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When I was fresh out of
high school and looking for work, I took a job working twelve hours a day,
seven days a week. At $1.25 an hour, I was making pretty good money, or so
I thought. The way I figured it, I could earn 455 dollars a month, live
with my folks, and buy a new car.
And so I went to work. I
started at six in the evening and worked until six in the morning. I had a
ten minute break every two hours, and a short break for "lunch" at
midnight. I was working on a drill press helping fulfill a military
subcontract. The lathe operators would cut the cast iron stock to shape
and then I would place the finished stock into a jig on my drill press and
put a hole in the middle of it, shaping a flange at the same stroke. The
job required absolutely no thought. There were three simple movements
required on each piece on to the press, down with the tool, off to the
stack of completed material. This went on for twelve hours.
When we got off at six in
the morning, there was the bus ride home, a shower, a bite to eat, and a
few minutes to unwind before getting to bed about eight o'clock to dream
about drill presses. I got up about four in the afternoon, showered and
shaved, had a bite to eat, puttered about for a short while, and then
caught the bus back to work.
When I started on that
job, I had no idea how depressing it would be. Remember, I was eighteen,
single, and just out of high school. I didn't last long--I quit. But I
have often thought of the other men who were working that same job. They
didn't have the same option I had. They had children to clothe, mouths to
feed, and rent to pay. Jobs were not that easy to come by in those days.
In truth, those men were not far removed from being slaves.
It is looking back on this
experience that helps me truly appreciate the Sabbath day. Too often we
think of God's law as restrictive, prohibitive, taking away from us things
we want. If you happen to be a person of leisure, you may feel the Sabbath
interferes with your recreation. But if you are a working stiff, you are
more likely to think of the Sabbath as a day of liberty, of freedom, of
rest. You are more likely to welcome the Sabbath as the great gift it
is.
The Fourth
Commandment
If we are to understand
Sabbath observance, the obvious place to start is with the commandment
itself,
"Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy. "
Most of us make a peculiar
omission when we talk about "keeping the Sabbath." For merely saying we
keep the Sabbath stops one word short. God said, "Remember the Sabbath
day to keep it holy. " Simply put, that which is holy belongs
to God. The temple and all its accoutrements, for example, were holy
because they belonged to God.
In this case, the Sabbath
is declared to be holy, and we are commanded to keep it that way. The law
goes on to explain:
"Six days shall thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the
Lord thy God; in it thou shall not do any work..." (Exodus 20:10).
Six days of the week
belong to us, but the seventh day belongs to God.
Not only are we to keep in
mind that the Sabbath day does not belong to us, and to avoid any work on
that day, we are not to require work of others:
"...thou shall not do
any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy
maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.
"
Does this mean you stop
the boy from delivering your paper on the Sabbath day? No, he doesn't work
for you. In most cases he is self-employed and makes his own decisions
about when to work and when to take off. The commandment forbids you to
require work of anyone who is under your control. Notice the
use of the possessive: thy servant, thy daughter, even
thy stranger. The commandment is to you and has to do with what you
do and what you require. It does not call on you to prevent work by
others, nor does it prevent you from benefiting from the labors of those
who decide to work. Otherwise, you would have to avoid even the use of
electricity on the Sabbath.
(See
Eat In Restaurants On Sabbath?)
Why are we to do this?
"For in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested
the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed
it" (Exodus 20:11).
Some funny arguments have
grown up around the Sabbath. There are those, for example, who believe the
Sabbath originated with Moses. And yet it is plain that in resting on the
seventh day, God set it apart and hallowed it from creation. To
hallow something is to make it holy. The Sabbath day was made holy right
from the start.
As Jesus put it, the
Sabbath was made for man. It was created when man was created. The fourth
commandment itself points to creation as the origin of the Sabbath.
The account in Deuteronomy
adds another element to the Sabbath:
"And remember that
you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought
thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm:
therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day"
(Deuteronomy 5:15).
To people born in slavery,
the Sabbath was without a doubt the greatest expression of liberty these
people had ever known. No longer did they have to work seven days out of
seven. No longer were they left without time to think about God, to
worship, to pray, to rest as God Himself rested.
Judgments
The commandment was pretty
simple. "Keep the seventh day apart as belonging to God. Do not work on
that day. Rest on that day. Do not require work on that day. Remember that
God your creator rested on the seventh day, and remember that He liberated
you from slavery." That was all the fourth commandment had to say about
the Sabbath.
Even though that is all
there is to the commandment, it doesn't take a great theologian to realize
that there are a lot of unanswered questions raised here. For example,
does it really matter which day is the Sabbath, or can we keep any one day
in seven? Just what constitutes work? What if my house catches fire-would
it be work to remove some of my belongings?
These two versions of the
ten commandments are not all the Bible tells us about Sabbath observance,
but there is an important difference between this commandment and all the
other scriptures about the Sabbath-all the other references are
judgments. What difference does that make? Judgments are
administrative statements applying the law to specific situations. The
principle remains in force, but it may not always have the same force when
applied to different circumstances in different times.
(See Sabbath Day's
Distance?)
There has never been a law
given which does not require interpretation. And if there is to be
official interpretation, then sort of official administration is
called for.
Someone must have decision
making powers in any governmental structure. Israel was no exception, and
the procedure for handling questions and disputes was described in
Deuteronomy 17:8. If there arose a matter too hard for them in judgment-especially
a matter creating controversy-then they were to get up to the seat of
government and inquire of the priests, Levites, and judges. These
officials were charged with the responsibility of rendering judgments in
doubtful matters. Their decisions took on all the force of law for those
who had so inquired (verse 10), even to the extent of the death penalty
(verse 12).
These judges could not
decide arbitrarily. They were constrained to derive their decisions from
the law and to support them by exposition of the law (verse 11). This was,
in effect, the supreme court of the day. Like our supreme court, their
decisions actually became a part of the body of law, and we find biblical
writers referring to the law in terms of commandments, statutes, and
judgments. Like our supreme court, they made narrow decisions that
applied only to the case in point or they made broad decisions that could
find application in many similar cases.
Whatever the decision, it
became the law of the land, and was just as binding on applicable cases as
if it were written with the finger of God.
Sometimes the judgment
came from God Himself. Take for example the young man who went out to
gather sticks on the Sabbath day. Numbers 15 draws a distinction between
sinning through ignorance, and sinning presumptuously:
"But the soul that
doeth ought presumptuously [margin: with a high hand], whether he
be born in the land, or a stranger, the same reproaches the Lord;
and that soul shall cut off from among his people" (Numbers 15:30).
In this context, a case
study is included of a man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath (verses
32-36). He was arrested and held "because it was not declared what
should be done to him. " In other words, the law did not specify this
particular violation-after all, no law can cover every contingency.
God's "judgment" was that
he should be put death, but in terms of the courts, this was a "narrow"
decision. Not every man who ever gathered sticks on the Sabbath would be
stoned. This man had not acted out of ignorance, weakness, necessity or
even stupidity. He had acted defiantly- with a high hand. His
attitude and intent had figured in the decision. Jesus would later make it
clear that human and even animal necessity could create exceptions in the
Sabbath law. This man had reproached God by sinning "with a high hand."
The Preparation Day
We will not be called on
to discipline someone for gathering firewood on the Sabbath, but the
judgment is still important. It underlines a fundamental concept of
Sabbath observance: the preparation day. If you are going to need
firewood on the Sabbath, collect it the day before. After all, the Sabbath
does not come as a total surprise each week.
When God decided to "rain
bread from heaven" for the Israelites (Exodus 16:4-30), He did it in such
a way as to drive home two important lessons about the Sabbath. Bear in
mind that this is not a commandment, but an administrative statement as to
how the Sabbath should be observed in this situation. It is a judgment.
We will derive lessons from it, but we may apply those lessons a little
differently under Christ's administration.
Lesson one:
The proper observance of the Sabbath requires forethought and preparation.
"Behold, I will rain
bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a
certain rate every day, that I may prove them [it was a test
commandment], whether they will walk in my law, or no. And it shall
come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which
they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily"
(verses 4,5).
God gave them a very
simple procedure. Gather just enough for your family each day and eat it
all. If you gather too much and try to hold it over, it will breed worms
and stink. It was to be their "daily bread." Then, on the sixth day, they
were allowed twice as much and told to prepare extra for the Sabbath day.
This time it did not breed worms and stink. They were being carefully
taught to prepare for the Sabbath day.
Lesson two:
The Sabbath could not be any one day in seven. It was established on a
specific day. Some people tried to do otherwise and were left with smelly,
worm eaten bread. Those who went out on the Sabbath to collect manna found
none and were rebuked for their efforts:
"How long refuse ye to
keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you
the Sabbath, therefore He gives you on the sixth day the bread of two
days; abide ye every man in his place [stay put], let no man go out
of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day"
(verses 28,29).
What we learn from these
judgments is that the Sabbath is on a specific day, and that proper
observance of the Sabbath requires preparation. There is nothing in
Christ's teaching to change that.
What we have read so far
are God's judgments for a people fresh out of slavery. They had to be
taught, and that teaching required discipline. There were questions to be
asked about the observance of the Sabbath in that time and place, and
those questions had to be answered.
When preparations were
being made for building the tabernacle, Moses' opening instructions
clarified a matter regarding the Sabbath. Even the work on the tabernacle
would cease on the Sabbath. In fact, they were not even to kindle a fire
on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:3). Did this mean that they could not start a
fire to keep warm in case of a sudden change in the weather? Not likely.
They were not even to build a fire on the Sabbath preparatory to resuming
work after the Sabbath was over, even if the work was on the tabernacle.
Remember, this is a judgment of Moses given on a specific occasion. It
has not been abolished. It remains in the law as a precedent, but
judgments may be interpreted differently when we face different
circumstances. Kindling a fire in our own age is hardly work. It may only
involve the flipping of a switch. And there is no prohibition in any age
to kindling a fire to get warm. It is a matter of judgment.
Nevertheless, the concept
of the preparation day calls for us to get our firewood ready the day
before so we can truly rest on the Sabbath.
Much later, after the
captivity when the leaders of Israel were anxious to restore obedience to
God, a governor named Nehemiah rendered some judgments about the Sabbath
(Nehemiah 13:15-22). In those days some of the Jews were carrying on all
their normal activities on the Sabbath day including setting up farmers'
markets in Jerusalem. By means of a "city ordinance" he forbade the
marketing of produce in Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. There was little he
could do about work done elsewhere, but in Jerusalem, he was governor.
Even when they tried to set up markets outside of Jerusalem, he drove them
away. If you have ever been to that kind of market, you will realize how
it can shatter the peace of a Sabbath morning.
Some have taken this as
proof that it is wrong to buy, sell, or even for money to change hands on
the Sabbath. There are four things to be considered about this passage.
First, there is nothing in the fourth commandment to prohibit money or
goods changing hands on the Sabbath, though nothing done should cause
others to have to work or serve you. As a rule, money should not
have to be so much as carried. The commandment is that you are not
to do any work. Second, although it is a small point, Nehemiah was the
governor, and was establishing a Sabbath-keeping society. Different judgments may be called for in a non-Sabbath keeping society where you
have no authority. Third, this is a judgment of a governor to meet a
specific situation. While it is a precedent, it is a narrow precedent.
Foufth, we have yet to consider Christ's judgments relative to the
Sabbath.
Jesus'
administration of the Sabbath was a common sense approach.
By the time He came on the scene, the Jews had rendered the Sabbath almost
unrecognizable. Following what they thought was Nehemiah's example, they
had decided how far a person could walk on the Sabbath, how much he could
carry, whether one could take things out of his house if it were on fire,
and even whether one could heal on the Sabbath.
Jesus and His disciples
for the most part ignored the traditions of the Jews regarding Sabbath
observance, though Luke mentions the distance in Acts 1:12. On a day when they were passing through grain fields, they
were plucking ears of grain as they went (Mark 2:23). To the Pharisees,
this was unlawful and they challenged Jesus on the question. They saw no
real difference between the act of plucking one head of grain, and
harvesting fifty or five thousand. The difference was only a matter of
numbers.
Now common sense tells you
that isn't so. Obviously there is a difference between plucking a few
heads of grain to eat right then and there, and harvesting your entire
crop. What is the difference? The difference is in your intent. One
man might have gone out to collect sticks on the Sabbath to build fire to
keep warm after a sudden cold snap-this man might have gone unpunished
while another man who performed exactly the same act might have been
stoned. One was reluctantly working to meet a human need, (an ox in the
ditch situation, but under normal circumstances, these matters should be
attended to on preparation day) and the other
was arrogantly flouting God's law. It was purely a matter of intent.
Jesus replied to the
critics,
"Have ye never read
that David did, when he had need, and was an hungered, he, and they that
were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar
the high priest, and did eat the shew bread, which is not lawful to eat
but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?"
What did this reply have
to do with the Sabbath? Merely that a simple human need like hunger could,
on a rare occasion, take precedence over the law-even the fourth
commandment. Such an occasion in no way invalidates or sets aside the
commandment-it is an exception to the rule.
Jesus even acknowledged
that there could arise a conflict between two laws. In Matthew's account
of this incident, Jesus continues by asking,
"Or have you not read
in the law, how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane
the Sabbath, and are blameless?" (Matthew 12:5).
In truth we would expect
that the greater law would take precedence over the lesser, and who would
argue that the sacrificial law is greater than the Sabbath? The priests
were commanded to do the work of sacrificing animals. The Sabbath forbade
work. Which commandment took precedence? The sacrificial law took
precedence as it was service to God and man.
This deserves some
consideration. The Sabbath, Jesus continued, was made for man, and not man
for the Sabbath. Man was not expected to worship the Sabbath, but to rest
and not work on the Sabbath, thus, worshiping God. The offerings were a part of the worship of
God and so were offered every day. They were also a presentation of the
Gospel since every sacrifice pointed to Christ.
Having made this point,
Jesus continued:
"But I say unto you
that in this place is one greater than the temple" (Matthew 12:6).
If the service of the
temple could continue on the Sabbath, then so could the service of Christ.
"But if you had known
what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have
condemned the guiltless. "
The rigid, ritualistic
observance of law was not as important as mercy, according to Christ.
He concluded,
"For the Son of man is
Lord even of the Sabbath day" (Verse 8).
Jesus is the final
judge of proper conduct on the Sabbath day.
He took us beyond the ministration of death to
the ministration of the spirit and defined this day at a level no Pharisee
would ever have seen.
They asked Him,
"Is it lawful to heal
on the Sabbath days?"
They were only setting a
trap-trying to find some accusation against Him. When they asked this,
there was a man standing near who had a withered hand. Jesus asked,
"What man shall there
be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the
Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?"
Plainly, all of them would
have rescued the dumb animal. If not, then His question would have been
meaningless. Elsewhere, He asks a similar question regarding an ox in a
ditch, plainly expecting that even the strictest Pharisee would save the
animal even though it involved backbreaking work. After all, it was an
emergency. Jesus taught that work is permissible in an emergency, even
to save an animal.
Then He hit them with the
clincher:
"How much then is a man
better than a sheep? Wherefore, it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath
days, then says He to the man, Stretch forth your hand. And he
stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other"
(Matthew 12:13).
You would think the
dramatic healing would have been all the authority Jesus needed to pass
judgment on how to observe the Sabbath, but the men went out and conspired
how they might destroy Him.
It was almost as though
Jesus sought out opportunities to correct the errors of the Jews. On
another occasion, He found an impotent man lying on a pallet. He could
easily have said, "rise up and walk, but that would have left an issue
unresolved. He went on to say,
"Rise, take up thy
bed and walk. "
This was on the Sabbath,
and the Jews had precisely defined the size of the burden a man could
carry on the Sabbath.
When the Jews saw the man
carrying his pallet, they said,
"It is not lawful for
thee to carry thy bed."
The man's answer is
instructive:
"He that made me whole,
the same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk."
He had no question about
Jesus' credentials in interpreting the Sabbath. Any man who could heal him
could certainly explain the nuances of Sabbath observance.
Did Jesus intend to
completely invalidate the Sabbath? Hardly. What concerned him was the
trivializing of the Sabbath.
The Jews can hardly be
blamed for being careful. They knew it was carelessness on the Sabbath
that had resulted in the Babylonian captivity. They recalled vividly
Jeremiah's admonition to "bear no burden on the Sabbath day"
(Jeremiah 17:22). God had warned through Jeremiah that if they would not
listen and routinely carried a burden through the gates of Jerusalem on
the Sabbath that He would kindle a fire in the gates of the city (verse
27). They recalled Nehemiah's admonition that God had brought captivity
upon their fathers for profaning the Sabbath (Nehemiah 13:18).
What they could not see
was the difference between carrying a heavy burden of firewood, and
carrying a rolled up blanket under the arm.
There is a difference, but it cannot be measured in kilograms. Once again,
it is a matter of intent.
When Jesus was challenged
on the matter, He responded,
"I can of mine own self
do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek
not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me"
(John 5:30).
It was not God's intent to
prevent a man from carrying even a light burden on the Sabbath, or from
doing good on the Sabbath. It was His intent to set a man free from his
work on the Sabbath.
Jesus' judgment about the
Sabbath was the Father's judgment, the Father's intent. It was the true
interpretation of the original intent of the Sabbath law.
But Jesus also realized
that there was no way He could answer all questions for all generations.
What about the questions that would arise as technology radically changed
man's lifestyle? Would there be a continuing need for interpretation?
Jesus told, not only
Peter, but all the apostles,
"And I will give unto
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shal1 bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:19, 18:18).
This does not include the
power to change laws, but simply to pass judgment on doubtful matters.
All that is permitted or disallowed must be in accordance with His well.
Then and only then does Jesus' statement include the support of these decisions at the
highest level of God's kingdom.
This is not to
say that the ministry decide for the people what they can decide for
themselves. As it was in Old
Testament times, the decision-making process was only for those things,
"Too hard for you in judgment ...being matters of controversy within your
gates. " The body of ministerial judgments, given to resolve questions and
controversy, become a part of the tradition of the church. This is
a major factor in maintaining the unity of the church.
Using Jesus' principle
that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, the
ministry have long since determined, that while it is wrong to work at
your job on the Sabbath, it is not wrong for you to benefit directly or
indirectly from the work of others. The extreme opposite view would argue
that proper observance of the Sabbath requires that we use no electricity
on that day. We must turn off our air conditioners and use candles to
light our home. Even the candles should be lit before sundown as we are to
kindle no fire on the Sabbath.
But in following that
approach, we are going far beyond the requirements of the law, and we may
well defeat the very purpose of the Sabbath.
The keeping of the Sabbath
is very much a matter of intent. God revealed through Isaiah the right
attitude toward the Sabbath of the fast:
"If thou turn away thy
foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call
the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shall honor
Him, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, nor
speaking your own words: Then shall you delight thyself in the Lord; and
I will cause thee to ride upon high places of the earth, and feed thee
with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it" (Isaiah 58:13,14).
The purpose of the Sabbath
is to get man to pause-to step out of the rat race for a moment and to
find a little time for God, for family, for friends, for brothers, with
the emphasis on resting. It is
not a time to sit in the dark because you don't want to turn on a light on
the Sabbath.
But it is God's day.
It is a day when you have all the time in the world. You have time for
reading the Bible, time for prayer, time for fellowship, time for your
children, time for thought, time for yourself, and, above all, time for
God.
Don't you feel sorry for
those poor souls who have no Sabbath?
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