Ten Commandments, P4: Keeping the Sabbath
““Remember the Sabbath day by keeping 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20: 8-11, NIV)
When you think of the Sabbath, what do you think of?
Do you think of your local church service? Some worship songs, a message, and fellowship of other Christians? Do you think of your Sunday routine? Do you think of the last moments of family time before dreaded Monday morning?
Or do you think of rest? Do you think of a day where you don’t have to work or accomplish anything, and you just get to relax? Yes, our Sabbath in these times has come to mean church and Sunday morning, but in reality the Sabbath God is talking about in the ten commandments is a day of rest.
In Genesis, God creates the world in six days and rests on the seventh, giving us a model that we should regularly be taking time to pause and reflect. And at the same time, it sets a precedent for us that we should work when it’s time to work and rest when it’s time to rest. It isn’t for us to neglect the work God has put in front of us to do, but it is for us to steward what God has given correctly.
So if God says it’s equally important to rest as it is to work, it’s something we should adhere to. Because without proper rest, we burn out and our work is less meaningful.
But that’s not why God asks us to rest. He doesn’t command us to rest so that we can be better work-horses and kingdom-builders. He isn’t clocking our productivity or tracking our time clocks to see who is the spiritual employee of the month. In American society, we’ve given ourselves a reputation of working to live. We work more hours with less rest than any other country on the planet. We love our stress– for some, we wear it as a badge of honor.
Our stress, our job title, and our schedules can all be idols for us. We can place it on a pedestal above our devotion for the Lord. Why? Because if we have a million things to do, a thousand tasks to check off the list, and a jam-packed calendar of events, and they are all competing for our time and attention that we should be devoting to the Lord, then we’ve allowed our work to overshadow Christ.
In all reality, God asks us to observe a Sabbath not just because we work hard and need to be reminded to take a break. God asks us to respect the Sabbath because it should be our natural inclination that when we rest, we turn to Him. The Sabbath isn’t for us alone. It is for God. The rest God commands us to have is rest that is meant to be spent with Him.
On the seventh day, God rested after creating the earth, sky, ocean, light, dark, man, and all the animals. That seventh day is blessed by God and considered holy to Him. It is the same with our Sabbath as seen in the fourth command: God blesses it and asks us to keep it holy unto Him. God blessed the work of His creation and rested.
It is healthy for us to rest. It’s even healthier to take this God-ordained rest and honor Him with it. So we have church on Sundays, the widely accepted day of Sabbath according to the modern Church. And that’s supposed to give us the opportunity to slow down, commune with God alongside other Christians. It is gravely important, however, that we are taking that time and using it to personally and individually draw near to Christ– and that’s not something that only happens on Sunday or when we take our Sabbath.
Sabbath could be that time we set aside to quietly read our Bible with our cup of coffee. Sabbath could be the alone time we spend in our cars, praying and worshiping the Lord. Sabbath could be those moments when you’re rocking your child to sleep each night, waiting for them to drift off and occupying your mind by focusing on Jesus.
Yes, we have a day where God calls us to rest. He commands us to pause. And that’s something we shouldn’t take lightly or take for granted. Our God is unique in that He asks for our obedience in the things that glorify Him– and perhaps some of those things seem restrictive to our flesh– but He also commands us to do things that are healthy to sustain a peace that’s rooted in Him.
So this commandment isn’t a reminder to go to Church. It’s a call to rest, and rest in a way that honors the Lord. It is an invitation to draw near to Him and learn how to meditate on Him, being filled and refreshed by Him to do the work He has laid out before us. This call to rest isn’t God telling us that we need to take a break from all our toil and busy-ness. It’s a rest that is designed to fill us, restore us, and motivate us to keep pressing on.
By observing it, we honor God’s desire for us to be rooted in Him and in communion with Him. By observing it, we keep that invitation holy and reverent; regarding it as more important than any busy work we can make for ourselves.
