With the reference in Exod. xxxi. 1-6 to the two men who were specially endowed
with wisdom for the making of the tabernacle, and the enumeration of its
furniture in Exod. xxxi. 7-11, the description of the tabernacle and its
parts comes to an end. Upon the close of
the description of the place of worship follows the sign and covenant of the
sabbath, the giving of the law on the two tables of stone, and the lapse into
idolatry during the absence of Moses.
The Companion Bible shows the
inter-relation of these parts very clearly;
we give a somewhat condensed copy of the structure here:--
Exodus xxiv. 9 - xxxii. 14.
A | xxiv. 9-11. The worship of the seventy elders.
B | xxiv. 12-14. The tables of stone promised.
C | xxiv. 15-18. The six days and the seventh.
D | xxv. 1 - xxxi. 11. The tabernacle and its furniture.
C | xxxi. 12-17. The six days and the seventh.
B | xxxi. 18. The tables of stone given.
A | xxxii. 1-14. The idolatry of the people.
It has sometimes been felt that the making
of such a structure as the tabernacle demanded greater skill than it can be
supposed a nation of slaves, whose labour was in the brick fields, could
possess, but we must leave God out of our reckoning. He not only gave Moses detailed instructions
and a perfect pattern, but fitted specially appointed workers for their task:--
“I have called by name Bezaleel . . . . . I
have filled with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in
knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.”
“And I behold, I have given unto him
Aholiab . . . . . and in their hearts I have put wisdom, that they may make all
that I have commanded thee” (Exod. xxxi. 1-6).
This covers the whole question: the God who gave the command provides the
wisdom and skill necessary for its accomplishment. Bezaleel means, “In the shadow of God”; Aholiab means, “The tent of my Father” — two
precious and fitting names for men who were to be used of God in the
construction of the tabernacle.
While we would make no pretensions to
supernatural endowment to-day, we do most certainly believe that when God calls
a man to a service He equips him for the work.
He may be but a fisherman or a gatherer of sycamore fruit. He may be the wisest of kings or the most
learned of pharisees, but, be he whom he may, his fitness for service will be
given by the One Who called him to the work.
What
a blessed thought, too, is conveyed to the heart of the worker by the name
Bezaleel, “In the shadow of God”. There
is the place where wisdom, knowledge and understanding are first received, and
ever after maintained — “Not by might, nor by power, but My Spirit, saith the
Lord”. There is also a note of
instruction in the name Aholiab, “The tent of my Father”. Paul stresses the necessity to be occupied
with “God’s building” when building upon the one foundation: all else passes away in smoke and fire (I
Corinthian iii.). Just as the tabernacle
imaged the person of the Lord when He was made flesh and “tabernacled” among
men (John i. 14), so we find the “shadowing” suggested in Luke i. 35:
“The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee”.
The second half of Exodus xxxi.
is devoted to the question of the sabbath, so that, in some sense, we
have in this chapter the six days’ work (1-11), and the one day sabbath
(12-18). This, as the structure shows,
falls exactly into correspondence with one special week recorded in Exod. xxiv. 15-18:--
“And the glory of the Lord abode upon
Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days;
and the seventh day He called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.”
The placing of the covenant of the sabbath
immediately after the appointment of the workers of the tabernacle would be a
reminder that even work for God must be allowed to crowd out worship. We may all profit by this lesson.
The sabbath.
We will now look into the teaching of Scripture
regarding the sabbath.
In the first place it is important to
remember that not only is there the weekly sabbath day enjoined upon Israel,
but that a system of sevens, from days to years, is found in Scripture. Creation is stamped with the number seven. In the Hebrew of Gen. i. 1
we find seven words, Bereshith bara elohim eth hashshamayin beth haerets
— and twenty-eight letters, 7*4.
This cannot be shown in English because in that language separate
letters for the sounds “th”, “sh”,
&c., must be used.
The present creation is introduced by the
word of God: “And God said”. In this phrase there are ten Hebrew letters
having the following numerical equivalents:
Vav 6, Yod 10, Aleph 1, Mem 40, Rosh 200, Aleph 1, Lamed 30, He 5,
Yod 10, Mem 40. These figures total
343, which is 7*7*7, or raised to the superlative. If, moreover, the reader will look at this
series he will see that exactly seven different letters are used.
The present creation occupies a double set
of three days followed by a seventh rest.
These sets of three perfectly correspond with each other:--
1st Day . . . . . Light.
2nd
Day . . . . . Firmament
and waters.
3rd Day . . . . . Dry land. PLANT
LIFE.
4th Day . . . . . Light bearers.
5th Day . . . . . Fowls in the firmament. Fish in the waters.
6th Day . . . . . Beasts of field.
HUMAN LIFE.
Then the 7th day . . . . . rest.
This sevenfold character lies behind the
whole purpose of the ages, and Peter’s comment:
“One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as
one day” (II Pet. iii. 8) suggests that the whole range of time, from the
Adamic creation until and including Millennium, will be a series of seven days,
each measuring one thousand years. The
feasts of Israel, specified in Leviticus
xxiii., fill up the interval between
Creation and Millennium, and foreshadow the purpose of the ages.
We find the following use of “seven” in
the Scriptures that deal with Israel:--
Seven DAYS.—“The seventh day
is a sabbath of rest” (Lev. xxiii. 3).
Seven WEEKS.—“Seven sabbaths
shall be complete” (Lev.xxiii.15).
Seven MONTHS.—“In the
seventh month” (Lev. xxiii. 24).
So far as feasts are
concerned the year ends here.
Seven YEARS.—“The seventh
year shall be a sabbath of rest” (Lev. xxv. 4).
Seven times seven YEARS.—“It
shall be a Jubile unto you” (Lev.xxv.8-13).
Seventy times seven
YEARS.—“Seventy weeks are determined” (Dan. ix. 24).
Seven TIMES.—“I will chasten
you seven times” (Dan. iv. 16).
Israel’s chastisement the
same length of time as Gentile madness.
Here we have a progressive series of seven
features, showing that the weekly sabbath was one of a series of ordinances
enjoined upon this people.
The sign and
the covenant.
Just as blood of the passover lamb (Exod.
xii. 13), the unleavened bread (xiii.9), and the redemption of the firstborn
(xiii. 13) were “signs” or “tokens”, so the sabbath was a special “sign” to
Israel of their separation unto the Lord from all other nations. This sanctification is expressed in Lev. xx. 24-26:--
“I am the Lord your God, which have
separated you from other people. Ye
shall therefore put a difference between clean beasts and unclean ... ye
shall be holy unto Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other
people, that ye should be mine” (Lev. xx. 24-26).
The
scruples discussed in Romans xiv. as to “days” and “meats” arose out of the
relationship of such things to Israel’s exclusive position.
The observation of the sabbath was given
for an “age-abiding covenant”, but it is well to notice that in Exodus xxxi.
both the “sign” and the “covenant” are restricted to Israel (xxxi. 16,
17):--
“Wherefore the children of Israel shall
keep the sabbath ... an age-abiding covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children
of Israel for the age.”
There can be no intrusion of others into
this covenant. It belongs to Israel, and
to those who, by becoming proselytes, are reckoned with Israel. The breaking of the sabbath by the
performance of work was punishable by death, and anyone who thus transgressed
the commandment was cut off from the people of God; he had broken the covenant. The sabbath, moreover, was to be observed and
kept as an age-abiding covenant.
There are reasons for observing the
sabbath attached to the various commands that we should notice. The first passage is that which occurs in the
ten commandments. The reason given there
for sabbath observance is that the Lord, after the six days’ creation, “rested
the seventh day; wherefore the Lord
blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it”.
So long as Israel observed the sabbath day, they were a witness to the
God of creation, and the creation narrative of
Genesis i. & ii.
In
Exod. xxiii. 12 the sabbath is
enjoined so that ox, ass and servant may be refreshed. The words are echoed in Exod. xxxi. 17:--
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed.”
The word “refreshed” is naphas, and
could almost be translated “had time to breathe”. We do not entertain the thought that the
mighty Creator becomes weary with work, but it is helpful to see how He stoops
to the needs of the creatures made in His image.
Attached to the command to keep the
sabbath is a reminder that Israel was once a servant in the land of bondage, so
that the institution of the day showed God’s mercy to Israel and His concern
for others (Deuteronomy v. 12-15).
Reverence for the sanctuary of God, also, was associated with the
sabbath (Lev. xxiii. 32). Though
shrouded in type and symbol, the sabbath, nevertheless, was an opportunity of
experiencing and expressing something of the grace of God:--
“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; and shalt honour Him, not
doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own
words” (Isa. lviii. 13)
Both the true spirit of the sabbath, and
the false representation of it, as it had become by the tradition of the
elders, are very vividly brought to view in the Gospels. When the disciples plucked a few ears of
corn, and rubbed them in their hands, they broke the sabbath according to the
tradition of the Pharisees. Of course
reaping and threshing on the sabbath were forbidden by the law, but these
formalists taught that to pluck an ear of corn was “reaping”, and to rub it in
the hand was “threshing”, even as walking on grass was a species of threshing!
The persecution of the Lord, and the
crucifixion itself, may be traced to His attitude toward the sabbath day:--
“Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus,
and sought to slay Him because He had done these things on the sabbath day”
(John v. 16).
In spite of the fact that the Lord kept
every jot and tittle of the law, the Pharisees refused to recognize in His
actions any observance of the sabbath.
They said: “This man is not of
God, because He keepeth not the sabbath day” (John ix. 16). While these things are important, and have in
view the great sabbath rest that awaits the children of God (Heb. iv. 9-11), we
must not omit the statements concerning the sabbath and other holy days and
feasts that are found in Paul’s epistles.
The
Sabbath, Sunday
and the Church.
It is evident that Paul could not have
written Romans xiv. had the sabbath day been binding upon the
church. The law of the sabbath does not
leave room for “esteeming every day alike” (Rom. xiv. 5), and if this be true
regarding such an established institution as the sabbath, it is also most true
regarding the first day of the week.
When Paul said to the Galatians:--
“Ye observe days, and months, and times
and years, i am afraid of you, lest i have bestowed upon you labour in vain”
(Gal. iv. 10, 11),
he
made no exception of the sabbath day.
His words in Colossians ii., however, leave one without a doubt as to the
purport of his teaching:--
“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or
in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbaths,
which are a shadow of good things to come:
but the body is of Christ” (Col. ii. 16, 17).
With the coming of the full truth of the
mystery, there passed off the scene all types and shadows. The inclusion of the “sabbaths” in such a
context as Colossians ii. should make us doubly on our guard against
any specious arguments that “have a show of wisdom”, but which lead away from
our full and complete position in Christ.
We respect the conscience of the weaker
brother regarding the observance of days, the abstaining from meats, and other
items that have no longer any value for us.
Sunday is not the sabbath, and no manipulation of the references to the
first day of the week can make it so.
Moreover, we do not seek to impose Sunday observance upon the world of
the ungodly, for we realize that no such claim belongs to our calling, or to
them. We thankfully accept Sunday as an
opportunity for obtaining that necessary one day’s rest in seven which our
physical nature demands. We, moreover,
welcome the opportunity it provides for more completely turning aside from the
things of everyday life to the worship of God, and the ministry of His Word,
but we see no special sanctity in a meeting held on Sunday, neither
would we allow any thought of the “day” to influence our attitude or
witness. Concern for the conscience of
others is the only bondage to which we are willing to submit in this matter. The bondage of “holy days” is “not after
Christ” and is to be rejected.
Whatever the sabbath meant to Israel a
rest, a delight, a prophecy of the rest that remaineth, a sign, a covenant, a
mark of the high calling of God, this, like circumcision and other rites, we
find in full measure in Christ. He is
our Sabbath, and we need no shadows of good things to come. We have the blessed substance. While we walk in Him, we need no holy days.
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