Sports and the Lord’s Day

Note: This is a follow-up to “The Christian and Sports” which I posted on James Faris’ page before I got my own!

 Our love for sports as both participants and spectators can swerve into idolatry in many ways.  Perhaps none is more obvious than the effect that sports can have on the Christian observance of the Lord’s Day.  I suppose I should not have been surprised when I received an email through the Christian-based basketball league one of my daughters was participating in this winter inviting her to come to a basketball clinic hosted by the Indiana University women’s team at 9:30 AM on a Sunday morning.  After all, college athletics misuse the Lord’s Day nearly as much as the professional leagues do today.  Still, I found it hard to believe that the good folks at I.U. would send an invitation to an explicitly Christian basketball league for a Sunday morning clinic.  But, of course, the reason the marketing people at I.U. thought that was a good idea is doubtless because it has worked in the past.  Christians, by and large, show little commitment in honoring the fourth commandment which requires us to cease from our regular work in order to rest and worship for an entire day every week.

My thoughts on this issue have evolved over the last several years, but I have come to the conclusion that participating in or even watching organized athletics is not a good way to honor God on the Lord’s Day.  There is a real danger that efforts to “honor the Sabbath Day” will degenerate into man-made lists of approved and unapproved activities.  This was one of the besetting sins of the Pharisees, and Jesus was not shy about condemning this approach to the fourth commandment.  On the other hand, this does not mean that we are all left to “do our own thing” on the Lord’s Day.  One of the key principles regarding our approach to the Lord’s Day comes from God’s words through the prophet Isaiah: “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.  The mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13-14, NKJ).  These words challenged me to seriously question the source of my delight on the Lord’s Day.  Is it in the Lord or is it in my own pleasures, words, and soccer games?  Continue at Gentle Reformation