Work on the Sabbath

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Exodus 20:8-11

When it comes to the Sabbath, the command regarding its observance that is most well-known is the command to rest or cease from work. This is even more well-known than the declaration by God that His Sabbath is a day of sacred assembly, a day for congregation of God’s people (Leviticus 23:3). However, to many the Sabbath is nothing more than a day on which we are to do, well, nothing. As such, they make it out to be a huge burden because one is not permitted to “do what he pleases” on this Holy Day (Isaiah 58:13) and not “go his own way”. But is that truly a proper representation of what the Sabbath day is about? Is the Sabbath an impractical burden that could never work in today’s society?

Our Lord Jesus had many a run-in with Jews of His day over the Sabbath day. The Sanhedrin was a body of Jews charged with maintenance and interpretation of the Oral Torah, having appeared after the last book of the Hebrew Scriptures were written. They attached many a rule to the keeping of the Sabbath day. They had 39 categories of activities not to be done on the Sabbath and these rules were obeyed by all observant Jews. Well, almost all. Jesus disagreed with some of what was added; but before we go to that, let us go to the Old Testament, before the Sanhedrin’s additions were made.

Sabbath work in the Old Testament

In the book of Moses called Exodus, we find a command not found anywhere else:

Exodus 35:3 Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”

Here, we find the command not to light fires. We see that fires were lit every day for burnt offerings (Numbers 28:2-3), including the Sabbath (Numbers 28:9-10), and there were to be burnt offerings every day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:36), which always coincides with one Sabbath, so there is nothing wrong with lighting fires themselves. Perhaps it is the motive we should consider?

The first verse of this chapter assembled the Israelites to disclose to them a revelation from God. The verses following show he had called them to assembly to discuss the building of the Tabernacle. Verse 3 should be considered in this context. Yahweh commanded that the Hebrew smelters should not do any work for the temple on the Sabbath; that was to be done on the other six days. Those who were able to do this work would likely have equipment in their “dwellings” to do the work of smelting to build the different components of the Temple; it doesn’t seem to be a command against fires for something like warmth. The ninth and tenth months of God’s calendar (around November and December on the Gregorian calendar) are cold months (Ezra 10:9, 13), so much so that King Josiah needed a fire to stay warm (Jeremiah 36:22). Do you think that the God of Israel, would give them the Sabbath and the whole law condemning them to be cold during this season and then saw He gave it to them for their benefit (Deuteronomy 4: 5-6, 40)?

One question that I have been asked on more than one occasion is “Can you eat on the Sabbath?” While there has never been any command not to eat on the Sabbath day, there does appear to be limitations declared on cooking:

Exodus 16:23 He said to them, “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.’ ”

Baking and boiling took much effort, so they were to be done the day before. The first and last days of the Festival of Unleavened Bread are sacred assemblies and Yahweh declared, through Moses, that no work was to be done on these days save for cooking (Exodus 12:16). In Leviticus 23, He instructed that there should be no “regular work” done on the annual assemblies. The only exception is the Day of Atonement. His instruction was:

Leviticus 23:28 Do no work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the LORD your God.

He said “no work” is to be done not only on the Day of Atonement, but on the weekly Sabbath. The very same Hebrew word used to refer to the Sabbath is used to refer to the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:3, 32). This connection may be significant. It makes sense if the Day of Atonement, as a fast day, is a day on which no food should be cooked, just as food should be prepared beforehand to be eaten on the Sabbath. This is the concept of preparation, an aspect of the Sabbath that cannot be ignored for proper and sensible Sabbath observance; it makes sense that it came from God Almighty Himself. Activities that would be considered too tedious to be done on the Sabbath should be done beforehand, like cooking for one’s family.

Nehemiah gives us some telling details about the work that is not to be done on the Sabbath day.

Nehemiah 13:15 In those days I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day.

These people were treating the Sabbath as a normal work day; a market day no less. This Nehemiah was definitely against. He said they were, by these actions, “desecrating the Sabbath day” (Nehemiah 13:17). But here, we see something interesting: Nehemiah posted guards to keep the sanctity of the Sabbath by preventing any items to be brought into Jerusalem to be sold (Nehemiah 13:22). These guards would be “working” on the Sabbath day in one sense. But here, we notice something about these guards’ actions; they were stationed “to keep the Sabbath day holy”.

This doesn’t seem to be a day to just “do nothing” is it? The motive behind one’s actions is something we must certainly consider if we want to know what is “Sabbath-worthy”; we must remember the word “Sabbath” (Shabbat) comes from a word that means “to cease”. It is not just a rest, but a cessation of our normal activities that do not focus on the Creator. But that doesn’t mean we do nothing.

Many believe the Sabbath is impractical; saying doctors, firemen, and other civil servants would not be able to help people on the Sabbath. But we have seen by the example of Nehemiah that one could “work” towards proper Sabbath observance. We must notice something about Nehemiah’s day that is different from ours. It was a day when the law of the land was the Law of God. This is not the case now in any land.

A life-or-death situation can be handled by a doctor on the Sabbath without violation; electric companies could supply electricity to homes and places such as hospitals that need electricity for the survival of their patients. In a religio-political society like the one in ancient Israel, in which all its citizens kept the Sabbath, necessary resources like this could be maintained; after all, Jesus did say it is “lawful to do good on the Sabbath” Matthew 12:12. And even in today’s world, it would not be wrong for such to help someone on the Sabbath day. What would be in question, however, is whether they would take money for their actions; they should be doing a service, not “work”.

Sabbath work expounded by the Messiah

Did Jesus break the Sabbath? This is what many believe and teach. One incident pointed to is found in Matthew 12. Jesus and His disciples picked heads of grain to eat and the Pharisees saw them.

Matthew 12:2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

One of the 39 categories of activities considered wrong on the Sabbath was “reaping” and “threshing”. While it is a sound principle that one should not harvest his fields on the Sabbath, this was simply not what our Lord and His followers were doing. They were simply hungry (Matthew 12:1). After saying that the priests “desecrated” the Sabbath without sin because they were doing God’s work (like Nehemiah’s guards), He said:

Matthew 12:8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

In this passage, He did not even hint toward His breaking the Sabbath command. If He were truly not intending to keep the Sabbath holy according to the commandment, would He not have said so instead of declaring how one should keep the Sabbath?

Matthew 12:11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?
Matthew 12:12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

He even went so far as to, in verse 8, use the Sabbath day to identify Him as the One who instituted it in the first place (compare Genesis 2:2-3). Another passage is as follows:

John 5:16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him.
John 5:17 Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”
John 5:18 For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Here, Jesus gives us another example of what kind of “work” that allowed on the Sabbath. Earlier in the chapter Jesus is recorded as healing a man. This was another of the Sanhedrin’s additions, it seems. There is no Scripture that declared it is wrong to heal; and Jesus’ very words show that this “work” on His Father’s behalf is not a violation of the Sabbath command. Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:12 were spoken in the context of His being accused of breaking the Sabbath by healing. This certainly isn’t a Sabbath violation. So why does John record that it was “breaking the Sabbath”? It is my opinion that the verse could be rendered:

John 5:18 For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he “breaking the Sabbath”, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Notice where I put the quotation marks. Jesus broke the Sabbath commands that had been permeated Judaism in His day, not the command that came from His Father. The Oral Torah was considered as binding as the written Torah, so the Jews in His day, He was “breaking the Sabbath”. But in truth, He simply was not. He couldn’t have and still been our Saviour, a sinless Lamb “without blemish” (1 Peter 18-19). Jesus was born under the law (Galatians 4:4) and so He would have to keep it because breaking the law is sin (1 John 3:4). However, we know from Scripture that He didn’t sin at all (1 Peter 2:22, Hebrews 4:15).

A practical practice

Someone who calls the Sabbath impractical should really think of what they are saying. Sometimes when people ask me questions about the Sabbath and try to make it sound ridiculous, I wonder if they realize that I didn’t come up with the Sabbath. Was it the Lord Yahweh who instituted the impractical Sabbath day? He did not create it to be a burden. God, though Isaiah the prophet, instructed Israel to “call the Sabbath a delight” (Isaiah 58:13), is it possible for people in today’s society to do the same?

Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) This is often taken by many to mean that we need not keep the Sabbath. Proponents of this interpretation are very correct in saying that we should not worship the Sabbath as it seems the Pharisees were doing. But they are incorrect, I believe, in their interpretation of the other part of this statement. The Sabbath was given to man, for man’s benefit. Mankind has become a race of hard-workers. Many work hard to attain what they want to achieve in life. We need to work.

But we also need to rest, take a break from our normal lives and just de-stress.

Note: All Bible quotations are taken from the New International Version (NIV). Bolded words in Bible quotations are my emphasis.

· Anthony Coore’s Should Christians Keep the Sabbath?

· Take of Your Sandals: A Look on the Sabbath

· Colossians 2: Paul’s True Message

· What It Means To Be Under Grace

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