President Thomas S. Monson has echoed many prophets in teaching that the reason we are commanded to rest from our labors on the Sabbath day is so that the Lord can do His work exclusively on that day. Now, let us ask: What is the Lord's work? We are His work . . . the work of becoming like Him. "For behold, this is my work and my glory---to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man," the Lord says.
A couple of years ago as a family we visited the Church Museum on West Temple Street in Salt Lake City. We were impressed and thrilled with the evidences on display of the pioneer heritage we all cherish and relate to. One of the displays was of a pioneer family keeping the Sabbath day holy, and was centered upon the revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith given by the Lord on 7 August (a Sunday) in 1831. The key verse in that revelation says, "And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day" (D&C 59:9). We discussed this verse some weeks ago in the Sabbathought on lepers and becoming clean from the world.
The display in the Museum showed the last part of this verse as if it were etched on a large stone. But by someone's error it read, " . . . offer up thy sacraments upon thy holy day." We drew the error to the attention of the guides in the Museum who were most gracious, and grateful to have it pointed out.
That this error had gone unnoticed for many years tells us something. It tells us that most of us do not understand nor appreciate the Sabbath day and the purpose for which it was given. We tend to think of it as our day, a day to rest from our labors but to spend in our own way. This despite Isaiah's words to the contrary in Isaiah 58:13--14, where this great prophet taught: "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord . . . ." And other promised blessings follow.
Notice the pronouns "thy" and "my" and the emphasis the Lord gives them for the Sabbath through His prophets. In our modern society we are steeped in self esteem and God's unconditional love for us, as we suppose, and the deep and wonderful blessings of the kingdom go unclaimed. That is why the error in stone was not apparent to anyone, and it is why even "the humble followers of Christ . . . in many instances . . . do err because they are taught by the precepts of men" (2 Nephi 28:14). It is, in many cases of our conduct, as if we had never received the revelations in Isaiah and in section 59 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and elsewhere.
The very next revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants, section 60, says in verse 7, "For I am able to make you holy . . . ." Do you catch this? He is holy (see Leviticus 11:44; 19:2--3; 2 Nephi 9:20, footnote a, LDS Bible Dictionary, pp 703--704)), and He knows how to make us holy, but it is not on our own terms or in our own way or by our own methods. And "making you holy" has a great deal to do with "His holy day". He is a specialist in making His children holy. Consider these wise and profound thoughts: "The sabbath is not an infringement of man's liberty but rather the liberation of man.
"The sabbath asserts the principle of freedom under God, of liberty under law, God's law. It summons man to obedience to the ordinance of rest in order to free man from himself and from his work. The essence of humanism is its belief in the plenary ability of man. Man is able, it is held, to save himself, to guide his own evolution and that of society, to control himself, his world, the weather, and all things else. When man controls and re-orders all things, then man will have re-created the world into a paradise. Whether Marxist, Fabian, or democratic, this is the dream of humanism" (Rousas John Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 129).
I recall hearing in high school, as we studied the French Revolution of 1789, that Robespierre and his cronies changed the order of rest from one day in seven to one day in ten. It didn't work. Much less was accomplished. Production was down. So they changed back.
It was President Ezra Taft Benson who taught that a deep study of the Book of Mormon would expose the false ideas of man that are found in communism, socialism, and humanism (see Alma 30, for instance). We hear echoes of modern society in these wise words from Rushdoony.
The Lord Jesus said (see Mark 2:24--28) "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath," and we tend to use that truth to justify any activity we choose on that holy day. But it is vital to know to whom He was speaking --- the context of His words --- for a text without a context is a pretext. He was speaking to Pharisees, to those who held priesthood and should have known better. The word "saint" comes from the word "sanctify", which means to make holy. We Latter-day Saints can't be like the world.
The final word goes to Elder Bruce R. McConkie: It is in no sense an exaggeration, nor does it overstate the case one whit, to say that those who keep the sabbath day holy according to the revealed pattern obtain the encouragement and faith to keep all the other commandments and will be assured of an inheritance in the celestial kingdom of our God (paraphrase from memory of page 588 of Promised Messiah).
May your thoughts and words and happiness reflect His holy day on this one day in seven.
Steve
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