My last post, The Sabbath Should be a Delight, dealt mainly with what we should wear to Church, and only touched on what we should actually do on that day.
Yesterday I posted this piece from The Daily Telegraph on Facebook, starting with my comment:
Well - if they will shop on the Sabbath!!
Payment machines fail
Shoppers at Asda supermarkets encountered long queues and chaotic scenes yesterday after the stores’ card machines failed.
Customers reacted angrily after being told they could not pay for their shopping unless they had cash.
Asda apologised for the inconvenience and said it was working on the issue after scores of shoppers took to social media to complain about the delays.
People posted photographs of cashiers using old-fashioned card-readers, while others said stores were advising them to withdraw cash from ATM machines.
Customers reacted angrily after being told they could not pay for their shopping unless they had cash.
Asda apologised for the inconvenience and said it was working on the issue after scores of shoppers took to social media to complain about the delays.
People posted photographs of cashiers using old-fashioned card-readers, while others said stores were advising them to withdraw cash from ATM machines.
There were two comments disagreeing with me, one saying that the Sabbath is on Saturday; so I shall deal with that first:
When is the Sabbath Day?
The Bible Dictionary says:
One of the charges frequently brought against our Lord
was that of Sabbath breaking, but this was because He failed to conform to the
traditions and man-made regulations concerning the Sabbath. Jesus obeyed the
letter and the spirit of the Sabbath, but was not obligated to follow the
traditions of the elders of the Jews.
After the Ascension of Christ, the members of the
Church, whether Jews or Gentiles, kept holy the first day of the week (the
Lord’s day) as a weekly commemoration of our Lord’s Resurrection (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10); and by degrees the observance of the
seventh day was discontinued. (See Lord’s Day.)
To this we can add:
“The Church accepts
Sunday as the Christian Sabbath and proclaims the sanctity of the day. We
admit without argument that under the Mosaic law the seventh day of the week,
Saturday, was designated and observed as the holy day, and that the change from
Saturday to Sunday was a feature of the apostolic administration following the
personal ministry of Jesus Christ. Greater than
the question of this day or that in the week is the actuality of the weekly
Sabbath, to be observed as a day of special and particular devotion to the
service of the Lord” (James E. Talmage, The Articles of
Faith, 449).
This is the dictionary definition of Sabbath:
sabbath
noun
- 1.a day of religious observance and abstinence from work, kept by Jews from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and by most Christians on Sunday.
What We Should do on the Sabbath Day
The second comment quoted Romans 7:1-6, to suggest that ALL law has been fulfilled in Christ and that it is no longer necessary to keep any commandments. However, this is clearly not so. What Paul was very cleverly doing was to compare Israel's allegiance to the Law of Moses with that of a wife to her husband. However, while the Law was - and is - dead, the Gospel of Christ is very much alive.
The Ten Commandments are eternal gospel principles that are necessary for our exaltation. The Lord revealed them to Moses in ancient times (see Exodus 20:1–17), and they are also referenced in whole or in part in other books of scripture (see Matthew 19:18–19; Romans 13:9; Mosiah 12:33–36; 13:13–24; D&C 42:18–29; 59:5–13; 63:61–62). The Ten Commandments are a vital part of the gospel. Obedience to these commandments paves the way for obedience to other gospel principles.
Matt 19:17 says in part: if thou wilt enter into life,
keep the commandments.
There is an excellent article that explains the relationship between the Mosaic Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I quote from it as follows:
The Law After Christ by Stephen E Robinson
In view of this very exalted concept of the Law in Jesus’
time, it is easy to see why the teaching of Jesus and the early Church that the
Law of Moses was a temporary, or “lesser,” law aroused such heated opposition
from Jews. It is also understandable that many of the Jews who accepted Jesus
as the Messiah and joined the Church might nevertheless have found it difficult
to alter their belief that observance of the Law of Moses was necessary for
their salvation. (See Acts 21:20.)
Consequently, one of the most persistent doctrinal
questions in the early Church concerned the precise role of the Law of Moses in
the gospel of Jesus Christ: Was the gospel only an addition or appendix to the
Law of Moses, in which case the requirements of the Law were still in effect;
or was the gospel itself a new law which
replaced the old and rendered it obsolete? Again and again this question was
raised in the Church, particularly by Jewish members, and much of the New
Testament deals with it.
Yet the position of the Church had been made quite
clear from the beginning. The Saviour himself in the Sermon on the Mount had
shown that the old rules were no longer adequate and that those who wished to
enter the kingdom of heaven must subscribe to a new standard of righteousness.
(See Matt. 5:20.) Even
the Ten Commandments, the ethical heart of the Law, were represented by Jesus
as insufficient for salvation except as encompassed within the higher
principles of the gospel.
For example, the Saviour expanded the commandments
“Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” by now commanding
Christians to avoid even hatred or lust. (Matt. 5:28, 44.)
Merely abstaining from adultery and murder was no longer sufficient. Christians
must now change their very hearts, and this was more than the old Law had
required. Also, at the Last Supper Jesus had made it clear that the atonement
he was about to accomplish instituted a new covenant which
would replace that of Sinai. (See Luke 22:20, 37.) And
on at least two occasions in the New Testament (Matt. 5:31–32; Matt. 19:3–9), Jesus made it clear that the teaching of
the Law (in this case on the issue of divorce) was not eternal but was only a
temporary concession made necessary by the hard-heartedness of Israel.
And yet it is vital to note that in the teaching of
Jesus, the Law was not revoked nor repealed but fulfilled. (Matt. 5:17.) Under the gospel of Christ, murder,
adultery, and dishonesty are still prohibited, and the formal requirements of
the Law are still essentially in place; but the demand of the Law of Moses has
been expanded, has been filled to
its fullest extent. Where there is no hatred or greed,
there can be no murder; where there is no lust, there can be no adultery. With
the coming of Christ, the ethical portion of the Law had not been abolished; it
had been caught up by, included in, and expanded to a broader application its
intention, its potential as an ethical standard, had been fulfilled. ...... For
example, animal sacrifice prefigured the future sacrifice of the Saviour, the
Lamb of God. But when the events prefigured actually occurred, they could no
longer be anticipated; they could only be remembered. https://www.lds.org/ensign/1983/09/the-law-after-christ?lang=eng
Therefore Exodus 20: 8 - Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy - is in full effect.
And one of the ways we can keep it holy is to keep it special, which means avoiding activities that we can do on the other six days of the week. So I quote from another talk:
A very important aspect of properly observing the Sabbath concerns shopping on Sunday. Unfortunately, many commercial businesses and establishments are open on Sunday. The world sees no conflict in Sunday shopping. But we of the Church have been counselled and taught by prophets to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.”7 We should not shop on Sunday.
“There isn’t anybody in this Church who has to buy furniture on Sunday. There really isn’t. There isn’t anybody in this Church who has to buy a new automobile on Sunday, is there? No. There isn’t anybody in this Church who, with a little care and planning, has to buy groceries on Sunday. No. … You don’t need ice cream to be bought on Sunday. … You don’t need to make Sunday a day of merchandising. … I don’t think we need to patronise the ordinary business merchants on the Sabbath day. Why do they stay open? To get customers. Who are those customers? Well, they are not all nonmembers of this Church. You know that and I know that.”8
In the book of Nehemiah, in the Old Testament, the people were taught to observe the Sabbath with the following instruction: “And if the people of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the sabbath, or on the holy day.”9
The Saviour said that
“the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath,2 so that means that the Sabbath was His
gift to us, granting real respite from the rigours of daily life and an
opportunity for spiritual and physical renewal. God gave us this special day,
not for amusement or daily labour but for a rest from duty, with physical and
spiritual relief.
In my previous post I asked:
How should we keep the Sabbath holy? We need to make it a delight.
In Isaiah 58:13-14 it says:
13 ¶If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Isaiah 58:13-14
But if Sunday is to be a delight it needs to be special. "The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." (1 Sam. 16:7). Both the inward thought … and the heart, is deep: Ps. 64:6 . "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Prov. 23:7 . In Matthew 22 it says:
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
From these words we understand that both the heart and the mind must be fully engaged in this holy process, so how do we hallow the Sabbath day? We can learn from these scriptures that our conduct and attitude on the Sabbath constitute a sign between us and our Heavenly Father.12 With that understanding, we do not need lists of dos and don’ts. When we have to make a decision whether or not an activity is appropriate for the Sabbath, we simply ask ourselves, “What sign do I want to give to God?” That question makes our choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.
Thus, we learn that the Sabbath needs to be a special day to us, not a day when we do activities like shopping and sport that we can do on the other six days of the week.
