The Sabbath was made for man and it was made when man was made - during creation week. "And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." (Gen. 2:2-3)

Over in the book of Exodus, God gives us some instructions abut the Sabbath day. We know these instructions as the Fourth Commandment: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." (Exo. 20:8-11)

God made this day holy. When something is holy, it is the opposite of common or profane. God elevated this day to a special status and it is sacred and pure, belonging to God and it is the part of time that is wholly devoted to God. Therefore, since the Sabbath day is holy time and God made it that way, it is up to us to keep it that way! Remember, God told us in vs. 8 of Exo. 20, to "keep it holy."

That same section of scripture also says that we are to "remember the Sabbath," which implies that we would naturally tend to "forget" this day. And, it is not saying here that we would necessarily forget which day is the Sabbath, but would forget to keep it holy!

The Sabbath is special to God. It is a memorial of creation that identifies God as Creator and those who keep it as His people. "You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed." (Exo. 31:14-17)

Yet, throughout much of their history, God's people, ancient Israel, rebelled against God and failed to observe the Sabbath. They ignored and trampled all over it. We can see one of the beginning examples of that in Ezekiel. Speaking of ancient Israel, "Moreover I also gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them. Yet the house of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they did not walk in My statutes; they despised My judgments, which, if a man does, he shall live by them; and they greatly defiled My Sabbaths." (Ezek. 20:12-13)

Because of this sin, the 10 tribes of Israel went into captivity and eventually lost their identity. They forgot God and His Sabbath and turned to idiolatry. Things were not much different with Judah. Jeremiah repeatedly warned Judah of it's sins. "But if you will not heed Me to hallow the Sabbath day, such as not carrying a burden when entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." (Jer. 17:27) We all know the sad conclusion. The people didn't listen. They continued to break the Sabbath and the result was the sacking and destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people.

To make a long story short, after a number of years, God brought some of the Jews back to Jerusalem. The people rebuilt the city, and for the most part, acknowledged their sins and began to keep God's law and Sabbath. But, it didn't take long for the people to regress and begin to break the Sabbath once again.

Nehemiah addresses the problem with the elders of Judah: "Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said to them, "What evil thing is this that you do, by which you profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers do thus, and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath." (Neh. 13:17-18)

After receiving Nehemiah's correction, most of the people repented and began observing God's Sabbath. However, as we know, human nature has a tendency to go to extremes. "If a little is good, more is better." After the death of Nehemiah, the Jewish religionists, in their zeal to keep the Sabbath holy, began to legislate in minute detail what a person could and could not do on the Sabbath day. It eventually evolved, or maybe we should say "devolved" into the religion of Judaism we find when Jesus Christ walked the earth - which, for the most part, He roundly condemned.

All God actually gave us were basic principles to apply in various life situations. Well that wasn't good enough for the religious leaders that came to be known as "Pharisees." Much like today's various religions, these leaders had the attitude that the people don't have the knowledge, understanding and wisdom to figure out how to obey God, so they decided to legislate every detail about what they may and may not do.

The Pharisees established 39 main categories of prohibited work. That was eventually broken down into such detail, that standards were set such as whether it was "work" to swat a fly on the Sabbath! The Pharisees sought to govern every remote contingency and trivial circumstance of daily life.

By the time this form of "Judaism" had reached the life and times of Jesus Christ, the Sabbath had become an institution unto itself. The Sabbath had become a burden and not the blessing God had intended it to be. As we saw earlier, in Mark, Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way around. It was made to help you, to enable you to live a happier and more abundant life and keep you in the knowledge of the true God, not to become a burden.

God didn't ever intend for humans to fret and worry so much about the Sabbath that they would go through life fearing to do anything on that day that might "break" the Sabbath. That is one reason this article isn't meant to be a comprehensive compilation of "do's" and "don't's" for the Sabbath. We're not striving to be a Pharisee, but God does supply some very important guidelines.

Our Creator God knew we would need a period of rest from our normal weekly duties. He gave us the seventh day for that purpose. We all tend to become absorbed in our daily cares during the week. God foresaw this and He set aside the Sabbath as a time when we can completely forget our routine work. Then we can spend more time on those activities that help us better understand and worship God. God has always intended His Sabbath to be a day of rest, joy, delight and happiness.

What does it mean exactly to "rest?" God is concerned with two overall aspects of our life where it concerns the Sabbath: First, He wants our time to be free from responsibilities and activities. Second, He wants our mind free from thinking about those daily responsibilities and activities. This makes us free to properly worship God on this day.

Obviously, we can physically rest more on the Sabbath. In fact, I particularly enjoy taking a brief nap on occasion - something I am totally unable to do any other time of the week. But, the main emphasis is to rest from your normal work and activities on this day. You should serve God with your mind on the Sabbath.

I suppose those who can't, or don't control their minds call the Sabbath "bondage." You know them. They can't wait for the end of the Sabbath so they can go about pursuing their own ways and pleasures- which they have been thinking about all day anyway!

If we are able to get our mind focused on God's ways and His purpose, we will begin to find out what a delight and joy the Sabbath is. Isaiah gives us more of God's instruction for keeping the Sabbath: "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken." (Isa. 58:13-14)

How do we do this? We devote the additional free Sabbath time to extra Bible study, prayer and meditation. This is the one day of the week when you don't have to worry about getting to the job, making payments, building fences, working out schedules, cleaning the house, or any other form of daily work.

(1) Your "ways" means your normal day to day life. It could include your job, finances, or the serious business of making a livelihood. On the Sabbath, you should not involve yourself in working at what you normally do during the week. That could include those things by which you feed, clothe and care for yourself physically.

This includes working around the house, sewing, cleaning, washing the dishes, the clothes, the car, the dog, you name it - all the things that pertain to your physical maintenance during the normal course of the week. That of course, does not include personal hygiene - brushing your teeth and bathing. We should take special care to come before God clean and neat - in the best condition possible on the Sabbath Day.

(2) Your "pleasure" does not mean that the Sabbath should be a day of rigorous abstinence. The principle to keep in mind is that we should avoid having our mind, time and energy taken up with hobbies, sports, shopping or other pleasure seeking. The Sabbath was not designed for activities such as hunting, fishing, golfing, movies, TV, "cruising the internet," boating, etc. that take up our leisure time, nor would it include any time consuming hobbies.

(3) Your "words." This is the spiritual application of the first two principles. Matt. 12:34 says, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." We tend to talk about what we are thinking. Our words show what is going on in our minds and hearts. Obviously, this is the most difficult of the three principles to master. We may cease doing our ways and our pleasures, but it is much more difficult to cease thinking or talking about them!

Again, we don't need to become pharisaical. There is no rule that says we can't mention non- spiritual things on the Sabbath. We simply must apply the principle of putting our mind on the positive purpose for which the Sabbath was made and not letting physical pursuits and thoughts dominate our day.

This probably doesn't need to be said, but in order to keep the Sabbath holy, we need to know when it occurs. Even within the various splinter groups of the Church, there is confusion and differing thoughts on when the Sabbath begins.

The Sabbath should be kept "from evening to evening," or sunset to sunset, beginning Friday evening. Most newspapers list the approximate time of sunset for each day, or if you can see the sun, you would begin to observe the Sabbath when the sun is ready to fade over the horizon on Friday evening. It does not start when all light is gone and darkness is present, or in the middle of the night as most of this world observes.

I only bring that up because it ties in directly with how we should observe the new moon. God is consistent. He set a basic principle in motion. The new month begins when the old moon disappears, or enters the first part of the dark phase of the conjunction, much as when the sun sinks below the horizon and the beginning of the night part of the day, or twilight begins.

Now that I have covered the Sabbath in a general way, I would like to address two specific aspects of Sabbath observance that seem to have been forgotten and/or ignored by the majority of the Churches of God.

The first is the day of preparation. In order that we may have our minds free from last minute duties on the Sabbath, God has commanded that we prepare for it the day before. God gave us Friday, the sixth day, (from Thursday sunset to Friday sunset) as a preparation day.

In Exo. 16:4-5, we read, "Then the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not. And it shall be on the sixth day that they shall prepare what they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily."

Now we know that God didn't tell them to gather twice as much manna on Friday because He wanted the people to eat twice as much on the sixth day as the other days of the week. God intended the extra amount to be prepared on the sixth day, in order that it could be eaten on the seventh day, or the Sabbath.

All our heavy cooking should be done on Friday, the preparation day. God doesn't want His Sabbath cluttered up by hours of cooking. "And so it was, on the sixth day, that they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. And all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. Then he said to them, ‘This is what the LORD has said: 'Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept until morning.' " (Exo. 16:22)

What about those who did not prepare? Vs. 25, speaks of the extra portion they collected on Friday, "Then Moses said, "Eat that today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, there will be none."

Anything that can reasonably be done before the Sabbath should be done. All the weekly household duties should have been done, such as grocery shopping, house cleaning, washing of clothes, ironing, gassing up the car. etc. Heavy baking and roasting should have been done so that a minimal amount of effort and time need to be expended on preparing the Sabbath meal.

It is important though to use the whole week to plan and prepare, so Friday doesn't become a hectic ordeal of trying to get the whole week's worth of work done in 24 hours. We also don't want to literally collapse into the Sabbath, so worn out from our last minute scramble to get things ready that we are exhausted. We want the Sabbath to be a peaceful day of rest and relaxation, with enough energy to communicate with and worship God.

The second aspect of Sabbath observance I want to address is probably the most overlooked of all and that is the question of whether we, as Sabbath keeping Christians, should eat out at restaurants on the Sabbath.

I remember back in the late 60's and early 70's when I first began attending God's Church, no one ever went out to eat before or after services on the Sabbath. We either ate at home, another member's home, or a Church sponsored pot-luck. Buying food in a restaurant was looked upon as the same as grocery shopping on the Sabbath.

As the liberal spirit took over the Church in the mid to late 70's, the brethren and the ministry too, for that matter, began to water down God's Sabbath, by not treating it as special to God. Going out to eat on the Sabbath became part of our Sabbath Day activities. I have to plead "guilty" to going along with the crowd in the past. That is something I have had to repent of.

Has Christ "loosened" the Sabbath for us? Can we treat it as the Protestants and Catholics treat Sunday and head for the local restaurant after church lets out? Is it wrong to eat in a restaurant on the Sabbath? Have we, perhaps, allowed ourselves to go a little too far in permitting ourselves to do what we want to do, what we enjoy, instead of letting God's Word be our guide?

The Sabbath is Holy time. What did God tell Israel in the wilderness back in Exodus 16? He told them "Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a Holy Sabbath to God." Six days they were to gather or work, but on the seventh day which is the Sabbath, there would be no manna provided, so God told them to gather twice as much. They were to prepare for the Sabbath by preparing twice as much food on the sixth day, and I guess for lack of a better term, "eat left- overs the next day."

It says in Genesis 2 that "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it." It is Holy time. When we go out to eat at restaurants on the Sabbath, are we keeping this day sacred and holy? Are we keeping it holy by spending this holy time in the company of those who are profaning the Sabbath - by working and buying and selling as on every other day of the week? Are we devoting this time to God, or using it to enjoy our own pleasure?

What exactly does the Fourth Commandment say? "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." (Exo. 20:8-11) If you will notice, everyone had the day off. Even animals were given the day off.

Do you think when Christ has set up His Kingdom, that He and some friends will go over to the "Millennial Café" for burgers after services on the Sabbath? Who is going to be there to make and serve them? If it isn't going to be OK then, what makes you think it is OK for us as God's people, to do it now?

People working in restaurants are violating God's day of commanded rest. If we go to the restaurant to purchase their food, are we not in some way contributing to them breaking the Sabbath? Doesn't that make us a party to their lawlessness? We are an accessory to the crime, so to speak!

Some might argue that "well, they are working there anyway, so what's the problem?" God tells us in the Fourth Commandment that even our servants and the strangers within our cities are not to work on the Sabbath. When we frequent a restaurant, we are hiring "servants" on a temporary basis while we are there.

It may be true that we are not making them be there on the job, but we certainly do not decrease their workload when we go. We actually increase the amount of work that they have to do. When we are there, they are our "servants." They serve us and they work for us - and then we pay them! It is a business, after all.

There are numerous instances given in Exodus and Numbers that show the penalty for working on the Sabbath was death! It may appear to be a "small thing" to us, but we need to see sin through God's eyes.

We are not to conduct business in any way on the Sabbath. Going to a restaurant is conducting business. A restaurant is a business, just as much as the movie theater, bowling alley, shopping mall, golf course, or any number of other things I could name are. It exists for the sole purpose of making money and when we go there, we are conducting business. We pay money to someone for their product (in this case food).

Most of us would not consider going to the grocery store on the Sabbath, buying some food and then go home and cook it. Why would we think it is OK for us to pay someone else to buy food and slave over a hot stove in order to cook it for us? Are we not conducting business and contributing to others doing business?

Obviously, we can't make restaurants (or any other business) honor the Sabbath by shutting it's doors, but we should not patronize them on the Sabbath and join them in polluting the Sabbath by paying them to prepare a meal for us!

Let's go back to the book of Nehemiah again. Nehemiah was dealing with the various families of Judah that had been allowed to return to Jerusalem after 70 years of captivity. Most wanted to revive the true worship of God. For the most part, they were very sincere, but they were, as their parents before them, still a carnal people. One of the mistakes they were making at this time, was that they were not keeping the Sabbath holy.

In Neh. 10, the people covenant with God to return to the Law. We can see that in Neh. 10:28-31. "Now the rest of the people--the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the Nethinim, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and understanding - these joined with their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God's Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes: We would not give our daughters as wives to the peoples of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons; if the peoples of the land brought wares or any grain (or "victuals," or food, as the K.J. says) to sell on the Sabbath day, we would not buy it from them on the Sabbath, or on a holy day; and we would forego the seventh year's produce and the exacting of every debt."

Only three chapters later, the people had already forgotten their oath. They were again buying and selling food on the Sabbath day. Nehemiah tells them, "In those days I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day." (Obviously because they were selling and the Jews were buying!) "And I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions. Men of Tyre dwelt there also, who brought in fish and all kinds of goods, and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said to them, "What evil thing is this that you do, by which you profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers do thus, and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath." (Neh. 13:15-18)

What "evil thing" had they done? Nehemiah didn't make a distinction between buying food and buying other items such as clothes, or even physical work, such as the treading of grapes. The "evil thing" was the overall buying and selling and physical work - or the conducting of business on the Sabbath day.

In Nehemiah's day, the Jews lived very closely with the Gentiles around them. These Gentiles (just as the unconverted people around us), had absolutely no regard for the Sabbath and didn't close their shops on the seventh day (just as it is today). We don't live in Sabbath keeping communities today, anymore than the Jews did in Nehemiah's day. So, we can't make the supermarkets, malls, restaurants, movie theaters, golf courses, etc., close their doors and honor God's Sabbath day.

Those Israelites who went out to find food on the Sabbath, found none. Do we use the same reasoning they did when we don't prepare the day before and then find there is no food prepared for the Sabbath and say: "Let's go out into the field (or a restaurant) and find some?"

If we properly prepare on the sixth day as God intended, then we will not have to go out and look for food on the Sabbath. What did God tell those in Israel that went out looking for food on the Sabbath? "How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws?" That doesn't sound like a good thing to me.

If we are 100% confident that is all right to frequent restaurants on the Sabbath, then perhaps we can do so and be confident we are not sinning. It means that we are assured that we are not causing others to work and contribute to the profaning of the Sabbath. It means that we are confident that we are not conducting business. It means that we are certain that we are not "doing our own pleasure."

If we are positively convinced that we are not doing any of these things to some degree, then I suppose it would not be a sin to us. But if we believe that we might be doing some wrong to some degree, then it becomes sin. Romans 14:23, tells us that "what ever is not of faith is sin."

If it is not all right to eat there on the Sabbath, then we should never eat at a restaurant on the Sabbath. It is either right or wrong. We have to make a choice. Do we do what is right in our own eyes, or what God directs us to do?

In any matter, if we have a choice, and if we are not absolutely, positively sure, then the best choice is not to do it! If we don't have complete faith that it is right, then it is sin for us. It is better to err on the side of obedience to God.

It is a very serious matter to buy or sell on the Sabbath day. The Sabbath is the test commandment. It is the "mark" or identifying sign between God and His people. We have been purchased with the precious blood of God's Son, Jesus Christ. We are sealed with God's Holy Spirit. God's Truth sets us apart from all others.

Rejoice in the Sabbath. Call it a "delight" and don't seek your own pleasure on God's holy day. Honor God and His Sabbath. Remember to keep the Sabbath holy and then God will, as He says in Isa. 58:14, "cause you to ride on the heights of the earth and feed you with the inheritance of your father Jacob."