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Turn with me to Exodus 20. Exodus
20. This is one of two places in
the Pentateuch where the Ten Commandments are listed. The
other is Deuteronomy chapter 5. And in both places, the thing
that stands out to me is that this commandment, the fourth
commandment, is the longest and most detailed of all of them.
It takes the most space. The shortest commandment, at
least in the English Bible, the shortest commandment is the eighth,
which is just four short words in English, you shall not steal.
The sixth commandment is likewise four words in English, you shall
not murder, but that one takes a couple more letters to spell,
so we'll count you shall not steal as the shortest commandment.
In the Hebrew text, the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments
are all just two words. So, which is good if you're trying
to write the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone, and you
have one as long as the fourth commandment, it's good to have
some short ones there too. The second commandment, the one
against making graven images is three verses long and 91 words
in the ESV, but the fourth commandment covers four verses and takes
98 words in the ESV. In Deuteronomy it's similar proportions
and all that's not that important, except to say that so much space
relatively is devoted to this commandment and it falls right
in the middle of the ten, so it's important. and we need to
pay close attention to it. Now there's no end of opinion
on the fourth commandment and it remains a point of fierce
controversy even among the theologians whom I most respect. At least
one Baptist fellowship that I'm aware of and have sympathies
with split into three different groups because they had differences
of opinion about how the fourth commandment is to be interpreted
and applied. So this is a controversial passage,
and let's just acknowledge that at the outset. But I think we
can untangle a lot of the confusion about it. Here is the commandment
itself from Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11. 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, or 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
on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath day and made it holy." Now, the commandment itself is
not all that hard to understand. Remember the Sabbath day to keep
it holy, verse 8. And that sets aside a special
day, a specific day, as a holy day unto the Lord. And the precise
day is then specified. It is the seventh day of the
week, verse 10. The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your
God. And then a reason is given why it's the seventh day rather
than the first or the third or the sixth, because for in six
days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is
in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day and made it holy. That verse, verse 11, is a reference
back to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis 2 verses 2 and 3 says,
"...on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done and
He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had
done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because
on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation."
So, one in seven days was set aside as holy, and it was the
seventh day, Saturday, on our calendars, because that's when
God rested from His creative work. The Israelites were commanded
to observe that day each week and set it aside for the Lord.
The rest of the Mosaic Law then includes numerous specific laws
that severely restricted what the Israelites were permitted
or not permitted to do on the Sabbath. But the commandment
itself, as it appears in the Decalogue, is simple and straightforward,
and it simply establishes a fixed day of rest and worship each
week that all of Israel was to observe. Now, why is this commandment
such a source of controversy? Because there's widespread disagreement
in the church about whether it applies at all to Christians,
and if so, how should we apply it? And opinion ranges from those
who think it calls for strict observance of a seventh-day Sabbath
forever to those on the other end who don't think it has any
application to the church at all. At one end of the spectrum,
you have the Seventh-day Adventists and their predecessors, which
were a small group of Baptists that arose in the 1700s known
as Seventh-day Baptists, And in their view, this commandment
sets up an eternal moral principle that imposes a strict seventh-day
Sabbath observance on all people of all times. That's the most
extreme view. We'll call it the strict seventh-day
Sabbatarians. And then at the other end of
the spectrum, you have Christians who believe that this commandment,
not only the fourth commandment, but the entire Decalogue is irrelevant
to Christians anyway because it belongs to the Mosaic Covenant
and has nothing to do with us. And so they wouldn't trouble
themselves about how to apply this commandment today because
they believe every aspect of the law has been abolished under
the New Covenant and therefore the Ten Commandments simply don't
have any legitimate application to Christians. and they would
oppose the application of any legal principles for believers
today. because they say we're not under the law. And they interpret
that to mean there is no legal authority that binds us. We call them antinomians. And
in this category, there are many hyper-Calvinists, most of the
old line, you know, original Schofield style dispensationalists,
and then some who would hold to a newer kind of theology known
as New Covenant theology. Now, let me say something here
as a footnote, because many of those people would reject the
label of antinomianism. They think that has a sound of
libertinism to it. you know, as if it signified
they promote immorality or whatever. That's not what I mean by it,
and I don't use that term in order to be derogatory, but antinomianism
is the proper theological term for the view that the Ten Commandments
are not binding on Christians. You can look it up in the Oxford
English Dictionary or any theological dictionary if you don't believe
me. So I'm using that term not in a pejorative sense, but in
its technical sense. If you believe the Ten Commandments
have no application whatsoever to the Christian, then you are
against the law in a theological sense, and the name for that
kind of theology is antinomianism. So those are the two extremes.
You've got, you know, the strict Seventh-day Baptists on this
end, the antinomians on that end, and in between those two
opinions, there's still quite a wide variety of views. the
typical Reformed view, the one that's spelled out in most of
the Protestant creeds of the 17th century, is that the Christian
Sabbath has been changed from the seventh day of the week to
the first. And in fact, let me read you from one of those confessions.
This is the Baptist Confession of 1689, a confession that I
generally would be in agreement with, but I disagree with what
it says here. It says, God hath particularly appointed one day
in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto him. which from
the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was
the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ
was changed into the first day of the week, which is called
the Lord's Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world
as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of
the week being abolished. And many who hold to that view
then want to impose most of the Old Testament restrictions against
work and travel and, you know, fire building and all of that.
They want to impose those restrictions on Christians. In essence, what
they've done is merely move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. That was the classic Puritan
view, and it's still the view of, I would say, probably most
of those who call themselves Reformed today. We'll call that
view Christian Sabbatarianism. And in recent years, as more
and more people have sort of returned to classic confessional
reform theology, this type of Puritan Sabbatarianism has been
growing in popularity. There's a revival of the kind
of Sabbatarianism that was enforced by the Puritans. And some think
that, you know, if you hold to Calvinism at all, you must embrace
this kind of Sabbatarianism. So this has become a hotly debated
issue in the very theological circles some of us travel in.
There is one other classic Reformed view on the Sabbath, and it happens
to be where my own sympathies lie. And so for those of you
who've been eager to hear what position I would take, this is
it. This was the view of Calvin and the early Continental Reformers.
And they said, no, there is an eternal moral principle that's
contained in the Fourth Commandment, and that's why it's part of the
Decalogue, but there's also a ceremonial aspect of this law that was abolished
under the New Covenant. And the specific Old Testament
Sabbath restrictions pertain to the ceremonial ordinances
that were abrogated by Christ. So all those restrictions about
fire building and traveling and all of that, those were for Old
Testament Israel. They don't apply to the church.
Here's what Calvin had to say about the fourth commandment.
He wrote, with the seventh day of rest, the Lord wished to give
to the people of Israel an image of spiritual rest. And he said,
as to this reason, there is no doubt that it ceased in Christ
because he is the truth by which the presence of all images vanish. Hence, Calvin said, superstitious
observance of days must remain far from Christians. As the truth,
therefore, was given to the Jews under a figure, in other words,
in kind of typological imagery, so to us, on the contrary, truth
is shown without shadows in order, first of all, that we might meditate
all our lives on a perpetual Sabbath from our works so that
the Lord may operate in us by His Spirit." And so Calvin said
the weekly Sabbath observance was ceremonial and the Sabbath
day in the Old Testament pictured a reality that prefigured Christ
and was fulfilled by Him because He offers the perfect Sabbath
rest. The Old Testament Sabbath observances,
all those rules and regulations about what you could and couldn't
do on Saturday, merely foreshadowed something that was brought to
fruition, made clear in Christ. And when you have the substance
of the real thing, there's no need to hang on to the shadows
and symbols of that thing. Let me illustrate. I think I've
used this illustration before, but it bears repeating. When
I travel, when I went to Asia last year for a couple of weeks,
I took a picture of Darlene with me. Actually, I took several
of them on my iPhone. And it was something I could
take out and look at to remind me of her. And I would take that
picture out practically every day and count down the days until
I could see her for real. But when I came home and saw
her after two weeks of being away, I didn't pull out that
picture and kiss it. I kissed her. And on the way
home in the car, she drove me home from the airport. I didn't
pull out that picture and look at it. I looked at her. It would
be folly and it would be an insult to her if I gave my attention
to a mere symbol of her when I had the real thing right there
beside me. So it's better to kiss your wife on the cheek than
it is to kiss your cell phone on the cheek. And the Apostle
Paul says, that's how we should regard all of the ceremonial
elements of Old Testament law. The priesthood, and the sacrifices,
and the ceremonies, and the rituals, and all these things that were
symbols that prefigured Christ and his work in various ways,
those things are done away with because we have the real thing
now. Those were just shadows, and we have the real thing. It's
a sin, actually, to go back to observing something that was
merely symbolic. The whole book of Hebrews is
about that. So the animal sacrifices, for example, were object lessons
that pictured and prefigured the atoning work of Christ. Now
that his atoning work is finished, it would be wrong to observe
the symbols. The Passover, all the other Jewish
holidays, all of these things pictured various aspects of Christ
and His work. And so now that the full light
of divine revelation has shown us the realities that were only
symbolized by those things, we don't need to maintain the symbols. That's why we don't observe Passover
or the other Jewish holidays. And there are groups that say
we should. They're wrong for this very reason. And the Apostle
Paul specifically includes the weekly Sabbaths among those types
and symbols that he says have passed away. Turn with me for
a moment to Colossians chapter 2. I want you to see this with
your own eyes. Colossians 2. And in verses 13 and 14, Paul
is talking about the finished work of Christ and how it has
liberated us from our sin, liberated us from the condemnation of the
law. And verses 14 and 15, Colossians 2.14 says, by canceling the record
of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this
he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers
and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over
them in him. In other words, Christ freed
us, liberated us from all of the ordinances that condemned
us, and he utterly defeated the forces of evil, and all of that
is done. His redemptive work is finished. There's nothing left to be foreshadowed
by any kinds of types or symbols. And therefore, verse 16, he says,
therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and
drink with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things
to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. But notice, in one
fell swoop there, he's saying, look, all of the dietary laws,
all of the ceremonial laws, all of the holidays, and even the
Sabbaths have been done away with. They were merely shadows,
but the substance is Christ. Now, the typical Sabbatarian
will look at that passage and say, yeah, but that has nothing
to do with the weekly Sabbaths. That's a reference to certain
feast days and maybe the sabbatical years, like the year of Jubilee.
But no, if you follow what Paul is saying here, he uses a clear
progression in order to make his meaning absolutely clear.
Let no man therefore judge you in respect of a holy day. a festival. That refers to the
annual feasts of the Jewish calendar. Or, he says, of the new moon.
Those were the monthly celebrations, the feasts of the new moon. Or,
of the Sabbath days, and that can be none other than the weekly
Sabbaths. We're under no more obligation
to observe the ceremonial requirements of the weekly Sabbaths than we
are to follow the dietary laws of Old Testament Judaism, or
circumcision, or the priestly ceremonies, or any of the other
ceremonial aspects of the law. Those things were merely pictures
that illustrated Christ and His redemptive work. He is the fullness
of rest. He represents the fullness of
rest that the Sabbath pointed to. And now that we have the
real thing, we don't need to be fixated on the pictures. Now, let me say this, all Reformed
theologians, even the ones who most strictly argue for the observance
of Sunday as the Sabbath, they must all ultimately acknowledge
that there is a ceremonial aspect to the Old Testament Sabbath.
They cannot deny that. You remember from Our study of
the Ten Commandments, more than 15 years ago now, I think, that
the Ten Commandments, as we understand them, are simply a summary of
God's moral law, the eternal law of God. But even though this
commandment falls right here in the middle of this outline
of the law's moral precepts, it nonetheless deals with a ceremonial
and symbolic observance. And even the strictest Reformed
Sabbatarians ultimately have to concede that point. Because
the commandment itself spells out which day is to be regarded
as the Sabbath, and it's Saturday. But not one Reformed creed or
theologian of any stature has ever argued that this commandment
should be observed without change from how Moses delivered it on
Sinai. The only ones who argue that
way are the Seventh-day Adventists and the Seventh-day Baptists,
and they are in clear violation of the law, the principle that's
set forth in Colossians 2.16. So ultimately, Protestant theologians
have never disagreed on whether this commandment has a ceremonial
aspect, even though it's included here with the moral law. It has
a ceremonial tint to it that makes it stand out in the Ten
Commandments as different from all the others. And where theologians
disagree is on the question of whether Sunday is given to us
as a Christian Sabbath, and if so, how is that Sabbath to be
observed? And those questions have prompted, as I said, no
end of debate, and to cover every aspect of that debate would take
us several weeks. I don't want to do that. So what I do want
to do this morning is give you five principles to keep in mind
about the Sabbath. This will help you think through
the question of how we as Christians ought to regard the Sabbath,
apart from the ceremonial ordinances, that governed how Old Testament
Israelites were commanded to observe the Sabbath. And at the
end, I'll try to show you that there is, as I said, an eternally
binding moral lesson built into this law. It is here with the
moral law for a purpose, and it's a good purpose. And in fact,
there are several moral principles we ought to draw from this commandment.
And the moral aspects of this commandment are applicable to
us as Christians today. But before we get there, I want
to go through these five points and I hope this will help you
see how this law fits where it is in the Ten Commandments and
why it's there as a part of God's eternal moral law. So principle
number one, The Sabbath looked back to creation. Very simple.
Principle number one, the Sabbath looked back to creation. The
first inkling of the Sabbath appears in Genesis 2, where you
have that description of the seventh day of the week of creation.
Let me read it again, Genesis 2, verses 2 and 3. And on the
seventh day, God finished His work that He had done, and He
rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done.
So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. because God
rested from all His work that He had done in creation. Now
you might think, and some people would say, well, right there
the Sabbath is instituted because it says, God blessed that day
and made it holy. But the fact is, there is no
mention of the word Sabbath neither here nor anywhere in Scripture
until you get to Exodus 16. That's that occasion when manna
begins to come down to feed the Israelites in the wilderness.
And before we leave Genesis here, there's just no suggestion in
this Genesis passage that God, by blessing the Sabbath day and
making it holy, that he somehow imposed Sabbath observances on
Adam. In fact, he didn't, and he couldn't
have, because Adam was less than a day old and he had no works
to rest from. And furthermore, if Adam obeyed
God, if he had never sinned in the first place, the garden would
have been...his life there would have been a perpetual Sabbath
rest. Living in the garden, enjoying the presence of God with a daily
existence that was free from any kind of exhausting labor,
Eden was designed to be its own Sabbath. And it was Adam's sin
that ruined that. But the Sabbath was then instituted
after the fall, after the flood, after the Israelites left Egypt.
That's the first we read about it, when the manna starts to
fall. It was a gracious gift to the Old Testament Israelites
that enabled them to experience one day a week a small taste
of what life in Eden was supposed to be. a day of rest and fellowship
with the Lord. That's what Eden was supposed
to be. So keep this in mind. The Sabbath was supposed to be
a sample of what humanity forfeited in Eden, but it wasn't instituted
as an ordinance. It's not even mentioned in Scripture
until the time of Moses. Then around the time of Christ,
The Pharisees, legalistically, began to make the Sabbath law
and obedience to the Sabbath restrictions a focus of rigid
enforcement. And this was sort of, as we've
talked about before, the trademark of the Pharisees. It was the
thing they picked the most fights with Christ about because they
accused Him of violating their Sabbath laws, because they'd
made a whole bunch of laws that weren't in Scripture, and tried
to impose them on people. And by doing that, they turned
the Sabbath into a drudgery. But it was originally intended
to be nothing more than a day of pure rest and refreshment
for God's people. It was a gracious gift from God.
In Isaiah 58 verse 13, God pleads with Israel to call the Sabbath
a delight and to seek their pleasure in what pleases God and to honor
the Lord's rest and to enter into that rest instead of seeking
pleasures of their own. And so the Sabbath day was a
commemoration of day seven of creation week, when God rested
and hallowed the day. And again, there's nothing anywhere
in the Old Testament that suggests God commanded His people to observe
the Sabbath until the time of Moses. Nowhere in Scripture do
we ever read that Abraham or any of the patriarchs ever observed
the Sabbath. There's not a hint that they
did anywhere. Now, this is one of the questions about the Sabbath
that is hotly debated. So was the Sabbath a creation
ordinance, or was this a commandment that was initiated at Sinai?
And you will find that most theologians have inferred from Scripture
that Sabbath was a creation ordinance, because the reason for observing
the Sabbath was to commemorate God's rest at creation, and it
was at creation that God blessed the day and declared it holy.
And you find that most theologians you read, there are two notable
exceptions, John Bunyan and John Gill, both of whom pointed out
that there's nothing anywhere in scripture that suggests anyone
prior to Moses' time was ever commanded to observe the Sabbath,
and no one prior to Moses' time is ever even said to have rested
on the Sabbath. Bunyan pointed out, let me quote
him exactly, he said, quote, in all the scriptures we do not
read that the breach of a weekly Sabbath was charged upon any
man from Adam to Moses. And John Gill said, none but
the Jews were ever charged with the breach of the weekly Sabbath.
And so this goes to the question of whether the Sabbath was purely
moral commandment or is it mostly ceremonial. If it wasn't given
as a commandment to humans until Moses' time, then it must be
mainly ceremonial. Because if the commands and restrictions
associated with Old Testament Sabbath observance, if these
were moral principles, then they would have been eternally binding
on all people at all times, just like the commandments against
murder and adultery. You realize murder and adultery
didn't become a sin at Sinai. Those things were wrong and people
knew it because those laws were inscribed on the human heart
from creation. And so again, I think the proper
biblical view is that there are both moral and ceremonial dimensions
to the fourth commandment. The ceremonial aspect, which
calls for the observance of the seventh day in particular, could
not have been a creation ordinance, because if it were, it never
would have been subject to change. Saturday Sabbaths would be eternally
binding if this were a creation ordinance. But at the same time,
it's important to see that whatever eternal moral principle is found
in this law is eternally Therefore, there is an aspect of this law
engraved on our hearts, and I'll tell you what it is, but not
yet. My own conviction is that in its broadest form, there is
this moral aspect to this law, and it was...that moral aspect
is indeed harks back to creation. You could call it a creation
ordinance if you want because it's binding on all men of all
time. But the specifics regarding the Sabbath day and all those
rules about traveling and building fires on the Sabbath and the
external features of the Old Testament Sabbath observance,
those things are purely ceremonial and they are not binding on believers
today. Now, precisely which aspects of this commandment pertain to
the moral law, we're going to take up in my final point. I
promise you we will get there. But as far as worshiping on the
seventh day, on Saturday, is concerned, there is no such ordinance
either given or implied in Scripture, and there's no example of a seventh-day
Sabbath anywhere in the Old Testament until the time of Moses. that
was a particular aspect of the Mosaic Covenant. And this commandment,
when given to Moses at Sinai, looked back at creation, that's
true. Its whole rationale was drawn from the example of God
Himself, who rested from His works on the seventh day. That's
exactly what verse 11 of Exodus 20 says, from six days the Lord
made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and
He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath and made it holy. So that's principle number one,
and it's clear. The Sabbath did look back to
creation. Now, here's principle number
two, and it's equally important. The Sabbath looked forward to
redemption. The Sabbath looked forward to
redemption. This is a major point according to the writer of Hebrews.
Turn for a moment to Hebrews 4. I have you turning all around
here today, and that's good for you. It keeps you awake. Hebrews
4, And notice verses 4 and 5, for he has somewhere spoken of
the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh
day from all his works. And again, in this passage, he
said, they shall not enter my rest. Now, notice the point he's
making here. This is a little obscure, and
you have to read Hebrews 4 in its context, but he's acknowledging
that the Sabbath pointed backward to creation and to the example
of God's rest. That was our first point as well.
But, he says, it also looked forward to a future rest, which
the people of God had not yet entered into. And they couldn't
enter into that rest as long as they remained in rebellion
against God. Disobedience would keep them
out of God's rest. And the Bible uses a word in
this context for disobedience that speaks of more than just
flippant disobedience. It's obstinate disbelief, defiance
against God. Verse 6, therefore it remains
for some to enter it. It's talking about this future
rest. And those who formerly received the good news failed
to enter because of disobedience, defiance against God, disbelief.
And again, he appoints a certain day. What day? Today. This is important. Now, what
kind of rest do people not enter into because they harden their
hearts against God? That's talking about the rest
that comes with redemption. And what is the appointed day?
Today. He's talking about there the
day of grace. That is every day until the Lord
returns. And the writer of Hebrews is
relying on some familiar typology here. He's quoting Psalm 95 verse
11. That's what he's referring back
to, which recounts how God forbid an entire rebellious generation
of Israelites from entering into the Promised Land. And Canaan
itself, the promised land, was a picture of paradise and redemption
for the people of God. And so the writer of Hebrews
applies Psalm 95-11 this way. He sees that Psalm as a graphic
lesson about ultimate redemption, salvation. And he says it's talking
about something more than the Israelites literally entering
into the land of Canaan. He says there is another rest.
There is a greater rest. It's an eternal heavenly rest
that's yet to come, and that, he says, is what the Sabbath
pictures. Look again at verse 7. Again,
he appoints a certain day. Today. saying through David so
long afterward, this is in Psalm 95, in the words already quoted,
today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts. Now again,
that's a quotation from Psalm 95, that's verses 7 through 9. In fact, let me read you Psalm
95 verses 7 through 11. From the psalm it says, For he
is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep
of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your
hearts as at Meribah, as on the day at Massa in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof,
though they had seen my work. And the writer of Hebrews points
out that David wrote this psalm many years after Joshua's time,
when the people of God finally did enter Canaan in Joshua's
era. David's writing after that, and
yet David speaks of a still future rest. So back to Hebrews 4, verses
8 and 9. For if Joshua had given them
rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then,
there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. So, the
writer of Hebrews is very clearly saying, what the Sabbath points
to is a rest that is still yet future. And here's the point,
that's what the Sabbath points to, it's the rest of redemption,
basically heaven. Salvation by grace through faith,
that's the rest He wants them to enter into, verses 10 and
11. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his
works as God did from His. That's what we do when we trust
Christ for salvation, right? We set aside our works and trust
instead in His. Let us therefore strive to enter
that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience."
He's writing to Hebrew people who knew the truth of Christ.
They'd even identified with Him to a degree. He's saying, look,
go all the way with Him. Enter into that rest. Set your
works aside, all the ceremonial law, all those observances, set
those aside and rest in the finished work of Christ. And that's what
this typology of the Sabbath was all about. It's a lesson
about redemption and how we enter into it. Redemption is not obtained
by working, but by entering into the Lord's rest through repentant
faith. By the way, this is why Jesus
was so incensed at the Pharisees and the way they corrupted the
Sabbath. They had made the Sabbath into a drudgery that was all
about rigid laws and stern punishments, and it was never supposed to
be that. It was supposed to be a refreshing
rest from labor, and it signified the way of salvation. So by messing
up the typology of the Sabbath, the Pharisees had actually obscured
the gospel. And that's why Jesus said in
Mark 2, 27 and 28, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for
the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even
of the Sabbath. He's Lord of the Sabbath because
He's the Lord of our redemption. So the Sabbath wasn't just a
backward-looking ordinance. It was a forward-looking object
lesson about the way of redemption. And that brings us to principle
number three. Number three, if you're taking notes, the Sabbath
has reference to God's rest. The Sabbath has reference to
God's rest. See, the Sabbath was a reminder
that God rested and it graciously invited the people of God to
enter into its rest, His rest, God's rest. In other words, the
Sabbath was like a gospel invitation in symbolic form, enter into
the Lord's rest. Now, the nature of this rest,
the Lord's rest, is extremely significant. Remember, this is
God's rest we're talking about. That means it wasn't, and it
couldn't have been, the rest of exhaustion. It wasn't a rest
that signified weariness. God didn't rest because He needed
the refreshment. He rested because His work was
finished. And therefore, the rest of the
Sabbath, the rest that's spoken of in the Sabbath, is not a rest
that is made necessary by fatigue. It's a rest that celebrates a
finished work. In other words, the Sabbath signified
entering into God's rest with Him. He was graciously sharing
His rest with His people. the rest of His finished work.
And that's why the forward-looking aspect of the Sabbath is so central
to the meaning of this law. The eschatological rest of redemption,
that yet future rest, and the historic rest of creation, both
of them signify the finished work of God Himself. And the
Israelites were not under this law supposed to think that they
were earning their own rest by working the other six days of
the week. That wasn't the point at all. Their earthly work was
never finished. And yet God graciously gave them
one day a week to enter into His finished work, His rest.
So this is absolutely central to the meaning of the Sabbath.
This is all about the gospel. It's all about salvation. The
Sabbath was a token of divine grace, and it pictured the rest
we obtain through salvation. It's not a rest we earn by our
own works. It's a rest that is graciously
given to us by Christ, who has done all the saving work on our
behalf, and He's finished His work. In other words, And get
this, the purpose of this law was theological, not utilitarian. It was given because it teaches
us something about God, not just because it was useful to humanity.
But it reminds us of the eternal Sabbath rest that is entered
into by those who cease from their labors and find their salvation
in Christ alone, in His finished work. That's what it prefigured. And that's why, as Christians,
we regard the form of Israel's Sabbath observance as predominantly
ceremonial, and therefore obsolete today. We who have entered into
the true rest purchased for us by Christ don't need to retreat
to the shadows of holy days or new moons or Sabbath days. But
those things are a shadow of things to come. The substance
belongs to Christ. Is that clear? Principle number
four. The Sabbath observances had a
unique significance to national Israel. As I said, the Sabbath
commandment doesn't appear until the time of Moses and it is found
here in the Ten Commandments for a very specific reason. This Sabbath law was the formal
sign of the Mosaic Covenant. Every covenant that God ever
made came with a sign that sealed the covenant. When God made a
covenant with Noah, He gave him a sign of what? The rainbow. Genesis 9, 12, and 13, and God
said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between
me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future
generations. I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be
a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. So the rainbow
was a sign of Noah's covenant. When God made a covenant with
Abraham, he gave him a sign. It was a sign of circumcision.
Genesis 17, 11, he says to Abraham, you shall be circumcised in the
flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant
between me and you. And in precisely the same way,
when God made a covenant with the people of Israel through
Moses, The Sabbath was the sign of that covenant. Look at Exodus
31. This is Exodus 31, starting in verse 12. And the Lord said
to Moses, You are to speak to the people of Israel and say,
above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign
between me and you throughout your generations that you may
know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath
because it's holy for you. Whoever profanes it shall be
put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be
cut off from his people. Six days shall work be done,
but the seventh is a Sabbath of solemn rest. holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the
Sabbath day shall be put to death." This is a capital crime. Why
is it so important? Verse 16, therefore the people
of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout
their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever
between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord
made heaven and earth and on the seventh day rested and was
refreshed. So this was a sign of the Mosaic Covenant, the Sabbath.
Now notice, this sign had specific significance for the Israelite
nation. It's not a covenant God makes,
like he did with Noah, for Noah and the whole world. This is
for the people of Israel. Verse 17, it is a sign forever
between me, and that's the Lord, and the people of Israel. Nothing
in Scripture ever suggests that God demanded seventh-day Sabbath
observance from any other nation, ever. And so, someone might ask,
then, why does this commandment appear in the Decalogue? Why
is this in the Ten Commandments, which is a compendium of all
the moral laws that God requires of all people of all times? The
Ten Commandments is applicable universally and in every era. It's just simply spelled out
in Commandments on Stone as part of the Mosaic Covenant, but it
applies to everybody. So why is this commandment in
there? Well, the reason is found in the form of the covenant itself.
See, when covenants were made between kings and nations in
the time of Moses, it was common. to incorporate some sign into
the treaty that would then seal the covenant. The sign had a
special significance. If you made a covenant with a
king and you broke any other part of the covenant, you could
find forgiveness and the covenant would remain intact. But if you
abandoned the sign of the covenant, it signified that you had forsaken
the covenant altogether and the covenant as a whole was deemed
irreparably broken. The structure of the Decalogue
is exactly like those kingly treaties. In fact, the Ten Commandments,
that's a summary of the Mosaic Covenant. In Exodus 34 verse
28, the Ten Commandments are referred to as the words of the
covenant, the Ten Commandments. In fact, if you're still in Exodus
31, look at verse 18. Immediately after I stopped reading
there, verse 18 says, and he gave to Moses, when he had finished
speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony,
tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. What was on
those stone tablets? Ten Commandments. And those two
tablets of stone were the formal covenant document, written by
the finger of God. And therefore, they had to include
the sign of the covenant. That represented the whole covenant
in shorthand form. And as a written form of the
covenant, written by God Himself, those Ten Commandments written
on stone had a particular significance to the nation Israel because
that was the nation with whom this covenant was made. Yes,
the Ten Commandments summarize God's moral law for all people
of all time, but as a written record of the covenant, Those
two tablets of stone had a particular significance for Israel and the
covenant sign therefore had to be prominently featured in this
document which represented the whole covenant. The fourth commandment
was the sign of the covenant. Now, other more specific laws
pertaining to the Sabbath spelled out precisely how Israel was
to observe this sign. And virtually all of those commandments,
all those additional commandments that you read elsewhere in Exodus
and Deuteronomy and throughout Moses' writings, all the restrictions
on the Sabbath, pretty much all of them are ceremonial in nature.
For example, the Jewish Sabbath required a special offering.
Numbers 28 verses 9 and 10, you don't need to turn there, I'll
read it to you. Numbers 28 verse 9, on the Sabbath day two male
lambs a year old without blemish and two-tenths of an effa of
fine flour for a grain offering mixed with oil and its drink
offering, this is the burnt offering of every Sabbath besides the
regular burnt offering and its drink offering. Now, that mandates
a special sacrifice every Sabbath. That's clearly ceremonial in
nature and it's not observed even by the most rigid Sabbatarian
today. Even the most extreme Seventh-day
Baptists don't follow that part of this. You had other specific
laws that forbid the Israelites to travel, or to kindle fires,
or to bake bread, or to even boil water. They couldn't gather
sticks, they couldn't do their housework, they couldn't do any
kind of work And those were all symbolic ordinances that signified
the utter separation of the nation of Israel unto the Lord and their
seclusion from the rest of the nations. They were different
from every other nation. But those Sabbath restrictions pertained
to covenant Israel only. They were never enforced by God
on any other people, either before Moses or after the appearance
of Christ. because those commandments were
ceremonial in nature. And the proof that they were
ceremonial is found in God's own words through the prophet
Isaiah when God tells Israel that He despises their Sabbath
keeping. Isaiah 1.13, bring no more vain
offerings, incense is an abomination to me, new moon and Sabbath and
the calling of convocations, I cannot endure iniquity and
solemn assembly. And Hosea 2 verse 11, God says,
I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons,
her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. So those Sabbath restrictions
were for the nation of Israel only. They were merely ceremonial.
And the hypocrisy of the Israelites made the Sabbath observance itself
an abomination to God. And that's why nothing in the
New Testament ever commands Christians to observe the Sabbath or to
obey any of the Old Testament restrictions related to the Sabbath.
When the Jerusalem Council met in Acts 15 to consider which
aspects of Moses' law pertained to the Gentiles, there was not
even any mention of the Sabbath. And that would be remarkable
if any observance of the ceremonial Sabbath was supposed to be required
of Christians. And furthermore, nowhere in the
New Testament are we ever warned that any breach of the Sabbath
was a sin. Nowhere are we ever commanded
to observe a certain day. And as a matter of fact, in Romans
14, the Apostle Paul portrays the weaker brother as the person
who observes holy days, and the stronger brother is the one who
esteems every day alike. That's Romans 14, verse 5. Paul
regarded it as a matter of utter indifference whether we observe
any holidays or not, any holidays or not. I mean, people get...there
are these Christians, you know, who get all upset about Christmas
and Easter and Halloween and all of that stuff. And Scripture
says very clearly multiple times that for Christians, it's a total
matter of indifference whether you observe any day or not. So
let no man judge us in the matter of Sabbath observance. That's
what it says in Colossians 2. There are no ceremonial restrictions
against Sabbath activities for Christians like those that are
binding on Old Testament Israelites. And that brings us to this final
principle, the one you've been waiting for me to explain. Number
five, the Sabbath is full of moral significance. The Sabbath
is full of moral significance. Please don't get the idea that
I'm saying that the Sabbath is utterly devoid of any relevance
to us, that there's no moral principle in it or any of that.
I am not suggesting that the Ten Commandments have been reduced
to nine. But I am suggesting that we as
Christians need to understand this law apart from the ceremonial
trappings of the Mosaic Covenant. To reinstate the ceremonial Sabbath
laws is as wrong as going back under any of the priestly or
dietary or ritualistic principles of the Old Covenant. But there
is a moral aspect to the Fourth Commandment. To quote Turretin,
one of my favorite Reformed theologians, he said, it is a mixed commandment,
moral as to its substance, ceremonial as to its circumstance. Now that
requires some unpacking. Really the question is this,
what are the moral principles that underlie this commandment?
What can we take away from this out of the Ten Commandments that
applies to us? Well, number one, this is a unique
commandment. To quote Calvin once more, since this commandment
has a particular consideration distinct from the others, it
requires a slightly different order of exposition. That's what
Calvin said. He went on to say, we need to
take care to separate that which is moral from that which is merely
ceremonial. Without reconstituting the ceremonial
aspects of the law, we have to be careful to affirm what is
morally binding in it. What is that? Let me suggest
several moral principles that we need to draw from the fourth
commandment. In fact, Calvin himself named three. I'm going
to add a fourth. And let me read you, though,
from Calvin. This is from his catechism, the Genevan Catechism.
He asks, what then? Is there anything in the fourth
commandment beyond ceremony? Answer, it was given for three
reasons. One, to figure or to give us
a picture of spiritual rest. Two, For the preservation of
ecclesiastical polity, in other words, to give the people of
God one day each week on which they come together. And three,
for the relief of slaves, or as Calvin wrote elsewhere, to
give a day of rest to servants and to those who are under the
authority of others in order that they might have some respite
from their toil. Now, as I said at the beginning,
many Christians believe that Sunday, or the Lord's Day, as
it's commonly referred to in Scripture, and also in the early
church's writings, the Lord's Day, they say, is the Christian
Sabbath. They believe that when Christ rose from the dead on
the first day of the week, God thereby changed the Sabbath from
the seventh day to the first. And I won't spend a great deal
of time answering that, except to say that the whole idea is
sheer conjecture. Nothing in Scripture ever refers
to Sunday as the Sabbath, ever. And in fact, throughout the book
of Acts, the seventh day was still referred to as the Sabbath
because Paul would go to the synagogue on the Sabbath when
they were meeting there. That was Saturday. I don't see
any biblical warrant for treating Sunday as a Christian Sabbath,
and neither did Calvin, by the way. Nowhere did Calvin ever
refer to the Lord's Day as the Sabbath or suggest that we should
regard it as a Sabbath. That was an innovation by later
reformers and the Puritans especially wrote it into most of their creeds,
but it was not the view of the early reformers. I love the Puritans
and I rarely disagree with them, but they did sometimes have legalistic
tendencies and their tendency to multiply Sabbath restrictions
was one of their legalistic tendencies. Still, I think there is an important
moral aspect in the fourth commandment that warrants setting aside one
day each week for ceasing from our labors and worshiping the
Lord. And we accomplish this when we devote the Lord's day
to Him. I just wouldn't call it the Sabbath. There may also
be a moral principle in the six-to-one work-to-rest ratio. I think God
made us so that we function best with one day off every week.
And conversely, one of the moral principles underlying the fourth
commandment is the principle of work. Think of it backwards.
The commandment itself is about a day of rest, but it includes
this imperative, six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.
which is to say Christians ought to work hard when it's time to
work and rest in the Lord when it's time to rest. That's the
moral principle. Work hard when it's time to work,
rest in the Lord when it's time to rest. And so the reason for
the Sabbath is a moral principle. One full day a week devoted to
the Lord. The ratio is a moral principle.
One day of rest for every six days of work. And above all,
I believe the rest commanded by the Sabbath rule is a moral
principle. Pay attention here because I
think this is the most important principle of all. Here is the
rest principle that lies at the heart of the Sabbath law. It
is in worship that we are to find our primary refreshment. That's what this law teaches
us. Where do you go? What do you do when you seek
refreshment for your soul? Do you turn, first of all, to
television and worldly entertainments? Do you seek your principal rest
in recreational activities and spiritually empty amusements?
Because those things have the rightful place. I wouldn't outlaw
them, but it's certainly not the prominent place our culture
gives to them. If you can do those things as
unto the Lord and glorify God in them, then that's fine. I'm
not suggesting you should never watch football or even play football
on the Lord's Day, but that's not the first thing we should
turn to when our soul needs refreshment from the toil and labor of the
work week. The Lord should have that priority.
And not just on Sunday, but every day of our lives, we need the
spiritual refreshment of communion and fellowship with God more
than we need the carnal refreshment of exercise and recreation. We
need the rest of worship and fellowship with the people of
God more than we need the mindless entertainments this world has
to offer. You know, it always troubles me when somebody tells
me he skipped church because he just felt he needed some time
off. Time off from what? If you don't see worship and
devotion to the Lord as more restful than any form of worldly
entertainment, then you have the wrong idea of worship. If
you're not coming to church with the idea of refreshing your soul
and invigorating your spirit, then you're coming with the wrong
thing in mind. Psalm 37 verse 7 famously says, rest in the
Lord. In Matthew 11, Jesus said, "'Come unto me, all who are weary
and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls.'" That's the best rest of all.
That's the rest the Sabbath points to. That's where the moral principle
of this commandment lies. It's all about the gospel. And
I would urge you to seek your ultimate rest right there in
the finished work of Christ because it's a complete rest from all
of our labors. That's the true Sabbath. Let's
pray. Lord, it is to the praise of
Your glory that the whole work of redemption is complete and
Christ is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high until
His enemies are made His footstool. You've invited us to enter into
that rest. And I pray, Lord, that none of
us, no one in this room would fall short because of unbelief
or disobedience. Give us grace to enter fully
into the rest of redemption and may our whole lives be one long
Sabbath celebration. In the name of Christ, who is
our Sabbath, we pray. Amen. You have been listening
to Pastor and Teacher Phil Johnson. For more information about the
ministry of the Grace Life Pulpit, visit at www.thegracelifepulpit.com. Copyright by Phil Johnson, All
Rights Reserved.
The Fourth Commandment
Series The Ten Commandments
| Sermon ID | 112214959168 |
| Duration | 55:10 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Exodus 20:8-11 |
| Language | English |
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