Commandment #4: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, not your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11) Can you imagine what it would be like to be a slave—like the Hebrew people in Egypt? Working hard everyday with no days off. Slaves could literally be worked to death. If that was your life, how would you feel to find out that God actually wants you to take one day off every week? That would be wonderful!
I imagine that is how the Hebrews felt after God used Moses to deliver them from slavery in Egypt, and then Moses told them the Fourth Commandment: God required them to take one day off every week! Six days a week they could work their jobs, perhaps on their farms or in their businesses, but God wanted them to dedicate one day to him. Surprisingly, what God wanted them to do wasn’t work, but not-work! He wanted them to rest.
The Bible teaches that work is good, but rest is also good. Most Jews kept the Sabbath day very strictly with rules against doing any kind of work, even against taking a long walk! And there were heated debates about how to apply this commandment. What kinds of work were forbidden? If your ox fell into a pit on the Sabbath, could you rescue it? Or was it acceptable for Jesus to heal a sick person on the Sabbath? These sorts of questions led to divisions among the Jews: those who took the legalistic view held that no activities were permitted on the Sabbath, and those who took a more practical view held that some necessary activities were allowed. Jesus took the second view.
Jesus declared himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath. He told his disciples that the Sabbath was given for human benefit (Mark 2:27). Therefore, Jesus could heal on the Sabbath. In a similar way we can help others on the Lord’s Day. Works of necessity or of mercy are permitted on the Sabbath.
As Ted Ward, a former teacher of mine, wrote, “Once a week we need to be reminded that there is more to life than the pressures, the demands, and the drudgery of the normal routine. Show me a Christian who treats the Lord’s Day like any other, and I’ll show you a tired and frustrated Christian.”
There is another reason why God told the Jews to keep the Sabbath day holy: it was to honor him as their Creator and their Lord. Just as God stopped working after six days of creation, so he set apart one day of seven as holy, a time to worship and remember him. For the Jews the seventh day was Saturday, which is why Jews today and a few churches meet for worship on Saturday.
Most churches, however, meet on Sunday, which is called the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10). (And a few churches worship on other days.) So, you may be asking, what is the Lord’s Day, and is it the same as the Sabbath? We know that the church in Ephesus and in Corinth met for worship on Sunday (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2). There were two reasons for this change of days: an historical reason and a prophetic reason. First the historical one: Sunday was the day of the week when Jesus rose from the dead. The first Easter was a Sunday morning, and to remember that glorious event most churches meet on Sunday. Every Sunday is Easter Sunday!
But there is a prophetic reason to meet on Sunday as the “eighth day,” as the first day of the coming week it represents the first day of the coming era. Meeting on Sunday says that we are looking forward to the coming Kingdom of God when every day will be holy to the Lord. The Saturday- Sabbath was just a partial fulfillment of a day for God’s holiness, but in heaven everyday will be holy, and the shift from Christians setting aside the seventh day to the eighth day is in anticipation of the coming Kingdom when Christ will be honored everyday. In Christ, any day can be holy.
Christians are told not to judge others or be judged by others for how we keep the Sabbath (Colossians 2:16). Whichever day we choose to meet for worship, the important thing is that every week we each set aside time to honor God, and every week we take time away from work to get the rest we need.
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Greg Giles is a published author, who, along with his wife Jean, has embraced the call to serve and teach around the globe. Their life together has included missionary work in Liberia, Bangladesh, teaching in China, and raising a family in Bemidji, Minnesota. Between global travels and local commitments, including serving as superintendent of Corn Bible Academy and their current part-time roles at Corn Heritage Village, the Gileses have found “home” in many places; yet, they now happily reside in retirement in Cordell.