Out of Egypt: Thinking Christian about the Sabbath Commands

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and today we're going to be discussing the Sabbath command. Now, the Sabbath command actually occurs in two different places in the Old Testament, once in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. In Exodus, it's 28-11 and Deuteronomy, it's 5, 12-15. In both cases, the Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the last day. It's commanded to be kept holy, but there are some differences between these two passages. In Exodus, for instance, the Sabbath is very much rooted in creation. And so we see in verse 11 that the rationale for the Sabbath, the reason the Israelites are to keep the Sabbath, is to imitate God. God, when he was creating the heavens and the earth, he worked for six days and he took the seventh day off, created a Sabbath, kept it holy, and so now Israel is supposed to do that as well. Deuteronomy 5, however, which is really Moses' restatement of this command, it's a reinterpretation even, perhaps, of the Sabbath command, where he's speaking to Israel who is on their way to taking possession of the promised land. And so he is going to root that passage, that practice of Sabbath, really in the Exodus, the Exodus from Egypt. And so what he does is, he doesn't say that the Exodus is the rationale for the Sabbath. So in Exodus, the rationale, the grounding, the reason that Sabbath is kept, is the creation pattern. Again, it's that imitation of God. God did it, so now we're going to do it. We're going to order our lives, create a cadence for our lives that is very similar to what God did at creation. But in Deuteronomy, you have a slightly different thing happening, and it seems to me that part of it is conveying almost a purpose of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath is to remind Israel that they were rescued from Egypt by God. And so to understand really what's going on, especially in the Deuteronomy version of the Sabbath, we need to understand where they came from. And so unceasing labor was really characteristic of the lives of Israel under the Pharaoh. And this Pharaoh, remember, did not know Joseph. And so when he's looking out on the Israelites, and he sees that the people are getting bigger and multiplying, he's concerned that they're going to be a threat, and he needs to neutralize them so that he can preserve the stability of his nation. Now, all of that's wrong. He doesn't get any of that right. He doesn't understand what's happening with the Israelites. He doesn't know that they could be a blessing to Egypt, as the previous Pharaoh discovered. But because he hasn't witnessed or been made aware of the blessings that Joseph brought to the nation of Egypt, this new Pharaoh finds himself standing against Israel and, more importantly, against Israel's God. And so let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. When God brings Israel out of slavery, he doesn't intend for them to become the next Egypt. As I suggest actually in Trajectories, A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology, God's redemption of Israel from Egypt isn't intended to bring about a reversal of power relations, but a fundamental change in the system of governance. In other words, when God brings Israel out of Egypt, he's not intending that Israel will now somehow be over the top of Egypt. It's not just a political revolution or a change in rulership. Instead, it's a transition from a Pharaoh-run economy, an economy where labor is necessary and worship of the Lord is precluded, and into an economy that is run by God, the sovereign Lord of the universe. And so once the Israelites are delivered, they're brought under the rule of the Lord. Israel's never actually autonomous after the Exodus. They're not free in the sense that sometimes we think about it in terms of sort of a self-determined governance or a governance by the people, let's say. That's not what Israel has. Israel has now a theocracy where God is sitting above them as their sovereign Lord. They're in covenant with him, and he is going to set the terms of the way that they're going to interact in the world. And so this new sovereign is incapable of providing for his people without their work on the Sabbath. And this is one of the differentiating points between Pharaoh and God. Whereas Pharaoh couldn't do without the work, saw the work as necessary to even try to curtail the multiplication of the Israelites, God, on the other hand, is saying, no, I don't need your work on Sundays. I'm going to provide for you, and this is going to be a day where it's set apart. It's set aside for me. It's set aside for worship. What you couldn't do in Egypt, you couldn't take a break in order to come out and worship me. We're going to build this into the structure of your nation. Every seventh day, you're going to take that time, and it's going to be a time of worship. You're going to worship me in those moments. You're not going to work. And so the call to practice Sabbath is one that requires complete rest. And it's because any time you don't have complete rest, you're really shorting God. You're not setting this aside for him. And so Sabbath really does recall that the power behind the Israelite economy is not found in the amount of labor accomplished in a given week. It's not even found in slave labor. You know, it's not a recapitulation of Israel as a new Egypt. It's now a reinvention of Israel as a nation under God who is dependent upon him and seeks to live according to the provision of God. And so the command to keep Sabbath was given so that Israel could be a visible expression to the power that fueled the nation's success. Unlike Egypt, Israel isn't dependent on ceaseless labor to sustain their nation. Rather, to survive and thrive, Israel needed to walk according to the commands of God. In keeping the Sabbath, Israel remembered that God brought them out of the land of Egypt. And what does that remembering entail? It's not just Israel looking back with nostalgia, but, you know, it's an enacting of God's presence. It's a recognition that we can order our lives differently because now we are no longer in Egypt. And I think it's probably not inappropriate to think of that idea of in Egypt in a little bit more of a symbolic way. So obviously, the Israelites had a concrete reference for Egypt. It was, you know, an actual nation, an actual pharaoh who was oppressing them. And when they come out of that, God is going to free them to serve him in ways that they couldn't under Egypt. But when we look back at that text, what we also need to recognize is that Egypt is a human system. Egypt is going to be severely limited and it's going to have just boundaries to what it can actually provide for these people. And so understanding it as, you know, sort of a symbolic of a broader human system of the futility that comes when rulers are trying to, perhaps, be God themselves, to curtail worship of God, to operate in the world apart from God. All of these things are sort of symbolic of Egypt. It gestures toward that. And so by remembering the Exodus, Israel wasn't looking back with nostalgia, but they're enacting in the present what God had delivered them to be. So in other words, in coming out of Egypt, this remembering of the Sabbath, the practice of the Sabbath, is Israel's remembrance that they no longer live in Egypt. It's their way to show that they now have this ability to live differently. And Israel, in practicing Sabbath, proclaims that God was different from any other ruler on the planet. And so when we consider the implications of the Sabbath command for God's people today, we do well to remember what the Sabbath conveyed about God and what it was designed to reinforce in the people of God. So I think, first, the Sabbath was to proclaim...

to the world that God's people serve a different king or ruler. It demonstrates that the Lord was not subject to the constraints of the world as other rulers are. God's not dependent on natural or economic resources. You know, he's not bothered by the political maneuvering in the nations. And as such, those who serve him are free to set aside the normal anxieties and at every turn trust in the Lord. And the Sabbath showcases that dependence on God rather than on worldly efforts and wealth. Now I'd say second, the Sabbath is to be a reminder that we exist as members of a new kingdom with a new ruler. So through rest, we offer more than our intellectual assent that God is in control. Through rest, we surrender ourselves to God. We trust him to provide because we honor him. And as true as it may be that the human body actually needs rest, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that God is not primarily commanding Sabbath for our good. Sabbath is a radical activity that does not make sense to those who do not trust God. We don't Sabbath in order to regain our energy so that we can be more productive. We Sabbath to keep holy the day God set apart for himself. We do it as an expression of trust in the order God established at creation. We do it as a way of imitating God and recognizing that labor and worship, the service that we do, the labor that we do, the service that we provide all week, there needs to continually be room for the worship of God, that our labor should not overcome or spill over into or push aside our worship for God. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And so, we Sabbath as an act of worship that pulls back the curtain to reveal a simple reality, that God reigns. And while we may not practice Sabbath in the exact same way prescribed in the nation of Israel, we'd still be wise to consider how we will convey to the world just how God is different and remind ourselves that we're no longer dependent on the world systems. Sabbath isn't just a state of mind, it is a concrete practice through which we recognize that our time and our productivity are of little consequence if we refuse to honor God. Now, the Sabbath is one of the practices that have the potential to make Christians fairly odd. Arguably, Christians are often strange, but perhaps not strange in quite the right ways. But in practicing Sabbath, we put ourselves in the hands of God. We set aside anything that might make it appear that we are still being productive in order to worship our Lord and Savior. And to those who don't know God and don't have his resources to fall back on, setting aside productivity seems rather foolish. Yet as we do so, we proclaim to the world and remind ourselves that we don't live by bread alone or on the toil that produces it, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. I think that is, in part, one of the important things that we need to recognize about the Deuteronomy command. This is another difference. So we had the creation account referenced in Exodus 20, and that's a difference. We also now can look at Deuteronomy and see this little phrase that's included in Deuteronomy that isn't exactly in the other one. So in verse 14, well, I'm just gonna read the whole command in Deuteronomy 5, and then I'm gonna highlight an aspect of verse 14. So here's the command. Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do 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 ox, your donkey, or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. Now, what's interesting is in verse 14, what we have is this addition of so that your male and female servants may rest as you do. That has often been taken in Old Testament scholarly circles as a humanitarian element that is influenced by Deuteronomy, the Deuteronomist, some people would call it. I tend to think that this is Moses and Moses is speaking this. This isn't necessarily influenced by some sort of a school of people who are editing this later. You can get into that in the JEDP theory if you Google JEDP, it'll kind of give you a sense of what I'm talking about there. But what I would say is, I don't think this is humanitarian. I don't get the sense that it's wise of us to divide the 10 commandments and particularly the Sabbath commandment here, but what I would argue is, I don't think it's wise for us to divide the 10 commandments into the theological portion and the neighborly portion. In other words, you know, usually what we have in the first three commands are these commands that are related to God. And so we have, I am the Lord, your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image. You know, you should not bow down to them or worship them. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord. You should not represent the Lord in a poor way. You should not bear the name of the Lord in vain. And then he's going to go into observing the Sabbath. Then you get honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery, steal, false witness, coveting, all those different commands. Well, some scholars would suggest that by the time you get to at least honoring your father and mother, you're really into neighborly commands. You're into more ethical, moral sort of stances. But I don't think we should be disconnecting. There's nothing in the text that would make you think that we should disconnect the first few commands that are really very much rooting everything that God is going to ask Israel to do in a theological matrix. He's going to say, look, you're mine. I'm your God. You're my people. And so you can't worship anyone else. You can't, you know, you can't put other gods before me. I'm your primary God. Like this is, this is what this is going to make. This is how this is going to work. You need to bear my name well. You need to make sure that you don't tarnish my reputation by the way that you're acting. And oh, by the way, you need to keep a Sabbath, set it apart for me. That's the context that we're coming to the Sabbath command with. And so my tendency is to think that as Moses is extrapolating and expounding on the Sabbath command Deuteronomy 5, what he's really doing here with the addition of this phrase, so that your male and female servants may rest as you do, what I think he's doing there is he's saying, look, this is what Sabbath looks like. Sabbath makes no sense. It loses all intelligibility if the Israelites are lounging back, taking a rest, chilling out at their house while their slaves do all the work. That is not reflective of what God is trying to shoot for with the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn't about one group taking a rest while everyone else serves their needs, continues to produce. The Sabbath is about depending on God and his provision and allowing everyone to experience this rest on the Sabbath day. It's allowing everybody the time to worship the Lord. And so what I think is going on there with that addition is this, that he wants to avoid the Israelite thought, you know, the misguided interpretation of Sabbath as I'm the only one who needs to rest. Everybody else can actually work. And we actually see this at various points, sometimes in the prophets where we're seeing cheating happening on the Sabbath. We're seeing the marketplace continue to operate on the Sabbath. We're getting these odd sort of aberrations of the Sabbath. And I think this... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak

makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. The man is supposed to help us understand that's not how this is supposed to work, that there is to be no productivity. It's to be truly set apart. The day is to be set apart, not the person, not us, right? The day is to be set apart. And this is why I think we have a prohibition against there's to be no labor done on the Sabbath. Now, the interesting part of this, obviously, we see, you know, in the gospels, we see a lot of controversies around the Sabbath. And Jesus will talk about, you know, if your ox falls in a pit on the Sabbath, do you not go and get it out? And so I think that we shouldn't be too, too rigid with the way we think about what happens on the Sabbath. There is a sense in which, as Jesus says, you know, man was not created for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was created for man. I think there is a good sense in which the Sabbath is for us, but the set apartness of the day is actually really crucial. And within this context, the focus is very much on the dynamics of Egypt, coming out of Egypt. Israel, don't be a new Egypt. Don't think that just because you can worship me on the seventh day and your slaves can be working all around you and continue to produce, that's not what I'm redeeming you for. I'm redeeming you to be a completely different sort of people to practice these odd and strange practices so that you don't look the same as the rest of the nations. It's not, yeah, look the same as the other nations, but do it a little bit more ethically. That happens sometimes in the law. We see different laws that are governing, let's say, war or slavery and those kinds of things where God is trying to take the edge off and manage a practice that is not aligned with his order. We see it with divorce. I've written some articles on that on Christianity.com and I can link to those in the show notes. But ultimately, what I think is happening here is God is saying, look, the day is to be set apart. That's what's happening. So as we kind of close this up with Sabbath, the question ultimately comes up, you know, should Christians practice Sabbath? Here's what I'd say to that. I think that a lot has changed since the Old Testament. And my tendency is to say that just because we have the requirement to observe the Sabbath in the same commandments doesn't mean that that maps across perfectly one-to-one to the church in the modern day. I tend to say Sabbath is a good practice, but it's not a requirement. I want to look at the book of Hebrews. I want to look at how the book of Hebrews talks about the rest we now have in Christ. And I think there's a case to be made that we are to be at peace in our labor always, that we should be worshiping always, that we should be resting always, that we have now entered into this rest. There's no longer a struggle or labor against sin. But I would certainly not deny that keeping the Sabbath is a good idea. I'm just not sure that it's a mandate for Christians. Now, there may be some people who disagree with me. I think there's plenty of room for disagreement on this issue. So, you know, I would say let's just think about that charitably and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, because at the end of the day, here's what I would also say about Sabbath. There's the other question that often comes up when we think about Old Testament Sabbath is, did Israel actually practice Sabbath? Now, we have some instances or some evidence that they didn't. This is part of the reason that is given for them going into exile so that the land could have its Sabbaths because the Israelites had not been taking them. There are prophetic critiques about, you know, Sabbath practice that's aberrant. And so we just see some evidence that Israel didn't actually do the Sabbath. What I would say is there the Israelites practice of Sabbath is not unimportant. It's not trivial, but at the same time, what I want to focus on is that this word, this command is inscribed in the biblical text. And that inscription makes it into something that we need to remember. It makes it important regardless of whether Israel ever practiced that way. That's a historical question. And it's an important historical question. But I think what we see in scripture is not simply a historical question, but in the inscription of the command, what we see is a theological question. And that theological question is, how is it that God's people honor the Lord? How is it that they depend on him? What does it look like for Israel to truly break from Egypt? And what could that tell Christians today about the way that we are supposed to break from the world in Jesus Christ? And so we are supposed to look different. We're supposed to look strange. Our practices should reflect our identity in Christ. Our thought process should reflect our identity in Christ. That doesn't simply mean that we avoid the immoral. It certainly means that, but it doesn't simply mean that. It also means that we live into our dependent relationship with God and that we find ways that may look odd to the world that demonstrate our dependence on God and that point to and glorify him on an everyday basis. So that's my treatment of the Sabbath commands in the Old Testament. Hopefully you understand them just a little bit better now and we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just wanna take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for working everything out for my good. Help me trust in your perfect plan. Amen. Father, thank you for loving and caring for me. With Christian prayer meditation, you can pray along to prayers based on specific topics. Go to lifeaudio.com or search your favorite podcast app for Christian Prayer Meditation. You can also download the Abide app for biblical meditations at abide.com.