Season 1 Podcast 26 f Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy
Season 1 Podcast 26, “Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy.”
It is unthinkable today, in our frenetic society, to have a national day of rest once a week where the working world just stops, and we contemplate spiritual things. But for the first two hundred years of our history, keeping the Sabbath Day Holy was actually part of our American culture.
In the South, when I was a child, we had the Sunday Blue Laws. I remember in Spartanburg, South Carolina, when the drive-in theatre manager was arrested for opening his drive-in on Sunday. However, they didn’t take him behind the drive-in and stone him. He was instead supported by a mob of young people who wanted to go to the drive-in. The Sunday Blue laws soon died and taken off the books or just forgotten and ignored, and with it the last American Sanctuary.
Contrary to what many detractors claim, our nation’s laws were built upon the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are called by James, “The Law of Liberty.” Of the Ten Commandments, number four is to keep the Sabbath Day Holy.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, 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.” (Exodus 20:8-11)
Ancient Israel also struggled with Sunday Blue Laws. In Chapter 13 of Nehemiah, we read:
“18 Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath. 20 So the merchants and sellers of all kind of ware lodged without Jerusalem once or twice. 21 Then I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about the wall? if ye do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came they no more on the sabbath.” (Nehemiah 13:18, 19-21)
One of the purposes of the Sabbath Day is to free us from the labor that occupies the other six days of the week. It is actually a covenant between God and man. In Exodus 31, The Lord, speaking of the Sabbath Day, instructs Moses:
“16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. 17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” (Exodus 31:17)
Another of the purposes of the Sabbath Day is to remind us of the creation, to remind us to turn our hearts and thoughts to God who created heaven and earth and man. One guide to keeping the Sabbath Day holy is to ask, “Is what I am doing on the Sabbath Day reminding me of God?” Recreational activities that detract our thoughts from God were generally considered in Christian tradition to be inappropriate on the Sabbath Day and once upon a time were reserved for the other days of the week.
On the practical side, if it was necessary for God to be “rested, and refreshed,” how much more is it necessary for man? How did we allow those who do not believe in God to rob us of such blessings? Keeping the Sabbath Day holy makes the hardest of toils easier the other days of the week.
Simply returning to the Fourth Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy,” will do more for the worker than all the unions, all the laws, and all the designs of man. Imagine if the blessings of keeping the sabbath day holy were voluntarily returned to our nation!
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