Luke 14:5-6

Obviously, in the New Testament, God shows that there is room in God's laws for circumstances that do not conform to the regular pattern, so that we don't have to feel constrained that the Sabbath is a burden. But under normal situations, we should be prepared for its arrival and use. There are a lot of things that could be gone into here regarding preparation, but I am not going to do that.

This is the famous "ox in the ditch" example. I think that, if you noticed the way that I read it (and if you have a New King James Bible), they have changed to word from "ditch" to "pit." Ditch is incorrect. Pit is correct. It is virtually impossible for an ox or an ass to fall into a ditch. They have four legs, four hooves. They are among the most stable and sure-footed of all domesticated animals. Man has two legs, and how many times do you fall in a ditch? Almost never have you ever fallen in a ditch. And an ox, or an ass, is hardly ever going to fall in a ditch. (Probably less times than you ever will.)

But they did (every once in a while) fall in a pit. He's talking about a cistern. Like we, who have had cisterns in the past, they caught rainwater and stored it in a cistern in the ground. People occasionally, carelessly, left the lid off the cistern. Every once in a while, a person would step into the hole—or an ox, or an ass, would step into it too—not seeing it; and they would fall into the pit because of human carelessness. Sometimes it was a life or a death situation, because the thing might be filled with water quite a number of feet deep.

But I think you can see that the chances of an ox or an ass falling in a pit are probably about as good as you seeing a blue moon. They just don't happen all that often—very infrequently. This, of course, applies in principle to emergency situations that might arise on the Sabbath. True emergencies just don't happen all that often. They do every once in a while, but most of the time they don't.

If somebody comes to you with what they claim to be an emergency, YOU make the decision as to whether it is an emergency. Don't let them bulldoze you, because often the "emergency" to them is going to be, "I forgot to buy sugar yesterday, when I went shopping. And now I need to go to the store." There's a big difference between that and, "My son just fell out of the apple tree and broke his arm." One is a genuine emergency. The other is merely an inconvenience. And we have to make the decision as to whether or not it truly is an emergency.

If we do any old thing just because somebody else decides it's an emergency, there's not going to be any witness—is there? That is, no witness that we are really keeping the Sabbath holy. In addition to that, we'll probably be a weak king because we'll let any special interest group just bulldoze us into doing something. So we need to decide whether this is going to be resolved the way they want, or the way that we want.