3. Sabbath and Work (Remastered)

The Sabbath and Work

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Leviticus 19:23-25, and our topic, ‘The Sabbath and Work.’

“And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal. And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God.”

The fourth commandment requires of us that we keep the Sabbath holy, and it declares that there are six days for work, but the Sabbath, the seventh, is to be kept holy unto the Lord.

Now, in analyzing this commandment, there are two aspects that we must note. First of all, the commandment tells us that man, like God, is to work and to rest, that human life is to be a copy of the divine life, and the work of God’s people is to be instrument in the restoration of the divine order of the earth. Subdue the earth and exercise dominion over it, this is the great creation mandate to man, and this is the work of man. This is that which man must dedicate himself to. So that we must never forget that the Sabbath ordinance sets apart one day indeed for rest, but it sets apart six days for labor.

Now, this does not mean that we must have a six-day work week, but that six days are dedicated to our vocation. And our vocation must be given over to work in those six days.

But second, our labor, like God’s labor, must terminate in a happy rest. Human labor is not to go on in endless circles, but it is to end in a happy harmony and result. So that the seventh day is the day of rest, but except for works of necessity and works of mercy; healing and the like, it is to be the cessation of work.

In analyzing the Jubilee, we say that the Jubilee brings out this aspect of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath is to be a time of Jubilee, of rejoicing, of cessation of work, and a happy confidence that God will ultimately bring in the great Sabbath, the great Jubilee. We must remember, moreover, that the first chapter of Genesis, as it describes the six days of creation, ends each day with a statement of, “…and the morning and the evening were the first day.” But when it comes to the seventh day, it does not cite it as ending. So that the first six days were six 24-hour days that began and ended. But the seventh day, although it was again another day like all the others, in a sense never ended because Genesis one does not speak of it as closing. So that the divine Sabbath, God’s rest, hovers all over history, it is around us, it surrounds us, and its purpose is to absorb redeemed man into it. When we are saved, we are taken into that Sabbath rest, and the more we grow in grace, the more our sanctification proceeds, the deeper our rest in the Lord. Until finally the perfection of that rest comes with the new creation.

Thus, the Sabbath speaks both of work and rest, effort and result, labor and the goal of labor, and both concepts are basic to the Sabbath. The Sabbath therefore gives purpose to man’s life because it climaxes work, it makes work meaningful, purpose it, it links it to a joyful consummation. The Sabbath looks backward to creation and to the creation Sabbath for its pattern. It looks forward to the great Sabbath consummation, and it looks upward to God in assurance of His grace and victory, that God will bring about His victory in time and the fullness of it in eternity.

Restoration is basic to the concept of the Sabbath. But restoration clearly involves work. The Sabbath has no meaning unless it is preceded by work, and it rests on the foundation of our labor in our calling. As we saw last week, it is God’s covenant sign with man. It declares God’s grace and efficacious work unto salvation so that man can rest:

“…forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” i

So that the Sabbath tells us, no matter how frustrating our work is in the sight of the world, how frustrating it is in our own sight as we see the tide of evil around us, that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. God makes:

“…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” ii

So that our labor can never be fruitless, and every Sabbath we rest in the fact of God’s absolute sovereignty we rest in the fact that though our work the previous six days seem futile and hopeless, and though the tide of evil seems to be running against us and over us, our labor is not in vain in the Lord because He makes:

“…all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” iii

And so, whatever our work the previous six days may seem in the sight of man; futile, and in our site hopeless, on the Sabbath we rejoice in it, knowing that it is not in vain in the Lord.

Six days thou shalt labor, six days are set aside for work, and the creation mandate is: “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, bear rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living, moving creature on earth.” This is the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28. It lays down the duties of fertility, of work, and of dominon. These duties were established before the Fall, they continue after the Fall, but with a serious impediment. Man the sinner cannot keep God’s Laws or discharge His duties. And so, this work is in vain, it is beset with frustration, with all kinds of inner and outer handicaps. But the redeemed man can work, and therefore he can rest. It is only the man who knows how to work, which is the Christian man who can rest because he has the joy of his calling and knows that under God he is accomplishing something in the restoration of God’s order, in the abolition of sin and death from the world, in the restoration of the fullness of health, which is the fullness of salvation. And therefore, knowing that his labor is not in vain in the Lord and that the goal is in time a world in which Christ and His law prevail, and in eternity the new creation, he labors joyfully, and rests truly.

There is, therefore, an inescapable relationship between work and the Sabbath, and when we truly work we bring all things into relationship to God and in dedication to Him, so that nothing can be outside of God, and all things are done unto Him. This means, to use Biblical language, the ‘total circumcision’ of all things. And this brings us to our text, it is one of the Sabbath law. And it declares that when you planted a vineyard or an orchard, the fruit thereof should be counted ‘uncircumcised’ the first three years. The first three years of growth of any vine or tree were a Sabbath.

“…in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal.” iv

The fourth year it belonged to God, it had to be taken to His sanctuary. Or else, if you kept it, you had to redeem it with a fifth part of the value thereof. That is, if you had fruit worth a $100, then you redeemed it for yourself by paying a $120.

“And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God.” v

Now, the commandment also makes clear that the fruit was to be pinched off on those other years. It’s obvious, of course, one of the meanings of this is definitely conservation. The fruit was to be pinched off to drop to the ground and decay, and also that the young tree might put its energy into growth, into maturity, before it began to bear. So that the vine, or the tree, for three years had to grow. It is interesting to note that the old orchards, which were kept in terms of this kind of principle, used to last, here in California, for example, forty and fifty years, and were commercially profitable. Now, of course the vineyards, the Thompson seedless grapes, for example, the second year they are brought into production, they’re harvested; and the trees as quickly as possible, and the result is a very much shorter life for the trees.

So there is definitely and aspect of conservation here, but this clearly is not all, because when we look to very literal word-by-word translations, we find that, it reads:

“…then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised.”

Or:

“…then ye shall ye circumcise the uncircumcision as fruit.”

In other words, “It is uncircumcised, or polluted, unto you,” it is disqualified or unfit to eat, the fruit is to be regarded as unclean, religiously unclean. Now, to understand this law. It means that the trees are a part of a cursed world, they are forbidden. But anything that is uncircumcised belongs to the world of pollution, it is apart from God, and it is to be regarded therefore exactly as the forbidden tree in the garden of Eden. Now, this is a staggering thought, we are not accustomed to taking God’s Law that seriously. We are accustomed to going to the law and picking and choosing and saying: “This we will honor, and this we will not because, in terms of our standards, this is a good practice, and that is not and as long as we are not adulterers or murderers or thieves, we are, in God’s sight, wonderful people.”

But the language in the Hebrew text makes it clear that every fruit tree was to stand unused for three years, even as the tree in the garden of Eden. It was forbidden fruit. And this command has the same implication as the commandment in Genesis. Do we take life on our terms, or God’s? If we take it on our terms, we are saying, “We shall be as God, knowing determining good and evil for ourselves.” And no doubt Adam and Eve, as they took of this one tree, said, “We are obeying God in all else, but we reserve the right were we think it is better for us to do as we deem best. So, we have obeyed God with respect to everything else in the garden, and therefore we consider it our prerogative here, to see and do that which we deem is best.” But the whole point of this law, as with all the law, is that we take life on God’s terms only. We cannot say for example, “I eat good nourishing food, three hundred and sixty-four days in a year, this entitles me on the three hundred and sixty fifth to take a little poison without suffering any damage.”

St. James said, “If the law is broken at one point, it is broken at every point.” The earth is the Lord’s, and it is to be used on His terms and under His law. So that while the note of conservation is important here, even more important is the note of obedience, the fact that God takes priority, that God alone is God.

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;

The world, and they that dwell therein. vi

Including ourselves, and so we, as God’s people, must keep God’s Laws on God’s terms. Thus, we see that the Sabbath was not kept merely by inactivity, not in the in the Pharisaic manner by refusing to eat eggs that a hen had labored over on the previous Sabbath, but the Sabbath is kept by purposed law-abiding work, work unto the Lord, work which ends in a rest in which we know our labor is not in vain in the Lord. Work and activity which proceeds on the basis that that which God does not allow us is forbidden fruit to us. But even as the forbidden tree in the garden of Eden represented a principle of law, of obedience, so the least of God’s commandments represents a fundamental principle unto us.

On the Sabbath, therefore, a man who has labored unto the Lord, rejoices unto the Lord. He rests in His labors, knowing that they are not in vain in the Lord. Like Adam, he can truly rest when he abides by God’s Law. When what God commands is obeyed, and what God forbids is forbidden fruit to him. Man exercises dominion under God, but he recognizes that God sets the boundaries on that dominion. Six days thou shalt labor unto the Lord, and on the seventh thou shalt rest unto the Lord.

Let us pray.

* * *

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee for thy Word, and we thank thee that thou hast given us work to do in the restoration of the earth. And we thank thee, our Father, that thou hast given us a confident rest, week by week, and the blessed knowledge that our labor is not in vain indeed, that thou dost make all things work together under good for them that love thee, for them who are the called according to thy purpose. We thank thee, our Father, for the joy of work and rest in thee. Make us ever mindful, our Father, how great thou art, and ever joyful in thy praise. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] When does the new creation begin? Did it begin with the resurrection of Christ? vii

[Rushdoony] No, the new creation begins in Jesus Christ. We keep the seventh day, but it doesn’t say which seventh day. In other words, as we saw last week, or the week before, the seventh day means one in seven, the seventh after six days of work. And we commemorate the first day of the week as our seventh day because it is the day of Christ resurrection and the beginning of the new creation, the victory over sin and death, but the Hebrew Sabbath, you remember as we saw, is not Saturday. The Hebrew Sabbath fell on any day of the week, and it varied regularly, it was by the date of the month, not by the day of the week.

Another question? Yes?

[Audience member] What of the farmer who cannot cease from his activities totally any day of the week? viii

[Rushdoony] Well, the rest he is called upon to take is a rest in the Lord, not in the earth, and there is a difference. Now, a work of necessity in the field, if a farmer has, say, raisins on the ground and it’s raining, you go out there to save them.

Yes?

[Audience member] What of those who say that my worship is gardening, for example?

[Rushdoony] There is a difference between say, working in the garden, and worshipping God, resting in God. How many men who go out and work on the garden all day on Sunday think about the garden of Eden and this being symbolic of Eden, or think about the Bible? In other words, usually that excuse is offered by people who have no desire to show any interest in God.

I’ve heard this from many people this argument, and I’ve found that those who use it have no respect for God, they don’t believe in Him, they never read the Bible, they never show their face near a good church or any kind of church, in other words they never think about God until somebody in their family tells them “Why are you working on Sunday, why don’t you go to church?” Well, then suddenly they’re doing it unto the Lord. It never occurred to them to give a nickel or a penny to the Lord the rest of their lives but if they need an excuse then suddenly God is dragged in. I think their work in the garden would be a lot better in God’s sight if they didn’t try to justify it. It’s when they try to make an excuse that somehow it’s religious, that it really stinks as far as I’m concerned.

[Audience member] But a man can really enjoy gardening! ix

[Rushdoony] Well, look, a man can enjoy sitting in a bar too, enjoying isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of proving that is something is good. I’m not interested in getting into the argument on specifics; my point is these people who offer these things and say, “This is my rest,” are not interested in God, they are interested in recreation and themselves. So, to try and drag God into justification of that and offer what they are doing to substitute is all wrong in my sight. Because, first of all, to drag God into it to me is blasphemy, because they’re not interested in Him. Let them go out and work in the garden, I’m not stopping them! Let them go and play golf, let them do what they want, but keep God out of it! That is the sin, when they try to say somehow, “This squares with God,” then they’re the worst Pharisees under the sun. It’s the worst kind of hypocrisy. But if they leave God out of it, let them go their way, I’m not stopping them. But, I say, if you are going to bring God into it, then you’ve got to put God first, not my recreation, and my tastes, and my pleasures, and my this and that. That is the evil, and it is an evil, it’s a fearful evil. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” And I’ve never found anybody who used those arguments who wasn’t taking God’s name in vain, they just wanted to have their cake and eat it too. God didn’t mean a thing to them until somehow they thought, “Maybe this doesn’t square with God.” In their sight, they’re the salt of the earth, so they’re going to cloak everything with the name of God.

Yes?

[Audience member] How can we define a; ‘work of necessity?’x

[Rushdoony] The work of necessity, now we can’t go into specifying here, works of necessity and works of mercy are clearly permitted, clearly. And it’s up to us to determine what is a work of necessity.

[Audience member] Some might consider that a bit too lax. xi

[Rushdoony] No, I’m not interested because some people might consider my views lax and others might consider them too free, but to get into the specifics is to try to determine things Scripture does not lay down, we’ve got to judge for ourselves here. But we’ve got to be sure that we are truly keeping a Sabbath rest, and that we are keeping the day holy unto the Lord. And I feel many people go overboard in both directions here. But since Scripture doesn’t specify, I don’t feel I have the right to, and this is where you, under your own conscience, have to do what you feel you can do. But be sure you are doing it in terms of a basically Christian perspective

Yes?

[Audience member] Well, but what is the difference between rest and inactivity? xii

[Rushdoony] Yes well inactivity and rest are two different things. When you get legalistic like this you can push it to all kinds of ridiculous extremes, and this is what the Pharisees did. For example, the Pharisees would never have dreamed of picking up a needle on the Sabbath, but getting drunk on Sabbath, that was not work. So, the Sabbath in, our Lord’s day, was a time we know from the records was quite a bit of drunkenness and it was entirely legal. They couldn’t walk more than so many yards, but they could get drunk. Now, you see, if you try to push things to specifics, you end up in absurdity. You have to move in terms of the spirit of the thing so that you get into trouble when you try to put it down in terms of specifics.

Yes?

[Audience member]

[Rushdoony] Well, I would say if a man feels, under good conscience, that he can, that’s up to him. There’s nothing under which I can strictly, or anyone, can strictly forbid him. But I do think that rest is a good idea, it’s a God-given mandate, and rest is something we do need. The body recuperates under rest. So that while his property may not look quite as good if he spends the afternoon working, his body is going to be the worse for it. He needs rest. There’s a lot a person can do to relax and enjoy things because the body needs the recuperation of rest. And in this day and age, I think, especially, the wear and tear on men is such that men ought to be leaning over backwards to rest. And you realize that last year there were, in the United States, five hundred thousand heart attacks, and this is the stress and tension factor, you know that man needs rest.

Yes?

[Audience member] It’s strange that men are working less than ever before and yet suffering exponentially more stress. xiii

[Rushdoony] An odd fact, yes, is that in this day of the forty-hour week men are working harder and showing more symptoms of overwork than ever before. And I do feel one central reason for this is the lack of rest, of real rest. So that, while I definitely feel that the old-fashioned Sabbath was carried to the point of absurdity, and I remember as a boy how extremely strict it was, and how many things you didn’t dream of doing on the Sabbath, and I do believe it was carried to the point of absurdity, it really was very often. Nonetheless, people were not under the stress and strain in those days because they did know how to rest. And while sometimes the kids were shushed too much into inaction and inactivity on the Sabbath, it did make for kids who were basically more disciplined and not the nervous fidgety kids that you have today who can’t sit still five minutes. So apparently it did have, in spite of its absurdities, superiority to the modern endless activity type of living.

Well, there are a few things I’d like to share with you in a different area now, our time is growing to a close. This I thought in the paper last week, little item from Chester, England, was an interesting sign of the times.

“Over his protest the local planning authority refused to let David White name his new restaurant after himself, too racial it ruled.”

And then this little item from England in the last weeks parade. This article interviews a great many taxicab drivers as though they are great philosophers and this one, John Hardy in England, says that, well, of his passengers.

“I get ‘em all, right in this big black cab, they’re all the same to me. No man’s any better than any other just because he’s got a Duke in front of his name or some chimney tower on his face. They’re the same when they come into this world, and went they go out of it. Its only in the middle years that we pretend they’re any different”

Now, can you imagine any greater asininity then that? And yet this is presented as though it’s a bit of real philosophy from a cab driver. They’re all the same when they come into the world, and when they go out of it. All right so they’re all dead! Or they’re all newly crying babies, but isn’t life the difference? In death there are no differences, but what makes life, life, is the differences. One is good, and one is evil, and when you reduce it to that, you are reducing it to tyranny, to slavery, to death, ultimately. And this is the whole temper of democracy, of equalitarianism, the reduction of everything to death.

This from Friday’s paper I thought was a very interesting item, a fashion note you might say.

“You can hardly buy a flea collar, a flea collar that is, for your dog in Hollywood anymore. The hippies have found out the connection between long hair and fleas, and are grabbing them up for themselves, that’s a huge market on Highland, they even have to keep the collars behind the counters because the hippies have been shoplifting them.”

If your dog has a flea collar on her or him, watch the dog when he’s outside, it might get its collar shop lifted or stolen.

Strom Thurmond’s report to the people for October the seventh 1968 I think was excellent, and while there isn’t time to go through all of it, he does call attention to the real issues in Czechoslovakia. And he says:

“The Soviet plans direct intervention into the affairs of West Germany. Depending on the reaction and attitude of the United States, the Soviet plans quite possibly include the use of military force against West German territory. The real meaning of Czechoslovakia is becoming clearer every day. Although the Soviets had real grievances against the Czech Communists rulers, the force used to crush the Czechoslovakian attempt to weaken party rule was far out of proportion to that required. At least 30 divisions poured into little Czechoslovakia. Six divisions taken from East Germany were replaced with seven divisions of fresh troops in East Germany. The Warsaw Pact forces, overwhelmingly Soviet, now number over one million men stationed in territory adjacent to West Germany armed with the latest and most modern equipment including missiles and tactical nuclear weapon. The skillful and dramatic operation in Czechoslovakia could easily be the dress-rehearsal for an invasion of West Germany. The picture darkens when recent Soviet declarations are examined. In the Soviet mind, the Czech situation and the German situation are closely linked…”

But the point is of course today the one nation that is really healthy economically is West Germany. And West Germany is the only nation that has an ax to grind where the Soviet Union is concerned because millions upon millions of Germans are in slavery in East Germany. Some of them handed over to Poland, some to Czechoslovakia. The one country that really has an ax to grind where the Soviet Union is concerned, I repeat, is West Germany. It has to be, by nature, anti-Communist. If you are West German and you have relatives across the border suffering, or relatives who had been sent to the slave camps and killed off there, you would be anti-communist.

And that’s why any government that does not keep a hard policy here, even though they are walking a tightrope with us and with Britain and Soviet Union, doesn’t last long in West Germany. The governments play ball, by and large, with us because we pressure them, and the French pressure them, and the British, none of us are anti-Soviet. But the people are, and hence the one nation that is the target of Communist hostility is West Germany.

They didn’t need to pour that many troops into little Czechoslovakia. There was no likelihood of resistance. And the whole thing is a show, the purpose of which is to make Czechoslovakia the issue, while West Germany is rendered all the more vulnerable. And this is the real issue. What will happen here, in part, will depend on the election in this country and a number of other factors but it is a move that is designed to break West Germany, ultimately. And so, it has very, very serious consequences as Strom Thurmond makes clear. The best course, of course, for us to be would to take our hands off West Germany and tell them, “Go ahead and arm yourself. We’re not going to interfere, in fact we’ll help you. We’ll stay out this time, but you take care of yourself.” The fact that West Germany now has the industrial capacity to put out a bomb superior to the “H-bomb” is a factor here also. So, this is, as Strom Thurmond points out, the real issue in Europe today. And he’s the only one reporting it.

Well with that we are adjourned.

i. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), 1 Co 15:58.

ii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ro 8:28.

iii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ro 8:28.

iv. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Le 19:24.

v. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Le 19:25.

vi. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ps 24:1.

vii. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.

viii. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.

ix. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.

x. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.

xi. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.

xii. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.

xiii. Question added/modified for the sake of clarity and brevity.