8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Westminster Confession of Faith: Chapter XXI, Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath-day.
VIII. This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations,(o) but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.(p)
(o) Exod. 20:8; Exod. 16:23, 25, 26, 29, 30; Exod. 31:15, 16, 17; Isa. 58:13; Neh. 13:15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22.
(p) Isa. 58:13; Matt. 12:1 to 13
Obviously, I added the emphasis to the WCF, but the questions remain:
- Is it possible to have a Super Bowl Party without violating the 4th commandment?
- Can a Sunday Super Bowl Party (or any gathering outside of formal, stated worship), be pleasing to God as an act of worship?
- What if it is used as an outreach tool?
- What if a church organizes it as a fellowship gathering?
- Are preparations for such an event considered 'work' as described in Exodus?
- Could such an outreach activity be considered mercy?
I hadn't put alot of thought into this until this year when confronted by a friend. If anyone is reading out there, I'd be interested to know your thoughts.
B
3 comments:
Man, what a wide open topic. I really want to straddle the fence on this one. On the one hand, I remember that in Jeremiah it talks about not turning your foot to your earthly pleasures on the sabbath. I'd have to say that I personally don't feel like it the best thing you could do to spend a sunday evening, but as you know we were raised in such a way that I didn't even have a TV in the house till I was 13 or so. I know that part of my adverse reactions have to do with my upbringing, but I don't feel like that was in error. We talked at youth the other night about "christian liberty" and the example used was driving a car on the edge of a cliff, -- that we shouldn't try to get as close as possible to the edge without falling off, but that we should give it a wide berth. (sp?)
I think the WCF strictly speaking would forbid the Super Bowl. -- It would pretty much fall under "worldly recreations" in my book. (esp. in light of Janet Jacksons' excitement last year).
All of that said, I think that having a fellowship with people on the "Super Bowl Sunday" would be less of a "Violation" if you will of the WCF's standards. I would think explicitly that going to the game, and spending the day drinking (tailgating MSU style) would be breaking the 4th Commandment.
Was your friend admonishing you against having your party? I would also say that you could have some other event, that wasn't focused on a "worldly" activity -- like a fellowship supper, and be pretty far from that edge -- as an act of mercy. But I know folks that won't even let the TV get cut on, and pretty much has their family reading the Bible or nothing at all. I'm not sure if im that far right on it...
AC
"Confronted" isn't really the right word. He is definitely a sabbatarian and said he and his family couldn't come because they would be at evening worship, etc... But I do think that they would watch the game from home afterward. He wasn't coming down on me.
I did not know that you had no TV in the house. I like that. TV is a HUGE time waster; I often feel imprisoned by it.
When we used to go to CJ's pizza for lunch -- back in those days... We had a computer monitor hooked up to a VCR, but really only watched movies on it as a family. We were allowed to watch the occasional world series game. (but only if the Braves were playing).
But prior to that we didn't have the first thing -- not that we couldn't afford that, but our nintendo was each other, and we had more entertainment than we knew what to do with. I really don't want to raise my kids with a TV in the house, but i know their dad really likes to waste time and watch it. There's a very cool guy in our church who can easily get cable, but doesn't have it. His kids (and himself) are better for it.
I want to cut ours off, but leave FNC, PBS, ESPN and maybe the networks.... but even those are filthy sometimes.
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