Rest as Rebellion
“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 of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 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
How the Sabbath Wages War Against Busyness
There is a kind of rebellion that happens outside the battlefields in the kitchens, living rooms, and front yards. And it looks like a father closing his laptop when the company says there’s more money to be made. It’s the kind of rebellion that would fuel a mother to turn off her phone and gathering her kids around the dinner table. It looks like a family skipping the game, the emails, and the noise, choosing instead to worship, to rest, to breathe on the Lord’s Day. This kind of rebellion doesn’t wear rank, march in unison, or carry a flag. It simply says, “Enough.”
In an age that worships motion, where the calendar has become a petty tyrant and the clock a brutal taskmaster, to stop and get off the ever rolling treadmill is an act of rebellion and war. In this culture, to rest is akin to revolt. To sanctify one day in seven is to raise the standards of a very different kingdom and to confess that time itself bows to a higher throne.
And this is surely confusing to many. Today, we live beneath the lash of a digital Pharaoh. His chariots are deadlines; his idols, productivity; his temples, our offices and glowing screens. He promises freedom through efficiency, joy through progress, all the while wrapping you with invisible chains of restlessness. We trade our peace for paychecks and call it success. We measure our worth in exhaustion and call it virtue. And above the hum of ever-connectedness and the ache of endless striving, the voice of God atop the Mountain at Sinai still cuts through the static void, saying: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
That word remember—the Hebrew word zākar—is not a sentimental word that describes having a fond affection for a past event or a cherished memory. Instead, this word describes a kind of allegiance. To remember, in this way, is to mark something as central, to order your life around its meaning, to build your week around it as if it is the most important truth you could ever consider. To remember the Sabbath then is to reorient your existence around God’s finished work in creation and redemption and to join Him deliberately in rest. It is to renounce the illusion that the world depends on your labor and rejoice that it rests safely in His loving hands.
Think about it. When the Lord rested on the seventh day, He was not weary but demonstrating His wondrous power. His rest was not surrender to fatigue but celebration of His fullness. He gazed upon His creation, called it very good, and blessed the seventh day as the crown of His handiwork. That rest was where God’s royal rule began— His regal enthronement over all materiality, not an escape or a collapse, but a coronation. And since that first Sabbath, the people of God have been invited into the same divine rhythm to join our God: working diligently for six whole days of faithful labor followed by one day of holy delight. To keep the Sabbath, therefore, is to live in tune with the Father, and to like the rhythm of your life beat in sync with the metronome of His creation. To ignore it, however, is to grind against reality. It is to splinter your life from His, and the creations, septenary cadence.
The Sabbath, then, is not a remote rule written to restrict, restrain, or rob humanity of our joy. It is instead the metrical tempo of materiality we align ourselves with to be poured back into and restored. In this way, the sabbath reminds us that we are not machines fueled by energy drinks and deadlines, but image-bearers sustained by grace. True rest, therefore, is not laziness; it is covenant loyalty. It is the weekly pledge of allegiance to the King who rules while we sleep. It is the moment you close the laptop, silence the phone, and sit with your family in peace, trusting that the world will not fall apart while you worship. It is the choice to let unfinished work stay unfinished because Christ’s work is complete. Every time you step away from your striving, you make a declaration louder than words—that Jesus Christ is Lord.
True rest, therefore, is not about laziness; it is a demonstration of loyalty. It is the weekly pledge of allegiance to the King who reigns while we sleep and is ever-sovereign while we are awake. It is an act of trust that shatters idols, a declaration that the cosmos continues because Christ upholds it by the word of His power, not because we scurry about the face of the earth in unending busyness. Every time you and I stop striving, we proclaim with our bodies what we confess with our mouth—that Jesus Christ is Lord.
And History shines with examples of those who dared to trust this pattern. When the Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell learned that his Olympic race would be run on the Lord’s Day, he refused to compete in it. The press mocked him, his nation pleaded with him, and his name became a laughing stock at the Olympic games. Yet his conscience was firmly anchored to God’s commands, not the applause of men. “The Sabbath,” he said, “is not man’s; it is the Lord’s.” Days later he entered a race for which he had scarcely trained, and there—his head lifted heavenward, arms flung wide—he broke the world record. The man who would not run on the Lord’s Day ran faster on man’s day than any man alive, because he had first learned the rebellious obedience of resting in God.
A century later, Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, made a similar stand. He closed his restaurants on Sundays, defying every market instinct of Babel. Economists scoffed at him, competitors sneered, but the God who governs six days of labor governs and a seventh day of rest was pleased with Him. And through famine and feast, recession and revival, God has honored Cathy’s faith. The business that closed one day a week has now flourished beyond many of the ones that never rested, proving that obedience is never inefficient when the Lord blesses the day.
The true heroes of Sabbath rebellion, however, are not Olympians or wildly successful entrepreneurs but ordinary saints: fathers who turn down double-time pay to protect their Sundays, mothers who gather their children around Scripture instead of the stadium, employers who lock their doors so their workers can worship. These quiet revolutionaries preach Christ and His law without words. Their stillness shakes the throne of Mammon; their delight dethrones despair. They have discovered that rest is not weakness but witness.
And in that way, the Sabbath is not a cage but a crown. It is a fortress in time where the people of God find refuge—a walled garden of grace that blooms each week amid the desert of demands. Within its gates we lay down the tools that pretend to save us and take up the songs that remind us who actually did.
In Him, the Fourth Commandment is not a mere ancient law but living promise. The invitation that once thundered from Sinai now whispers through the pierced lips of the Savior: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” To keep the Lord’s Day holy is to live inside that invitation, to shape your time around His victory, and to make your home a weekly echo of the empty tomb.
So rebel—not with clenched fists but with open hands. Rebel against the world’s system of perpetual busyness by closing your laptop, by silencing your devices, by gathering your household around the table of grace. Let the smell of bread replace the hum of machines; let the sound of psalms rise higher than the noise of news. Feast, sing, pray, and let the Sabbath become a delight, the sweetest revolution of all—a protest of peace in a world of unrest. Because every time you rest in Christ, you bear witness that the grave is empty, that Christ reigns, and that history is moving toward His eternal Sabbath.
And that is not laziness.
It is not retreat.
It is dominion through delight.
This is rest as rebellion—a rehearsal for eternity, when all creation will at last fall silent in the joy of God’s finished work.
