Honoring the Sabbath

[This post is the text of a devotional I delivered a little while back. For those of you not in the St. Louis metro area, Goedecker's is a local home furnishings store whose TV ads explain that they're not open on Sunday because it's one of the ten commandments.]

Tonight, I’d like to tell you all about my adventure in legalism. About two years ago, I started feeling guilty for not honoring the Sabbath. That’s something Christians do, right? I mean, just watch the Goedecker's commercials. I try to keep all the other commandments, so shouldn’t I try to keep this one, too?

So, I decided to try it. I knew that the Sabbath was actually supposed to be Saturday, but since church is on Sunday, I decided to go with that. At first, I just didn’t work on Sundays, and since my work is also what I do for fun, that was pretty hard. Then I remembered that if you’re keeping the Sabbath, you’re not supposed to make OTHER people work on the Sabbath either, so I stopped going out to eat or shopping or even gassing up the car at the self-serve pumps on Sundays.

I had to do something with all that spare time, so I started studying bible commentaries, which is one of the few things you’re actually supposed to do on the Sabbath, and naturally, the first topic that came into my head to study was “Honoring the Sabbath.”

Now, I’m a perfectionist. If I do something, I HAVE to get every single little detail exactly right. So, after spending a little while looking into whether or not Christians are supposed to keep the Sabbath, and immediately dismissing everything that said they shouldn’t, I started looking into exactly HOW you’re supposed to go about honoring the Sabbath. And of course, that information is in the Old Testament. So, after I read all about it there, I had a lot of questions about how exactly to translate those laws into modern terms. And of course, the most obvious source I could think of for the answers to those questions was to take a look at what the Orthodox Jews do—and DON’T do—to honor the Sabbath.

And I found a LOT of information, because there’s a LOT of things that Orthodox Jews do and don’t do to honor the Sabbath. Here is a partial list. To observe the Sabbath, you can’t do any of the following:

• Kneading
• Baking
• Shearing wool
• Washing wool
• Beating wool
• Dyeing wool
• Spinning
• Weaving
• Making two loops
• Weaving two threads
• Separating two threads
• Tying
• Untying
• Sewing two stitches
• Salting meat
• Cutting hide up
• Writing two letters
• Erasing two letters
• Building
• Tearing a building down
• Extinguishing a fire
• Kindling a fire
• Hitting with a hammer
• Taking an object from your home out into public, or carrying an object in public.

Some people even say that you shouldn’t carry things, period, or do anything even vaguely resembling housework. And of course, you’re not supposed to cause anyone else to do any of the things on that list, either.

In modern terms, you can’t use any technological means of doing anything on that list, which means that you can’t use machinery, you can’t drive, you can’t even use electricity, because electricity counts as ‘kindling a fire.’

Now, I actually tried to keep a lot of these. In order to attend church and to eat and drink, I had to do a few of them, but I told myself, “Well, you don’t want to be a Pharisee, do you?” So I allowed myself to drive to church, to get a drink of water from the fridge, to turn on a light so I could read my commentaries, to answer the phone if someone called, that kind of thing.

And I was miserable, absolutely miserable. I think I managed 2 Sundays of this, and maybe a month before that of gradually increasing my legalism.

I finally caught myself feeling horribly guilty for carrying the paper towel I’d eaten my ham sandwich off of into the kitchen and throwing it away, and finally, FINALLY, I actually listened to the little voice in my head that, for weeks, had been saying several times each Sunday, “This CAN’T be right. This just CANNOT BE RIGHT.”

But did I stop immediately? NOOOoooo, that would have been sensible. First, I had to figure out what to do instead. But at least I was finally taking the right approach. Instead of reading all the convoluted commentaries that explained why I shouldn’t pay attention to the most obvious meaning of the parts of the New Testament that talk about the Sabbath and the Law, I started actually reading the Bible, and reading those passages in context.

And all of a sudden, things became MUCH CLEARER. I’d read all the verses before, when I was persuading myself that I should honor the Sabbath. This time, I actually listened to what they said.

For example:

The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant.
Exodus 31:16

The Sabbath is a part of a covenant made with the Jewish people. I am not Jewish! The Sabbath set the Jewish people apart from the Gentiles. I am a Gentile!

So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.
Galatians 3:24-25

This is the point that’s made over and over again in the New Testament—we are not saved by the Law. We are saved by our relationship with God. In fact, we are no longer bound by the 10 commandments!

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Romans 7:4-6

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?
2 Corinthians 3:6-8

But the New Testament gets clearer than that, much clearer. In Galatians, Paul gets very worked up about the subject:


You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
Galatians 3:1-5

He talks more about this in Chapter 4 (and really, in all of Galatians).

But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Galatians 4:9-11

And in Colossians, Paul mentions the Sabbath specifically, in a verse that I really should have taken at face value the first time I read it!

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
Colossians 2:16-17

Now, am I saying that I think it’s wrong for a Christian to observe the Sabbath? Absolutely not. To me, this means that it would be just as wrong to criticize someone FOR observing the Sabbath as to criticize them for NOT observing it. The important thing is to glorify God, whether you do it by honoring the Sabbath or by NOT honoring the Sabbath.

Now, this whole devotional probably sounded like it was about the Sabbath. And ok, yeah, it was, but the real point I want to make tonight is this: it is absolutely amazing what you can learn when you actually read the bible in context, and pay attention to what it actually says rather than listening to what people tell you it says!