Mark 2:27-28

A NATIONAL TREASURE

‘The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath.’

Mark 2:27

This is our Lord’s endorsement of the Fourth Commandment. The Sabbath, that is God’s holy Sabbath ordained at Creation, the hallowing of which is commanded at Sinai as part of the moral law, was made for man. Not for the Jews only, but for the whole race.

I. The authority of the Fourth Commandment cannot be overthrown.—It is not less than that of each and all of the other Commandments. Parents are glad to fall back upon the Fifth Commandment to preserve order in the family. The State falls back upon the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Commandments to guard society and the home against the murderer and the adulterer, the thief and the perjurer. Surely those who avail themselves of the protection afforded by these five Commandments ought not to deny the authority of the Commandment which immediately precedes them. Some try to represent the Fourth Commandment as an impossible one, because of the words in the Prayer Book version, ‘Thou shalt do no manner of work.’ The words in Exodus are: ‘Thou shalt not do any work’; and they must be taken in connection with the words of the preceding verse: ‘Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work.’ The week-day work is to cease on the Sabbath day. Many of our Lord’s injunctions in the Sermon on the Mount might just as reasonably be called impossible commands. But we think it childish to stumble over the exact wording of them. We recognise the beauty of the law of love which they embody, and only the enemies of the Gospel find fault with them. So, whatever the motive which actuates them, those who carp at the Fourth Commandment are acting as enemies of God and of the highest welfare of mankind.

II. Our Lord has given us clear guidance in this matter of Sabbath observance.—There was no laxity in His days upon this question, but the plain Sabbath law had been almost smothered by tradition. In the case of some of the Commandments the Jewish traditions tended to laxity. In the case of the Fourth Commandment they rather added to and magnified the Divine requirements. Our Lord set Himself to correct all that was traditional and mistaken in the Jewish observance of the Sabbath, and to leave the Sabbath law in its primitive simplicity and beautiful adaptability to man’s needs. He lifted the law into its right position, a Divine law, but not to be so interpreted as to break other laws of equal authority, and on a higher plane—the law of mercy and the law of love. All this full teaching of our Lord (He said more about the Fourth Commandment than He did about all the other nine put together) is decisive proof of the perpetuity of the Sabbath law. What legislator intending to abrogate a law would thus elaborately explain it, bring out its spirit, make known its limits, and yet not utter a single word of disapproval or give the least hint of an approaching abolition? The pains our Saviour took to ‘mend’ the Sabbath law distorted by Jewish traditions, is clear proof that he had no thought of ‘ending’ it. He claimed, however, to be Lord of the Sabbath, and in the exercise of a Sovereign’s right He changed the day of the week, and the first day was observed as His own Lord’s Day.

III. St. Paul’s teaching is in no way out of harmony with this view.—The testimony of Hebrews 4 is very clear. The author clearly views the Sabbath rest as dating from the Creation, and he reminds us that there still remains a keeping of Sabbath for the people of God.

IV. The teaching of the early fathers is in complete accord with this view.—Tertullian (born about 150 a.d.) writes: ‘That very day which was holy from the beginning by His Father’s benediction, He made more holy by His own benefaction.’ Irenaeus, consecrated Bishop of Lyons in 169 a.d., writes: ‘On the Lord’s Day every one of us Christians keeps the Sabbath, meditating on the law, and rejoicing in the works of God.’ Clement of Alexandria, who died about 220 a.d., writes: ‘The Fourth Commandment informs us that the world was made by God, and that He gave us the seventh day for rest on account of the sufferings and afflictions of life, and the eighth appears to be rightly called the seventh, and to be the true seventh.’ Epiphanius states, ‘The first Sabbath from the beginning decreed and declared by the Lord in the creation of the world has revolved in its cycle of seven days from that day till now,’ and Athanasius declares that the Lord ‘transferred the Sabbath to the Lord’s day.’

How shall I impress upon you the deep importance of this question. There is something radically wrong in your spiritual condition if you need any urging to keep the Sabbath day. The Sabbath is one of God’s best gifts to men—like sleep and sunshine. Better a city without a park, a world without flowers, than a week without a Sabbath.

—Rev. F. S. Webster.

Illustration

‘We cannot let Sunday go without quickly discovering and realising our loss. Very weighty are the words of the Right Hon. John Burns, m.p., on this question: “Sunday rest is physically good, mentally invigorating, and morally healthful. It has been commercially beneficial to the people of this land. It has done more than anything else to buttress and maintain the excellent institution we call ‘home’. The Day of Rest is from every point of view a national treasure.” The same view was emphasised not long ago in America by the overwhelming popular vote which decided that the Chicago Exhibition should be closed on Sunday; not, certainly, because of the religious intolerance of fifty millions in the United States, but because of their recognition of the importance of Sunday to a people. And a strange confirmation of the same principle comes to us from the French Republic in the law lately passed, which seeks to compel the observance of Sunday as a day of rest.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

FROM THE DAYS OF CREATION UNTIL NOW

The Sabbath was made for man:—

I. For his body.—In the evidence taken before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, it was proved that there must be a day of rest for the bodies of men; and those who keep horses know quite well that, if they are to be wrought up to their strength, you must give them rest one day in seven. So it is with man; if he has to work up to his strength, he requires one day of rest in seven. Now does not this prove that He that made our bodies has also appointed the Sabbath for the whole human race? For had He pleased He could have made our bodies of iron.

II. According to the example of God.—We are told in Genesis 2 of God making the Sabbath. It is a very common thing for Sabbath-breakers to say that it is a Jewish ordinance. But the first Sabbath dawned on a sinless world two thousand years before ever the mention of a Jew was heard of. The first Sabbath dawned in the bowers of sinless Paradise.

III. From the command that God gave concerning it.—When God brought Israel out of Egypt to the rocky mount of Sinai He there gave them a clear revelation of His holy law; and it is said, that ‘it was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made’ (Galatians 3:19). And in the very bosom of it was written, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ This is God’s Word—this is God’s unchangeable law.

IV. All God’s children love the Sabbath day.—God said to Israel, ‘My Sabbaths you shall reverence.’ And Ezekiel says: ‘He gave them a Sabbath to be a sign between them and Him’; it marked them out as God’s peculiar people. It’s the same still.

V. God’s enemies hate the Sabbath day.—It was the same first: it will be the same to the last.

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‘A well-known Secularist leader, the late Mr. George Holyoake, asserted with an absolutely true instinct of the real issues which underlie this question, “It is on the religious observance of Sunday that the Christian religion in England mainly depends.” In other words—attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Voltaire, most clear-headed and far-seeing of statesmen—“If you would destroy this Christianity, you must first kill Sunday.” Or, in the language of Montalembert—“Il n’y a pas de Religion sans culte; et il n’y a pas de culte sans Dimanche.” ’