The Fourth Commandment, Part 1

Then, over the last several months, taking one commandment at a time. So we've gone through the first three, and you know what the first three commandments are. And today we'll begin to cover the fourth commandment. As I began to put together a sermon on the fourth commandment, I always know how big the Sabbath was and how important it was in God's eyes. But, you know, when you begin to put together the scriptures and the concepts of the Sabbath from the Bible, you really begin to see how important it is to God. You know, of all the commandments, you know, 1 through 10, probably the Sabbath commandment is the one that is the most controversial in the world. I mean, it seems like people just don't want to pay attention to that. In fact, some people just get angry about the Sabbath day. You know how the Jews have been persecuted over the years for keeping a Sabbath day. And, you know, probably many of you, as you've looked for jobs or had jobs, have been turned down, you know, when the Sabbath day came up. And many, you know, may have been asked, you know, as I have many times, why didn't you know you were Jewish? No, I'm not Jewish. I'm Christian. We just keep the same Sabbath that God commanded everyone to keep. And even in the Church of God, sometimes the Sabbath can be not so much controversial, but there's a lot of discussion about it, you know, what should we do, what shouldn't we do. So today, we're going to begin looking at the Sabbath day, and it's going to be a two-part sermon. The first day here, or the first time here, we'll look at more the things that we, and I hate to use the words, can't do but shouldn't do on the Sabbath, what God had proposed for us, and to get the concept of why He would do that. And then the next time, you know, we'll talk about more what God is working in the Sabbath, and what we should be doing on it, and what His purpose for us is. So let's go back to Exodus 20, and just let's read through the commandment just to get our bearing and be all on the same notes here of what the Bible says. Exodus 20, verse 8 says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your cattle nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth to see in all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day or the Sabbath day and hallowed it. You read that commandment very many times. It's the most verbiage surrounding that commandment of any of them that are listed there. Again, an indication of how important it is to God that we keep his Sabbath holy. Let's go back up to verse 8 and look at the very first word that's there. Remember. Remember the Sabbath day.

Remember there is translated from the Hebrew word zakar, z-a-k-a-r. And zakar, as you look into the concordance, it means to mark or set aside. Set aside this day to remember it. Like make it special. Sometimes when we get our new calendars for each year we'll go through and we'll, you know, mark certain dates in them, things that we want to remember so when that month comes around we don't forget it. Probably a lot of us guys mark our anniversary so when we look at that date we know it's there. We won't forget that. Well, God says mark this day, the Sabbath day, the seventh day. Set it aside. Remember it. Don't forget it. And in the last verse there of this commandment, in verse 11, he points us back to some of the things that we can remember and that's that it was instituted and created during creation week. A lot of people will say, you know, you don't have to keep these commandments because God gave them to Israel back at Sinai. But we all know from that that isn't the case. Let's turn back to Genesis 2 because the Sabbath day was there from the very beginning. And when we read through the verbiage here in Genesis 2 verses 2 and 3, you can see a remarkable similarity to what God says back at creation week to what is in the commandment there in Exodus 20. In Genesis 2 it says, on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So back in creation week there was a division of time that God created. In six days he created a physical earth. Before the foundation of that earth there was a purpose and a plan put in motion. It wasn't just something that God decided at that moment. There was something great that he was going to work out on this planet earth that he recreated at that time, reestablished a physical universe with a physical man on it. And in six days he did a lot of physical labor. He divided the day from the night.

He divided the dry land from the seas. He created the lights up in the sky that would mark times and seasons and even appointed times as we talked about before the Moed, the appointed times of which the Sabbath is won. He created birds. He created the animals that live in the sea. He created land animals and he created man. And at the end of six days of physical creation, physical work that was done in those six days, at the end of chapter one he looked at it and he said, you know, it's all very good. It's all very good. Some might say, well, you know what, physical creation was done at that time and physical creation was done. But creation, God's creation, was not done at the end of the sixth day. The physical part was done, but without the seventh day, creation would have been incomplete. So he created on the seventh day a time that set aside for him, a time where the work ceased. And he set an example for all of mankind, not just one race or one group of people, but for all of mankind there's a time for physical work. And that physical work occurs during the first six days of the week and on the seventh day the work ceases and something else happens. Let's read verse three. It says, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.

He blessed it and he sanctified it. All the weeks, all the days of the week were important, but the seventh day he blessed it and he sanctified it. Sanctified, he set it apart. But he also blessed it. And in those two words, we begin to see some of what God's plan for the Sabbath was. Yes, it set the part from the rest of the work week. Yes, we do something different on the Sabbath than we do on the other days, but he also blessed the seventh day. And when God blesses something, there's some purpose that he has for it that we will talk about later. In Exodus 20, when we read the commandment, it said that at the end of the commandment there. God sanctified or hallowed the Sabbath day and he blessed it. You know, at the end of that creation week, when the six days were done and they were divided off, creation was done and on the seventh day, man, God, the whole universe was at perfect peace, perfect harmony in unison with one another. Tremendous time in man's history, if you will, or the history of the physical earth, the only time that that was the case. Sometime after that, when Adam and Eve were dressing and keeping the garden, and Satan appeared, he came in and introduced and they chose to follow his way rather than God's way. And you know it's never been the same since. So when God talks about the seventh day, he says, remember. Remember back. Think back on how it was at that time in creation week when everyone was in perfect unison, perfect harmony. The world was at peace. And later we'll see the part of the Sabbath is looking forward to the time that that will reoccur in the future.

Let me read a couple of quotes for you here. Because when God created the seventh day, or when he created the week, if you will, of seven days, he created a natural rhythm in the universe. Six days you work, one day you don't work, it's reserved for him.

Now, as we think of creation week, six days the work was complete physically, but the seventh day, it wasn't complete until the seventh day was there. In many ways, it parallels our lives. We can work, and we can work, and we can work. We can reach great heights, we can build great buildings and monuments, we can do all the physical work. But if we haven't taken time for God, if there's not a spiritual element in our lives, we're incomplete. And the universe, even though it was a perfect creation at the time God did it, without the seventh day, without him in it, it would have been an incomplete universe.

Just physical, but with no real potential. And the same is the case in our lives as well. Let me read from Jamison Frost at Brown here. First on the seventh day, quoting his comments on Genesis 2 verse 3 here, he says, God blessed and sanctified the seventh day, a peculiar distinction put upon it above the other six days, showing it was devoted to sacred purposes. The institution of the Sabbath is as old as creation, giving rise to that weekly division of time which prevailed in the earliest ages.

It's a wise and beneficent law affording that regular interval of rest which the physical nature of man and the animals employed in his service require, and the neglect of which brings both to premature decay. Moreover, it secures an appointed season for religious worship. Now, I don't know if Jamison, Fawcett, or Brown, any of them kept the Sabbath. But when he read the verses, when he went back and analyzed, he came up with a pretty accurate explanation or a pretty accurate analysis of it.

It's there God gave the Sabbath as a blessing to people, and that seventh day was set aside for a separate person or separate purpose. Now, let me address the physical in it as well, because I thought this was interesting. Now, you guys, if you ever watch TV, or ever watch infomercials, you've heard of this man, and if you haven't heard of him, you would know his picture.

It's a man by the name of Kevin Trudeau. He was just kind of like Mr. infomercial back several years ago. Well, he later wrote some books on several topics. One of them was called Natural Cures. Natural Cures that people, some natural cures that they don't want to tell you about, or something like that. I only wrote that on Natural Cures. Here's what he wrote on page 108.

He's talking about the time for rest, that people need that in order to maintain their health. He says, the most optimum time for the body to rest is when the sun is no longer shining. Ideally, a person would rest and sleep when the sun goes down and arrives when the sun comes up. That's the natural cycle. However, most people's lifestyles don't allow this. Therefore, they're resting and sleeping at non-optimal times. Each week, he says, a lunar cycle occurs, starting at sundown every Friday and ending at sundown every Saturday.

This time period is absolutely the most ideal time for the body to recharge and rejuvenate. Now, I didn't see where he got his study from. I don't think he's Jewish, but he had that in there as part of what you would do to help the healing of your body. And I thought it was very interesting that whatever research he looked at, whatever study had been done, it was that specific 24-hour period of time that people should rest if they were looking for optimal healing and refreshing of the body.

Just tells you God knows what he's doing. He knows what he's doing, and when he set the seventh day in motion, and when he sanctified it and set it apart and made it a blessing for mankind, man needs to pay attention. It isn't that the case in so many things, that we just need to follow the natural rhythm of what God did, follow his laws, and it has benefits for all of us.

Let's go back to Exodus 20 again.

Exodus 20.

We talked about, remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, to keep it separate. Six days you shall label and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.

How many people in the world would say, that seventh day, it's the Jewish Sabbath. We don't need to keep it in the New Testament. The Christian Sabbath, they say, is some other day.

But in this commandment here, it doesn't say it's the Sabbath of the Jewish people, or of the Israelite people. It says it's the Sabbath of the Lord your God. Not for just a separate group of people, but for all of mankind, God's Sabbath. In the New Testament in Mark 2, Christ, who came to magnify the commandments and the law, and to live it perfectly, had this to say. Mark 2, verse 27, as he's talking to the Pharisees, he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man. It's supposed to be a blessing to man. It's supposed to be something that we derive something from. God gave it as a blessing, and the Sabbath was not, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, he says, the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. It's His day. It's His day. And he says, set it apart. What you do on that seventh day is totally different than what you do the other six days of the week. God set the example during creation week, and He expects mankind to follow that same example. Let's go back to Exodus once again, this time to chapter 31. You know, as you read through the Bible, if you go on the internet and you go into one of the Bible search programs and type in the word Sabbath, you'll be surprised how many times the Sabbath comes up in the Bible. Probably more than any other commandment, you read about the Sabbath. It's there over and over and over again throughout the Old Testament, and of course, in the New Testament, where people were living by the words of the Old Testament here. Now, if I can ever find Exodus 31. Here at another time, God is talking about building the tabernacle in Israel, and down in verse 13 of Exodus 31, He talks about the Sabbath day a little bit more. He says in verse 13, speak to the children of Israel, saying, surely my Sabbath you shall keep. My Sabbath you shall keep, for it's a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. It's a sign, He says, between you and me. Something that you do, something that you keep, something that you live in the appropriate way, that is a link between you and me. Something that you do, that God is able to work through you, and He knows that you are His people, and we know that He is our God who we follow. Verse 14, He says, you shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it's holy to you. Everyone who propanes it shall surely be put to death, for whoever does any work on it, that person will be cut off from among his people.

Now, we won't turn into the story in Numbers 16, I think it is. You know the story where the man was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, and they found him, and they took him, and they asked God what to do, and God said, put him to death. It was crystal clear in this verse, what would happen if you broke the Sabbath day? If you did on the seventh day, the type of work that was supposed to be done the other six days? It was that important to God. And we know that every one of those Ten Commandments earns the death penalty when we break it, but the seventh day is especially, I won't say especially, is very important to God that He would single it out, and of course there would be someone in Israel who would test that commandment to see if that was going to be true. And it was. And as God writes about the Sabbath day here, it's almost that, well, He certainly knew, but kind of preparing Israel that, you know, somewhere down the line, they're going to depart from the Sabbath day as well. And He wanted to let them know, the Sabbath day, this time that you're looking at, may not seem important to you. It may seem that it's okay to just do whatever you want on it, and how important can it really be to God. But He's warning them, if you depart from it, if you do your will on My Sabbath day, that death will result. In the case of the man gathering sticks, it was a physical death. In the case of the nation of Israel, it was a loss of a promise that had been made to them. Let's turn back to Ezekiel 20. In Ezekiel 20, will you remember Ezekiel was the prophet of God who was carried away in the second invasion of Nebuchadnezzar? And there are some people coming to ask Him what's going on, because the nation has departed from God in every way. And they're looking to ask God some questions. I think it is Ezekiel 20. It says, Now why would God say that? These people wanted to know, what is it? They were looking to God, probably not wholeheartedly, what is the problem? What's going on here? But you remember Isaiah 59?

When there's something that comes between us and God, He doesn't listen to our prayers anymore. Isaiah 59 says, And the people of Israel had departed from God wholesale. Here He had taken them out of Egypt, where they were slaves, brought them through the desert, showed them miracles that our minds can't even conceive of. And when He brought them in the Promised Land, just like He told them that He would, what they did was turn on Him. They didn't keep His commandments anymore. They looked at the nations around them and thought, well, do things the way they do. Who needs to keep, for instance, the Sabbath day? The nations around us don't do that, and they departed from it as well. And that separated them from God. He was very patient with them, but there came a point in time where He said, if you don't do what you say, death is the result. In this case, the promise that He had made them, they had violated the covenant and they were going to lose the land that they had given them. Now, let's drop down to verse 13 here.

No, verse 12. Verse 12, Moreover, God says, I gave them my Sabbath to be a sign between them and me that they may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them. Just like He said back in Exodus, I gave them my Sabbath, told them to keep them, told them if they did that they would be blessed, gave it to them, yet the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They didn't walk in my statutes. They despised my judgments. Which if a man does them, he'll live by them. He's rebinding them again. If you want to live, if you want the blessings of God, live by them. And He says, they greatly defiled my Sabbath. And now they're coming to inquire of me, what's the problem? Then I said I'd pour out my fury on them in the wilderness to consume them.

Let's drop down to verse 17. Nevertheless, my eye spared them from destruction. I didn't make an end to them in the wilderness. God is a merciful God. He was hoping, just like He hopes with all of us, that they would turn from their way and turn back to Him so that they could experience what He wanted them to experience. So they could have the blessings. They could inherit the promises that He wanted to give. But I said in verse 18 to their children in the wilderness, don't walk in the statutes of your fathers. Don't observe their judgments. Don't defile yourselves with their idols. That generation, He was saying, departed from Me. And He was telling the children, don't do things the way they did it. Don't follow their way, because if you follow their way, the same thing that happened to them is what you're going to reap. Instead, He says in verse 19, I am the Lord your God. Walk in My statutes, keep My judgments, and do them. And then He brings the Sabbath up again. Hello My Sabbath, and they will be a sign between Me and you that you may know that I am the Lord your God. Over and over, when He talks about the commandments and following God, He keeps coming back to the Sabbath. Hello My Sabbath. Keep them. Observe them. Let them be a link between you and Me. In verse 20 is one, it says, notwithstanding, the children rebelled against Me. They didn't walk in My statutes. They weren't careful to observe My judgments. Which if a man does them, he shall live by them. But what did they do? They profaned My Sabbaths. And I said I would pour out My fury on them and fulfill My anger against them in the wilderness. He keeps repeating. I told them what would happen. I told them what would be there if they didn't keep the commandments that I gave them. Verse 23, I raised My hand in her nose to those in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the Gentiles and disperse them throughout the countries. And that's what happened to Israel. And that's what happened to Judah. Exactly what God said would happen to them. They had it. He gave them the promise. All they needed to do was keep their end of the covenant. They didn't. And so He dispersed them. And He says, repeats again in verse 24, why He did what He did. Because they didn't execute My judgments, but had despised My statutes, profaned My Sabbaths, and their eyes were fixed on their Father's idols. They didn't keep the covenant with God. They didn't keep the Sabbath. He specifically says, over and over and over again. He said it in Exodus 20, set it apart, keep it holy, observe it. And in Exodus 31, He said, if you don't, you die. You'll lose the promises. And that's what happened to Israel. They lost the promise they were given. That's what happened to Judah. They lost the promise they were given. You can go back and find similar sets of verses in Jeremiah, where He says the same things to the people of Judah in that time. Don't profane God's Sabbath. Turn back to Him. Pay attention to what He has asked you to do, and simply do it. But don't allow this commandment, and don't minimize it, thinking that you can do whatever you want on the Sabbath day, because it's important to God. Vitally important to Him, and vitally important to us as well, if we really do want what God is offering. If we really do want and believe Him that He's going to return to earth and set up the kingdom and give eternal life. If we want that, then we'll keep all the commandments. Today we're talking about the Sabbath, and we see He repeats about the Sabbath or talks about it many, many times.

Let's go back to Exodus 31. Exodus 31.

And I think we had gotten through verse 15. Let's pick it up on verse 16. Exodus 31.16. It says, Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.

The children of Israel, the children of Abraham, who did keep God's commandments and statues and judgments. They'll keep it from generation to generation, he says, as a perpetual covenant.

A perpetual sign between him and his people.

The words are pretty clear there. We look at the word perpetual. It comes from the Hebrew olam, O-L-A-M, and it means from antiquity to futurity, a long duration of time.

Doesn't mean eternal, as in from time that we don't know until time into the future. We can't, but from a time, a long duration of time, from antiquity to futurity.

Now we saw that the Sabbath was his instance at the beginning of the creation here. God established it in creation week. It was there. He blessed it. He sanctified it. He set it apart from the other six days of the week, and when he finished his work, he set an example for us. Stop doing that work and do something else on the Sabbath day. Set that time aside.

We know that in the Old Testament times, they were supposed to keep the Sabbath. We know that God gave Israel the Sabbath as they came out of Egypt. We know that they were supposed to keep it. We've read verses that go right on through, and we could probably go through the end of the Old Testament and see that was binding during that time. Let's turn to Matthew 24.

Matthew 24 is, of course, Christ's Olivet prophecy.

And when his disciples asked him what would be the signs of his coming, what would be the signs of the end of the age, he gave them a whole series of events that would occur and told them to watch what was going on. And he, later down in the chapter in verse 20, he says to this, he says, pray that your flight, talking about the time right before the tribulation or during the tribulation, pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath.

Now, there's many in the world today that would say, the Sabbath doesn't need to be kept today. Christ did away with the Sabbath. Now we can keep another day or we can keep any day, and then any day is as good as one as long as we're keeping a Sabbath, even though the commandment says the Sabbath. But if Christ said to his disciples, pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. If there was no Sabbath to be kept in the end time, would he have said that? So I think it's pretty clear. At the end of time, the Sabbath will be kept. It's something that will be observed. The commandment is still in force.

Now, a few, probably months ago now, we talked about Christ and the introduction to the Ten Commandments. So we talked about how people believed the law was done away with. Well, as long as we're in Matthew, let's turn back to Matthew 5 and look at those verses for a minute. Turn back to Matthew 5 and verse 17.

And there, as Christ is talking to his disciples, he says, don't think that I came to destroy the law, destroy the law of the prophets. I didn't come to do away with the Old Testament or the that, he says. I didn't come to destroy but to fulfill. And you remember the word fulfill means to complete, to expand, to magnify them. I came to complete them, give them a more full meaning. For assuredly, in verse 18, he says, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law, till all is complete, until heaven and earth pass away.

As long as there's a heaven and earth, as long as there's physical man, the law that was re-given to the people in Exodus 20 exists. As long as heaven and earth exist, a physical creation, a Sabbath, exists. A Sabbath that God commands his people that want what he has to offer, that Sabbath exists. That Sabbath he expects people to keep. That Sabbath he has set apart from the other six days of the work week when we do everything else but we reserve one 24-hour period that we remember, that we mark, that we set aside.

The physical creation is still here. At the beginning of the physical creation, God created the Sabbath day. At the end time here, we read in Matthew 24, the Sabbath will still exist. We've already seen that the Sabbath will exist, or had did exist in the Old Testament right through it. Let's turn back to Isaiah 66. And at the end of Isaiah's prophecy, in verse 22, he takes us to the time of the millennium. Verse 22, he says, for as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your descendants and your name remain. And it will come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says God.

So we have the Sabbath placed in the Old Testament, at creation, at the end time, and in the millennium. Right from the time the physical earth was created until the time, as long as the physical earth is still in place. But what about now? What about now? People want to say, we don't have to keep a Sabbath day. People want to say that Christ did away with it. We've already seen verses that would disprove that. Let's go back to Hebrews and look at some verses that have confused people over time here. Hebrews 4.

Hebrews 4, the writer, the author, is continuing a thought that he started here in chapter 3, when he was talking about the children of Israel, the people of the Old Testament times, who hardened their hearts against God, who didn't listen to what he had to say, who kind of departed from his law, wanted to do things their own way, and they lost out on the promises that were given them. Let's pick it up in verse 1 and just kind of read through this and go through it piece by piece. Therefore, he says, well, verse 19 of chapter 3 says, we see that they couldn't enter in because of unbelief. They didn't enter into God's kingdom. They didn't enter into his rest because they didn't believe him. They didn't follow what he had to say. Therefore, he says, since the promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. Speaking to a New Testament crowd years, decades after Christ lived, don't you fall prey to the same mistakes that they made, for indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them. But the word which they heard didn't profit them. They didn't maximize it. They didn't pay attention to it. It didn't benefit them because they heard it and they ignored it. They went off and did their own thing. They didn't grasp the importance of what God was offering. And being mixed with faith, not being mixed with faith, he says, and those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter into that rest, as he has said, so I swore in my wrath they shall not enter, for we who have believed do enter that rest, as he has said, so I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, that God rested on the seventh day from all his works. We read that that occurred right at the beginning of creation, and again in this place, they, the people of the Old Testament, shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains that some must enter. And those to whom it was first preached didn't enter. Why? Because of disobedience. Again, he designates a certain day, saying in David, today, after such a long time as it has been said, today, if you will hear his voice, don't harden your hearts.

Don't think that it's not important to God. Don't harden your hearts and think it can't be that important what we do with this 24-hour period.

All 24 hours of it. Don't harden your hearts. Don't think that what you read in the Bible and the admonitions that God gives over and over again, don't harden your hearts against them. Listen to them is what he's saying. And then he says, if Joshua had given them rest, if they had entered into that time, then he wouldn't have spoken of afterward of another day. There remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God. Now, many people use that verse and say, proves we don't have to keep us Sabbath anymore. I don't know. I never read those verses that way. There remains, therefore, a rest for the people of God seems pretty clear to me. And it's true to the Greek that it was written in. Rest in verse 9, me, is the only place that rest in the New Testament is translated from Sabotismos, the Sabbath. There remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. They didn't enter into it. Now there's a new covenant. God is offering us that. There remains, therefore, a looking forward to what God had intended that the Sabbath day would picture or would portray. There remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for God. The Lamsa translation of the Bible translates it pretty well. It simply reads, it is, therefore, the duty of the people of God to keep the Sabbath day. And that's in the New Testament. That's decades after Christ died. It remains, therefore, the duty of the people of God to keep the Sabbath day.

So we've placed the Sabbath day from creation all the way to the time of the millennium. It's there. No one can argue the fact that the Sabbath doesn't exist and that we wouldn't, that God wouldn't want us to keep it. Hebrews 13.8 says, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. If he created the seventh day Sabbath as part of creation week, if when he was on earth as a physical human being and he kept the Sabbath day, why would anyone think that he would do away with that Sabbath day for just a period of time? And everything he said about it in the Old Testament, he wants us to pay attention to it. Then it was a physical thing, but in John 4.24, today we worship Christ in spirit and in truth. Today, we even keep it more fully than they did in the Old Testament when it was just a matter of physically stopping work. There's a greater purpose for the Sabbath today. It's about ceasing from our work the other six days of the week, but there's more to it than just resting. Let's go back to Exodus 20 again, because whenever we talk about the Sabbath, the concept of work is, of course, right there front and center. It was there when God was creating the seventh day. He worked, and he stopped his work. And in chapter 20, verse 9, it says, six days you will labor and do all your work.

Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you will do no work.

And then he lists all the people that might be within our gates.

The word work there is from the Hebrew malaka, m-e-l-a-k-a-h. And it means work in the sense of our workmanship, occupation, or our business.

So Christ, we know, for instance, was a carpenter. So his profession was a carpenter. Six days a week, he would have done the work of a carpenter. Peter was a fisherman. Six days of the week, he would have done the business of a fisherman. You might be a plumber, electrician, engineer, accountant, teacher, student, homemaker. Six days of the week, there is something that's our occupation, something that occupies our time, something that we do. God intended that we physically work. He physically worked. He created the physical creation. Six days of the week, we attend to those things. But he says what you do on those six days of the week, when the seventh day comes, you stop. You don't do that anymore. On the seventh day, you're not doing the work of a carpenter, fisherman, teacher, homemaker, student. Stop that work. That's for the other six days of the week. There's a seventh day, that's a special time that we set aside, that God set aside for a special purpose, a time that he sanctified and that he blessed. Because it has a tremendous meaning. And we can see in the verses that we've seen already, it has a tremendous meaning to him, and it better have a tremendous meaning to us, because God is working through a lot more on the Sabbath day than just giving us physical rest. So on the sixth day, we stop working. We don't do on the seventh day, we stop working. We don't do on the seventh day what we do the other six days of the week.

When God brought Israel out of Egypt, and he reminded them of what they had forgotten about the seventh day, because they were in captivity all those 400 years, it was pretty simple. They were out in the desert. They weren't doing carpentry work. They weren't doing those other things necessarily. But they were having to feed themselves, and remember, he gave a manna. When they complained and wondered what they were going to eat, he gave a manna. For six days a week, the manna was there. They went out, they gathered it, they brought it in, they ate it. But he said, on the sixth day, bring in double, because on the seventh day, the work of the other six days isn't going to be done. So on the sixth day, you prepare what you're going to eat on the seventh day, because you're not going to do this typical work that gets done on the other six days. That's going to be done on the sixth day. So on the seventh day, you have a time that's set aside for God.

Pretty simple at that time, but he was teaching them something. Well, as they got into the Promised Land, as other things developed and society developed around them, they needed to learn some things as well. No longer was there manna, but there was work all of a sudden that they were doing. Now they were in a land, they were building, they were harvesting, they were planting, they were doing the things that they do. They didn't do it well. As we learned, they didn't keep God's law, I should say, well. And he sent them into captivity. They lost what he had given them because they didn't obey him. And so Nebuchadnezzar came in, conquered Judah, and they were carried off captive. Now back in Nehemiah, we find a group of people that were going back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, to rebuild the temple. And the king allowed it to happen, and wanted it to happen. And as they went back there, it was going to be a city of God. This city that they would be rebuilt, Jerusalem, that would have the temple in it, God's dwelling place, was going to be governed by his laws. The people at that time recognized what they had done wrong. They realized that God had issued them out of their country because they disobeyed. So they were going back now, and in the front of their mind should have been. And certainly in Ezra's mind, it was at the front of his mind that they were going to keep God's law exactly the way that he had intended. But let's pick it up in chapter 13 and verse 15. As he's looking around what's going on there in Jerusalem, he says, I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in sheaves and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens, which they brought in Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them, it says, about the day on which they were selling provisions. So here they were, they were coming back into a land to correct their prior mistakes and to live in a way different. But as he looked around, what he saw the people were doing was the same thing they had done before. Here on the Sabbath day, they were going about their everyday business. It was not a whole lot of difference. People were in the streets, people were selling figs, all these things that they had there.

And he had to tell them, this isn't what the Sabbath was made for. No, maybe they were carpenters. Maybe they were carpenters. Maybe they were working on the temple. And on that seventh day, maybe they weren't working on the temple. Maybe they thought it was enough just to not work on the temple that day. Or maybe they thought it was enough just to not work at whatever they did. But they were out in about the streets, and these people were selling things, and they thought, you know what? We're not working, so why can't we engage in this activity? Buying things, selling things, looking things over. And they were told, that's not what the Sabbath day is for.

You don't work. You stop your work. But the seventh day wasn't set aside so that you could do other things like commerce on that day. It wasn't a day.

They would go down to the marketplace. Now let's read verse 16. Here it even says, Men of Tyre were there in the city with them, who brought in fish and all kinds of goods, and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah and in Jerusalem.

It was a regular marketplace. It was like going to Walmart to see what was there, heading over to Publix and see what they had on sale that day. And somehow in their minds, they thought, I'm not working. I didn't punch a clock today. I'm resting from my everyday activity or what I do the other six days a week, but it must be okay to engage in commerce.

Not so, they were told. That's not why God set the day aside. There's a lot of people in the world that think that's why God set the day aside. I see my neighbors, one of whom is a minister, and you know, he comes only periodically. But on Sunday, he'll be out mowing his lawn and working in the yard. But I think in his mind, it's okay. As long as I've gone to church and I'm not doing something else, it's okay to do these other things that I don't have time for on the other six days of the week. That's what the people of Judah were thinking at that time. That's not the case. That's not the day to go shopping. That's not the day to do these other things. The day was set aside, not to give time to do other chores, but to be set aside for God. And so they're told here, verse 17, I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day? Do you not understand what God set the seventh day for? He didn't set it so that you could just get things done that you didn't have time for during the other six days. He set it at its heart for a separate purpose. Didn't your fathers do this, he said, and didn't our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city, yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath?

He wasn't at all pleased with what he had seen. He understood that God was looking for a time set aside, that there was a time for physical work to be done, a time to engage in those things. But the seventh day that was set aside that was special, that those activities of the other six days of the week, the things that keep us moving, the things that keep our households running, those things are done on six days, but the seventh day is for God. It's not just a catch-up day. It's not okay to just not go to work. There's something more that God wanted on that Sabbath day.

Now, in that city, at that time, they were looking at the gates of the city. This was a city that was set up for God. It was a place that God's law was supposed to reign. God was going to dwell in the temple that was there with them, and yet they had all these traders and all these people in there, and they were told, as we read through the ensuing verses here, get those traders out of here. Lock them out of the city. We don't want them here on the Sabbath day. I don't want the people even tempted with that. Well, today, you know, we're here in Jacksonville, and there's an awfully lot of commerce going around. As we drove up here, you can see plenty of people at gas stations, see plenty of people at the whatever the stores we passed along the way there. Plenty of people going on, but you know Jacksonville is not God's city. It's not God's government that's here.

But you know where God's government is, or should be? Should be in our gates, should be in our homes, should be in the property that we control. And so, we might say, you know, I'm not going to go to work today, but if I have a house that needs to be remodeled, is it really that bad to have someone come in and work in those gates? Or in your gates? Well, the answer is no. If you're obeying what God said, no one inside your gates works. Not your son, not your daughter, not your wife, not your man servant or female servant. Nothing. Everything rests. Everyone sets that day aside for God.

And so, there's been a few times when we moved that all of a sudden I would look out, and I remember when we moved here and we got a fertilizer sure enough on 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning, I saw someone out in the front yard and thought, what is he doing? And he was out there fertilizing. And I said, you know, no one said it was Saturday. It was supposed to be Friday or Monday, but they were there while we got that straight. But it's just kind of in the then they look at you like, what's your problem? You're not doing it. But you know, in our gates, we don't let that happen, just like the people who are here are being told. Don't let that happen in your gates. Keep that day, your household, reserve that day for God because it's a blessing. And it's not enough to just not work. God has other purposes in mind for the Sabbath day. He sanctified it. He set it apart. And we set it apart on our calendars, in our minds, and by our physical labor. But he also blessed it. And he wanted us to be learning something from it.

Let's go back to Isaiah 58. So we know we don't work. We know we don't engage in the business of commerce, that we don't go out and actively, for the purpose of buying something to supply our homes, go out and do those things. That's all work for the other six days of the week. In Isaiah 58, he talks about another aspect of how to keep the Sabbath day. Isaiah 58, verse 13, says, If you turn your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, not doing your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.

So we don't do the physical work. We don't actively engage for the purpose of commerce on the Sabbath day, even though it may be not our job. But he's also saying here on the Sabbath day, don't do the things that you would find of your own pleasure. Now let me give you a couple examples of this, and I'm going to speak from mine. You have to figure out what you do yourself.

Sometimes when I come home from a hard day, I just want to watch TV. And it may be a Tuesday night, and what I don't even really want to watch TV. What I really want to do is just push buttons and watch the pictures go by is what I really want to have happen. But, you know, on Friday night, I don't do that. I couldn't do that, because that would be, to me, a violation of the Sabbath, because that's what I might do the other six days of the week. I might sit there and push buttons. But on the Sabbath, I'm not looking for my own pleasure. There's something else God wants to work with us on on the Sabbath, and I don't want my mind just filled with picture flashing every 30 seconds as I go through the channel list on that TV. Some nights, people will put in a movie to sit and relax at the end of a hard day's work.

I personally couldn't do that, because that's like finding my pleasure. I'm filling my mind with something that should be for the other six days of the week, not for the seventh day, God set aside the seventh day. What we do the other six days of the week isn't what we're supposed to be doing on the seventh day. He set that day aside. He sanctified it. He blessed it. He's looking for us to learn something from that Sabbath day.

Let me give you an example. Let's say that I have a relative that's been very sick, lives far, far away from me, and I take some time off work to go visit them. While I'm there, I intend to spend time with them, talk, show them that I care, and I'm there for them. But maybe the first night I do that, and we talk. But then the second day I'm there, the phone can start ringing, and I can do all sorts of business on that day. I can sit and watch TV all day. I can sit and listen to whatever news program that's on all day.

How does the person, and I can do that day after day, what does the person feel like after a few days of that? Do they feel like they really came to honor them to be part of what they to come there to spend time with them? Or do they spend a little bit of time, but really do everything that I wanted to do in the process and just be there?

Well, that's kind of how God looks at the Sabbath day. He wants us to be fully with Him. Give us, give Him our attention. Give Him ourselves. Set that day apart, that we're not working, not doing the other things of the six days, not seeking our own pleasure, not doing all these other things that might fill our time, but letting Him be in that day. Letting Him be part, the most important part of that day. A day He sanctified and a day that He blessed. Not enough to just not go to work on the Sabbath day. Not enough. God is looking for us to give Him that time, and He's working a purpose through that time in our lives. Let's turn back to Amos here.

Amos 8 And verse 4.

Amos 8 verse 4. Hear this, you who swallow up the needy and make the poor the land fail, saying, When will the new moon be passed, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may trade wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel large. Just talking to people who, okay, we're kind of observing the Sabbath. We're kind of not doing the things that we need to do. We've got this command from God. We don't work. We don't do our own pleasure. We're just kind of waiting for the day to be over. And, you know, here we have an attitude in Israel where they're just waiting for the Sabbath day to be done. And maybe that's been some of our attitude in the past. We're just waiting for the time that that clock ticks and the sun is down and we can go do what we want to do. Is God pleased with that attitude? Is that calling the Sabbath a delight? If we can't wait until that time comes, that sunset is over. And is that the spirit that God would want us to keep the Sabbath in? Do we delight in the Sabbath day, as it says in Isaiah? Or do we endure it and just wait for the time to come when it's over?

If we're just enduring it, if we can't wait for the day to be done, then I would say we probably have some examination to do of ourselves. We need to ask God, show us what we're missing in the Sabbath day. Show us what you intended that you would say you want the Sabbath day to be a delight.

Because if we're keeping the Sabbath the way that God intended it to be kept, it'll be a delight. It'll be the thing that on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're looking forward to that day because that's the highlight of your week. In it, you find a great purpose, not just rest, not just not going to work, but a whole lot of other things that God built into the Sabbath that He wanted us to keep it holy and to set that time aside for. Remember, He set it aside, and we set it aside by not going to work, not doing those other things, but He blessed the Sabbath day as well. Next time I'm here, we'll talk about, as He blessed the Sabbath day, what did He mean by that? How is it a blessing to us? But here we have in Amos 8, this attitude that people were just waiting at the time for the Sabbath to pass. In verse 6 it says, you know, well, it goes on and talks, you know, we just can't wait for the Sabbath to be over so we can go back and do the things that we do the other six days of the week. The Lord has said, has sworn by the pride of Jacob, He says in verse 7, I'll never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn who dwells in it, and it'll swell like the river, haven't subsided like the river of Egypt.

Keep the law in spirit and truth. Worship God in spirit and truth. Keep the Sabbath in spirit. When we do, it'll become a delight. Now, we've talked about things that we don't do, and I certainly didn't mean to give you a list here of things. Don't do that. You need to, you know, you need to work with God and know where those boundaries are yourselves.

But we need to know there's a designation between six days of the week, the time for the physical, the physical work, the physical commerce, the physical entertainment. That all happens in six days, but on the seventh day there's a spiritual purpose. Creation wasn't complete until there was a physical creation and a spiritual component to it. And we can never be complete until we understand the physical and do it well, because God commands us everything we do, do it to the best of our abilities. But we also understand the spiritual. Now, there was a group of people they began to understand that God was very interested in the Sabbath day, and they came to understand that they lost their promise. They lost the promised land because they didn't keep his laws. And because, as he said in Ezekiel that you can read in Jeremiah and other places as well, they profaned his Sabbath. They didn't pay attention to it. They didn't keep it the way he wanted it kept. And the Sabbath became important to them when they began to understand that. And the Pharisees began to tell people what they couldn't do on the Sabbath. Remember that? They had a whole list of things that people couldn't do. You can't walk more than this amount of miles. You can't pick up anything heavier than this amount of money or this amount of weight.

And I think I read someplace that there were like 600 laws attached to the Sabbath. 600 things that people had to remember to not do this, not do that, and it was all kind of negative. Don't do this, don't do that, don't do this on the Sabbath day. And the Sabbath became a burden to them. They kept it because they understood that it was important to God and it had to be as important to them, but they weren't getting out of it what they wanted because they were so concerned about all the little things that they had to do or could not do. And then Christ came. Then he began his ministry and he began walking among the Jews of his time and people who had all these ideas of how to keep the Sabbath day. He was Lord of the Sabbath. He created it. He knew what he wanted people to derive out of that Sabbath day by keeping it and he knew that he didn't want it to be a yoke around their neck that they just quaked for 24 hours during that seventh day, wondering if they had picked up an ounce too much when they picked up whatever they picked up. Or walked a foot too long in the Sabbath day journey. And so he came in and he began to show the Sabbath day was never designed to be a burden. Let's look at Matthew 12.

Matthew 12. Let's read through the first several verses here. It says, at that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath.

And the disciples were hungry and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

You can picture what's going on here. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what's not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Did you see what they did? They walked by that and they picked up a beer of corn and they ate it. How dare them do that? Don't they understand? They were saying, that's physical work. But Christ said, no. He said to them, have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him. How he entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests.

They weren't breaking the Sabbath. They weren't breaking the intent of the Sabbath by picking up that ear of corn. The Pharisees had begun to trust more in their own ideas of how physically to keep the Sabbath and lost the concept of what the Sabbath was for. And so when they picked up that ear of corn or that head of grain to eat, the Pharisees were quick to rush to judgment. But Christ the Lord of the Sabbath thought, no, they haven't broken the Sabbath. That time is still set aside. It's holy time. They are still doing what God wanted to work through them. This was just an innocent thing that they did at that time to satisfy hunger and to enhance the time of the Sabbath. Verse 5, haven't you read in the law? Or verse 5, yeah. Haven't you read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profaned the Sabbath and are blameless?

When you read back in the activities of the Tabernaclean temple, there was an awfully lot of work going on in the Sabbath. Not easy work to slaughter those animals, sacrifice them, put them on the altar, but it was all done in God's service. It was all done as part of worshipping Him. Yet I say to you that in a place there is one greater than the temple.

And if you had known what that means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you wouldn't have condemned the guiltless for the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

So we were saying there, don't be constrained by little laws. The Sabbath has a purpose. God is working something through the Sabbath, and the things of the other six days, mentally and physically, we put behind us. But on the seventh day, we let Him work through us. I won't take the time today. Next time we're here, we'll talk about some of the healing that God did on the Sabbath. And you know that many scriptures, when people would come to Him, He would heal on the Sabbath. And the Pharisees were quick right there to say, what are you doing? You can't do that on the Sabbath day.

And Christ said, it's lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. That's what God is. He's good. He attends to our needs. He wants us to love. He wants to teach us the things of Him that we may not as clearly get in the other six days of the week. But as we allow His Spirit to work through us, as we allow Him to teach us, and as we live the blessing of the Sabbath day, we begin to know more and more about Him. And we see what He's working, and we see how valuable that day is. More valuable. Well, what we do the other six days of the week, it is valuable. We have to work. We have to run our homes. We have to do those things. He put us in a physical earth, and He wanted us to do well, and He said He would bless us when we do well, and when we obey Him. But on the Sabbath day, there's a different mission. There's a different thing that God is working through us. We'll talk more about that next time. Let's conclude here in Isaiah. Isaiah 56 today.

Isaiah 56.

And verse 1. Another prophecy of Isaiah. Again, today we've talked more about separating the Sabbath day from the rest of the week. The things that we do the other six days we wouldn't do today on the Sabbath. Next time we'll talk more about the blessing and the things that God wants us to do on the Sabbath. The things that we do that prepare us for what He's called us to do. But let's read in chapter 56 verse 1. Thus says the Lord, keep justice and do righteousness. You remember what righteousness is? Doing His commandments. Keeping His law of love. Keep righteous and do righteousness. For my salvation is about to come.

Isn't that what the world has been waiting for? Isn't that what we've been waiting for? My salvation is about to come and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of man who lays hold on it, who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and keeps His hand from doing evil. Plus it is the man who does that. Don't let the Son of the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, the Lord has utterly separated me from His people. We talk a lot about Israel in the Old Testament times. That was the people that God was working through. Abraham kept God's laws, commandments, statutes. God blessed him and worked through that people and called that people His own. But today, it's not just physical Israel God's working with. We all come from different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicity. And He's saying here, don't let the foreigner say, hey, I can't be part of that group. Of course we're all part of that group. Anyone that God calls, anyone that responds to His call, anyone that follows Him is there. And God says, don't let the foreigner say, He has separated me from His people. No, that's not the case. We're all God's people. We all are following Him. He wants to give all people eternity and His blessings. Don't let the eunuchs say, those who might have some kind of physical problem, here I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who keep them the right way, who understand the meaning of them, who understand that they're a sign between me and them, and who allow me to work with them on the Sabbath, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me. God says, when they choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name, better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Do you see what the promises that God has made to all people are who respond to His calling? Who does what pleases Him? And He specifically mentions keeping His Sabbaths the way that He wanted them kept. Verse 6, also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to God to serve Him and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant, even them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.

You want what God has to offer?

We keep all His commandments, but we keep the Sabbath. We keep the Sabbath the way that He wants. A Sabbath that the world would tell us we're silly for what we do.

Well, we keep the Sabbath the way that He wants because it's a sign between us and Him, a day He sanctified and a day that He blessed. And next time we'll talk more about how God blessed the Sabbath day and what we do as a result.