The Ten Commandments
LOVING AND WORSHIPPING GOD
(Ex. 19:1-20:11; KJV)
Golden Text
“Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. 6:5).
Plan of the Lesson
The Giving of the Law (19:1-25)
Worshipping the One God (20:1-7)
The Sabbath Law (20:8-11)
Setting of the Lesson
Time: On the second month (April-May) the Israelites reached the wilderness of Sin, and on the first day of the third month (May-June) they reached the wilderness of Sinai.
Place: The mountainous region of Sinai, between the two arms of the Red Sea. Mt. Sinai and its plains and valleys.
Questions addressed in our study
Why did people murmur at Moses when they reached Rephidim?
How was their murmuring stilled?
What tribe attacked them there?
How was the victory won?
Who came to meet Moses, with his family?
What was Jethro’s advice to Moses?
Where did the Israelites encamp to receive the law?
Under what awful circumstances was the law given?
What does the 1st Commandment forbid?
What does the 2nd Commandment forbid?
What does the 3rd Commandment forbid?
What does the 4th Commandment forbid?
How are the first four Commandments alike in their themes?
Re: Adult Study
Adult study should focus on circumstances regarding the giving of the Law. Most of this lesson will be devoted to the first four Commandments, especially their present-day applications. Hopefully, our study will be a strong lesson of warning against worldliness and the cultivating of a godly reverence, a love for and understanding of the Sabbath, a delight in God’s house and God’s Word. As we begin these important considerations, one question permeates our thinking: how can we help to inculcate reverence for sacred things?
Re: Youth Study
In this lesson, younger students, as well as new born babes in Christ, while also studying the circumstances attending the giving of the Ten Commandments might focus on the majestic scenes that inspire awe and reverence for God, hopefully filling the young and inexperienced mind with veneration for Divine commands.
Scripture Reading: Exodus 19:1-25
The Giving of the Law
Water from the Rock (Ex. 17:1-7)
From the wilderness of Sin, the Israelites, going eastward, penetrated the wild and mountainous region between the two arms of the Red Sea known as Sinai, and reached a place known as Rephidim (“expanses, stretches”). When the manna was given, the people were suffering for food; at Rephidim, in that parched land, they suffered for lack of water, and were almost ready to stone Moses, blaming their splendid leader, as before, for their miseries. Then the Lord told Moses to take his wonder-working rod and with it smite a rock at Mt. Horeb. At once a copious stream of water flooded from the rock down to where the Israelites were, and continued to flow; supplying their needs all the time they were at Sinai.
It is difficult to read this passage in the Book of Exodus without indignation. How shamefully those emancipated slaves treated their deliverer, and how patiently God bore their reproaches, knowing that He was dealing with a race of children.
God’s mercies are often water out of a rock, bursting from hard and unlikely circumstances, but all the more welcome and gracious because of it. We may expect every rocky feature of our lives to prove a spring of blessing, if we are God’s children.
This episode is taken up in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 10:4, as a symbol of Christ, Who ever follows His people as a moving rock, from which flow springs of living water, even as He said (John 4:10-14) – water which will satisfy our thirst for evermore.
The Victory at Rephidim (Ex. 17:8-15)
It was at Rephidim, too, that the Israelites encountered and conquered the Amalekites (a tribe of Edomites animated by the fiercest jealousy, because of Jacob’s seed having been preferred to Esaus) who came upon their rear, and annoyed the feeble and helpless of the host. This tribe had probably their usual residence in that neighborhood. Moses, with his hands supported by Aaron and Hur, held his rod outstretched while the battle was going on, in token of dependence on the help of God. While his hands were extended Israel prevailed; when they were let down Amaleck prevailed. Joshua was the leader of the host in this battle. Josephus says that Hur was the husband of Miriam. From this incident comes the familiar phrase, “to uphold one’s hands,” meaning to give sympathy and aid.
It would have been a sad day for Israel if Moses had been alone that day. None of us if fitted to go alone. We need Christian sympathy and fellowship.
Jehovah could as easily have defeated Amalek as He drowned the Egyptians: Amalek could as easily have swallowed up Israel in the absence of Jehovah as the sea swallowed up the hosts of Pharaoh. One man with Jehovah could have chased a thousand: without Jehovah a thousand could have been chased by one man. Therefore, while Joshua went down into the valley to fight, Moses went up the hill to pray.
How splendid is human sympathy. Three men on a rock somewhere, indicating that your fight is their fight also as they carry you in their hearts, will be enough to turn the tide. John Newton wrote:
We now of fleets and armies vaunt,
And ships and men prepare;
But men like Moses most we want,
To save the state by prayer
After the victory, Moses built a memorial altar and called it “Jehovah-nissi”, that is, “Jehovah is my banner.” He evidently meant that Jehovah, this most august name of the Mighty God, importing absolute eternity, independency, and immutability, is the true standard under which God’s saints achieve all their victories.
Jethro’s wise advice (Ex. 18:1-27)
Reuel, the chieftain-priest of Midian, whose other name, Jethro (meaning “his excellence”), seems to have been his title, was the father-in-law of Moses, and had taken care of Moses’ wife, Zipporah, and his two sons, Gershom and Eliezer, while Moses was away on his hazardous journey to Egypt. Now that he had returned in safety and glory, Jethro and his daughter and grandsons came to meet Moses, to congratulate him, and to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving. The friends being separate and at great distance, could render no material assistance to each other; each committed, apart, to the wide world. But a greater Friend than all has incessantly watched over both. Therefore, when they meet they experience one of the truest acts of friendship, adoring and thanking God because of one another – building an altar to the Lord.
Moses spent the day after Jethro’s arrival hearing complaints from all over the immense camp, settling claims, and judging disputes. The desert chieftain watched all day, and they he expostulated. Moses was wearing himself out in tasks that inferior men might handle just as well. And so Moses readily agreed to put into effect the plan with which Midian was thoroughly familiar whereby able men were appointed over groups of a thousand each, subdivided into groups of hundreds, fifties, and tens, each group with its leader who would decide all cases arising in his jurisdiction, reserving for Moses only the more difficult cases.
How valuable is a little common sense – and how scarce in every age. Here was Moses, a man trained in King’s palaces, deeply skilled in all the wisdom of Egypt, and yet he had to wait till Jethro, a mere man of the desert, came before a self-evident remedy could be applied to a self-evident evil.
The principle applies to all division of labor in the church of our Lord, such as that which led to the appointment of the first deacons. Why should one man be allowed to be eyes and ears and hands and feet for everybody? Let us have more eyes than one man’s, more hands than just one pair; although we will all admit that Moses’ hands were big and capacious. Let us have more hearts bent and strained over the business of looking after God’s Church than simply one when more are needed, and when we have every expectation that God will be with us in this subdivision of labor. It will be proved to be according to His will because it is so according to common sense and right reason.
The Holy Mount (Ex. 19:1-25)
The Sinaitic Peninsula consists of a huge wedge-shaped block of mountains,
Intersected by numerous gorges and valleys, lying between the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba. The mountains of the peninsula are rugged and lofty. Jebel Musa (“the Mount of Moses”), almost exactly in the center of the wedge, is at its summit 7,636 feet in height, Jebel Catharina, two miles to the southwest, 8,536 feet, and the highest peak of Jebel Serbal, twenty miles to the northwest, 6,734 feet. The mountains consist chiefly of granite or porphyry and sandstone, which give a rich and varied coloring of red, gray, lilac, purple, etc., to the landscape. The higher parts of the mountains are uniformly bare. The herbage of the valleys and plains, meager as it is, provides pasture for the camels, goats, and sheep kept by the Bedouin. Only in a few of the wadies are there perennial streams. The Sinai of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) has commonly been supposed to have been some part of the Jebel Musa. Jebel Serbal has, however, found its advocates.
Arriving at this scene of surpassing grandeur, Moses went up on the mountain and heard the Lord calling to him: “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” Answering these words, the people cried to Moses, “All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do.” Then they prepared themselves by purifications for three days, since on the third day the Lord would have a special revelation for them. Therefore, on the third day took place one of the most stupendous scenes of Bible history. Someone wrote:
They saw the mountain smoke, the whole of it;
Sinai, as if it were one furnace, rolled
Masses of smoke in volume to the skies;
For on it came Jehovah down in fire.
They felt the mountain quake, the whole of it;
From base to top it quaked, with dreadful sway
And oscillation to and fro, the whole
The pealings of that trumpet louder grew.
Wind there was none; and neither rain nor hail
Descended from that lightening-driven cloud.
The noise was not of tempest, nor the fire;
It was the light; it was the sound, of God
Come down in majesty upon the mount.
Then, at the bidding of Jehovah, Moses and Aaron went up on the mount, the people being charged to keep a reverent distance on pain of death; and there the Ten Commandments or Decalogue (“The Ten Words”) were given to Moses to give to the people of God. The first half of these Commandments, those dealing with man’s relation to God, is the special subject of our lesson.
Scripture Reading: Exodus 20:1-7
Worshipping the One God
20:1 … “And God spake all these words.” Can you account for a well-nigh perfect code, appearing suddenly in an archaic age, among a most imperfect people, in any better way than by accepting the Biblical statement that Jehovah Himself proclaimed this code among the supernatural phenomena of Mt. Sinai? The Ten Words are words of God, and have proved themselves Divine by speaking with authoritative voiced to the hearts of men for many centuries.
20:2 … “I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (margin, “bond-men”). By the remembrance of their late great deliverance, He mollifies their hearts to receive the impression of this law. Gratitude leads to obedience. The Hebrews had been slaves to their Egyptian taskmasters; now they were glad to bow beneath the yoke of Jehovah, just as Christians today are proud to submit to the yoke of Christ, knowing that “if the Son shall make us free, we shall be free indeed,” and that there is no liberty except under His law.
1st Commandment
20:3 … “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The fact that this commandment stands first would indicate that it is the most important of the ten, and the same conclusion is reached if we compare it with the other nine. Christ’s answer to the lawyer (Matt. 22:36ff) calls this “the first and great commandment.” Some have put the emphasis on humanity as if the second commandment of Christ’s summary was more important than the first. “I remember that Tolstoi called attention to this error during the day which it was my privilege to spend with him at his Russian home. He insisted that the first commandment was the most important because man cannot understand his relation to his brother until he is first brought into harmony with the heavenly Father” (William Jennings Bryan).
Something is uppermost with every one of us; something is supreme, subordinating everything else; and that something is our idol. So the controversy between the service of God and the service of idols is still raging. And every man is on one side or the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. And every one of us is encouraging either godliness, the prolific root of every virtue and grace, or that paganism that blights character and blasts life.
2nd Commandment
20:4 … “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image.” Images of wood or stone, carved with knives and chisels to represent various animals and supernatural beings, were used in unbelieving nations (and still are), and were before the eyes of the Hebrews all the time in Egypt.
20:4 … “Nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above.” Such as idols representing the sun, moon, and stars, all worshipped by idolaters, sometimes with cruel and indecent rites.
20:4 … “Or that is in the earth beneath [gods of the lower world and of darkness], or that is in the water under the earth” (emphasis added). Many ancient nations worshipped fish and other aquatic creatures. “As the First Commandment asserts the unity of God, and is a protest against polytheism, so the Second asserts His spirituality, and is a protest against idolatry and materialism” (Pulpit Commentary).
20:5 … “Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them.” It was not the art of sculpture that was forbidden, but idolatry, the degrading of worship by worshipping things instead of the one Divine Person. The essential thought underlying the Decalogue is the spirituality of God. That is why to all who grasp this fact, idolatry is abhorrent, and why the prophets denounced it with sarcasm and indignation.
20:5 … “For I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God.” We need to put out of our minds completely any and all thought of that which is here described indefinitely by “jealousy,” as a trivial, selfish, little-minded jealousy – that is not what is meant. We must think of that intense craving for just, righteous response to love; that absolute assertion of the claims and demands that to receive its just response, there must be fidelity and obedience. It is God alone who has the right to the undivided devotion of the creature. That is where human jealousy is evil. It is the passionate claim of one human creature to the undivided devotion of another. And so our jealousy tends to become sinful, because it is our assertion of a claim that is proper to the infinity of God.
20:5 … “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.” Men of today have come to a profound sense of the power of heredity to impress characteristics, and inflict penalties, and also to perpetuate strength, wisdom, and beauty. We do need to go outside our own neighborhood or family to see the working of this law. Is not this close connection of man with man, often involving the suffering of the innocent for the guilty, a thing we must make up our minds once and for all to face? Has not every one of us the power to injure our descendants? Are we not all to a great extent at the mercy of the past? And can we be surprised that the Bible should recognize the same law that God has so deeply impressed on human nature?
20:5 … “Upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me.” God’s visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, and letting the innocent suffer for the guilty, is a blessing and not a curse – a sign of man’s honor and redemption, not of his shame and ruin. It is a token of man’s solidarity, and the great agency of human improvement, since the same provision that passes evil along to our descendants also passes along goodness and wisdom and power, while the certainty that the effects of sin will be transmitted to posterity acts as a constant warning against iniquity.
20:6 … “And showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.” “Unto a thousand generations” is the marginal reading, God’s punishment of the evil lasting for only four generations, but His blessings on the children of the righteous continuing for a thousand generations.
3rd Commandment
20:7 … “Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain.” Margin, “for vanity (or falsehood).” Moffatt translates: “You shall not use the name of the Eternal, your God, profanely.” This command forbids all irreverent use of the Divine name, all light and trivial use of it, as in swearing. Profanity is so common in our society that it has been called “the great American sin.” Profanity is a sign of impoverished thought. It is doubtless true that simply not knowing what to say leads most people into the habit of swearing. Our Lord supplemented this commandment most helpfully when He said solemnly: “I say unto you that for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account in the day of judgment.” In old times, names significantly spoke of the characteristics of the person bearing them; the Name of God in Holy Scripture is often used for the character and attributes of the Divine Being. If in the 3rd Commandment the Name of God is to be understood in this broad sense, then every sort of profaneness, all desecration of things, connected with God is forbidden. Our prayer should be: “Hallowed be Thy name, thou God of infinite power, and wisdom, and holiness, and mercy; and still more gratefully may Thy name be hallowed when we remember that it is the name of our Savior and Redeemer by whose mercy and grace we are saved from our sins and redeemed unto everlasting life.”
20:7 … “For Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” That is, God willhold him guilty, will condemn him; and the most terrible punishment will be a loss of the sense of spiritual things and an increasing separation of the soul from God.
Scripture Reading: Exodus 20:8-11
The Sabbath Law
4th Commandment
20:8 … “Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy.” The use of the word “remember” shows that God was not laying down a new law for Israel. He was only telling them to remember an old law, as old as mankind. Keeping it holy may imply a number of eternal duties, serving externally to separate the day from other days, but the meaning of the word is not exhausted there. It means that beneath all external things there shall be a genuine spiritual use of the day as holy time, time to be used in holy ways, to the special worship of God and to our own growth in holiness. The Sabbath is one of the oldest of all religious institutions, a relic of Eden itself. The first morning that ever dawned on man was the morning of a Sabbath day. God’s seventh day, man’s first; and it has been an unmixed blessing ever since, where it has been kept as a sacred thing. As Christians, each week is doubly precious for it reminds us of our risen Lord. We have the Sabbath day, the seventh day (Saturday), as a memorial of the finished work of Creative Power, and the Lord’s Day, the first day (Sunday), as a standing witness to the finished work of Redeeming Love.
20:9 … “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work.” This is not a preliminary to the commandment, but an integral part of it. Work is enjoined, just as much as rest is enjoined. The Israelite was to feel that he was working because God bade him work, that that was a divine calling, that that was made holy by the Lord, and was holy to Him. It is the most utter perversion of this law to treat the day of rest as if it were God’s, and the days of work as if they were man’s. If you are a laborer or doing something that tires you, makes you feel the need of rest then you are obeying the second sentence of the Fourth Commandment. The main reason why many do not observe the Sabbath is because they do not work hard enough during the week to get their tasks out of the way. So many today desecrate the Lord’s Day much like no doubt many desecrated the Sabbath by postponing and neglecting duties, or by spoiling it by worrying over them and dreading the accumulation of tasks they must face on the morrow. Let the student prepare his Monday’s lessons on Saturday. Let the merchant come to the Lord’s Day with his books in order and his correspondence attended to. God wanted the Sabbath to be a day of rest, but like the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath needed to be prepared for.
20:10 … “But the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Jehovah thy God.” To be spend as to God, since it comes from God. Work is one of God’s greatest blessings, but God never meant that we should overwork. An unresting civilization cannot long do its work well. This law of one in seven seems to be written with the finger of nature. Physiologists have proved that one in ten (as tried during the French revolution) would be insufficient. God understands the strain, the wear and tear of life, and gives us this foil for our weakness. The Rest Day is the recurring providence of every week.
20:10 … “In it thou shalt not do any work.” Of course, necessary work is not forbidden; but foolish men are so likely to regard as necessary work whatever ministers to their fancy or their desires. A big Sunday dinner is not necessary work, and our households would be far better off if on Sunday they lived on food prepared the day before. But, on the other hand, most families in our society today eat out. Our careless and selfish modern world seems to continually aim at forcing a multitude of laborers into a seven-day week, without either rest or worship.
20:10 … “Thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter [Sabbath-keeping was largely a matter of household feeling, of family influence and training], thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant [Here male and female slaves are meant, and disregard of the Sabbath actually made slaves of workers. The Sabbath is the best friend of the laborer], nor thy cattle [All animals do better work and remain in better condition if they have their periods of rest. Even the soil must have its fallow seasons or it will not remain productive], nor thy stranger that is within the gates” (emphasis added). Immigrants coming from lands that were lax regarding the Sabbath, on occasion attempted to lead the people of God away from faithful observance of the Sabbath. Such had to be carefully guarded against.
20:11 … “For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” Therefore, even though today we worship God on the first day of the week, Sunday; remembering Jesus Christ around the Lord’s Supper, still, we are living in God’s Sabbath day, Saturday, the day of His ceasing from the work of creation. When Christ came He enlarged the Jewish idea of the Sabbath, as He had a right to do, being Lord of the Sabbath, and declared that the day is made for man and not man for the day. His Spirit appears in the Book of Revelation, wherein John writes, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.” That is what comes from keeping the Christian Sabbath as it was meant to be kept: to be pervaded by the conscious presence of the Spirit of the living God; to hear within one’s soul a great voice, as of a trumpet, speaking of the underlying reality of things, and saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last.”
20:11 … “Wherefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” There is a cynical French epitaph, “He lived a man and died a grocer.” It traces in an epigrammatic form the gradual growth of absorptions that Sunday is intended to counteract. “He lived a man and died a banker or a lawyer.” Shall it be true of us? Whatever law, written or unwritten, preventing our absorption in any bondage is a moral and intellectual advantage of the highest kind. The motive of devotion: to give us a pause for worship amid the fret of existence, and train us to lift our spirits into more tranquil and undisturbed converse with the Father of our spirits than is possible on any other day – this is that side of the law that speaks so powerfully to every spiritual mind.
Genesis 2
There are few subjects on which so much misunderstanding and contradiction prevails as “the Sabbath.” The distinct commandment, to “keep holy the Sabbath day” will, Lord willing, come before us in our meditations on Exodus (see Schoolmaster to Christ in Religion Library section of Contents). In the chapter now before us, no command is given to man; only the record that, “God rested on the seventh day.” “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made, and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”
Here we are simply told that God enjoyed His rest, because all was done, as far as creation was concerned. There was nothing more to be done, therefore, the One Who for six days had worked, ceased to work, and enjoyed His rest. All was complete; all was very good; all was just as He Himself had made it; and He rested in it. The work of creation was ended, and God was celebrating a Sabbath.
It should be observed that this is the true character of a Sabbath. This is the only Sabbath that God ever celebrated, so far as the inspired record reveals. After this, we read of God commanding man to keep the Sabbath, and man utterly failing so to do; but we never read again the words, “God rested;” on the contrary, the word is, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). The Sabbath, in the strict and proper sense of the term, could only be celebrated when there really was nothing to be done. It could only be celebrated amid an undefiled creation – a creation on which no spot of sin could be discerned. God can have no rest where there is sin; and one has only to look around to learn the total impossibility of God enjoying a rest now. The thorn and thistle, together with thousands of other melancholy and humiliating fruits of a groaning creation, rise before us, and declare that God must be at work, not at rest. Could God rest in the midst of thorns and briers? Could He rest amid the sighs and tears, the groans and sorrows, the sickness and death, the degradation and guilt of a ruined world? Could God sit down, as it were, and celebrate a Sabbath in the midst of such circumstances?
Whatever answer may be given to these questions, the Word of God teaches us that God has had no Sabbath, as yet, save the one recorded here. “The seventh day,” and none other, was the Sabbath. It demonstrated the completeness of creation work; but creation work is marred, and the seventh day rest interrupted; thus, from the fall to the incarnation, God was working; from the incarnation to the cross, God the Son was working; and from Pentecost until now, God the Holy Spirit has been working.
Assuredly, Christ had no Sabbath when He was on this earth. True, He gloriously finished His work, but where did He spend the Sabbath day? In the tomb! Yes, the Lord Christ, God manifest in the flesh, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Maker and Sustainer of heaven and earth, spent the seventh day in the dark and silent tomb. Has this no voice for us? Does it convey no teaching? Could the Son of God lie in the grave on the seventh day, if that day were to be spent in rest and peace; and in the full sense that nothing remained to be done? We need no farther proof of the impossibility of celebrating a Sabbath than that afforded at the grave of Jesus. We may stand beside that grave amazed to find it occupied by such a One on the seventh day; but the reason is obvious. Man is a fallen, ruined, guilty creature. His long career of guilt has ended in crucifying the Lord of glory; and not only crucifying Him, but placing a great stone at the mouth of the tomb, to prevent, if possible, His leaving it.
And what was man doing while the Son of God was in the grave? He was observing the Sabbath day. What a thought. Christ in His grave to repair a broken Sabbath, and yet man attempting to keep the Sabbath as though it were not broken at all. It was man’s Sabbath, and not God’s. It was a Sabbath without Christ – an empty, powerless, worthless form; Christless and Godless!
But some might say, “The day has been changed, but all the principles belonging to it remain the same.” We do not believe that Scripture furnishes any foundation for such an idea. On the contrary, in the New Testament the distinction is maintained. Consider this remarkable passage: “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week” (Matt. 28:1). There is no mention here of the seventh day being changed to the first day; nor of any transfer of the Sabbath from the one to the other. The first day of the week is not the Sabbath changed, but altogether a new day. It is the first day of a new period, and not the last day of an old. The seventh day stands connected with earth and earthly rest; the first day of the week, on the contrary, introduces us to heaven and heavenly rest.
There is a vast difference in principle. Celebrating the seventh day marks us as earthly, because clearly as that day is the rest of earth – creation rest; but when we understand the meaning of the first day of the week, we at once apprehend its immediate connection with that new and heavenly order of things, of which the everlasting foundation is formed by the death and resurrection of Christ. The seventh day appertained to Israel and to earth. The first day of the week appertains to the church and to heaven. Further, Israel was commanded to observe the Sabbath day; the church is privileged to enjoy the first day of the week. The former was the test of Israel’s moral condition; the latter is the significant proof of the church’s eternal acceptance. The Sabbath made manifest what Israel could do for God; the first day of the week perfectly declares what God has done for us.
It is impossible to over-estimate the value and importance of Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Being the day on which Christ rose from the dead, it sets forth, not the completion of creation, but the full and glorious triumph of redemption. Nor should we regard the celebration of the first day of the week as a matter of bondage, or as a yoke put on the neck of Christians. It is our delight to celebrate that happy day. Hence we find that the first day of the week was pre-eminently the day on which the early Christians came together to break bread; and at that period of the Church’s history, the distinction between the Sabbath and the first day of the week was fully maintained. The Jews celebrated the Sabbath, by assembling in their synagogues, to read “the law and the prophets;” Christians celebrated the latter, by assembling to break bread. There is not a single passage of Scripture in which the first day of the week is called the Sabbath day; but there is abundant proof of their distinctness.
Therefore, why contend for that which has no foundation in the Word? Love, honor, and celebrate the Lord’s Day as much as possible; like the apostle, seek to be “in the spirit” thereon; and let your retirement from secular matters be as profound as possible. But, while doing all this, call it by its proper name; give it its proper place; understand its proper principles; attach to it its proper characteristics; and, above all, do not bind on Christians observance of the seventh day, when it is our high and holy privilege to observe the first. Do not seek to bring Christians down from heaven’s rest, to a cursed and bloodstained earth, where there is no rest. Do not ask a Christian to keep a day that our Master spent in the tomb, instead of that blessed day on which He left it (See Matt. 28:1-6; Mark 16:1-2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19, 26; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10; Acts 13:14; Acts 17:2; Col. 2:16).
Many in the religious world conscientiously observe the Sabbath day; and while we honor their consciences, we simply seek a Scriptural basis for such conscientious convictions. It is not our intent or desire to wound a soul’s conscience – we seek only to instruct. However, we are not now occupied with conscience or its convictions, but only with the principle which lies at the root of what may be termed the Sabbath question; and we only pose the question, “Which is more consonant with the entire scope and spirit of the New Testament, the celebration of Saturday, the seventh day (the Sabbath), or the celebration of Sunday, the first day of the week (the Lord’s Day)?” The Lord’s Day is the Christian’s day of worship, and we are not suggesting that a religious service also be held on Saturday. Actually, traveling long distances to attend such a worship service would, in and of itself, be contrary to the Law, and the additional custom of washing clothes and stringing them out on a clothesline on Sunday. No, we do not hold to the view that the commandment to worship on Saturday is binding on God’s people today.
This subject came before us in our study of the 20th chapter of Exodus (See ‘Schoolmaster to Christ’ in Religion Library section of Contents); but we now observe that some of the offence and misunderstanding connected with the Sabbath, may be traced to the conduct of some who, in their zeal for what might be termed Christian liberty, lose sight of the place the Lord’s Day occupies in the New Testament. To show their liberty, some enter their weekly avocations, causing needless offence. We do not hesitate to say that we respect the honest consciences of others, so, perhaps it’s enough to simply state that those who so conduct themselves may not fully understand the true and precious privileges connected with the Lord’s Day. The good providence of our God has arranged for His people throughout the United States, Great Britain, as well as other countries to enjoy the Lord’s Day. This is surely a rich blessing; for, if it were not so, man’s covetous heart would probably rob us of the privilege of attending the Lord’s Day assembly. And who can tell what would be the deadening effect of uninterrupted engagement with this worlds traffic? Those Christians, who, from Monday morning to Saturday night, breathe the dense atmosphere of the maul, the market, and the workplace, can form some idea of it. Thus, it should not be considered a good sign when men introduce measures that publicly profane the Lord’s Day.
