(Wait a minute...how can you break the 4th Commandment every day of the week?...That's another topic for another time...)
Now that the label game has been played and I have successfully deconstructed your scapegoat that my argument does not apply to you because I am just an RP who believes he's better, holier, and more righteous than thou, let's play in the demilitarized zone. This isn't about denominations, this isn't about confessions of faith or catechisms, but it is merely a matter of what the Scriptures teach. This isn't a finger-pointing, this isn't a competition to see who's more faithful, and it's not meant to glorify one person and demean another. With all of that said, you're still uncomfortable with this subject. You started reading this because you were intrigued, but now that you see the direction it is heading you are hesitant to continue reading. I implore you, read on.
Hundreds of thousands of professing Christians will either skip a worship service this Sunday or dart out the door the second it is over in order to nuke their Velveeta with spicy salsa, slice their summer sausage, pop open their bags of Doritos, power on the boob tube, plop down on the couch, and taunt their church friends watching the game with them that are rooting for the opposite side. They'll laugh at the commercials, their share a few brews, they'll jump up and down in elation when their team scores or intercepts the ball, they'll turn the half-time show off because good Christian folk shouldn't watch Beyoncé flaunt her stuff on national television on Sunday, and they'll share a good cry when their team loses. In the meantime, the pulpit sits empty or if it is filled then the pews are lacking the congregation.
This is a confession, and the satire probably resonates with many because I have been there and done that. Frankly, every Super Bowl Sunday leaves me tempted to catch a sneak peek at the score. One little peek, that's all. I have to be in the know. Surely, I cannot return to work on Monday and not know about the highlights of the game and share all the inside jokes with others about the funniest parts of the commercials. Or can I?
Some Christians in the church still believe that the Sabbath rest is a creation ordinance that is still binding and applicable to mankind today, many others believe that Jesus' death instituted an everlasting Sabbath rest that believers partake in spiritually, and that the command to keep a physical, 24 hour day holy to the Lord was abrogated/fulfilled when Jesus rose from the dead. Most Christians watching the "Super" Bowl fall into the latter category, but there are many others who fall into the former category as well.
Apart from the Sabbatarian argument, what is wrong with watching the Super Bowl on Sunday? The RP church is not ordained by God to be the watchdog/finger-pointing denomination in the catholic church. Although there will be many judgmental and nose-in-the-air comments made throughout the social media world by many RPs on Super Bowl Sunday, one has to ask themselves, I know I don't like their approach, but what is my attitude towards God and worshiping Him this Sunday that is different from every other Sunday?
I'm going to replace Super Bowl Sunday with Martha Stewart Sunday, and hopefully I'll start to get a point across. Rather than a nationally praised and worshiped sporting event that replaces devotion and worship to God on Sunday, let us suppose that America makes a really big deal about Martha Stewart Sunday. One Sunday out of the year, Martha Stewart Living televises the slam dunk episode of the year concerning cooking, interior design, and all-things domestic that airs for three and a half hours. Knowing that Americans and people around the world will tune into this special episode of Martha Stewart Living, companies spend obnoxious amounts of money for a chance to air a hilarious commercial that will be the talk of the nation for two whole weeks. Families all around the country gather together into parties and share recipes and food that they learned to make on previous shows in annoying anticipation of how this episode of MSL will best the others. Church services are cancelled or are marginally attended because more people would rather stay home and watch MSL with the rest of the country than worship God and fellowship with the saints.
That's ridiculous! There is no way on earth that Martha Stewart would become that big of a deal. You can't compare Martha Stewart, the domestic diva, to Super Bowl Sunday!
Maybe you're right. By all means, tell me the difference. What is qualitatively different between a show of Martha Stewart Living and the Super Bowl? Well, you can just record Martha Stewart and watch it later because it doesn't lose it's wow factor when recorded. Nobody is going to go to work the next day and say, "Dude, did you see the way she basted that roast! Man, that action was divine!" Martha Stewart and the Super Bowl are apples and carrots.
It's just a show. It might be one of the most impressive, overly hyped, highly anticipated televised events of the year, but deep, deep down, it is nothing more than American sports' greatest display of pomp and circumstance. What happens if you miss it? For some, it would sadly be the end of the world. Others would rather get a root canal than even think about missing the biggest game of the year. It would kill me to miss this game, but I can live without worshipping God on His holy day.
Say what?! This is where we need to slam on the brakes.
The question is plain and simple, and take it at its face value. Don't try to marginalize it or justify the answer you know to be completely untrue. What comes first, worshipping God or watching the Super Bowl? You have a pastor ready to lead a worship service and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ behind door "A" and you have a Super Bowl party jam packed with friends, beer, and junk food behind door "B." You can worship God any given Sunday, but the Super Bowl is a once-a-year event! If I choose door "A" then I am just going to hear the same Gospel I already know and have heard a million times before. I probably should share the Gospel I hear with the guys at work, but they'd laugh at me if I told them that I went to church instead of watching the Super Bowl. If I choose door "B" then I'll be in the know, I'll really enjoy myself, I'll be able to fellowship with my buds, and fellowship is a good thing. Unfortunately, most Christians don't even think about the choice set before them this hard. Their minds are already made up. Tell me, what is so Christian about choosing door "B" and I will tell you what is so un-Christian about choosing door "B."
In Timothy Keller's book Counterfeit Gods, Keller writes:
When most people think of "idols" they have in mind literal statues--or the next pop star anointed by Simon Cowell. Yet while traditional idol worship still occurs in many places of the world, internal idol worship, with the heart, is universal. In Ezekiel 14:3, God says about elders of Israel, "These men have set up their idols in their hearts." Like us, the elders must have responded to this charge, "Idols? What idols? I don't see any idols." God was saying that the human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, (sporting events), even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them. (Emphasis original)
If your good friend was in a car accident on Super Bowl Sunday, would you visit him in the hospital? Would you need to make sure his hospital room has a TV first? If your estranged father called at the end of the 4th quarter when the game was tied and asked you to forgive him for a past full of sins against you and your mother, and he asks that you share with him the things of the Lord and pray with him, would you tell him that you would call him back in thirty minutes? If God asked you to turn off the TV and go to church, worship Him, fellowship with the saints, and keep His day holy, would you? (What if He commands you?) Or is that too much to ask? I can give you one day a week most of the time, God, but this is the Super Bowl we're talking about! Don't you understand what this game means to Americans? I promise, I'll be all the more attentive next Sunday, but please, let me turn my back on you this Sunday so I can worship my counterfeit god that will bring me significance, security, safety, and fulfillment. Ah, but it won't. Watch the Super Bowl and you'll still be left feeling insignificant, insecure, unsafe, and unfulfilled. You would rather abandon Him who provides all these things abundantly and turn to that which will only further aggravate your situation.
"The only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one. The living God, who revealed himself both at Mount Sinai and on the Cross, is the only Lord who, if you find him, can truly fulfill you, and, if you fail him, can truly forgive you" (Keller).
It truly makes no difference to the 49ers, the Ravens, the NFL, San Francisco, Baltimore, Beyoncé, or any one else involved if you watch or not. They assume you will, but they could care less if you don't. They won't know if your missing the big game or not. You think that it will be a big deal if you show up to work the next day and you tell the guys that you didn't watch the game. They really don't care. Trust me, I know.
However, God will notice your absence. God will miss your voice during the singing. God will miss your prayers at the prayer meeting. God will miss your heartstrings during the preaching of the Word. God will know that the temple of your heart was more obsessed with football than with everlasting life in Him. You can try to fool yourself into believing that it is not a big deal and rest completely upon the grace of God to forgive you for spending His day watching TV with the rest of the world rather than worshipping Him. After all, no one can keep the Lord's Day perfectly. I just didn't try as hard today, and I'm just relying upon His grace more than usual today. But that's what I am supposed to do anyways, right? Rest in His grace for salvation?
"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:1-2)
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but 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. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." (Exodus 20:8-11)
But I believe Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath with the ceremonial laws. I appreciate your warning not to make the Super Bowl an idol of my heart and all, but God doesn't care when I worship Him as long as I worship Him. It makes no difference to Him if I worship Him on Sunday or Wednesday. You RPs make such a big deal of this because you make Sunday into something that it's not. Jesus Christ is our eternal rest, and the days of the week do not matter as long as we are resting in Christ. Stop trying to judge me for sins when you are misinterpreting what the Bible teaches about Sundays and the 4th Commandment. You live your Christian life and let me live mine!
This may be your thought, it might not be. But I will address it nonetheless. Wilhelmus Brakel's The Christian's Reasonable Service, Vol. 3 has an entire section called "The Observance of the Sabbath to Continue After the Abrogation of the Ceremonial Laws" wherein Brakel seeks to demonstrate from Mat. 24:20 that Jesus Himself demonstrates that His death does not abrogate the observance of the Sabbath rest and the holy day of the Lord. Jesus told His disciples, "Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath." Read the chapter, read the context for yourself. Jesus is speaking to His disciples about the end of the age (v. 3). Brakel explains that this chapter refers not only to the destruction of Jerusalem but also the end of the world. Even if someone argues that Jesus is only referring to the destruction of Jerusalem, Brakel observes that, "Prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, the Christian church had long separated itself from the Jewish church, and the ceremonies had become as dead to them." Therefore, even before the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, the Christian church's observance of the Sabbath was different from the ceremonial observance of the Jewish Sabbath. You're stuck, then, because Jesus is obviously talking about the observance of the Christian Sabbath that survives the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath.
Why would Jesus tell His disciples that they should hope that their flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath if the Sabbath day observance has been abrogated? (Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a day that doesn't even exist.) If the Sabbath rest is now eternally fulfilled in Christ and men are only meant to enjoy a spiritual rest in Him, then wouldn't Jesus be telling His disciples to pray for the unavoidable? The widely held view of the fulfillment of the 4th Commandment in Christ's death makes Jesus' words here harsh, provoking, and un-loving. "Pray that your flight may not be on a Sabbath, but because my death will establish an eternal, spiritual rest in me, your prayers will be in vain." It does not make any sense.
Now, pleasure me for a second and take Jesus' words in light of the understanding that the Sabbath commandment was not abrogated in Christ's death, but that Christ's resurrection established the observance of the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath, the Lord's Day. Brakel asks the question: Why then did they have to pray that fleeing upon the Sabbath be prevented? He answers:
"Since God had appointed this day for refreshment and the enjoyment of an extraordinarily joyous rest, they would then have to miss this, and lose the opportunity to praise God with the congregation and to both edify and be edified. Thus, fleeing on the Sabbath would be double misery for the soul--just as fleeing in the winter would be a double misery for the body."
Matthew Henry writes:
Secondly, That it might not be on the sabbath day; not on the Jewish sabbath, because travelling then would give offence to them who were angry with the disciples for plucking the ears of corn on the day; not on the Christian sabbath, because being forced to travel on the day would be a grief to themselves.
This intimates Christ's design, that a weekly sabbath should be observed in his church after the preaching of the gospel to all the world. We read not of any of the ordinances of the Jewish church, which were purely ceremonial, that Christ ever expressed any care about, because they were all to vanish; but for the sabbath he often showed a concern. It intimates likewise that the sabbath is ordinarily to be observed as a day of rest from travel and worldly labour; but that, according to his own explication of the fourth commandment, works of necessity were lawful on the sabbath day, as this of fleeing from an enemy to save our lives: had it not been lawful, he would have said, "Whatever becomes of you, do not flee on the sabbath day, but abide by it, though you die by it." For we must not commit the least sin, to escape the greatest trouble. But it intimates, likewise, that it is very uneasy and uncomfortable to a good man, to be taken off by any work of necessity from the solemn service and worship of God on the sabbath day.
We should pray that we may have quiet undisturbed sabbaths, and may have no other work than sabbath work to do on sabbath days; that we may attend upon the Lord without distraction. It was desirable, that, if they must flee, they might have the benefit and comfort of one sabbath more to help to bear their charges. To flee in the winter is uncomfortable to the body; but to flee on the sabbath day is so to the soul, and the more so when it remembers former sabbaths, as Ps. 42:4.
Jesus taught His disciples to pray that the end of the world would not come on the Sabbath because then they would spend the day of solemn service and worship of God fleeing from their enemies. If there was ever a reason to forfeit a Sabbath, it would be to save our families' lives from destruction. Jesus taught His disciples to pray that their flight would not have to take place on a Sunday, so that they might not have to be as spiritually miserable as a warm body fleeing in the frigid air of winter.
Take what you will from this confession. It was long, it was biased, and it was hard to read through. If you made it this far, even though you wanted to stop reading long ago, then at least take the time to search your heart, contemplate you reasons for watching the Super Bowl rather than sharing in the blessings of the Lord's Day, and pray that God would convict you of unknown sin that you might obey him rather than continuing to sin unknowingly (Ps. 19:12-13).
I too wrestled with this debate, I too was hesitant to make a big deal out of missing worship services for the Super Bowl one Sunday a year, but I cannot say that I have any regrets whatsoever in the conclusion I reached. It may be hard for you to imagine a world without the Super Bowl, but as time goes by, it becomes less divine and more and more like a silly game that you can record if you really must watch it.
To Super Bowl or not to Super Bowl? Hopefully, that isn't even a difficult question to ask anymore.
Please leave a comment. Read Isaiah 58:13-14, and explain how these verses can be interpreted if the Christian Sabbath is only a spiritual rest in Jesus and not also a 24-hour day to be kept holy. Does this promise only apply to the Jewish observance of the Sabbath or is this passage applicable to Christians today? It seems to say that if you honor the Sabbath then you are not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure. Does this mean that we should not find any pleasure in observing the Sabbath or does this mean that our pleasures should be found in the holy day rather than in our ways?
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