Si Sabbath

Let me explain the title before we get started.

It started as a typo.

But as far as typos go, it made a lot of sense because too often we don’t say yes to Sabbath.

So there you have it; Si Sabbath.

I just got back from a church workers conference, the full title being the Sabbath Church Workers Conference. Not even slightly coincidental that the topic is the same as the conference title.

Having taken that week to be renewed and invigorated I was made all the more aware of how greatly I fail at doing the whole Sabbath thing. But as much as I fail at it, I’m glad that I have the option as to whether or not I am allowed to fail in this particular area.

“Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.”

 Exodus 35:2

Yikes!

I should be so dead by now! Well, for that and about ten million other reasons!

But can you imagine the fear that would strike into the heart of anyone who was trying to live according to God’s will? I would be terrified every time the Sabbath rolled around! Quite honestly, I might just stay in bed all day, lest I be found guilty of working and thus sentenced to death.

It hardly seems like the best way to devote a day to God!

Maybe if there were certain rules about how to relax…

That’s right, there’s a Pharisaic law for that!

It’s good though because having a rule about what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath is helpful for keeping you cognisant about rest and God and devoting a whole day to Him.

Or not at all.

Maybe it happens that everything just revolves around these man made rules and God is no longer even a part of the equation. Maybe we get so caught up with keeping these laws that we completely forget the reason behind the Sabbath. We don’t care about God. We definitely don’t care about our neighbour. We care about ourselves and our main effort will be in making sure that we follow the rules, even if that means forsaking the needs of our neighbors.

So what does Jesus say about that?

Let’s look at his reaction in Matthew 12:1-14

There are two statements that really stand out to me, the first in verses 7 and 8:

“And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

 Matthew 12:7-8

And the second:

“So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

 Matthew 12:12b

So, let’s look at the first one. Mercy and not sacrifice. It really flies in the face of everything that the Jewish people had learned up to that point. The Sabbath day had become a day of sacrifice, not necessarily in  terms of animal sacrifice, but in terms of what they were sacrificing, trying to gain God’s favour. However, the one thing that they weren’t sacrificing was their own self-protection. Jesus rightly points out that their recognition needs to be on what they’re doing for themselves, but rather what they’re doing for those around them. We’ve just seen in the verses preceding that the Pharisees have just called the disciples out on fulfilling their base needs on the Sabbath. What kind of dangerous ground are we treading on when we say to someone that they shouldn’t be allowed to eat because it’s considered work? I’m pretty sure that isn’t what God had in mind when he commanded the Sabbath to be a day of rest!

The second statement seems so simple that it shouldn’t have to be said, but unfortunately it was being completely overlooked. The idea of doing good wasn’t nearly as important as taking care of oneself. If it was work to take care of your ailing neighbour, you wouldn’t do it. If someone was dying on the side of the road, well, you might deal with it the next day, if they’re still there! Morals are very skewed when the need to protect yourself becomes greater than somebody else’s life!

It’s a lot easier for us to look at the Sabbath day as a series of rules and laws than as the blessing it was intended to be.

To more fully understand the blessing of the day it helps to go back to Genesis.

"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."

Genesis 2:1-3

What did God do on the seventh day? He rested.

Why did he rest? Because everything that he made was good…and it was finished. The seventh day, the Sabbath day, was put into place as a celebration, a time to acknowledge what God had done and to bask in the perfection of creation. Rather than rushing around, worrying about what you should and should not do, it’s a day to stop and not to worry but to thank God for what He has given to us.

Now, I have a trick question for you: What day were Adam and Eve created?

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The sixth day of course!

So, that means that the first day they were around was…

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The seventh day! The day of rest!

Weird right?

They didn’t work their butts off and then take a day to try and get themselves up to a level where they would be able to just function. Nope, they started out with a day of rest, God did all the hard work and gave them the opportunity to get up to 100% before they could even consider working.

Ideally that’s what God still wants to do for us. The Sabbath is still around and is supposed to be used to bring us up to function at our full potential. Very few of us (myself included) would even think of using the Sabbath as it is intended. We might consider it if we were really exhausted and absolutely needed to take a break, but definitely not on a weekly basis!

For us the Sabbath day is no longer a command. It’s not a day that we’re forced to evaluate every little thing we do lest we be accused of working and sentenced to death. But Sabbath is a time that is set aside and dedicated to God. It is a chance for us to go back to the garden of Eden, to remember the perfection of creation, the perfect way in which we were created and at the same time to give thanks to God that he sent his son to be the one to reinstitute that state of perfection for us and all humankind.