Artikel Rohani

Does God Care How We Keep Sabbath?

 As we know, the Sabbath had its origin at Creation when God set the supreme example by resting from His creative work. Later He would make His will explicit in the heart of the Decalogue, enjoining us to “do no work” in this sacred time (see Ex. 20:8-11, NKJV).*

 

It’s a 24-hour period, however; we are human beings; and life must go on. So the command to “do no work” calls for some interpretation.

 

In this connection, I accept as relevant the clarification we find in connection with the Feast of Passover since, as we may logically assume, the rest connected to it (and to the other ancient observances) was patterned after that of the weekly Sabbath. On both the first and seventh days of the Passover celebration the people were to “hold a sacred assembly.” They were to “do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do” (Ex. 12:16).

 

Here we see a critical interpretation of the “do no work” stipulation. The Sabbath is not for fasting; food must be prepared, and that entails some work.

 

From Exodus 16 we get a hint, however, as to the kind of work envisioned here. The people were to collect only so much manna each day, with any surplus going bad overnight. On Friday, however, they were to gather enough for two days, with no spoilage. Explaining the phenomenon, Moses says: “‘This is what the Lord commanded: “Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning”’” (Ex. 16:23). (Whether out of stubbornness or curiosity, some people went out Sabbath in search of the product, “but they found none”—verse 27.) Thus God made a clear distinction between Sabbath and the rest of the week. Exactly what they fixed and how they ate it, we do not know. But according to Exodus 35:3, they were not to “light a fire in any of [their] dwellings on the Sabbath day.”

 

Does this mean that we today should eat cold food on Sabbath? I once learned what it would mean to answer yes to that question. As is often the case while on itinerary, I’d not had a proper supper that Friday evening, and breakfast consisted of what little my hosts had stashed away in the refrigerator in the guest apartment they’d arranged for me. So all morning I’d been looking forward to lunch, especially after preaching in two different churches before midday—and also because I’d been scheduled for two more sermons in different churches in the afternoon.

Alas, however, lunch was beastly cold—the rice, the potatoes, the entrée, everything. I always try to be flexible, but that day I found it impossible to get things down, and so I preached that entire Sabbath hungry.

 

Is this what God wants? I doubt it.

One way to understand the passage about not making fire, I believe, is to see it in context. When you try to imagine what it would have looked like in the Israelite camp with the smoke of 100,000 fires covering the grounds, then you get the sense that that was not the atmosphere God wanted for this sacred time. In many places today, on the other hand, the process of producing heat to warm our food is as easy as brushing our teeth. And while I think that we, like the ancient Israelites, should still prepare the bulk of our food ahead of Sabbath, I can see no good reason to eat it cold. The effort to warm it is no more than what’s needed to bring it to the table. Making food palatable is the kind of work anticipated in Exodus 12:16.

 

God’s intention is that the Sabbath should be a day of renewal. In a passage filled with poetic beauty, “the gospel prophet” Isaiah paints a picture of the blessings that await all who honor God in the context of this sacred day: “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob” (Isa. 58:13, 14).

 

Comparing this text to its sister passage in Jeremiah 17:19-26, I take it to mean that on the Sabbath my activities and thoughts should be channeled in a different direction than on other days of the week, as befitting the sacredness of these special hours. If I’m a merchant, I don’t do sales on Sabbath. If I’m a schoolteacher, I don’t do class on Sabbath. If I’m an electrician, I don’t string wires on Sabbath. If I’m an attorney, I don’t do cases on Sabbath. If I’m a student, I don’t do books on Sabbath. And if I’m a pastor, a physician, or a nurse, then Sabbath brings a modification (though not necessarily a complete stoppage) of my work.

 

There are exceptions, of course—for emergencies or special situations. When disaster strikes, for example, you respond in whatever way seems appropriate: You fix tires; you rescue from a burning building; you cook; you haul wood; you dig ditches; you build a house; you travel long distances; you bake bread—whatever is needed in the crisis. But when under regular circumstances (and to prove a point), we deliberately single out the Sabbath as the time to paint widow Jane Doe’s house or cut her grass—things that could well wait till Sunday or even Wednesday, then something’s wrong with that picture.

 

Here in Isaiah God is saying that if I’m careful to observe the Sabbath His way, then He will bless me with a whole bundle of good things I don’t even fully understand—like “feed” me with “the heritage of Jacob” (KJV) and all that rich stuff. Don’t know what it all means, but it sounds mighty good to me!

 

Adventists, especially in the industrialized world, are awful busy during the week, and so they tend to pack a lot of stuff into the Sabbath hours. But our aim always should be to free up the Sabbath from all unnecessary clutter. One of the best Sabbath afternoons I’ve ever spent was on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean, when the young people planned a relaxed youth meeting and Sabbath vespers in a field down by the seaside. As the big, red sun dipped behind the horizon, its golden afterglow filling the western sky with beauty, the evocative words of Henry de Fluiter flowed out in grateful song, blending with the sound of the lapping waves before us and reminding all of that glorious day to which every Sabbath points:

“Over yonder, down by the crystal sea,

Over yonder, there’s where I long to be,

No more sorrow, toil, grief, nor care,

In the homeland bright and fair,

Over, over there.”

What wonderful Sabbaths with Jesus when we get there!