Evasive. My objection to this statement has been clear for several posts now. You Sabbatarians claim to take the commandment literally but in fact you don't. Go back and read Genesis 1. How many days did God work? Five? Or Six?
You're certainly not taking it literally by working only five days a week.
Here's what legalists fail to understand. Written law can only express micro-snapshots of God's specific will. Why so? Because circumstances, governments, nations,languages, customs, cultures, etc are constantly changing. That's why we need the Voice. When looking at the Bible, the only thing we can be fairly certain of is that all His commands spell love. You cannot ascertain the specifics of His will without the Voice. You can HOPE to get a general idea of His will from the written Word - but that (exegetical) process is NOT very reliable. It's better than nothing, if you don't hear His voice clearly (most of us are not yet prophets so we don't hear much that is clear).
Maybe I can shed a little light here. How were the 10 commandments originally delivered to Israel? On stone tablets? Wrong. The Voice SPOKE the words to all Israel (Ex 20). The admonition, "Obey my law" is rarely found in the OT - it is almost always "Obey my voice", about 50 times. The Hebrew word for voice is qowl, it occurs 500 times in the OT, always in sonic contexts. And the Hebrew word for "obey" actually means to hearken unto a voice.
You have NO OBLIGATION to a bunch of written laws. Your ONLY obligation is to the voice, actually the voice of conscience (even the divine Voice speaks through the voice of conscience - see my initial post on this thread). That is what Paul was trying to tell the Galatians. By returning to the rule of written law, they had once again enslaved themselves under a yoke of bondage - a bunch of burdensome regulations that were not even necessary for pleasing God.
Whether or not Jesus kept the sabbath as religiously as you think is not worth debating. What IS clear is that He obeyed His father's voice instead of blindly and ritualistically observing a bunch of laws/ceremonies.
Gods 4th commandment taken from Exodus 20:8-11
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 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. 11 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.
It's says we should do all our labor/work in six days, that could be working a job, working around the house, working out, running errands, how we use that time to work is our choice, but very clearly God said to "Remember" the Sabbath day, keep Holy the Sabbath day and the Lord Blessed the Sabbath day. Just like He did from creation.
Genesis 2:3 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. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
If you think Sabbath is only for the Jews/Israel Please read these verses:
Isaiah 66:23
And it shall come to pass
That from one New Moon to another, And from one Sabbath to another,
All flesh shall come to worship before Me,” says the Lord.
Notice is doesn't say only Jews, it says
all. That is everyone. The sabbath is clearly defined in the commandments as the seventh-day God's Holy day.
In the forth commandment it says:
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 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. 11 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.
That's everyone.
Mark 2:27 27 And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for
man, and not man for the Sabbath.
Jesus again said for
man (everyone) He doesn't say Jews.
The commandments were written with the finger of God:
Exodus 31:18 And when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
These commandments are different than the laws spoken to Moses that Moses wrote in a book. The distinction is clearly made in the 10 commandments that God refers to His commandments as My commandments as shown in the Lord's 2nd commandment
Exodus 20:4-6 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness
of anything that
is in heaven above, or that
is in the earth beneath, or that
is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God,
am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth
generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands,
to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Also note, who does God show mercy to:
6 but showing mercy to thousands,
to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Similar to many passages in the Bible including the ones in Revelations
Revelations 14:12 12 Here is the patience of the saints; here
are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.
Revelations 22:14-15 Blessed
are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. 15 But outside
are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.
Here is a good example of Moses law
1 Corinthians 9:9
9 For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it oxen God is concerned about?
There is nothing in the 10 commandments about muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.
I hope these scriptures help. God bless.