What to do about the Sabbath
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What to do about the Sabbath
As promised last week, this week we will be looking at the fourth commandment, and this one, perhaps more than any of the others, is a source of misunderstanding or contention, because the Church generally does not practice the keeping of the commandment the same way a Jew would, either in the early days following the exodus, or even today.
Let’s look right off at our text in Deuteronomy 5 concerning the foruth commandment: Deut5.12-15
“ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 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 or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
Now, there is a lot that will be said this morning, and I may write a blog this week about it as well, but let me start right off giving some of the ways Christians and those who claim to be Christians have understood this commandment:
First, there are those who say this commandment does not apply to believers at all. They will point out that this is the one commandment that is not reiterated either by Christ or any of the writers of the New Testament. They may further point out the Paul himself wrote about not judging someone whether they kept the Sabbath or not. Some of those who say that this commandment is null and void for the Christian will go even further, saying that since Christ is our rest, the Christian does not need this weekly respite from work, because Christ completed the law already and we need not keep it.
Then there are those who say that we need to keep the Sabbath just as the Jews do, because this command, while not reiterated in the New Testament, is certainly not explicitly revoked in the New Testament, and because the command is not explicitly revoked, it still stands and therefore, the Christian should keep the Sabbath on the 7th day, which is Saturday, not Sunday, as we do, and we call it the Lord’s Day. Those who believe the Sabbath is still to be kept on the seventh day can further be divided into two groups. There are some that realize that though their personal conviction is that the Sabbath is the 7th day, or Saturday, but that this is a matter of conscience and not a matter of gaining or losing your salvation by which day you keep the Sabbath.
But many of the Seventh Day Sabbath keepers go further and believe that this is actually the mark of the beast, that in the end, the separation between real Christians who will be saved in the end and those who are deceived will be the ones who have “changed” the Sabbath to Sunday in violation of the fourth commandment and therefore will be rejected by God in the end, so that the only true church is those who honor the Sabbath on the seventh day. However, once a person has stepped into this mindset, I would argue, they have come into cult territory, with a dangerous misunderstanding of salvation, which comes not from the keeping of the law, but by grace.
Then there is a middle ground so to speak among Christians today, where I would guess most of us fall on. This is the understanding that Jesus did indeed declare that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and that He himself was Lord of the Sabbath, and in consideration that the early church, as recorded in Scripture, celebrated the Lord’s Day, on the first day of the week, rather than the seventh day of the week, and furthermore that Paul warned believers not to enforce the Sabbath or judge others by their keeping of it, would say that the concept, or precept of the Sabbath as established in the fourth commandment, is still a valid concept, but because we now set aside the first day of the week, rather than the seventh day, we keep it in a new and different way. Yet even within this view we will find different ideas of what this means to different believers. Does it mean that no secular activities at all can be done on this day, or does it simply mean a day of enjoying life? Is it a day to sit quietly and read the bible all day, or to spend all day at church, or some different thing? Is it primarily to be a day of rest, or a day of worship?
Now, since there are so many different ways that Christians have understood this concept of the Sabbath, we have before us this morning a monumental task to try to understand what to do with the Sabbath. The thing we must do is to take a posture of humility before God’s Word. This means that regardless of how we were personally brought up to understand the Sabbath, we must consider that our own tradition may have been right, may have been wrong, or may have had elements of truth but some mistaken things as well. This does not mean we throw out the tradition we grew up with (unless we are compelled to by scripture), but we should always be evaluating whether or not our understanding of something is scriptural or not.
Ultimately, if we are true believers, it will be our desire to obey God and honor Him in accordance with the Word of God and our best understanding of it. If this is our goal, we need to do all we can to learn what scripture says about a matter, and then, once we have concluded what scripture says, we must choose to observe, or do those things.
So first, we are going to break down our current passage on the Sabbath, look at what the Bible says elsewhere about the Sabbath, and do our best to understand it biblically, to examine ourselves personally and bring our own practice into alignment with scripture.
Let’s do the deep dive now together:
“ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
We are going to be drawing comparisons between this list of the commandments, and the list given in Exodus. Let’s look at them together:
“ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
In Exodus20.8
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
So in Exodus, the action word here is remember, and in Deuteronomy, observe. Observe means to keep, or be careful to do. Not the same as remember. Why does Moses highlight Observe in Deuteronomy? Well, we can guess at the reason. Some have wondered if this is because some of the Jews had already stopped observing it. Just because we remember something does not mean we are doing it. I’ve noticed that many people do not observe the rule about using turn signals before doing a lane change. Yet most drivers would say, if you asked them, what are you supposed to do before you change lanes? They would remember that the rule is to use your turn signal, but not all observe this, or in other words, not all keep this rule, or are careful to do it.
So perhaps Moses had noticed that some people were no longer observing the Sabbath, even though they knew about it. That is one theory. By the way, for the most part, the other commandments are all nearly identically written in both Exodus and Deuteronomy; the fourth commandment is unique with the differences we see in the two texts. This is important work we are doing, comparing these, so please bear with this. Hopefully in the end we will understand this a little better.
The next difference between these two texts is the additional definition given in Deuteronomy about who among the Jews was to keep the Sabbath:
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.
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 or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
So in Exodus, those who are not to do work are you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, or female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner. Sojourner means a guest or traveler staying with you. So even a guest was not to be allowed to do any work. In Deuteronomy, this list is the same, but added to it is your ox or your donkey. Again, some have speculated why this addition is made, and while this may make an interesting discussion, we don’t have time for every side topic, so we will let that go for now. However, we can learn from the concept, and that is, that even a working animal will benefit from a day off of work.
I would say that it seems clear to me that there is a reason that the livestock is included in this command beyond just the fact that the animals need a break, too. My observation is that animals don’t go work unless a human leads them to the work. In other words, it is doubtful that the ox is going to go out and hitch itself to a mill or plow. It would be a human leading them. And in case some clever chap decided he could get around this and say, “But I’m not working, the ox is working”, he would not be able to say so when the command clearly excludes the livestock from working.
Now we are going to talk about one pretty big difference between the text of the fourth commandment in Exodus vs Deuteronomy. I wonder if you have observed this already. This difference comes in the motivation, or the impetus given for this commandment. And by taking a look at this, we may be able to understand that while God is unchanging, his Word and revelation to people may be enhanced over time. He may reveal a little more about his character by giving a little more information to subsequent generations. This is very common in scripture. The Jews of the days of Isaiah had more information about God and his intent than Jews in the days of Moses, because God’s revelation had been progressive in the sense of Him revealing a little more about himself.
So we see something about the motivation behind this commandment when we look at Exodus and then Deuteronomy. In Exodus, it says that
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.
When the Sabbath Command was first given, the reasoning, or motivation, behind it was that in the creation week, God made the heavens and earth in six days, and then rested.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
So God sanctified the day, and set the example of taking a day of rest. Now, when we think of rest, we tend to think of physical or emotional rest. Did God need this? Was he tired out from creating the world? Certainly not! Was he emotionally worn out? Of course not! Then why did he rest? I have two thoughts. First, rest goes far beyond just physically or emotionally recuperating. It also involves enjoyment. In this case, enjoyment of the creation. Not only that, but God has chosen to set an example to us of a behavior we are required to do, yet he is in no need of.
Do we see this anywhere else in scripture, where God sets us an example of doing something that he really does not need to, but wants to show us the way? Well, I can think of two right off the top of my head. Remember how John the Baptist objected to baptizing Jesus? John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, yet Jesus was without sin, why would he need this baptism? To set an example of humility that all who would follow him must adopt as well. This humility is demonstrated to us so that we can follow the example. If the perfect sinless one showed enough humility to subject himself to baptism, then certainly his followers should be able to obey his command to be baptized!
Just as John the Baptist initially objected to baptizing Jesus, so Simon Peter initially objected to an example the Lord was giving to the disciples. John13.8
Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
So a perfect God could set an example to people. Jesus did not need to be baptized as a matter of needing to be cleansed of sin, but did so as an example and sign to others. He did not need to wash any feet, but to show what true humility looks like, he demonstrated to His disciples this act of humiliation. Neither did Jesus need to prove anything by going to the cross, but did so for us.
And God did not need any emotional or physical rest from the creation, but as an example and as the law-giver, he established the Sabbath, setting aside a day of rest and enjoyment for himself, that ultimately would be the motivation for people to rest one day out of seven as well.
However, the second time we see this commandment, in Deuteronomy, we see an additional reason given. Deut5.15
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
For all of the years of their captivity, the people were given no day of rest. Day after day after day, the worked, and with no rest. Then God set the people free from Egypt, and gave them both a permanent rest (meaning, no longer did they have to work and toil for Egypt) and the Sabbath rest as a statute, or law, to be kept by the people. We see this in the collection of the Manna, on the sixth day they were to collect double so that on the seventh day they could rest. And this involved a trust of God, that he would indeed provide enough for everyone, and that the manna collected on the sixth day would not expire and would still be edible.
So they are now told to observe, that is keep or be sure to do, the Sabbath, remembering their slavery. By remembering their slavery, they would hopefully be compassionate to any servants or slaves they might have.
Now, we should note that in both the Exodus text and the Deuteronomy text, the primary focus of the Sabbath is rest from work. In fact, nothing at all is specifically mentioned about worship or prayer. Furthermore, the Sabbath is elaborated on in Exodus31.12-17
And the Lord said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’ ”
Notice again the focus is on rest from work. You may notice that it says I, the Lord, sanctify you. The Sabbath is holy to you. These words can have relation to worship for us, but in this specific case, it is God who sanctifies, or sets apart His people. They are separated from others largely in their keeping of His commandments. So God sets aside His people by giving them commandments that will make them different, or peculiar, from other races or ethnic groups who do not adhere to these rules.
And the people are to consider the Sabbath holy, because it the word holy in this case also means to set aside, to make different. the Sabbath was different from every other day because it was set aside as rest from work.
So regarding the Sabbath as recorded in the Ten Commandments, I think it is clear that the primary focus was rest. This commandment, like all the others, was for the good and the benefit of God’s people. So why do God’s people need to be commanded to do something that is good for them? The answer is pretty clear. On our own, we tend to think we know best, and we want to depend on ourselves. It takes trust and humility to stop working for one day when you are concerned about providing for yourself and your family.
The rest the Sabbath brings is not only the physical break, but is a time to enjoy God’s creation, as He set the example to do. Like many of the good things God provides, the Sabbath was perverted by some of the people. Jesus had many a tussle with those who hated that he would heal on the Sabbath. He confronted that, and told people that doing good was allowed on the Sabbath, and that the Sabbath was God’s gift to man, not man’s gift to God.
Hopefully, having looked at the Old Testament texts on the Sabbath, we are now clear: For God’s people Israel, the Sabbath was to be taken on the Seventh day for the purpose of rest and enjoyment of His creation and to rest not only form work, but to rest in God’s sovereignty and provision, trusting that he would provide for those who obeyed him.
But what does that do for us today, trying to understand what it means for the believer? And in answering this, I am going to likely ruffle some feathers of those who will feel I am being too loose and those who will say I am legalistic, but the fact is that we must wrestle with this and find its meaning for us and what we are to do to obey this command.
Some of you just want the pastor to tell you what it all means, and what to do about it, and some of you may want me to shut up and let you do whatever you have been doing with no warning about a need for change. Neither will be 100 percent happy I suppose.
Clearly the concept of a day of rest is universal throughout time. We need a day of rest as much today as ever. Just as Israel needed the physical and emotional rest from work, so do we. Just as they needed a day to enjoy God and his creation, including the community around them, so do we. And yet we live in a society that has made work ethic a higher virtue than this virtue of enjoying God and the rest He offers. Now, I would by no means say that work ethic is bad. But when work consumes our lives to the point of no rest and no enjoyment of God, we are failing not only to be obedient to God, but failing ourselves. While the sin is primarily against God, who is the law-giver, It really is a sin against ourselves to not take a Sabbath.
We will make all kinds of excuses. you may be listening even now and thinking how this pastor doesn’t understand the pressure you are under, or the work stacked up before you, whether you are white collar or blue collar or no collar, you may think this pastor should just shut up and let me be. I work because I have to! I don’t have a choice! You don’t understand! Well, I do understand the challenge, but what I want to understand and obey is scripture, and I desire God’s blessings for you, and I know that His word promises blessing to those who obey him.
God, from creation, set the example of rest and enjoyment, and we would find ourselves healthier and happier if we could simply learn to rest. Physically rest, yes, but to rest in him is the most important thing. It is clear to me that the concept of Sabbath is not abolished in the New Testament, at least as far as our need for a day of rest.
But what about the day? Well, from scripture, we know that already in the early church, the church had begun to celebrate the Lord’s Day. The first day of the week, the celebration of the resurrection that happened on that day. John received the Revelation on the Lord’s Day. Paul encouraged the church to set aside offerings on the Lord’s Day. When Eutychus fell out the window, it was because Paul was teaching for a long time on the Lord’s Day. Hebrews teaches that we who have believed have entered in to the Sabbath rest. Clearly, the first day of the week, from the beginnings of the church, was called the Lord’s Day, and was the day when Christians came together in community. It was their Sabbath, but so much more, it was a day to be reminded of the resurrection that brings eternal life to those who believe.
The community of faith is so important that the writer to the Hebrews that we are warned not to neglect meeting together. As things in the world get worse and worse, the need for the community of faith is more important, not less:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
All the more! So what has happened when many churches today, when they record regular attenders, include those who come once a month? Today, the church celebrates this on Sunday, the first day.
Deuteronomy: An Introduction and Commentary a. The Heart of the Covenant Faith (5:1–6:3)
This commandment has posed many problems for the Christian. Jesus’ statements (Mark 2:27, 28) that the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath, and that he, the Son of man, was Lord of the sabbath, removed the law for ever from the unwholesome restrictions of the rabbis. The Christian observance of Sunday is, of course, not an observance of the seventh day but of the first day, and hence is in the nature of a new commandment based on a new covenant. It is nevertheless the ‘fulfillment’ of the old. The first day provides opportunity to commemorate the resurrection of Christ which made possible deliverance from the bondage of sin (cf. verse 12), and the renewal of life by way of a new creation (cf. Exod. 20:10, 11).
What do we do with those who still believe the Sabbath must be on Saturday? Well Paul argued against enforcing a Sabbath:
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
So is there room for disagreement yet unity? Well, possibly. We are not to let anyone pass judgment on certain ways we are trying to be obedient to scripture in the way that we understand scripture to lead us. The problem comes not in the day of the Sabbath, but when someone judges someone else to be apostate, or outside the faith, because they disagree. However, the disagreement about the day of the week is not to say we can dismiss this concept all together. We need a day of rest, we need need the community of believers, we need to be preached at, we need to worship together, we need to be encouraged and learn to rest in the Lord.
Can we watch sports or movies, or play games, or cook food? Well, I am not going to address all of those things right now. I think I will leave you with something broad that in your own life and home you need to consider, and then as you need to, you may need to make it more narrow.
For one person, reading a book is a pleasure, for another it is work. For one, going for a jog is a way of getting rest, for another it may ruin your whole day. I’m going to stay away from too many specifics, but my take on what the Bible is telling us today is this: We certainly need the day of rest. Scripture is clear, and we all need to be careful to make this happen in our lives. That may mean making some tough choices about how we use our time. ANd we need each other in the community of believers for mutual encouragement, edification through God’s word, singing, prayer together, and just pure enjoyment as well, as we are about to do at lunchtime.
The Westminster Confession says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. I will close with this quote from a commentary. Patrick Miller writes:
Deuteronomy (Fourth Commandment: Keeping the Sabbath (5:12–15))
the sabbath looks forward to the promised rest also in the Christian shift to celebrate the day of rest on the first day of the week as the day of Jesus’ resurrection, which is an anticipatory celebration of the rest that lies with God.Such eschatological meaning to the sabbath continues in the Jewish tradition, as indicated by the following rabbinic legend:At the time when God was giving the Torah to Israel, He said to them: My children! If you accept the Torah and observe my [commandments], I will give you for all eternity a thing most precious that I have in my possession.—And what, asked Israel, is that precious thing which Thou wilt give us if we obey Thy Torah?—The world to come.—Show us in this world an example of the world to come.—The Sabbath is an example of the world to come (A. Heschel, The Sabbath, p. 73).