Do exactly as you like on the Sabbath!
And now have blagged enough during one almost sleepless nite to last a week! So, if not more blagging appears for a few days..... have already served them up!
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock , or the sojourner who is within your gates. 1 1For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
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The above heading is within quotation marks. I cannot take credit for it. It is another man’s phrase — a certain Jim Elliff, writing an article for the Baptist Press. It is timely. It hits home.
Sports has become much of Christianity’s new “god.” Those of us living in West Michigan can verify that. Last month the Grand Rapids Press ran a three part series on Christians (of the Reformed community in particular) getting more and more involved in Sunday sports in every way — as fans, as participants, as professionals earning their living [desecrating] the Lord’s Day. The Grand Rapids community has noticed this development. The Grand Rapids Press thought it high time for the Christian community, its Reformed section in particular, to explain (and justify) itself after so long having condemned those who played on the Lord’s Day.
The same Christian churches that so recently condemned sports and recreation as a transgression of the Lord’s Holy Day, now have members out there hitting a pitching wedge to the green and trying to leg out a double with the best (worst?) of them. Professing Christians lead the Sunday hit parade. What gives? What changed? The community wonders.
The Christian "apologists" did their best to explain. According to the "apologists," the new "freedom" to “violate” the Lord’s Day has to do with Christian maturity, that is, Christians finally growing up and learning not to be so legalistic, that is, judging others by one’s own personal preference as to what one may or may not do on the Lord’s Day. Spiritual maturity means each has the right to determine for oneself what’s the best use of the Lord’s Day for one’s spiritual growth. Some evidently find arguing with an umpire over another blown call another step in their spiritual development.
In short, it appears to me what comes to light is a new insight into the Bible, in particular a passage we evidently have misinterpreted for all too long: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, (and spiritually mature), I embraced with even greater fervor childish things and refused to put them away even on the Lord’s Day." I am sure that is what I Corinthians 13:11 really must have meant to say.
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