“in it (the Sabbath of the Lord your God – from the first part of the verse) you shall not do any work, you or our son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.”
As I study this part of
Scripture, I ask myself, “Is it any wonder we, as an entire Body of believers,
are not being blessed as much as we could be, or that we are not be being the
blessing we could be to others when we have tried to do things our way? We seem to even change what God says about
His commandments so that they can be interpreted to allow what we want the
meaning to be.”
My intention here is to first
look carefully at what the text says about work in relation to keeping the
Sabbath, then to raise some difficult questions as to how the text may be
applied in our modern lives and their implications. So, bear with me.
You may well tell me that I
am living in the Old Testament (or as a friend of mine says, the Old Covenant)
and that I need to get under the New Covenant implying that Jesus said we are
no longer under the “law given to the Isralites and later on tablets to
Moses”. But then these same people are
not brave enough to state out rightly that they no longer believe in the
keeping of the Ten Commandments. The
fact is that you cannot have it both ways.
Either we are intended to keep the Ten Commandments or we are not. I believe these laws are unique to the
believer in God. While it is true we
cannot, in our sinful nature, keep all the laws all the time, we have been
given ten laws that we could keep if we wanted to. We have been given ten laws that, unless we
are ready to throw them out the window, we have to focus on keeping.
And if that is the case, then
this fourth law that we are to observe says “no work” on the Sabbath. And just so we do not try to pass our work on
to others, God goes on to say no work for your family. It specifically mentions our sons and
daughters. Our spouses are covered in
the “you” part. And our extended family
is covered in the “son or daughter” part.
So no, you cannot use your niece or nephew to do your work for you.
God goes on to say, your
servants (read employees today) cannot do any work on the Sabbath. Some may ask, “Why did God mention male and
female servants separately?” That is a good
question and I do not claim to have the definitive answer. I can only take an educated guess based on a
study of some other themes in scripture.
There is no doubt that the culture of the day, including that of the
Israelites, was that somehow there was an inequality between the genders. That was not God’s intention for the two
sexes. The roles He gave each one of
them when He created them were somehow misinterpreted and the man became the
superior one in his own mind and acted accordingly. Throughout Scripture, and later as we move
into the New Testament, Jesus, made great strides in correcting that perception
that man had about his helpmate. And
here in Exodus 20:10, God is pointing out that this commandment of His applies
equally to one’s servants (and thus by inference to all members of the family)
be they male or female. It was the
Israelites’ job to facilitate that keeping of the Sabbath for all their
workers.
The text goes on to say that
your cattle are not to do any work either on the Sabbath. Now we have two ways to interpret that for
modern day living for the majority of us.
We can either claim that God mentioned ‘cattle’ because He really
considers animals to be very special and certainly places them above inanimate
objects, or we can assume He refers to them as representative of what the
majority of Israelites used to help them with their primary means of making a
living and providing for their families.
The first would make my daughter-in-law, an avid animal lover, very
happy. The second would appeal more to
my way of thinking. Perhaps a third and
preferred alternative would be to believe that He had both reasons in
mind. Again we do not know for sure, but
let us go with this interpretation. God
says ‘no work’ is to be done by anyone or anything for your enterprise on the
Sabbath. Farming stops. Manufacturing stops. Billable hours stop. That’s what the commandment calls for.
But surely there is an
exception for certain types of services?
We will look at that later, but at this point, the direction is pretty
clear. In fact, God goes on to say,
that if you have anyone staying with you at your house for a period of time
(that is what a sojourner is), they cannot do any work for you or themselves
either.
Do we get the idea? No work period on our Sabbath. That is what God asks. Yes, He asked it of the Israelites in the
desert. But He gave it to them in the
Ten Commandments and thus He asks it of anyone who believes they should honor
and keep these ten laws. No work period
on the Sabbath.
Next we look at some real
crucial “but what about” or “but what if” questions as we try to get a
‘faithful’ handle on what God would have us do or not do on the Sabbath. Our only hope is that “Scripture answers
Scripture” when it comes to that, for as far as this text goes, the message is
clear.
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[Are you
looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken
is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]
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