Exodus 16:22-26 "Now it came about on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, "This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning." So they put it aside until morning, as Moses had ordered, and it did not become foul, nor was there any worm in it. And Moses said, "Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none."
Here we have the first occurrence of the word "Sabbath" in the Bible. Notice that the children of Israel did not understand why twice as much manna had fallen on the sixth day. Moses had to explain to them that the Lord had spoken to him (the word "meant" in verse 23 literally means "spoke") and told him it was because they were not to gather the manna on the seventh day. This suggests that the Sabbath was a brand new revelation to the Israelites. They were not in the habit of obeying the Sabbath command before this time. This conclusion finds further support in Nehemiah 9:13-14 where the Scripture states, "Then Thou didst come down on Mount Sinai, And didst speak with them from heaven; Thou didst give to them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments. So Thou didst make known to them Thy holy Sabbath, And didst lay down for them commandments, statutes, and law, through Thy servant Moses." Here we are told that when God came down on Mount Sinai He made known to them His holy Sabbath! If God made known his holy Sabbath at Sinai, then it was not known before then, and thus can not have been a creation ordinance.
Exodus 20:8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
In this passage we have the Sabbath commandment contained in the Ten Commandments, inscribed on stone tablets. Many believe this is proof positive that the Sabbath must be part of God's unchanging moral law for all people of all time. Therefore, they say, it is just as wrong to break the Sabbath as it is to commit theft, adultery, or murder. But before we draw a hasty conclusion, let's pause to consider whether all of the commands in the Decalogue must be of a moral nature. If all of the Ten Commandments must be moral, does that mean that all the commands not listed in the Decalogue must not be moral? That, however, is clearly not the case, for the commands to love God and our neighbor are not listed in the Ten Commandments (Lev.19:18; Deut.6:5), yet Jesus said that these commandments were so important that all the law and the prophets hang on them.
In addition, notice from the passage that the Sabbath commandment was very simple and straightforward. A man was not to work on the seventh day. The text says nothing about the duty to worship on this day. In fact, you will search your Bible in vain to find a command to attend public worship on the Sabbath. This point will become important when we evaluate the various Sabbath views at the end of our study.
Exodus 31:12-17 "And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'You shall surely observe My Sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you. Therefore you are to observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death. So the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath, to celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.' "It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed."
This text clearly states that the Sabbath was a "sign" between God and Israel. Notice the expression in verse 12, "But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'You shall surely observe My Sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations.'" God said that the Sabbaths were a sign between Him and the sons of Israel, not between Him and the whole world. Furthermore, the Sabbaths were given as a sign. These truths are confirmed again in verses 16 and 17, "So the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath… it is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever." Again, in Ezekiel 20:12-13 God states emphatically, "And also I gave them My Sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them. But the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness. They did not walk in My statutes, and they rejected My ordinances, by which, if a man observes them, he will live; and My Sabbaths they greatly profaned. Then I resolved to pour out My wrath on them in the wilderness, to annihilate them." In this text, it is only after Israel had profaned God's Sabbaths that He poured out His wrath upon them. The reason is simple. By profaning the Sabbath, Israel was in effect repudiating the Mosaic covenant, because the Sabbath was the sign of that covenant. In fact, the Sabbath is so closely identified with the Mosaic covenant that it can stand for it. For example, Exodus 31:16 states, "So the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath, to celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant." It should come as no surprise that the Mosaic covenant had a sign, for nearly all of God's covenants had signs. The rainbow was the sign of the Noahic covenant (Gen.9:9-17); circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant (Gen.17); and the Lord's Supper is the sign of the New Covenant (1Cor.11:25).
To ignore or break a covenant sign is tantamount to breaking the whole covenant. That's why a man was to be cut off from his people in death if he refused circumcision (Gen.17:14). That is why God met Moses and sought to put him to death (Exodus 4:24-26). Although Moses was on his way to deliver Israel in fulfillment of the covenant God had made with Abraham, Moses' own son was not wearing the covenant sign of circumcision. God would have gone ahead and killed Moses if Zipporah had not taken a flint and cut off her son's foreskin herself. It seems that Zipporah had objected to circumcising her son, and Moses had gone along with her so as to keep peace in the family. But when God came and sought to put Moses to death for his blatant disobedience to His Word, Zipporah knew exactly what to do to save her husband's life. That is why Exodus 31:14 says that if anyone breaks the Sabbath, he is to be put to death. That must also be the reason God dealt so severely with believers in Corinth who were profaning the Lord's Supper (the sign of the New Covenant). Those who partook the Supper in a loveless and unworthy manner were afflicted with sickness, while some even died. If someone were to work on the Sabbath, it would be like one of us spitting into the communion cup and grinding the bread beneath our feat. In effect, we would be denying the very essence of our covenant relationship with God. If I took off my wedding ring, threw it on the ground, and stomped out the door, my wife would have no doubt as to the message I was communicating - "You and I are through! Our marriage is over!" Similarly, when an Israelite went out and worked on the Sabbath he was disavowing his covenant relationship with Jehovah God.
Actually, the Sabbath commandment was the most important of all the Ten Commandments. Because it was the sign of the covenant, it had to be part of the covenant document of which it was the sign. Exodus 34:28 tells us that the Ten Commandments were the very words of the covenant. "So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; but he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments." This also explains why the Sabbath commandment takes up such a central and prominent portion in the Decalogue. Of the 144 Hebrew words detailing the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:2-17, 55 are devoted to the Sabbath commandment. That amounts to a whopping 38%! Positionally, the commandment is placed smack dab in the middle of all the rest. But when we understand its purpose, we realize it had to be placed in the middle of the rest and be given most of the attention - it was the covenant sign.
Numbers 15:32-36 "Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation; and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." So all the congregation brought him outside the camp, and stoned him to death with stones, just as the LORD had commanded Moses."
In this passage we have further proof that the Sabbath commandment was new revelation to the children of Israel. This is the first time that Sabbath breaking was dealt with after God made it the sign of the covenant. But notice that the children of Israel did not know what to do when someone broke the Sabbath - "it had not been declared what should be done to him." If all mankind had been given the Sabbath as a perpetual moral command from God since creation, surely they would have known exactly what to do when someone broke that command. Are we to believe that God gave the command to keep the Sabbath at creation, but neglected to give the penalty for breaking the command until over 2,400 years later?
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Deuteronomy 5:2-3; 12-15 "The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. The LORD did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, with all those of us alive here today… 'Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.'Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."
Moses clearly states here that God did not make this covenant with their forefathers. Thus, the covenant sign of the Sabbath could not have been observed before this time.
Furthermore, verses 12-15 tell us why the Sabbath was given to Israel - "and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day." The reason God commanded Israel to keep the Sabbath is because God had redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. Interestingly, in Exodus 20:8-11, the reason God gives as to why Israel should keep the Sabbath is that He is their Creator - "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy… for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." In these two passages Israel is given a double reason to keep the Sabbath. God is both their Creator and their Redeemer. However, since God gives redemption as a reason to keep the Sabbath, no one before the exodus of Egypt could have kept the Sabbath! This is yet another Biblical proof that the Sabbath was not a creation ordinance, but a ceremonial ordinance (sign) given to Israel to acknowledge God as both their Creator and Redeemer.
Having discovered what the Old Testament Scriptures say about the Sabbath command under the Mosaic Covenant, it is interesting to observe what they do not say. The Scriptures never tell us that God gave the Sabbath to the gentile nations. When the Sabbath is spoken of in Scripture, it is always in reference to Israel. In fact, God judged Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality and selfishness (Genesis 19:5; Ezek.16:49), Assyria for pride and arrogance (Isaiah 10), but we never read that He judged the gentile nations for Sabbath-breaking. Nor does God ever send His prophets to rebuke the gentile nations for Sabbath-breaking, though He did reprove Israel for it. If that is true, then the Sabbath could not have been a moral law given to all people for all time. Having examined the teaching of the Old Testament on the Sabbath, let's summarize our findings before moving to the New Testament.
We have no Biblical record of anyone keeping the Sabbath for the first 1,600 years of Biblical history.
We have many passages of Scripture which give us reason to believe that men began to keep the Sabbath only after the exodus from Egypt:
- Moses had to explain to them why twice as much manna fell on the sixth day,
- The children of Israel did not know what punishment to effect upon a Sabbath-breaker,
- The Sabbath was to be obeyed in gratitude to God for redeeming them from slavery in Egypt,
- Nehemiah 9:13-14 expressly states that God made known the Sabbath at Sinai.
- The Scriptures state the Sabbath was the sign of the Mosaic covenant.
- The Scriptures state that the Sabbath was given to the sons of Israel.
- The Scriptures never enjoin the Sabbath as a binding law upon the gentile nations.