A Day for God

We come today to the commandment that is easily the most misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misapplied of them all. It’s the fourth commandment - the one about keeping the Sabbath holy.

There are a lot of disagreements about this one. Some Christians believe that the Sabbath is still in effect, except that it is Sunday, not Saturday. They will do no work on the Sabbath. They will not watch TV, or read the newspaper, or go grocery shopping, or go to the beach, or mow the lawn, have a barbecue, or dress in casual clothes, or do anything like that on the Sabbath day.

But, on the other hand, some Christians believe that the Sabbath law is no longer in effect. They believe that the Sabbath is like any other day. They go to the beach, go to the mall, watch television, do housework, mow the lawn, wash the car, trim the bushes, and anything else that comes to mind on Sunday. For them it is no different than any other day of the week.

So what about it? Who’s right? What did God really have in mind when he gave us this commandment? What is the Sabbath anyway? Are it’s restrictions still binding on us today? If they’re not, is there still some spiritual value here that we need to know about?

Exodus 20:8-11 “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 manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 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.

1. What is the Sabbath?

The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word “shabbot”, which means “to rest” or “to cease”. It means to stop working and rest.

God created man to be a worker. Some people think that work is a result of sin; that it is a result of the Fall. But that is not so. God created man and put him in the Garden to work it, and tend it, and make it flourish. What happened after the Fall was that creation began to resist man’s efforts; to fight back, in other words.

But work itself is good. Man was created to be a worker, and people are happiest when they have something productive to do with their lives.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

But there is a danger in all of this. The danger is that work will take over our lives. There is a danger of becoming so consumed with working, and making a living, and filling our lives with our own activities, that we crowd God out. So that is why God commanded the Israelites to reserve one day a week for Himself, when they could pause from their daily routine and make time for Him.

It would be a day when they could regain their spiritual bearings, and refresh their souls; a day when they could recalibrate their lives to eternal things. A day when they could cease from their daily labor.

But when God said “On the Sabbath day you shall not do any work”, did He mean that everyone should just lay around in hammocks on the Sabbath day? No, He certainly did not. We read in Leviticus 23 that the Sabbath day was to be a day of holy service.

It was a day of sacred assembly - the people had to work to get together for services. The priests had to work doubly hard on the Sabbath day. They had to offer double the sacrifices on the Sabbath day. They baked double the regular amount of showbread on the Sabbath day. The work of serving God in the tabernacle, or the temple, went on.

The work that was to stop on the Sabbath day was the regular work - the everyday routine of life. That was to cease in order that the Israelites might give themselves to serving God. That was the purpose of the Sabbath day.

2. Is the law of the Sabbath still in effect for us today? Is this commandment still binding? The answer to that question is yes and no. Let me deal with the “no” part first.

God gave the Sabbath day law to the nation Israel to serve as a sign that, alone among all of the nations, they were his chosen people.

Exodus 31:16 The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever

The Sabbath was a sign to the nation Israel. The church is not Israel. Israel and the church are not the same in God’s program.

1 Corinthians 10:32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews (that is, all those belonging to the nation Israel, most of whom are unbelievers because they have rejected the Messiah), or Greeks (that is, Gentile unbelievers) or the church of God (which is made up of both Jews and Gentiles who have put their faith in Jesus Christ.)

Do not confuse Israel with the church. They are two different and distinct entities, and God has a separate plan for each.

You say “Now wait a minute. What about all the other commandments in the Old Testament that do still apply to us today? How do you know that the Sabbath isn’t one of them?”

There are 613 commandments in the OT law. 365 positive and 248 negative. You can divide these 613 commands into three sections:

a. The civil law. Remember, Israel was a nation. A nation needs laws to govern their economy, their civil life, their legal affairs, matters of property and inheritance, crime and punishment, public health, and so on. And God gave Israel commands to regulate all these areas. That was the civil law.

b. There is the moral law. These are principles of behavior which are to be true, not just of Israel, but of all nations and all peoples. These are commands like “You shall have no other gods before me”; “You shall not steal”; and “You shall not murder”. These commands express the will of God for all people. They were true long before the nation Israel even existed, and they are still true today.

Nine out of the Ten Commandments are the moral law. NIne out of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the NT. Guess which one isn’t? Right! The Sabbath commandment. The fourth commandment is the only one of the Ten Commandments that is not specifically reiterated in the NT. That’s because it is part of the third section of OT law, which is called

c. The ceremonial law. These were laws which governed the religious life of the nation Israel. These laws governed the sacrifices, the special days and festivals, and the priests and all their duties.

What was the purpose of all these ceremonial laws? They were meant to serve as symbols of something related to the Messiah and his ministry. They were meant to point to Jesus.

Hebrews 10:1 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.

Romans 10:4 Christ is the end of the law - He is the fulfillment of it. He is the reality of which the OT ceremonial law is only a shadow.

Colossians 2:16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

Every aspect of the OT ceremonial law finds its fulfilment in something that Jesus Christ did. Take the Passover for example. The Passover symbolizes that anyone who takes shelter under the blood of a substitute will be passed over, and delivered from the judgment of God. This points us to Jesus Christ and what he did when he died on the cross. When we take shelter under His blood, we are no longer under the judgment of God against sin.

How does the Sabbath - a day of rest - point to Jesus? Well, if you read Hebrews 4, you’ll have the answer. The Sabbath is a symbol of the spiritual rest that is given to all those who believe in Jesus. It is a spiritual picture of sinners who have put aside their own work, and their own striving, and their own efforts, and are resting in the work of Jesus Christ for their salvation.

This is why, as Christians, the Sabbath law and all the other Jewish ceremonial laws are no longer in effect. Jesus has come. The reality is here!

That’s why Paul rebuked the Galatians for going back to those old ceremonial laws.

Galatians 4:9 But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.

When a Christian turns back to the ceremonial law of the OT, he goes back into bondage to things which are only shadows. And he says, in effect, that the finished work of Jesus Christ is not enough to accomplish his salvation. Something more is needed — some ritual, some observance — to make him right in God’s sight.

So in that sense, the Sabbath commandment is no longer in effect for us today. We are not obligated to observe the Sabbath.

But a few minutes ago, didn’t I say that there was a sense in which it was still in effect? Yes, I did. I was referring to the fact that, although the Sabbath law itself is no longer in effect, there is a very valuable principle underlying it which still is in effect.

Long before there was a nation Israel, long before God gave the Ten Commandments, he established a principle of setting aside one day a week as a special day. And he did it by personal example, so it must be a pretty important principle.

This principle is the very first spiritual lesson that God ever taught the human race. It dates all the way back to the Creation of the universe. Genesis tells us that God created the universe in 6 days and rested on the seventh.

Genesis 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

So here is something that has nothing to do with the nation Israel, and nothing to do with the ceremonial law of the Jews. Here is a spiritual principle that says we need to take one day in seven to turn aside from our work and give our attention to God. To rest from all of our daily routine and set our thoughts on holy things. For Israel, God made it a law, but for us, it is a privilege. But we need to exercise that privilege if we want to be spiritually healthy.

What are some things we need to consider as we apply this principle?

1. What day should we make it?

Well, there is a sense in which every day for a Christian is the Lord’s Day. But we read in the NT that the early Christians met together on the first day of the week. That was the day that Jesus rose from the dead. They even called it “The Lord’s Day” - “dies dominica” in Latin. In Spanish, they call it “Domingo”; in Italian “Domenica”; in French, it is “Dimanche”.

And that day has been celebrated throughout the Western world ever since, because of the impact that Christianity has made on our culture. Here in North America, it is easy for us to observe Sunday as the Lord’s Day, because it is part of the weekend. Most people are off on Sunday.

But if you were to find yourself in Israel, you would find something quite different. There, Sunday is nothing special. Their weekend is Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, you get up and go to work. So if you were a Christian in that culture, you might have to take another day, not Sunday, and make it the Lord’s Day.

The point is, it is not important which day you take, just that you make one day in seven a day especially given to the Lord.

2. How should I observe the Lord’s Day?

Well, there’s always a tendency to distort this spiritual principle. On the one hand, you can make it a day of bondage. That’s what the Jews did with the Sabbath day.

The ancient rabbis wrote 24 volumes of rules governing what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath day. Many Jews to this day observe them. Want to hear some of them?

- you could not walk more than 3,000 feet from your house on the Sabbath. That is why the Jews, down through history, tended to live in tight-knit neighborhoods, around their synagogues.

- you could take a bath on the Sabbath, but not with hot water.

- if you took a bath, you’d better not spill any water on the floor, because that would be considered washing the floor.

- it was okay to dip a radish into salt on the Sabbath day, but you’d better not leave it there, because then the salt would start to pickle the radish, and pickling was work.

- you could circumcise a child on the Sabbath, but if a boy broke his leg, you couldn’t set it.

- you weren’t allowed to kindle fire on the Sabbath day. This leads the Jews today to all sorts of interesting practices. Jewish housewives will do no cooking on the Sabbath.

Strict Jews will not drive cars on the Sabbath, because an internal combustion engine kindles fire. Any kind of electrical switch kindles fire. Many orthodox Jews hire Gentiles to come into their houses and turn on the lights for them.

The hotels in Israel have a Sabbath elevator that automatically stops at every floor, so that orthodox Jews will not have to press the button.

- if a chicken lays an egg on the Sabbath, you have to throw the egg away, because the chicken did work to lay it. But you can’t throw it away on the Sabbath, because that would be work.

- A woman is not allowed to look into a mirror on the Sabbath, because she might see a gray hair and pluck it and that would be work.

- You were not allowed to lift a burden on the Sabbath. The rabbis argued forever about what constituted a burden. They finally agreed that a burden was anything that weighed more than a dried fig. Women were not allowed to wear jewellery on the Sabbath, because jewellery weighed more than a dried fig.

- if your false teeth fell out on the Sabbath, you couldn’t put them back in.

- You weren’t allowed to write more than one letter of the alphabet on the Sabbath, because that was considered work. I heard an orthodox Jew yell at someone in our tour group as we stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem because that person happened to be taking notes in a little notebook. He was breaking the Sabbath.

These are the sort of restrictions and rules that Jesus was referring to when he said…”Woe to you, scribes, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry.”

There is always the tendency to make that one special day a burden. But there is an opposite tendency, which I believe may be more true today than ever before. That is to make the Lord’s Day a day of total self-centeredness. God told us to set aside one day in seven for him, not for us. Instead of it being a day for the Lord, it becomes a day for our leisure. But to spend the day on me is to distort what the Lord gave us that day for.

When you look at what Jesus did on the Sabbath Day, he certainly didn’t spend it in a hammock sipping a soda reading a newspaper.

He was involved in intense activity - he taught in the synagogue, he told parables, he healed the sick, he performed miracles. He drove the Pharisees crazy because he did so much work on the Sabbath day. But the work that he did was the Lord’s work.

What kind of work should we be doing on the Lord’s Day? Let me give you 3 suggestions:

1. Assemble together for worship and instruction in the Word.

Hebrews 10:25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing…

You show me a Christian who doesn’t think that attending church every Sunday is terribly important, and I’ll show you a Christian who is defeated in his walk with the Lord. Believe me, the world, the flesh, and the devil are so tough that you cannot fight them without taking that one special day a week to get your batteries recharged and your spiritual armor polished and adjusted. You need to be in church on the Lord’s Day.

2. Find some way to serve the Lord Jesus Christ on the Lord’s Day.

Whether it is ushering or singing in the choir or teaching a Sunday School class or visiting a nursing home, every one of us needs to be doing something for the Lord on the Lord’s Day. Remember, it is not to be a day without work; it is to be a day when we put aside our work so that we can give ourselves to the Lord and to His work.

3. Spend the day on things that are of eternal value.

When you talk to some Christians, you would think that God gave us Sundays just so we could watch football. Now there’s nothing wrong with football, but if that’s what we’re looking forward to on Sunday, then there’s something wrong with us. The Lord’s Day is for things that are of eternal value.

Building relationships, spending time with friends and family, seeking to deepen our own walk with the Lord, seeking to build bridges with our unsaved neighbors. If that means sitting down and watching an Eagles game with them, then that’s great. If that means mowing your lawn so that you will maintain a good testimony in your neighborhood, then maybe you should do that. (Although you should have taken care of it before it got that bad!) The point is: use the Lord’s Day for a divine purpose that relates to the Lord and to his work.

Let me give you six questions that will help you to evaluate how you spend the Lord’s Day. Ask yourself

1. How are my Sundays different from other days?

2. How are my Sundays set apart for God?

3. Do I spend Sundays doing things that draw me closer to God?

4. Am I encouraged and strengthened and challenged to live for God?

5. Do I have some way to serve the Lord Jesus Christ on Sundays?

6. At the end of the day, if I put all of my activities into a balance, which side would be greater: the earthly things or the heavenly things?