We are in a series featuring the Ten Commandments. We began with an overview of the scene when the Ten Commandments were first given in Exodus 19. And now we find ourselves examining the fourth commandment.
Today’s Scripture
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep 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, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and 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” (Exodus 20:8-11).
How are you progressing on memorizing the Ten Commandments?
When billionaire Bill Gates was asked why he didn’t believe in God, he said “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning.” For many people, worshipping God can be a royal waste of time. Today, I want to challenge you to “waste” your time. Actually, God commands you to “waste” one day a week.
God commands; He doesn’t collaborate. When you talk about the Lord's Day, it is one of those subjects where one gets a “But what about...” before you can even start talking about the issue.
There is a range of views on this commandment. On one end of the spectrum is the Seventh Day Adventists who believe we are wrong from worshipping today. On the other end are those who treat this day as if it is the same as any other day. “Nothing special about this day…” is not a thoughtful response but a neglected reality. For many Americans, there is no debate concerning the Fourth Commandment – it’s something we simply ignore. Yet, we ignore what we need. We live in busy times. Even as we have the lights turned on in this worship center, somebody's down at the power plant making sure we have power. We need doctors on call for medical emergencies.
Yet, in a day when we have so many time-saving devices in our possession, we’ve never been more hurried and restless. We have computers, calculators, and cell phones to save us time, but we have no time for the things that matter. It seems for all of our progress that about all we have accomplished is to increase our speed and increased our volume. We get there faster but we don’t know where we’re going.
There was a man who swallowed an egg whole. He was afraid to move because he was afraid the egg would break. Yet, he was afraid to sit still because he was afraid the egg would hatch. That is a great description of our day. We’re so frenetic and so pressured that we don’t know which way to go.
I want to change your thinking when it comes to God’s command for one day of rest. I want you to think more about what you are commanded to do rather than what you are not commanded to do.
1. It’s a Holy Day to Remember
The command is given in verse eight. And I want you to see the specifics of the command in verses nine, ten, and eleven.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 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, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and 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” (Exodus 20:8-11).
1.1 Remember
“Remember the Sabbath day…” (Exodus 20:9a). This command does not begin with words such as “Thou shall not…” or “Don’t.” Instead, this is the first commandment of the Ten Commandments that is worded positively. The word Sabbath means, “stopping.” Instead of calling it a “Sabbath” day, you could call it a “stop-working” day. This was done for the sake of placing your focus on God. You are to remember this. You are to mark your weeks and your calendars. This is a day when you must remember God.
1.2 Keep the Day Holy
“…to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:9b). This tells us the reason why we should remember this day. We remember to take one day off in seven in order to “to keep [the day] holy.” The word “holy” has to do with belonging to God. You can make your cell phone holy if you use your phone for the special purpose of God. You can make this day holy by setting it aside for God alone.
Each commandment is a two-sided coin with both a positive and negative. To sit all day and do nothing is not the meaning of this commandment. When “Blue laws” existed throughout the US, people chaffed against such rules. People cannot exist in a vacuum. Space shuttle astronauts wear a fitted elastic garment called CAPS to prevent the formation of gas bubbles in a vacuum. God’s commands do not exist in a vacuum. When you view God’s commands as only something you cannot do, you’ll not find success in keeping His commands. Again, they do not work in a vacuum. But when you replace the negative with a positive, then you’ll traction. I want you to think more about what you are commanded to do rather than what you are not commanded to do.
1.3 Rest One Day Out of Seven
“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work…” (Exodus 20:9). These words are not just a preview before the movie. These words represent a command in itself. You are to work. We’ll talk more about God’s command to work when we study the Eighth Commandment – “You Shall Not Steal.”
Social scientist Charles Murray identifies what he calls the “New Lower class: pleasant, inoffensive folks who consume more than they produce…
They may break no laws and break no windows, but by not contributing, they are destroying.” A society can absorb the underproduction of a few people, but when that number reaches into the millions, the consequences are high for everyone.
Nevertheless, you are to rest one day out of seven. This is so unusual for many of you. We talk (or even brag) of all our plans. We tell of how much we have to do and how little time we have to do it. Still, God commands you to rest. His command to rest is alongside His command not to steal. There are equally forceful.
1.4 Don’t Fudge
“On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates” (Exodus 20:10b).
As much as it is possible, you should stop any usual work that is connected to the other six days without causing anyone or anything harmful. You still have to feed animals but make everyone’s workload minimal. Don’t shift your work onto someone else either. The goal was no work at all. Don’t shift your work over to children or servants. The point was that the Sabbath was to benefit everyone and not a special few.
1.5 God Rested
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and 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” (Exodus 20:11).
The basis of this is found in the first verses of Genesis Two: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Genesis 2:1-3).
God did not rest because He was exhausted. Neither do we rest today because we do not have the strength to work another day. Instead, we stop in order to gain spiritual strength. The day belongs to God. That is what holy means – belongs to God. To love God doesn’t mean to be lazy one day a week. To love God is to set aside a day especially focused on doing His will.
When a family doesn’t establish a habit or when you don’t establish a fixed point, then worship will have to fight for a place on the schedule with band practice and sleepovers. Once the habit is in place and when conflicts arise, you’ll know how to react by asking the right questions: “If I (or my family) do(es) this will it bring attention to God?” “If we make this the exception will this show I take the Lord’s Day seriously?” “Will this exception become a habit?” If you are a parent, “How will this exception influence my children?”
It’s a Holy Day to Remember
2. It’s a Helpful Day to Work
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
He went on from there and entered their synagogue. And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”—so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him” (Matthew 12:1-14).
The first-century setting is one of Sabbath confusion and Sabbath corruption. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Sabbath but to dig it out from under the mountain of legalistic sediment. It is a day to give it to us again as a blessing rather than a burden. It is a day for showing mercy and a day for doing good (verse 12). It should not be governed rigidly by narrow definitions of what is work and what is not. Neither is it a day to focus on sports and gardening. Instead, it is a day to focus on the Lord.
Ask the Right Questions
One person says, “Just give me a laminated wallet-size list of dos and don’ts so I can do what God asks me to do.” While others come with questions like this: “Pastor, does that mean it’s all right to watch television on Sunday?” “Is it all right to go to a ball game on Sunday? “Can we eat out? Can we read news from the Internet? Can we go to the lake on Sunday?” Those are good questions. The only thing wrong with them is that you’ve asked the wrong man. It’s not my day; it is the Lord’s day. Ask Him.
“Lord, how can I honor You on this day?” “How can I can this one day and give You glory?” “How can I can this one day and give You reverence?” “How can I can this one day and give You praise?” “How can I do all this so that at the end of the day I can rightly call it your day?” Again, the main issue is what you are to do rather than what you are not to do.
Unfortunately, remembering the Sabbath is the blessing we love to hate. Sunday is not a grudging duty but it should be a joyful privilege. Here are two practical suggestions for your Sabbath.
2.1 Set Aside Time for God’s Word
Take approximately thirty minutes and have a plan on reading the Bible. You should include time to memorize some Bible passages. Aim for "word for word" memory. A good place to start is the Roman Road (just Google it).
2.2 Set Aside Time to Show Mercy to Others
This is a great time to remember the poor. This was exactly Jesus’ point in Matthew: “He said to them, ‘Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath’” (Matthew 12:11-12).
Too often our church operates as a restaurant where hungry people wait to be fed by a select group of waiters. Instead, our church should operate as an anthill where every member has a talk of mercy to do. The Sabbath is a Holy Day to Remember. Sunday is a Helpful Day to Work – only we are to work in acts of mercy, compassion, and acts of worship.
3. It’s a Happy Day to Rejoice
“If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;?14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13-14).
God has given us a day not as a straightjacket to restrict us but as a day for our joy. The reason that so many people feel it as a burden is partly that we have so much leisure; we don’t feel the need for the Sabbath rest. More important, I think, is the fact that not many people really enjoy what God intended us to enjoy on the Sabbath, namely, Himself. We want a day for joy, only our joy is not in Him.
Many professing Christians enjoy sports and television and secular books and magazines and recreation and hobbies and games far more than they enjoy direct interaction with God in his Word or prayer. If you are looking for a yardstick to measure your spiritual growth... You can measure your growth by how much pleasure you find in spending one day focusing on Christ.
Most people who attend our church end up in three camps:
1. Those who always come;
2. Those who occasionally come (they miss about two to three times a month);
3. Those who rarely come (you’re here about every four to six weeks).
I began this sermon by quoting billionaire Bill Gates who said worship on Sundays was an ineffective use of time. Again, I want to challenge you to royally waste your time in worship. If God speaks to you during the time of worship, why do you come occasionally or rarely? If your Bible study group is an encouragement to you to live godly and love God, then why do you come just whenever you can? Gravity causes objects to return to earth. Sundays ought to work like gravity, you always return to the house of God. If your practice of worship is not persistent then your children’s Christianity will be deficient. If worship is not an addiction then your Christianity is fiction.
