The Fourth Commandment
' Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For 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 20:8-11
No other commandment contains the word Remember. The word for this commandment is glaringly apparent for in this day and age, it has not been remembered. It has been shelved for the sake of a day that God did not sanctify ( set apart ); that God did not make holy. You see God, who created you and me, if you hold that sacred; also created and set aside a particular day for worship, for reflection, for honoring His goodness.
Remember according to Strong's Lexicon is : 1c) (Hiphil) 1c1) to cause to remember, remind 1c2) to cause to be remembered, keep in remembrance 1c3) to mention 1c4) to record 1c5) to make a memorial, make remembrance.
And Websters Dictionary includes this : to recall to the mind with effort or determination. To retain in the mind. To keep (someone) in mind as worthy of affection or recognition.
Some areas we will discuss on this commandment will not be very in depth, for a more indepth study of the Sabbath we have this area to help those who want every aspect of this Holy Day studied. The Sabbath.
We realize that most Christians not only believe that we are no longer under the Law of the Ten Commandments, but sadly those who will admit we are, still ignore this Fourth Commandment. It has been taught that Sunday is an acceptable day of worship for God, and that is based mostly on this verse ,' so let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are shadows of things to come, but the substance is of Christ,' (Colossians 2:16-17).
Once you get past the Four Gospels, and the Book of Acts, this is the only mention found of a sabbath in the New Testament. We find that in many churches, that when the Bible is studied or taught, there is a clear misunderstanding of how to go about it.
For one, you cannot take a single verse from the Bible and construct a doctrine around it. Every verse in the Bible has a sister or kindred verse to confirm it. In fact we will bold enough to say every verse has a whole family of other verses to confirm it.
For second, they overlook just who it was these Epistles were first written too, and what their spiritual condition was at the time.
For third, the concern in this verse was the fact there were believers who were judging others in how they were conducting themselves. The admonition is not so much eating or drinking, festivals or sabbaths; but on judging others. It is for God to judge, and we in our fallen state cannot possibly judge another person and there ways of worship. If there doctrine is bad or false, we can teach against it in truth, but we are not to judge. Again for a better study see The Sabbath
And as well, some again will say this is for the Jews. If this were true, then there would have no need for it's inclusion in Genesis 2:3,' Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it,' it was blessed (made holy) and sanctified (set apart from the other six days). And there were only two people on the face of the other at this time, no Jews, no Gentiles, just mankind as it was, and Jesus reaffirmed this in Mark 2:27,'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,' not Jews, but man.
We know of late, at the begining of the new century there is a ressurgence of wanting to have the Ten Commandments reposted in schools and goverment buildings, we believe to be admirable and needed. But when the secular reads these commandments what conclusions will they draw when they compare them to how the church is observing them. Case in point :
From the monthly newsletter of In Touch, a ministry from Charles Stanely out of Georgia, a Southern Baptist orginizaation,' There are two categories of God's moral will. First there is God's moral will. It applies to every person and consists of the do's and don'ts listed in the Bible, including the Ten Commandments. It is within God's moral will that all men be saved.'
We hate to single out one church from any orginization, but it is factual that other than the Seventh Day Baptists, no other Baptist denomination observes the seventh day as God's day of worship. And to proclaim to follow God's moral law, while in truth calling to observe the full Ten, they observe only Nine.And sadly, few of the Protestant denominations follow this Fourth Commandment.
Why is that a handful of believers see so great an importance of this one lone day?
Foremost would be, that God, the Supreme Being, the Creator of all that was and is, and is to come, personally set aside this one day. That should be enough there for any believer to accept it, but we know it is not.
It is a day that is blessed. God blessed it, and therefore who could doubt that blessings would come from observing it. In fact the Bible states that this is so -
' 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 day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Hom, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.' Isaiah 58:13-14
Note that it is His holy day. Christ did so many of His miracles on the Sabbath. Christ observed the Sabbath, His followers observed the Sabbath. Christ prophesied in Matthew 24 that the Sabbath would still be observed in the future. Paul observed the Sabbath,he held many of his teachings on the Sabbath, the Book of Acts bears this out. He called for those who taught to observe and walk as he did, for he followed the example of Christ, and Christ, being Lord of the Sabbath followed the will of His Father, and the moral will of the Father are these Ten Commandments. Who is man to subtract one?
But is that not what we have done. Study the Gospels and you will see that when Christ healed on the Sabbath, it so rankled the ire of the wise men of that time, why?
We say that it is because they,(not just the Baptist) as denominations have now, gotten completely away from the spirit of the Law, which is to do the will of the Father, of God, that this is why there is so much apostasy and confusion in the Christian realm today. And this confusion in turn, has bled over into the secular, and so we should not wonder at the conditions we find ourselves in.
God has revealed few details about how He created the universe - only that He did create it. Observing the abbath brings to light the point He did. For one reason He gave this commandment was as a reminder of what He did. God did not want us to lose this understanding. He knows that everyone who neglects this basic knowledge loses sight of who and what He is. This is why this commandment is crucial. This is why the weekly observance of the Sabbath is so important, it keeps us in constant remembrance that we worship the very Creator of the universe.
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 construction, as the apostle Paul tells us,' therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new,' 2 Corinthians 5:17.
The Sabbath was given as a reminder of the new for constant renewal, and our dependance on the Lord to achieve it,' you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the decietful lusts, and [are] renewed in the spirit of your mind, and ...put on the new man which [is] created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness,' Ephesians 4:22-24
Our spiritual character is not by our will. The ' old man ' will eventually resurface with its weaknesses. Paul summed it up,' For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice,' Romans 7:18-19.
God Himself creates holy and righteous spiritual character in us. He alone through the Holy Spirit reshapes our lifestyle and thinking, abd gives us the power to resist our flesh nature. Paul confirms this,' it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for His good pleasure,' Phllipians 2:13.
We must 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). Our weekly time with Him sets not only this day apart, but sets us apart as well. God calls us ' newborn babes ' and says that we should ' desire the pure milk of the word, that [we] may grow thereby ' (1 Peter 2:2). Though we may grow closer to God through a day by day walk, and that God is with us not matter the day, He none-the-less has sanctified and set apart this one, much as He did one tenth of our earnings.
Jesus and His apostles consistently obeyed God's command to keep the Sabbath holy. They kept the seventh day as the Sabbath.
God's commandment remains the same,' Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.'
go to the Fifth Cammandment
return to Ten Commandments
for further study on the Sabbath - The Sabbath, and
The Sabbath of the Bible from the Seventh Day Baptists [ we do not necassarily endorse this denomination]
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