Sermon Tone Analysis

In the long series of problems that Nehemiah confronted, the next was a violation of the fourth commandment.

According to verses 15 and 16, he had witnessed the people of Judah engaging in various forms of labor on the Sabbath, plus there were a few men from Tyre, who apparently resided in Jerusalem and also sold their products on the Sabbath.

This sin was not only widespread; it was also egregious.

In verse 18, Nehemiah cited Sabbath violation as a principle reason for the Babylonian captivity and all the problems that the Jews had to deal with in his day.

He said, /Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city?

yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath/.

Because of this, Nehemiah took quick action to correct the problem.

First, he addressed the matter to the nobles in verse 17.

Modern Americans, after nearly two centuries of Hegelian philosophy, like to dialogue.

You tell me what you think, I’ll tell you what I think, and maybe we’ll find some common ground in between.

But Nehemiah did not dialogue with the nobles.

Our text says that he /contended/ with them.

The word used here (וָאָרִיבָה) could be translated as “strove” or “chided.”

In other situations, it means to prosecute a lawsuit against someone.

Next, Nehemiah took steps to put an end to Sabbath-day merchandizing in Jerusalem.

He ordered that the gates be shut the entire day, and he even stationed his own servants at the gates to make sure that they remained shut.

Third, Nehemiah threatened to arrest the merchants who camped outside the gates hoping to get in.

And finally, he instructed the Levites to guard the Sabbath more diligently.

They had not done this because they had been working in the fields, and they were working in the fields because the people had stopped supporting them.

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Views of the Sabbath

The events recorded in today’s text are straightforward, but the meaning and application of the fourth commandment is not.

Calvin gives us one extreme.

His position on the fourth commandment was both complex and inconsistent.[1]

Nevertheless, we can say a few things about it.

For one thing, he made a distinction between how the commandment applied in two testaments.

In the Old Testament, it had both a ceremonial and moral aspect.

The ceremonial aspect set aside a particular day of the week for rest from physical labor.

The moral aspect added that physical rest was not to be looked upon as an end in itself, but was required to teach the people to find their delight in God in public worship.

In the New Testament, however, the ceremonial aspect, which typified the believer’s rest from sin, has been abolished, though the moral aspect is still in force.

Thus, only that work is forbidden which interferes with our ability to assemble for worship.

Since the keeping of a day was part of the ceremonial law, Calvin argued that any day of the week would be acceptable for worship in the New Testament, though he preferred the first day of the week because it commemorated Christ’s resurrection and had been set aside for worship in the church by common usage.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1648–52) gives us the other extreme.[2] It teaches that the Old Testament seventh-day Sabbath has been changed into the New Testament first-day Sabbath, which we call the Lord’s Day.

All the prohibitions and restrictions given in the Old Testament carry over in full force.

Thus, the fourth commandment forbids believers to engage in “their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations” and requires them to spend the whole day “in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.”

The position that has prevailed in Reformed churches over the years was enunciated in the post-acta decrees of the Synod of Dort (1618–19).

The same synod that settled the Arminian controversy declared six principles regarding the fourth commandment that avoided the extremes mentioned above.

For the most part, these principles agree with Calvin; however, they reject the idea that the New Testament church has the liberty to choose which day to worship.

Contrary to the Westminster Confession, they did not prohibit all “worldly employments and recreations,” much less “thoughts” of such things, but insisted rather that we seek “as much rest as is necessary for the worship of God and holy meditation of him.”[3]

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A Sabbath Theology

You can see from this how difficult our subject is.

The only way to unravel all of this is to search the Scriptures.

So, let’s review what the Bible says.

The very first information about the Sabbath was given at creation.

God, having finished all of his works in the space of six days, rested the seventh day.

Therefore, according to Genesis 2:3, /God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work/.

Two ideas stand out here.

The first is that God, who needed no rest, rested on the seventh day.

Surely, this was for our benefit.

And second, God also sanctified the seventh day, i.e., he made it holy or devoted to a different purpose than the other days.

At the time of the flood, the Lord also interacted with Noah on the basis of a seven-day pattern (cf.

Gen. 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12).

Years later, God gave his people manna six days each week, with a double portion on the sixth day but none at all on the seventh day.

A short time after this, Moses received the Ten Commandments, one of which required God’s people to /remember the Sabbath day/ (Exod.

20:8).

The reason given was the order of creation.

Forty years later when Moses repeated the commandments for the next generation, he based the Sabbath commandment on the Lord’s redemption of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.

He woret, /And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day/ (Deut.

5:15).

We can rest only because God made us and saved us.

Otherwise, we would be like the wicked, whom Isaiah compared to a /troubled sea/ that /cannot rest/ because its waters /cast up mire and dirt/ (Isa.

57:20).

Even the sabbatical years and feasts were further amplifications of the Sabbath-day principle.

The importance of the Sabbath in Jewish life can be seen in two ways in the Old Testament.

Positively, the Lord called the Sabbath a sign of his sanctifying grace.

Exodus 31:13 says, /Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you/ (cf.

Ezek.

20:12, 20).

In other words, we can hide most of our sins from other people, but we can’t hide our Sabbath observance.

We’re either present for worship or we’re not .

Negatively, when God sent his prophets to chide the Jews for breaking his law, he often complained that the people had polluted his Sabbaths.

Ezekiel 22:8 says, /Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths/.

Their breaking of the Sabbath revealed their rejection of God’s sanctifying grace.

But only the Sabbath was mentioned in many cases.

It seems to have had a special honor all to itself.

In our text, Nehemiah singled out the Sabbath as the reason for the Jews’ seventy-year exile.

They had returned to their land, but had they really returned to the Lord?

When we cross over into the New Testament, we see that the Jews, particularly the Pharisees, had become enamored with the Sabbath.

They had figured out just how far a person could walk on the Sabbath without breaking the law, but they also used their explanations to get around specific Sabbath commandments.

Exodus 35:3, for example, prohibits the kindling of fires on the Sabbath.

These fires were probably for cooking (cf.

Exod.

16:23), although some commentators think that they might have been fires used in certain crafts like blacksmithing.

In any case, the rabbis taught that you could build a fire on the Sabbath if you had placed the pot over where the fire would be before the Sabbath began.

Against such silliness, Jesus set the record straight once again.

When the Pharisees complained that he and his disciples picked grain on the Sabbath, he reminded them that /the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath/ (Mark 2:27).

Its purpose was not to restrict a man, as much as it was to make him free.

By releasing man from the responsibilities of the other six days, the Sabbath allowed him to focus his attention more directly on drawing near to God.

This was for man’s own good.

The Sabbath was a sign of man’s sanctification.

Mark’s comment at the end of this incident affirms, further, that Jesus had the authority to correct the Jews’ misinterpretation of the fourth commandment.

The /Son of man is/ /Lord also of the sabbath/ (Mark 2:28).

Having given the commandment in the first place, he could certainly assert its true meaning.

On another occasion, Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1–6).

When the Pharisees challenged him, he asked them, /Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil?

to save life, or to kill?/ Apparently, they had forgotten that the Sabbath was not given to prevent good works, but to encourage them.

Old Testament priests offered sacrifices (Matt.

12:25), children were circumcised (John 7:22–23), judges heard emergency cases, and those who owned livestock lead their animals to water on the Sabbath (Luke 13:15).

Thus, the fourth commandment was never meant to bind God’s people with impossible burdens.

Rather, Jesus’ question forced the Pharisees to consider the Sabbath in relation to God’s covenant.

They would have immediately thought of what Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 30:15: /See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil/ (Deut.

30:15).

So, which is it?

Was the Sabbath given to hurt you or to help you?

Was it meant to be a restriction or an aid to your service of God?

If we want to observe a true, Christian Sabbath, we can only do so when we understand the purpose of the fourth commandment in relation to Jesus Christ, the mediator of the covenant.