Give Yourself a Break
The one issue that seemed to get Jesus in conflict with the religious aristocracy of his day more than any other issue was Sabbath observance.
“This man does not keep the Sabbath!”
“This man does what it is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”
Remember 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.
– Exodus 20:8-11, ESV
Sabbath, שָׁבַת (shaw-bath’) simply means rest, cease, take a break from. One commentator suggested, “intermission.”1 Remember, זָכ֛וֹר֩ (zā-ḵō-wr), is a term of marking or setting aside. In this case, the Hebrew people didn’t need to “remember” the holy day of rest so much as they needed to think of it differently than all other days. The Israelites, along with all the nations around them, had been observing seven-day weeks since the creation.2 Sometimes, you just need to give yourself a break!
If you’ll recall the exodus from Egyptian slavery, the very context in which this fourth commandment was given, God instructed the people to gather manna every day for their daily sustenance, but on the sixth day they were to gather twice as much so they would not need to gather on the seventh day, the Sabbath, “a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD.”3
So the people didn’t need a reminder that the seventh day was the Sabbath. What they needed was a determination to mark it as a holy day of rest. God knows we tire and become overwhelmed by the cares of life. We need a day to just unplug and rejuvenate.
When discussing Sabbath rest with students at Kansas University, one student shared something so profound that I still remember it almost 40 years later. I cannot quote him precisely, but he said something like, “The reason we don’t take a Sabbath rest is that we don’t trust God, that he will empower us to get everything done during the week that we need to do.” In this young man’s mind, not keeping a Sabbath for rest was a trust issue. He argued that not taking that day to rest and relax results in serious performance degradation. It is similar to Martin Luther reputedly saying, “I’m too busy not to pray.”
Even McDonald’s knew, in 1971, that “You Deserve a Break Today.”
God gave us Sabbath rest as a gift, not as a burden.
And [Jesus] said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
– Mark 2:27, ESV
How does any of this affect the believer today? It shows us God’s concern for our well-being. Where the Jews had a Sabbath rest to remember God’s finished work of creation, we have a Sabbath rest to remember his completed work of salvation.
So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
– Hebrews 4:9-11, ESV
Life in the world is chaotic and exhausting. God has always promised rest to his people and provided rest for his people. As those created in the image of God, the God who created and then rested, we rest and we remember.
1. Dr. Henry Morris, Institute for Creation Research
2. Genesis 2:1-3
3. Exodus 16:22=30
