Question:
Is it Sabbath-breaking for me, who keeps Saturday as the Sabbath holy unto the Lord, to sell patterns to a lady who does her sewing on Saturday?
Answer:
The Bible has much to say about buying and selling and about how to keep the Sabbath.
The children of Israel bought and sold to idolaters. There are several examples of this. In Genesis 23, the record is given of Abraham buying a gravesite from the children of Heth. When the children of Israel were passing through the desert, Moses offered to buy water from the Edomites (Numbers 20.), and when Solomon built the temple, he bought and sold to the heathen. (II Chronicles 4, 5.)
Jesus said, in Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath has been given to us as a gift from God. The Sabbath is also a sign to the people of God that they belong to Him and that He is their God. (Exodus 31:13; Ezekiel 20:20.)
If we are God’s people and He is our God, we will keep the Sabbath according to the Ten Commandments. Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” John 14:15. If we do not love the Lord, we will not be blessed by keeping His commandments. He also stated this another way: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37–40.
Jesus also said, “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:45. In other words, God does not discriminate between those who serve Him and those who do not. He blesses them all with the natural resources.
We find in the Bible that man was made to be a free moral being, and he has the right to choose to serve whomever he wishes. As Joshua said, “If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that [were] on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15.
Elijah said, to the people of Israel, “How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord [be] God, follow Him: but if Baal, [then] follow him.” 1 Kings 18:21.
In the fourth commandment, God recognizes the rights of property ownership, as He specifically states, “thy stranger within thy gates”: “The seventh day [is] the sabbath of the Lord thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates.” Exodus 20:10. He does not say that you are responsible for the stranger outside thy gates. We should recognize ownership as well.
Once you sell a pattern, you are not responsible for what the buyer does with it, because it belongs to them. Thus we may conclude that it is not wrong to sell to non-Sabbathkeepers. It is the buyer’s choice as to how and when the product will be used.