Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Sabbath and the End
Commentary
for the May 20, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"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, NIV
What does this have to do with Sabbath? Like me when
I thought I didn't need love in my life, we tend to devalue the acts of love
toward us that the Bible records as coming from God. Although there is no
mention of Sabbath in the Bible until Exodus, Exodus relates it to the seventh
day of Creation, identifying that day as the initial Sabbath. When we consider
Creation week, two things are striking.
First, we are told God rested. Why would a being of
limitless power need rest? He didn't. But we can find a clue in the first
chapter of Genesis. We were made in God's image,[i] and immediately
after we were created, he modeled what that image was through the rest he took
on the Sabbath. Second, he presented the Sabbath to us before we had any
opportunity to earn that rest through labor. Sometimes, when we work hard, the
rest we feel we have earned can seem especially sweet. But this rest came unearned.
It was a gift, an act of grace founded in God's love for his Creation. As such,
it is not simply an arbitrary anachronism we are burdened with enduring like I
had the burden of the love that pursued me through hugs and kisses by doting
relatives. It is a gift that often remains unopened because we think we are too
mature for such things.
We reason that the Sabbath is fine for the Jews who
live by the Old Testament, but for New Testament Christians there is no need to
earn righteousness by observing it. The reasoning behind this thinking is that
we are no longer under the law but under grace, usually referring to no longer keeping
the Ten Commandments.[ii] But if we
examine those commandments, we find that no one would suggest that any of the
other requirements were no longer important, only the Sabbath. Why? Ironically,
those who urge that Sabbath keeping is legalism and is no longer applicable for
Christians, have little problem pushing Sunday as being just as obligatory
despite there being no command for such observance anywhere in scripture. If
grace does away with the biblical Sabbath, why doesn't it also eliminate any
obligation for Sunday keeping?
Those who keep Sunday may not realize where it
originated. Some believe it is kept in honor of the resurrection and some
justification for that belief may be found in later patristic writings, especially
after the early second century, but the idea was never mentioned by the apostles
or their contemporaries. This profound change came about because of the Jewish
Revolt of the early second century, also referred to as the Bar Kokhba Revolt
for the man who led it, Simon bar Kokhba. The Jews expected the Christians,
whom they viewed as simply another Jewish sect, to join them in the uprising.
After seeing what happened with the revolt in 70 CE, and how their assistance at
that time did not buy them any reprieve from persecution by the Sanhedrin, they
demurred to join in. The split that occurred between Judaism and Christianity
as a result was bitter. This split is well documented in the book "Partings -
How Judaism and Christianity Became Two" edited by Hershel Shanks.[iii] From this
point, patristic literature reveals a growing antisemitism. When the Christian
church eventually received the backing of the secular government in
Constantinople, successive church councils, especially the Council of Laodicea
in the late fourth century, outlawed practices considered "Judaizing,"
including the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath. Notably, that council also
forbade continuing the practice of ordaining women, but even though it is germane
to current disputes, that is an aside to our topic. The point is that rather
than honoring Jesus' resurrection, Sunday keeping was intended initially to
spite the Jews and bring separation in the eyes of Rome between loyal Christianity
and seditious Judaism. Most important though is the revelation that if they
sought to outlaw practices such as the ordination of women and keeping the biblical
Sabbath, both must have been in enough practice that outlawing was considered
necessary, even in the late fourth century.
While the substitution of Sunday for the actual
Sabbath may be seen as a blow against legalism, it is hard to understand how an
act of grace founded at Creation came to be a symbol of legalism. It is as
though Adam and Eve walking with God in the garden as they were wont to do was
reinterpreted as an onerous demand of God rather than a loving fellowship the
three enjoyed until they chose to listen to another. Anyone who has been
through a divorce or separation knows how painful such broken relationships can
be. I have no doubt that there were tears in God's voice when he came to walk
with them, and when they were hiding, he cried out, "Where are you?"[iv] Perhaps he
feels the same when he fills the Sabbath with blessing, and we are nowhere to
be found. Some might feel that the day does not matter, but if your friend
scores tickets for a Broadway show and invites you to join them, if you show up
on a different day, does it matter? Likely your friend will enjoy the blessing
of seeing the show, but you won't.
If we accept that the writings of the Apostle John
in Revelation are apocalyptic prophecy, the three messengers of chapter 14
highlight the issues that define that apocalypse.[v] First there is
the issue as to whether to honor God as Creator. Some feel that geology and
archaeology should disabuse us of that idea. I have come to believe that if that
is the case then perhaps the definition of God is too finite. While those who
claim that Genesis, chapter one, is describing six literal twenty-four-hour
days are offering up God in the box they have placed him in, those who reject
God on that basis are no less guilty of seeing him in the same box. Both are
offering up straw men and rejecting or accepting that offering to suit their
own purposes. Nonetheless, it is possible to accept God as Creator without demanding
agreement on the details.
The second issue highlighted is confusion (Babel)
collapsing and betraying all those who depended on that confusion for their
power and authority. We tend to rely on institutions that fail us, both in the
secular and the religious realm. People craving power build corporate edifices
to that power and expect all to support it either through genuine belief in the
corporation's mission or through lip service to the mission, both types hoping
to advance through their choice of method. Ultimately, even if they have
managed to convince themselves that they are altruistically motivated, they may
find themselves confronted by the third message condemning those who have sold
themselves to the system instead of pursuing a relationship based on love of
God and others. That third messenger defines the faithful as those who live in
harmony with God's commands and the teachings of Jesus.
The world as it exists is either greatly confused
about the teachings of Jesus or rejects them outright. This does not mean that
there is no one who can be defined as faithful. Elijah thought he was alone in
serving God in his day, but God told him he still had seven thousand faithful. His point was that Elijah was wrong to assume that
he would have knowledge of who was and who was not faithful. God is under
obligation to no one to reveal all who are his until that great day of Christ's
return. Even so, those who are faithful will know others who are in the same
way that Elizabeth knew of the holiness of Mary's child when they met.[vi] They do not
demand that God only express himself according to their understanding, even if
that understanding is based on scripture. Instead, they humbly accept him as he
presents himself. Many from the Pharisees of old to their more modern ilk have
failed to understand the compassion, mercy, and love personified in Jesus, substituting
instead something that reflected the harshness and hatred of others in their own
hearts. These imagine themselves winning converts to Christ, but instead create
worshippers of their own false image of God. While Christ, quoting Hosea, said
that God required mercy not sacrifice,[vii] they could not
see nor understand the burdensome sacrifices they demanded of people to conform
to their idea of what was God's character.
This is the most important aspect to understand
about the biblical Sabbath. If we see it as a sacrifice of time offered to
please God, we don't understand the Sabbath at all. We would just as well be spending
time with God on Sunday or any other day of the week. But if we see it as a gift
of grace, filled with blessings and a delight to look forward to then we begin
to understand the true character of God. Then instead of hiding from expected
wrath, we will be welcoming his presence just as once was common in Eden.