In this sermon, Pastor Babij preaches on the fourth of the Ten Commandments, explaining the principles gleaned from the Sabbath command that are applicable to today’s observance of the Lord’s Day:
1) The Necessity of the Sabbath
2) The Idea of Rest
3) The Idea of Redemption
4) The Idea of Righteousness
Pastor concludes by exhorting Christians to carefully prepare for and observe the Lord’s Day as a special day to receive strength from God and increase in love for Him.
Full Transcript:
Let’s turn to the Old Testament book of Exodus 20:1-11 where we are looking at the fourth commandment:
Then God spoke all these words, saying, 2“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3“You shall have no other gods before Me. 4“You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5“You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 7“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. 8“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but 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. 11“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.
Let’s pray:
Father, as we come before Your word, we come wanting to know what it says and wanting to put it into practice. I pray, Lord, that You would continue to change our mind when it comes to wrong thinking, and even wrong practice. I pray, Lord, that we would learn how serious the commandments are in Scripture. I pray, Lord, we would put them and place them in the right place in our lives, so we would honor You and we would reap the benefits that You planned when You gave them to us. I pray, Lord, as we do that, You would make us believers who are steadfast, steady, and strong in the faith. I pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.
Here, we have the fourth commandment, which gives more detail than the other commandments. The commandment clearly spells out what is involved in a relationship with God, who is Holy. As I have mentioned already, recognizing that He alone is God and He is to have first place in our hearts and our lives. When He’s not, usually our lives and our relationships are in disorder.
The worship of anything or anyone, other than the redeemer God, is absolutely prohibited by the commandments. The right relationship we are to have with God is our responsibility every single day of our lives. Secondly, man must not attempt, in the second commandment, to make any visible representation of the invisible God. To do so would be to degrade Him and distort His holiness. Furthermore, the idol that is intended to represent God as an aid to worship eventually becomes God in the minds of the worshippers.
Thirdly, we have the responsibility of taking up the name of God and are responsible for His reputation before a lost and dying world by treating His name with honor, with respect, and with reverence in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Now, we have come to the fourth commandment, and we have a responsibility of one day in seven to attend to God’s honor and our own souls. The fourth commandment teaches God’s people to keep the Sabbath holy. Most say that the Christian’s Sabbath is the first day of the week, on Sunday, called the Lord’s day. However, in many places today, Sunday is no different from any other day of the week.
Now, why don’t Christians worship on the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why is Sunday a special day for a Christian? At least it’s supposed to be a special day. In order to answer these questions and others, I would like to present two messages concerning these two important days – the Sabbath and the Lord’s day.
First, I would like to briefly examine each one and then glean some principles from the Sabbath. Next week, we’ll look at the similarities of the two days. Lastly, I would like to conclude with the requirements and obligations regarding these two days. In other words, what it means for the believer. The overall purpose is to get you to think about yourselves and how you are to prepare yourselves for the one day in seven that you are to worship Him.
Today, we will examine the Sabbath as it concerns the Israelites. In the next message, we will examine the principle of the fourth Commandment as it applies to believers today. From the Sabbath day in Scripture, we glean the foundation for the Lord’s day, so the principal found in this fourth Commandment is that of the nature of the Sabbath and it says to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy.
When God gave the Sabbath, it was to be a day of rest and remembrance. However, through the years, it developed into a burden for the people because there was a system of terribly hard to-do rules imposed by the Jewish leadership on the people, so there was no lack of rules for surrounding the fourth commandment.
For example, in the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had added hundreds of petty rules that made the law so complicated that people had to study it and study the laws that were on top of it to figure out what God actually wanted them to do. Usually, they never really got to what God wanted them to do because it was so cloudy, but they did fear breaking the fourth commandment. All the rules that surrounded the fourth commandment actually clouded the original sense of the commandment.
When you get to the New Testament, you see Jesus denouncing the Pharisees traditions as transgressing the commandments of God and making them to no effect. Jesus, in many instances, would say to the Pharisees the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. That saying is found in Mark and what Jesus is doing is giving the correct understanding of the Sabbath, so Jesus subordinates the Sabbath to man’s real welfare.
Man was not made for the Sabbath as the rabbi’s assumed with their petty rules. When man messes with the word of God and goes outside the boundaries of the word of God, then they come up with utterly ridiculous traditions and rules.
In relation to the fourth commandment, if a man was bitten by a flea, then he would have to let the flea keep on biting him or be guilty of breaking the Sabbath law. If he killed the flea, he would be guilty of hunting on the Sabbath, so it’s pretty ridiculous.
If a farmer’s ox fell into a ditch on the Sabbath, he can pull it out, but if he fell into the ditch, he had to stay there. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus blasts the religious leadership of Israel and exposes their errors. Jesus says to them in Mark 7:7-8:
‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’ 8“Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
Jesus is saying:
You abandoned the commandments of God. You are substituting man’s rules and man’s ingenuity for God’s laws.
They do it very attractively. They put away God’s law in a very nice way. Jesus continues to say in Mark 7:9:
He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.
In other words, they constantly nullify the divine in order to keep human rule. Don’t do that. Jesus actually exposes the damage done by such self-invented human tradition. A particular term is used in the Gospel of Mark 7:13 where Jesus says:
thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.
Jesus said that they are robbing the word of God of its authority. In other words, the word “invalidate” means to leave without authority. If you minus or extract the authority of the word of God from the word of God by substituting something man said instead of what God says, you are actually undermining the word of God and making it of no effect. That’s what He says, so don’t do that.
True religion can never be produced by the mind of man. True religion should not be mistaken for mere outward observance and religious acts. The real deception is making the man-made rules appear to be teachings that come from God. In fact, there were more than roughly 1,500 ways that a person could break the Sabbath.
You may ask: why did the Jewish leadership come up with so many rules related to breaking the fourth commandment? Well, if you take your Bibles and look to Exodus 35:2, we get the sense of why they did it, which is because of fear and prevention of death:
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a sabbath of complete rest to the LORD; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.
You can see that they were trying to hedge against somebody losing their life or not in carrying out the Sabbath day the way they should. However, when they took matters into their own hands to try to prevent breaking it, they actually nullified it and broke it, and by fear, they moved away from the meaning and the significance of the special day called the Sabbath.
If they would have just stayed in the Hebrew Scriptures, they would have come up with at least eight specific ways the Bible says on not doing these things on this day. They would have been fine. The Hebrew Bible actually tells us the types of work that are prohibited on the Sabbath.
The first part would be that of leaving one’s place. You couldn’t be moving around on the Sabbath. Also, agricultural activities such as no planting or harvesting on the Sabbath. There is no kindling of fire on the Sabbath. No gathering wood on the Sabbath. Of course, no conducting business on the Sabbath, carrying burdens, treading the winepress, or loading donkeys. These were the eight things found in Scripture. If they would have just kept those, they would have been fine.
Yet, the Lord never intended the Sabbath to be a day of burden and of restriction. It was to be a very special day. It was a day set apart for the Lord in which it was to benefit God’s people with rest and remembrance. So then, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is saying that the Sabbath was made to benefit people, not people to benefit the Sabbath, so they got it all messed up. Therefore, they ended up breaking it by trying to prevent from breaking it.
That’s what happens when we mess with the word of God, or we substitute man’s thinking and impose it upon Scripture. We should never do that. The principal under this is the necessity of the Sabbath, which included four benefits on behalf of mankind for the Sabbath day. The first one is the idea of remembering. Exodus 20:8 says:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
The idea of remembering is not primarily recalling something from the past, but it is used in the sense of remembering the law and the commandments with the idea of doing them. Hence, to remember the Sabbath is to observe it by abstaining from work. That’s how you observe it. That’s why God gave it. This principle of Sabbath was rooted in the action of God himself in creation. When God created, He called the first six days good, but the seventh day He called holy. Meaning, it was a day that belonged to the Lord and it was to be used for God’s purpose and not for ours. For example, Isaiah 58:13 says:
If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot
From doing your own pleasure on My holy day,
And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable,
And honor it, desisting from your own ways,
From seeking your own pleasure
And speaking your own word
The pattern of the Sabbath was set back then at creation, but it has tremendous value for people every single week of their lives. Breaking away from the regular labor is to honor God in this sense. So, they were to remember that God created the world in six days and then rested on that seventh day. Meaning, the second necessity of the Sabbath is that of rest. Exodus 20:11 says:
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.
It was to be a day of rest because by the seventh day, God completed His work of creation, which He had done and rested on that seventh day from all the work that He had done. God, as a manual laborer, rested after He had finished creation.
The word “Sabbath” comes from the Hebrew word that means ceasing or desisting activities. The Sabbath does not mean Saturday or the seventh day. What is contained within the word Sabbath is the whole thought of ceasing from labor. The Sabbath is a day when people suspend or cease their normal routine of working.
If you notice, the majority of our life is going to be working. Six days we work, right? We have plenty of work to do. All of us have work to do in our life. However, the Bible is saying that on this one particular day, which is called the Sabbath, is the day that you are going to suspend the normal labor of work and cease from doing it. It is not a day specifically about you, but it’s a day about God. It would be a day of no work, but a day of rest. The word “Sabaton” means complete rest. Exodus 31:15 says:
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death.
The Lord took this day very seriously, but He took it seriously for the benefit of the people themselves. For your information, God did not rest because He was physically tired. Rather, His rest signified satisfaction with His creation. That’s what it signifies. God tells Moses something very interesting concerning this rest in Exodus 31:17:
It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.
This Hebrew verb means to take a breath or to refresh oneself, so God tells Moses how He was refreshed by His day of rest. Meaning, He meditated upon the satisfaction of what He had done. He created the Heaven and the Earth and everything in it and God stepped back, stopped working, looked at what was done, and He called it very good.
Then, He called, when He gave the commandments, this particular day a Holy day, which is to be set apart. We have this one day we set apart so we can look at what God had done, step back, and rest from our normal routine of working so we can appreciate and drink-in what God has done. In doing that, it refreshes our soul. We have the benefits of getting charged again for the next week of labor.
There is no doubt that God talks about the Sabbath in this way in order to show people that they must follow the pattern of the Creator, which He has set forth to them. God resting from His work is a pattern given to mankind to benefit them. If God, the Creator, rested, then how much more should His creatures rest? It reflects God’s law about the Sabbath. A day of rest is necessary for individuals, for families, for households, and for animals. If you look back at Exodus 20:10, notice the details given:
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 Lord says:
Listen, this is going to benefit everyone. All the individuals within your influence will benefit from that day.
I haven’t met anybody, maybe you know somebody, who wishes that their life was more hectic than it is. Do you know anybody? If you do, then I think you’re a little bit wacky. I mean, I don’t need another thing in my life. I don’t need another thing to do, another thing on my schedule, or another hectic thing to drive me absolutely bonkers.
When we just work and work and work and work, that is not God’s plan. That is very destructive for your spiritual life, for your physical life, for your family life, for your relationships, and for God’s church. He does not want us to live like that, and it is not beneficial for you. It is beneficial for us.
Whatever labor God gives us, to set aside this day of rest is like no other day of the week. It’s a different day. It’s not a day to cut your lawn. It’s not a day to paint your house. It’s not a day to clean out the basement, to change the oil in your car, or to schedule what you are going to do the next week. It is a day just to rest and to focus your attention on the things that are beneficial for your soul.
God instituted the weekly Sabbath, a day of rest, because it reflects His creative work and the blessing that He gave when He had finished creation. It also allowed an opportunity for both people and animals to rest from their work and to be refreshed for the next week.
Christian’s should really ponder the importance of the Sabbath described in the Bible. God’s instructions require all people to observe a regular weekly break from work. One day in seven to rest our souls, to remember, to honor, and to worship our Lord for His works and redemption.
Thirdly, it was for the idea of redemption. In Deuteronomy 5:12-15, we get the idea of redemption. The Exodus account from Mount Sinai and the Deuteronomy account delivered on the plains of Moab were separated by 40 years. The idea in Deuteronomy is a little different than Exodus 20. In Exodus, the focus is on all people as created beings. In Deuteronomy, it is directed to Israel as a nation, a group of Gods’ redeem people. In Deuteronomy 5:12, this is what they were to do:
Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.
The term “observe” is to distress and to pay careful attention to keeping this specific day. Then, this day is also connected to God redeeming His people. Deuteronomy 5:15 says:
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.
The Sabbath was God’s signpost to remind His special people of His mercy shown to them when He rescued them from the Egyptian slavery. Exodus pointed to God’s goodness towards His people as their Creator. Deuteronomy went a step further by pointing to God’s mercy towards His chosen people as their Redeemer, who rescued them from slavery.
This was done so they would not forget what God had done. That they would take ownership of what they believed and honor the Lord by putting their belief into practice and into the regular weekly schedule. Meaning, one day was that day in which they were as God’s redeem people, to gather together, and not forget all the great works God has done on their behalf.
It was this sense of: I know that God redeemed me. For the believer, it would be: I know that God saved me, and I know the work that He carried out in order to save me. Therefore, because of that I am going to set aside this one day in seven for my regular weekly practice. Remember, it’s not a day that you come up with or a day that you decide. It’s a day that God decides.
That brings me to the necessity of this special day, and that it was also a day with the idea of righteousness. In Deuteronomy 5:14, God’s people were to be different. Not only in their daily lifestyle, but in their worship of God. They were also to be concerned with the treatment of others:
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 or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
God’s people were to have a special concern for others, especially on this one day that they were breaking apart from their regular labor to focus in on people. Because God was merciful to the people of Israel while they were slaves in Egypt, He expected the Israelites to show loving concern for the people who served with them during the week.
Meaning, the Sabbath day offered the Israelites a perfect opportunity to show love and concern to others on that particular day. Remember, the Jewish leadership messed up the whole point of this day of rest and considering what the Lord had done on their behalf by way of redemption and showing people kindness on this day. When you come again to the New Testament, you find Jesus constantly coming against the Jewish leadership because they had so distorted this day, they weren’t even kind to people. For example, Mark 3:1-5 says:
He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered. 2They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. 3He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” 4And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. 5After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
Specifically on the day of Sabbath, kindness was to be shown to people, but they had put so many boundaries upon this commandment, they could not even show compassion to people who needed help. They thought that would have been work. Therefore, they would have been put to death. This special day was never to be a sham. Even the later prophet saw a great deal about the observance of Sabbath being a sham to people.
Many people treated the Sabbath day more as a holiday than as a holy day. They used it as an opportunity for self-indulgence rather than a day for worshiping God. Even some greedy tradesmen found the restrictions of the Sabbath an annoyance to their regular business flow. In fact, the prophet Amos mentioned this in Amos 8:5:
When will the new moon be over, So that we may sell grain, And the sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, To make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, And to cheat with dishonest scales
In other words, they were upset that their flow of business was being hindered because Israel decided to take a day off during the week to rest and worship God instead of making money.
In Scripture, even this practice was debunked. Many years ago, there was something called Blue Laws where all businesses were closed on Sunday no matter what. One day, I was preaching in Hicksville Long Island and I went to the town. I haven’t seen Blue Laws in a town for a long time, and I get there and thought we would have a cup of coffee, get something to eat, and then go to the church. Well, there was nothing open. I found out later that this particular town still has Blue Laws in place, so businesses were prevented from opening and making money on Sunday. Of course, that practice is pretty much gone forever.
Now, I didn’t get to the Lord’s day yet, but I’m laying down for you some of the principles that we can glean from the Sabbath because they do translate into the Lord’s day. Not that it’s the same day, but the principles are all there. Even the prophets did not shrink of exposing the disobedience and abuse of the Sabbath laws.
Isaiah said to those who go through the motions for Sabbath worship actually nauseated the Lord by their misuse of it. Jeremiah told the people that they’re breaking of the Sabbath laws would eventually bring destruction of the city of Jerusalem, which it did. Ezekiel warned the people that God had been very patient with His people, but if they continued to disobey the rules of the Sabbath, this one day in seven to rest and worship Him, He would severely judge them, and He did.
It’s not until Nehemiah where we see the Israelites, who come back from exile, be more careful than before to observe this one day in seven. It can be very specific and important day for Israel. There are some observations that we can glean from the Sabbath that is going to be seen and practiced in the Lord’s day. There are several of them made about the Sabbath for the purpose of guiding our understanding of how we should observe an approach the Lord’s Day.
First, it was a special day. It was not a regular day of work. Meaning, God’s people were not to treat it like any other day. Do we treat the Lord’s day like any other day? Do we have our plans all set where we say: I come to church, and when I’m out that door, I’m doing what I need to do that day? I think we need to start changing our mind set on that. It’s not just about gathering and hearing preaching. It’s about what you do when you leave out those doors and go back home or go wherever you go.
Is it something where you are still in the mindset that it is a special day? That it is a day set apart unto the Lord. The rules in the Old Testament about the Sabbath we’re not meant to rule out activity of any kind instead. The laws were meant to stop regular every day work because if God had set aside the Sabbath, the most obvious way of being disrespected was to treat it just like any other day.
It should never just be another day for believers. It was to be set aside with great care and consideration. Also, we saw that the Sabbath was a day of doing good. It was a day for doing good deeds. Many ministries take place on Sunday. Those are not considered by God to be worked. They are considered to be service to your fellow man as good deeds. Matthew 12:11-12:
And He said to them, “What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? 12“How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
The Sabbath is a day of doing things but it’s doing things other than would you do during the week. It’s doing Ministry. It’s ministering to people. It is helping people. It’s meeting with people. It’s talking with people. It’s counseling people. It’s going and sharing the Gospel with people. It’s all those things that are included in doing good on the Sabbath.
Also, it was a day which pointed the people to remember how much the Lord loved His people and wanted to draw near to them. Scripture tells us that God gave His people the Sabbath as an opportunity to serve Him and as a reminder of the two great truths in the Bible. One, the God that we serve is the God who created the heaven and the earth and set this principle out for us. To take this one day in seven and rest. Then, the same God gave us the plan of salvation and redemption. If we are saved and if we’ve come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, then that day becomes our special thought.
During the week we can forget about those things because of the business of the week. We shouldn’t, but we may. That’s why every week we must come together and have our focus adjusted again on the right things. Also, it was a day that God’s people valued because they valued the relationship with God.
When you go off to church on Sunday morning and people see you and your family sees you, and when you’re on your way to church and people are on bicycles, skateboards, and doing their business on Sunday, but you’re not. You’re valuing that day as a special day because of your relationship with God, not just to get up and go to church. We should never have that attitude.
This is the day that we value because we value would God’s given us. We value the word of God. We value the rest that Gods granted to us. We value how God is going to use that to benefit us for our life, and for what goes on that next week. We value that and we show it by actually carrying that day out and doing it.
Also, it is a day that tested the people’s loyalty. You can be at a soccer game this morning. You can be at a shower for a family member this morning. You can be in any hundred places this morning, but those are the decisions we have to make before God to show our loyalty to Him.
This day is so important that I don’t replace it with something else. Even though somebody else may think that it’s important for me to be somewhere else instead of here, I decided that I’m going to be here. I know that sometimes our families do not pick up on that nicely. They like to come against us because of that, right? They like to schedule things right when they know you’re in church, and then they ask why you weren’t there.
That’s the struggle we’re all going to have, but see there is a sense of are you loyal to the Lord? If you are here, you’re loyal. If you’re setting apart that day your loyal, so is it day to test loyalty. Also, it was a day of blessing and enjoyment, not a day of Labor and burden. It is a day of rest and remembrance.
The Sabbath day should be a day of delight. A day of joy. A day of not doing the things that I like to do. It wasn’t a day of really seeking my own pleasure or seeking things that I wanted to talk about. It’s a day that I want to hear from God and His word. I want to know what God wants me to do. It’s a day to come, praise, and worship God and lift up our hands and voices before Him.
That becomes a very special day now. The last passage I want to look at this morning is Psalm 92. The reason why I picked this particular Psalm is that on the top it says:
Praise for the LORD’S Goodness. A Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath day.
Remember, the Psalms were songs. This is the song of a Sabbath day where they rested and didn’t labor. Psalm 92:1-5, 15:
It is good to give thanks to the LORD And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; 2To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning And Your faithfulness by night, 3With the ten-stringed lute and with the harp, With resounding music upon the lyre. 4For You, O LORD, have made me glad by what You have done, I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands. 5How great are Your works, O LORD! Your thoughts are very deep…15To declare that the LORD is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.
That song gives us a sense of what is in the mind of the people when they come to worship God. It’s about focusing in on what He had done, His character, declaring to Him, giving thanks to Him, praising Him, and declaring that the Lord is upright, good, righteous, and a God to be worshipped. That’s what is in their mindset. That is what strengthened them and refresh them to go on and live another week until the next Sabbath.
Next week, I’m going to examine how the Sabbath principle influences us and how it’s related to life today. Also, we will see if there are any similarities between the two days. Then, conclude with the requirements and obligations regarding these two days, and what it means for a believer as we prepare ourselves for the Lord’s Day each week.
I pray that the Lord’s Day, as we look at this next time, would truly become and remain a special day that is carefully prepared for and observed, so that we reap the benefits of spiritual rest and that the Lord is honored, worshipped, and praised by us for His mercy, faithfulness, and great works. Let’s pray:
Lord, thank You for the kindness that You have displayed to us and given to us. In the sense, giving it first to Your people in the Old Testament, Israel. Lord, Your redeemed people then. Now, Lord, in a special way, we also have a special day. A day to put these principles into practice and not to neglect them. A day to honor Your name with an attitude that You’re pleased with, and with our voices that are prepared to lift up and praise Your great name. I pray, Lord, You would adjust our thinking about how we consider the Lord’s Day from this day forward until next week and each week after. I pray this in Christ’s most precious name, Amen.
Let’s turn to the Old Testament book of Exodus 20:1-11 where we are looking at the fourth commandment:
Then God spoke all these words, saying, 2“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3“You shall have no other gods before Me. 4“You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5“You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. 7“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. 8“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but 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. 11“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.
Let’s pray:
Father, as we come before Your word, we come wanting to know what it says and wanting to put it into practice. I pray, Lord, that You would continue to change our mind when it comes to wrong thinking, and even wrong practice. I pray, Lord, that we would learn how serious the commandments are in Scripture. I pray, Lord, we would put them and place them in the right place in our lives, so we would honor You and we would reap the benefits that You planned when You gave them to us. I pray, Lord, as we do that, You would make us believers who are steadfast, steady, and strong in the faith. I pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.
Here, we have the fourth commandment, which gives more detail than the other commandments. The commandment clearly spells out what is involved in a relationship with God, who is Holy. As I have mentioned already, recognizing that He alone is God and He is to have first place in our hearts and our lives. When He’s not, usually our lives and our relationships are in disorder.
The worship of anything or anyone, other than the redeemer God, is absolutely prohibited by the commandments. The right relationship we are to have with God is our responsibility every single day of our lives. Secondly, man must not attempt, in the second commandment, to make any visible representation of the invisible God. To do so would be to degrade Him and distort His holiness. Furthermore, the idol that is intended to represent God as an aid to worship eventually becomes God in the minds of the worshippers.
Thirdly, we have the responsibility of taking up the name of God and are responsible for His reputation before a lost and dying world by treating His name with honor, with respect, and with reverence in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Now, we have come to the fourth commandment, and we have a responsibility of one day in seven to attend to God’s honor and our own souls. The fourth commandment teaches God’s people to keep the Sabbath holy. Most say that the Christian’s Sabbath is the first day of the week, on Sunday, called the Lord’s day. However, in many places today, Sunday is no different from any other day of the week.
Now, why don’t Christians worship on the Sabbath, or Saturday? Why is Sunday a special day for a Christian? At least it’s supposed to be a special day. In order to answer these questions and others, I would like to present two messages concerning these two important days – the Sabbath and the Lord’s day.
First, I would like to briefly examine each one and then glean some principles from the Sabbath. Next week, we’ll look at the similarities of the two days. Lastly, I would like to conclude with the requirements and obligations regarding these two days. In other words, what it means for the believer. The overall purpose is to get you to think about yourselves and how you are to prepare yourselves for the one day in seven that you are to worship Him.
Today, we will examine the Sabbath as it concerns the Israelites. In the next message, we will examine the principle of the fourth Commandment as it applies to believers today. From the Sabbath day in Scripture, we glean the foundation for the Lord’s day, so the principal found in this fourth Commandment is that of the nature of the Sabbath and it says to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy.
When God gave the Sabbath, it was to be a day of rest and remembrance. However, through the years, it developed into a burden for the people because there was a system of terribly hard to-do rules imposed by the Jewish leadership on the people, so there was no lack of rules for surrounding the fourth commandment.
For example, in the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had added hundreds of petty rules that made the law so complicated that people had to study it and study the laws that were on top of it to figure out what God actually wanted them to do. Usually, they never really got to what God wanted them to do because it was so cloudy, but they did fear breaking the fourth commandment. All the rules that surrounded the fourth commandment actually clouded the original sense of the commandment.
When you get to the New Testament, you see Jesus denouncing the Pharisees traditions as transgressing the commandments of God and making them to no effect. Jesus, in many instances, would say to the Pharisees the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. That saying is found in Mark and what Jesus is doing is giving the correct understanding of the Sabbath, so Jesus subordinates the Sabbath to man’s real welfare.
Man was not made for the Sabbath as the rabbi’s assumed with their petty rules. When man messes with the word of God and goes outside the boundaries of the word of God, then they come up with utterly ridiculous traditions and rules.
In relation to the fourth commandment, if a man was bitten by a flea, then he would have to let the flea keep on biting him or be guilty of breaking the Sabbath law. If he killed the flea, he would be guilty of hunting on the Sabbath, so it’s pretty ridiculous.
If a farmer’s ox fell into a ditch on the Sabbath, he can pull it out, but if he fell into the ditch, he had to stay there. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus blasts the religious leadership of Israel and exposes their errors. Jesus says to them in Mark 7:7-8:
‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’ 8“Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
Jesus is saying:
You abandoned the commandments of God. You are substituting man’s rules and man’s ingenuity for God’s laws.
They do it very attractively. They put away God’s law in a very nice way. Jesus continues to say in Mark 7:9:
He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.
In other words, they constantly nullify the divine in order to keep human rule. Don’t do that. Jesus actually exposes the damage done by such self-invented human tradition. A particular term is used in the Gospel of Mark 7:13 where Jesus says:
thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.
Jesus said that they are robbing the word of God of its authority. In other words, the word “invalidate” means to leave without authority. If you minus or extract the authority of the word of God from the word of God by substituting something man said instead of what God says, you are actually undermining the word of God and making it of no effect. That’s what He says, so don’t do that.
True religion can never be produced by the mind of man. True religion should not be mistaken for mere outward observance and religious acts. The real deception is making the man-made rules appear to be teachings that come from God. In fact, there were more than roughly 1,500 ways that a person could break the Sabbath.
You may ask: why did the Jewish leadership come up with so many rules related to breaking the fourth commandment? Well, if you take your Bibles and look to Exodus 35:2, we get the sense of why they did it, which is because of fear and prevention of death:
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a sabbath of complete rest to the LORD; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.
You can see that they were trying to hedge against somebody losing their life or not in carrying out the Sabbath day the way they should. However, when they took matters into their own hands to try to prevent breaking it, they actually nullified it and broke it, and by fear, they moved away from the meaning and the significance of the special day called the Sabbath.
If they would have just stayed in the Hebrew Scriptures, they would have come up with at least eight specific ways the Bible says on not doing these things on this day. They would have been fine. The Hebrew Bible actually tells us the types of work that are prohibited on the Sabbath.
The first part would be that of leaving one’s place. You couldn’t be moving around on the Sabbath. Also, agricultural activities such as no planting or harvesting on the Sabbath. There is no kindling of fire on the Sabbath. No gathering wood on the Sabbath. Of course, no conducting business on the Sabbath, carrying burdens, treading the winepress, or loading donkeys. These were the eight things found in Scripture. If they would have just kept those, they would have been fine.
Yet, the Lord never intended the Sabbath to be a day of burden and of restriction. It was to be a very special day. It was a day set apart for the Lord in which it was to benefit God’s people with rest and remembrance. So then, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is saying that the Sabbath was made to benefit people, not people to benefit the Sabbath, so they got it all messed up. Therefore, they ended up breaking it by trying to prevent from breaking it.
That’s what happens when we mess with the word of God, or we substitute man’s thinking and impose it upon Scripture. We should never do that. The principal under this is the necessity of the Sabbath, which included four benefits on behalf of mankind for the Sabbath day. The first one is the idea of remembering. Exodus 20:8 says:
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
The idea of remembering is not primarily recalling something from the past, but it is used in the sense of remembering the law and the commandments with the idea of doing them. Hence, to remember the Sabbath is to observe it by abstaining from work. That’s how you observe it. That’s why God gave it. This principle of Sabbath was rooted in the action of God himself in creation. When God created, He called the first six days good, but the seventh day He called holy. Meaning, it was a day that belonged to the Lord and it was to be used for God’s purpose and not for ours. For example, Isaiah 58:13 says:
If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot
From doing your own pleasure on My holy day,
And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable,
And honor it, desisting from your own ways,
From seeking your own pleasure
And speaking your own word
The pattern of the Sabbath was set back then at creation, but it has tremendous value for people every single week of their lives. Breaking away from the regular labor is to honor God in this sense. So, they were to remember that God created the world in six days and then rested on that seventh day. Meaning, the second necessity of the Sabbath is that of rest. Exodus 20:11 says:
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.
It was to be a day of rest because by the seventh day, God completed His work of creation, which He had done and rested on that seventh day from all the work that He had done. God, as a manual laborer, rested after He had finished creation.
The word “Sabbath” comes from the Hebrew word that means ceasing or desisting activities. The Sabbath does not mean Saturday or the seventh day. What is contained within the word Sabbath is the whole thought of ceasing from labor. The Sabbath is a day when people suspend or cease their normal routine of working.
If you notice, the majority of our life is going to be working. Six days we work, right? We have plenty of work to do. All of us have work to do in our life. However, the Bible is saying that on this one particular day, which is called the Sabbath, is the day that you are going to suspend the normal labor of work and cease from doing it. It is not a day specifically about you, but it’s a day about God. It would be a day of no work, but a day of rest. The word “Sabaton” means complete rest. Exodus 31:15 says:
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death.
The Lord took this day very seriously, but He took it seriously for the benefit of the people themselves. For your information, God did not rest because He was physically tired. Rather, His rest signified satisfaction with His creation. That’s what it signifies. God tells Moses something very interesting concerning this rest in Exodus 31:17:
It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.
This Hebrew verb means to take a breath or to refresh oneself, so God tells Moses how He was refreshed by His day of rest. Meaning, He meditated upon the satisfaction of what He had done. He created the Heaven and the Earth and everything in it and God stepped back, stopped working, looked at what was done, and He called it very good.
Then, He called, when He gave the commandments, this particular day a Holy day, which is to be set apart. We have this one day we set apart so we can look at what God had done, step back, and rest from our normal routine of working so we can appreciate and drink-in what God has done. In doing that, it refreshes our soul. We have the benefits of getting charged again for the next week of labor.
There is no doubt that God talks about the Sabbath in this way in order to show people that they must follow the pattern of the Creator, which He has set forth to them. God resting from His work is a pattern given to mankind to benefit them. If God, the Creator, rested, then how much more should His creatures rest? It reflects God’s law about the Sabbath. A day of rest is necessary for individuals, for families, for households, and for animals. If you look back at Exodus 20:10, notice the details given:
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 Lord says:
Listen, this is going to benefit everyone. All the individuals within your influence will benefit from that day.
I haven’t met anybody, maybe you know somebody, who wishes that their life was more hectic than it is. Do you know anybody? If you do, then I think you’re a little bit wacky. I mean, I don’t need another thing in my life. I don’t need another thing to do, another thing on my schedule, or another hectic thing to drive me absolutely bonkers.
When we just work and work and work and work, that is not God’s plan. That is very destructive for your spiritual life, for your physical life, for your family life, for your relationships, and for God’s church. He does not want us to live like that, and it is not beneficial for you. It is beneficial for us.
Whatever labor God gives us, to set aside this day of rest is like no other day of the week. It’s a different day. It’s not a day to cut your lawn. It’s not a day to paint your house. It’s not a day to clean out the basement, to change the oil in your car, or to schedule what you are going to do the next week. It is a day just to rest and to focus your attention on the things that are beneficial for your soul.
God instituted the weekly Sabbath, a day of rest, because it reflects His creative work and the blessing that He gave when He had finished creation. It also allowed an opportunity for both people and animals to rest from their work and to be refreshed for the next week.
Christian’s should really ponder the importance of the Sabbath described in the Bible. God’s instructions require all people to observe a regular weekly break from work. One day in seven to rest our souls, to remember, to honor, and to worship our Lord for His works and redemption.
Thirdly, it was for the idea of redemption. In Deuteronomy 5:12-15, we get the idea of redemption. The Exodus account from Mount Sinai and the Deuteronomy account delivered on the plains of Moab were separated by 40 years. The idea in Deuteronomy is a little different than Exodus 20. In Exodus, the focus is on all people as created beings. In Deuteronomy, it is directed to Israel as a nation, a group of Gods’ redeem people. In Deuteronomy 5:12, this is what they were to do:
Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.
The term “observe” is to distress and to pay careful attention to keeping this specific day. Then, this day is also connected to God redeeming His people. Deuteronomy 5:15 says:
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.
The Sabbath was God’s signpost to remind His special people of His mercy shown to them when He rescued them from the Egyptian slavery. Exodus pointed to God’s goodness towards His people as their Creator. Deuteronomy went a step further by pointing to God’s mercy towards His chosen people as their Redeemer, who rescued them from slavery.
This was done so they would not forget what God had done. That they would take ownership of what they believed and honor the Lord by putting their belief into practice and into the regular weekly schedule. Meaning, one day was that day in which they were as God’s redeem people, to gather together, and not forget all the great works God has done on their behalf.
It was this sense of: I know that God redeemed me. For the believer, it would be: I know that God saved me, and I know the work that He carried out in order to save me. Therefore, because of that I am going to set aside this one day in seven for my regular weekly practice. Remember, it’s not a day that you come up with or a day that you decide. It’s a day that God decides.
That brings me to the necessity of this special day, and that it was also a day with the idea of righteousness. In Deuteronomy 5:14, God’s people were to be different. Not only in their daily lifestyle, but in their worship of God. They were also to be concerned with the treatment of others:
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 or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
God’s people were to have a special concern for others, especially on this one day that they were breaking apart from their regular labor to focus in on people. Because God was merciful to the people of Israel while they were slaves in Egypt, He expected the Israelites to show loving concern for the people who served with them during the week.
Meaning, the Sabbath day offered the Israelites a perfect opportunity to show love and concern to others on that particular day. Remember, the Jewish leadership messed up the whole point of this day of rest and considering what the Lord had done on their behalf by way of redemption and showing people kindness on this day. When you come again to the New Testament, you find Jesus constantly coming against the Jewish leadership because they had so distorted this day, they weren’t even kind to people. For example, Mark 3:1-5 says:
He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered. 2They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. 3He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” 4And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. 5After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
Specifically on the day of Sabbath, kindness was to be shown to people, but they had put so many boundaries upon this commandment, they could not even show compassion to people who needed help. They thought that would have been work. Therefore, they would have been put to death. This special day was never to be a sham. Even the later prophet saw a great deal about the observance of Sabbath being a sham to people.
Many people treated the Sabbath day more as a holiday than as a holy day. They used it as an opportunity for self-indulgence rather than a day for worshiping God. Even some greedy tradesmen found the restrictions of the Sabbath an annoyance to their regular business flow. In fact, the prophet Amos mentioned this in Amos 8:5:
When will the new moon be over, So that we may sell grain, And the sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, To make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, And to cheat with dishonest scales
In other words, they were upset that their flow of business was being hindered because Israel decided to take a day off during the week to rest and worship God instead of making money.
In Scripture, even this practice was debunked. Many years ago, there was something called Blue Laws where all businesses were closed on Sunday no matter what. One day, I was preaching in Hicksville Long Island and I went to the town. I haven’t seen Blue Laws in a town for a long time, and I get there and thought we would have a cup of coffee, get something to eat, and then go to the church. Well, there was nothing open. I found out later that this particular town still has Blue Laws in place, so businesses were prevented from opening and making money on Sunday. Of course, that practice is pretty much gone forever.
Now, I didn’t get to the Lord’s day yet, but I’m laying down for you some of the principles that we can glean from the Sabbath because they do translate into the Lord’s day. Not that it’s the same day, but the principles are all there. Even the prophets did not shrink of exposing the disobedience and abuse of the Sabbath laws.
Isaiah said to those who go through the motions for Sabbath worship actually nauseated the Lord by their misuse of it. Jeremiah told the people that they’re breaking of the Sabbath laws would eventually bring destruction of the city of Jerusalem, which it did. Ezekiel warned the people that God had been very patient with His people, but if they continued to disobey the rules of the Sabbath, this one day in seven to rest and worship Him, He would severely judge them, and He did.
It’s not until Nehemiah where we see the Israelites, who come back from exile, be more careful than before to observe this one day in seven. It can be very specific and important day for Israel. There are some observations that we can glean from the Sabbath that is going to be seen and practiced in the Lord’s day. There are several of them made about the Sabbath for the purpose of guiding our understanding of how we should observe an approach the Lord’s Day.
First, it was a special day. It was not a regular day of work. Meaning, God’s people were not to treat it like any other day. Do we treat the Lord’s day like any other day? Do we have our plans all set where we say: I come to church, and when I’m out that door, I’m doing what I need to do that day? I think we need to start changing our mind set on that. It’s not just about gathering and hearing preaching. It’s about what you do when you leave out those doors and go back home or go wherever you go.
Is it something where you are still in the mindset that it is a special day? That it is a day set apart unto the Lord. The rules in the Old Testament about the Sabbath we’re not meant to rule out activity of any kind instead. The laws were meant to stop regular every day work because if God had set aside the Sabbath, the most obvious way of being disrespected was to treat it just like any other day.
It should never just be another day for believers. It was to be set aside with great care and consideration. Also, we saw that the Sabbath was a day of doing good. It was a day for doing good deeds. Many ministries take place on Sunday. Those are not considered by God to be worked. They are considered to be service to your fellow man as good deeds. Matthew 12:11-12:
And He said to them, “What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? 12“How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
The Sabbath is a day of doing things but it’s doing things other than would you do during the week. It’s doing Ministry. It’s ministering to people. It is helping people. It’s meeting with people. It’s talking with people. It’s counseling people. It’s going and sharing the Gospel with people. It’s all those things that are included in doing good on the Sabbath.
Also, it was a day which pointed the people to remember how much the Lord loved His people and wanted to draw near to them. Scripture tells us that God gave His people the Sabbath as an opportunity to serve Him and as a reminder of the two great truths in the Bible. One, the God that we serve is the God who created the heaven and the earth and set this principle out for us. To take this one day in seven and rest. Then, the same God gave us the plan of salvation and redemption. If we are saved and if we’ve come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, then that day becomes our special thought.
During the week we can forget about those things because of the business of the week. We shouldn’t, but we may. That’s why every week we must come together and have our focus adjusted again on the right things. Also, it was a day that God’s people valued because they valued the relationship with God.
When you go off to church on Sunday morning and people see you and your family sees you, and when you’re on your way to church and people are on bicycles, skateboards, and doing their business on Sunday, but you’re not. You’re valuing that day as a special day because of your relationship with God, not just to get up and go to church. We should never have that attitude.
This is the day that we value because we value would God’s given us. We value the word of God. We value the rest that Gods granted to us. We value how God is going to use that to benefit us for our life, and for what goes on that next week. We value that and we show it by actually carrying that day out and doing it.
Also, it is a day that tested the people’s loyalty. You can be at a soccer game this morning. You can be at a shower for a family member this morning. You can be in any hundred places this morning, but those are the decisions we have to make before God to show our loyalty to Him.
This day is so important that I don’t replace it with something else. Even though somebody else may think that it’s important for me to be somewhere else instead of here, I decided that I’m going to be here. I know that sometimes our families do not pick up on that nicely. They like to come against us because of that, right? They like to schedule things right when they know you’re in church, and then they ask why you weren’t there.
That’s the struggle we’re all going to have, but see there is a sense of are you loyal to the Lord? If you are here, you’re loyal. If you’re setting apart that day your loyal, so is it day to test loyalty. Also, it was a day of blessing and enjoyment, not a day of Labor and burden. It is a day of rest and remembrance.
The Sabbath day should be a day of delight. A day of joy. A day of not doing the things that I like to do. It wasn’t a day of really seeking my own pleasure or seeking things that I wanted to talk about. It’s a day that I want to hear from God and His word. I want to know what God wants me to do. It’s a day to come, praise, and worship God and lift up our hands and voices before Him.
That becomes a very special day now. The last passage I want to look at this morning is Psalm 92. The reason why I picked this particular Psalm is that on the top it says:
Praise for the LORD’S Goodness. A Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath day.
Remember, the Psalms were songs. This is the song of a Sabbath day where they rested and didn’t labor. Psalm 92:1-5, 15:
It is good to give thanks to the LORD And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; 2To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning And Your faithfulness by night, 3With the ten-stringed lute and with the harp, With resounding music upon the lyre. 4For You, O LORD, have made me glad by what You have done, I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands. 5How great are Your works, O LORD! Your thoughts are very deep…15To declare that the LORD is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.
That song gives us a sense of what is in the mind of the people when they come to worship God. It’s about focusing in on what He had done, His character, declaring to Him, giving thanks to Him, praising Him, and declaring that the Lord is upright, good, righteous, and a God to be worshipped. That’s what is in their mindset. That is what strengthened them and refresh them to go on and live another week until the next Sabbath.
Next week, I’m going to examine how the Sabbath principle influences us and how it’s related to life today. Also, we will see if there are any similarities between the two days. Then, conclude with the requirements and obligations regarding these two days, and what it means for a believer as we prepare ourselves for the Lord’s Day each week.
I pray that the Lord’s Day, as we look at this next time, would truly become and remain a special day that is carefully prepared for and observed, so that we reap the benefits of spiritual rest and that the Lord is honored, worshipped, and praised by us for His mercy, faithfulness, and great works. Let’s pray:
Lord, thank You for the kindness that You have displayed to us and given to us. In the sense, giving it first to Your people in the Old Testament, Israel. Lord, Your redeemed people then. Now, Lord, in a special way, we also have a special day. A day to put these principles into practice and not to neglect them. A day to honor Your name with an attitude that You’re pleased with, and with our voices that are prepared to lift up and praise Your great name. I pray, Lord, You would adjust our thinking about how we consider the Lord’s Day from this day forward until next week and each week after. I pray this in Christ’s most precious name, Amen.