TEN 4: The Fourth Commandment

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Exodus 20:8-11

N:

Opening

Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship at Eastern Hills! I’m pastor Bill Connors, and I’m glad you’re here in the room or online today. I can’t believe that July is already nearly half over, but I can say that I had a great time last Sunday night when we had our church-wide picnic and fireworks. If you were able to be here last week, I pray you had a good time as well. It was a beautiful night (even with the momentary light rain), and the fellowship was a lot of fun. I have a couple of quick announcements this morning before we dive into our study on the Ten Commandments:

AOM, Adults On Mission, will meet tonight at 5:00 in the Parlor. That’s the room just west of the Sanctuary doors off the foyer. Andrey Grinevich will be giving an update on the happenings with the Word of Life Russian church that meets on Sundays in our Choir Room, as well as giving some insight about what church life is like under communism.

Our 60+ senior adult ministry, called Cornerstone, is having their first real post-COVID event! They’re having an indoor picnic in Miller Hall—the downstairs section of the north education building, right through these grey doors at the end of the foyer—this Thursday, July 15, at 11:30 am. It’s being catered by Rudy’s BBQ, and I know it’s going to be a fun event!

Final announcement for me: Next Sunday night, July 18, is our bi-monthly business meeting, here in the Sanctuary at 5:30 pm. We need to have 50 members to make a quorum and officially conduct business according to our by-laws. And this is one of the blessings of being a congregationally governed church: you get to be a part of the decision-making process of the church family. Please make plans to be here to make sure we can do what needs to be done. Thanks!

With all of that said, we come to our fourth message in our series on the Ten Commandments, what the Hebrew people call the “Ten Words.” We’ve considered the first through third commandments, and last week gave some thought to how we might violate the Third Word prohibiting the misuse of the Lord’s name without realizing it. This morning, we come to the Fourth Commandment, the Word on the Sabbath. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read this, the longest of the Commandments, together:

Exodus 20:8–11 CSB

8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: 9 You are to labor six days and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. 11 For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.

PRAYER

To be completely frank this morning: Of the Ten Commandments, this is the one I was least looking forward to preaching. Why? For two reasons: First, because it is the one that there is the most confusion or even debate over, and Second, because this Commandment is the one that I have the hardest time keeping successfully. If I were to stand up here and say that I have this down, I would be a complete hypocrite. Instead, I’m a learning, and hopefully a recovering, hypocrite. Writing this message was terribly, terribly convicting.

So first of all, if we are going to discuss the Sabbath well, we need to clear up some of the confusion around it. The Hebrew word for Sabbath is pretty close: shabbat, and its root word literally means a period of rest, the cessation of work, the coming to the end of what one has to do. As far as the day’s title goes, it really just refers to the seventh or last day of the Jewish week, and according to Leviticus 23, the Sabbath actually runs from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

We often think that this ordinance was given by God here at the Ten Commandments, but it was first mentioned with the title “Sabbath” just a little earlier in the book of Exodus, in relation to God’s miraculous giving of manna to the Israelites as they traveled away from Egypt:

Very briefly, there were perhaps a million Israelites traveling through the wilderness on their way from Egypt up to Mount Sinai (where the Ten Words were given), and they grumbled against the Lord because of the difficulty of procuring food. So God provided this miraculous food that the Israelites called “manna.” Each morning it appeared on the ground, and they could gather it for their meals, but only enough for that day’s meals. If they gathered more, it would not keep overnight. However, on the sixth day, essentially our Friday, they were told to gather twice as much, because it would not appear on the Sabbath day:

Exodus 16:23–29 CSB

23 He told them, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Tomorrow is a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil, and set aside everything left over to be kept until morning.’ ” 24 So they set it aside until morning as Moses commanded, and it didn’t stink or have maggots in it. 25 “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you won’t find any in the field. 26 For six days you will gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.” 27 Yet on the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they did not find any. 28 Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commands and instructions? 29 Understand that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he will give you two days’ worth of bread. Each of you stay where you are; no one is to leave his place on the seventh day.”

Unfortunately, the Israelites were terrible listeners (as we have already mentioned in this series), and they didn’t believe that the manna wouldn’t show up on Saturday. But Moses had been clear: the seventh day of the week was to be a day set apart for the Israelites, a day when they did not work to provide for themselves, but instead believed in and planned on the provision of God for their needs.

The confusion about Sabbath comes in several forms: Why was the Sabbath given? What is it’s purpose in our lives today, and how should we follow it? Is there any further meaning or promise in the Sabbath? One sermon on the Sabbath is not enough to delve the depths of these questions, but we will strive this morning to have a good overview and, Lord willing, application for this Scripture about the Sabbath.

So we come to our first question:

1) Why was the Sabbath given? Reminder.

God gave the Sabbath day as a means of reminding the Hebrew people of who He is, what He had done, and what He had promised to do. It was to be an ongoing sign of the covenant between God and Israel, as we saw in our church-wide reading in Exodus 31 on Friday. But the command itself is really very simple:

Exodus 20:8 CSB

8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy:

The Israelites were commanded to “remember” the Sabbath day, and to keep it set apart or sacred. In this way, Sabbath was a day that was to be different from every other day, just as Israel was to be different from every other people. So one day out of every week there was to be a national reminder, a day to worship the Lord and recall that they were His covenant people… something that no other people of the time did for any god, as far as I could find in my research. This scratches the surface of the “why” question, but the rest of the answer is actually found in two places. First of all, we see it here in verse 11:

Exodus 20:11 CSB

11 For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.

God intentionally connects the remembering of Sabbath to the remembering of what He did when He was finished with His initial act of creation. In the creation account in the book of Genesis, the Lord created the entire universe, the world, and everything in it in six days. And then, He set aside the seventh day by ceasing His work of creating:

Genesis 2:2–3 CSB

2 On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.

Both times this verse says that God “rested,” it is the verb form of “Sabbath.” God came to the finishing spot of what He was doing, and so He stopped doing it. Keep in mind that this did not mean that He took a one-day break from being God. He didn’t go take a nap or a vacation. He did not stop working because He was tired or worn out. He’s GOD… He doesn’t grow weary or faint. No, He simply stopped doing what He was doing. But He was setting up a standard for His people to follow later on. Something that He explains more clearly in verses 9-10 of our focal passage:

Exodus 20:9–10 CSB

9 You are to labor six days and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates.

Just as God did His work in six days, and then took the seventh day off of that particular work, so His people were to imitate. They were to spend six days of every seven in their regular work, and then take a day off of it. And as they did, they were to remember the story of God’s creation of the universe, and they would be reminded of His great power.

But in Scripture, there is one other place where an answer to the “why” question about the Sabbath is given. It is found in the second giving of the Law, the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 5 where the Ten Commandments are repeated right before the Israelites would go into the Promised Land. The reason here is somewhat different, but no less important for Israel: (changed Bible versions because this passage just made MediaShout crash every time)

Deuteronomy 5:12–15 ESV

12 “ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On 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 livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

The Lord tells them that they are to remember the Sabbath day because they had been slaves in Egypt, and God had redeemed them with His strong hand and outstretched arm, breaking the will of Pharaoh, plundering the land, and defeating the Egyptian army without the Hebrew people having to do anything. The Sabbath then was to be the great picture of rest for Israel. When they were slaves, they couldn’t take a day of rest. And now they had been set free, and God commanded that they take one day off per week. Not only that, but they were to make sure that any slaves that they had at that point also got to take the Sabbath, as well as any who lived in their land who were not Hebrew.

So they were to remember where they had come from, and what God had delivered them out of, by keeping the Sabbath day. This provision was both a blessing for these former slaves and a reminder to not be like the Egyptians had been to them. They were to rest, and were to allow others to rest as well.

So Sabbath was given to the Hebrew people to remind them of God’s amazing power and His incredible provision in setting them apart as His chosen people, to worship Him and praise Him for that provision, as well as to follow His example in both: how He ceased from His work on the seventh day, and how He gave them freedom from their impossible labors. They were to keep it as a perpetual memorial of their covenant relationship with God (something that they failed to do).

So what does the Sabbath mean for the Christian today?

2) What is the Sabbath’s purpose? Refreshment.

We struggle with the purpose of the Sabbath today, and part of that is that there is a fairly wide spectrum of viewpoints on the Sabbath. Sometime after the Resurrection and Ascension, the Christian church shifted their observance of what we might refer to as the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, in remembrance of Christ’s resurrection. Some feel that Christians should still observe the Sabbath on Saturday. Some say it should be Sunday. Some say that it can be any day, and still others say that it has kind of been done away with, as Christ has fulfilled the Law and so Sabbath observance is not necessary for the believer anymore. Add to that the differences of opinion about what it means to observe the Sabbath itself, and it’s no wonder there is confusion!

Let me address the fulfillment question first. Yes, Christ has fulfilled the Law and its demands. And this is correct: our keeping the rules and regulations of the Law never did save, and never will save. The Law pointed out our sinfulness and our need for God to save us, because we would never be good enough. So Christ came and died as the final sacrifice necessary to impart righteousness on those who belong to Him by faith. If we trust Him for our salvation, then we receive His perfect righteousness before God, and are promised eternal life with Him. This is the hope that we have in Christ!

However, this doesn’t mean that everything just goes out the window: especially the Ten Commandments. While they are not a means of salvation, that doesn’t mean that we should live against them. And it seems to me that the only one that we kind of try to take this “fulfillment” path on is the Sabbath. We don’t try it with any of the others. Do you think God would be okay with us making idols and bowing to them because Jesus “fulfilled” the Law? No. Do you think that God is okay with stealing? Or lying about the thing we stole? Or murdering someone who knows that we lied about stealing? You get what I’m saying.

So I believe that this Commandment is still in effect for us to obey, although we have liberty in the expression of it. But the other side of that coin is that we then tend toward legalism with it. It’s what the Pharisees are perhaps best known for from the New Testament. Jesus got crossways with them over and over about the Sabbath, because they had all of these rules for how to keep it. There were rules about just about everything, just to make sure you didn’t come close to breaking the Sabbath. And keeping the Sabbath became a chore in itself. We don’t want to be that way either, because it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, according to Galatians 5:1.

I preached a little on this in February during our “Disciple” series in the book of Mark. We looked at Mark 2. Here’s what Jesus said about the relationship between us and Him and the Sabbath:

Mark 2:27–28 CSB

27 Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. 28 So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath was given for our blessing (remember that God blessed the seventh day at creation?), and it was made for us, not the other way around. God didn’t give it so we had a bunch more rules to follow. We need to remember that the Sabbath is a gift from God. It’s a blessing for us, not a burden. Since Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, we can come to Him for the rest and refreshment that we need.

Matthew 11:28–30 CSB

28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

In Matthew’s Gospel, this verse is right before the parallel passage that we just read in Mark, so I believe there is a strong connection between the two. So the Lord of the Sabbath has given it for the purpose of providing us with rest in order to refresh our bodies and refresh of our souls.

A) Sabbath provides refreshment to our bodies.

First of all, but not necessarily most importantly, the Sabbath was given for the refreshment of our bodies. We are intentionally designed by God to need rest. We need rest for our bodies to function correctly. We need rest for our minds to work properly. Lack of rest can take a toll on our emotional health as well.

Here’s something we maybe wouldn’t expect in a message on Sabbath: Work is a good. Work was a creation ordinance. We are designed to work, and we always were. However, it would appear that from God’s example, rest was also a creation ordinance.

The Sleep Foundation (sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/sleep-facts-statistics) reports that insufficient rest has an estimated economic impact of over $411 BILLION each year in the United States alone. A lack of rest has been connected to increased obesity, increased heart disease, increased stress, increased depression, increased mental disorders… We just aren’t made to function well without sufficient rest.

But we think that we have to work seven days a week to get things done. Or we have to be available for work every day, even on our days off. Or we think that the only way to accomplish everything we need to accomplish is to work late into the night all the time. But rest is a blessing that God has given: both the daily limitation of our bodies and the weekly instruction to take a day to rest and be refreshed. Consider this verse from Psalm 127:

Psalm 127:2 CSB

2 In vain you get up early and stay up late, working hard to have enough food— yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves.

Yes, naps are good gifts from God… usually. More on application in a moment.

B) Sabbath provides refreshment to our souls.

Along with the fact that keeping the Sabbath provides refreshment to our bodies, it also does to our souls. What I mean by that is that taking a day to disengage from the workaday world in order to focus on the Lord does two important things: it reminds us that we need Him, and it reminds us that we can trust Him.

Both of these things go back to why God gave the Fourth Commandment in the first place: God is necessary. Everything else is contingent on Him and His power. He does not need us. We need Him. Also, He is completely trustworthy. He’s never out of control and never afraid, surprised, or confused. He knows how to care for His children.

Is it possible that when we refuse to take a day of Sabbath that we are saying, maybe by implication, that with either don’t think that God is powerful enough to take care of us, or that we don’t trust Him to… so we will do it ourselves? I’m not saying that that’s every time, but if it’s consistent… could it be? In Amos 8:5, the Israelites were so focused on commerce that they saw the Sabbath as a frustration, and they would say, “When will the New Moon be over so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may market wheat?”

The beauty of the Sabbath is that taking a day to be refreshed physically and spiritually helps us to be humble. We remember that we cannot do it all, and so we have to trust the Lord, because He can. I love how Psalm 3:5 talks about God’s provision in sustaining us, even when we rest:

Psalm 3:5 CSB

5 I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me.

Also, the Sabbath refreshes us spiritually because in keeping it, we set time aside to remember, reflect on, and worship our Lord as part of our day of rest. If reflecting on what God has worked in your life, intentionally spending time with Him, can you really call it Sabbath?

On to application:

Now, what I don’t want to get into is a “this is right” and “this is wrong” thing about the Sabbath, because that’s just another form of legalism. Should we observe the Sabbath? Yes. Is it going to look exactly the same for everyone? No. Notice that I didn’t say it has to be a particular day. Paul said this to the church at Colosse:

Colossians 2:16–17 CSB

16 Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ.

Remember that the Sabbath was not given so that we could be burdened by it. It was given so that we could be free to rest and trust God and to be refreshed as we observed the day. One day of seven is to be set aside for remembering, for resting, and for worship. It doesn’t have to be Sunday, or Saturday. Some people have jobs that require them to work on “weekend” days. My Sabbath is not Sunday. My Sabbath day is Thursday. Also, I believe that Scripture is clear that some things: such as household management, taking care of children, the basic caring for one’s animals, and defense of the nation were all acceptable on the Sabbath. So the day may be different for each of us, or even different week-to-week for you.

Rest looks different to each of us as well. For some, it is extremely restful to go on a hike, or play a round of golf, or maintain your garden. The point is that we be refreshed physically from whatever it is that we do on the Sabbath. The caveat to this, however, is that the Sabbath is not a day that we can set aside in order to entertain our idols. That does not keep the Sabbath holy, and our idols are things that we should be dealing with managing anyway. Sabbath is a good way of limiting the power and influence of those idols.

Some of us (myself included while I was writing this) are kind of mentally pushing against this idea of keeping the Sabbath. “Bill, you don’t get it. I’m busy. I have a lot going on. I can’t take a day a week to not work.” Oh, no… I do get it, because I could easily work all day every day. We push back against this so hard because we’ve gotten so used to NOT keeping the Sabbath.

The best way I can illustrate it is this: It’s a question of priority. God gives us seven days. He commands us to protect one of those days. How we normally approach this discussion of Sabbath is to ask: “How can I make room for a Sabbath day with all my work?” The problem is that when we focus on that, we will find it very easy for work to erode our Sabbath rest. The question instead should be: “How can I make room for all of my work after I keep a Sabbath day?” See, the Sabbath, not our work, is to be “set apart.” This might mean saying “no” to some things. It might mean planning our working days better so that we can get things done in the time we have. I’m speaking to myself as well as you.

Kevin DeYoung said it this way:

“We all know we need rest from work, but we don’t realize we have to work hard just to rest. We have to plan for breaks. We have to schedule time to be unscheduled. That’s the way life is for most of us. Scattered, frantic, boundary-less busyness comes naturally. The rhythms of work and rest require planning. More than that, they require godly habits. I have never had trouble finding time for our Sunday worship services. Not once. I’m never double-booked during those times. I never feel pressure to say yes to another request or squeeze in another appointment at eleven o’clock Sunday morning. Why? Because it’s a habit, has been my whole life. I go to church on Sunday. It’s there. It’s fixed. I’ve planned for it.”

Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy, p. 98-99

Keeping the Sabbath is important for our being refreshed physically and spiritually. But ultimately, because our rest is in Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Sabbath promises something as well:

3) What does the Sabbath promise? Renewal.

I’m going to cover this point very quickly. The earthly Sabbath is, as we just saw in Colossians, a “shadow” of what is to come, and that the substance of what is to come is Christ. And in Christ, we have something beyond amazing to look forward to: complete renewal in His presence, the world, the universe all set right, and our relationship with God completely restored, with us being freed from the power of sin and death, freed from mourning and pain, freed from doubt and fear. This is the ultimate, eternal Sabbath that we anticipate if we are in Christ. Hebrews 4 talks about this “promised rest:”

Hebrews 4:8–10 CSB

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. 10 For the person who has entered his rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from his.

When we come to Christ in faith, this Sabbath rest is promised to us. The ultimate Sabbath is still out there. We will be in the presence of God, made complete in Christ, and have eternity to look forward to the way the universe was designed. We will have things to do, but not things that are burdensome or tiring. Jesus will make all things new, including our work.

Jen Wilkin, in Ten Words to Live By, said it this way:

The banner over the seventh day of creation is, “It is finished” (Gen 2:1-2). The banner over the believer at the cross as a new creation in Christ is, “It is finished” (John 19:30). And the banner over the re-creation of all things is, “It is finished” (Rev. 21:5-6).

— Jen Wilkin, Ten Words to Live By, p. 72

Closing

So the Sabbath is a day of rest, a day of refreshing, a day of spiritual renewal. But that rest is only for God’s people. Those who belong to God through faith in Christ.

Invitation

Offering

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading: Exodus 33 today.

Visitors

Benediction:

Psalm 92: A song for the Sabbath day.

Psalm 92:1–5 CSB

1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praise to your name, Most High, 2 to declare your faithful love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, 3 with a ten-stringed harp and the music of a lyre. 4 For you have made me rejoice, Lord, by what you have done; I will shout for joy because of the works of your hands. 5 How magnificent are your works, Lord, how profound your thoughts!

Praise the Lord today and each day this week!