Are We Forgetting the Sabbath?
I’m typing this sentence on a Friday morning.
That’s irrelevant except for the fact that I wanted to start this post by telling you that Fridays are a day when I spend a good chunk of my time thinking about Saturdays. And probably not for the reason you might think.
For me, it’s not that I find myself in a kind of T.G.I.F. anticipation for the end of the workweek and the beginning of the weekend. No, I’m actually one of those people who really enjoys the workweek. I love Monday-Friday. I love what I do. So that’s not it.
For me, I find myself thinking about Saturday every Friday because over the last two years my family has been rediscovering the gift of Sabbath — a 24-hour period of rest, play and freedom from anxiety-driven production and consumption. We are amateurs when it comes to Sabbath, but it’s been a life-changing, life-giving practice.
So are Jesus-people supposed to keep the Sabbath?
Well… I’m not sure.
But here’s a question that I’d like to propose to get you thinking about it.
Are we supposed to obey the Ten Commandments?
I’m obviously aware that we are not ancient Israelites and that there are all sorts of commands in the Torah that we are not expected to obey today. But what about the top ten? Are we supposed to still obey those?
Well, if you take a minute to read through the Ten Commandments, I’d be willing to bet that you would say “Yes” to at least 9 of the 10. There’s a really good chance that we would all agree that we should definitely obey nine of them, but then there’s one in particular that we just don’t seem to take that seriously. And interestingly enough, it’s the longest commandment of the ten (it’s described in greater detail than any of the others).
Which one is it?
You guessed it.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave or your female slave, or your cattle, or the foreigner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; for that reason the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Now, I can’t possibly say everything I want to say or share everything that I want to share about the Sabbath in just one blog post. So right now, I just want to start the conversation, and then I’ll come back to it regularly with more thoughts and insights.
For now, here’s 2 things I want you to think about:
1. Why do we seem to not take this one commandment as seriously as we take the other nine in the Ten Commandments?
And if your initial answer has something to do with Christians not having to obey all the commands in the Torah that were originally given to ancient Israel then I get it. But that leads me to the second thing that I want you to think about…
2. Why is the command here to “Remember”?
All the other commands in the Ten Commandments are given with language that says, “You should do this” or “You should NOT do this”, but this one particular command is worded differently.
It does not say, “You shall take one day off a week.” It says, “Remember this particular day.”
Remember it.
That word remember seems to communicate something profound.
The actual command seems to be to remember something that already existed previously before these commandments were even given. Something that apparently preceded God giving Israel all these commands at Mt. Sinai. Something that has always been there but was forgotten and needed to be remembered. Something that was originally built into the DNA of creation itself.
The command is to remember the Sabbath.
Remember the rhythm that God set for creation from the very beginning — six days of making, creating and producing, and then one day to stop, rest and enjoy it.
Is it possible that we have forgotten the one commandment that preceded all the other commandments? The one that actually starts with the word “remember”?
Are Jesus-people supposed to keep the Sabbath?
I don’t know.
Do I think Jesus-people should keep the Sabbath?
I encourage you to think about it.
