(Exodus 20:8-11 KJV) Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, 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 in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.Again, that is pretty clear and I am not sure any of us try to pay attention to it. I have a feeling that if we did the shopping malls and restaurants would start closing up one day a week.
I could make the defense that I am not a Jew and this is the Law, thus it does not apply to me. That does not work too well because if I can do that with the Sabbath I can also do it to stealing and adultery, if you catch my drift. While I feel comfortable doing that with the ceremonial law I can’t do it with the moral law.
So lets go literal. What is the purpose of the Sabbath? It seems clear that it is a day of rest. It is a day for no work. Notice that there is no mention of worship, synagogue or temple. God did not go to church on Saturday, He rested. He stopped His work of creation.
So the Sabbath is to be a day of rest. I will admit that we do not honor that. I could go along with the idea that we do no work on Saturday. Maybe that is where the church has missed it. We have taken Saturday to be the day we catch up on chores and called Sunday a day of rest. Then on Sunday we wear ourselves out doing church stuff. In the process we don’t have a day of rest. Now that I am retired I could easily avoid any work on Saturday and still go to church on Sunday. That would leave me five days to get everything done on the “honey-do” list. If you are working you don’t have that luxury.
Modern appointment calendars may solve the problem for me. If you have bought one you have noticed that they are now making Monday the first day of the week and putting Sunday at the end. They do it because it saves space on the format that puts a week on two pages. Personally I think it is also done to kick the Lord’s Day off the beginning of the week. It will be interesting to see if it ever spreads to the monthly calendars people have on their walls.
I see the Sabbath as Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. I see Sunday as the Lord’s Day. One should be for rest and the other for worship.
Until I work that out, just call me “inconsistent”.
homo unius libri
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