The purpose and meaning of the Fourth Commandment
The Fourth Commandment to remember the the Sabbath day concludes the section of the Ten Commandments that specifically helps define a proper relationship with God and how we are to love, worship and relate to Him. It explains why and when we need to take special time to draw closer to our Creator.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shall you labour, and do all your work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:8-11
Why is setting apart one day a week so important that God included it as one of His Ten Commandments? The Sabbath, the seventh day of the week was set apart by God as a time of rest and spiritual rejuvenation. On our calendar the Sabbath begins at sunset Friday evening and ends at sunset Saturday evening. Of course, someone will immediately ask: Why the seventh day? How can our relationship with God benefit any more from observing that particular day than any other day? After all, Friday night and Saturday bustle with all sorts of sports, business and other secular activities. Why should we be different? Isn't this a symbolic Commandment, one never meant to be taken literally, and didn't Jesus Christ ignore this Commandment leaving us free from the burden of keeping it?
These questions represent some of the most widely assumed and long held beliefs about the Fourth Commandment. But God's Commandment is simple and easy to understand. So why is this Commandment so frequently ignored, attacked and explained away by so many? Could it be because the challenges to the Sabbath Commandment are views generated by the god of this present evil world? After all, this being wants us to accept these views because he hates God's law. He does all he can to influence us to ignore, avoid and reason our way around it. Few grasp the extent of society's indoctrination by Satan. As the real “god of this age.” (2 Corinthians 4:4), he has deceived most of humankind (Revelation 12:9). The whole world falls prey to his influence (1 John 5:19). His objective has always been to destroy the relationship between the true God and humanity. He wants nothing more than to thwart people from developing a loving, personal relationship with their Creator, which is the purpose of the Fourth Commandment. He wants to prevent us from reaching our incredible destiny in God's family!
Jesus and His apostles kept the Sabbath
What does Christ's personal example teach us about the Sabbath? “And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.” Luke 4:16. Jesus used the Sabbath for its intended purpose: to help people develop a personal relationship with their Creator.
After His death, we see that Christ's apostles followed His example in their observance of the Sabbath day. “And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures.” Acts 17:2. “And he [Paul] reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks.” Acts 18:4
Today however, most people who profess to follow Christ do not follow the example set by Him and His apostles. Most fail to realize that the wholesale rejection of the Sabbath as the Christian day of worship did not start until almost 300 years after Christ's ministry on earth. The official substitution of Sunday for the Sabbath was orchestrated by the Roman emperor Constantine who made Christianity the official state religion to secure political advantage over a defeated contender for the office of emperor. His rival supported a policy of persecuting and killing Christians. Constantine was quick to grasp the political advantage of accepting and supporting Christians but that acceptance came with a price: state control over all religious matters. Nowhere in the Bible does either the Father or Jesus Christ ever grant permission to change the time of the Sabbath from the seventh day to Sunday, the first day of the week. No human being, institution or state has ever had the right to tamper with what God has made sacred. See also the origin of Babylon and Sun worship and did Constantine change the Sabbath to Sunday.
The Sabbath and a godly relationship
The Sabbath is vital to our relationship with God because it shapes the way we perceive and worship Him. We should remember the Sabbath by formally worshiping God on that day. Otherwise, we forfeit that special understanding that God wants to develop in us by worshiping Him on that day. It is by ceasing our normal labour and activities that we are reminded of an essential lesson every week. After six days of fashioning this beautiful earth and everything in it, our Creator ceased moulding the physical part of His creation and rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:1-3).
The Sabbath is a special day to concentrate on developing our spiritual relationship with God. Although it is a day of rest from our normal routines and we do need even physical rejuvenation, it is not a day for doing nothing as some assume. On the contrary, the Sabbath is a special day on which we dramatically change the focus of our activity. God intended that it be a delightful period during which we busily draw closer to Him. God said through the pen of Isaiah, “If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shall honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 14 Then shall you delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father: for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.” Isaiah 58:13-14
Indeed to “delight yourself in the LORD” is the reason we should cease for the 24 hours of the Sabbath, the labour and normal activities that consume our time the other six days of the week. Relationships take time. Every successful association demands time. No close relationship can succeed without it, no courtship, no marriage, no friendship. Our relationship with God is no exception. God however, wants us to take special time to worship Him. That is what only the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week can provide.
The Hebrew word for Sabbath, shabbath, means “to cease, to pause or take an intermission.” On the Sabbath we are to take the day off from our regular activities and devote our time and attention to our Creator. Why? Because “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:11. The Sabbath in a different way from any other Commandment keeps us in touch with how real God is as our Creator.
A world without knowledge of the true God
Look at the world around us. The theory of evolution that the world and everything in it developed from nothing dominates the thinking of the most highly educated. Most scholars scoff at the idea that the creation requires a thoughtful, purposeful, almighty Creator. Even many professing Christian scholars accept this point of view. Observance of the seventh day Sabbath, however, keeps those who faithfully obey the Ten Commandments in constant remembrance that their faith is founded on the existence of a very real Creator.
We read, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Hebrews 11:3. That faith is nothing less than an unshakable confidence that the Bible was inspired by the Spirit of God and accurately reveals how the world and humankind came into existence.
God reveals few details about how He created the universe, only that He did create it. Observing the Sabbath brings that fact to the forefront of our minds every week. God does not want us to lose this understanding. He knows that everyone who neglects this knowledge loses sight of who and what He is. That is how crucial this knowledge is. That is also why the weekly observance of the Sabbath is so important to our relationship with our Maker. It keeps us in constant remembrance that we worship the Creator of the universe.
A continuing creation
The Sabbath is not simply a reminder of a past creation. God finished the physical part of His creation in six days. However, the spiritual part is still under way. The Sabbath is the primary day on which that spiritual creation, the creation of the new person in Christ takes place. As the apostle Paul tells us: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17
The new spiritual creation is internal in the heart and character of each person. It begins when “you put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24. This “new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” Colossians 3:10
Spiritual character cannot come solely by our own will. The “old man” will inevitably succumb to the weaknesses and pulls of human nature. Paul sums up this struggle: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Romans 7:18-19. God Himself creates holy and righteous spiritual character in us. He reshapes our thinking and gives us the will and the power to resist our nature. Paul confirms this, telling us that “it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13
The day of renewal
Do you grasp how important this is? If we are in Christ, our heavenly Father is creating in us His own character, His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). The weekly time He has set perpetually apart to remind us that He is the Creator is the same weekly period during which He instructs us as He moulds us into a new creation. God's Word calls us “newborn babes” and says that we should “desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” 1 Peter 2:2. The Sabbath is the time God has set aside for us to grow closer to Him through study of His Word, personal prayer and group instruction. He has sanctified it and set it apart as holy time (Genesis 2:1-3). We should use it to delight ourselves in Him by diligently seeking His participation in our spiritual development (Isaiah 58:14).
The Sabbath is the day on which Christ's disciples should be growing closer to each other. “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as you see the day approaching.” Hebrews 10:24-25. The Sabbath is the only day on which God ever commands a weekly assembly. “Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; you shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.” Leviticus 23:3
The internal evidence of the New Testament shows that Christ's apostles and their converts continued to assemble on the seventh day, the Sabbath. They observed the day, however, with a renewed emphasis on the “new” person God is in the process of creating. The relationship of the seventh day to their lives grew in its importance to them. The book of Hebrews confirms that the followers of Christ and the apostles kept the Sabbath, affirming that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” Hebrews 4:9 NASB
Yes, Jesus and His apostles consistently obeyed God's Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. They kept the seventh day as the Sabbath just as their fellow Jews and Gentiles of that time did. God's Commandment to us remains “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Exodus 20:8. We desperately need to take time to grow close to our Creator. He tells us how much special time we need to set aside for our relationship with Him and when to take it. We have to decide whether we trust His judgment and are willing to obey His Sabbath Commandment.
