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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

A Day to Remember

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

Once a week, a rabbi in New York City travels around Manhattan, spending a lot of time looking up.

He's looking to see if the air roof is still intact.

If it isn't, he calls a construction company and he gets in a cherry picker and rises 18 feet above the streets of Manhattan to fix it.

An eruv, E-R-U-V, is, at least in this case, a clear fishing line strung up around most of the island of Manhattan, from the southern tip of the island all the way to 145th Street in Harlem in the north, and taking in all of Central Park.

When God gave Moses the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai, He said and wrote this, "...remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

6 days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.

In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates." Exodus 20 verses 8-10.

And observant Jews, as you'd expect, take that seriously.

So in places like New York City, that presents some challenges.

For traditional Jews, on the Sabbath day nothing can be carried from one's home into a public space.

And that includes things such as house keys or a wallet.

It means no pushing a baby stroller, which for some families would mean that there's no way they could leave their home on the Sabbath.

Erevim are found in more than 30 states in the United States and in several countries around the world, and they function as a workaround, really.

The rule is, if you're within the Eruv, you're in your own personal space, so therefore you can carry whatever you want.

The eruv turns a big city area into 1 big communal backyard.

Which is interesting perhaps to a non-Jew, because what you have is a rule created by rabbis and not by God that severely limits what a person can do on the Sabbath.

Then another rule is devised to get around the restrictions imposed by that first rule.

Keeping the Sabbath today is largely a Jewish concept, but it wasn't always that way.

You find someone who's got a few miles on the clock and ask them what it was like when they were younger, and they'll tell you something like, well, after church, we'd go to grandma's house and she'd have a special meal prepared.

And then the rest of the day, no 1 would do any work.

Grandpa wouldn't even work on his farm because They considered the day to be special and they kept it holy.

Not like observant Jews, of course, but holy nonetheless.

As society has drifted away from the religious and embraced the secular, there's been a move away from some of the practices that once characterized religious faith.

And not everybody thinks that's a great idea.

When Simon & Schuster published the book The Gift of Rest in 2011—a book written by then-Senator Joe Lieberman, who is Jewish, the book received strong critical acclaim from Christian quarters, with many people beginning to wonder out loud whether Christians weren't missing out on something by passing lightly over the Sabbath.

God gave 10 commandments on Sinai, and we'd have no trouble agreeing on the benefits, the blessings, and the plain old common sense of keeping them.

Well, of course, if God wasn't God in your life and something else was, then God wouldn't be first, He'd be second or third or fourth or worse.

And then you could never honor the words that Jesus spoke when He quoted Deuteronomy 6.5 in Matthew 22.37.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Unless God is first, that just can't happen.

That's idolatry, praying to statues, bowing before images.

It lowers your concept of God and therefore lowers you.

And you see, the 10 Commandments are good ideas.

The third commandment says we shouldn't take the name of the Lord in vain.

A lot of people do, and it's never right.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

In fact, it's by far the longest of the 10 commandments.

The fifth, honor your father and your mother.

I can't think of a single parent who doesn't think that that's a really good idea.

And by the way, how would society look if we actually did take that commandment seriously?

And what if parents who wish for their children to honor them, conducted themselves in such a way that it would make it easy for children to render that honor?

The sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill, which actually means thou shalt not murder.

Now there are 2 of the remaining commandments that have fallen out of favor.

It says, "...thou shalt not commit adultery." That's physical intimacy with someone you're not married to.

Although Jesus said that this even includes looking at another person to lust.

The reason I say this commandment has fallen out of favor is that in society, and even in the church, there's unfortunately plenty of adultery and lust and pornography.

The eighth commandment is, thou shalt not steal.

0, wait while you lock your house and set your alarm and lock your car before you answer.

Now keep in mind, we're briefly reviewing the 10 Commandments and we're seeing that there are real benefits in keeping them.

The ninth commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness, no lying.

And the final commandment is the other 1 that's kind of neglected, thou shalt not covet, which gets to the root of all commandment breaking.

Now coveting is an inappropriate desire to have that which isn't yours, that which you have no right to.

So, of course it's okay to want to be in a car or to admire a nice house.

This commandment speaks to our inner desires.

Most moral codes only deal with outward acts.

This 1 touches on the thoughts, the intents, the desires.

And seeing as we're not to covet, this tells us then that we're not slaves to our desires.

This is not a commandment that you want to forget.

So why is the fourth commandment kind of forgotten these days?

I'd like to encourage you to get today's free offer.

It's my DVD presentation of Rest and Recovery, taken from our Hope Awakens series.

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Do you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong became the first person to ever walk on the moon.

If your memory doesn't go back quite that far, maybe you remember where you were when 9-11 happened, or when the Berlin Wall came down, or when Princess Diana died.

There are some days that are just impossible to forget.

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A Day to Remember

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