Sermon Tone Analysis

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

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:

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:

In Exodus20.8

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:

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

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.

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

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

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.