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Keeping the Sabbath, May 3
I am the Lord your God; follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Keep my Sabbaths holy, that they may be a sign between us. Then you will
know that I am the Lord your God.
Ezekiel 20:19, 20
, NIV.
At the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the Sabbath institution was brought
prominently before the people of God. While they were still in bondage, their
taskmasters had attempted to force them to labor on the Sabbath by increasing
the amount of work required each week.... But the Israelites were delivered from
bondage and brought to a place where they might observe unmolested all the precepts
of Jehovah.
At Sinai the law was spoken; and a copy of it, on two tables of stone, “written
with the finger of God,” was delivered to Moses (
Exodus 31:18
). And through nearly
forty years of wandering the Israelites were constantly reminded of God’s appointed
rest day, by the withholding of the manna every seventh day and the miraculous
preservation of the double portion that fell on the preparation day.
Before entering the Promised Land, the Israelites were admonished by Moses
to “keep the sabbath day to sanctify it” (
Deuteronomy 5:12
). The Lord designed
that by a faithful observance of the Sabbath command, Israel should continually be
reminded of their accountability to Him as their Creator and their Redeemer. While
they should keep the Sabbath in the proper spirit, idolatry could not exist; but should
the claims of this precept of the Decalogue be set aside as no longer binding, the
Creator would be forgotten and men would worship other gods.
“I gave them my sabbaths,” God declared, “to be a sign between me and them,
that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.” Yet “they despised
my judgments, and walked not in my statutes, but polluted my sabbaths: for their
heart went after their idols.” And in His appeal to them to return to Him, He called
their attention anew to the importance of keeping the Sabbath holy. “I am the Lord
your God,” He said; “walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them;
and hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may
know that I am the Lord your God” (
Ezekiel 20:12, 16, 19, 20
)....
Christ, during His earthly ministry, emphasized the binding claims of the Sab-
bath; in all His teaching He showed reverence for the institution He Himself had
given. In His days the Sabbath had become so perverted that its observance reflected
the character of selfish and arbitrary men rather than the character of God. Christ
set aside the false teaching by which those who claimed to know God had misrepre-
sented Him. Although followed with merciless hostility by the rabbis, He did not
even appear to conform to their requirements, but went straight forward keeping the
Sabbath according to the law of God (
Prophets and Kings, 180-183
).
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