Exodus 20:8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day by
keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a
Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son
or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within
your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day
and made it holy. (NIV)
The Sabbath was a special day of
rest.
It was a day of rest for man and beast. We are created such that we need rest and relaxation. This is as important as work. God's will is that there will be a period of rest set aside in our life when we are not to work, but we are to spend that time resting and worshipping.
Deuteronomy 5:14 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the
LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor
your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the
alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do.
(NIV)
The Sabbath was a special time to
memorialize God's deliverance.
The Sabbath involved remembering how
God brought the Hebrews out of Egypt. It was a time devoted to meditating upon what God
had done and was doing for them.
Deuteronomy 5:15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt
and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm. Therefore the LORD
your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (NIV)
The Sabbath was a special time to
memorialize God's creative work.
Exodus 20:11 For in six days the LORD made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (NIV)
The Sabbath was a special sign to
Israel.
Exodus 31:16-17 The Israelites are to observe the
Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a
sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and
the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.'" (NIV)
The fourth command also included the
command to work.
When God created man to till the Garden
of Eden, it was his way of saying that he created us for a purpose--He created us for
work. This part of this command is often overlooked. God is at work in our world working
out his purposes. He expects us to accept our purpose in life so that we might be called
according to his purpose.
Deuteronomy 5:13-15 Six days you shall labor and do all
your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do
any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor
your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your
manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and
that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (NIV)
Exodus 35:3 Do not light a fire in any of your
dwellings on the Sabbath day." (NIV)
Num 15:30-36 "'But anyone who sins defiantly,
whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the LORD, and that person must be cut off from
his people. Because he has despised the LORD's word and broken his commands, that person
must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.'" While the Israelites were in the
desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering
wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody,
because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses,
"The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp." So the
assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.
(NIV)
Observance of the Sabbath was slow in
coming. Although, by the time Jesus was born the Sabbath was kept with a vengeance.
Exodus 16:22-30 On the sixth day, they gathered twice
as much-- two omers for each person-- and the leaders of the community came and reported
this to Moses. He said to them, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be
a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you
want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.'" So they saved it
until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. "Eat it
today," Moses said, "because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. You will not find
any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the
Sabbath, there will not be any." Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the
seventh day to gather it, but they found none. Then the LORD said to Moses, "How long
will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Bear in mind that the LORD has
given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days.
Everyone is to stay where he is on the seventh day; no one is to go out." So the
people rested on the seventh day. (NIV)
Nehemiah 13:14-22 Remember me for this, O my God, and do
not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services. In
those days I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain
and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads.
And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them
against selling food on that day. Men from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in
fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the
people of Judah. I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, "What is this wicked
thing you are doing-- desecrating the Sabbath day? Didn't your forefathers do the same
things, so that our God brought all this calamity upon us and upon this city? Now you are
stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath." When evening
shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut
and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men at the gates so
that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day. Once or twice the merchants and
sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside Jerusalem. But I warned them and
said, "Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will lay hands
on you." From that time on they no longer came on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the
Levites to purify themselves and go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day
holy. Remember me for this also, O my God, and show mercy to me according to your great
love. (NIV)
The Law permitted necessary work on the
Sabbath.
Matthew 12:1-14 At that time Jesus went through the
grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of
grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your
disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath." He answered, "Haven't you
read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God,
and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread-- which was not lawful for them to do,
but only for the priests. Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests
in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the
temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,'
you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the
Sabbath." Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a
shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is
it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep
and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How
much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the
Sabbath." Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he stretched
it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went
out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. (NIV)
God doesn't make arbitrary laws that
disregard human need. Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath. (Mark 2:27 NIV) By the time Jesus was born, Jewish legalism had turned the
Sabbath into a harsh and hateful ritual. They made it a burden and its observance an
object of ridicule. God intended the Sabbath as a blessing. It wasn't designed to totally
disregard the needs of man or beast.
Christians worship on the first day of
the week and not the Sabbath.
Exodus 34:21-22 "Six days you shall labor, but on
the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
"Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the
Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. (NIV)
The Feast of Weeks we read about here
is the feast of Pentecost that we read of in Acts 2:1. The feast was celebrated at the end
of our month of May. It was when the harvesting of the wheat was celebrated.
The word Pentecost means fiftieth; it
was celebrated fifty days after the Passover. It was the equivalent of seven weeks after
the Passover, which places Pentecost on what we know as Sunday. Sunday is the day that
Christ was raised from the dead and it was the day Christians were first added to the
church (Acts 2:47).
Christ rose from the dead on the first
day of the week and he met with his disciples after his resurrection on the first day of
the week.
John 20:19 On the evening of that first day of the
week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus
came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" (NIV)
John 20:26 A week later his disciples were in the
house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood
among them and said, "Peace be with you!" (NIV)
Revelation 1:10 On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit,
and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, (NIV)
After Pentecost Christians met
regularly on the first day of the week.
Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week we came
together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the
next day, kept on talking until midnight. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 16:1-3 Now about the collection for God's
people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first day of every week, each
one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so
that when I come no collections will have to be made. Then, when I arrive, I will give
letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem.
(NIV)
As we consider all these verses, we
realize that Christians in Jerusalem, Troas, Galatia and the city of Corinth were coming
together upon the first day of the weak to break bread -- that is to observe the Lord's
Supper.
There is no indication that the laws of
the Sabbath governed the first day of the week. Our behavior on Sunday is not be governed
by Old Testament Law. However, Sunday is a day of public worship. It is a day when
Christians come together in fellowship and worship.
Romans 10:4 Christ is the end of the law so that
there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (NIV)
We do find the apostles seeking the
Jews out in their synagogues for the purpose of teaching them about Christ. However, we
find them worshipping with Christians on the first day of the week.
Acts 13:14-15 From Perga they went on to Pisidian
Antioch. On the Sabbath they entered the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from
the Law and the Prophets, the synagogue rulers sent word to them, saying, "Brothers,
if you have a message of encouragement for the people, please speak." (NIV)
Acts 13:42-44 As Paul and Barnabas were leaving the
synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next
Sabbath. When the congregation was dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to
Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue in the
grace of God. On the next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the
Lord. (NIV)
Acts 16:13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city
gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to
speak to the women who had gathered there. (NIV)
Acts 17:1-3 When they had passed through Amphipolis
and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As his
custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them
from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from
the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ," he said. (NIV)
Acts 18:4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the
synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. (NIV)
The Sabbath commandment has no New
Testament equivalent, but the underlying principle for the Sabbath is timeless.
This timeless principle is a real part
of worshipping God on the first day of the week. It is an essential prerequisite to
putting God first.
Tennessee Titans center Kevin Long, who
played under Coach Bobby Bowden at Florida State University, said his college coach
inspired the team with parables. Long recounted a favorite story:
[Bowden] was playing college baseball,
and he had never hit a home run. Finally he hit one down the right-field line, into the
corner. He rounds first and looks to the third base coach. He turned at second, was
halfway to third and the coach was still waving him on. He got to home; he hit the plate.
He had his first home run, he was so excited and everybody was slapping him five. Then the
pitcher took the ball, threw to the first baseman, and the umpire called him out.
[Coach Bowden] said, "If you don't
take care of first base, it doesn't matter what you do."
The same is true in life, "If you
don't honor the Lord first, it doesn't matter what else you do."
The first four commandments require
putting God first as we develop a correct view of God so that we may honor God by ordering
our life to fit his purposes. The first four commandments are given to help us focus our
lives on God. The fourth commandment outlines the priority of work and worship in a
focused life.
I realize that the same laws do not
govern the Jewish Sabbath and Sunday. However, there are relevant principles involved in
both. There must be a time for work; and there must be a time for worship. "Six
days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD
your God."
Our worship and work build a sense of
self-esteem.
God created us to work. "Six days
you shall labor and do all your work . . ."Knowing that we are created for a purpose
builds our self-esteem. You cannot build a life without knowing how worship and work go
hand in hand. Worship allows time for reflection on where we need to go, but only work
will take us to where God wants us to be.
Any system that tries to help the poor
without involving them in meaningful work is a system that robs those people of
self-esteem. The Old Testament made provisions for the poor but they had to work. The rich
landowners would leave the corners of their fields unharvested. The corners of the fields
were left for the poor, but the poor had to harvest the corners of the fields themselves.
They had to work to get what was provided.
The work was provided as a means to
sustain life without robbing them of self-esteem. The rich and poor were enabled to see
their lives from a divine perspective as God directed each to a meaningful way of life.
The poor could reflect on God’s concern for them as they realized that it was God
providing the corners of the fields to be harvested. The rich could take delight in their
work as they respected God’s provision to help the poor.
However, we must not imagine that work
for God in the world is a substitute for direct fellowship with him in praise and prayer
and devotion.
There are too many workaholics worn
out by the demands of their lifestyles.
They worship their lifestyles, which
have left them empty and burnt out. Their lifestyles have left no time for the spiritual.
Many people engage in activity for activity's sake and use business as a device to avoid
facing the reality of God's presence in their lives. Just as alcohol can deaden the senses
to personal relations, family obligations, and community responsibilities, so constant
work can be a narcotic to deaden our need to worship God.
Have you been pouring your energy into
work and giving your family the "leftovers?" Have you been spending more time on
urgent tasks than on important ones? Are you serving mostly in areas outside your
giftedness? Are you wrapped up in future tasks and unable to concentrate on present ones?
Affirmative responses to these questions indicate a need to examine motive, priorities,
and desires.
A first-grader became curious because
her father brought home a briefcase full of papers every evening. Her mother explained,
"Daddy has so much to do that he can't finish it all at the office. That's why he has
to bring work home at night." "Well, then," asked the child innocently,
"why don't they put him in a slower group?"
Solomon discovered that trying to find
meaning and satisfaction by being a creative, productive person was vain. For a while this
made him happy. But then as he thought about the work he had done with his hands he
realized it was full of emptiness. It was like a big bubble that had suddenly broken, and
his heart was broken with it. Solomon realized that work is vain without God.
We may convince ourselves that work
is the most important thing in our lives.
There is a concept about time that may
diminish our modern day worship. We may think the things we spend the most time doing, are
the most important things in our lives. Many of you spend most of your time at work; but
is work the most important thing in your life? Some spend their weekends getting
everything done around the house so they can go back to work on Monday. Many fill their
weekends with weekend trips more exhausting than a week of work. They may feel that this
is the most important use of their weekends.
There is no way that work can be
meaningful without God.
To truly worship God we must understand
how work and worship compliment each other. There is a time for work and there is a time
for worshipping God. And, there is no way that worship can be valid if it fails to express
itself in work.
Scripture doesn't call us to be more
motivated, or even more productive; it calls us to be fruitful. The fruit-bearing tree is
not frantic and frenzied, nor does it wander from its source or become distracted. It
abides, remains. It is our spiritual fellowship with God that allows us to develop a
spiritual perspective that we might abide in God.
Abiding in God is not passive, it takes
effort, but it alone gives nourishment and renewal. It involves activities of body and
mind that allows the soul to receive life from God.
Worship Empowers Our Lives
Worship energizes us as it instills
the idea that our work has an eternal perspective.
The purpose of the fourth commandment
was to keep those who worked all week from losing their spiritual perspective. We are
spiritual beings. Worship gives us a perspective of life that allows us to experience the
satisfaction that God designed us to experience. It is at worship that we discover God’s
purpose for our lives that makes what we do through the week meaningful.
Observance of the Passover served as a
sign to Israel. God worked six days and rested on the seventh day, Israel’s adherence
to six days of work and a day of rest was to serve as a sign from God. It was God that
provided the rest. However, they were also reminded that it was God that provided work to
sustain their lives. The mere fact that God has provided us with a job to sustain our
families allows us to work as if we were working for God.
1 Peter 2:17-19 Show proper respect to everyone: Love
the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. Slaves, submit yourselves to your
masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to
those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust
suffering because he is conscious of God. (NIV)
1 Timothy 6:1 All who are under the yoke of slavery
should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching
may not be slandered. (NIV)
Worship gives us rest and renews our
strength.
Without proper worship our work will be
done without the power of God. Relying upon our limited resources depletes us. Worship is
for the purpose of energizing our bodies by energizing our spirits. But there is no way we
can truly energize our spirits without God.
Worship is a means to find rest as we
labor to fulfill God’s purpose for our lives. "There remains, then, a
Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his
own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that
rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience."
(Hebrews 4:9-11 NIV) When we worship God understanding our lives from an eternal
perspective we enter into God’s rest. Our burdens are made lighter as we yoke
ourselves up with Jesus Christ.
Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to me, all you who are weary
and burdened, 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. For my yoke is easy and
my burden is light." (NIV)
Worship was made for man not God.
Jesus states this principle when he
said that the Sabbath was made for man and man was not made for the Sabbath. Sure, God is
the object of our worship. God desires our worship, but the purpose of worship is to keep
our lives in perspective. Worship allows us to see beyond the materialistic world. The
psalmist writes, "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10) What we
do in life must be done from a spiritual perspective.
Worship provides time for reflection,
which is an important part of life.
Have you ever done something terrible
and later thought about how that just a moment of reflection would have prevented the
error? At times I have worked real hard trying to make a sermon work. I have gotten
frustrated and forced myself to lay it down for the day. When I come back to it the next
morning it begins to flow. Sometimes you can take a 15-minute break to reflect on what you
are doing and during those few minutes of reflection you gain a totally new perspective of
what you are doing. (There have been times when I reflected on sermons as I was delivering
them in worship and decided that I should have thrown them away and started over.) It was
God’s reflection in Eden that caused him to say, "It is not good that man be
alone." It was then that he created woman.
Worship is a time of reflection. It
gives us a chance to think about what we are doing: what’s good and what’s bad;
what went wrong and what went right; what we want to avoid and what we want to repeat. It
gives a chance to think about what we need to accomplish from an eternal perspective.
Worship gives us a chance to think about where we want to go and what we want to become.
It is a time to give serious consideration to your life.
Lee Iacocca credited his success as a
businessman to his commitment to this principle. As a vice-president of Ford, and as CEO
of Chrysler, he put in more than his share of long days. But, Lee Iacocca was committed to
staying home every weekend, being with his family, going to church, and spending time in
reflection.
Worship allows us to reflect upon God’s
ongoing deliverance from sin.
The Jews were to keep the Sabbath
remembering they were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord had brought them out of bondage
with an outstretched arm. (Deuteronomy 5:15) It was a reminder that what God had done was
a clue to what he would continue to do for them. It is the Lord’s Supper that takes
up back to Egypt. The Lord’s Supper was instituted at the last Passover meal eaten by
our Lord. It was there that Christ incorporated two meals into one. The Jews see what God
did in Egypt, but we see that the Passover foreshadowed Christ’s death for our sins.
The Lord’s Supper reminds us that God continues to be with us.
God’s deliverance continues on our
behalf on a daily basis. There is no way we can understand our deliverance from sin
without understanding how God is continually working in our lives to deliver us from evil.
Philippians 1:4-7 In all my prayers for all of you, I
always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until
now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to
completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of
you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming
the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. (NIV)
Public worship energizes the Christian
community.
The Sabbath worship was the heart and
core of the Jewish community. Worship brought them together as a community. Both personal
enrichment and church enrichment are important. 1 Corinthians 13 is sandwiched between 12
and 14. As love controls the expression of spirituality in church a community is built.
Through personal worship the church is built. Paul writes, "When you come together,
everyone has a hymn; or a word or instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an
interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church (1
Corinthians 14:26).
Hebrews 10:24-26 And let us consider how we may spur one
another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in
the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-- and all the more as you see the Day
approaching. If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of
the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, (NIV)
Failing to worship with faithful
Christians caused the Hebrews to lose their perspective. They were forsaking Christ and
were reverting to Judaism. The Hebrews were forsaking God because of the hardships imposed
upon them by the world. They were giving up their faith. Proof of that was that they
stopped attending the assemblies of the saints. They weren’t just missing an
occasional assembly; they were forsaking God. However, missing church can result in
forsaking God.
A few years ago, the world watched as
three gray whales, icebound off Point Barrow, Alaska, floated battered and bloody, gasping
for breath at a hole in the ice. Their only hope: somehow to be transported five miles
past the ice pack to open sea. Rescuers began cutting a string of breathing holes about
twenty yards apart in the six-inch-thick ice.
For eight days they coaxed the whales
from one hole to the next, mile after mile. Along the way, one of the trio vanished and
was presumed dead. But finally, with the help of Russian icebreakers, the whales Putu and
Siku swam to freedom.
In a way, worship is a string of
breathing holes the Lord provides his people. Battered and bruised in a world frozen over
with greed, selfishness, and hatred, we rise for air in church, a place to breathe again,
to be loved and encouraged, until that day when the Lord forever shatters the ice cap.
(Craig Brian Larson, Arlington Heights, Illinois. Leadership)
If we fail to worship God on Sunday we
will not be energized to face the difficulties ahead. True worship provides nourishment
for the mind, body and soul. The nourishment we receive is provided when we surrender our
wills to God’s purpose and it results in strong desire to seek God’s purpose for
our lives.
When we submit ourselves to the nature
of God, we discover a renewal in our lives that no other source can provide.
Conclusion:
When God finished creating Adam it was
on the evening of the sixth day of creation. The first full day of Adam’s life was
the seventh day of creation. It was the day that God stopped to rest and reflect upon his
creation. Undoubtedly it was a day that Adam spent considerable time reflecting upon God’s
purpose for his life in the scheme of creation.
This is what the first day of each week
should be to each of us. It should give us a new perspective of where we fit into God’s
purposes. When we understand how we fit in we will be motivated to live up to God’s
purpose.
Last modified:
April 18, 2006