“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8)
I recently read a newspaper article about the success that the 735-store Chick-Fil-A Restaurant chain has enjoyed since its start in Hapeville, Georgia over fifty years ago. Chick-Fil-A has reaped huge profits and its 76-year-old founder, Truett Cathy, believes that Chick-Fil-A has been blessed because Chick-Fil-A has tried to honor God’s Word.
Cathy should know and the numbers speak for themselves. In its fifty-year history, Chick-Fil-A has never opened on Sunday. In fact, Cathy once fired one of his restaurant’s managers when he broke that rule. Interestingly, while the fast-food industry is only growing at an average of 5.2% annually, Chick-Fil-A is experiencing sales growth of 10% a year. Annual revenues for the restaurant chain are projected to top $1 billion by the year 2000.
God has honored Truett Cathy’s devotion to biblical values. I’m not surprised because the God’s Word tells us that he will smile on the obedient and Cathy has shown himself to be obedient. His Chick-Fil-A restaurants are an outward and visible sign that we should remember the Sabbath day.
Most modern Christians, with the exception of Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists, actually do not observe the Sabbath. The Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday. So just what did God mean when he told us to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy?
This Fourth Commandment is the longest of the Ten Commandments. Yet as theologian Herschel Hobbs observed, “So often in dealing with the Fourth Commandment, we think only of the day of rest. But the Commandment also speaks of the days of labor. To be sure, the primary emphasis is placed on the Sabbath. But the Commandment speaks of the other six days also.
Hobbs is right. Many Christians believe that Exodus 20:8, the verse that I chose as the lead verse for today’s column, is the Fourth Commandment in its entirety. But God didn’t stop at Exodus 20:8. He used three more verses to flesh out just what he meant. He told Moses in verses 9 through 11, “Six days you shall labor and do all 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 manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:9-11)
I don’t think it matters to God which day we choose to honor as the Sabbath. “Sabbath” doesn’t mean Saturday, Sunday or any other day. It comes from the Hebrew word, Shabbath, which means “to rest or cease”. The Sabbath is a day that should look different from the other six days of our week. It should be a day that brings an interruption to the normal routines in which we find ourselves on every other day.
Jesus once said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) In other words, don’t get caught up over the particular day. The point is the purpose of the Sabbath. For me, the Sabbath is Sunday because that’s the day that I break from my normal routine. I go to church and worship with other believers. I also take God seriously and rest on the Sabbath. After all, If God can cease from his work of creation and rest, then so can I.
I personally think Sunday should be observed as the Sabbath for most Christians. The reasons are obvious. Sunday is the common day of worship in our community. It is a day that has an outward appearance of being unlike any other day. That’s the kind of day the Sabbath should resemble. By the way, God also told us to keep it holy, which in Hebrew means “set apart for God’s special service”. Sunday also meets that standard in our community.
In spite of how I may feel, it really doesn’t matter to God when you celebrate the Sabbath. The more important question is do you celebrate a Sabbath day each week of your life?
Take a day off from your normal routine and devote some time to how you can serve God more effectively the other six days of the week. If possible, worship with other believers and celebrate the special feeling that comes through obedience. And don’t worry about the day of the week that happens to be your Sabbath. God’s much more concerned with substance than he is with style.
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