In the Wilderness
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warmth. The act of this man was a willful and deliberate violation of
the fourth commandment—a sin, not of thoughtlessness or ignorance,
but of presumption.
He was taken in the act and brought before Moses. It had already
been declared that Sabbathbreaking should be punished with death,
but it had not yet been revealed how the penalty was to be inflicted.
The case was brought by Moses before the Lord, and the direction was
given, “The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall
stone him with stones without the camp.”
Numbers 15:35
. The sins of
blasphemy and willful Sabbathbreaking received the same punishment,
being equally an expression of contempt for the authority of God.
In our day there are many who reject the creation Sabbath as a Jew-
ish institution and urge that if it is to be kept, the penalty of death must
be inflicted for its violation; but we see that blasphemy received the
same punishment as did Sabbathbreaking. Shall we therefore conclude
that the third commandment also is to be set aside as applicable only
to the Jews? Yet the argument drawn from the death penalty applies to
the third, the fifth, and indeed to nearly all the ten precepts, equally
with the fourth. Though God may not now punish the transgression
of His law with temporal penalties, yet His word declares that the
wages of sin is death; and in the final execution of the judgment it
will be found that death is the portion of those who violate His sacred
precepts.
During the entire forty years in the wilderness, the people were
every week reminded of the sacred obligation of the Sabbath, by the
miracle of the manna. Yet even this did not lead them to obedience.
Though they did not venture upon so open and bold transgression as
had received such signal punishment, yet there was great laxness in
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the observance of the fourth commandment. God declares through
His prophet, “My Sabbaths they greatly polluted.”
Ezekiel 20:13-24
.
And this is enumerated among the reasons for the exclusion of the
first generation from the Promised Land. Yet their children did not
learn the lesson. Such was their neglect of the Sabbath during the forty
years’ wandering, that though God did not prevent them from entering
Canaan, He declared that they should be scattered among the heathen
after the settlement in the Land of Promise.
From Kadesh the children of Israel had turned back into the wilder-
ness; and the period of their desert sojourn being ended, they came,