Oh shine upon the darkness, a word of truth shine bright. Oh, by with me forever, your law is mighty light. Remember this Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God, and it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave, or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. That was Exodus 20 verses 8 through 11, and this is the Anumani, where we seek to help the good man, leave an inheritance to his children's children. This is Jeremy, the host of the Anumani. This week we are continuing on in the part of the 10 Commandments series on the fourth Commandment. Before we go further, I want to say a couple of things. One, actually three things. One, if you like this episode, please share it with your friends, subscribe to the Anumani and your favorite podcast catcher, leave a rating or review, and if that catcher allows for things like that. Second, follow my wife, Rose Collins writes on Facebook and X, our Collins writes. I believe is the handle for both of them. There is a passage I had not read in a while, and so it did not come to mind when working on the last episode. But I read it in the weeks since that episode was released, and I wish I had mentioned it in that episode because it is helpful on the topic of works of necessity and works of mercy. And that passage, it is John 7, 22 to 23, where Jesus points out that if a newborn boy's eighth day falls on the Sabbath day, then they will do the work of circumcision on the Sabbath. But they, the Pharisees got mad at Jesus when he healed on the Sabbath. The Jewish leaders rightly recognize the work of necessity of obeying God's laws and circumcision, even on the Sabbath, but did not extend that to the work of mercy of Jesus healing on the Sabbath or the work of necessity of plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath while walking through a grain field. I have added a note about this in the description of the last episode. So the fourth commandment, once again reading a little bit from Ketra's Catechism before we dive in, question 64, what is required in the fourth commandment, answer the fourth commandment requires the keeping holy to God, such set times as he has appointed in his word, expressly one whole day and seven to be a holy Sabbath to himself. Question 68, what are the reasons annex to the fourth commandment answer the reasons annex to the fourth commandment are God's allowing us six days of the week for our own employment, his challenging a special propiety on the seventh, his own example and his blessing the Sabbath day. In the last episode on the fourth commandment, we spent the majority of the time talking about works of necessity and works of mercy, the two primary categories of exceptions where it is okay to work on the weekly Sabbath day. In this episode, we will cover some more aspects of that once a week Sabbath and then look at land Sabbaths. For those other aspects, I said I'd address first the parts related to the once a week Sabbath. I planned to first address the implications of work in the fourth commandment, how that ties into laziness, implications of the fourth commandment on the debate over creation in Genesis 1 to 2, and the day of the week for the Sabbath in both the Old Testament and now. It is a lot to cover in one episode, but honestly, I wanted to cover even more. I reduced what I am covering in this episode from the original plan as I got near the end of preparing for it because it became so much information. I will see if I can still finish the fourth commandment with only one more episode after this one like I planned, but it may take two more. I love having more information about the fourth commandment, but I do have six others to cover still, and it only monthly episodes that takes a while when I do this many episodes on one commandment. And I'm doing this many episodes in the fourth commandment, along with what I spend on the eighth. First, let's look at the importance of work for the other six days in the Sabbath. The lazy idle man says that he obeys the fourth commandment very well, but I tell him that by treating all seven days as a day of rest, he violates it because it says six days you shall labor and do all your work. A further the idea behind the five day work week is that if you have a man work for you six days, he is hardly different than a slave because he works for you every day, but the Sabbath. But if he has one day a week to himself, then he can attend to what he needs to attend to and thus be a free man, even while employed by you, thus differentiating the employee from the slave. Even if that is an exaggeration and not completely true, it still stands as a valid point and principle. So on that note, with the five day work week that many people are on now, what do you do with your Saturday, with your other day off besides the Sabbath? Do you use to get things done around the house that you did not have time for earlier in the week because of your job, like mowing the grass weed eating or weed whacking. If you prefer that terminology, maybe even landscaping or pressure washing the driveway when those needs arise, cleaning the house, organizing things, maybe even shampooing the carpet when that need arises. Is there something you are trying to teach your children that you don't have time for during the week, so you do it on Saturdays. Do you have a side hustle that you work on to make some extra money? Do you try to get a six day in at work when you can to get some extra overtime and some extra money? All that to say, and that list is by no means exhaustive with just some general ideas. If you get two days off work each week, do you use one of them to be productive and get things accomplished? Maybe instead you respond, I'm so sabbiterian that I take two days off. Though you are not actually properly following the Sabbath because it prescribes six days of work and one day of rest. Who are you to tell God that for you it is five days of work and two days of rest rather than what God universally prescribed and prescribes for all humans? I use the past and present tense there because of the ancient and continuing nature of it. So if you get two days of work off each week, use one of them for most people's Saturday with the common Monday to Friday jobs, to be productive in other ways rather than to be slothful and take another day outside of the Sabbath to be a second day of rest each week. The point with all of that is that part of the fourth commandment is the command to work to be productive in God glorifying ways the other six days of the week. Yes, there are times for holidays and celebrations. In fact, God commanded Israel to take time off for those things with the Old Testament feast days that he instituted. But the general principle is to work six days and then rest for the Sabbath. On that note, rest in your rights. The Sabbath presupposes work, work fulfilling God's creation mandate and performed under God's law and the Sabbath is the joyful rest from the exercises of this godly dominion. As I note, as a qualifier and sane, all of that, I am not talking about when you have a really crazy week where you practically killed yourself for four or five days straight and it took the remaining two or three days of the week to rest. Your body needs to recover after pushing itself so hard or you will injure yourself. I'm not even talking about the guy whose week looks like what I just described every single week because that is how his vocation is. I'm talking about the guy who is doing this because he is being lazy. Use your time well, work six days, get some over time, start a side hustle, mill your grass fixer upgrade something on the house or car. Study how to do that thing you've been wanting to learn, play with your kids, take them to the park, do something that is not being idle with your sixth day of work each week. Much of this stuff I just described can still be done by the guy who practically killed himself all week and needs to slow down over the weekend so his body can recover. I've had weeks where I broke 60 hours by the end of the day on Friday and still had a productive Saturday. Sometimes by working even more hours and cashing in on overtime. And that is nothing compared to the hours I worked in my teens through early 20s when I worked at a church camp in the summer. I barely did anything besides work, sleep and go to church. Sometimes I even found time to eat in that busy schedule. Though I could always find a way to have enough time to have fun past curfew, even if it took away from what was already too little sleep. Just in case anyone was wondering, that fun there was not anything bad. It often involved water balloon fights, toy bow and arrows that are designed for children and can actually hurt when a teenager uses them. I got waltz from them a few times and stuff like that. And since me and my friends were their best workers when we did eventually get caught, we were basically told just not to do anything that would bother campers. And then if we stay up too late and it affects our work as a result, then we need to stop. And that was coming from a supervisor who played favorites with other people sometimes to our harm. So that shows just how vital my friends and I were because of all the work we did. And that not eating part a moment ago was a joke, but for real, I would be so busy working that I sometimes skip meals occasionally dinner would be my first meal of the day because I'd been working non stops and shortly before breakfast or what was breakfast for everyone else. There's a one summer there I lost 10 pounds and I am skinny saying that. I'm over six foot tall and briefly broke into the one six is my freshman year in college lost that way that summer at the camp and I've been in the 140s or 150s ever since. Another point I want to make about the other six days as you mentioned that taking too much time for rest is often a sign of laziness and scripture speaks harshly of laziness. To show that I am going to read some verses from Proverbs 26 on the fool yes I said on the fool not on the sluggard and you will see why in a moment. Proverbs 26 verses 6 through 11 he cuts off his own feet and drinks violence who sends words by the hand of a fool like the legs which hang limp on the lame so is a proverb in the mouth of fools. Like one who binds a stone in a sling so as he who gives glory to a fool like a thorn which goes up into the hand of a drunkard so as a proverb in the mouth of fools. Like an archer who owns everyone so as he who hires a fool or who hires those who pass by like a dog that returns to its mom it is a fool who repeats his folly then verse 12. Do you see a man wise in his own eyes there is more hope for a fool than for him. But now let's look at Proverbs 6 sorry not Proverbs 16 same chapter Proverbs verse 16 which reads the sluggard is wiser in his own eyes then seven men who can respond with a discrete answer. If you put those last two verses together then easy that Solomon under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and compiled by the men of Hezekiah said that laziness or being a sluggard is worse than being a fool. There is more hope for a fool than a sluggard because the sluggard is wise in his own eyes and there is more hope for a fool than for one who is wise in his own eyes. For all the negative things the book of Proverbs has to say about fools saying that sluggards are worse than fools is really being harsh on sluggards on lazy men. Moving from what the fourth commandment implies about work to what it implies about Genesis 1 I want to look at verse 11. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. I don't know how you read that and come away with some sort of theistic evolution where each of those days was like a few million years because of second Peter 3.8 or some of the other various longer or theistic evolutionary theories like the gap theory. I don't know how someone holds theistic evolution and reads Romans 5. Our seven day week is not based on any sort of astronomical thing like the day based on the earth's rotation or the year based on the earth's revolutions around the sun. The seven day week is based on Genesis and that is why some of those part of the French Revolution wanted to switch to a 10 day week but as my wife likes to say even though horses could not handle it. Our week is based on the account of creation and Genesis and our pattern of working six days and resting one is based on God's creating for six days and then resting on the seventh. By the way, God is omnipotent and did not need to rest. He did it to set this pattern for us to follow. In other words, he did it for us, not for himself. And those days in Genesis clearly say and there was evening and there was morning one day and there was evening and there was morning a second day and there was evening and there was morning a third day. So how can it be talking about periods of time longer than our days today each with an evening and a morning, especially when X's 20 roots the Sabbath in that creation week. Talking about this aspect of the fourth commandment often makes me think of this answer than Genesis cartoon panel I saw probably over 10 years ago now. We're asked if evolution and or millions of years fits into the Bible and the answer was that yes it does but scissors are required parts of the Bible were cut out and some of those scraps had burst references on them with one of them being Exodus chapter 20 verse 11. Moving from that onto the day of the week for the Sabbath let's first talk about the day of the week for the Old Testament Sabbath. God made the world in six days so God created the world on Sunday through Friday and then he rest on Saturday setting the pattern of one day of rest for us. That is why we generally regard Saturday as the Sabbath in the Old Testament but there are some who argue for a revolving Sabbath in the Old Testament. This would mean that the Sabbath was on set days of the calendar and therefore each year the Sabbath was on a different day of the week as those calendar dates would each year fall on a different day. Like how Christmas is on a different day each year but is always December 25th. I've looked into some of the arguments and people who argue for this position do make some thought out arguments for it. This is no quick jumping the gun position from shallow thinkers. However, I have not studied the issue in enough detail to confidently say those matter correct or to confidently say that they are wrong. I will say that I want to be careful with a view that appears to be novel in church history and is held to by tiny minority believers though granted only tiny minority believers have studied the issue in much detail. Now whereas the Sabbath was on the seventh day in the Old Testament it is now on the quote unquote eighth day or first day of the week. Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday on the first day of the week. This changed the day we call the Sabbath so that instead of being Saturday like in the Old Testament or revolving each year with specific calendar days if you hold that view. The Sabbath is now Sunday. There's a theological implication we should take note of with this change from the last day of the week to the first. Old Testament Jews looked forward to the Sabbath as they worked the first six days of the week. They looked forward to their coming rest as they were. Christians on the other hand begin the week with our rest and then work for six days after that rest. We begin with our rest just like how we begin everything with our rest in Christ. And from that rest we work the rest of the week. It might sound small and insignificant but those implications are a powerful and meaningful difference and a blessing of living after the cross and set it before the cross like the Old Testament Saints. Another thing to talk about with changes of the Sabbath from the Old Testament to the New Testament is what do we consider the beginning and the end of the Sabbath. Are we going to be like Old Testament Jews who consider the day from sunset to sunset or roughly 6 p.m. 1 day to 6 p.m. the next day? Or are we going to go with how people today consider things and consider the Sabbath as from midnight to midnight or midnight to 11.59 if you want to get really technical. My opinion on it is to go with whatever the prevailing culture is. I don't think this is an issue and definitely not an issue to be divided over. I live in 21st century America where we consider our days from midnight to midnight. So I consider midnight to midnight on Sunday the Sabbath. If someone feels convicted that it must be 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. or even closer at sunset to sunset to be more in keeping with Old Testament Sabbath parameters. I don't fault them on it as long as they don't become a tyrannical weaker brother calling others and sin because they don't hold the same views. I just consider this a conscience issue and we'll leave it at that. Hey, maybe even different people with different views on this subject couldn't help a future. Theonymous society fill in the gaps of necessary occupations on Sunday. As those with a midnight to midnight view can cover 6 p.m. to midnight Saturday evening and those with a 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. you can cover 6 p.m. to midnight Sunday evening. And then there are only 18 hours that have to be split up among different staff as they work in necessity. Next I want to talk about the Sabbath of land. There was a one year land Sabbath every 7 years. Let's read some passages on this topic. First, Exodus chapter 23 verses 10 to 11. Now you shall sow your land for 6 years and gather in its produce. But on the 7th year you shall let it rest and lie fallow so that the needy of your people may eat. And whatever they leave the beast of the field may eat. Thus you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. Then we have Leviticus 25 verses 1 to 7 then dropping to 20 to 22. Yahweh then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai saying, Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land which I am giving to you, then the land shall have a Sabbath to Yahweh. 6 years you shall sow your field and 6 years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its produce. But during the 7th year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to Yahweh. You shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. You grow as its own accord from your harvest, you shall not reap. And your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather. The land shall have a sabbatical year. And the Sabbath produce of the land shall be for food, for you and your male and female slaves and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who sowed your in with you. Even your cattle and your beasts that are in your land shall have all its produce to eat. But if you say, what are we going to eat on the 7th year if we do not sow or gather in our produce, then I will command my blessing for you in the 6th year that it will bring forth the produce for three years, so that you shall sow the 8th year and eat all things from that produce, eating the old until the 9th year when its produce comes in. Unfortunately, as Rushduni notes, these laws should be noted, were not too well observed in much of Israel's history. Between the Exodus and the Babylonian captivity, it was neglected 70 times, and had 70 years of captivity were imposed to give the land rest, Signacronico's 3621. This means that more than half the time, the law was not observed. But the Old Testament Jews did eventually get better at obeying this command. We know from Tacitus that the land Sabbath laws were obeyed better after the Babylonian captivity than they had been before the Babylonian captivity. This is why Rushduni writes that Julius Caesar remitted Jewish taxes in the 7th year and recognition of their custom. That's from Josephus Antiquity's Jews die K, volume 14, 10 and 6. People complain about some of the Old Testament names, but I'll take those any day over when I was just trying to read there. Let's look at some scripture relevant to this, the land Sabbath, and the Babylonian exile. First, let's look at Leviticus 26 verses 33 to 35, then dropping down to verse 43. You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste. Then the land will make up for its Sabbaths all the days of the desolation and you will be in your enemy's land. Then the land will rest and make up for its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it will observe the rest which should not observe on your Sabbath while you are living on it. Dropping down that last verse for the land will be forsaken by them and will make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They meanwhile will be making up for their iniquity because they rejected my judgment and their soul loathed my statutes. Let's also look at 2 Chronicles 36 verses 20 to 21 which read, and those who had escaped from this sword he took away into ex out of Babylon and they were slaves to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia. To fulfill the word of Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had made up for its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath until 70 years were fulfilled. There were other reasons for the exile beyond just the refusal to obey land Sabbath laws but as the text we just read stated they were a part of it. One pastor that talks about the exile as punishment on Israel but does not mention land Sabbaths as 2 Kings 23 verses 2627 which read, however Yahweh did not turn from his great burning anger, his anger which burned against Judah because of all the provocations with which Menasa had provoked him to anger. And Yahweh said, I will remove Judah also for my presence as I have removed Israel and I will reject Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen and the house of which I said my name shall be there. So Israel had committed a myriad of sins that led to the exile, some related to land Sabbaths, some not and thus rushed any rights. When God ordained that Israel and Judah go into captivity it was not only to punish the people but to restore the land. Not only was there the land Sabbath on the land every 7 years but after the 7th one there would be a second one immediately following it. In other words there would be a 2 year land Sabbath every 50 years or twice a century. You would have the one every 7 years for 7 of those periods or 49 years and then you would have one the 50th year which would mean 2 in a row since it would follow the one the year before and the 49th year. Leviticus 25 verses 8 to 12 addresses this and it reads, you are also to count off 7 Sabbaths of years for yourself, 7 times 7 years so that you have the time of the 7 Sabbaths of years, namely 49 years. You shall then sound a ram's horn abroad on the 10th day of the 7th month, on the day of atoma you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus set apart as holy the 50th year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you and each of you shall return to his own possession of land and each of you shall return to his family. You shall have the 50th year as a Jubilee, you shall not sow, you shall not reap what grows of its own accord and you shall not gather in its untramed minds. For it is a Jubilee and shall be holy to you shall eat its produce out of the field. That passage talked about the Jubilee year and while I'm not going more into that in this episode, I did address it and how it relates to student loan forgiveness in an episode from almost 3 and a half years ago, episode 67. The land Sabbath principle ties in well to concepts we today refer to as crop rotation and the discussions on fellow fields, though that word, followed did appear in the text. Let an afarm field go, follow refers to not growing anything on it intentionally for a set period of time, probably one growing season or one year. In order to let the soil regenerate and just grow whatever managed to grow on its own. Crop rotation involves having different sections of your field with a fraction of your total farmable land line, follow any given year. Since crop rotation does get at the spirit of the law and in some parts of the world, the development of crop rotation may have been influenced by the Bible. I could see both sides of an argument where one Christian farmer lets one semif of his fields lie, follow any given year, rotating that fellow field every year. And another wants to be stricter to what the Old Testament Jews did or should have done when they were being unfaithful and plants all of his fields for six years, then none of them in the semif. Also, while a cover crop is technically not follow ground, there are advantages and I would not outright call it a contradiction of this command to do something of that sort. Dr. Grant Woods of Growing Deer, a man I believe is a believer, has developed his Buffalo system or maybe you have heard it called the Bison method. And he has had amazing results at rejuvenating the soil with this system. If the point of the land Sabbath is outside of trusting God, rejuvenating the soil, then a cover crop that prevents erosion and builds organic material as it dies and decomposes into the soil is in keeping with that spirit of this law. Now, this assumes you let that cover crop die and decompose into soil or let your livestock graze on it since the text didn't mention leaving it for the animals, although that minimizes how much decompose into the soil unless you're using their manure for fertilizer and I'm getting into a lot of side tannets there. On that note about land Sabbath rejuvenating or dare I say restoring the soil, that could be a way that the Sabbaths pointed to Jesus. They have to restore the soil and thus pointed to Christ who would do the much greater restoration of restoring all things, far beyond just the single field on one small plot and one part of the planet. And these land Sabbaths, the land was temporarily quote unquote freed from the curse as Mendo plow plant and reap for a year, allowing plants to grow as nature directs. Granted is not 100% the same as weeds, including thistles grow, but no foreshadow is 100% the same or it'd be the thing itself not merely a foreshadow. As a positive note with those weeds though, one thing I've learned working in that area of more natural landscaping and soil management is that weeds are usually a sign of poor soil. But more than that, many of them can actually help increase soil quality by bringing nutrients deeper down to the surface with their roots, then dying in those nutrients going to the soil as they decay. As an example, white clover is often a sign of poor nitrogen in your soil, but not only is that weed a sign of poor soil nitrogen, it also over time can actually increase your soil nitrogen. On the note of nitrogen there, if you really want to help your lawn get better nitrogen, well it's hard to give blanket advice across the whole country because of different climates and soil types and soil needs. The best advice I could give that would generally cover as many people as possible as to increase organic matter, increase humics, increase beneficial bacteria, get away from nitrate nitrogen and use ammonium nitrogen or better yet amino acid nitrogen and be patient as things take time. Now the best is to do a soil test and talk to a guy local to you who focuses more on organic natural biological approaches because he will know your area better and can tailor things to your soil type and soil test results. But what I just said at appropriate levels for each item is what I would do to my lawn if I wanted it looking the best it could. And nothing else, unless you have some crazy HOA that requires you bag your grass clippings. As long as you are mowing your lawn often enough that the grass clippings won't smother the grass letting your lawn mowers spit them back out instead of bagging them is free nitrogen for your soil. Bringing this back to the land Sabbaths after the detour, Rush Junior writes, God's work of restoration is from the ground up and his Sabbath must therefore apply to the soil also. Ignoring the land Sabbaths brings death as the ground loses fertility sometimes the point of becoming a desert. Rush Junior writes, the earth clearly is renewed by rest or it is exploited ruthlessly and finally turned into a desert. Many once populous areas are today desert as witness Babylon and the Sahara. Part of being postmills I believe we can and will restore deserts. I actually have some ideas on that that I won't get into in this episode but I will say that I'm a signatory on a business that could be a part of this down the road. I was there when the prototype machine was tested in it despite some kings proved that the system works and can work a lot better with some alterations of future models. So when I have time we can build the next model, have it be making us money and then eventually we could start a nonprofit that legally reduces the tax burden of the business while doing things like restoring deserts and cleaning waterways. We are getting long now so I'm going to leave this episode with the connection point between where I'm finishing this episode and where I plan to pick up the next one as a bit of a teaser for the next episode. If it's obeying the land Sabbaths can literally bring death. How serious should we be about obeying its laws on humans and animals? Not allowing animals to rest such as with our modern horrible conditions for animals has degraded food quality and nutrient density which is not only extremely poor stewardship and dominion but also harms humans as we eat that lower quality food. This is something I'm opinionated about as a Joel Solitant fan that I've mentioned before at least in the episode with Trevor from the Kings Ridge Outerberries if not in other episodes too. But this does not just stop with animals and maybe a few down the line impacts on humans. If violating land Sabbaths can bring death then how much more can violating principles of Sabbath rest wreak havoc and death on humans which is where I plan to pick up the next episode. That was this month's episode of Theonimoney as we go I want to remind everyone the law of the Lord is perfect sure right pure clean and true. So go apply that law and light of the gospel of Christ the Tony and death and resurrection to every area of life. Grace and peace friends. You