“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8a) could have been the next shortest commandment behind the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth with two words each.  The Sabbath command could have been four Hebrew words, but we’re not telling God what to write, right? I like poking around in the Decalogue because I am still looking for the good news it is said to contain.  I kid you not, a man did write a book entitled “Good News from Sinai”. I can barely crack a smile at his transparent rebellion. I suspect we will never find the life giving terms of the glorious gospel or the majesty of the apostolic letters of Christ’s witnesses in the Ten Commandments.  Of all the things that the Sabbath might be in the spiritual realm one has to be convinced that it is not from or of heaven a day, a sign, and a symbol: anything else will tend to serve man’s Idolatry-prone intelligence.

Sabbath from shadow to spotlight

Real theologians do not speculate.  They imagine what the Scripture says until it has nothing to do with the Christ Event.  It is a profound irony in fact that the command in the Sinai Covenant that establishes Sabbath definition and regulation contains eight (8) verbs. Opinion varies about what (1) remembering and (2) day holiness really are and the number eight is not going to end well if those actions mentioned give rise to activities which are to be monitored.

Remembering and holiness

• remember the day, strictly covenantal
• keep sabbath holy, exclusively human
• sanctify sabbath, exclusively God’s

The pattern of the fourth commandment in the Ten Words is unique.

• This WORD departs from the simple pattern, “you shall not”.
• It has several clauses
• It is flooded with verbs

Here are the clustered verbs

1. Remember, זכר, zakar
2. Keep holy; קדש, qadash, same as SANCTIFY from “Then God blessed the seventh day and SANCTIFIED it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Genesis 2:3, NASB)
3. Labour, abad, עבד, work, essentially serve
4. Do, asah, עשה
5. Make, asah, עשה
6. Rest, shabbat, שבת
7. Bless, ברך, barak
8. Make holy; same as SANCTIFY from Genesis 2:3

We know what happens to the guy who forgets that Friday sunset marks the arrival of the Lord’s Sabbath?  His hoarded food spoils and if he needs a fire he cannot afford to start one and he had better not gather sticks to make one.  I have never heard anyone make a serious offer of bringing Sabbath law to the profile of a perpetual statute.  Sabbath law, beginning with sunset to sunset, does not even apply in the natural terrestrial sense, given the varying lengths of days and the sometimes endless day and endless night for months at a time. What is right and equitable with no sunset and no sunrise?  More to the point of righteous behavior and the apprehension of violators of the law, we must in choir what does the church do when someone is found violating the Sabbath profaning the Sabbath come and is there anyone exempt as the priest were in Old  and New Testament times?

Did God not know that priests and Levites were going to profane the Sabbath on a weekly basis with no accusations or allegations of wrongdoing? How could he not? But who would have thought that a Jew could say he is the Sabbath’s Lord, and portray himself as legitimately working every Sabbath without apology?

None of us could have imagined either of those scenarios but one thing is clear, Sabbath belongs to the festivals, to the moedîm (Genesis 1:14).  It is no secret that the Sabbath is proclaimed as a festival (Leviticus 23), one of the rudimentary practices of the juvenile phase of human development (Galatians 4).

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain. (Galatians 4:9-11)

Quit fanning the ashes

Uncleanness contracted from sitting where a menstruating woman had been sitting and waiting for sunset to remove one’s uncleanness is not a thing, neither is a symbol of things to come, like a festival or eating roasted goat meat ever going to be a primary moral obligation. One does not fan ashes to start a fire.  How many times do we have to be told that the seventh day Sabbath is a sign? God’s rest is not umbilically tied to a weekday and a Sabbath is not a sabbatismos – σαββατισμος – (Hebrews 4:9).  No one has to strive to have a weekly Sabbath; it comes naturally at the end of the week,  and furthermore, it comes every day as night falls. Spiritual rest is guaranteed to all who come to Christ for refuge.   Who is so deceived as to believe that anything that lasts for 24 hours, like a festival, can compare to the unending holy presence of the Holy Spirit in every believer or to the rest that Christ gives here and now to the weary and heavy laden?  Not me. Why anyone?