“Hey, Jim! Where have you been?” I asked my neighbor. He was entering his apartment as I was leaving mine.
“Oh, you know. Working.”
“But I haven’t seen you in weeks!”
“Well, I’ve been working a lot.”
“Every day? I mean, you’re not even around on the weekends?”
“Oh, yeah. I work every day.”
“Seriously? How long have you been doing that?”
He had unlocked the door to his apartment, but he stopped to think about my question.
“I guess it’s been about five months.”
“Five months since you had a day off?!”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Thereabouts.”
I was stunned.
“You have worked an unbroken string of days for five months?”
“Pretty much.”
“Man! What does that do to your mental health?”
He looked at me. “You know what? It takes a toll. It does. But I gotta do it.”
It has been thirty years, and I still think about that man. I just cannot imagine what that’s like.
What is the Purpose of the Sabbath Day?
Do you “remember the sabbath day”? Are you good at obeying the fourth commandment? Unless you are Jim it’s probably hard to say for sure. We know whether or not we commit adultery or murder. But whether or not we are properly honoring the sabbath day is not an easy question. First of all, exactly what duty does this Old Testament law impose on New Testament Christians?
Are we simply supposed to take a day off every week?
Is God teaching us to have some “margin” in our lives? Is that the purpose of the day? To have a rhythm, six days on and one day off? Is mental health the issue or could it be something more?
Historically, most Americans—and the laws of most U.S. jurisdictions—honored the strict “Puritan Sabbath” (by law, nearly everything was closed: no opera, no theater, no movies, no blood sports, no ball sports, no hunting, no fishing, no horseracing, no gambling, and no work), while a largely German immigrant class held to the more liberal “Continental Sunday,” a slippery slope which saw things devolve to the present status quo. As more and more businesses and activities opened up on Sundays, one clergyman complained (generations ago) “Now the [Sunday laws are] so confused, that one’s conscience does not know what to do.”[1]
Truer words have ne’er been spoken. How are we supposed to remember the sabbath? In fact, what is the purpose of the sabbath day?
Few of us can speak confidently about the duties of Christians vis-à-vis the sabbath. But when all else fails, read the instructions, right? God provided legislation—a statute—when He gave Moses the Ten Commandments:
“Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it” Exodus 20:8-11.
God rested on the sabbath. But God also “blessed the sabbath and hallowed it.”
Neither rest nor mental health is the purpose of the sabbath day. God called the day holy, yet rest alone is not holy. “Holy” means different. Separate. The sabbath day is a different kind of day. It is not like the others. There is something more going on here, as we shall see below.
The legislation is straightforward. But for enforcement, consider a passage in the book of Numbers:
“And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they … brought him to Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in the ward because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘The man shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.’ And all the congregation brought him without the camp and stoned him with stones and he died, as the Lord commanded Moses” Numbers 15:32-36.
Although this is the only Biblical record of a sabbath violator being sentenced to death, it should get our attention. We are talking about a man’s life. God expects His commands to be taken seriously.
And whatever the exact meaning of the rule, or the purpose behind it, I am confident of this: few Christians take the sabbath day seriously.
That being said, I would like to suggest two points with regard to the purpose of the sabbath.
First, the prohibition against working on the sabbath day is not about work, but about remembering the Lord. It is a day for worship.
“The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God” Exodus 20:10. This is God’s day. And keeping it holy means remembering that our activities on that day should allow us to worship God and to create a family—and to the degree that we can, a society—that has both the time and the inclination to worship God.
Consider Chick-Fil-A. The restaurant has remained closed for thousands of Sundays. Add up the number of franchises multiplied by the number of Sundays each has been closed, and you would be looking at years and years–centuries–of “sabbath rest.” Yet the restaurant could not be more profitable. God has honored them for creating an environment in which their employees can easily attend church.
Second, the prohibition against working on the sabbath day is not about work, but about a tithe, an offering not of money but of time.
Consider the pattern: God gives us a harvest, but we give back the first fruits. God gives us an income, but we give Him the first ten percent. God gives His people animals but the first born from each womb belongs to Him as a sacrifice. God gives Israel twelve tribes of children, but the tribe of Levi is given back to God. God gives Israel annual harvests, but every seventh year was to be a sabbath year in which the land would rest. Consider the sabbath day in this context. God gives us a lifetime of days, but asks that we give back to Him one day out of every seven.
The purpose of the sabbath day is not simply that we do not work. The day is holy. It is a tithe, an offering to God.
The purpose of the sabbath is to set aside one day every week in which we restrict our activities so that we can honor God and worship and serve Him. The positive impacts of rest and improved mental health are beneficial results, but they are not the purpose of the sabbath. The sabbath is a day that belongs to God.
We give God one seventh of our time just as we give Him one tenth of our money.
Grace remains.
The life of every Christian should be characterized by grace. But we are to fear the Lord. And we should honor Him by giving Him the first day of every week. Not simply by staying home from work, but by attending worship. By singing. By teaching. By serving. By making the church a habit. By involving our children in joint worship. By taking on some responsibility at the church as God leads.
Give God the day. And walk in grace as you wrestle with competing distractions–from youth sports to entertainment to fishing trips to whatever.
Remember: the purpose of the sabbath day is not mental health. If it were, you could ignore it for years as long as you felt mentally healthy.
The purpose of the sabbath day is to give God one day of the week as an offering, and to fill that day up with activities that honor Him and help you and your family to know Him better.
AΩ.
[1] I’ve explored the question of the history of Sunday sports and particularly youth sports here. Historical information from BAT, BALL & BIBLE: BASEBALL AND SUNDAY OBSERVANCE IN NEW YORK, by Professor Charles DeMotte.
Household Words: 