South Woods Baptist Church

The first three commandments expressly deal with one's relationship to the Lord God. The last six commandments explain how we are to morally relate to others. But the fourth commandment deals with a day. In this sense it differs from the other commandments. Yet how far does it vary from the subject of relationships? Though the fourth commandment pinpoints a day of the week and the practices that are to take place on that day, it does so as a bridge to the relationships with God and man. It is a day that is set apart as holy; thus there are distinct elements that go with the Sabbath specifically addressing one's relationship to God. Additionally, the command is multifaceted in that it also is a call to work. One's labor has an effect upon others; your vocation in life does not take place in a vacuum but others benefit from the work that you do. The call to refrain from work affects relationships as well since he addresses this within the framework of the household, so that all within the household are to respect the Sabbath as a day of rest.

But I'm getting ahead of myself! What's the controversy all about concerning the Sabbath? The world of Moses' day recognized different calendars and different lengths of what we consider to be a week. Some had five-day weeks; others had ten-day weeks; while others had four, six, and eight-day weeks. No consistency in the seven day pattern was practiced until God established this pattern with the Israelites. During their 400 years in Egypt, they had followed the Egyptian practice of ten day weeks. They worked daily without a day of rest. Counting down the days of the week left no anticipation of a relaxing weekend! At the end of ten days they started again with the same drudgery without rest. But when God gave the commandment to them, He took them back to the order of creation. He set the pattern; working six days in creating the world and resting on the seventh day.

Did God need a break? Was the omnipotent God worn out so that He had to rejuvenate his strength and catch up on His rest after creation? Quite obviously, He could have created the entire universe in a split second. He could have taken 10,000 years to do it or ten million. But He created the world in six days. Genesis 2:2 records what happened next. "By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." The basis for the fourth commandment does not begin in Exodus 20 but on the seventh day after God created the world. He established the pattern of resting from our work just as He, the One that needs no rest, rested from His work. God let Israel know in the fourth commandment that He did not sanction the practice of the Egyptians or Babylonians or Canaanites. He commands that men work and rest, just as He set the moral example for us in the creation [see Brian Edwards, The Ten Commandments for Today, 120-121].

God set the fourth commandment within the moral demands that He makes upon all people. Though this commandment has been grossly abused in times past and even in present day, it is just as valid and useful as the other nine. Here is no call to return to the rigidity of first century Pharisaism but the call to establish the pattern of work and rest; work and rest. God demands that we work and rest: with our work as unto the Lord and our rest to prioritize worship. How do we put this into practice?

I. Four practices

The Sabbath did not begin in Exodus 20. We even find Moses and the children of Israel observing the Sabbath before they made it to Mt. Sinai and received the Ten Commandments. When the Lord provided manna in the wilderness, He established that this food would be provided for six days. On each day they were to take just what they needed for the day-thus establishing what Christ taught us to pray, "Give us this day, our daily bread." Some found out that when they hoarded the manna by gathering more than they needed, it bred worms and produced foul odors! But the sixth day they were to trust the Lord by gathering twice what they needed, since on the Sabbath, the manna would not be found. Most trusted the Lord in this and discovered that the leftover manna did not breed worms or stink when gathered on the sixth day. Some, who did not obey, went out on the seventh day to gather manna and found none. In the divine rebuke, the Lord identified the Sabbath as His gift to them. "See, the Lord has given you the sabbath; therefore He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day" (Ex. 16:29). What was this Sabbath gift of God?

We usually identify the 4th commandment only as "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." But as with the other commandments, the partial is given with reference to the whole (a synecdoche). The command carries with it a four-fold practice.

1. Remember

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." The Sabbath observance took the children of Israel back to creation. "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." With the Egyptian practice of a ten day week, with no sabbath break, the children of Israel had to be reminded that they were to stop their work and set apart a day unto the Lord. The Sabbath served to call attention to a change in their preoccupations and duties for one day out of seven. They needed to "remember" because of the human proclivity to forget the Lord. Even Jesus Christ gave to the church the Lord's Supper as a meal for remembrance of His death. We are preoccupied people. We have lots of things on our minds: work, family, business deals, trips to be made, school, national and international issues, sports, recreation, hobbies; the list goes on! It is easy to forget that we are to take time to draw aside and worship the Lord, hear His Word proclaimed, fellowship with believers, and renew our hearts before the Lord. We are so busy, that if a day is not set apart for this purpose, we will easily let eternal matters slip by. Just imagine these people moving through the wilderness with hundreds of thousands of others, dust in their faces, burdens on their backs, circling through a barren desert. Would anyone know what day of the week it was? We've all had those weeks when we've been so busy that we have to stop to remember what day of the week we're embarking on. But just as we do, the Israelites learned to count the days, and in their case, they were to look with anticipation to the Sabbath Day.

The act of remembering was not to be a simple mental check mark that it happened to be the seventh day. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." It was to be remembered with a view toward holiness. They had to remember why God set apart the day-with "set apart" being the meaning of holy. Later on during the 1st century, all sorts of regulations were added to the Sabbath observance. One couldn't ride his donkey unless he saddled it the previous day. Women couldn't wear jewelry lest they be tempted to work by taking off the piece of jewelry to show to a friend. You could dip your radish in salt but if you left it there too long you were pickling it, and thus working. You could brush dirt off of your dress but not rub the dirt off; that would be work. One who threw something in the air had to catch it with the same hand, lest if the other hand was used work would take place. Ridiculous, laughable, and rigid, we would echo! They had missed the point of making the day holy. In their literature of that day, "little is said about the spiritual purpose of the Sabbath day. The Pharisees were not concerned to tell the people why the Sabbath was given in the first place." "This," as Brian Edwards observed, "is all sheer legalism" [124-125].

2. Work

The call to remember the Sabbath also contains the command to work. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work." Just as the Sabbath observance began at creation, so did the ordinance to work. "Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it" (Gen. 2:15). Adam was not to be lazy or wait for God to stick food into his mouth. He had work to do. God had given him a vocation, that of cultivating and tending the Garden. Some mistakenly think that work is a curse. When there was no sin in the world, Adam worked according to the responsibilities given to him by the Lord. He found satisfaction in the work. The toil and difficulty in work came only after the fall into sin. God did not curse work but rather the ground where he would by the sweat of his brow earn his bread (Gen. 3:17-19).

"The cycle of labour is as irreversible as the cycle of rest," wrote John Murray [Principles of Conduct, 83]. It seems to be popular in our day to avoid work. Some make their living by not working and depending upon others to support their laziness. Paul established the principle based on the creation ordinance of work: "if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either" (2 Thes. 3:10b). Much dissatisfaction over one's job becomes the increasing conversation around the table. Yet the cycle of work has been established by the Lord. Just as we were created to worship we were also created to work. We are to find joy and satisfaction in our labor. You may not presently be working at the job that you will do for most of your life but it is important to find joy and satisfaction in that job. Here are some essential guidelines toward this end.

(1) Recognize that you are where you are by God's providence. He is ultimately your provider. He uses means to that end. Give Him thanks for the job that He has entrusted to you.

(2) Since you have been entrusted by your Father in heaven with a particular work, then do all that you do as unto Him. He may not leave you in that particular job for the rest of your life but while you are doing it, be a faithful steward unto Him. As Paul told the slaves in the Colossian church: "Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve" (Col. 3:23-24). When we work without a view to pleasing the Lord, we will lack the joy and satisfaction that He intends work to bring. As Murray commented on this passage, "...the apostle lays his finger upon the cardinal vice of our labour: we do it to please men... This evil that turns labour into drudgery is but the ultimate logic of eye-service and men-pleasing" [87-88].

(3) Let your labor at your job be an act of worship to the Lord rather than letting your job become your lord that you worship.

3. Stop working

Yes, you heard that correctly, stop working! "But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you." The tendency might be for the master of the house to rest while demanding that his children or servants continue the work. Here is an egalitarian principle that affected even the farm animals. Ligon Duncan translates the term "Sabbath" as "the stop-working day," since it means "to desist from labor" [www.fpcjackson.org, "The Command (Blessing) We Love to Hate," p. 3]. Here is the antidote to worshiping our work. We stop for one day out of seven.

But I can make more money if I work seven days! If money is the ultimate goal of your work, then I suppose that may be true. It is not that making money is wrong or evil. That is a noble thing if we are good stewards of what God has provided through our work. But when the ultimate goal is money, then that means that you do what you do solely for money and not as unto the Lord. One more quote from John Murray may prove helpful. "Riches are not evil; they are God's benefactions. We are, therefore, to put our hope in him as the bountiful giver, not in the riches themselves-they are uncertain because they are at the disposal of God's sovereignty and in the exercise of the sovereignty by which he dispensed them he can also take them away" [91].

Our mental, emotional, and physical engines can run only so long before they are exhausted and breakdown. That's why we have to have rest each day to invigorate us for the next day's labor. But it is also why God set the principle within the human race that we are to work, and work hard for six days, but then we must stop. The stopping point gives our bodies, minds, and emotions a break and time to catch up in preparation for the next week. Thus the Sabbath is a gift to us. Jesus continued this thought when He declared, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27).

4. Rest

"The Lord... rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." The principle of rest is inherent with the Sabbath command. As God rested, so are we to rest. But what does this rest constitute? Some consider Sunday as a day to sleep in, and therefore they don't have time for Bible study or worship in their thinking. But the kind of rest spoken of is holy rest, since the Lord "blessed the Sabbath and made it holy." Cessation from work one day in seven at least gives the body a chance to slow down and reinvigorate. But it is also a day to "remember." The emphasis in Exodus 20 on remembering focuses on God's work of creation. We are to remember, "It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture" (Psa. 100:3). Deuteronomy 5:15 puts the emphasis on remembering the Lord as Redeemer. "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day." We do not adequately rest until we rest in the Lord as our Creator and Redeemer. We do this only if we take the time to stop and think upon Him; to read the Scriptures; to meditate upon the Lord; to worship Him; to hear His Word proclaimed; to pray in dependence upon Him.

That is what we might call the rest of worship. Though worship is often taxing, it stretches our minds and emotions as we encounter the living God through the Word of God. Yet there is a certain invigoration that takes place in worship. We are more ready to face the challenges before us, knowing that Christ has redeemed us from our sins, that He has given us all the promises secured by His bloody death on the cross, that He indwells us by the Holy Spirit, that He rules and reigns as Sovereign Lord, and that He cares for us more than our minds can comprehend. That is the rest of worship.

Rest also implies that we do what is needed to reinvigorate physically, mentally, and emotionally. What refreshes me may not refresh you. This is where we must guard against rigidity and legalism. If we observe Sunday as the Christian Sabbath, better known to us as "the Lord's Day," (more on this later), then we must seek to use the day as a gift from the Lord to prepare for the week ahead. Walking, running, or taking a drive might do a world of good for you. For someone else, sitting quietly at home with a book in hand adds refreshment. For another, a Sunday afternoon nap adds a new zest to life! For others, visiting, serving, and studying change the normal pace and provide needed refreshment. I think that the parameters for what we do on the Lord's Day should be this: it is permissible if it does not cause us to neglect assembling with the body of Christ and worshiping, and if it does not distract our minds from focusing on the Lord. Is it an activity that I can do as one set apart unto the Lord? Will it help to prepare me to work more effectively during the coming week? Will it detract from my ability to engage in worship?

II. Perpetual, abrogated, or refocused?

It's obvious where I have leaned in the first consideration. There are three primary ways of looking at the 4th commandment. First, we can say that it is perpetuated through the centuries, including the seventh day as the obligatory day of observance. I did not realize that any group, other than Jews and Seventh Day Adventists, observed Saturday or the seventh day as a perpetual Sabbath until my first year in seminary. I received a call from one of my dearest friends who told me of his engagement to a wonderful Christian young lady. But there was one thing; she was a Seventh Day Baptist, and to marry her would be to commit to Sabbath observance. I researched the various positions and we engaged in lengthy conversations. He married her, and they remain happily married nearing 30 years. He also became part of the sabbatarian practice of that small denomination, though often supplemented with worshiping on Sundays at a local Southern Baptist Church where he lives.

Second, a growing number of people consider the Sabbath abrogated by the cross of Christ. Certainly, the numerous ceremonies and festivals attached to the Sabbaths (plural) were abrogated in Christ. That's the clear message in Hebrews that teaches us that the shadows are no longer necessary when the substance-Christ-has come and fulfilled their purpose (Heb. 8-10). But the fourth commandment, stated within the compass of the moral demands reflecting the moral character of the Creator, call for one day in seven to be given to a day of rest. Like the rest of the commandments, it is viewed as a moral responsibility for all men. The New Testament, in no place, calls for an end to giving one day in seven to rest and remembrance, though it never sanctions the rigid abuses of the Pharisees regarding the Sabbath.

Third, I believe that the New Testament refocuses the Sabbath into a Christian practice known as the Lord's Day. The principle remains the same: one day in seven we stop what we are doing, remember the Lord as Creator and Redeemer, worship Him, and reinvigorate in preparation for the next week. The distinctively Jewish practice of the seventh day recognizing Creation is changed into a distinctively Christian practice on the first day of the week recognizing the resurrection.

1. Continual need

Is there still the need for our work week to cease for a day, to reinvigorate ourselves, to draw aside in a day of worship and reflection on the Lord? Even most of those holding to the abrogation of the Sabbath agree that the day is needed for these purposes. A gradual shift took place in the New Testament. Jesus and the disciples observed the Sabbath. Then, after the work of redemption was completed by Christ's death and resurrection, Christians began to have their own day. They continued using the Sabbath as a day for making disciples, but the first day, Sunday, became the special time that they gathered together to worship.

The day of Pentecost followed the Jewish Sabbath. That first Christian sermon and great ingathering of new believers came on Sunday [see Edwards 129]. Luke makes this comment after the gospel had penetrated Europe. "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them" (Acts 20:7). Nowhere else does he mention the second day or the third day of the week. "The first day" had significance to the disciples by that point. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians about giving, instructed them, "On the first day of the week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come" (1 Cor. 16:2). Since workers typically received pay each day, this identification of the first day signified that it was the regular time of gathering for believers. Many years later, John referred to being in the Spirit "on the Lord's day," (Rev. 1:10) a phrase that implies "a day dedicated to the Lord" [Edwards 129]. Some sixty years after this, Justin Martyr wrote "about the first day of the week as their worship day," and further gave a description of the elements of their worship together [Edwards 129]. Eusebius, the 3rd century Christian historian and church father, stated that "the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred to the Christian Sunday" [Edwards 130]. And that has been the practice of the majority of Christians from the first century to the present day.

2. Distinguish from rigid 1st century Judaism

"The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." As a blessed day, that implies joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, and delight. Once the rebellious Israel could "call the Sabbath a delight," then God would know that they had truly repented (Isa. 58:13). I think that much of the opposition to the Christian Lord's Day observance comes due to lingering thoughts of the rigidity of the Pharisees toward the Sabbath in the 1st century. Their basic problem was in thinking that the stricter their observance of the Sabbath the more righteousness they would accrue. Instead of the Sabbath being a joyous day to celebrate and be refreshed, they made it a day of drudgery by their legalism. Jesus debunked their practices, claiming to be "Lord of the Sabbath" (Matt. 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-28).

Added to this is likely some legalistic holdovers that some of us had in our upbringing that made us afraid to smile on Sundays! Jesus healed on the Sabbath, walked through the fields with His disciples, (the disciples) winnowed grain to eat as a snack, preached, taught, worshiped, counseled, showed compassion, and enjoyed being with friends. "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," He taught (Mark 2:27). Therefore, what a person needs to be refreshed from the work week and spiritually invigorated, as long as it does not conflict with Scripture, does not detract from worshiping the Lord with the body of Christ, and he has liberty to do so as unto the Lord, then he should pursue it joyfully as a gift from the Lord.

Conclusion

Work and worship are both gifts from our God. We must cherish and savor both to His glory. Both are to be reflections of our delight and submission to Him as Creator and Redeemer.