Deuteronomy 5.12–15; Colossians 2.13–17; Mark 3.1–6
Fourth sermon on the Ten Commandments delivered at Nedlands Anglican Church 27th August 2023
A young man sat on the ground and leaned his back on a fence post. His mind was troubled. He was a student, not long a Christian, and had recently begun to ponder the fourth commandment: “Keep holy the sabbath day.” What would happen to his results if he ceased studying on Sundays? He thought he would pass, but could he excel in the way he wanted? He was sure he couldn’t—not with one day less to study. But if God was telling him not to work … well, for him work meant study. He made his decision—no more uni work on Sundays—and returned from his walk, heavy of heart.
But it is impossible to do nothing. There was church, of course, but what then? He wrote some letters; he used to cram them into the working week, but they now fitted nicely into Sunday. He visited friends, read, enjoyed doing nothing—Sunday became a very human day, a thoughtful day—and his grades improved. So did his general peace of mind.
Fast forward fifty years and Sunday is different: we may not go to work— sleeping in is great—but the frenzy of having a good time is exhausting. At the same time the nation is afflicted with a mental health epidemic—lack of it—and no one knows the cause.
Keep holy the sabbath day, Moses told the people; don’t work! What a strange thing to find in the commandments! Six days of work, and the seventh day rest. It’s not exactly moral like the others.
What does it mean to keep it holy? Holy means separate, different, specially set aside for God. That’s odd. Surely, if the day is special for God, you would need to work for him. But no; God says, “This is my day; I want you to quit working and rest.” Why rest?
We have been going through the commandments as they are set out in the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy records Moses’ final words to the Israelites before they entered the promised land; it is the layperson’s book of the law. The commandments are also found in Exodus, along with the story of Israel meeting up with God at Mt Sinai. They are the same in both books—except for this one.
Exodus 20: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy… 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.
So the sabbath is a weekly commemoration of God’s creation of the world.
Deuteronomy 5: Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded 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 now the Sabbath is to be a weekly commemoration of God’s rescue of Israel from slavery.
Is there a connection between the creation of the world and the exodus from Egypt? Yes, indeed. God created the world and it was good, but it soon fell into difficulties. Humans had to battle for subsistence. The ground was against them. You could think of it as a kind of slavery. When the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, it was worse. The powerful sought to escape from labouring at the expense of the weak. But then God stepped in and rescued them: led them out into a land of milk and honey, where the ground was cooperative and the rains regular, and every family had its parcel of land. Israel was commanded to rest and remember their creation and redemption.
And, going on, the promised land became a picture of God’s future new creation, where the suffering and death of this old order will be a thing of the past, and God’s people will walk in freedom and plenty. The Sabbath, then, becomes a celebration of creation, a memorial of Israel’s redemption, and an anticipation of the coming kingdom of God.
When you take a step backwards and wonder what all this means, what hits you is God’s desire that humans should be happy. Before and during the Industrial Revolution work was hard—life was painful. For many it still is. God laid it down that every seventh day Israel was to stop work and rest.
But why the seventh day? I don’t think it particularly matters whether the day of rest is Saturday, as with the Jews, or Friday, as with Muslims, or Sunday, as with Christians. The important thing is that it is the end of the working week. God worked a six-day week, and then sat back and enjoyed what he had done. Humans are to follow suit. There is to be a rhythm to life: day and night, the working week and the Sabbath. If your working week finishes on Wednesday, let Thursday be your day to attend to all you own stuff, and let Friday be your day of rest—so long as it is the day at the end of your working week. Start your week again on Saturday.
Who is to rest?
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.
What is startling is that the slaves and foreigners were included. You might have thought that if they wanted to celebrate their salvation they would leave the slaves and foreigners out, so there was someone to do the necessary work. But there were no exceptions.
We hear a lot today about the Bible and slavery. It is enbarrassing that the Bible nowhere forbids it, though it does begin with a great act of liberation, and ends with the liberation of the whole creation. But how could it ban slavery; half the population of the world and most ot the slaves would have starved? Some super-intelligent “loners” might have made it, but mostly humans survive by working together, which means division of labour, with some working for others. The word “male servant” (‘ebed) also means “slave.” The difference between a slave and a day-worker was that the slave lived on his master’s land, and was cared for. There were no buses to take you to work each day; a slave was better off in some ways than a day-worker who had to fend for himself. No one was to work on the seventh day.
The Sabbath is the most humane social institution ever instituted for human wellbeing, and it has been adopted by most of the world’s nations—so much so, that it is now taken for granted. Imagine what it was like to be a slave in Roman times: no rest until they finish with you for the night, and work every day for the whole of your life. What a revolution took place in Israel when slaves were given a day of rest! Happily, slavery is obsolete, though sadly it still exists in some corners of the world, but the need to work for a living is still with us, and the Sabbath principle is as relevant as ever.
How the are we to honour it?
Listen to the commandment again.
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, 1but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
“To the Lord your God,” means the day is somehow dedicated to God, or in honour of God, or for worshiping God. Worship is not only what we do on Sunday; it is the total response of the whole of our life to God. Resting on the Sabbath is worship, if it is done in obedience to God. There is nothing in the Old Testament about synagogue services on the Sabbath. There were certain times of the year when Jews were commanded to assemble (three times), but not every week. The bulk of the commandment is about not working. That is how God was to be worshiped. What does it say about God, that he commands his people to worship him by having a holiday? It’s not how people naturally think of God.
But what about our traditional weekly assembly to worship God together? Where does that come from?
If we are celebrating a Sabbath to the Lord our God, it stands to reason we will praise him for the creation, commemorate the exodus, anticipate the new creation, and think of all that Jesus has done, and is doing, and is yet to do to make it possible. So, getting together to sing and pray and hear his word is totally appropriate and natural. Israel started meeting as a synagogue—a local community—every Sabbath when they were exiled to Babylon and cut off from the temple. What they started then has continued non-stop for two and a half thousand years. Jewish Christians continued it, of course, and Gentile Christians learned it from them. The form of the Anglican services of Morning and Evening Prayer is little different to the weekly synagogue service that has been going on for 2500 years. The New Testament tells us not to neglect this custom.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 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. Hebrews 10.
Inevitably, this means there will be some conflict between spending the Day of Rest on a surfboard or bushwalking, and gathering to encourage each other. There is a story from the Anglo-Boer War. The two sides were camped against each other on either side of a valley. They decided on a truce to stop fighting on Sunday. The Boers had a church service, and the British organized a game of cricket. The Boer commander was so incensed at this godlessness going on in full view on the other side of the valley that he ordered his gunners to fire a shot over their heads. But the British were actually doing what it says to do on the Sabbath—and so were the Boers. It is a question of balance.
People today are always glad for a holiday, but it is no longer “to the Lord.” Sadly, the Sabbath has lost its meaning, and with it, more than we realize. We are like space travellers in a lost ship, unsure of where we are going, or if we are going anywhere. Food and games is all we can think of. But for those who know that God is real a day to focus our thoughts on creation, redemption, salvation, and the coming kingdom is welcome—a day to especially celebrate the goodness of God.
How then should we rest?
For Israel the law was strict; working on the Sabbath was punishable by death. The intention was not to kill people, but to ensure that the whole country observed the day—to create a culture. They developed a fine culture. Friday was the Day of Preparation. It took forethought and action to plan for a day when there would be no work. Sabbath began at 6pm with a special Sabbath meal. The rest day ended on Saturday at 6pm.
The problem that arose, was to know what exactly constituted work. The Pharisees worked it out. They were a guild of laymen who believed the kingdom would only come when everyone kept the law. Their big idea was to build a fence around the law. Work out all the details of what constituted work, and even if you made a mistake, you wouldn’t infringe the central commandment. I heard a rabbi saying the Jews had 613 laws: “one for every day of the year and one for every bone in your body.” But the Sabbath then became a burden, the very opposite of what it was meant to be. This was the problem Jesus confronted. The Pharisees accused his disciples of Sabbath-breaking when they were passing through a wheat field and picked and eating some of the grain. “The Sabbath was made of man,” Jesus said, “not man for the Sabbath.” He insisted the Sabbath was instituted for human happiness. It was a foretaste of the “rest” (holiday) the people of God will enjoy in the new age. But he was bringing the new age. This is why he was always willing to heal on the Sabbath. Salvation is what the Sabbath is all about.
That is what the Letter to the Hebrews 4 is talking about when it speaks of entering into our rest. The ultimate rest—think holiday, not sleep—is the kingdom of God. We need to take care we do not miss out on that rest, as many of the original recipients of the law did.
How are we Gentiles supposed to approach it?
Israel’s law was not meant for all, though wise lawmakers will do well to see it as a model and pay close attention to it. On this law they mostly have. But there was a problem when non-Jewish people embraced Christianity. There was no sabbath in the Roman empire, and no rest for slaves. Converts to Christianity couldn’t stop work. There is a letter from a Roman governor to the Emperor early in the second-century seeking advice on how to deal with Christians. He says it was their custom to meet for worship very early on Sunday mornings. They had to be at their work later.
Perhaps this is one reason Paul lays it down that no one is to be judged by their keeping of sabbaths. So, to do no work is not a hard and fast law for Christians as it was for Jews. Paul gives another reason: the Sabbath is a “shadow” (a symbol) of the new age which is coming. The reality, he says, is Christ. In other words—if I understand him correctly—the Sabbath is an anticipation of the kingdom of God, but this has now come. The symbol (shadow) does not have the same force now that the reality has dawned.
But has the new age dawned? Yes and no.” The King has come and is welcoming people into his kingdom; Christians begin to live the life of the age-to-come now. But only partially. The kingdom will not come in full until Jesus returns. So, we live in an in-between age when the sun has begun to rise, but there is still much darkness. Sickness and death are still a reality, and work can still be irksome. A day of rest is still a merciful provision. It would be a foolish nation that did not legislate for it in some way. Only a foolish person would think they had no need of it. Have a day of rest, if only to preserve your mental health.
In the absence of detailed laws each must decide for themselves how they will use the day, remembering it is meant to be a cessation of labour, whatever your labour may be. It is a day to realize that we are more than animals; and more than slaves, even if, humanly speaking, we are. Our lives have meaning, we are going somewhere, and that somewhere is a promised land where every dream of God’s children will be fulfilled.
So, it’s up to us. “Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” It’s up to you how you keep it. I hope you will be like that young man I spoke of at the beginning. Take a long walk, find a comfortable place, sit down and think about your life. Talk about it with God! As David Boan says, it’s not enough to know God’s word, we need to transact with him and make decisions.