How Shall the Sabbath Be Kept?
"How Shall the Sabbath Be Kept?"—"According to the commandment;" that is the way the holy women who followed Jesus observed the day. The Lord declares, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." This does not mean a lazy rest. The rest is from our own labor for our own profit or pleasure. The best commentaries on the Sabbath law are those given through the prophet Isaiah and Jesus Christ. The former reads: "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, honorable; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord." Self is not to be served, but God. "But are we to do no work, build no fire, cook no food?" asks one. That depends on the purpose, the object for which, and the spirit in which, these things are done. Our Saviour's life is a guide in this. The raving demoniac stood before our Lord on the Sabbath day, and Jesus restored him. He saw, one Sabbath, an impotent man lying at the pool, and He bade him to rise, take up his mat, and walk. He goes to the sickbed of Peter's mother-in-law, touches her with divine power, and she rises on that Sabbath day and serves Him and His disciples. He places His holy hand on the bowed back of a daughter of Israel, on another Sabbath, and she is made whole. His disciples pluck the heads of wheat, shell out the grain, and eat it on another Sabbath day, and Jesus justifies the act. "It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." "The Sabbath was made for man." Works of necessity, of worship, of direct labor for God, have ever been in harmony with the Sabbath law (Matt. 12:3-5); yet works not of necessity, but of presumption and defiant rebellion against God, will be as surely punished as were the same in the wilderness. Num. 15:30-36. He who delights in God will delight in God's commandments.