When I was barely a teenager, the church I attended (the Worldwide Church of God) began to attack the Sabbath as bondage and slavery, and that obedience to God’s law was a dreadful burden instead of liberty. And yet even among those who keep the Sabbath, the Sabbath’s relationship with godly liberty is not something that is often preached or written about, or seemingly well understood. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to at least sketch the outlines of the relationship between the Sabbath and liberty within the Bible. This may at some later time become a longer study, but this present note is merely a sketch or outline of my thoughts on the matter.

The first direct statement that we have about the relationship between the worship of God and liberty is in Exodus 5:1-21. Here we have Moses and Aaron going to the Pharaoh of Egypt demanding that Israel be set free to go and worship to the Lord. The response of Pharaoh was typical of those who are hostile to God’s ways—he accused the Israelites of being lazy, increased their workload, and then beat them for being so “idle” and lazy that they asked him for days off to worship God. Don’t they know that it was their job to slave away (literally) at their jobs 24-7-365? The fact that many companies think that way of their employees now speaks to the evils of a lack of the Sabbath rest in our present world.

The connection between the Sabbath and liberty is further revealed in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15. In both commands the freedom of the Sabbath rest both for Israelites themselves, their whole families (no children slaving away for “lazy” parents, or vice versa), as well as their animals and anyone who is under their economic control (who the Bible terms “servants”). The liberty of the Sabbath is not something to be hoarded, but something that God designed to be shared with everyone. Deuteronomy 5:15 explicitly reminds the Israelites that their ability to keep the Sabbath day is connected to the mighty arm of the Lord in delivering them from slavery. It is a sign that the Israelites are not to treat anyone that way themselves.

What gain did Israel, aside from physical rest, obtain from the command to obey the Sabbath? What gain doe the church have today from that same command, which remains for Christians (see Hebrews 4:9)? An often forgotten but important gain is that of the cultural benefits of leisure. Throughout human history leisure has been the basis of human culture. It is typically only “aristocrats” that have had the chance for leisure, because need and the control of labor by some men over others (whether in slavery or serfdom or restrictive wage requirements) kept some men from having the chance for genuine rest or leisure. Rest allows mankind the opportunity to think, to ponder, and by freeing the mind allows the opportunity for mankind to make plans for the future. By forcing the poorer sort of human beings to slave away for present need, the wicked societies of the world have enslaved them in mind and spirit, preventing them from exercising and honing the freedom of their minds, and it is this freedom that the Sabbath allows to the godly believer.

Let us remember as well that the Sabbath is not merely concerning the weekly Sabbath, but also the annual Holy Days (Leviticus 23) as well as the land Sabbaths where even the land was to enjoy rest every seven years, where slaves were to be freed, and where land was to be restored every jubilee to its original families so that all could have a periodic new start and so that no wealthy elites would become entrenched in society through the possession of land and wealth (see Leviticus 25). All of these aspects of the Sabbath, many of which are largely forgotten, even by those who claim to be believers in the Sabbath, also increase our understanding of the connection between the Sabbath and liberty. The earth is the Lord’s, and we are mere stewards of it. Neither people nor land are there for our exploitation, but rather we are to be good stewards looking towards leaving a legacy for the next generation of godly living. The Sabbath, as a whole set of related doctrines about weekly, annual, and yearly cycles of Sabbaths, reinforces the connection between the deliberate choice not to exploit others (whether land, animals, or humans) and our conscious decision to obey God through keeping his Sabbath holy.

Therefore, seeing the practical benefits of Sabbath obedience for the people of God, and seeing the way it provides liberty not only for ourselves but also to others, and reminds us of our place within God’s universe as the stewards of His creation, let us therefore remember and keep in mind the implications of the Sabbath for the liberty of mankind from the tyranny of want and greed, from the exploitation of employers, and the liberty to plan for the future, a future where mankind is to enjoy an incredible destiny as kings and priests in the family of God. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, and seek that we may hinder no one else’s entrance into that rest.