The Exodus. Day 83, Sabbath Laws

Today we will look at laws regarding the Sabbath.

Even the land is allowed a Sabbath rest, not only on the weekly Sabbath day when no one is to be performing labor, but for an entire year every seventh year. "For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest your crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused." (Exodus 23:10-11a) Leaving land unplowed is also known as letting it "lie fallow". There is a very practical reason for this since it allows the ground to regenerate and replenish nutrients that are drawn out of the soil during the seasons when crops are growing from it. Some farmers with extensive acreage still practice this method or a variation of it which involves crop rotation so that the same nutrients aren't being sucked out of the ground each year by planting the same crops in the same field year after year. A farmer might plant corn in a field this year but soybeans in it next year, for example. But the Israelites were to do no planting during the Sabbath year.

In addition to the practical reason for letting a field lie fallow, there is a compassionate reason for it as well. "Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and with your olive grove." (Exodus 23:11b) The fields and vineyards and olive groves are not to be pruned or harvested during the Sabbath year, as is more fully explained in Leviticus 25:1-7, where the Lord says they are not to prune their vineyards or harvest the grapes or go out and gather up everything that comes up on its own in the fields. People were free to wander the fields and collect food as needed from these "volunteer plants" but no one was to harvest the fields and gather the food into barns and they weren't to harvest that year's grape crop or that year's olive crop. Whoever was needy could gather what they needed for eating and so could the livestock and the wild animals.

There was a spiritual reason for letting the field lie fallow. Remember when we studied about the Lord sending manna from heaven six days a week but not sending any manna on the Sabbath? The people were to gather enough on the sixth day to last them through the seventh day. If they gathered more than they needed on any of the other days, the excess would rot overnight. The Lord orchestrated the giving and the gathering of manna in a way that would help the people learn to trust Him. If they gathered a double portion on a Monday, for example, this displayed a lack of faith that the Lord would send fresh manna on Tuesday. So the Lord caused the excess to rot overnight and be unusable on Tuesday. He would then send fresh manna on Tuesday. The people were to learn to expect Him to faithfully provide fresh manna on the days they were to gather manna and to keep the excess gathered on the sixth day from rotting. The Sabbath year is intended to provide the same type of training for the people: they are to learn to trust God to provide---to "give us this day our daily bread". The Lord knew the people would be concerned about what they'd eat during the Sabbath year, and He said, "You may ask, 'What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?' I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in." (Leviticus 25:20-22) He supplied such an abundant crop in the sixth year that it would see them through. They would store up the excess food from the sixth year. They could eat volunteer crops that came up during the time between the planting of the sixth year and the harvest of the ninth year. All these food sources combined together would be plenty until the next harvest.

We can learn a lot, financially speaking, about storing up in years of plenty. There are years in our lives when our salaries may be better than in other years. The average person changes jobs ten to fifteen times during their working years, according to statistics I found online. Some of these job changes are voluntarily and some are the result of layoffs or firings. I just sat here and counted nine jobs I've had since graduating high school in 1988. I've never been fired but I've been laid off once, and I was transferred once to another location due to company restructuring, and I've left a few jobs for other jobs that offered more pay or a more enjoyable work environment, and twice I've quit jobs where the atmosphere was so negative and unpleasant that I dreaded getting up in the morning and going. So during our working years we will have years of plenty and years where things are not so good. It's wise for us to store up the excess during the years of plenty. We never know when a downturn in the economy or a restructuring of the company or a closure of the company might take place. If we store up the excess for the future, I believe we're following Biblical principles, and we won't be hit as hard if we get laid off work for a while.

For about five years my husband had the most enjoyable job and the best salary he's ever had. Then in 2018 the company was sold out to a bigger corporation and the corporation closed the location here in Tennessee, laying off all the workers, including my husband. It took him seven months to find another job and he isn't making anywhere near what he made at the previous job. He's not even making as much as he made at several other jobs prior to the job he loved so much. We should have stored up more than we did during the years of plenty but instead we lived as if things would continue that way forever. That was a mistake and we've learned our lesson but, believe me, it was a hard lesson! The only thing good I can say about hard lessons is that those are the kind of lessons you don't forget. We are being a frugal as we can right now and, if things get better, we plan to do a much better job of storing up the excess. But cutting costs now is training us for that day and I think the Lord will bless our efforts to be better stewards of what He's already given us.

The Lord now reminds the people that they are not to work on the Sabbath. They aren't to make their children, their hired help, their slaves, or their animals work on the Sabbath either. "Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed." (Exodus 23:12) The Lord cares about the health and wellbeing of humans and animals both. He knew if He did not make the rule that no person and no animal is to work on the Sabbath, some people would force their servants and animals to work while they themselves rested. It would be tempting for a rich landowner, for example, to feel bothered by his estate losing a day of work each week. I can picture him giving in to the temptation to force his workers and his animals to keep going seven days a week even if he himself observes the Sabbath. In the Lord's eyes, the man would be breaking the Sabbath. He'd be technically keeping the letter of the law (for himself), but he'd be breaking the law by losing the heart of the law and giving others no choice but to break the Sabbath.

I live in the Bible Belt where a lot of small, family owned restaurants and stores are closed on Sundays. It's common for the business owners to not want to stand in the way of their employees attending church if they want to attend church. A very popular family owned restaurant down the block from my work just announced that they will no longer be open on Sundays because they don't want to prevent their employees from going to church. A very nice little family restaurant in my neighborhood started being closed on Sundays a few years ago. The owners are members at my church and they said they began to feel guilty about expecting their employees to work on Sunday. Any restaurant that isn't open for the after-church crowd on Sundays is losing a lot of revenue, but if the business owner is a Christian who is observing the Sabbath by going to church, they will often begin to feel troubled about having their business open and expecting employees to work on the Sabbath. I applaud any business owner who decides to be closed on the Sabbath and to trust God to provide everything they need on the six days of the week they are open. I believe the Lord will make up the difference and I've even heard business owners praising Him for making their business income grow after they stopped being open on Sundays. Do all their employees attend church on Sundays? No, but the employees can never use work as an excuse for not going. Their employers can never be blamed for preventing them from attending. The employers have done what they can to make it possible for their employees to attend church and that's where their responsibility ends in the matter and where each employee's personal responsibility kicks in.

The Lord created the Sabbath for our benefit, not for His. He set aside a day in which people and animals can regenerate physically and spiritually. While resting from work the person's mind is to be focused on the Lord. It's hard to focus on the Lord if you're working a fast assembly line seven days a week. It's hard to devote time to prayer if you're on the phone all day seven days a week at a call center. It's hard to read the Bible when you work five or six days a week at a job and spend all of the seventh day catching up on work in the house and in the yard, so the Lord says to rest on the Sabbath. The Lord, like those employers who close on Sundays for the spiritual benefit of their employees, does not want work to stand in the way of worship. It's possible to keep ourselves so busy that we never take time to obey the Lord's command to "be still and know that I am God". (Psalm 46:10) If we never allow ourselves to become still in the presence of God, and if we don't spend any time in prayer or studying the Holy Bible, we are going to become worn down mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. God doesn't want that for us. We shouldn't want that for ourselves either.