So, the other day I read a story about these Hebrew slaves in Egypt. They were being worked to the bone by their masters. They cried out to their God, Yahweh, for deliverance, and He rescued them. Yahweh brought them to a mountain and said, “You are no longer slaves; you have been redeemed. Honor the Sabbath and don’t do any work on that day. In fact, give your animals a day off too. You were saved from Egypt, so keep the Sabbath holy.”
In the last 35 years, I have worked over 20 jobs in more than 5 different industries: from fast food to fancy restaurants, from UPS to construction at a Christian camp, and in pastoral ministry at churches.
Looking back, I sometimes felt like those slaves in Egypt—expected to work harder, do more, put in long hours, make more bricks, and even gather my own straw. But oddly enough, the times I pushed the hardest were when I was in charge of my own schedule! I chose to go without a day off, to work on my own time, or to neglect the rest I needed. Often, I justified it because… it’s ministry.
But in that story, God tells them: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”
It’s as if God is saying: There is a word for someone who doesn’t get a day off each week—“slave.” But you are my sons and daughters. You are not slaves anymore.
So why is it, as a follower of Yahweh, as a Christian working in ministry, that there is this temptation to forget the Sabbath? And because it’s “ministry,” it somehow seems okay to skimp on family time, fail to rest, or go months without taking time away for extended silence and solitude with God?
Someone might say, “But we don’t have to keep the Sabbath because we are not under the Law.”
Okay, we are not “under the Law,” so we don’t “have to” do all the things. We are not required to “check all the boxes,” and we are not trying to gain righteousness through some “merit earned” by keeping the rules. But that’s not what He’s even talking about.
There’s another story, where Jesus and his followers are walkin’ through a field, and they start snackin’ on some grain. The religious leaders say, “Hey! You’re breakin’ the law!” Jesus turns to them and says that the Sabbath was made for humans, not the other way around (Mark 2:27).
It sounds like Jesus is saying that the Sabbath is a gift made just for us! It seems like Jesus doesn’t see it so much as a “law to be obeyed” but as a “gift to be received.”
So I wonder why we often leave that gift sitting on the table, refusing to receive it because, for some strange reason, we are afraid that we won’t get enough stuff done.
But if that’s the case, then who are we doing all this stuff for?
There is a word for those who don’t get a day off: “slave.”