Contrast | Knowable Word

Why keep the Sabbath?

December 2, 2012 By Tom Hallman

Most Christians have heard of the Ten Commandments. Many can even tell you what they are. But how many can answer this question: Why does God ask His people to keep the Sabbath?

Photo adapted from OZinOH on Flickr

Let’s take a look at these two familiar passages and take note of the similarities and differences:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11 ESV)

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15 ESV)

If you just skimmed those passages, you’ll probably miss the point of this blog entry 😉 Go back and read them again.

Here are some things that are the same:

Six days are allocated for work, but the Sabbath is to be kept holy.
The Sabbath is not just for us, but “to the LORD your God”.
On the Sabbath, no one works: not you, your family, your servants, your animals or your visitors.

But did you notice the key difference between the two passages?

In the Exodus passage, the motivation for keeping the Sabbath comes from the character of God in Genesis. God made everything in six days and then rested. Thus we should do the same.
In the Deuteronomy passage, the motivation for keeping the Sabbath comes from the rescue of God in Exodus. God (not Egypt) is now their master and has a different set of [very gracious] rules to live by.

So why am I noting this on a blog about Bible Study? It’s because we’re often tempted to assume we know what a passage means just because we’ve read it somewhere else before.

The Bible was inspired by God for all time for His supreme purpose: to reveal the glory of His Son, Jesus Christ. Simultaneously, the Bible was penned by different men at different times for different purposes. With these two truths in glorious tension, we study the Bible to understand as much as we can about every word, every passage, every book – even if we’ve seen a similar story previously.

In each case, be sure to observe the context of the “duplicated” passages. It may be that the main point and application may change in each case! For example:

Why might God speak of the blessing of the Sabbath to a newly-freed nation at the foot of a terrifying mountain while recalling it later with an emphasis on commands and obedience?
Why do the details of the same battle vary between Judges 4 and Judges 5?
Why is Jesus recorded as saying different things in each of the four gospels just before He dies?

Feel free to leave your thoughts on those questions in the comments!

What to Observe: Four More Tips

October 9, 2012 By Peter Krol

We’ve seen five things you can observe when you study a Bible passage: words, grammar, structure, genre, and mood. Here is a final hodgepodge of things to observe.

Repeated Words. I can’t repeat it enough. Pay attention to stuff that repeats. This is one of the simplest observations you can make. Get a Bible that you don’t mind writing in, and highlight repeated words with the same color. The author’s big ideas will jump right off the page. For example, Genesis 14 repeats the word “king” more than 20 times. It’s even built into one of the character’s names (Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”). The author wants us to think about what a true king looks like!
Comparison and Contrast. A passage often shows how two or more things are similar (comparison) or different (contrast). Picking up on that connection can help. For example, Gen 24, Gen 29, Exod 2, and John 4 all describe interactions between a man and a woman at a well of water. What is similar and different in each account?
Characters. Pay special attention to how each character is named in a passage. Authors will communicate important stuff just by using certain names. For example, Genesis 21, which has a lot to say about Ishmael, never mentions his name. He’s always “the son of Hagar” or “the son of the slave woman.” Why do you think that is?
Connectors. Words like “therefore,” “in those days,” or “in the same way” draw significant connections between sentences, paragraphs, or chapters. Notice the connections so you can work to figure out why they’re there. For example, Genesis 15:1 begins with “after these things.” How might it affect your understanding of this chapter, if you think about how Abram might be feeling immediately after the events of chapter 14?

What else can we observe?

Observation tip: Look for contrasts

August 18, 2012 By Tom Hallman

“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.” – C.S. Lewis

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” – Mark Twain

“I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.” – Barack Obama

The quotes above, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, have this in common: they are all statements of contrast. (We’ve written about other examples of contrasts in an earlier post.) Contrasts are very helpful at emphasizing the difference between two things. That is, each side of a contrast can contain some observation that is useful, but when compared against one another, their differences are highlighted. This is very useful in determining the main point of the speaker/author.

We use contrasts all the time in our daily speech and the Scriptures are chock full of them. One sure-fire way to spot a contrast is to look for the word, “but”. That’s not the only way to find contrasts, but it’s a good starting point. (Did you notice that contrast right there?)

Consider these texts and how the contrasts emphasize the statements:

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” (Proverbs 31:28-29 ESV, emphasis mine)

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. (Romans 4:13-16 ESV, emphasis mine)

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:16-18 ESV, emphasis mine)

The three examples above are from Proverbs, Romans and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). All three of those sections of Scripture make frequent use of contrasts. Why not go through a chapter or two of those sections to see how many contrasts you can pick out, and what it tells us about God, men, sin and salvation? It will be well worth your time!

How’d You Do That? (5/10/12)

May 13, 2012 By Peter Krol

In Thursday’s post, we briefly surveyed Proverbs 9 and identified a few common counterfeits of wisdom in our day. Here are some principles demonstrated in that post.

1. Observe Comparison and Contrast

Proverbs 9 describes two different women. We are meant to observe what is similar (comparison) and what is different (contrast) about them.

Similarities: women, serving a meal, making invitations to bystanders.

Differences: prepared food vs. secret bread, mixing wine vs. stealing water, sending maidens vs. no maidens, hewing pillars vs. knowing nothing.

Observing the similarities and differences enables us to see that, though both want to recruit followers and serve them a meal, what they offer and how they offer it is very different. Folly is copying Wisdom, but with less power and weaker results. We too ought to expect counterfeits to wisdom.

Comparison and contrast are simple yet powerful to observe. Here are a few more examples.

Characters, such as:

Abram/Lot in Genesis 13-14, 18-19
Zechariah/Mary in Luke 1:5-38

Plots, such as:

Men meeting women at wells in Genesis 24:15-21 & 29:9-12, Exodus 2:15-22, John 4:1-10
Sexually immoral demands at the doorstep in Genesis 19 & Judges 19

Settings, such as:

Personal encounters with God on mountains in Exodus 33-34, 1 Kings 19:9-18, and Mark 9:2-8
Childlessness in Genesis 11:27-31, 25:19-22, 29:31; Judges 13:1-3, 1 Samuel 1:1-2, Matthew 1:18-25

Things, such as:

Two gates, two trees, two candidates for the Kingdom, two houses in Matthew 7:15-27

Whenever we see two or more things that resemble each other in some way, we should keep our eyes out for both similarities and differences. Make two lists, and ask yourself the question, “what is the author trying to communicate by comparing or contrasting these things?”

2. Identify What a Passage is NOT Saying

When I moved toward particular application, I began to list some common assumptions in our day regarding what makes someone wise. I haven’t yet defined, from the text of Proverbs, what wisdom is; I thought first it would be helpful to clear out some misconceptions.

One way to apply a text of Scripture is to consider what we ought to believe in light of the passage. As we do so, we can identify what common beliefs exist in our culture don’t quite hit the bullseye. Recognizing these faulty beliefs enables us to clear the debris so we can apply right beliefs. We’ll see this in a few weeks when we move past the counterfeits (what wisdom is not) and define what wisdom is.