By Michael Pursley
The other day I was listening to a pastor/seminary professor, from North Carolina, whom I dearly love, enunciate the rules of the Sabbath, especially as they are listed in the Talmud and in the Mishna. I had to listen because my best friend growing up was a Hasidic Jew, and he would read those very same passages to me from each of those books—as well as help me struggle to learn Hebrew—an accomplishment for which I was, and am, profoundly grateful (though admittedly I have forgotten much of it over the years). Nevertheless, let me share some of these Sabbath nuggets and other thoughts with you that I heard. And I want you to compare them with what you have experienced in Adventism
Now to understand what I am going to say, you need to realize that the Talmud and the Mishna are Hebrew texts that give the great codification of the law that was given to Israel, and that law defined their identity. For example, if you were to ask a Jew in Jesus’ day what was most important in his life, he would say, the law. Why? Because in it he believed that he had life and temporal blessings, and he believed that through it he had a connection to God.
Furthermore, as you recall, the Pharisees in Jesus’s day had committed their lives to keeping the law—all of the law, all the way down to the smallest minutiae of the law that could be discovered. In fact, they delighted in minutiae, and they were committed to keeping the law whether the cost to them was a great inconvenience or not.
Now, I understand that in Jesus’s day there were never more than 6000 of these Pharisees at any one time, and they called themselves “the brotherhood.” Part of their initiation into the brotherhood of Pharisees was to stand in front of three Pharisees and swear to them that they would commit their lives to keeping all the details found in the law. This commitment, however, is where their problem began. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of little details about the law that Jewish scholars had uncovered over the years, and these minute details were part of what the Pharisees pledged to observe. To illustrate what I mean, I will share some of the details related to keeping the Sabbath law.
The Bible clearly states that on the Sabbath the Israelites were to do no work; they were to rest, and they were to worship. They were not to carry burdens of any kind. But—the question arose—how does one define “work”? For that matter, what is a burden?
Well, we can read that to the Israelite, one definition of work would have been lifting a spoon weighing more than the weight of one dry fig on the Sabbath day. Lifting more would have constituted lifting a burden.
Work would have included other things also, such as drinking more than one swallow of milk, or lifting more water than was necessary to moisten an eye salve. To lift more water than that, in some cases, could have been considered a burden.
There were also discussions in those days as to whether a woman could wear a brooch on the Sabbath day. Another intense discussion was whether or not a mother could pick up her child, or whether a man could wear his wooden leg on the Sabbath, for each of these could be considered burdensome, and thus doing work.
Yes, the Bible does say that the Israelite could not work on the Sabbath, so the Israelites studied and endeavored to define what things constituted work. Remember, they lived in an agrarian society, and they had to define work in relationship to their lives. Therefore, they established rules such as this: tying a knot with two hands could be considered work, but if they could tie the knot with one hand, that would be OK.
I quote them: “The following are the knots, the making of which will render a man guilty: The knot of camel drivers, and that of sailors, and as one is guilty in the tying of them, so also, is one guilty in the untying of them. However, a woman may tie up the strings of her calf and those of her girdle.”
Now let’s take a closer look at that rule. Let’s say a man wanted to lower a bucket into the well, but the bucket was not attached to the rope. He couldn’t tie the rope to the bucket because that would be doing work. He could, however, take one of his wife’s spare girdles, tie that to the bucket, and then tie the rope to the girdle, and lower that down into the well. Why? Because tying any kind of knot to a girdle was considered legal. Thank goodness!
And I have to laugh…
On one hand—how ridiculous! But on the other hand, what an incredible commitment to keeping all those regulations so as to please God! They truly believed that keeping all those rules for the Sabbath day would please God.
The burden of having the truth
You see, they, the Jews, like Seventh-day Adventists, believed that they had the truth, that they were the “chosen people”, and that therefore they had their “ticket” to heaven!
And I have to laugh…
Why? Because, dear Seventh-day Adventist, you play the same games! And I remember them well…
Remember when we were children and we wanted to play in the pond, or the ocean, and our parents told us that we couldn’t wade any higher than our knees because we might start swimming, and swimming would be breaking the Sabbath? Of course, we always tried; we’d advance to one inch above the knee—two inches above the knee—and they would start calling us to come back. Of course, when they called us back, we laughingly pushed the other person into the water and then fell in after them. And, of course, we told our parents it was an accident.
And again, I have to laugh…
Remember when we would go on a Sabbath afternoon walk and would start to run just for sheer joy? They would make us stop because running wasn’t a Sabbath activity—we would certainly stop for a little while, wouldn’t we?
And, once again, I have to laugh…
There are so many of these little “Adventism’s”, aren’t there? I remember in college when the definitions of Sabbath prohibitions became a little more serious. We were in a discussion with other couples one Sabbath afternoon, and the subject came up, “What about sex on Sabbath?”
Suddenly our Sabbath rationalizations weren’t so funny. We thought of the quotes about “not doing thine own pleasure,” and now Sabbath rules weren’t just a simple inconvenience—they were a burden. As I looked at my wife and she back at me, all of a sudden, we felt that our Sabbath rules were no longer protecting our holy day as much as they were hurting and ruling our relationship. Nevertheless, we honored God, we believed, by pushing back temptation.
We could rationalize wading but not swimming; we could even make a case for walking but not running, but we had trouble understanding how God’s gift of marriage was somehow unholy. How could a day matter more to God than the marriage by which He represented His relationship to His people?
We could understand giving up our own “good pleasure” for the sake of Sabbath holiness, but ironically, we could sleep the entire Sabbath afternoon away. After all, God had said we could rest, and even though as weary college students sleep was our own “good pleasure”, it was allowed, because rest is rest.
And as I look back, somehow I have to laugh…
No longer funny
In looking back, I remember how I related some of these very same Jewish fine points of Sabbath keeping to my Adventist church members, just to see their reaction. I was astonished that they could not see anything wrong with them except, perhaps, they were a little too “excessive”; or a little too strict—a little too inconvenient. Otherwise, they believed that the Jews were certainly honoring God by honoring the Sabbath Law and were in awe of them. They never realized that the Jews’ honoring the minutiae of the law was not honoring to God, because the law testifies of a relationship to Jesus. To honor the law and to reject Jesus is to both break the law and to dishonor God.
And now, I would have to laugh, except that it is just a little sad…
You see, those Adventist members, like many Seventh day Adventists today, thought that if they had a strong desire to keep the Sabbath, and if they could white-knuckle away all their Sabbath temptations, that they would truly be pleasing God. Further, they believed that by such discipline, they were also keeping the “spirit” of the Sabbath.
Most Adventists never realize that their own brand of “Sabbath-keeping” does not fulfill God’s Sabbath commandments at all. Neither do they realize that the rules for keeping the Sabbath—and God’s purpose for it—was for Israel to remember how God had rested after His work of creation, how He had delivered them from slavery, and how they were to rest in his promises which cannot fail.
In fact, the only Sabbath rules Adventists keep today are the same ones that I kept as a child: the “convenient” ones. Moreover, if you, dear Adventist, are honest, and you look deep inside yourself, you know that statement to be the truth.
Occasionally, when I was an Adventist pastor, I would venture into the children’s Sabbath schools. The question that I was always asked in the pre-teen and teenaged groups was essentially this: “How much can I get away with and still get to heaven?”
Now I have a question for the Adventists who believe their Sabbath-keeping demonstrates their sincerity: how much of your Sabbath-keeping do you think is really God-honoring? How much of it is simply keeping the requirements so you won’t get the “mark of the beast” and go to hell?
And now, I would have to laugh, but ironically, it is so sad…
Yes, there are many, many of these little “Sabbath Adventism’s”, aren’t there? We avoided toll roads, unless we had a token. We would not go out to eat on Sabbath, unless we were buying food at campmeeting—preferably with pre-purchased meal tickets.
One time I asked one of my Adventist professors about dealing with these inconsistencies. “Well,” he replied, “they are doing the best they can.”
There is an Arabian proverb that I also picked up from my pastor/professor; it is of an old traveler who was riding his mule in the desert. He came upon a bird that appeared dead in the middle of the road. Coming closer, he saw that the bird was not dead, but was simply lying on its back, with his little legs sticking straight up in the air.
The Arab looked at the bird and asked, “Why are you lying there with your feet in the air?”
The bird opened one eye and replied, “Haven’t you heard? The sky is going to fall.”
At that the old traveler laughed and retorted, “Let’s say it is; do you think you can hold back the sky with your feeble little legs sticking in the air?”
At that, the bird replied with great dignity, “One must do the best one can.”
But you see, the law is much bigger than you. And it took someone as big as Jesus to keep it so that you could be saved. For as it says in Romans 3:21, we find righteousness apart from the law. By believing in Christ, His righteousness, His perfect law-keeping is imputed to your account, and you are seen as perfect in God’s sight.
But you, Adventist, what do you do? You stick your feeble little spiritual legs in the air, and you reply, “One must do the best one can.”
And now, I would laugh, except that it is just way too sad.
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