IN EXODUS 14, Moses and the Israelites found themselves standing on the far shore of the Red Sea; God had just miraculously saved them from Pharaoh’s army. Many of the Egyptian soldiers now lay buried under the waters; others lay dead on the shore. The chapter ends on this solemn note: “And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant” (vs. 31, NIV).

You think?

Unfortunately, that holy fear and trust didn’t last long. By the end of the next chapter, the people had been traveling in the desert for three days, and complained against Moses because they didn’t have any water to drink. God, of course, provided. And by the beginning to the chapter after that, the people despaired over the lack of food, even daring to say, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death” (Exod 16:3). They spoke as if their life in Egypt had been one of luxury and ease, forgetting the painful slavery from which they had been rescued.

And still God provided, first quail for meat, then manna for bread.

The miraculous gift of manna came with specific instructions: Every morning, gather as much as you need for your family, and don’t keep it until the next morning or it will spoil. But on the sixth day, gather twice as much; this time, it won’t spoil. That’s because the seventh day is to be a day of Sabbath rest. Don’t go out to gather on the morning of the seventh day; you won’t find any manna. God will have already provided that for you.

This is the beginning of the regular practice of Sabbath that would soon be enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Along with circumcision, Sabbath would become one of the key distinctions of God’s people — so much so that desecration of the Sabbath would be punishable by death, and those who worked on the Sabbath were to be excluded from the people (Exod 31:14-15).

But notice the freedom that came with the institution of Sabbath rest as it was first given with the manna. At that time, all the people were told is that they didn’t have to gather on that day; God would provide. Manna itself was already a miraculous gift — literally, their daily bread. And since it wouldn’t spoil on the evening of the sixth day, the Sabbath was a miracle within a miracle. The day of rest was a pure gift to a stubborn and often faithless people.

This forms the backdrop, then, to the later conflicts between Jesus and his opponents regarding the Sabbath. His was a ministry of compassionate healing that demonstrated the merciful character of God. But he repeatedly dared to heal people on the Sabbath, earning him the denunciation of the Pharisees. They could not see these stunning miracles as acts of God, only as a violation of the rules.

One Sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples were walking through a field of grain. They were hungry and began to pick and eat some of the heads of grain, probably without thinking. The Pharisees saw them and scolded Jesus for allowing them to do this, for to pick grain was technically considered reaping. Of course, technically, to walk any significant distance on the Sabbath was also a violation of the law — so one has to wonder what the Pharisees were doing in the field themselves.

In response, Jesus used the story of David to correct their thinking, essentially telling them that they had their priorities wrong. He finished with a punchline that must have given the Pharisees fits: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28).

FAST FORWARD TO the time of Paul. Controversy over the observance of Jewish law still existed, but with a new wrinkle: now that Gentiles were coming to consider a Jewish Messiah their Lord, should they be required to follow Jewish ceremonial customs as well? Many Jewish Christians in different places around the empire seemed to think so, and were pressuring the Gentile converts to conform. In the churches of Galatia, for example, the main issue was circumcision. But in the church of Colossae, apparently, the concern was broader, as Paul’s counsel to the Colossians suggests:

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. (Col 2:16)

Again, there’s no way to know exactly what the Colossians were being told. Though the Sabbath was a specifically Jewish observance, other religions celebrated the New Moon and various festivals as well. Whatever other cultures may have been involved, however, Paul’s words have a particularly Jewish slant to them. The mention of festivals, monthly celebrations of the New Moon, and the Sabbath — those three, in that order — can also be found in Hosea 2:11 and Ezekiel 45:17, words written specifically to God’s people.

Somehow, the Colossians were being pressured to observe them, and Paul wants to free them from that pressure. “Therefore,” he begins, pointing back to what he’s already said. Through the cross, the uncircumcised Colossians had their debts canceled by God and the so-called “powers and authorities” had been defeated. Because of this, the Colossians were under grace and no longer subject to the scornful judgment of those who thought these Gentiles weren’t being religious enough.

That “judgment” was probably more than just a bit of headshaking; it can imply social exclusion. If that’s the case, then the Colossians weren’t simply attracted to the false teaching because it sounded nice or clever. There may have been more at stake, such as the risk of being shunned.

Sadly, something similar has remained true throughout the history of the church. A shared faith too easily degrades into mere religion, a set of rules and customs that becomes increasingly separated from a living relationship with a living God. But the Sabbath was given by God as a gift, created for the benefit of the people and not the other way around. There is freedom in that gift.

And as we’ll see, Paul has much more to say about the nature of Christian freedom in the face of all the religious rules we might be tempted to force on each other, or on ourselves.