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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“You have desecrated my Sabbaths.”
Ezekiel 22:8b
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Today is Sunday, the day designated for worship in the
United States. It’s been that day for as long as I have been alive and when I
became old enough to study and understand the scriptures, I discovered a bit of
a conundrum as I read this command from God nestled within the Ten
Commandments:
“Remember the Sabbath
day by keeping 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,
neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor
your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord
made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested
on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it
holy.” Exodus 20:8-11
This scripture was reinforced by a couple of other passages:
“Remember the Sabbath
day by keeping 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,
neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor
your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord
made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested
on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it
holy.” Exodus 20:8-11
“There are six days
when you may work, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, a day of
sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a sabbath
to the Lord.” Leviticus 23:3
The Israelites are to
observe the Sabbath, celebrating
it for the generations to come
as a lasting covenant. Exodus 31:16
Given all this, I think we can see there is little doubt
about four things:
1. The Israelites were to observe a Sabbath day.
2. The Lord ordained and blessed the Sabbath day.
3. On that Sabbath day, they were to do no work, resting and
making the day holy.
4. The observance of the Sabbath was to carry on through the
generations.
So on the seventh day, the Israelites were required to rest.
It was not to be a day like any other where the people would work and labor. It
was to be set apart and consecrated, a day that would begin at sunset on what
we know as Friday today and would carry on until sunset the following day,
Saturday. And there was little doubt that the Lord expected His people to be
obedient to His command to rest and keep the day holy, just as He expected them
to not murder or dishonor one’s parents, to care for foreigners and orphans and
widows, and to not defile His holy things, the wrongs we have seen the
Israelites committed in the first four devotions in this series.
So did the Israelites at least obey this one decree from
God?
Not exactly, for as we see in our scripture verse for today,
God’s people had failed in observing the Sabbath as they were told to:
“You have desecrated
my Sabbaths.” Ezekiel 22:8b
At its base definition, to desecrate means to treat
something considered holy with disrespect. And so we can ascertain that the
Israelites decided to not respect the Sabbath and in doing so, failed to keep
it holy thus desecrating it as well as God. Look at other translations and you
will find other words used instead of desecrate like:
1. Profaned (NKJV)
2. Violated (NLT)
3. Don’t keep (GNT)
4. Ignored (TLB)
and
5. Dishonored (NCV)
Each of these words give us further confirmation that the
Israelites had sinfully disregarded and disrespected the day the Lord set apart
for them to rest and keep sacred. One more translation of this verse perhaps sums
the whole problem up best in my view:
“You treat the
Sabbath just like any other day.” (CEV)
That was really the root of the problem. The Sabbath had
become just another day of the week or in other words, there was no way to
really distinguish it from any other day. There was nothing holy or sacred
about it and thus it was a direct disregard of God’s command and just another
coal burning hot on God’s judgment fire against His people.
All of this begs a couple of questions for me and all of us
really so let me try and address them one at a time.
1. Why is church worship on Sundays and not Saturdays?
The scriptures do not really prescribe worship to happen on
the Sabbath. It just commands God’s people to set apart the day as a day of
rest. And so when you go back to fourth century AD, you will find that the
Christian church began to hold worship gatherings on Sundays which were
considered the first day of the week and the proper day for observance being
that it was the day when Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Ever since then,
Sundays have become the traditional day for worship for most Christian
denominations and frankly every day is supposed to be a day where we worship,
honor, and glorify the Lord in what we do so there’s really not a debate here
regarding what particular day should be a proper day for worship.
2. Does this supplant the Sabbath observance obligation?
Absolutely not. There is nothing found in the Holy
Scriptures that states there has been an end to the observance of the Sabbath
rest and additionally, nothing that has changed that observance from the
seventh day of the week. This ordinance is still scripturally in effect.
3. Are we truly observing the Sabbath as God commanded?
Well, perhaps the right answer to the question is to look at
Saturdays and then ask yourself the question. Frankly, I would say we’re just
as bad if not worse than the Old Testament Israelites of Ezekiel’s day because
I think you would agree that Saturday has become a day like every other day. We
labor. We do recreational things. We shop. We do almost anything except observe
the day as a day of rest and a day to keep holy.
Desecrating got the Old Testament Israelites in big trouble
with God. We’re going down the same road I’m afraid, in fact, I think we’re
already there.
Amen
In Christ,
Mark
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