CRITICAL NOTES.—
Exodus 31:14. Ye shall keep the Sabbath = Ushemartem eth hashahabbath]. The verb shamar = to keep, implies the idea of guarding, watching over with tenderness and fidelity. (Comp. Psalms 21:4-5, “He that keepeth Israel”—and, “The LORD is thy keeper”). Thus Israel, by keeping the Sabbath aright, was intended to cultivate those ennobling qualities of the human heart and mind which should distinguish them as a people in covenant with God, both their keeper and liberator, to bless them with rest from the works of their bondage, and with peace on account of His jealous love and care.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Exodus 31:12-18
THE SABBATH AND THE SANCTUARY
The command to keep the Sabbath was included already in the decalogue, and there is therefore some special meaning in the repetition of the command in this place. Coming as it does at the conclusion of the instructions respecting the Tabernacle, it is evident that the intention was to teach the connection which existed between these great institutions. We observe—
I. Both exist to the same divine end. What is the end of the sanctuary? That man may come near to God—that he may worship God. All understand this. The sanctuary does not exist to any merely intellectual or physical end, but it is the place where our spiritual nature is to be instructed and purified and blessed by communion with the Holy Spirit (Psalms 27:4). What is the end of the Sabbath? Precisely that of the sanctuary. Many entertain the idea that the grand end of the Sabbath is physical rest—that this is one of its purposes is quite true, but it by no means exhausts the meaning of the day; neither is the grand end of it intellectual—visiting picture galleries and science lectures, &c; its grand object is spiritual. The Sabbath is primarily intended to free man from bodily toil and secular care, that he may give his earnest attention to his spiritual nature. The sanctuary and the Sabbath have one purpose, and that is religious and holy.
II. Both are alike essential for the accomplishment of that end. They cannot be divorced.
1. If the public worship of God is neglected the Sabbath will soon be secularised. The Sabbath has a divine basis, and when God ceases to be recognised and worshipped, this day will no longer retain its spell.
2. If the Sabbath is secularised, religious worship will soon cease. If we spend some hours of the sacred day frivolously, how seriously it impairs our worship in the temple! When society give up the Sabbath to physical and intellectual pleasures, it will give up its God and His worship soon after. Some who are fully persuaded of the importance of the sanctuary and its services, have very loose views on the keeping of the Sabbath. It is greatly to be deplored. The Sabbath is the main pillar in the temple of God, and if it comes down the whole fabric of divinity comes down with it.
III. Both are alike of absolute and perpetual obligation. We know that the worship of God is of strict and perpetual obligation, and thus is the Sabbath. Read the text. And Christ did not revoke or modify the obligation of keeping this day to high and holy ends.
Lessons:—
1. We see the wickedness of those who would secularise the Sabbath. It would shock us if some profane man made a stable of a church; it ought not to shock us less to see God’s holy day profaned to worldly ends. Anti-Sabbatarianism is essentially atheistic.
2. We see the mistake of those who seem to think that having worshipped they may spend the remainder of the Sabbath in worldliness and pleasure.
3. We see the error of those who think that doing religious work justifies certain forms of Sabbath desecration. The Israelites had a great work to do in building the Tabernacle, but they were not to build it on the Sabbath; and we must all take care that the work of the Sabbath which we call unavoidable is really so.
4. We see the error of those who think they have kept the Sabbath when they rest from their work, but who absent themselves from the house of God.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Mosaic-Mines! Exodus 31:1-18.
(1.) The face of Nature, says Macmillan, is everywhere written over with Divine characters, which he who runs may read. But beside the more obvious lessons which lie, as it were, in the surface of the earth, and which suggest themselves to us often when least disposed for inquiry or reflection, there are more recondite lessons which she teaches to those who make her structure arrangements their special study, and who penetrate to her secret arcana. And those, who read her great volume, passing on leaf after leaf, to the quiet and sober Chapter s of the interior, will find in these internal details revelations of the deepest interest.
(2.) It is even so with the Bible. In the New Testament, we have a rich robe of vegetation adorning the surface, the beauties of tree and flower, forest, hill and river, and the ever-changing splendours of the sky. In the psalms and prophets we walk amid the beauty of gardens and ornamented parterres, where every-thing thrills with their beauty and fragrance. But in the pentateuch, we descend, as it were, into the crust of the earth. We lose sight of all these upper-air glories; but we find new objects to compensate us—truths written with the finger of God—lessons on the deep things of God—diamonds which sparkle when brought up within the sphere of the Sun of Righteousness, who has risen with healing in His wings.
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”
—Gray.
Sabbath-Storm! Exodus 31:12-15. Owing to the length of the winter and the shortness of the summer on the Swiss mountains of Jura, it is of great importance for the peasantry to preserve their hay; otherwise the cattle would starve. One Lord’s Day, when the hay was just in the finest condition for taking up, the sons of an old man who feared God and honoured His Sabbaths, proposed to go and cut it. He admonished them for the wickedness of such desecration; but they persisted and went. Just as they had cut it down, a sudden and terrible storm broke over their heads, the rain poured down from the thunderclouds in torrents, and the hay was soon completely destroyed. Returning home drenched and dispirited, the sainted patriarch replied: “My sons, learn from this to respect the commandments of God.”
“I do regret God’s day among the hills,
Spent in wild wand’rings in His world so fair;
Warmed by the sunshine which His mercy fills,
Swept by His mighty wings when storms were there;
When I passed by the church’s sacred door,
And left His people all within once more.”
Sabbath-Significance! Exodus 31:16. In addition to other important ends, the Sabbath was intended to be an ever-recurring symbol of heaven, and a prophecy of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. It is thus explained at large by inspired writers, and by those who accept the Bible as from God this statement will not be questioned. It is not essential to our purpose to determine whether or not this institution be still binding upon the Christian Church. But it is clear as a sunbeam that, as positive institution, prophetic type, or soothing symbol, the Sabbath has graven its name on the very heart of Christianity. Its sweet voice is heard in her hymus and psalms of praise. To unnumbered millions of her children it is the only practical foretaste of that blessed rest which it foreshadows, and which the servants of God anticipate with longing hearts.
“Day of all the week the best,
Emblem of eternal rest.”
Testimony-Tables! Exodus 31:18. The learned author of “Earth’s Lessons” says, it was on tables of stone that God’s finger traced the unerring and unchanging moral law. The same handwriting may be recognised in the masses of rock from which these very tables were constructed. We can trace the universality of Divine law throughout all the successive creations of the earth—throughout all the time worlds, as throughout all the space worlds, in geology as in astronomy. That divinely universal law is unity of force amidst diversity of phenomena—unity of plan amidst diversity of expression. And thus, amid all the varying operations of His hands and dispensations of His Providence, we find Him to be without variableness or shadow of turning.
“Oh! Thou Almighty, throned above the stars,
In light eternal, which no darkness mars,
From where Thy bright pavilion is unfurled
Thou lookest on the sorrows of the world;
Thine is the kingdom, Thine is power and might,
Directing day, and ruling in the night.”
Divine Finger! Exodus 31:18.
(1.) Before Moses first went up to the Mount it was the voice of God which he heard repeating the decalogue; now he sees the finger of God writing the same. By finger some understand the “power” of God, as in Exodus 8:19; others conceive the “Spirit” of God, as in Luke 11:29. No doubt both are right; and the Holy Spirit by the power of God wrote the tablets.
(2.) Both as spoken by God’s own voice, and as written on the rock by God’s own finger, these commandments stand forth alone. Their supreme importance is sufficiently betokened by their prominence in the forefront of all the Mosaic ordinances and Levitical ceremonies, and by their promulgation so directly and entirely Divine. God’s finger gave to man those ten jewels of purity—
“As an eagle from the waters
Rising plumes his feathers bright,
Shaking diamonds as he soareth
Upwards in the sunny light.”
Decalogue-Restoration! Exodus 31:18.
(1.) This magnificent memorial was designed by God to stand up amid the ages in full clear outline, like the Egyptian pyramids, free from external growth of any kind. But during the subsequent centuries the grand pillars disappeared. True, it stood, but a jungle of weeds and creepers had sprung up around it. Instead of insisting on the simplicity of the decalogue, the Pharisees and Syrian scholiasts planted creepers round it, so that these growing up soon hid the Memorial-Thoughts of God amongst scarves and hems, washing of pots, and tithes of mint and cummin.
(2.) It was reserved for the Lord Jesus to destroy this desolating overgrowth. With the Sword of the Spirit in His Sermon on the Mount He cleared away this noisome tangle, until the Memorial-Truths of God again flashed forth to view, and beholders were astonished at their majesty. Nay, He did more. As the restoration of ancient fabrics brings out again the old lines of carving and sculpture; so did the Restorer of the decalogue fill out the law, and bring its sayings into stronger relief: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
“When Moses stood upon the hill,
The land with storms was trembling still;
As Jesus speaks from the hillside,
All is with sunshine glorified:
The Saviour preaches on the Mount.”
—Gerok.