The Sabbath And The Heart

“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

For many of us, Sunday worship is a non-negotiable. We go to church. We gather with the saints. We sit under the Word, sing the songs, and bow our heads when it’s time to pray. Outwardly, we are Sabbath-keepers. We have not forsaken the assembling of ourselves together. But if we are honest, many of us are doing all of the right things with all of the wrong heart. We come into the house of God not with gladness, but with groaning. We are present in body, but we are absent in spirit. We arrive flustered, scattered, half-awake, and half-engaged—and we expect that merely being there is obedience enough.

The truth is that you don’t have to skip church to break the fourth commandment. You only have to come without preparation. You only have to roll in late, exhausted from a week of worshiping productivity, leisure, or screen time, with a heart too dull to perceive the holiness of the hour. Many of us treat the Lord’s Day like the final chore of the weekend. We may have kept the letter of the law, but we have missed its delight. We may have shown up, but we’ve shown up empty, distracted, and unready to meet with the living God.

When God instituted the Sabbath, He was not adding one more rule to our week. He was giving us a gift—a sacred rhythm designed for our good. One day in seven, carved out by the Creator Himself, where work would cease, striving would stop, and our souls would be reoriented toward heaven. In Eden, this day was embedded into the very fabric of creation, not because God needed rest, but because we would. And now, in the new creation inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Lord’s Day is the first day of the week—a day of new beginnings, resurrection life, and covenant renewal. It is a day drenched in glory, and yet we often treat it as if it were just another box to check.

Isaiah 58 does not merely call us to honor the Sabbath—it calls us to “call the Sabbath a delight.” That word should confront us. Delight is not cold obligation. It is not begrudging compliance. It is not weary attendance out of habit or guilt. Delight is affection. Delight is joy. Delight is what you feel when your heart leaps toward something you love. And yet how many of us can honestly say we feel that way about Sunday? How many of us wake up with a sense of awe and anticipation that today is the day we get to meet with the risen Christ, in the assembly of His people, to sing, to listen, to feast, to rest?

We have not just neglected the Sabbath—we have forgotten how to love it. We have forgotten how to prepare for it. We spend our Saturdays filling every moment with noise, movement, and tasks, and then wonder why we’re too tired to worship on Sunday. We stay up too late watching shows, scrolling endlessly, or catching up on work, and then stagger into the service distracted and depleted. Our children see us more focused on finding matching shoes than on the majesty of God. Our preparation is frantic, and our expectations are low. We arrive late, we murmur about the length of the service, and we slip out as quickly as possible—never stopping to consider that we are treating holy things with casual contempt.

But God has not changed. His day has not changed. Christ still meets with His people on the first day of the week, just as He has since the tomb was found empty. This day still belongs to Him. It is not ours to shape around our schedules; it is His to shape us. The Lord’s Day is not a throwaway twenty-four hours tacked onto the weekend—it is the crown of the Christian week. It is the feast of the Kingdom in miniature. It is the day where heaven opens, where the King speaks, and where His people gather to be fed by grace.

If we want to recover the joy of the Lord’s Day, we must begin by repenting of our attitude toward it. We must stop treating it as a burden and begin treating it as a blessing. We must stop seeing it as one more thing we have to do and start seeing it as the one thing we most desperately need. That will mean preparing. It will mean reordering our Saturdays. It will mean teaching our children that Sunday is not just important—it is the best day of the week. It will mean coming to church not rushed and ragged, but early and expectant. Not to critique the service, but to commune with our Savior.

It is not enough to be in the room. Our hearts must be in it too. It is not enough to show up. We must show up prepared, tuned, ready. That is not legalism. It is love. You prepare for what you value. You clear space for what you cherish. If we do not prepare for Sunday, it reveals that we do not treasure what happens there. And what happens there is no small thing. The gospel is preached. The sacraments are administered. The saints are encouraged. The Spirit works. Christ is exalted. Eternity presses into time.

So let us recover the honor of the day. Let us raise our expectations. Let us come with hearts eager to sing, to hear, to rest, and to rejoice. Let us call the Sabbath what it truly is—not a duty, but a delight. And in doing so, we will find that our joy increases, our hearts are lifted, and our lives are reordered around the presence of God. The Lord’s Day is not a burden. It is the best day of the week. Let us treat it like it.