Liberation Day

Celebrating liberation is usually marked by a memorial day. Just so, the Sabbath, says Desmond B Hills.

Almost as the tanks rolled to a stop in central Baghdad and coalition forces took tentative control of Iraq, President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, in addresses to their respective nations and to the people of Iraq, said: “Our forces are liberators not conquerors.” Then they elaborated, saying, “We’re not here to stay, but to give [the people] freedom.”

Paul Bremer, the provisional administrator of Iraq, echoed this sentiment, saying, “The coalition did not come to colonise Iraq. We came to overthrow a despotic regime and to give you freedom.”

The record of history contains many such days of liberation for societies that lacked the freedom of a democratic government or were occupied by oppressors. The tiny island of Crete in the Mediterranean was twice occupied during World War II, first by the Italians, then the Germans. The Cretans were held captive, their culture suppressed and thousands of citizens were killed before their eventual liberation.

And when an Allied column rolled into Paris, led by Free French Forces General Charles de Gaulle, the people of the city were ecstatic. According to World Book Encyclopedia, “The triumphant parade down the Champs Elysées in August 1944 marked the liberation of Paris.”

And, as one after the other, the barbed-wire-decked gates of foul concentration camps were thrown open by liberating forces, their dying Jewish inmates once again breathed the sweet air of freedom and life. The liberators found “thousands of unburied dead, and survivors who were crippled, insane, or dying of disease or starvation.” Estimates are that some seven to eight million persons, mostly Jews, were consigned to concentration camps between 1933 and 1945 and by the war’s end about six million Jews had been murdered.

best-known liberation day
But for the Jewish race this liberation was not the first. Perhaps the best known and most enduringly celebrated day of liberation was that of some two million Israelites who were delivered after exile and then 80 years of slavery under Egyptian overlords some 3500 years ago. Their liberation came as the Red Sea parted and these descendants of Abraham, led by Moses, marched to freedom ahead of the pursuing army of the Pharaoh. This march to freedom is remembered in the Passover, still celebrated today by Orthodox Jews.

The God of heaven, who liberated Israel, gave them “wiser, better and more humane laws than those of the most civilised nations of the earth,” says Bible commentator Ellen G White (in Patriarchs and Prophets). One of the last acts of Moses was to review those instructions and their Liberator’s providential, often dramatic guidance during their 40 years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness.
Poised on the border of Canaan, the Promised Land, he reviewed God’s moral law, given at the beginning of their sojourn, one that far surpassed any national code to that time. “What other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws?” Moses asked the nation assembled before him (Deuteronomy 4:8).

The laws of most democratic countries have their roots in the Ten Commandments to which Moses was referring. They’re unsurpassed as the best principles upon which to build a happy society and a satisfying and happy individual life.

God’s operational manual
There was a good reason why the people needed to be reminded of God’s operational manual. It had been some 39 years since God delivered the moral code in a written form at Mount Sinai (see Exodus 20) when many of the assembly were too young to comprehend its meaning and importance. The version in the biblical book of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy actually means “second law”) omits some parts of the earlier Exodus 20 version, but also gives some extra commentary.

Obviously this verbal recitation of the law by Moses wasn’t a replacement of the words written on tables of stone by God, but it includes a fascinating aside to the fourth—the Sabbath commandment—which associates their liberation from slavery with it. There is no change in the command to keep the Sabbath, as instituted and sanctified in Eden as a memorial of Creation, which is the reason given for keeping it holy in Exodus 20.

Here God appeals to their sense of gratitude for the liberation (see Deuteronomy 5:15), even though it was the Passover and not the Sabbath that was specifically instituted as the reminder of the event (see Deuteronomy 16:1-8).

all need liberation
As Israel was liberated from the bondage in Egypt, we need to be liberated from the slavery of selfishness and sin. The apostle Paul reminds us that we can be “slaves to sin which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.” He teaches that we can choose whom we will serve, but that our choice will determine our destiny (Romans 6: 16-18, 22, 23). Today we rejoice in the fact that we can be and have been liberated, and that God wants to lead us into the heavenly Promised Land, the new earth, at His second coming.

This new earth is made possible by the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf. His death on Calvary replaced the Passover service for, as the apostle John states, He was the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world (see John 1:29). Contrary to popular belief, neither the memorial of Creation nor God’s moral code was superseded at that time. Rather, it was the Passover and related ceremonial laws (see Colossians 2:13, 14).

The Ten Commandments are not against us, for, from the time of the first family in Eden, they’ve given guidelines on how to love God and others. This is how Jesus summarised the moral code (see Matthew 22:34-40). They’re not a method of salvation, but a standard of righteousness. Grace and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ saves us but, as He taught, when we love Him we want to obey Him, which will include keeping His commands (see John 14:15, 23).

the day linked to Creation
The seventh-day Sabbath of the creation week was so important that God incorporated it in His 10 principles of life. The fourth commandment states that the seventh-day Sabbath is the “Sabbath of the Lord your God.” As Jesus also said that “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Luke 6:5), it follows that the “Lord’s day” to which John refers in Revelation 1:10 must be the biblical Sabbath day. It was made for us before there was a race called Israel and, by God’s grace, it was observed by patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings as well as the ordinary people of Old Testament times.

Jesus not only taught that the seventh day of the week was the Sabbath, but He and the disciples observed it as God’s memorial of Creation (see Luke 4:16; Acts 15:21; 17:2, 3). There is no verse in the New Testament to record a change to this observance.

the best yet to come
There have been many days of liberation celebrated by different peoples over the millennia, all-important to them and their culture. But the most significant one is yet to come, for it is universal, and applies to the whole of humanity.
As Israel departed Egypt and the waters parted allowing them to flee their slave masters, the day will soon come when the heavens will part and Jesus will appear. His return to this enslaved planet liberates all who chose Him as their Master.

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