Is Eating Out on the Sabbath Eating at You?

In our church culture, we've got a number of things that come upon us from time to time. Cyclical in nature. It seems that some discussions are always with us. They've been with us for decades. They run a cycle where it seems that we get into these discussions, debates, controversies. I don't know quite what the word to use. Maybe debate would be a good one. For example, the calendar, the holy calendar, the Jewish calendar that we use to calculate the Holy Days. There are those who say that we should use the Post-Polent Rule. There are those who say we shouldn't use the Post-Polent Rule on the Holy Days. There's a difference. If we use one versus the other, the difference as to the days when the Holy Days would fall could be, in some cases, more than a week different. Some people say that the rules of Post-Polent are man-made. Others say they're God-inspired. We go through that from time to time. We go through this idea about sacred names from time to time, where people think that they need to use the Hebrew name for God and not the words God or Christ or Lord. From time to time, people go through that and have discussions on that. What I want to cover today is something that we tend to have all the time. We have a discussion about whether we should eat out on the Sabbath day. I want to cover that today because there has been some question about that, whether we should eat out on the Sabbath. Both here in Detroit, there have been people who have asked me about it. They could give a message on it here. Also over in Ann Arbor. Now, this is not a great, huge topic, but it's a topic that we want to explore. It's been a long time. It's been a number of years since I've covered this with you. Let's begin by turning over to 1 Corinthians 8. There's a couple of principles on both sides of the issue we want to look at to set the table to get us going here. 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 13.

1 Corinthians 8, verse 13. Therefore, if food makes my brothers stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest they make my brothers stumble. So here we've got a perspective from the point of view of those people who feel that eating out on the Sabbath is okay. If we feel it's okay, and yet we know there's somebody that we're close to, there's somebody, a friend or so, that doesn't feel they should eat out on the Sabbath, well, we want to make sure that we don't always go to them and ask them. We never should go to them and ask them, well, you want to come out and eat with us on the Sabbath. We just shouldn't do that. Shouldn't in any way rub it in or make people feel like, as though, what's wrong with you, why don't you do that? We should love one another. If people have conscience issues about certain things, we allow people to have those issues, and we bid them Godspeed. So that's where we should be coming from. For those of us who go out on the Sabbath and feel there's nothing wrong with us eating on the weekly Sabbath. But let's take a look at it from the other angle. If you are one who feels that it's wrong or you don't feel it's proper to eat out on the Sabbath, let's take a look at a principle from your side of the fence over here in Romans chapter 14. Romans chapter 14 verse 23.

This is something for all of us to keep in mind. Romans 14, 23. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith, for whatever is not from faith is sin. And so we would have some people who have conscience issues, they feel that if they eat out on the weekly Sabbath, they're causing the waiter or the waitress, the cook, the establishment, anybody they come in contact to who works with the establishment to sin.

And they feel very strongly about that. And those of us who feel that it's not an issue should understand some people do have conscience issues with this. But where I like those of you who feel that eating out on the Sabbath is not proper, I would like you to think about something.

Many years ago, before I came into the church, I had conscience issues about a number of things. Conscience is a wonderful thing, but conscience needs to be educated. Years and years ago, back in the 1960s, before I came into our fellowship, I thought it was wrong to play cards. I thought it was wrong to drink alcohol. And I had to realize that my conscience needed to be educated. In terms of alcohol, we see that one of the first miracles, or the first miracle that Christ performed, was turning many gallons of water, many gallons of water, into wine for a wedding.

And this is after the people had run out of wine. It's not like they had no wine to begin with. So Christ, in Paul tells Timothy, drink a little wine for your stomach. So my conscience had to be educated that there was nothing wrong with drink.

And of course, playing cards. We're not talking about cult-type cards. We're talking about decks of 52. We're not talking about tarot cards or anything like that. But I came to realize that my conscience needed to be educated. There was nothing wrong. So if there are those, and I know there are those in the audience who feel maybe we shouldn't eat out on a Sabbath, I would ask that you listen carefully.

And it's not my intent today to try and change anybody's mind. If you feel what you feel, that's fine. But it is my job to let you know what our church teaches. It is my job to give you food for thought. And I do want to give food for thought on this issue. What does the Bible say about eating out on the Sabbath? What does the Bible say about going to a restaurant on a Sabbath? Well, I can summarize that real quickly. The Bible says absolutely nothing about eating in a restaurant on a Sabbath.

Absolutely nothing. So where do we form our opinions? Well, we form our opinions from two sources. Either a direct biblical command in the pages of the Scriptures, or through a biblical example. Now, for those who feel they can't eat out on the Sabbath, there are two major sections of Scripture that they would go to. And we're going to go to both of those today.

We're going to take a look at both of those and analyze those. We're going to ask ourselves a question. Does that section of Scripture say we shouldn't eat out on the Sabbath? We should ask ourselves, and they don't. Those Scriptures do not say that. But are there principles there that say we should not eat out on the Sabbath day? Are we causing somebody to work? And we're going to get into specific answers down the road as we take a look at it.

So the two Scriptures we're going to look at in time will be Nehemiah 13, verses 15-21, and then Amos 8 and verse 5. Now, there are two primary sections of Scriptures that are used, which I just made mention of. But I want you to think about something. And I was rather astounded. Now, what I'm about to give you today, don't feel like you've got to write and write and write. If you go to our members' website, members.ucg.org, you go to our members' website, you click on the Resources tab, there'll be a drop-down list, you'll see Study Papers. You click on Study Papers, and there's a paper here about Principles of Sabbath Observance.

It's all right there. I'm reviewing that study paper for you today. So you don't have to take a lot of notes. You just have to know where to go to look to find this. But I thought it was interesting that there are 116 verses in Old and New Testaments combined, 116, that deal with the Sabbath. I would have thought there'd be a whole lot more than that.

116. And there's only those two sections that deal with buying and selling on the Sabbath. Nehemiah 8, Amos chapter 8. Nehemiah 13 and Amos chapter 8. Now, on the other hand, mankind, the Jews, more specifically the Sanhedrin, had a whole list of things that we should do and not do on the Sabbath.

The Sanhedrin was like the Supreme Court of Israel. They had 39 areas where there were prohibitions against any form of buying, selling, trading, any other kinds of commerce on the Sabbath. Now, we want to follow God. We want to follow Godly principles. We don't want to follow the Sanhedrin. As an example, one of those 39 areas that the Sanhedrin legislated was the fact that they said, you cannot carry anything on the Sabbath.

You couldn't carry a Bible. You couldn't carry a purse. You could not carry a wallet. You could not carry a handkerchief. You could not carry anything. Obviously, that's not something you and I would feel that we are enjoying to do. They felt that the only thing a person could carry was the clothes on their back. So again, we don't want to say, well, if the Sanhedrin said it, if the Jews say it, well, that's got to be the case.

Well, the Jews said an awful lot of things, and one of the things that Christ had to deal with in his ministry was the scribes, the Pharisees, the Jews, who were adding to the law of God improperly.

The Sanhedrin had two basic functions. Number one, they felt that they were the keeper of the oral Torah. They were charged with its interpretation. Secondly, the Sanhedrin felt they had the authority to legislate religious law. And when they felt they had the authority to legislate religious law, that meant that they felt they were reading the Torah, reading the first five books of the Old Testament, and then they would make binding rules, binding rules on them.

And those binding rules had the authority of Scripture, equal with it. Now, does that sound familiar to another major church that you and I are aware of? The Roman Catholic Church feels the same way. That what the Pope says has equal standing with Scripture.

The Jewish Sanhedrin felt the same way. That what we say has equal standing with Scripture. Well, again, let's take a look at Mark 7. What does Christ say about that? I think Christ has a lot to say about this in Mark 7.

Mark 7 and verse 9. In my Bible, this is mostly all lettering. Mark 7 and verse 9. He said that, "...all too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition." Those 39 traditions, those things they said were do's and don'ts. Those things they used to go to Jesus and say, well, you shouldn't be doing that.

You shouldn't be healing on the Sabbath. Well, there's nothing wrong with healing on the Sabbath. But they felt that that was work. Verse 13. "...making the word of God of no effect through your tradition, which you've handed down in many such things you do." So, let's not think that just because the Jews said, this should be done, or that shouldn't be done, that somehow that is manna from heaven. We've got to take each thing individually and see, well, what does God say? Not what does the Sanhedrin say? Not what does the Jews say or the Gentiles?

What does God say on that issue? Now, with that in mind, let's turn to the book of Nehemiah. We've got Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah. What I want to do here is take a look at this first section, which is the big gun. This is the section of Scripture that people will use, whether they know it or not. There's a lot of things that happen in our church culture, where it's just kind of like sacred cows.

People say things, you know, we shouldn't buy and sell on the Sabbath. Therefore, since we shouldn't buy and sell on the Sabbath, we can't go to a restaurant because the restaurant is selling something and we're buying something, therefore, we can't go.

Now, the Bible does talk about buying and selling on the Sabbath, but what are the circumstances? What are the circumstances? What principles do we learn? And it's in this chapter here, Nehemiah chapter 13. I think people at times have really gone far in the field from what the intent was in Nehemiah 13. So what I want to do is read this section of Scripture. I'm going to go back and I'm going to give you background as to what's happening at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Then after I've given the background, we're going to go back to chapter 13 here and tear this apart piecemeal. We're going to take a look at this and see if it has anything to do with eating out in a restaurant, which it does not. It does not. And are there principles in the Nehemiah 13 that show we should not eat out in a restaurant on the Sabbath?

They're not there. So, again, my point today is to give you food for thought, not to convince anybody one way or another. I've got very close friends who don't eat out in the Sabbath. I've got very close friends who do eat out in the Sabbath. Love everybody. It's a matter of personal choice.

But my responsibility as pastor, as the minister, is to make sure you have all the information at your disposal so you can make a choice that you feel is best between you and God. Okay? So, Nehemiah 13. Let's start here in verse 15.

Nehemiah 13. Let's start here in verse 15.

So that no burdens would be brought on the Sabbath day. Now the merchants and the sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice, then I warned them and said to them, Why do you spend the night around the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. And he's not talking about lovingly an anointing them. You know, he's talking about he's going to lay hands on them and they will know the hands have been laid on them to get them out of there. From that time on, they came no more on the Sabbath. Okay. Now, for those who feel they should not eat out on the Sabbath, this is the crux. This is the court. This is where so much of our church culture has said, Well, you know, we're not going to buy and sell. We're not going to exchange money. And it all comes from here. So I want to take a really good look at this. I want you to take a good look at this. And we want to take a look at the ramifications of this as well. Now, let's go back for a moment and take a look at background here. Ezra arrived in Jerusalem from Babylon in 457 B.C. He arrives here. He sees the city is torn up. The temple is in disarray. People of Israel are marrying outside of the boundaries of Israel. They are marrying the people who are not Israelites of God, which God did not want at that time. And he was very upset. He set about to make changes. He was doing this a number of years down the road. A gentleman by the name of Nehemiah sees the same thing. He sees that Ezra is doing as much as Ezra can do, but Ezra needs some help. Ezra needs some backup. And so Nehemiah comes 13 years after Ezra came. Again, he finds things in disarray. And he also helps Ezra, and they set about to make changes to bring the people closer to God. The wall was rebuilt. Various things were reinstituted by Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra read from the law to the people, and the people responded positively. They made an agreement. I'm not going to turn there, but the agreement is in Nehemiah 9, verse 38, to chapter 10, verse 1. Nehemiah 9, verse 38, to chapter 10, verse 1. Now, let me just summarize seven major points. And again, this is all in that write-up, so don't feel like you've got to write all this down. But there are seven major points that came out of this covenant. Number one, the people needed to obey God's law. Let's never lose sight of the fact that God wants the Ten Commandments to be kept. To be kept pure. To be kept the way God has intended them to be kept. Not to be adding things in a Pharisaic way, but to keep the law the way God has intended them to be kept. Number two, there should be no marriages with the inhabitants that were not Israelite.

It's not that God doesn't like all peoples. God likes and loves all peoples. But God wanted Israel to be true to him. And the reason for not marrying outside of Israel is because that brought idolatry. You marry a woman or a man from outside of the faith of Israel. Chances were very good. You would eventually leave the true God for the false gods. Number three, any wares brought into Jerusalem would not be purchased by the Jews and shouldn't be purchased by the Jews on the Sabbath day or any holy day.

Number four, the land was to rest on its seventh year. All doubts were to be forgiven according to the year of release. Number five, there would be a temple tax on the people. Whether you were... and this goes contrary to sediment today. But whether you were rich or whether you were poor, you paid the same price. It wasn't something that was graduated according to your income or your ability. A rich man paid this price, a poor man paid the same price.

And that's what God wanted. He wanted everyone to buy into the need of the temple and needed to be unkept. And there was a lot of things that would take place where in tearing the temple, it was a very busy place, and that always needed to be renewed. Number six, the Levites that received the tithes and the firstfruits of number seven, the Levites themselves were required to pay a tithe of the tithe that was given to them.

And again, that was for use in the temple. Okay? Now, as we read here in the Amiah 13, as we read through verses 15 through 21, there is absolutely no prohibition against eating out on the Sabbath. What is the deal here? Let's cut to the chase. What is the issue here in the Amiah 13 verses 15 through 21? The issue is that the Jews were making the Sabbath day a market day. The whole day became a market day. And they were selling and buying all sorts of things, not just food, hardware items, any number of animals, any number of things.

And, you know, it's not like our day-to-day, where, you know, you jump in your car, you go into services, you stop at a 7-Eleven, you pick up a cup of coffee to go.

Or after services, you stop at a Ruby Tuesday, you have dinner, it takes you an hour, you're gone. These people would get up early in the morning, they would prepare their cart, they would hitch up the horses or the mules or the ox, whatever they used, to pull that cart of theirs, and then they would go into town.

And when they came into town, they would spend all day long buying and selling for the coming week. And then they would put their kids back on the cart and they would trudge back home. They didn't go to temple, they weren't worshipping God, they weren't keeping the Sabbath. All day long they used as a day of commerce. That's what chapter 13 is talking about. It's not talking about a restaurant one way or another. It's talking about making the Sabbath a full day of commerce.

Now, as I mentioned, we wanted to read this, give you background, and now let's go back here and take a look at this piecemeal part by part. Let's look at verses 20 and 21. Now the merchants and the sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. Then I warned them and said to them, Why do you spend the night around the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time on they came no more on the Sabbath.

So by the time of Nehemiah, the Sabbath had become a full-blown market day. This was wrong. It didn't allow for anybody to keep the Sabbath. Now, when you come to services here, you're keeping the Sabbath. You were keeping the Sabbath last night. You weren't preparing to go marketing last night. You weren't getting all your money at all to arrange, and you weren't getting all your coupons arranged, and all those sorts of things. And you didn't go to a flea market all day long before you came here.

Then once you leave here, you go into that same flea market. That's not how you keep the Sabbath. That's not what you do. But these people, that's what they were doing. And so, Ezra had to take steps because they were just completely forgetting the Sabbath day. If you go to a restaurant, you're not forgetting the Sabbath day.

Normally, you go to the restaurant, you're going with people here in a congregation. You're talking about the sermonette. You're talking about the sermon. You're talking about the things of God. You're making the Sabbath more pleasurable from a spiritual point of view. You're not doing the work of men by going out to a restaurant. And again, people will say, but yeah, you're making that waiter, that waitress, or that cook work. Well, we'll get to that in a little bit. Please wait. So the example here in Nehemiah, in no way, shape, or form, talks about eating out at a restaurant. Verse 15. In those days, I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath.

So they're working on the Sabbath. It's not a matter of going out to a restaurant. They're working on the Sabbath. They're bringing in the sheaves and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens. So these people are working up a sweat, doing work on the Sabbath. When you go to a restaurant, you're not doing that. You're not doing that at all. Verse 16. In a tired welt there are also brought in fish and all kinds of goods sold among the Sabbath, the children of Israel and Jerusalem.

Verse 17 says, He contends with the people. But once again, we're seeing where this is a lot of work. Now, I know all of you in this room, most all of you. We've got a few newer folks here in the room. But I know what it's like. My wife likes to entertain. And we will have people over to the home. Sometimes we've had, and our house is not that big, you know, 1,600 square feet, not that big of a house. But we've had as many as 10, 15 people over to our home. Weckerleys are very good with entertaining people. Stewarts have been very good with entertaining people.

Others of you have been very good. But when you have a lot of folks over to your home on the Sabbath, that's a lot of work! And when you're done, you feel tired! Now, if you go to Ruby Tuesday, and you're there with a bunch of people, it's a whole lot less work. You know, from our perspective.

Now, we'll get to the waiter thing later on. But it's much more... it's calm, it's nice, we talk, we enjoy. But if we have people at our home, it's more work on the Sabbath doing that at our home than going out to a restaurant. Now, if we think that this chapter is a chapter we're going to use, where we don't go out and go to a restaurant, now there are some ramifications we need to think about here. Let's take a look at some of them. Verse 21, I missed the verse here.

Oh, verse 19. So it was that the gates of Jerusalem had begun to be dark before the Sabbath, that I commanded the gates to be shut, and Charite must not be opened till after the Sabbath. Then I posted some of my servants at the gates. Nehemiah asked people to work on the Sabbath. They were guards. I'm sure they were armed guards. Now, if we're going to use this chapter and say we're going to follow everything this chapter says, does that mean as a Christian you can be an armed guard and work on the Sabbath? Of course not. Of course not. We take care, well, we can take care. We don't want to be an armed guard on the Sabbath. We don't want to work on the Sabbath. So we don't follow, in our culture today, what he does here. We just can't be an armed guard on the Sabbath.

Verse 24. Now, we're going to see a side of Nehemiah that might really shock you. Shock you. Verse 24. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod.

Now, we don't relate to that. But here's a man, Nehemiah, who's a patriot, who loves his country, loves Israel. It would be like us saying, half of America speaks Spanish. And we don't care for that. We don't have anything against the Spanish people or Mexican people or what have you. But we want everyone speaking English. I guess maybe I can say a little something to that. My father was born in Italy. He came over to this country not speaking a word of English. I don't demand that half the country speak Italian.

When I folks came over back in the 1920s off the boat, they wanted to learn English. They didn't want to go to stores where everything was in English and in Italian underneath. But here we see Nehemiah. He says, you know, half our people don't even know the language. They could not speak the language of Judah. But it was spoken according to the language of one or the other people. Verse 25. So I contended with them, and I cursed them. Cursed them? A little shocking behavior there. I struck some of them and pulled out their hair. And made them swear by God, saying, You shall not give your daughters as wives to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or yourselves. Now, over the years as a pastor, now we don't have an issue here in Detroit. We've got very few little kids. Very few. But over the years that I've been a pastor, there have been times that have tried my soul when it comes to little kids in church. I found myself, you know, little kids start screaming, they start hollering. If they're sitting near the front, their screaming is coming in to the microphone. It's being rebroadcast. I'm up here like a sitting duck. If you say something about someone's little one, it's like crucifying them. So I'm sitting here hoping the parents will get the idea, Please take the little one out. I remember when I was in another state, it got so bad with one particular family that I said to the deacon, saying, Look, guys, it's a real tug of war between me and this one family and their screaming kids. They sit there in the middle of church, they scream on end. I want you to write some 3x5 cards, and I'll try to give you some sort of a wide-eyed, fish-eyed look or something. But when I give you that look, I want you to walk up and give that family one of those 3x5 cards that says, Take your kid out.

Now, I've dealt with that. I've been in the ministry now for, what, 34 years. And I've dealt with a lot of bad kids and bad parents. But I've yet to jump on any of them and pull their hair out.

If you're not going to spank that child, I'll spank you.

You rascal you. Come over here. Let me pull your hair out.

So obviously, just as we don't use this as a way that we're going to do things. Now, Nehemiah was a patriot, and he was full of zeal, but we wouldn't do this. And so this idea that we're going to use this chapter, and this is going to be a chapter we're going to use, to say we don't eat out on the Sabbath, doesn't work, doesn't fit.

There are two overarching principles we see in this chapter. Two overarching principles. One, respect for the Sabbath. Respect for the Sabbath. And number two, we should marry somebody of like faith.

We should marry somebody of like faith. Now, do I patrol our church? Do I send a church wants to marry somebody outside the church? Do I forbid them? Of course I don't. Do I tell people that I won't do their wedding? Not necessarily. I'll take each couple as an individual couple and assess. Now, if I think somebody's bound for disaster, then I've got a conscience issue where I won't perform a wedding. You know, there are various counseling techniques and things that we do to see how prepared a couple is. And if they're not prepared, they're not ready, then I don't feel I've got to perform any wedding.

But on the other hand, I would say, from my personal perspective, I would never want to marry out of the faith. Never would I want to do that. So those are the two overarching principles. One, respect for the Sabbath, and number two, marry somebody of like faith. Now, let's talk about some ramifications. Let's talk about ramifications. Well, let's not do that quite yet. Not quite, because I forgot. There's Amos. Let's go over to Amos. You've got Daniel, then Hosea, Joel, then Amos. Well, those little tiny books.

This one won't take very long. It's only one verse. Amos 8 and verse 5.

Amos 8 and verse 5. Well, I don't think anyone's, you know, even though people would want to claim this as a verse to use, for not eating on the Sabbath, I'm really not sure why they would use this particular verse. This verse talks about people who can't wait till the sun goes down after the Sabbath is over, because they, well, it calls to me talking about waiting for the Sabbath. They want to still work on the Sabbath. They want to do their own thing. But it's work they're wanting to do. And the church has never said, working on the Sabbath for a living to make your income. We've never said that's appropriate.

And so these people, they want to work on the Sabbath. They want to do their own thing. They want to work on the Sabbath. But this is an example where these people are wanting to sell and buy and sell. They're selfish. It says they're wanting to make the even smaller and the shekel large. They're using false scales, bad waiting, and so forth. In other words, there are people who are doing things illegally in terms of the way God would have things done. Now, in Matthew 12, you've got Jesus Christ with His disciples. They're hungry. It's the Sabbath. Does Jesus say, well, okay, fellas, it's the Sabbath. We're out here on the road. Let's just kind of buck up. Let's just wait till we get home. When we get home, we'll prepare a meal. No? They're by a grain field. Christ says, let's walk over here and let's pluck some of this grain. Let's get this grain. We just pop-pop this in our mouth. Now, this is not a restaurant there in Matthew 12, granted. But when Christ was hungry with His men, He didn't say, well, let's just make sure we wait till we get home. He was hungry. He was on the road. He ate. He was hungry. He was on the road. He ate. Now, in the New Testament, we see where Jesus Christ gave us seven different principles for Sabbath observance. Let me go through these. And again, we won't spend a lot of time there in that write-up that you can find for yourself on the Internet at themembers.ucg.org under study papers. Christ said the Sabbath was made for man. The Sabbath is a tool for worshipping God. The Sabbath is not an object of worship. It is a tool of worship.

And certainly people who, after services, they want to go out and continue discussions. You know, we only have a hall for a certain length of time. People want to continue to talk. They want to fellowship. And so people many times will leave the hall here. They'll go to a restaurant. They'll sit. And they'll talk about what they've heard in services. And it's very much a way to worship God. We don't have to think there's something evil about going out to eat on the Sabbath. Secondly, Christ said He is Lord of the Sabbath. He created the Sabbath. Thirdly, healing and eating are permissible on the Sabbath. Christ ate. He healed. He did all sorts of things that were illegal on the Sabbath. And of course, the Sanhedrin, the Jews, many times the scribes and Pharisees would want to find fault with that. Christ also said the Sabbath command is still in place today. We see that, number six, that emergencies don't count as work in terms of God's concern. There's the ox and the ditch principle. If there's a legitimate emergency, a life or death situation, an illness or an accident, your next door neighbor house bursts on fire. Are you supposed to stand there and say, I'm a Sabbath keeper, I'm not going to lift a finger to help you? Of course not. There's the ox and the ditch principle. And of course, in the New Testament, the priests, quote-unquote, violated the Sabbath but were killed. According to that terminology, I violate the Sabbath every time it comes around. Why? Because the Sabbath is my hardest day of work. Many times I leave my house at 9.30 and I don't get home at 7.30. I pretty typically put in 130 miles on a Sabbath. I speak twice. I do two announcement periods. Counseling in between. Hard day. You put in hard days. I put my hard days on a Sabbath. And yet because I'm a minister, that's okay. So some types of work are okay on the Sabbath. Now, let's get to the questions of where the tire meets the road, as they say. Is it wrong to have someone serve you in a restaurant? Answer, no. Is it wrong? Are they working for you? The answer is no. They're not working for you. You don't fill out their W-2. You don't give them a 1099 form. They're not your employee. In the Old Testament, they talked about how you should keep the Sabbath, your wife, your kids, those in your household, your maids and so forth. But those are those in your household, not people here who aren't of your household. Aren't of your household. Now, today, we've got people, because of our economy and the way things have worked out in the last number of years, we've got more and more people in their 20s and 30s and 40s going back home to live with mom and dad. Let's say you're a church member. You keep the Sabbath. But your grown children don't keep the Sabbath anymore. But now they're living under your roof. Are you guilty for Sabbath break-breaking because your grown children won't keep the Sabbath? No. No, they may be under your roof, but they're their own household. They're responsible for themselves. The same way that a waiter or a waitress or a cook, they enter into agreement with an establishment, I will work any day you want me to work. If you want me to come in on Saturdays, I'm going to come in on Saturdays.

Whether Randy Delo Sandro or whoever your name is, whether you are there or not, they are going to be at work on Saturday. They're going to break the Sabbath because they don't even know about the Sabbath in most cases. They could care less. They're going to be there. They're going to work. If they're not there at the restaurant serving you food, they'll be out in the world doing something where they're breaking the Sabbath. You're not responsible for them making a decision to break the Sabbath. That's their decision. Your being there isn't making them break the Sabbath. They're going to be there regardless.

Now, again, giving you food for thought. We need to be consistent in our thinking. If we're saying that by our being at a restaurant on the weekly Sabbath, we're causing that waiter or waitress cook owner to sin, then aren't you sinning in the wintertime when you keep your heat on?

Because there's somebody at the power plant that's making sure your heat's staying on. And there are people in trucks, if there are difficulties, they will jump in their truck and they'll come to your house and attend to your need.

Now, years ago, I did know one man in this area, many years ago, a number of years ago, who was coming into the church and he felt, you know what? Here we are in Michigan. It's cold outside and sun down on Friday night. He unplugged a TV set. He unplugged all of his clocks. He turned off the heat. He turned off the light. He turned off the water. Now, he was coming to an outage of the Sabbath. But you know something? Interestingly enough, when his wife and kids were going through that, as they had to sit in the dark and the cold with cold food, they didn't think too highly of the Sabbath. Can you understand why?

People say, well, I've got no control over what I do with my heating. And they're going to issue it. You can do like that. You can turn it off. You don't have to have air conditioning. You don't have to have heat and water. You don't have to have that sort of stuff. But if we're going to say that the waitress is working, then so is the guy at the power station. So is the person at the water station. What if your garbage is collected on Saturday? Are you going to go and burn it yourself? They're working on Saturday. They're taking care of your needs. What if your wife is expecting?

What if everyone at the hospital said, well, you know, it's Friday night. We're going home. I don't think most women like that. I think they want a hospital staff there. You know, if you're having, like I did a couple of years ago where my appendix broke and it didn't break, the doctors at the University of Michigan said, it exploded. If your appendix exploded, you want to go to the ER at a hospital, and you want them to be there. You want them to take care of you.

And they're working on a Sabbath, and they're working on you. But they would be there working on somebody else if you weren't there. So again, we need to be consistent. Church. Now, we're lucky here in Birmingham Unitarian Church. We've been here so long. We've been here since what, 97? 97 or 98? We've been here so long, we've got a key to the place. We've been here so long that if they're going to have an activity, Jim Chatel will contact myself or Mr. Weckerle, sometimes Kathy, and say, hey, we're thinking of doing this. Would you mind? So they ask us our permission. That's kind of nice. But in other places where we have got church, you can't have church unless you've got a janitor there. So is the whole congregation sinning because a janitor is there to open a door for Sabbath services?

We've got to be consistent in our thinking. And I want us to, again, I'm not saying this to persecute anybody, but I want us all to be thinking about why we do what we do. The bottom line is there's a great many things that we have done for us on the weekly Sabbath. There are a great many things. And there's nothing much... Do you have any investments?

Do you have an interest-paying savings or checking account? Do you have CDs? Do you have various other kinds of investments where your money's working for you on the Sabbath? People say, I can't buy or sell. You're making money on the Sabbath? I would dare say everyone in this room makes money on the Sabbath. I guess you might be able to go to your bank and say, please stop the interest from Friday's sunset at the Sabbath. And I don't know if that can be done or not. But you might have mutual funds and various other things where that money's working for you. There are people who are handling your affairs, handling your money, and they're working on a Sabbath.

So again, we need to be conversant with all the rampant occasions of what we do. Secondly, the question comes up, aren't you participating in a business transaction when you eat out on the Sabbath? Legitimate question. Let me respond to that by reading the writer. He says, you most certainly will be expected to pay for the meal you consume on the Sabbath. But this is not running a business on the Sabbath. It's simply paying for the meal you received. There's nothing in Scripture that declares this act to be a violation of the Sabbath. It is actually less work for many to eat in a restaurant and pay for the meal than it is to have a group of people in your home to eat on the Sabbath.

This brings up another interesting issue, talking about ramifications. We don't want to go to a restaurant because we're causing the individual to work. How do you keep the Feast of Tabernacles?

When you go to the Feast, do you check out of your room before Friday's sunset? Do you check out of your room before annual Holy Day? And then after the Sabbath, weekly Sabbath, or annual Holy Day is over, do you check back into your room? Do you sleep in the car on the weekly Sabbath at the Feast or the annual Holy Day? No. And yet, when you're at the Feast of Tabernacles, there's somebody there at that hotel, at least one person at the front desk. Maybe more. But you've got people where you're staying. They're out there 24-7, and they're there for you.

What do you do about that? Well, in my thinking, they're going to do that whether I'm there at that hotel or not. So I don't feel like as though I need to... or a restaurant. Maybe you're staying at a hotel that's got a restaurant. Most people I know who feel they should not eat out in the Sabbath, they feel that way when they're at home. But when they're at the Feast, they'll eat out on the Sabbath. I guess you can buy your groceries, take them back to your room, and make things. But is that what God wants us to do? I don't think so. I don't think so. So anyhow, brethren, I'm going to end here early. We've covered this pretty thoroughly. I don't think anyone minds getting out a little bit early. But if you've got questions on this, and again, two big principles. If we feel... if we have a brother or a sister in the faith that feels they should not do something, then we should not in any way tease them or make them feel bad or belittle them. They have their conscience issues, and they have a right to their conscience issues. For all of us, every one of us needs to check our conscience. Is our conscience square with Scripture? Does our conscience need to be educated by the Scripture, and not by sacred cows? The Bible says we shouldn't buy and sell. Well, what the Bible said about buying and selling is, don't make the Sabbath a whole market day. That's what the Bible says. It doesn't talk about going to a restaurant. And something else that just crosses my mind. When Christ was alive, they had inns. There were business people who traveled back in Christ's day. You had caravans, you had business people. Jesus Christ, Mary, and Martha, there was no room at the inn. There were inns back in those days. But does the Bible say something specific? Well, at the inn, you can't serve the guest meals. The Bible is silent on that. Well, if it was such a sin, why doesn't the Bible say something about that? So anyhow, think about what we're doing. Remember, we've all got our conscience issues on either side of the fence. Either side of the issue. I shouldn't say fence. Either side of the issue. But nobody should try to force somebody to do something against their conscience. And no one should try to impose their conscience upon somebody else. Years and years ago, back in the 1970s, there was a fellow I knew, a pastor in another state, where this whole issue became an explosive issue in his local congregation. And it just so happened, in this particular case, those people who felt they should not eat out in a Sabbath were so zealous for that point of view that they were trying to force that point of view on those who felt they could eat out on a Sabbath. And they got to the point where it just wasn't pleasant coming to services. And that pastor, who was a conservative man, had to ask a number of people, I think it was 10 or 12, had to ask a number of people, please don't come until you can stop badgering other people. We always enjoy having you, but not when you come into church, to badger people. So, brethren, I give this as food for thought. I've never badgered anybody on this point. But it is my job to give you food for thought on the point. If you have any questions, feel free to see me later on.