Remember the sabbath day to hallow it.
This commandment opens by looking back: the day it names was holy long before Sinai. The writers ask what that rest meant, why it tested Israel, and what it means for a Christian now.
God set the day apart long before He gave the law. This command does not create the day; it recalls it. One writer traces the steps.
The day was set apart and made holy from the beginning (Gen. 2). Later it came in again. First, in grace to Israel, marked by the stopping of the manna and a double portion to provide for that holy day (Ex. 16). Second, as part of the law of Sinai, woven into every new and special dealing of Jehovah (chap. 20).
The other nine commandments echo what any conscience already knows. This one does not, and that is where its weight lies.
If any of the ten commandments rests on God's claim alone, it is the sabbath. A child shows far more of the spirit of obedience when he does his father's will than when he only avoids or hates what his own conscience knows to be wrong. In the same way, the Jew proved his obedience much more by bowing to God's command about the sabbath. If I bow to God's command where my own conscience says nothing apart from His word, it is clear that His authority is dear to me… For this reason the sabbath acted as a test in a way the other nine commandments did not; so it was the special sign between Jehovah and Israel.
The day points back to what God did at creation.
The Gentile nations had by this time lost all knowledge of the true God and of His work in creation. Israel alone knew this, and knew that God had rested on the seventh day. In the law God was enforcing His rights as Creator over man. By keeping the sabbath, Israel was to hold His work of creation in constant remembrance.
God did not give this command to slaves. He gave it to a people He had already brought out of Egypt.
It was to this redeemed people that the command was given, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."… That blood had separated them from Egypt and brought them to God in picture. That mighty power had brought them out. These were the ground on which God says, "Therefore the Lord your God commands you to keep the Sabbath day."… The real rest of God can only be known by those who have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
God gave the day as a gift to a weary world.
In itself, it was a real blessing. It was a sweet mercy from the hand of a loving and gracious God, who would relieve the toil and hardship of a sin-stricken earth with the refreshment of one day of rest in seven… "The Sabbath was made for man." Man has never kept it as God meant it to be kept. But that does not take away from the grace that shines in His giving of it.
The day pointed back to a rest God once enjoyed. Sin ended it.
This is the only Sabbath which God ever celebrated, so far as the inspired record teaches us. After this, we read of God commanding man to keep the Sabbath, and man failing completely to do so. But we never read the words "God rested" again. On the contrary, the word is, "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17)… God can have no rest where there is sin.
So which day belongs to the Christian? The answer turns on the resurrection.
This is the reason why Christians keep the first day of the week, and not the seventh or sabbath day. Christ's redemption won that rest. The first day, when He rose from the dead, proclaimed it to faith, despite man's guilt and ruin… The Christian therefore has the first day as his own, because it belongs to and witnesses of the finished work of Christ.
The rest itself, meanwhile, is still future.
"Sabbath" means "rest."… The Lord Jesus could not rest in a world full of sin and suffering… But in Hebrews 4:9 we read: "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." The sabbath rest is ahead of us.
- Rest remembered — God made the day holy at creation. "Remember" points Israel back to it, not to something new.
- Rest as test — this command rests on God's word alone. That made it the sign between Him and Israel.
- Rest through redemption — God gave it to a people He had already brought out of Egypt. Only the redeemed know His rest.
- Rest as mercy — one day of rest in seven eased the toil of a sin-stricken earth; the sabbath was made for man.
- Rest still ahead — sin broke God's rest, so God kept working. The Christian keeps the resurrection day and waits for the rest that remains.
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work;
The fourth commandment does not begin with the day of rest; it begins with the six days that lead up to it. Before God claims the seventh day, He gives man the other six. He calls all of that labour "your work." So what place does ordinary work hold in God's order? And what became of the rest waiting at the end of it?
God's measure for work reaches past the week. The same pattern shapes the years of the land.
Six days are man's working time; so six years of labour are followed by the Sabbatic year. Here we have the perfect period of service...
Work itself is not a penalty invented after sin came in. It was already Adam's occupation in the garden.
It is very illuminating that even in these days of man's innocence, God did not intend man to be idle. He was to dress the garden and keep it. Labour would not be irksome.
The six days here are the ordinary days of our week. The commandment sets them beside the six days of creation and treats both alike.
Once more, in Exodus 20:8-11, we have the fourth commandment about the Sabbath. There the seven days of the week and the seven days of creation stand together. Not one word marks off the two sets of days. We could only claim that one set of days was completely different from the other if clear proof came from other parts of Scripture. It does not.
Israel had just come out of Egypt, where the calendar itself belonged to the gods. Fixing six days for work and one for God cleared the week of rival claims.
The Egyptians dedicated each day of the week to one of their gods. Processions and obscene celebrations marked the honour paid to them... After the work of six days the command was imperative to rest on the seventh. It is not a bare permission but a command, and in effect the prohibition of idolatrous feasts. Working six days and resting the seventh cut off all opportunity for the riotous feasts of idolatry.
The command was never designed to grind people down. Six days of work with one day of rest brought relief to a hard-pressed earth.
In itself, it was a real blessing. It was a sweet mercy from the hand of a loving and gracious God. He would relieve the toil and hardship of a sin-stricken earth by the refreshment of one day of rest out of the seven... "The Sabbath was made for man." Man has never kept it as God meant it to be kept. But that does not take away from the grace that shines in the appointment of it. Nor does it strip the Sabbath of its deep meaning as a picture of the eternal rest that remains for the people of God, or as a shadow of what faith now enjoys in the Person and work of a risen Christ.
The order of the verse is work first, rest after. Under Moses that order left Israel's rest out of reach.
Moses had set the people to work, with a promise of rest when they had fulfilled their obligations. They were to work their six days, and get their Sabbath when they had finished all their work. But they never finished, so they never got their Sabbath. But Jesus gives the Sabbath to begin with.
Law and grace run in opposite directions, and the day Christians keep shows it.
The Sabbath marks the creation of the world. It is a rest at the end of six days' labour. That only makes the reason for keeping the first day plainer... The principle of grace is not "do and live," but "live and do." Life begins for us out of death... How fitting that a Christian should keep the day of his Lord's resurrection! He is raised with Christ, and that day is his new beginning — the day he rightly calls "the Lord's day"! How fitting that he keeps it, not because a law commands him, but for the joy and privilege of it!
Rest at the start does not empty the six days. Christ claims the ordinary working week, not only the day set apart for Him.
Christianity is meant to govern every day. I do not like your Sunday Christians... Some of us have work to do. Some of us may know what it is to work early and late... I still say it is a sad thing to be diligent for the world and not for the Lord. We are bound to see that our ordinary daily life is a witness of Christ.
- Work. The six days are man's appointed working time, and labour was Adam's task before sin ever entered.
- Rest. The rest that closes the week is a command, not an option, and it cleared Israel's calendar of the idol feasts of Egypt.
- Mercy. One day of rest in seven was pure kindness — relief for a sin-stricken earth, and a picture of the rest that remains for God's people.
- Reversal. Under law the rest came only after all the work, and Israel never finished. Christ gives the rest first: "live and do."
- Witness. Rest now comes first, so the six working days must show Christ — every day, not just the Lord's day.
but the seventh day is the sabbath of Jehovah thy God thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy bondman, nor thy handmaid, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
The fourth commandment ends with a reason, not a rule. God worked six days, then rested, and on that ground He set one day apart. The week, the rest, and the command itself all follow from that.
Many read this verse as though it says God created the world in six days. It does not, and the Hebrew words show why.
If Scripture said that the Lord created heaven and earth in six days, there would be reasonable ground for the thought. The word of God nowhere says that. What we do find is the creation of heaven and earth in the beginning. But when you come to the six days, it is the making of heaven and earth. So the difference is obvious at once. "Create" (bara), if we are to distinguish the words, points to the power that brings a thing into being; "make" (asah) points to the form it is given.
Those six days shaped a world for a purpose.
The main work of those days was to shape the earth and solar system anew. The purpose was to give a suitable home to the man He was about to create.
Days and years follow the sun and moon. The week follows nothing in nature.
There is another period of time — the week — of which we know nothing except by the Word of God. From that we learn that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. That is six days of work followed by one of rest. And this is so important that the week, a stretch of toil closing with a day of rest, becomes a divine institution.
People who have never read the law still know murder and theft are wrong. The sabbath is different, and that is what gives it weight.
The institution of the sabbath rests wholly on the direct authority of the word of God. Other commandments set out plain moral duties. Every man knows it is morally wrong to kill or steal. But no one would ever recognise keeping the sabbath as a duty if God had not clearly commanded it. That is why it carries such immense importance and interest... Only those who loved the Lord and His word would love and honour His sabbath.
Moses repeats the ten commandments in Deuteronomy 5. The sabbath is there again, but with a different reason attached.
The reader can see at a glance the difference between the two passages. In Exodus 20 the command to keep the sabbath rests on creation. In Deuteronomy 5 it rests on redemption, with no reference to creation at all.
God did not bless the day because people needed a break. He blessed it because He was satisfied with the work He had finished.
The sabbath was a continual reminder of the Creator's completed work. That fact explains its moral character and its perfection. God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. He had ended His work, and He rested on the seventh day. God's sabbath therefore expresses His complete satisfaction with a perfect scene. Nothing is missing there that could add to the happiness of the creatures He lets enjoy it all in fellowship with Himself.
Sin broke into that rest, and not only for man.
Because of sin, man never had the thing the sabbath signified. More than that, God Himself could not rest because of sin. So when our blessed Lord was accused of breaking the sabbath, He answered, "My Father is working until now, and I am working" (John 5:17)... The writer of the letter to the Hebrews argues that "there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."... It is Christ, and Christ only, who can lead us into the rest of God. Believers may have rest of conscience and rest of heart in Him now; but God's own rest waits until we enter that eternal scene where all things are made new.
So where does that leave the Christian?
In Exodus 31:13-17 God emphasises that the Sabbath was a sign between Him and Israel... This was not given to Gentiles, and it is not given to the church in the present age (compare Colossians 2:16-17). The Lord Jesus was in the grave on the Sabbath day, and was raised "the first day of the week"... Yet Scripture makes no law of this at all, for we are not under law but under grace. We should regard the first day of the week as "the Lord's Day," and be glad for the privilege of using it only for the Lord's pleasure, without attaching any legal bondage to it.
- Work. Six days of making — not the original creation — shaped a world fit for man to live in.
- Rest. God's own ceasing, not human tiredness, is the pattern the commandment copies.
- Blessing. He blessed and set apart the day because He was fully satisfied with what He had finished.
- Break. Sin ruined that rest so completely that God Himself keeps working: "My Father is working until now."
- Hope. The unbroken rest still stands ahead, and Christ alone leads into it — "there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God."