The Ten Commandments
DAY OF REST
(Ex. 20:8-11; Is. 58:13, 14; Luke 13:10-17; Gal. 4:8-11; Col.2:16; Rev. 1:10: KJV)
Subject
One Day Each Week for Rest and Worship
Golden Text
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8).
Plan of the Lesson
The Commandment Regarding the Seventh Day (Ex. 20:8-11)
The Blessings Promised To Israel If She Gladly Kept the Sabbath Day (Is. 58:13, 14)
How Jesus Kept the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17)
The Christian’s Life Is Not One of Legality (Gal. 4:8-11; Col. 2:16)
The Day of Rest and Worship for the Christian Is the Lord’s Day (Rev. 1:10)
Setting of the Lesson
Time: The later prophecies of Isaiah were uttered somewhere near 698 B.C. The incident recorded in Luke’s Gospel occurred in December, A.D. 29. The epistle to the Galatians was written A.D. 60; the epistle to the Colossians A.D. 64; and the book of Revelation A.D. 90 or A.D. 95.
Place: The incident recorded in Luke’s Gospel occurred in Peræa on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Galatia was a large province in Asia Minor at the time Paul wrote. The city of Colossæ was located in the southern part of Asia Minor; the island of Patmos is located in the Ægean Sea opposite the south-western coast of Asia Minor.
Scripture Reading: Exodus 20:8-11
The Commandment Regarding the Seventh Day
20:8 … “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The Fourth Commandment is distinct from others in a number of ways. In the first place, it begins with a word not found in any other of the Ten Commandments – the word “remember,” which seems to indicate, on one hand, that the Sabbath had been previously known to the Israelites, and, on the other, that men would be tempted to forget it. In the second place, the Fourth Commandment is the longest of any of the Ten Commandments. In the third place, it is the commandment that connects the first part of the Decalogue that deals with distinctly spiritual subjects, with the second part of the Decalogue, dealing with human relationships. In the preceding three commandments, man is spoken to individually regarding his relationships to God. In the last six commandments, man is spoken to as a member of society – his relationship to other people. In the Fourth Commandment both of these ideas are found together. On one hand, God is to be honored, worshipped, and remembered on this particular day; and on the other hand, man is not in any way to require others under his power to violate this commandment. We might say that the First Commandment has to do with the uniqueness of God, the Second Commandment with the worship of God, the Third Commandment with reverence for God, and the Fourth Commandment with the day of God. In the first two commandments God asks for the worship of our hearts, minds, and souls; in the Third Commandment He asks for the words of our lips; in the Fourth Commandment He asks for one-seventh of our time.
The word “Sabbath” is from a root meaning to break off, or to desist. Therefore, originally it simply meant a time of cessation from work. In itself the word does not have a religious significance. It acquired that by God giving it a particular degree of holiness and sanctity. While a day of twenty-four hours, a month, and a year are determined naturally by the movements and phases of the sun and moon, there is nothing in the movement of the heavenly bodies to lead men to divide time into periods of weeks, or to think that every seventh day is a holy day. This is strictly of God’s ordaining.
20:9 … “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work.” It is generally forgotten in reciting or speaking about the seventh day that there is as distinct a command to work, as there is to cease from work. Work is of God’s ordaining. Paul says that if a man will not work, he should not eat (2 Thess. 3:10; see also 1 Cor. 4:12; 1 Thess. 4:11; 2 Thess. 3:12). “Idle people, with whom every day is a day of leisure, cannot know what a Sabbath means. Before they can be in a position to observe the day of repose they must learn to do a week’s work” (J. Oswald Dykes).
20:10 … “But the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Jehovah thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.” “Rest and dedication to God are the properties here assigned to the Sabbath. The leisure of the Sabbath day affords the opportunity for the holy convocation, and for the public and private exercise of praise, prayer, reading, expounding and applying the word of God. It is remarkable that this enumeration intimates the duties of superiors to their inferiors. It points to the rights and duty of parents, masters, and hosts to restrain those under them from sin and train them to holiness. It makes the mother, the wife, the mistress, in this respect, equal to the husband. It marks the accountability of owners. In like manner it affirms the right of children, servants, and strangers to the observance of the Sabbath and to the free exercise of all other religious duties. It inculcates the kind treatment of the lower animals” (James G. Murphy).
20:11 … “For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” “The reference here is to Genesis 2:1-3. God requires a rational service. The reason is historical. It refers to the original division of time into six days of work and a seventh day of rest on the occasion of the creation of man. At this time God instituted a seventh-day Sabbath of perpetual obligation, reminding man of his exalted origin and bringing him into contact with his Master. It awakens in his breast all those feelings of joy and thankfulness that the possession of conscious life naturally evokes. The observance of the Sabbath, then, becomes the characteristic of those who cherish the recollections of the origin of their race, and who worship God not merely as the everlasting Almighty, but as Jehovah the Creator, Who has revealed Himself to men from the dawn of his existence as the God of love and afterwards of mercy and grace, of promise and performance” (James G. Murphy).
Man’s nature requires a Sabbath rest
“To work and to rest alternately, with a certain average proportion of time devoted to each, is prescribed to man by the conditions of his physical well-being. To attain the ends of his existence upon earth and maintain his powers in healthful exercise, a large amount of labor, with certain intervals for rest intercalated in the time devoted to labor, is universally indispensable. Nature itself has prescribed such a daily alternation by the interval of the night for sleep; and it might be imagined that this ought to prove sufficient. It is very questionable if it does so, even for man’s physical well-being. Experience is not favorable to the idea that with regular nightly repose men could work hard all their life through without further intervals for refreshment, and not suffer from it. . . . We are so constituted that we sustain a double relationship; we are related to earth as toilers, and to heaven as worshippers. . . . We do, in the long run, most for our Master when we respect His laws, by securing for ourselves that proportion of rest which He has seen to be needful in order that we may continue working for the longest period and in the most effective fashion” (J. Oswald Dykes).
The Lord’s Day is not for sloth
“But, if we are agreed that the Sunday is to be a day of rest, it is still most essential for us to understand that it must be a holy not an ignoble rest . . .. Let not your Sunday rest be slothful, not a day of languid bodily ease, relaxation, and luxury, as it became to the Pharisees and later Jews. A somnolent, sluggish Sunday – the heaviness induced by fulsome indulgence of the appetite – the plethoric rest of ‘men full of meat, whom most God’s heart abhors,’ is fit only for the lowest animals, not for men. If Sunday only means to many a heavier sleep and a more gluttonous dinner than usual, it is not only wasted but degraded. It becomes less holy, and more deleterious, than even continuous labor – clogging instead of expanding the wings of the soul, strengthening instead of helping to subdue the lowest passions of the body” (F.W. Farrar).
Students and the Sabbath
“There are students who think they need to study on the Sabbath. Let it be urged first of all that no student needs to study if he uses the rest of his time, as he ought. Of course he can find use for Sunday studying if he spends other time over which he has control for his own uses. But it is very poor religion to spend Saturday for one’s own pleasure or that of one’s friends, or even in domestic duties, leaving no time for study, expecting to use the time which God has set apart for other things, to introduce into it the grind of one’s week-day life. That is robbing God. It is robbing one’s self also, for the Sunday (Lord’s Day) hours are needed for the purposes to which God has set them apart. And a student needs the rest of the complete day of release from daily study, which is quite as much his daily toil as tending the counter is the daily toil of some others” (C.B. McAfee).
The Sabbath a defense against temptation
“Lastly, the ordinance of the Sunday is most precious, because it may snatch us again and again from the perils of temptation. How many of the world’s most deadly sins might have been prevented, if, in the crisis of temptation, some friend could have stood by us; some hand touched us; some kind voice have whispered to us, ‘Beware!’ Such a friend, such a voice, such a hand may Sunday be to us! By its silent, beautiful recurrence it may recall our thoughts from the evil purpose, our souls from the vain desire, our feet from the guilty path. It may be to us as a herald sent from heaven to save this frail bark of our lives out of overwhelming billows. How often, at the best does the anchor slip and drag! How often does the fierce wind drive us helplessly towards the iron shore! Amid these storms the day of God comes to remind us of Him Who, if we seek Him, will be the pilot of our course, and guide us to the haven where we would be. Sunday recalls to us, when all else tends to make us forget, that we have an anchor of the soul sure and steadfast, not holding us to the treacherous and slimy deeps of earth, but passing upward, through the aerial ocean, behind the veil, and there mooring us to the everlasting Rock!” (F.W. Farrar).
For other passages on the significance of the Sabbath day in the Old Testament see Genesis 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12; Exodus 16:21-30; 34:1-5, 21; 31:13-16; Leviticus 19:3, 30; 23:3, 38; Numbers 15:32-36; Deuteronomy 5:12-15.
How should Christians treat the Sabbath?
Most Christian’s think of Saturday, the seventh day, the Sabbath, as Old Testament, and Sunday, the first day, the Lord’s Day, as New Testament – that since the Lord did not discuss it in His Sermon on the Mount, the Sabbath has passed away; the Lord’s Day is only to be observed. However, after a lengthy and serious study of Holy Scripture, we are not as certain regarding this subject as so many seem to be. Without a doubt, the New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ was the sacrificed Lamb, offered once and for all – eliminating Old Testament sacrifices and ceremonies. And further, we know from the Lord Himself that a temple made with man’s hands is no longer where He dwells. While Christians are certainly to worship the Savior and remember His sacrifice on the first day of the week, Sunday, still, are we to believe that by omitting the Sabbath in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus would have us simply forget God the Father on His Father’s special day, Saturday? Did the Son ever teach us that His Father is not to be seriously thought of, honored and remembered on His special and particular day? Could it be that we are to honor God the Father on Saturday, remembering at the end of each week all He has done and does for us, so that our hearts will be ready to honor, remember and worship the Son on Sunday, the first day of the week? We have New Testament examples of God being worshiped by the Apostle Paul on Saturday in the synagogue. What does such an example teach us? Are we to believe that it is the desire and will of Jesus Christ, the Son of God that His children simply overlook, ignore, omit, and forget Jehovah on the special day that belongs to God the Father – the beloved eternal Father of our Savior, Jesus Christ? Are we suggesting that Christians return to the Jewish Sabbath worship and ceremonies? Certainly not. To do so would be against the will of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. No, we are not suggesting anything of the kind. However, we are suggesting that to us it seems unlikely that Jesus Christ wants us to completely ignore and disregard His Father’s special day. Let us seriously meditate on, remember, honor, and praise God the Father on Saturday, the Sabbath day, so that our hearts will be ready to worship and glorify the Father’s beloved Son on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. Consider it closely – five days we labor, focused on work and family; Saturday we rest from our labor and spiritually contemplate all that God the Father has done and does for us – giving Him praise and honor; then, on Sunday we pay homage to and worship the Father’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ, partaking of the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of Him.
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 58:13, 14
The Blessings Promised To Israel If She Gladly Kept the Sabbath Day
This passage is not as well known, as it should be; but it has a definite message this age, because we are so prone to do what is here forbidden – doing our own pleasure on the Lord’s Day. This is surely happening today. From Sunday morning until late at night, many of our highways are filled with cars carrying millions of people about the country for picnics, visiting, entertainment, and business – every conceivable thing except worship. In and of themselves, none of these things are wrong, and certainly some are permissible on the Lord’s Day; but if we allow any personal pleasure to keep us from assembling together to worship, pray, and partake of the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, then they become sin. Not only are they a transgression of God’s commandment, but they are also an insult to God, robbing one of spiritual strength and ultimate disaster, coldness of heart, and in many cases loss of religious fervor. God does not mean the Sabbath to be a dull, dreary day of ascetic practices or of solitude, but rather the Sabbath is to be a delight. It will be so if we love the Lord, if we love His Word, if we love other Christians. “To such it is not wearisome, nor are its hours heavy. They love the day of sweet and holy rest. They esteem it a privilege, not a task, to be permitted, once a week, to disburden their minds of the toils and anxieties of life. To the father of a family it is the source of unspeakable delight that he may conduct his children to the house of God” (Cf. Job 22:21-26; Ps. 37:4).
The promise here is that victory follows a Sabbath observed with joy, gladness, prosperity, and security. Sabbath-observing people are assured that God is on their side. God rules the destinies of nations, and those who love the Lord’s Day may expect God to order the circumstances of their life so that they will be continually provided for in the material necessities of human existence, and will be delivered from a common, wearisome, monotonous, defeated experience.
Scripture Reading: Luke 13:10-17
How Jesus Kept the Sabbath
13:10 … “And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath day.” From this verse we draw two conclusions. In the first place, our Lord regularly attended the services of worship in the synagogue on the Sabbath day (See, e.g., 4:16, 44). Though He was a teacher come from heaven, though He needed not that any man should teach Him, though He had wisdom far beyond that of any teacher of His day, though He had deeper, closer, and more intimate communion with God than any man walking on the earth, yet He did not think He had come to the time of life where He could dispense with the regular services of a divinely appointed order. No man is ever so good or so wise that he can afford to remain away from the Lord’s church. In the second place, we here discover that the Lord was acknowledged to be one worthy of expounding the Scriptures in the synagogue. The ruler of the synagogue could grant permission to any established teacher to address the people if he so chose. This accounts for Paul’s frequent access to the synagogues of Palestine and the nations about.
13:11 … “And behold, a woman that had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years; and she was bowed together, and could in no wise lift herself up.” Not only was this woman seriously ill, but the infirmity she had that bowed her down, making her walk in a most unnatural and probably painful way, was the result of an indwelling demon. Such an infirmity as this probably made her prefer death to life.
13:12, 13 … “And when Jesus saw her, he called her, and said to her, Women, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands upon her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.” Jesus did not wait until the woman asked to be delivered, “though probably her presence there may have been, on her part, a tacit seeking of that aid. From Him (through the laying on of hands) there streamed into her the currents of a new life, so that the bands, spiritual and bodily, by which she was held, were loosen” (R.C. Tranch).
13:14 … “And the ruler of thee synagogue, being moved with indignation because Jesus had healed on the sabbath, answered and said to the multitude, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the day of the Sabbath.” It is hard to understand the reaction of the ruler of the synagogue to this beneficent act of our Lord. To be furiously angry with Jesus for healing this woman can only be accounted for by this official’s jealousy. Obviously, he was one of those Pharisees who was a stickler for the strict legalistic interpretation of the law according to the traditions of the fathers. There was absolutely nothing in all the Old Testament to forbid performing an act of kindness on the Sabbath day. In fact, how could the Sabbath be better observed than by delivering a suffering creature of God from pain, infirmity, and demon-possession? Notice that the ruler of the synagogue did not rebuke Jesus Himself. Perhaps he was afraid to criticize one face to face who had the power manifested by Jesus. So, he turned to the people, making his criticism of Jesus to them.
13:15, 16 … “But the Lord answered him, and said, Ye hypocrites, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, lo, these eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day on the Sabbath?” A hypocrite is one who pretends to be something he is not. This man pretended to be a devout adherent and supporter of the law, and thereby a man righteous before God. Down in his heart he was not righteous at all. If he had possessed real compassion and love, both for God and for his neighbor, and for this infirm woman, he would have rejoiced that on this day she had been gloriously delivered from her eighteen-year ailment. “Jesus asks two questions, the answers to which are beyond question. These questions are far stronger than assertions would have been, for they compel all present, also the ruler and other opponents of Jesus, to make the answers themselves. Purposely our Lord’s assertion is an understatement, for many had several animals to lead to water. Was not this work? They untied the rope with their hands, they held the rope, and led the animal out, and then they tied it up again. According to their own rabbinical interpretations this was most plainly work. The divine law did not forbid this act on the Sabbath, but these hypocrites first held up a definition of forbidden work which was not forbidden, and then applied their own definition only against Jesus and not against themselves. The second question has the same unavoidable answer. The emphasis is on ‘this woman.’ The verb here translated ‘ought’ expresses all kinds of necessity, and here the moral necessity, vastly higher than watering an ox or an ass. The argument is cumulative: the woman, a human being, over against the ox and the ass, mere beasts. Daughter of Abraham, human over against ordinary being; bound by the cruelty of Satan over against tethering to a manger with fodder; eighteen years, over against one day; the need of being freed from a demon over against need of water” (R.C.H. Lenski).
13:17 … “And as he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame: and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.” There seem to have been many supporters of the condemnation of the ruler of the synagogue in the crowd gathered together that day. They are silenced and put to shame because the law, compassion, common sense, and overwhelmingly against them and on the side of Jesus, justifying what He had done. Out of all of this, and other miracles that Jesus performed on the Sabbath day, we are plainly taught that while labor as such is not to be engaged in on a day set aside for rest and worship, yet all acts of compassion, all that relieves human suffering, all that lifts, liberates, and ennobles human life is justified and commendable. Yet, even here, one must be careful to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong, e.g., to relieve a case of distress on the Sabbath day is an act clearly approved by our Lord’s ministry, while, on the other hand, attending musical concerts, sports games, and shows does not seem to have support in the teachings of the Holy Word of God. An act of mercy is always suitable for the Lord’s Day, but gathering together in a great crowd for secular purposes hardly seems necessary on the Lord’s Day when on any other day of the week these privileges can be enjoyed. It is deeply regrettable that in this age we are crowding the Lord’s Day with more and more worldly things which can just as easily be performed on any of the other six days of the week.
Scripture Reading: Galatians 4:8-11; Colossians 2:16
The Christian’s Life Is Not One of Legality
In these passages the Apostle Paul is pleading with those who had accepted Christ, both those brought out of the darkness of heathenness and those who had been converted from Judaism, not to return to the ritualistic observance of various feasts and fast days, which they observed before they were saved. The word “observe” here has a far deeper meaning than would appear on the surface. It actually means to make a religion of the observance. In pagan religions, and even in Judaism, as developed by the scribes and Pharisees into a mass of ritualistic, burdensome precepts, the observance of various days was considered to have virtue with God. Christianity emphasizes that it is the condition of a man’s heart, not the external observance of this or that day and the keeping all kinds of fasts and feasts, that makes worship acceptable to God. Jewish teachers had come into the Galatian church attempting to lead these new Christians back into the bondage of contemporary Judaism with all of its hardness and burdensome duties. However, we must remember that “Paul is not condemning the observance of ‘days and months and times and years,’ but their mis-observation. Jewish Christians might continue to keep them as hallowed customs of divine origin, but not as grounds of justification. These were not to be sharers with Christ in the great work of salvation. Bondage to these rudiments forfeited the liberty of the gospel. Gentile believers were never bound to such observances, and if they yielded to the Judaizing teachers and submitted to the yoke of the Jewish ceremonial, they were no longer partakers of the liberty of Christ. . . . There is clearly no exemption here from the obligation of the observance of ‘the seventh day.’ . . . What St. Paul condemns is the observance of the day in a legal spirit, in compliance with the minute and childish prohibitions of the rabbinic system and as a matter of merit with God” (E. H. Perowne).
Scripture Reading: Revelation 1:10
The Day of Rest and Worship for the Christian is the Lord’s Day
John was on the island of Patmos, no doubt a slave, confined to the island because of his testimony to Christ. It is presumed that he was banished there by Domitian, A.D. 95, where he labored as a slave for eighteen months in the quarries. Patmos is located in the Ægean Sea, west of Miletus, on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. This tenth verse has given a great deal of trouble to commentators. In the first place, it is debated whether by “in the spirit,” John mean to say in the Holy Spirit, or in a particularly spiritual state. In the Greek there is no article “the,” and it literally reads, “in spirit.” Thus, J.P. Lange says: “By the spirit, therefore, we undoubtedly are to understand that spiritual life of man which stands contrasted with his relation to the world; which, as a prophetic state, is inconceivable without the operation of the Holy Spirit, and hence presupposes the more general life in the spirit as its basis.”
However, by using a capital “S” in the word Spirit, the translators of our Bible indicate their belief to have been that John was that day experiencing a particular enduement of the Holy Spirit. The phrase “the Lord’s day” has been interpreted by some as being synonymous with “the day of the Lord,” with the thought that John hereby meant to say that he was projected in his spirit far into the future to behold these things that would happen on the day of the Lord. However, most commentators believe that this refers to what we know as Sunday; and, if so, this is the first reference to the first day of the week as being celebrated by the early church as the Lord’s Day. The first day of the week was called the Lord’s day because on that day our Lord rose from the dead. “All my days belong to Jesus, but one I must specially dedicate to him. Why should I keep that day? Because it is the day consecrated peculiarly to the sway of Jesus Christ. It is not a question of what I can do, or cannot do, on that day. That is legalism. The day is devoted to Jesus Christ. All too little can we think of him on other days: thank God I have one day full of him as of an atmosphere! Unless you vindicate Sunday as the Lord’s Day you will not vindicate it at all. Except we stand for the Sabbath as the Lord’s Day, we shall have little likelihood of resisting those who would encroach upon it” (Dinsdale T. Young).
Dr. George H. Morrison has a remarkable meditation on what he calls “contrasted environments,” in which he notes on one hand that while John was on the island of Patmos, he was, on the other hand, in the spirit; in the one of necessity, in the other by his own volition; and he draws this conclusion: “As it was with John, so is it with every one of us – there is an element of necessity in life. We do not choose the country of our birth, nor our parents, nor the homes where we are cradled. We do not choose the schools where we are educated, nor perhaps the particular places where we dwell. But how we live there, in what atmosphere, environed by what unseen presences, all that is within the compass of our will. In Patmos we may be in the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace. We can have liberty and rest in Patmos, though we be set there by grim necessity. How many dream that life would be far richer if they only had the wings of a dove to flee away!”
Would you say that the world itself is interested in keeping Sunday as a sacred day? In the fact that the world, and especially the corporations that promote worldly amusements are continually pushing legislation that is destructive of a quiet, reverent day of worship, do you believe that the Christian must be doubly earnest in a determination to keep the Lord’s Day to the glory of God? What happens in a man’s life when he continues to disobey this commandment, and makes the Lord’s Day his own? Let the question frankly be faced: is a person better prepared for five or six days of labor by an exhausting day of driving, picnicking, visiting, and seeing the sights, or by an hour or two spent in the house of the Lord in worship, and by a few hours of added rest at home? It might be interesting to name six or eight things that would be appropriate for doing on the Lord’s Day, which, perhaps, most people do not have time to do on the on the other six days of the week? Why should the Lord’s Day, Sunday, be a day of greater significance to us as Christians than the seventh day could have been to the Jews of the old dispensation?
