Exodus 35:1 – 3 “Then Moses assembled the whole congregation of Israel and said to them, “These are the things that the LORD has commanded you to do: For six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you are to have a holy Sabbath of complete rest to the LORD. Anyone who does work on that day must be put to death. Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”
Picture this: Here is Moses, who has just come down off Mount Sinai with the glory of the Lord shining from his face so brightly that people have to shade their eyes to look at him. God has laid out for Moses exactly what He wants the Israelites to do. Moses is speaking with all the authority granted to him by the Ruler of the Universe. And the very first command that Moses gives is that everyone must observe the Sabbath and that anyone refusing to do so must die! I don’t know about you, but I would be shaking in my sandals and nodding my head, “Sure, Moses! Whatever you say, Moses!”
Authority! How do you recognize it when you see it? An ad from several years ago pictured a huge crowd of people making all kinds of noise and then suddenly, wham! dead silence! The caption would always read “When E. F. Hutton speaks, everyone else is silent!” E. F. Hutton was a financial trading company, and the ad was designed to hopefully make viewers believe that E. F. Hutton was the ultimate authority in financial information. Sadly, in the early 1980’s a combination of several different kinds of fiscal wrong – doing led to the demise of E. F. Hutton. It has since been revived several times but has never regained its position as a leader in the stock industry. At that point, the ad might better have said, “When E. F. Hutton speaks, everybody snickers!” But nobody is snickering at Moses!
Moses is moving in the authority of God. The first thing out of Moses’s mouth is another warning to keep the Sabbath. Why does God keep harping on this one command, reminding the Israelites repeatedly about it?
Dennis Prager offers the following suggestion: “The remainder of Exodus is concerned with the building of the Tabernacle. First, however, the laws of the Sabbath are reiterated to provide the Israelites with an important stipulation: Even though the building of the sanctuary is the holiest work they will engage in, they are not allowed to do it on the Sabbath. In the Torah and later Judaism, time is holier than place, and thus the observance of the holiest day of the week takes precedence over the building of the holiest place.
Abraham Joshua Heschel notes that in the Hebrew Bible, “not even the Promised Land is called holy. While the holiness of the land and the holiness of the festivals depends on the actions of the Jewish people, the holiness of the Shabbat preceded Israel’s existence. Even if people fail to observe the Shabbat, it remains holy.”
“Anyone who does work on that day must be put to death.” Prager continues: The Torah prescribes such a severe punishment for violating the Sabbath to emphasize the severity of the infraction. The Sabbath affirms God created the world – the foundational belief of ethical monotheism, of the new Israelite nation, and the new and better world that should emanated from them. Without the Sabbath, there will ultimately be no Jewish religion, and no Jewish people. Hence, the aphorism of the Jewish philosopher Ahad Ha; am, “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” Such an observation has not been made about any other ritual law in the Torah, including kashrut and Yom Kippur.”
Why the proscription against lighting a fire on Shabbat but on no other holy days, except Yom Kippur? Again, Prager tells us: “The answer must lie in the meaning of the Sabbath: to affirm that God is the Creator (by not working or creating on the day God ceased working and creating). Aside from making new life (conceiving a child..), making a fire is the ultimate symbolic act of human creation. (Animals, too, make new life but they do not make fire.)
As only God creates ex nihilo (out of nothing), the kindling of fire is the closest humans come to creating. By kindling fire, humans are engaging in an act uniquely close to creating, whereas the purpose of the Sabbath is to refrain from such acts in order to affirm the one Creator is God… (Fire) has the unique power to transform everything it touches….The uniquely transformative entity – fire – thus becomes the archetypal Sabbath prohibition…The fires in the Temple affirmed the Creator, whereas all other fires had other purposes.” (Dennis Prager The Rational Bible: Exodus)
APPLICATION: God commanded the Israelites to observe the Sabbath both to rest and to honor Him as Creator. What practices do you follow on a regular basis to honor God in your life?
When my husband and I were first married, we chose to honor God by not shopping on Sunday unless it was a matter of dire necessity. To this day, we maintain that practice. This sounds ridiculously easy; but at the time, both of us were in demanding professions where we might work the rest of the week and Sunday afternoons would be our only free time. We at least try to wait to shop until after sundown on Sunday afternoon, and we continue to avoid shopping on that day as much as possible.
Whenever possible, we attend worship services. Now that many churches are live – streaming and posting their services on – line, it is far simpler to catch a worship service than it used to be. As much as possible, we reserve Sunday as a rest day. (On the other hand, as a surgeon in a district hospital, I have spent many Sundays in the operating theater. God has called me to save lives and I feel that I honor Him when I fulfill that calling.)
Ask God how He would like you to honor Him in your life and in the lives of your family members. The answers might surprise you.
PRAYER: Father God, we want to honor you but don’t know how. Please guide everyone who reads this devotional into special practices that will be meaningful to them and to you. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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