If you had to pick one of the Ten Commandments as being the most difficult to adhere to, which would it be? Personally, I would pick the fourth. Not because the other com­mandments are so easy to live by. When it comes right down to their essence, we are consistently breaking each and every one of them all the time. When it comes to actually fulfill­ing what they require of us, each of the commands is equally tough. No, what makes the fourth commandment harder to adhere to is that it is per­haps the most difficult to understand and apply to our contemporary situa­tion.

Don’t Desecrate the Sabbath⤒🔗

The fourth commandment as ex­pressed in Exodus 20 states:

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

On the surface, this is not too hard to understand. Don’t work on the sev­enth day of the week. You and every­one in your household are to keep the Sabbath day holy by resting. When you work on the Sabbath, you dese­crate it.

And desecrating it is no small matter. Over and over again, the Old Testa­ment shows that God took this issue very seriously. To quote just one relevant passage, we read in Exodus 31:13-15 — “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 is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.” Twice in a row it’s made clear: desecrate the Sabbath, and you must die. Obvi­ously, desecrating the Sabbath is not something to be taken lightly.

A Change to the Sabbath←⤒🔗

But what are we to make of this in our day and age? How do we go about keeping the Sabbath day holy in our time?

Well, we first have to recognize that the Sabbath is not the same for us as it was for the Old Testament people of God. There have been changes.

Of course, the most obvious change has to do with the fact that we no longer view the last day of the week as the day to rest from work. Instead, it’s the first day of the week, Sunday. And why is this? Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week. Right from the beginning of the church, the first day of the week became known as the Lord’s Day, in memory of the resur­rection of Christ. So, the last day of the week is no longer the day of rest, but rather the first day is.

The Sabbath and Salvation←⤒🔗

But now, wait a second. Why should Christ’s resurrection have anything to do with a day of rest? Or to put it another way: why does the Lord’s Day have to do with the Sabbath? In order to understand this, we need first of all to understand what Sab­bath is all about.

That’s easy, right? Sabbath is about not working. Well, yes and no. The thing is, that’s not really the heart of the matter. We have to realize that there is a more basic underlying principle behind the Sab­bath.

Ultimately, the Sabbath is really about salvation. When Jesus Christ returns, His chosen people are go­ing to experience the perfect Sab­bath rest forever. That is what eter­nal life really is: an everlasting Sab­bath rest. God’s people will be able to rest from fighting against sin, they will finally experience perfect peace, perfect salvation.

In the Old Testament, Jesus Christ had not yet come and won salvation on the cross. So the Old Testament Sabbath looked forward; it was an anticipation of the time when salva­tion would be accomplished in Je­sus Christ.

This was especially made clear in Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments. There, in laying out the fourth commandment, the people were instructed: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sab­bath day.”

The salvation from slavery in Egypt foreshadowed the salvation from slavery to sin that Christ has won for us. So Christ was the fulfilment of the Sabbath. With his perfect righteousness, He made it possible for His followers to experience the ultimate Sabbath rest. He accom­plished salvation. That is why the Sabbath as the seventh day of the week no longer needed to be ob­served.

Mind you, while Christ did fulfil the Old Testament Sabbath, that was not the end of the matter. Because there’s more that needs to be done. Christ still has to come back. Sal­vation will be completely accomplished when He returns again and His people will all join with Him in eternal life. That is when God’s peo­ple will perfectly experience the ulti­mate Sabbath.

And so, just as the Old Testament people of Israel were called to rest on the Sabbath day in anticipation of the Sabbath rest which was to come in the person of Jesus Christ, so too the New Testament people of God are called upon to rest in anticipation of the Sabbath rest which yet awaits them at the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Celebrate Sabbath Rest by Going to Church←⤒🔗

So how do we go about celebrating this Sabbath rest? One of the most crucial ways is by worshipping the Lord on the Lord’s Day. In other words: by going to church on Sunday. The first day of the week has been set aside for us as a fes­tive day of rest, so we gather together to wor­ship God for the re­demption he has ac­complished in Jesus Christ.

This tells us a whole lot about why Chris­tians go to church. They do it to celebrate salvation. Going to church is not first of all about getting a weekly spiritual booster. It’s not about being bom­barded with spiritual entertainment. It’s about celebrating the fact that Jesus Christ has won salva­tion for His people. It’s about experi­encing a taste of the Sabbath rest that awaits God’s people.

What will that eternal Sabbath rest be like? Pure focussing on God and worshipping Him, praising Him. And so, church worship in this life too must focus first of all on God.

It can be easy to forget what the Sab­bath is really all about. Historically, many Christians have looked at it sim­ply as a matter of not working. They were inclined to concentrate simply on what sort of activities they were or were not allowed to do on Sunday. You can do this on Sunday, but you can’t do that. This can so easily lead to cold legalism.

Mind you, today we have the opposite problem. Many treat Sunday as just another day, even Christians. But the Lord’s Day is to be set aside as a fes­tive day of rest on which to celebrate the ultimate Sabbath rest. And so, this day should be different.

It must be set aside for worship. It must be set aside to rest, in anticipa­tion of the perfect rest that awaits God’s people. And so, we should avoid unnecessary work, and we shouldn’t engage in activities that will take us or others away from worship. We shouldn’t do things like go to restaurants or shopping in stores if we can help it, because we know that by doing so we are encouraging these places to stay open on Sunday, and thus we are partly responsible for making it more difficult for the people working in the restaurant or store to go to church.

And of course, we will certainly make every effort ourselves to be there in church on Sunday. We will ensure that our activities on Sunday help us go to worship rather than keep us away. For instance, playing on an organized sports team on Sunday, when there is plenty of time for that sort of thing during the rest of the week, should be avoided. It will only distract you from putting your focus where it should be.

But at the same time, we should avoid a hard and fast legalism that fails to recognize that the most important thing about observing the Sabbath is to worship the Lord God for the Sab­bath rest He has accomplished in and through the Lord of the Sabbath, Je­sus Christ. Remember, this same Jesus Christ adamantly fought against Sabbath legalism in His day, because so many folks in His day failed to understand the true meaning behind the Sabbath.

Celebrate Salvation with God’s People←⤒🔗

Let me conclude by emphasizing again how important it is to cele­brate the Sabbath by going to church. Some people like to say that they get more out of listening to the radio or out of TV preachers than they get out of going to church. Is that your first concern: what you get out of it? If it is, then you don’t really understand what worship is all about.

The church is a body, a body that is called to worship God together. True, the church’s worship together in this life will be im­perfect. It will be led by imperfect men, and engaged in by imper­fect people. But nev­ertheless, it is in church that Christians primarily show that they are the body of Christ. To reject church worship is to reject the means that God has given His people for celebrating their salvation. To not go to church when you can is to dese­crate the Sabbath. And remember this: God does not take desecrating the Sab­bath lightly.

Is it your desire to celebrate your salvation by going to church? If you think you can be a Christian without going to church, then you really don’t understand what it means to be a Christian.

Celebrating together the Sabbath rest we have in Christ is our joy and privilege. Let’s take advantage of this whenever we can.