Law and Grace (15) Sabbath

The Pharisees twisted the laws from a blessing to a burden. The sabbath is a good example. It had two roles.

The first role of the Sabbath was as a cultural marker to distinguish Israel from the nations. This was the reason for the tough penalties. This role was described in the law of Moses.

You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy. The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever (Ex 31:13,16-17).

The Sabbath was a sign of the covenant between the God and the Israelites to remind future generations of what God would do for them. It marked them of from the nations who did not have this covenant. Keeping the sabbath was not good works to make the people holy. It was a reminder to the Israelites that it the Lord who made them holy.

The second and more important role of the sabbath was bringing God’s blessing to the people. This is recorded in Exodus 23:12.

Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.

The key word is “refreshed”. The sabbath was a gift to the people for their refreshment. Most people in the ancient world had to work every day, just to get enough to eat. As slaves in Egypt, the Israelites would have worked every day. Having one day off a week is a huge privilege that most people did not have. When giving the sabbath, God was promising that they would be sufficiently prosperous in the new land, that they would not have to work every day. That was a blessing, not a burden. Taking a day off each week would contribute to their wellbeing, because regular rest is essential for human health. God has made us to need rest every week.

Celebrating a sabbath rest required considerable faith in God. The people were expected to rest during busiest times of the year, during the ploughing time and the harvest (Exodus 34:21). Pausing during the harvest when the weather is fine is a huge risk. Only people who trusted God to provide for all their needs would have the confidence to rest when the harvest was ready for bringing in.

The Pharisees distorted the Sabbath into a huge set of rules. They came up with a list of hundreds of things that could not be done one the Sabbath. Jesus criticised the Pharisees, because they had changed the sabbath from something to be enjoyed into a work to earn righteousness. If the sabbath is a method of determining who is righteousness, then defining what is work and what is not becomes really important. Knowing whether carrying a chair across the room is work is an important, because it could be the difference between being in out. Hundreds of rules are needed, but that was not God’s purpose. He gave the sabbath as a blessing for humans.

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

If the sabbath is a blessing then the boundary between work and rest is not that important. What is work will vary from person to person. Reading theology might be work for a college professor, but could be resting for someone else. God did not give a great list of rules to define work, because the boundary was irrelevant to his purpose. He wants his people to enjoy a day of rest, not keep a set of rules.