"Eternal Rendezvous"2
THE SABBATH COMMANDMENT--A CALL TO MERCY
But frankly, you say, how can we be so sure that it is, on the contrary, the attitude of tender mercy God proclaims as His sacred principle and His peremptory order to us in the fourth commandment?
In order to make sure about that, it may be useful to go to other Bible texts. We find a parallel one in the 23rd chapter of Exodus. I do not say that it is necessary to do that. Intelligent and unbiased readers may not need that at all. I myself needed it. Of course, I ought not to assume that you are as unintelligent and as prone to bias as I am. But here I shall quote that other text for you anyway. The first part of it will not impress any one as different at all from the text of the 20th chapter:
"Six days thou shalt work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest." (Margin: "keep the Sabbath") Exodus 23:12.
And now further: For what purpose should man rest? Notice the reason here given to that cattle-raising people, those lowly herdsmen, elected by God to be His peculiar property: "that thine ox and thine ass may have rest."
That is brilliantly clear, isn't it? Man is required to give practical expression to a spirit of considerateness and mercy toward his "other ones". To what level of other ones? The down-most level; that is, as men are known to evaluate "up" and "down".
So we have had the matter pointed out to us in terms we cannot misunderstand, however dumb we may be, however deaf in our spiritual hearing. Those "hard" words about "thy son" and "thy daughter", "thy manservant" and "thy maidservant", etc. in the Sabbath commandment, as God put it all down with His own finger, cannot be regarded as hard any longer--I mean "hard" to the minds of ordinary common sense people. I am not yet speaking about the minds of certain theologians. But true theology is the "science about God", isn't it? And now, what does the essence of this text really tell us about the essence of God?
What a remarkable God! The God of the lowly ones! And what an unexpected hard nut suddenly dropping down from the highest branch of the peaceful palm tree and right upon the skull of the modern theologian. Pagan idealists of all ages and all climes--and particularly the proud humanists of our modern Occidental world--would tend to turn away with amazement and disgust, from such divine lowliness. This is unique in the annals of the formation of religions in any part of the world. Think of it: a God who, right in His most solemn statements of sacred legislation, utters words of merciful concern for dumb creatures, like donkeys and cows!
In fact, worshipers of the traditional gods in antiquity would think it an unworthy and unforgivable sentimentality, on the part of gods, to worry about the everyday lot of even human beings. Particularly those men of ancient societies who happened to have the good fortune, themselves, to be free men, would think it infinitely far below their personal dignity to pay any serious attention to the fate of such people whom our present text (Ex 23:12) qualifies as "the son of thy handmaid", and "the sojourner". What have we to worry about the destiny of slaves and barbarians?
And do not think, now, that that motley troop of Hebrews, with whom the Lord had to deal in the desert, and later, were so much different from the "pagans" around them in this respect. Their social reaction was very much the same. In their natural hearts they had no compassion with the "lower orders". So most of them undoubtedly felt rather scandalized when suddenly placed face to face with a formulation like this one:
"Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thy ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be refreshed." (Exodus 23:12).
What strange interests on the part of a God! Hardly a single one of the nations whom the Israelites met on their way, and were influenced by, was seriously disturbed in their ethical conscience by such thoughts about mercy toward bondmen and strangers.
Here Old Testament theology already was found to mean a revolution, a total transvaluation of values in the contemporary world. And we modern men think we have made a tremendous progress in social ethics. Yet our theologians, right in a so-called Christian environment, seem to be taken by surprise whenever they face the fact of God's merciful concern about creatures as far down in the valley of pain and suffering as the animals! The fact that God suddenly begins to talk about duties of mercifulness toward them--and this even in the solemn context of the moral law--that comes as something like a shock upon us.
What is wrong with the animals then, as our culture looks upon things? What makes them so unworthy? It is their lack of intelligence, we are told. Who cares about a "dumb beast"? Apparently, whatever is "not intelligent" is "no good". Intelligence is the measuring standard for all prestige.
How could a beast have any mercy shown to it, in such a pitiless environment? How could a creature that dares to walk around with an intelligence quotient as close to the bottom line as that, expect to have any attention paid to it at all in such a pitiless intellectualistic culture as ours?
We sometimes seem to think that the reason why God came down to us--and found it worthwhile to save us--was that we were so admirably intelligent. But why did he really come down to us? It was because we were the most miserable, the most pitiable and unhappy creatures in the universe. Without God we were absolutely helpless. Therefore-- and for no other reason--did the Merciful One come down. He simply took pity on us. This is one meaning of the Sabbath, and not the least important.
The Loud Cry in a Way You Hardly Thought of it:
The prophetic literature of the Bible repeatedly mention a certain "Loud Cry" and a "voice" exceedingly "loud". When I look at the history of the Sabbath I have the nagging feeling that, as the people of God, we have been sadly insufficient in our collective pilgrimage down through the ages. How distressingly low-voiced we have all been. For is it not through a miserable treachery on our part--we who have posed as the servants and trumpet-blowers of God--that the vindication of God's cause, tended to turn into a scarcely audible whisper in our throats?
On God's part there was a dramatic and urgent proclamation of the Sabbath message from the beginning. Where creation is the very setting, drama and urgency are self-evident. And when the law was announced in its fulness on Sinai, we know that it was to the accompaniment of an orchestra so dramatic that the people could hardly bear it:
"And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said to Moses `Speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die'". (Ex. 20:18,19).
Why did God speak so loud and so dramatically? It was because He simply could not stand the unrighteousness of mercilessness! For the Loud Cry, you see, is originally a cry for mercy. Were you quite aware of that simple fact?
Please read the "loud cry" as formulated by Isaiah in his 58th chapter. Read it thoughtfully and ruefully from beginning to end, and you will know why the prophet was requested to cry so loud. You will know also exactly what transformation has to take place--in you and me--before the great day of the Lord. This chapter is one great commandment of mercy, and it is as loud, even thundering, as any human prophet could make it. From the first verse we know what it is about:
:1 Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
And the name of that sin is mercilessness--mercilessness of the most hideous kind, under the cloak of "mercy" and "godliness". Hypocritically we bow our heads and "fast". But what is the loud cry that God desires?
:6 [Is] not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
:7 [Is it] not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
And then suddenly this exceedingly loud talk on mercy turns into an equally loud talk on the Sabbath. Did you ever wonder about that "change of topic"? It is no change of topic at all! For Sabbath means mercy.
It belongs to the story--and most ironically so--that the Sabbath had been made the most merciless burden of all. Almost an entire people had, by the time of Christ's first advent, come under the yoke, and the worst one imaginable: the yoke of legalist self-dependence, self-salvation.
In direct contrast to this, true Sabbath observance is shown. There is no reduction of its significance, no exemption from its real claims. There is just a touching appeal to accept its genuine spirit, and a beautiful description of its matchless charms:
"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, honorable and shalt honor Him, not doing thy own ways, nor speaking thy own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord. And I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob, thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken." (verses 13 & 14).
What a positive conclusion of the Loud Cry, so entirely compatible with the unbribable realism of strict law-abidingness, and still--or just therefore--filled to the brim with fatherly tenderness and mercy. What a touching portrait of the Sabbath, and the Lord of the Sabbath. Here we certainly get all due information about the meaning of sanctification within the glorious framework of the Sabbath's peculiar rainbow halo.
But what happened here among God's people, as, from generation to generation, prophet after prophet stood up and started raising, anew, with exactly the loudness that the Lord had ordered, that insisting cry for mercy, mercy for the lowliest ones and the most downtrodden ones?
Sad to say, almost invariably history tended to arrive at a point where the cry seemed to become so disturbingly loud, in the ears of the people, that they simply could not bear it--probably for the secret reason that their own guilty conscience joined in crying, as it were, thus amplifying the original cry with a raucous undertone that was particularly unbearable. And then the prophet, if possible at all, was hushed into silence, or as close to silence as you can hope to come without directly cutting the man's vocal chords. Then for some time it was the people themselves who decided the degree of "loudness" of the cries in that land. ... "Have some sense of decent moderation", they seem to be whispering. "Whatever you do, please don't speak that loud! Somebody outside might hear you, and label you `a fanatic'. Whatever you do, you must avoid every suspicion of belonging to that group. You must not become a fanatic. It is fanatics who have the uncouth habit of speaking loud."
In other words, it definitely is not according to the code of good manners among us to be vociferous. When voices get too loud, it arouses disagreeable attention. In our "modesty" we prefer to be among the rather unnoticed ones. Even our Sabbaths we seem to want as unnoticed as feasible. We sometimes even seem to be saying: "See to it, dear brother, that you do not cause the very name of the institution to which you belong, to become, in itself, some kind of Loud Cry. Do not use, for instance, to an unnecessary degree, the designation Seventh-day Adventist Church in full spelling, but preferably Adventist Church. That is peculiar enough and unpopular enough already. Abbreviations are the order of the day."
And what about "mercy"? "Oh, my brother! That kind of thing can easily be carried to extremes. You should watch your proper confines when it comes to deeds of mercy toward the suffering ones. For instance, if those who suffer should happen to be just animals, moderation becomes particularly incumbent on you. Let the "Friends of Animals" have a monopoly on loud speaking in this field. For please watch your step, it may turn out to be directly harmful to speak too loud about innocently suffering animals. That applies both to those in the zoos and those in the research laboratories of great medical institutions. Please do not speak too loud about these things. Remember again: it is fanatics who are so unrefined in their manners that they find it necessary to speak loud!"
What a biased wholesale judgment passed on loud speaking and loud cries! Of course we do know that the reasons why people speak loud are not always necessarily the noblest. We know too well the story about the orator who at a given point in his manuscript had the following note in the margin for his own guidance when he was to deliver his speech: "The argument somewhat weak here, speak loud." But of course it would not be too reverent to claim about God that when He raises His voice to give special emphasis to His message to men, then that is because He finds His argument somewhat deficient. God's children ever so often fail to discern, in His Loud Cry, the divine call to mercy and true humaneness.
In persistent cases of that kind, the character of the cry may change in a most alarming way. It turns into a cry of judgment. What destiny-laden thing has happened to the prophetic message in that case?
In the instance of the Sabbath commandment in Biblical prophecy this appears rather dramatically. Another phase, as it were, of the same commandment is entering into focus. That is a phase in which the point of gravity has been moved, so to speak. The message has turned into a revelation of God from the angle that is least appreciated by human beings: His quality as the sternly authoritative, the almighty Creator whose word is a shaking drama, the great eschaton.(judgement)
In its solemn eschatological setting the Loud Cry comes to us in the terms of the seer of Patmos:
"And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water." Rev. 14:1,7.
We recognize here every theme of the Sabbath commandment: tender mercy as exemplified by the great Merciful One, the Lord of the Gospel; and all along with this, His majestic creative power, lending authority and force to His mercy command. In fact, the call at this juncture is in a setting of judgment. The church's own refusal to heed the original loud cry for mercy is the direct reason why it was destined to become a cry of judgment:
"And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Rev. 14:8.
There is a tremendous crescendo, as the prophet comes right to the mark of distinction, pressed upon the foreheads and the hands of the unfaithful ones, so glaringly contrasted with the distinguishing mark imprinted in the minds and hearts of God's faithful ones.
"And the third angel followed them saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God." Rev. 14:9,10.
But the real climax of this crescendo is reached in Rev. 18. The cry of the three angels is here being amplified in an unexpected way by an angel little noticed so far, but suddenly coming upon the scene with an unparalleled loudness in his voice. The character of judgment and finality has become overwhelming:
"And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power, and the earth was lightened with his glory, and he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Rev. 18:1,2.
Here the prophet has obviously come to a point where it is not enough for him any longer to inform us that the angel was "saying" this ("legon"); no, this time he "cried it out" ("ekraxen").
This is definitely endtime judgment in terms of doom (krima). But at the same time there is still a tremendously efficient judgment in terms of crisis (krisis). By the very drama of surrounding events men are called upon to decide where they want to belong, to "come out", honestly and demonstratively, just accepting the seal of the living God, His merciful and gracious rest, an Eternal Sabbath.
In the fourth verse of the same chapter this tone of mercy in the midst of the tone of doom is particularly audible. There is a change of tones in another significant respect also here. What is now heard is not the voice of an angel any longer. This is the voice of God Himself. This is the Saviour specifically turning to those whom He is bent on considering as His personal property, those who He makes His own, wholly and fully, by just setting them apart, sanctifying them. Of course there is tender affection vibrating as the constant overtone of that voice. But there is also a stern and ultimate call to settle for exclusive fellowship with Him. Not the slightest mingling with the world is possible now. The issues are too clear, indeed. Half-heartedness is bound to be an unknown concept. Man has definitively come down into the valley of decision:
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins and share in her plagues." Rev. 18:4, New English Bible.
And now, what does this have to do with the Sabbath commandment? Of course we do know, if we are at all attentive and knowledgeable, that something strangely dramatic enters upon the scene with that fourth commandment. The very first texts in the Bible dealing with the Sabbath testify to that fact. And what happens as time passes? The Sabbath commandment assumes a character of something gradually sharpening or intensifying. There is something ever more pointed about it. New aspects of its nature are flashing out.
To be or not to be, that is the question. And anything less than that could hardly be expected in the case of a commandment which is so intimately wound up with the issue of sanctification. The God of the Sabbath is not only the God whose name is Jealous, but that "jealousy" makes Him stand out precisely as the God who insists on having His intelligent creatures sanctified.
To sanctification there is only one known alternative: that is, the great fall--self-destruction. God graciously pemits the creaturely person who does not accept life on the terms on which He is able to offer it, to just sink back into the state of non-existence. But to the one who has already been granted the glorious privilege of existing, on the highest level offered to any creature, non-life is bound to be tantamount to bottomless perdition. The will-freedom he has been endowed with pushes him irresistibly toward the great either-or. The concept of "rest" in this pointed case has nothing to do with passivity or flabbiness (laxness). "Rest" here means sanctification, and that is no timeless Nirvana. It rather has the endtime crescendo built into it. Everything here is inexorably pointed toward a final goal, the dramatic rescue of "the brand plucked out of the fire" (Zec. 3:2).
There is a tremendous solemnity settling down, as it were, over the passage at this point.
The history of the kingdoms of the earth is just reaching its final phase. The destruction is delayed only during that brief spell of time it takes to consummate the work of the sealing, described in detail in Revelation 7. There is breathless stillness in man's world, but it is the stillness before the storm:
"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads." (Rev. 7:1-3).
We all know that the seal at the time of the ancient kingdom was synonymous with the signature, the name and the title of the commanding one. And we all know that the seal of Christ, our Creator, is to be found in the Sabbath commandment only. This, also, makes it unique in the law of God.
Notice how Ellen G. White links the third angel's message of Revelation 14 with the Loud Cry of Isaiah 58: "The light we have received upon the Third Angel's Message is the true light. The Mark of the Beast is exactly what it has been proclaimed to be. Not all in regard to this matter is yet understood, nor will it be understood until the unrolling of the scroll; but a most solemn work is to be proclaimed in our world. The Lord's command to His servant is, `Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression...(Isaiah 58:1)'." 6T 17.
The caution rightly observed about applying the phrase, "receiving the mark of the beast", should be well known: Something fateful is bound to happen to modern man, once he has been really confronted with the law of God in its entirely and with the challenge contained in its supreme test of obedience. If he has responded to that test with an open defiance against God's clear command, then-and only then-can he be described as having "received the mark of the beast". For only then has the definitive choice been made between the seal of God and the mark of the beast.
But in the above quotation something more comes out which must fill with solemn earnestness every person who professes to belong to the people of God. For it is to such a person, first and foremost, that the loud cry of warning in Isaiah 58 is addressed. The Sabbath commandment is specifically mentioned in that chapter; and in what capacity first of all? As a cry for mercy.
So the nature of the reform so urgently demanded is not a matter of doubt. It calls for a transformation in you and me from mercilessness to mercifulness. Without that transformation we are utterly nonsensical if we go to others warning them against taking the mark of the beast. We ourselves may be the ones in the greatest need of a message of warning. Some of those to whom we would like to go with our great message of the abiding Sabbath, might have, in their very lives, a tremendous lesson to teach you and me, a lesson about the very thing the Sabbath stands for: MERCY. That is the Loud Cry message of Isaiah 58. A person's life is the loudest cry he can ever make A person's life is the loudest cry he can ever make!
A PERSON’S LIFE
IS THE LOUDEST CRY HE CAN EVER MAKE!
Where Did the WEEK Come From??
Considered from the viewpoint of human rationalism the Sabbath may seem to have a certain degree of "arbitrariness" about it. Take the very idea of dividing time into units containing just seven days each. Does that make any sense, humanly speaking?
If we go back to the smaller temporal unit, the day, that is an altogether different matter. For this is at least a dividing up of time based on a definite astronomical fact: a day is just the time this globe of ours takes to make one turn around its own axis. To any observer this "makes sense"; similarly for certain larger units of time, for instance the month and the year. They are self-evident divisions based on rationally acceptable mathematical and astrophysical relations.
But who ever hit upon the idea of dividing time into weeks? We must be reasonably justified--as far as human knowledge and human reason are concerned--in qualifying that idea as somewhat "arbitrary". So this question present itself: Who has had the incomparable "arbitrariness" to command, with an unmistakably authoritative voice:
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, thy God: In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." Exodus 20:8-10.
The Lord thy God!!