“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

“‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.’”

Notice also that, while the Sabbath is principally a time to be renewed in love for God – concentrating on His works and celebrating His redemption – it also guides us in the practice of neighbor love. We must not allow our use of the Sabbath to be a reason for others having to work (except such works of necessity and mercy as may be appropriate).

Believers are called to set aside all normal work on the Sabbath and to conduct their activities so as not to cause others to have to work that day, either. The fact that many of them choose to work, in spite of the Lord’s command, does not free us to engage them as they do. Our testimony to the world must be that, on this day, we rest in the Lord, and in the joy of His providence and salvation. And we urge them to do so as well.

In both of these givings of the fourth commandment the purpose is the same: to keep the day holy. Whatever is holy is “set apart” for a particular purpose, and that purpose is defined by the holy God, and not ourselves. God is holy, and He has expressly declared how He intends that we should use this one day each week. Do we dare to suppose that we know better than He how to “set apart” this day?

The Lord’s Day is kept holy when the Lord’s people embrace His holy purposes – remember and guard the Sabbath as a day to rest in God’s creation, providence, and redemption. There is nothing tedious or “boring” about this – unless, of course, being in the unobstructed presence of the Lord with heightened focus and extended duration is somehow not a delight to you.

From creation to the resurrection of Jesus Christ the Sabbath – a holy day for resting in the Lord’s finished work on our behalf – was observed on the seventh day of the week. Jesus was raised on the first day, and thus ushered in the full rest of God and brought His saving work of bringing new life to the world to the first stages of its completion. At the Feast of Weeks, which was celebrated fifty days after the Passover, an offering of new grain was made to the Lord on the day after the seventh Sabbath – the first day of the new week (Lev. 23.9-16). Did the first believers see in this a foreshadowing of the work of Christ sufficient to encourage them to move the day of rest to the first day of the new week?

The eternal Sabbath awaits us in the new heavens and new earth. For now, the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, has been the Christian Sabbath from the earliest years of the Church.

Although the early Christians worshiped on both Saturday and Sunday, the Church ultimately found its fullest rest on the first day of the week, and has done so for 2,000 years. Just as Jesus ushered in a change in the priesthood, so He brought a new Sabbath – a new rest – to the people of God. Sunday is the Christian’s day to remember and celebrate – in corporate and private expressions – the glorious and gracious work of God on our behalf.

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