A Background Study into the Jewish Attitude towards the Sabbath
INTRODUCTION
The Jewish Sabbath (שַׁבָּתּ) is one of the most important tenets of Judaism, the observance and practice of which sets the devout Jew apart from not only the nominal believer, but the non-believer as well. To the Jew, it represents not only a holy day of rest, but also serves as a reminder of God’s creation, the Exodus and His covenantal relationship with His people.
In order to understand and appreciate the importance of this day to the Jew and his resultant attitude towards the Sabbath, it is useful to trace the biblical origin and development of the Jewish concept and practice of the Sabbath throughout the different historical periods of the Jewish people.
This paper seeks to answer and explore the above, culminating in Jesus’ attitude towards and teaching of the true meaning of the Sabbath. Finally it hopes to suggest how this understanding of the Jewish Sabbath affects the Christian believer.
ORIGIN OF THE SABBATH
Although modern research towards the 19th century has tried to trace the Jewish Sabbath to Babylonian, Kenite, Arabic, Ugaritic and other extra-biblical origins, there has, to date, been no consensus and agreement among scholars with regards to the above.
For the purpose of our study, we will focus on the biblical origin of the Sabbath.
The first mention of the concept of the Sabbath is found in Exodus 16:22-30, in which the people of Israel were told to keep the Sabbath (the seventh-day) as a day in which they were free from the normal gathering of manna. The people of Israel had been accustomed to a “ten-day week” from their captivity in Egypt and this was Israel’s first introduction to a seventh-day week and a preparation for the subsequent commandment in the Decalogue.
Three chapters later, the Sabbath was again mentioned, this time in the fourth of the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 20:8-11 reads, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, 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.” (KJV)
Deuteronomy 5:15 reads, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.” (KJV)
In these two documents, the Israelites were reminded of God’s rest from His six-days of creation and His deliverance of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt. Just as God rested from his creative acts on the seventh day, the Israelites were likewise commanded to rest from their normal daily activities on that day. In contrast to their four hundred years of Egyptian captivity in which they had no rest from their labor, they were now a free people, and the Sabbath was also to be demonstration of their freedom from slavery.
The Sabbath was also a “perpetual covenant” and a “sign” between God and Israel “throughout their generations”, the seriousness of which was demonstrated by a death penalty for transgression of the commandment (Exod 31:16-17). This was evidenced in Num. 15:33-36 which recorded that a man was stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.
Thus we can see from these initial accounts that the Sabbath was taken seriously by both God as well as the Israelites.
DEVELOPMENT, DECLINE AND RE-INSTATEMENT
From the first giving of the Sabbath law on Sinai to Israel’s possession of Canaan, they were commanded not to do any work on the Sabbath. To keep the Sabbath holy and unprofaned, they were not to treat it like any other day. This meant that normal activities that were regarded as work on the other six days were not to be performed from sunset Friday to sunset Sunday. This entailed the gathering of manna, plowing and harvesting (Exod. 34:12) and the kindling of fires in the homes (Exod. 35:3).
As the Israel developed from a nomadic to an agricultural and subsequently into a commercial nation, “work” as an entity became slowly re-defined such that carrying of wares and goods into the community to sell were also prohibited (Jer. 17:21-22).
The Sabbath was celebrated as a day unto the LORD in both Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the 8th century BC, in which offerings were made in the temple during this day (1 Chr. 23:31, 2 Chr. 2:4). It was also to be “a delight”, a day to be honored “by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words” (Isa. 58:13, NIV). Psalm 92 gives an idea of the activities that the Israelite engaged in during the Sabbath – giving thanks, singing praises, playing on musical instruments and singing. There were also other lawful activities during the Sabbath – marriage (Judg. 14:12-18) and dedication (1 Kgs. 8:65) feasts, changing of temple guards (2 Kgs. 11:5-9), duties of the priests and Levites (2 Kgs. 11:5-9).
Although the concept of rest and worship on this day was widely acknowledged, there was also evidence that the Sabbath was beginning to be taken lightly and profaned, as greed and avarice manifested itself.
Amos 8:5 reads, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat? – skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” (NIV)
Isa. 1:13 reads, “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your evil assemblies.” (NIV)
The Israelites had started to forget the meaning of the Sabbath. The day of rest, worship and honoring God had degenerated to a day of trading and outward ritualism in which the corrupt and unfaithful heart profaned the day by continuing to offer sacrifices. The spirit of the Sabbath had degenerated into an outward superficial performance, in which the attitude of the heart was not commensurate with the outward excesses.
Jeremiah prophesied the kindling of “a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched” if the Sabbath continued to be profaned (Jer. 17:27). This culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity in 586 B.C.
Nehemiah, returning with the third group of exiles to rebuild Jerusalem in 445 B.C., found that Sabbath observance continued to be lax among the people. He noted in
Neh. 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.” (NIV)
He recognized that the desecration of the Sabbath was one of the reasons for the calamity upon Israel and he, together with Ezra and the scribes, then began to introduce changes, systematize rules and interpretation of the Scriptures to ensure Sabbath observance. (Neh. 10:31-34). This development took place over the next few hundred years.
THE SABBATH IN THE INTER-TESTAMENTAL PERIOD
The Scriptures are relatively silent over the practice and development of the Sabbath in the intertestamental period, and we have to refer to extra-biblical and inter-testamental literature in order to catch a glimpse of the intensification of Sabbath observance during this period. There was a definite shift from the initial lax attitude of the post-exilic Jews to one of increasing adherence to the Sabbath law and its growing regulations.
The apocryphal literature documents for us the uncompromising attitude of the Jews against profaning the Sabbath during the beginning of the Maccabean uprising, where loyal Jews refused to fight even in self-defense on the Sabbath, but rather allowing themselves to be killed. This eventually led to the recognizing of defensive warfare as permissible on the Sabbath. (1st and 2nd book of Maccabees)
Other historical literature documents that Jews were so well known with regard to their refusal to carry arms or to travel on the Sabbath that they were exempt from military service by the Romans.
In the few hundred years after Nehemiah and Ezra, after the decline of the prophetic movement and the subsequent rise of the scribes and teachers of the law, Sabbath laws became more formalized, as there was “a need to interpret and apply the past revelation of God’s will to the various situations that confronted the community. The guidelines for ethics, as well as apparently outmoded regulations, were applied by prominent teachers to the ever changing situations that confronted the Jewish nation.” The rabbis were aware of the relative silence of Scriptures with regard to day to day living, and they tried to apply their interpretation of the Sabbath law to almost every Jewish activity. Slowly but surely the Sabbath by-laws grew in volume.
Various documents like the Jubilees (ca. 150 B.C.) and the Damascus Document (ca. 100 B.C.) reflected a strict and uncompromising observance of the Sabbath, especially among the Essenes and the Qumran community. Their laws were so strict that even sexual intercourse and defecation was prohibited during the Sabbath. These laws, however, also allowed the saving of life to take precedence over the Sabbath.
Rabbinic laws, which were formalized in the Halakah, were the main teachings that the Jews took great pains to follow. The rabbis tried to answer two main questions concerning the Sabbath: First, they defined what constituted an offense against the law of God. Second, they defined what released a person from the obligation to fulfill the Sabbath law.
Two rabbinic schools existed at that time, Beth Shammai that taught, “ From the first day of the week, prepare yourself for the Sabbath,” and Beth Hillel which taught, “Blessed be the Lord day by day.” Even among the rabbis existed differences in opinion as to what constituted the proper observance of the Sabbath. For one, it was an end in itself; and for another, it was the culmination and expression of an attitude. Yet one thing was certain, to fulfill the Sabbath law was to be counted as righteous.
In the Mishnah, the rabbis determined the 39 avot melakhah (lit. “fathers of work) which included sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sorting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing sheep, washing wool, beating wool, dyeing wool, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, loosening, sewing two stitches, tearing, hunting a deer, slaughtering, flaying, salting, curing a skin, scraping the hide, cutting, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters, building, pulling down a structure, extinguishing a fire, lighting a fire, striking with a hammer, moving something.
Out of each avot melakhah would arise toledah (“derivatives”) that were to be observed as strictly as the avot melakhah. For example, a derivative of reaping would be to cut flowers or pick fruit.
In order to prevent someone from inadvertently transgressing the law, the rabbis also instituted further rulings, examples of which included gezerot, muktseh, nolah, shevut and eruv.
To give an example of how one could get around these laws, “If his teeth pain him he may not suck vinegar through them but he may take vinegar after his usual fashion, and if he is healed he is healed.” (Shabb. Xiv.4) Outwardly, there was the appearance of “righteousness” in obeying the absolute letter of the law, yet there existed ways in which the law could be circumvented. The heavy burden of the additional laws therefore necessitated “escape routes” which could excuse the otherwise transgressor of the law.
There were, however, cases in which these rules could be overridden. The expression used for such situations was אֶת־הַשַׁבָּת חִין דּוֹ – “push aside the Sabbath”. These include the duties of the priests and humanitarian acts to save life.
These were but some of the laws of the Sabbath that the Jew was expected to follow to the strictest detail if he was to be considered righteous and devout. The Jew was sincere in his desire to obey the Lord, but “as time went on, an anxious and ultimately a superstitious dread of profaning the sabbath asserted itself; the spiritual was subordinated to the formal, restrictions were multiplied, till at length those who were really important and reasonable were buried beneath a crowd of regulations of the pettiest description.”
The original concept of the Sabbath had, by now, been largely lost to the Jew. The attempts of the teachers of the law to define and re-define work over the years and centuries, albeit well-meaning in the beginning, had robbed the liberty of the first Sabbath; and replaced it with a false sense of security but a true sense of burden.
JESUS AND THE SABBATH
It was into this kind of spiritual climate that Jesus came into, one of extensive and sometimes ludicrous laws which sought to define what a Jew could and could not do on the Sabbath. Much of what was originally planned for man on the Sabbath was lost in a quest to obey the letter of the law. What was meant to liberate had become a shackle.
Jesus’ encounters with the teachers of the law over the Sabbath issues revolved around his apparent breaking of their understanding and institution of the law. He, therefore, sought to correct the misconception of the people by asking if it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:12) , by challenging the rigid and uncompromising but stifling legal restrictions of the Pharisees.
He brings us back one full circle to the origin of the Sabbath, as it was meant to be, to serve mankind for rest and to bring blessing. He declared that the “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27, NIV)
CONCLUSION
What can Christians learn from the Jewish Sabbath – when we are not bound by the law to practice it ? What lessons can we draw from the experience of the Jews in the wilderness when they were first commanded to keep the Sabbath day, after their return from the Babylonian exile and heard the words of Nehemiah exhorting them to observe the holy Sabbath, and their encounters with Jesus who continued to heal and to do what was lawful in the eyes of the Lord (unlawful in the eyes of the teachers of the law) ?
Have we lost our “Sabbath Rest” in the Lord by not dedicating time for worship, for remembrance of His grace and deliverance, for renewal of our covenantal relationship with our God ? Have we replaced the genuinely needful with outward “Christian rules and regulations” ? Have we exchanged our freedom for legalism ?
Perhaps this study will also bring us back one full circle. Back to basics.
The Jewish Sabbath (שַׁבָּתּ) is one of the most important tenets of Judaism, the observance and practice of which sets the devout Jew apart from not only the nominal believer, but the non-believer as well. To the Jew, it represents not only a holy day of rest, but also serves as a reminder of God’s creation, the Exodus and His covenantal relationship with His people.
In order to understand and appreciate the importance of this day to the Jew and his resultant attitude towards the Sabbath, it is useful to trace the biblical origin and development of the Jewish concept and practice of the Sabbath throughout the different historical periods of the Jewish people.
This paper seeks to answer and explore the above, culminating in Jesus’ attitude towards and teaching of the true meaning of the Sabbath. Finally it hopes to suggest how this understanding of the Jewish Sabbath affects the Christian believer.
ORIGIN OF THE SABBATH
Although modern research towards the 19th century has tried to trace the Jewish Sabbath to Babylonian, Kenite, Arabic, Ugaritic and other extra-biblical origins, there has, to date, been no consensus and agreement among scholars with regards to the above.
For the purpose of our study, we will focus on the biblical origin of the Sabbath.
The first mention of the concept of the Sabbath is found in Exodus 16:22-30, in which the people of Israel were told to keep the Sabbath (the seventh-day) as a day in which they were free from the normal gathering of manna. The people of Israel had been accustomed to a “ten-day week” from their captivity in Egypt and this was Israel’s first introduction to a seventh-day week and a preparation for the subsequent commandment in the Decalogue.
Three chapters later, the Sabbath was again mentioned, this time in the fourth of the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 20:8-11 reads, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, 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.” (KJV)
Deuteronomy 5:15 reads, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.” (KJV)
In these two documents, the Israelites were reminded of God’s rest from His six-days of creation and His deliverance of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt. Just as God rested from his creative acts on the seventh day, the Israelites were likewise commanded to rest from their normal daily activities on that day. In contrast to their four hundred years of Egyptian captivity in which they had no rest from their labor, they were now a free people, and the Sabbath was also to be demonstration of their freedom from slavery.
The Sabbath was also a “perpetual covenant” and a “sign” between God and Israel “throughout their generations”, the seriousness of which was demonstrated by a death penalty for transgression of the commandment (Exod 31:16-17). This was evidenced in Num. 15:33-36 which recorded that a man was stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.
Thus we can see from these initial accounts that the Sabbath was taken seriously by both God as well as the Israelites.
DEVELOPMENT, DECLINE AND RE-INSTATEMENT
From the first giving of the Sabbath law on Sinai to Israel’s possession of Canaan, they were commanded not to do any work on the Sabbath. To keep the Sabbath holy and unprofaned, they were not to treat it like any other day. This meant that normal activities that were regarded as work on the other six days were not to be performed from sunset Friday to sunset Sunday. This entailed the gathering of manna, plowing and harvesting (Exod. 34:12) and the kindling of fires in the homes (Exod. 35:3).
As the Israel developed from a nomadic to an agricultural and subsequently into a commercial nation, “work” as an entity became slowly re-defined such that carrying of wares and goods into the community to sell were also prohibited (Jer. 17:21-22).
The Sabbath was celebrated as a day unto the LORD in both Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the 8th century BC, in which offerings were made in the temple during this day (1 Chr. 23:31, 2 Chr. 2:4). It was also to be “a delight”, a day to be honored “by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words” (Isa. 58:13, NIV). Psalm 92 gives an idea of the activities that the Israelite engaged in during the Sabbath – giving thanks, singing praises, playing on musical instruments and singing. There were also other lawful activities during the Sabbath – marriage (Judg. 14:12-18) and dedication (1 Kgs. 8:65) feasts, changing of temple guards (2 Kgs. 11:5-9), duties of the priests and Levites (2 Kgs. 11:5-9).
Although the concept of rest and worship on this day was widely acknowledged, there was also evidence that the Sabbath was beginning to be taken lightly and profaned, as greed and avarice manifested itself.
Amos 8:5 reads, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat? – skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” (NIV)
Isa. 1:13 reads, “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your evil assemblies.” (NIV)
The Israelites had started to forget the meaning of the Sabbath. The day of rest, worship and honoring God had degenerated to a day of trading and outward ritualism in which the corrupt and unfaithful heart profaned the day by continuing to offer sacrifices. The spirit of the Sabbath had degenerated into an outward superficial performance, in which the attitude of the heart was not commensurate with the outward excesses.
Jeremiah prophesied the kindling of “a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched” if the Sabbath continued to be profaned (Jer. 17:27). This culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity in 586 B.C.
Nehemiah, returning with the third group of exiles to rebuild Jerusalem in 445 B.C., found that Sabbath observance continued to be lax among the people. He noted in
Neh. 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.” (NIV)
He recognized that the desecration of the Sabbath was one of the reasons for the calamity upon Israel and he, together with Ezra and the scribes, then began to introduce changes, systematize rules and interpretation of the Scriptures to ensure Sabbath observance. (Neh. 10:31-34). This development took place over the next few hundred years.
THE SABBATH IN THE INTER-TESTAMENTAL PERIOD
The Scriptures are relatively silent over the practice and development of the Sabbath in the intertestamental period, and we have to refer to extra-biblical and inter-testamental literature in order to catch a glimpse of the intensification of Sabbath observance during this period. There was a definite shift from the initial lax attitude of the post-exilic Jews to one of increasing adherence to the Sabbath law and its growing regulations.
The apocryphal literature documents for us the uncompromising attitude of the Jews against profaning the Sabbath during the beginning of the Maccabean uprising, where loyal Jews refused to fight even in self-defense on the Sabbath, but rather allowing themselves to be killed. This eventually led to the recognizing of defensive warfare as permissible on the Sabbath. (1st and 2nd book of Maccabees)
Other historical literature documents that Jews were so well known with regard to their refusal to carry arms or to travel on the Sabbath that they were exempt from military service by the Romans.
In the few hundred years after Nehemiah and Ezra, after the decline of the prophetic movement and the subsequent rise of the scribes and teachers of the law, Sabbath laws became more formalized, as there was “a need to interpret and apply the past revelation of God’s will to the various situations that confronted the community. The guidelines for ethics, as well as apparently outmoded regulations, were applied by prominent teachers to the ever changing situations that confronted the Jewish nation.” The rabbis were aware of the relative silence of Scriptures with regard to day to day living, and they tried to apply their interpretation of the Sabbath law to almost every Jewish activity. Slowly but surely the Sabbath by-laws grew in volume.
Various documents like the Jubilees (ca. 150 B.C.) and the Damascus Document (ca. 100 B.C.) reflected a strict and uncompromising observance of the Sabbath, especially among the Essenes and the Qumran community. Their laws were so strict that even sexual intercourse and defecation was prohibited during the Sabbath. These laws, however, also allowed the saving of life to take precedence over the Sabbath.
Rabbinic laws, which were formalized in the Halakah, were the main teachings that the Jews took great pains to follow. The rabbis tried to answer two main questions concerning the Sabbath: First, they defined what constituted an offense against the law of God. Second, they defined what released a person from the obligation to fulfill the Sabbath law.
Two rabbinic schools existed at that time, Beth Shammai that taught, “ From the first day of the week, prepare yourself for the Sabbath,” and Beth Hillel which taught, “Blessed be the Lord day by day.” Even among the rabbis existed differences in opinion as to what constituted the proper observance of the Sabbath. For one, it was an end in itself; and for another, it was the culmination and expression of an attitude. Yet one thing was certain, to fulfill the Sabbath law was to be counted as righteous.
In the Mishnah, the rabbis determined the 39 avot melakhah (lit. “fathers of work) which included sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sorting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing sheep, washing wool, beating wool, dyeing wool, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, loosening, sewing two stitches, tearing, hunting a deer, slaughtering, flaying, salting, curing a skin, scraping the hide, cutting, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters, building, pulling down a structure, extinguishing a fire, lighting a fire, striking with a hammer, moving something.
Out of each avot melakhah would arise toledah (“derivatives”) that were to be observed as strictly as the avot melakhah. For example, a derivative of reaping would be to cut flowers or pick fruit.
In order to prevent someone from inadvertently transgressing the law, the rabbis also instituted further rulings, examples of which included gezerot, muktseh, nolah, shevut and eruv.
To give an example of how one could get around these laws, “If his teeth pain him he may not suck vinegar through them but he may take vinegar after his usual fashion, and if he is healed he is healed.” (Shabb. Xiv.4) Outwardly, there was the appearance of “righteousness” in obeying the absolute letter of the law, yet there existed ways in which the law could be circumvented. The heavy burden of the additional laws therefore necessitated “escape routes” which could excuse the otherwise transgressor of the law.
There were, however, cases in which these rules could be overridden. The expression used for such situations was אֶת־הַשַׁבָּת חִין דּוֹ – “push aside the Sabbath”. These include the duties of the priests and humanitarian acts to save life.
These were but some of the laws of the Sabbath that the Jew was expected to follow to the strictest detail if he was to be considered righteous and devout. The Jew was sincere in his desire to obey the Lord, but “as time went on, an anxious and ultimately a superstitious dread of profaning the sabbath asserted itself; the spiritual was subordinated to the formal, restrictions were multiplied, till at length those who were really important and reasonable were buried beneath a crowd of regulations of the pettiest description.”
The original concept of the Sabbath had, by now, been largely lost to the Jew. The attempts of the teachers of the law to define and re-define work over the years and centuries, albeit well-meaning in the beginning, had robbed the liberty of the first Sabbath; and replaced it with a false sense of security but a true sense of burden.
JESUS AND THE SABBATH
It was into this kind of spiritual climate that Jesus came into, one of extensive and sometimes ludicrous laws which sought to define what a Jew could and could not do on the Sabbath. Much of what was originally planned for man on the Sabbath was lost in a quest to obey the letter of the law. What was meant to liberate had become a shackle.
Jesus’ encounters with the teachers of the law over the Sabbath issues revolved around his apparent breaking of their understanding and institution of the law. He, therefore, sought to correct the misconception of the people by asking if it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:12) , by challenging the rigid and uncompromising but stifling legal restrictions of the Pharisees.
He brings us back one full circle to the origin of the Sabbath, as it was meant to be, to serve mankind for rest and to bring blessing. He declared that the “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27, NIV)
CONCLUSION
What can Christians learn from the Jewish Sabbath – when we are not bound by the law to practice it ? What lessons can we draw from the experience of the Jews in the wilderness when they were first commanded to keep the Sabbath day, after their return from the Babylonian exile and heard the words of Nehemiah exhorting them to observe the holy Sabbath, and their encounters with Jesus who continued to heal and to do what was lawful in the eyes of the Lord (unlawful in the eyes of the teachers of the law) ?
Have we lost our “Sabbath Rest” in the Lord by not dedicating time for worship, for remembrance of His grace and deliverance, for renewal of our covenantal relationship with our God ? Have we replaced the genuinely needful with outward “Christian rules and regulations” ? Have we exchanged our freedom for legalism ?
Perhaps this study will also bring us back one full circle. Back to basics.
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