God's Word On ... THE OX IN THE DITCH

Is It Possible to Have a 3-Year Long
"Ox in the Ditch"?

Variations of this question regarding the proper observance of God's Sabbaths have arisen among Christians in any number of difficult circumstances: pressure by an employer for continuing work on God's Sabbath, challenging family situations, etc. The specific question is:

"Is it possible to have a 3-year long ox in the ditch? After all, a day to God is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day!"

This is an intriguing query. To understand God's mind on this matter, let's first consider the day being like a thousand years, and vice versa. This Scriptural concept is found in 2 Peter 3: 7-9:

But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

Does God intend this principle regarding Himself to be applied to our time frame for our practice of Christian living?

In evaluating the above passage, we must take special care to avoid the pitfall of granting ourselves license where God has not. Jude warns against those who "the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." (Jude 1:4)

The apostle Paul also cautions us strongly pertinent to this point:

Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who WILL RENDER TO EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. (Romans 2:4-8)

Additionally, in Scripture, we are encouraged by the example of faithful servants of God, to pray two to three times a day:

As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice. (Psalm 55:16-17 KJV)

Now when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house (now in his roof chamber he had windows open toward Jerusalem); and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God, as he had been doing previously. (Daniel 6:10)

Can we pray fervently as children, then wait until we are five hundred years old to next pray?

Moreover, if the physical time frame were not of real consequence to God, if we were intended to apply this principle to daily living, then we would not be obligated to keep God's Sabbath in this life at all, because humanity has not yet arrived at the Sabbath Kingdom -- it is yet to come! (Compare Revelation 20:4)

Conversely, it is God's very Sabbath command which punctuates God's emphasis upon the spiritual importance of how we allocate specific segments of time.

Nevertheless, is it somehow possible to have a three-year-long "ox in the ditch"? Christ answers quite clearly:

And He said to them, "Which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?" (Luke 14:5)

We should note by context that the ditch/pit/well described is of sufficient magnitude that neither the child nor the animal is capable of self-rescue. Christ states that we immediately pull our son or our ox out of the well. Our son or our animal is not going to be back in the well unless there is another accidental fall.

A wise old farmer in God's Church is reputed to have said, "If I had an ox that kept falling in the ditch, I would either shoot the ox or fill the ditch!"

The material question here is:

Is it acceptable to God for us to be a parent or a farmer or a Christian who allows circumstances such that our child or our ox or our spiritual condition is at constant risk of injury or death, as demonstrated by the fact that he or it has suffered -- requiring rescue -- from 156 serious accidental falls into the same pit over a three year period?

This is not acceptable parenting. It is not acceptable stewardship. Neither can it be considered to be acceptable Christianity.

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