Yeshua Explored
28th November 2022
Sabbath
Who is it for?
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Remember the Sabbath day by keeping 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)
This is a biggie, for two reasons. For a start, it is the longest “commandment” uttered, as you remember, from the very Mouth of God, which indicates that perhaps it has special significance for Him. Secondly, it’s the only “commandment” that Christians really get into a flap about. Is it just for Jews? What about Jews who follow Jesus? What about Gentile Christians? What about everybody else?
So we have four separate categories, the only “commandment” that we add conditions to. Perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way? Perhaps there is one universal truth here and we are missing it? There is, I believe a story to be told here and tell it I will … eventually. But first …
The first word, in Hebrew, is different when we compare Exodus 20 with the corresponding passage in Deuteronomy 5. Let’s look at the verses in question.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. (Exodus 20:8)
Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you (Deuteronomy 5:12)
The Exodus word is zakar, meaning remember, recall or call to mind. The Deuteronomy word is shamar, meaning observe, keep or guard. There’s a subtle difference between these words. The rabbis suggest that the first is a positive command, to encourage us to perform good acts on the Sabbath and that the second is a negative command, warning us against desecrating the Sabbath. Some of them go on to suggest that both commands were uttered at exactly the same time, emphasising the equal importance of both. This gives every impression of being a major deal with God. Why would this be?
Let’s face it, the first three “commandments” are explicitly descriptive of the needs of God’s determination that we should not be led astray by “other gods”, nor worship substitutes, nor blaspheme Him. Yet this fourth “commandment” doesn’t seem to be as personal in our way of thinking. But perhaps we are mistaken in this and the Sabbath is far dearer to God than we imagine!
Here is some evidence for this thinking.
- God spent more time on this “commandment” than any other and felt the need to re-iterate the Scripture where it was first mentioned (Genesis 2:2-3).
- Sabbath is the first thing that God made holy (Genesis 2:3).
- Jesus re-iterates the other “commandments” (mainly in Mark 10:17-18) but is silent on the Sabbath in the sense that he never declared “you shall keep the Sabbath …”. The Church has interpreted this silence in a negative sense, that Jesus obviously didn’t agree that it should continue. Yet he obviously observed it (in its truest sense, rather than how the Pharisees kept it e.g. Matthew 12:9-11). Also, why then would he warn the people concerning the end times, how hard it would be if the bad events occurred on a Sabbath (Matthew 24:19-21). Surely this is an argument for the continuation of the Sabbath even up to the Last Days?
- In my experience I have discovered that issues that cause the greatest confusion and upsets in the Church are usually the issues that are closest to God’s heart. I wrote about a few of these in my book, How the Church Lost the Truth, calling them “battlegrounds”, where Greek thinking has created havoc in our understanding of the things of God. These were Creation, Israel, Hell, Salvation and End Times. I would now, formally, choose to add the Sabbath to this list.
- He was teaching us something very special about this day, something that is not just concerned with obeying a “commandment” but something that was going to benefit us.
Let’s explore this further … next week This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
