Ex. 20:8-11 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all they work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
God has shown us in the first three commandments that He is all powerful, the creator and is so omnipotent that we should have no other gods before Him, nor make any false gods from wood or stone and never to use His great name lightly. The first three commandments show us God’s greatness and how His power and majesty is so great we should all fall down and worship Him. Flowing seamlessly from the first three commandments, the forth commandment follows this theme and teaches us how to worship Him.
Now that we know His power and majesty we must indeed fall down and worship Him, thus He gave us the Sabbath day which He calls “holy”. We are told to “remember” the Sabbath day as it was already in force (Ex. 16:24-31 for one example). The Sabbath is a special sign between God and His people (Ex. 31:12-17). We are not to work on the Sabbath day (Ex. 20:9-10; Deut. 5: 12-14; Ex. 35:2-3 Note: Work means to earn a living: See Strong’s #4399). Everybody gets a day off to rest and most importantly worship God. Why is the Sabbath day so important? God tells us why the importance of the Sabbath in Ex. 20:11. He “made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is…” With the Sabbath day God is continuing His theme of the first three commandments: His total omnipotence as creator of all there is. He is reminding us we must fall down and worship Him because of who He is and what He created. He gives us the Sabbath day as a weekly reminder of His power and glory. This emphasis on His creative power is repeated three times in this commandment by the use of the word, “LORD” in verses 9 and 11. This word LORD is YHWH in Hebrew, otherwise called Yahweh. Strong’s # 3068 says YHWH is, “the proper name of the one true God; knowledge and use of the name implies personal or covenant relationship; the name pictures God as the one who exists and/or causes existence- the LORD”. The Sabbath day is about us understanding God and all His powerful and creative nature and of His holiness. He is for us to worship because of what He has done.
The Sabbath day is the first of His Holy Days of worship (Lev. 23: 2-3; Deut. 5:12-15). We keep the Sabbath day because God the creator ordained it. As God rested on the seventh day and abstained from His work we must rest on the seventh day and abstain from our daily work (income earning as we saw in Ex. 35-2-3). God created the universe and all that is in it in six days, we must stop our daily lives and give honor to God for His magnificent creation on the seventh day. No one has the authority to change the Sabbath day to any other day because only God created the universe and all that is in it.
We have now covered the first four commandments which show us how powerful and wonderful God is and why we should worship Him. Jesus was asked “…which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets” (Matt. 22:36-40). We love God first (He is omnipotent) and our neighbor second (mortal beings) but we should love our neighbor like we love God. This summary of the law by Jesus gives us the dividing point of the Ten Commandments. The first four show how we love and worship God and the last six, with the transition of the fifth (Honor your parents) show us how to love our neighbor.
