{"id":3286,"date":"2012-01-16T00:58:09","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T08:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/?p=3286"},"modified":"2012-01-16T00:58:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T08:58:09","slug":"concerning-the-sabbath-part-24-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/2012\/01\/16\/concerning-the-sabbath-part-24-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerning the Sabbath (Part 2\/4): History"},"content":{"rendered":"

History and timeline<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Creation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though the details about the Sabbath aren\u2019t outlined until the Law of Moses in the book of Exodus, we see it show up very early on in scripture, in Genesis chapter 2.<\/p>\n

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
\n(Genesis 2:1-3 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So after God created the heavens, earth, and everything in it, he rested. Whether this was a 24-hour day or some other period of time doesn\u2019t matter. This period of rest is something instituted from the dawn of the earth. This is the origin of the week. Notice that in this verse there is nothing prescriptive. There isn\u2019t a command to Adam build a calendar and watch it carefully. We are just told that God rested and that he made the day \u201choly\u201d or sanctified – set aside as special. We aren\u2019t told that God rested every 7th day from then on or anything of the sort. Just that for that one day, he rested. He stopped creating things. God didn\u2019t rest because his muscles were tired. He doesn\u2019t have muscles (though Jesus did.) Adam needed sleep. God doesn\u2019t. His imagination and power are limitless.<\/p>\n

Abraham<\/strong><\/p>\n

Later in Genesis, we have Abraham. Nowhere do we have any explicit evidence that he observed any sort of Sabbath rest. He might have and some people conjecture that he did, but it apparently wasn\u2019t important enough to mention. The same goes for Abraham\u2019s descendants Isaac, Jacob, and the other early patriarchs.<\/p>\n

Early Israel: Egypt<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the nation of Israel is in slavery in Egypt, Moses asked Pharaoh to give them a few days off to go and worship God in the desert.<\/p>\n

But Pharaoh said, \u201cWho is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.\u201d Then they said, \u201cThe God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.\u201d But the king of Egypt said to them, \u201cMoses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.\u201d
\n(Exodus 5:2-4 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Pharaoh\u2019s reply is interesting. From his perspective, taking days off was bad for the economy. Judging by his reply to Moses here, he would not have been thrilled about a moratorium on brick-laying every seven days. \u201cSomething like that would kill GDP! Come on Moses, money never sleeps!\u201d<\/p>\n

Law of Moses<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Israel escapes from Egypt, the Lord gives Moses the law on Mt. Sinai. The Ten Commandments are a summary of this law. We already saw that #4 requires that we keep the Sabbath day holy.<\/p>\n

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The actual verse is this:<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember the Sabbath day, to keep 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, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
\n(Exodus 20:8-11 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later Israel is given a lot more details about what this entails:<\/p>\n

Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.\u201d
\n(Exodus 35:2-3 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But wait, there is more! It turns out Sabbath isn\u2019t just a day of the week. I can be a year!<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.
\n(Leviticus 25:2-4 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a very good law. Wise farmers know that they need to put their fields in fallow every few years so that nature can restore the nutrients to the soil. Trying to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of the environment has damaging consequences. The same goes for employers trying to squeeze ever last drop of productivity out of their workers by demanding that they work Saturday, Sunday, overtime, etc. This sort of abuse always backfires. Here we have explicit commands from God against it. The Law of Moses enforced economic moderation. Very prudent, and over 3500 years old too.<\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s even more! Every 50 years (seven times seven plus one) there was a \u201csuper Sabbath\u201d called the year of Jubilee. During this year, slaves were automatically freed, debts were forgiven, land was returned to the original owners, and others sorts of redemption occurred. I could read you the verses here from the Old Testament, but the passages are pretty long and detailed. The point is that the observance of \u201cSabbath\u201d was a big idea that extended to many things besides taking a day off your day job.<\/p>\n

I know people in this room who were personally devastated when the home mortgage bubble burst a few years ago. I have some older coworkers at my office who were supposed to be retired by now, but they lost most of their savings when the banks and stock markets tanked in 2008. Can you imagine what the mortgage industry would look like if everyone\u2019s debts were forgiven every 50 years? Economists today say that things like the year of Jubilee are silly and obviously can\u2019t apply to our modern society. All of God\u2019s old commands to Israel had a purpose though. Perhaps he knows something we don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

So for centuries, the Jews observed the Sabbath (or at least the more devout ones tried to). Things changed though after they were carried into exile in Babylon and returned a couple generations later.<\/p>\n

2nd Temple Judaism, the time of Jesus<\/strong><\/p>\n

This brings us to the time in history known as \u201cSecond Temple Judaism\u201d, the time into which Jesus Christ was born. The Jews were back in Israel, the temple had been rebuilt but they were no longer in control of the government. They were a conquered people, a small province of the empire of Rome. Because of this, there were huge parts of the law that they were no longer able to enforce. Much of their daily laws were subject to the secular powers. Think about the laws against worshipping false God\u2019s and the punishments? The moral restrictions on sleeping around or the requirements to be an honest businessman? The local pagan governor Herod or the Roman prefect Pilate didn\u2019t care about those. They only let the Jewish leaders enforce some of the Old Testament law as a way of keeping the natives settled down.<\/p>\n

Because the people of God were constrained, the Pharisees, teachers and experts in God\u2019s law, took certain parts of law and blew them up like a balloon \u2013 adding hundreds of pages of \u201cofficial\u201d commentary on how to observe the rules just right. A modern translation of these laws for Orthodox Jews who want to continue in the Pharisees\u2019 tradition includes thousands of these guidelines.<\/p>\n

Jesus was not impressed. He was frequently critical of their actions as the self-ordained ritual police. At the same time, many of the Pharisees were very interested in Jesus and would follow him around. He sure did seem like a prophet from God sometimes, they just weren\u2019t quite sure what to do with him.<\/p>\n

This pronouncement from Jesus in Mark 2:27 is revealing and key to our discussion:<\/p>\n

And he said to them, \u201cThe Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
\n(Mark 2:27 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back to why God established the Sabbath rest. Is it because he gets tired? Of course not. But we do. We need rest to be healthy. He knows this. He\u2019s the one who designed our minds and bodies. In a way, to NOT observe Sabbath (in some sense) is ultimately to abuse yourself. It\u2019s for us. God doesn\u2019t need our worship on that day either to enlarge his Godness.<\/p>\n

As far as following Jesus goes, note what is missing from this summary of the law that the apostle Paul gives in Romans 13.<\/p>\n

For the commandments, \u201cYou shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,\u201d and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: \u201cYou shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
\n(Romans 13:9-10 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I guess those are laws dealing with loving your neighbor. How about something more direct?<\/p>\n

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
\n(Colossians 2:16-17 ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why is the old Sabbath notion being tossed? The answer I think lies in Jesus himself. More on that later.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s move on to how the early church, the first Christians handled this. For the first few years, the church was made up almost entirely of Jewish people! Acts talks about them meeting in the synagogues together even after they became Christ\u2019s disciples. I don\u2019t think there is any reason to assume that they wouldn\u2019t have continued to be very Jewish, at least culturally. We know they still had their baby boys circumcised, and only ate kosher food. It\u2019s unlikely that their Sabbath observance changed much, especially if they lived in or around Israel.<\/p>\n

A few years later though, gentiles (that\u2019s the rest of us) started to be saved through the work of Paul and other missionaries. Some of the Jewish Christians were insisting that the new converts from Greece and Rome should also be circumcised and probably should lay off the bacon too. As is recorded in the New Testament, Paul was really serious about squashing these ideas from the so-called \u201cJudaizes\u201d. The old ceremonial laws are NOT important he insists. Jesus has fulfilled them. And Paul was trained as a Pharisee. He knew what he was talking about.<\/p>\n

What we do find is that Sunday began to take on a new significance. Since that was the day that Jesus rose from the dead, a lot of early church leaders apparently thought it was the new best day to get together for corporate worship.<\/p>\n

Ignatius of Antioch, an early church leader wrote this in about 100 AD. That\u2019s only one generation removed from the apostles:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord\u2019s Day, on which our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death\u201d
\n(Letter to the Magnesians 9.1).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Justin Martyr, another early church father, elaborates on this in 150 AD.<\/p>\n

\u201cSunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this is why MOST Christians (including us here) have been meeting together on Sundays for the past two thousand years.<\/p>\n

Later, for better or worse, the church became more institutionalized. In the year 321 Emperor Constantine officially gave Sunday a bit of Sabbath flavor:<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.\u201d
\n(From the \u201cSunday\u201d edict of 321)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So now, in the Roman Catholic Church, which for the next 1200 years or so is ALL Christians, at least in the west, Sunday became not just a day of gathering for worship, but was also a government enforced day of rest – a \u201cSabbat\u201d of a sort.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the secular world today still observes this tradition, to some degree. All government offices and banks are closed on Sunday across the whole earth! In America though, most retail stores are open. Modernism has eroded this healthy Sabbath-esque institution of rest.<\/p>\n

There has been some confusion as to whether Christians \u201cmoved\u201d the Sabbath to Sunday. No, rather they (at least the non Jewish ones) ignored the Sabbath (following Jesus\u2019 example and Paul\u2019s teaching), but then Sunday took on some of the same characteristics. Over the centuries though, \u201cThe Lord\u2019s Day\u201d the term for Sunday, and \u201cSabbath\u201d became largely interchangeable.<\/p>\n

During the protestant reformation, many of the leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin were very insistent that our faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ was the only really important element in Christianity. In the view of many of the reformers and descendants, we are in no way bound by the Law of Moses anymore. Having Sunday off is a convenient time to rest and also gather to worship. It\u2019s good and practical.<\/p>\n

So this history of \u201cwhat do people who follow the Triune God do on the weekend\u201d is our history here. You are participating in the continuation of it right now.<\/p>\n

There have been a few dissenting voices over the years. I\u2019ll mention a few of them now.<\/p>\n

The early Puritans that came to colonize America \u2013 some of them are your ancestors \u2013 were very zealous about not working on The Lord\u2019s Day. They made many local and regional laws restricting what sort of work could be done on Sundays. Some of this tradition can still be observed if you travel to certain parts back east. Some towns still virtually shut down on Sunday. This is from that early Puritan heritage.<\/p>\n

Growing up, I attended a 7th-day Adventist elementary school so I had a lot of friends that went to church on Saturday. As their name suggests, this is a Christian denomination that has decided that worshipping together on Saturday (not Sunday) is really important. This has turned out to be pretty handy, as they will usually let another church in town borrow their building the following day.<\/p>\n

Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the seventh-day Adventists had this to say:<\/p>\n

The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty. The observance of the false Sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God’s law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast, the other choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God. (Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, 1884).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You catch that? The \u201cMark of the beast\u201d mentioned in Revelation is going to church on Sunday. So that\u2019s all of us here I guess. Well, that was almost a hundred and fifty years ago and they\u2019ve toned down their rhetoric a lot since, so I don\u2019t want to give them a hard time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History and timeline Creation Though the details about the Sabbath aren\u2019t outlined until the Law of Moses in the book of Exodus, we see it show up very early on in scripture, in Genesis chapter 2. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Concerning the Sabbath (Part 2\/4): History”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3290,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3286\/revisions\/3290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}