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.
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