Six days you shall labor and do all your work, Sermons I. THE GROUND OF THIS COMMANDMENT. God, who had spoken to Israel as to those whom he had brought out of the house of bondage, and who had bidden Moses speak of him to the captives as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, now takes the thoughts of his people as far back as it is possible for them to go. They are directed to think of the great work of him who in six days made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is. "All the earth is mine," he had bidden Moses say in Exodus 19:5; and of course the Israelites, whatever their other difficulties in the way of understanding God's commandments, had no question such as modern science has thrown down for us to ponder with respect to these alleged days of creation. Though indeed, as is now generally agreed, no difficulty is found in this question when we approach it rightly. God's thoughts are not as our thoughts; his ways are not as our ways; and so we may add his days are not as our days, seeing that with him one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The great matter to be borne in mind by ancient Israelites - and for every Christian the consideration remains whether he also should not very strictly bear it in mind - was that by this seventh day of rest after creation, God gave the great rule for the consecration of his people's time. It is to a certain extent correct to say that this precept is a positive one; but it is not therefore arbitrary. God may have seen well to give the precept in such emphatic way, just because the need of setting apart one day out of seven is in some way fixed in the nature of things. It is a question worth while asking, why creation is set before us as having occupied six successive periods. Why not some other number? May not the periods of creation have been so arranged with a view to the use of them as a ground for this commandment? God sanctified the seventh day because it was the best day - best for human welfare and Divine glory; and it seems to have been at Sinai that he first distinctly made this sanctification. Israel knew already that God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made (Genesis 2:2); now it is known - at least it is known in part - why this resting was not till the seventh day, and also not later. May it not be that the expression "God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made," (Genesis 2:3) was inserted by Moses after the transactions at Sinai, as a suitable addition to the statement that God rested from his work? If this verse was not inserted in the Genesis record until after the instructions from Sinai, then we have some sort of explanation why no clear, indubitable sign of the Sabbath is found in patriarchal times. II. THE MODE OF KEEPING THIS COMMANDMENT. Let us distinctly bear in mind the object to be attained. The seventh day was to be sanctified, and in order that it might be properly sanctified, a scrupulous rest from ordinary work was necessary. The rest was but the means to the sanctification; and the sanctification is the thing to be kept prominently in view. The mere resting from work on the seventh day did an Israelite no good, unless he remembered what the rest implied. The commandment began, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," not "Remember to do no work therein." Certainly it was only too easy to forget the requirement of rest; but it was easier still to forget the requirement of holiness. A man might rest without hallowing, and so it had to be enjoined on him to shape his rest that hallowing might be secured by it. Certain of the animals required for holy purposes by God, were to be such as had not borne the yoke. The animal could not be given to God and at the same time used for self. And in like manner the Sabbath could not both be given to God and used for self. Therefore the Israelite is charged to do no work and let no work be done, even by the humblest of his slaves. He himself must get no temporal benefit from this day. God has so arranged, in his loving providence and holy requirements, that six days' work shall supply seven days' need. This lesson the manna distinctly teaches if it teaches anything at all. And now that the Jewish Sabbath has gone, the Christian has to ask himself how far the mode of Sabbath-keeping in Israel furnishes any guide for him in his use of the Lord's day. He is a miserable Christian who begins to plead that there is no distinct and express commandment in the New Testament for the keeping of a sacred day of rest. To say that the Sabbath is gone with the outward ordinances of Judaism is only making an excuse for self-indulgence. True, the sacrifices of the law are done away with, but only that imperfections may give place to perfections. In the very doing away, a solemn claim is made that the Christian should present his body as a living sacrifice; and one cannot be a living sacrifice without feeling that all one's time is for doing God's will. When in the inscrutable arrangements of Providence, we find that one day in seven has actually come to be so largely a day of cessation from toil, surely the part of Christian wisdom is to make the very best of the opportunity. There is, and there always will be, room for much improvement as to the mode of keeping the day of rest; but in proportion as we become filled with the spirit of Christ and the desire for perfection, in that proportion we shall be delivered from the inclination to make Sunday a day for self, and led forward in resolution, diligence and love, to make it a day for God. The more we can make our time holy time, the more we shall make ourselves holy persons. If in God's mercy we find Sunday a day of larger opportunities, let it be according to our individual opportunity, a day of larger achievements. Each one of us should say, "I am bound to discover how God would have me use this day." My neighbour Christian may feel constrained to use it in a way that, if I were to imitate him, might not promote my own spiritual advantage, or the glory of God. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, only let him take care that he has a persuasion and acts conscientiously and lovingly up to it. III. THE PECULIAR EMPHASIS LAID ON THIS COMMANDMENT. "Remember." Not of course that this commandment is more important than the rest. He who breaks one breaks all, for each is a member of the whole as of a living unity. But there must have been a special reason in the mind of God for calling attention to this commandment. We are told to remember what we are likely to forget. Also, certain things we are exhorted to remember, because if we only remember them we shall come in due course to other things which cannot be so constantly in the mind, and which indeed the mind may not yet be able properly to grasp. He who remembers the right way will assuredly come to the right end, even though he may not be constantly thinking of it. We may be sure that keeping the Sabbath day really holy, had a very salutary effect towards keeping all the rest of the commandments. It gave time for reflection on all those affairs of daily life in which there are so many opportunities and temptations to set at nought the righteous claims both of God and of our fellow-men. And so the Christian may ever say to himself, "Soul, remember the day of rest which God has so graciously secured to thee." God, though he has condescendingly done so much to come near to needy men with his supplies of grace, gets soon hidden by the cloud and dust of this world's business. It is only too easy to forget the spirit of these commandments, and be unfair, unkind, malicious and revengeful toward our fellow-men in the jostlings and rivalries of life. Remember then. Let us but attend to this and the rest of God's remembers, and we may be sure they will do a great deal to neutralise that forgetting which is inevitably incident to the infirmities of fallen human nature. - Y.
Remember the Sabbath Day. I. The first word of the Fourth Commandment reminds us that THE SABBATH DAY WAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED among the Israelites when the law was delivered on Sinai. That law created nothing. It preserved and enforced what God had already taught His people to observe by another method than that of formal decrees.II. IN THIS COMMANDMENT WORK IS ENJOINED, JUST AS MUCH AS REST IS ENJOINED. Man's sin has turned work into a curse. God has redeemed and restored work into a blessing by uniting it again to the rest with which, in His Divine original order, it was associated. III. GOD RESTS; THEREFORE HE WOULD HAVE MAN REST. God works; therefore He would have man work. Man cannot rest truly unless he remembers his relation to God, who rests. IV. It is not wonderful that the Jews after the Captivity, as they had been schooled by a long DISCIPLINE INTO AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE MEANING OF THE SECOND COMMANDMENT, SO HAD LEARNT ALSO TO APPRECIATE IN SOME DEGREE THE WORTH OF THE FOURTH. Nehemiah speaks frequently and with great emphasis of the Sabbath as a gift of God which their fathers had lightly esteemed, and which the new generation was bound most fondly to cherish. His words and acts were abused by the Jews who lived between his age and that of our Lord's nativity, and when Christ came, the Sabbath itself, all its human graciousness, all its Divine reasonableness, were becoming each day more obscured. V. JESUS, AS THE MEDIATOR, DECLARED HIMSELF TO BE THE LORD OF THE SABBATH, AND PROVED HIMSELF TO BE SO BY TURNING WHAT THE JEWS MADE A CURSE INTO A BLESSING. He asserted the true glory of the Sabbath Day in asserting the mystery of His own relation to God and to His creatures. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) 2. The particular day which was to be kept as a Sabbath was authoritatively determined. 3. The purpose of the day was expressly defined. 4. The manner in which the Sabbath was to be kept was very distinctly stated. 5. The sanction which defended the law of the Sabbath was most severe. The only similarity between the Lord's Day and the Jewish Sabbath is that both recur once a week, and that both are religious festivals. To the idea of the Jewish Sabbath rest was essential, worship was an accident; to the idea of the Christian Sunday worship is essential, rest an accident. The observance of Sunday as a religious institution is a question of privilege, not of duty. (R. W. Dale, D. D.) 1. A day of rest from physical toil. 2. A day of holy employment. "Keep it holy." (See also Deuteronomy 5:12, Isaiah 58:13, 14). It is to be a day of rest, but not a day of idleness. II. WHAT IS THE PRACTICAL RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE SABBATH? 1. It is a perpetual reminder of spiritual things. 2. It is a great conservative of good, and a powerful barrier against evil. III. THE DUTY AND PRIVILEGE OF KEEPING THIS DAY. 1. It is a duty we owe to God. He made the Sabbath. He commands us to keep it. 2. It is a duty we owe to ourselves. As a day of rest it is essential to the highest condition of physical health. As a day of holy meditation and worship, it is essential to our spiritual education and growth. 3. It is a duty we owe to our fellow-men. You cannot violate the Sabbath without influencing your brother to do the same. (George Brooks.) This Commandment holds a remarkable position in the Decalogue. It lies between those which touch our duty to God and those which touch our duty to man. It belongs to both branches of the Decalogue. Its position tells us that a breach of the Sabbath is a direct insult to God, and is also a direct injury to man, weakening the power of a day which is eminently a blessing to the human race. This remarkable position of the Sabbath Commandment is proof incontrovertible of its binding character for all men in all time. There are two expressions in the command itself which testify to this universality of application.1. "Remember the Sabbath Day." It is no new institution which you are now to learn about for the first, but it is an old observance, not Israelitish, but human, Noachic, and Adamic, which you, God's Israel, are to remember, that you may sustain it in its purity, just as you are to sustain a true and spiritual worship as against idolatry. 2. The other expression which proves the universality of its application (in addition to its very position in the Decalogue) is the reason given for the Divine order — because in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath Day and hallowed it." The reason began at the creation, and therefore the observance began at the creation. I. WHAT IS THE IDEA OF THE SABBATH? It had its origin in God's resting on that day. II. WHAT IS ITS PROPER OBSERVANCE? God has given it His own holy name — "The Sabbath of the Lord thy God," and the Holy Spirit calls it "the Lord's Day," in the New Testament. This fact shows us that its rightful observance must have regard to our right relation to God. The soul must be turned Godward. (H. Crosby, D.D.) Let us always make the Sabbath a cheerful day, as Phariseeism does not, and let us always make it a holy day, as worldliness does not.(H. Crosby, D. D.) There is no one thing that kills, exhausts, or sends to the lunatic asylum more of the active and strong men of this country (United States) than the breach of the Fourth Commandment.1. "He kept no Sunday." You may safely write that epitaph over hundreds of graves that will be dug this year for ambitious, prosperous, influential men, cut off in the midst of the race of life. There are suicides in scores where no apparent cause exists for what the newspapers call "the rash act." The man was doing well; his business was prospering; his family relations were pleasant and affectionate. 2. No law of God is arbitrary. It is for man's good that God has established all His statutes. Clear as that truth is about them all, it is especially clear about the day of rest. 3. As a matter of fact, there is no rest, no relaxation, so utter as that offered by a well-kept Sunday. There is perfect rest and quiet for the body, and, to the worker with his hands, that may be the main point. But there is far more than this. The mind is called away from all its cares and all its common vulgar interests. The man is called to rise out of the changing into the unchanging, out of the temporary into the eternal, out of the low into the infinitely lofty, out of the strife into the deep calm of the eternal peace. 4. It is the neglect of this provision of God that is the root-cause of the deaths and suicides from overwork, which shock us almost daily in the current items of news. 5. We are not placing this thing on the highest motive, because the highest motive is powerless to touch the transgressors. We only say the transgression does not pay. And by working on Sunday we do not mean only the formal going to the office or counting-room. We mean the carrying a man's business about with him on that day; the taking it home and poisoning the fireside with it; the taking it to church and poisoning the church with it. (Bp. H. M. Thompson.) I. LET US FIRST TAKE THE NEGATIVE VIEW.1. We are forbidden to do any work upon the Sabbath. 2. We are forbidden to make the Sabbath a day of pleasure (Isaiah 58:13, 14). 3. The Sabbath is not to be a day of sloth. II. NOTICE THE POSITIVE DUTIES IMPLIED IN KEEPING THE SABBATH HOLY. 1. Portions of the Sabbath should be devoted to public religious worship. 2. Portions of the Sabbath are due to special private devotion. 3. Portions of the Sabbath should be devoted to religious reading. 4. A portion of the Sabbath is very properly adjudged to Sunday-school work. 5. What remains of the Sabbath, deducting the time for necessary temporal cares, should be devoted to family religion. (H. Winslow.) I. DUTIES ENJOINED.1. The duty of work. This is man's normal condition.(1) For the soil's sake. Nature's capacities are latent as well as vast, and need the quickening, unfolding, marshalling power of a tireless, and skilful labour.(2) For man's own sake. He who does not use his faculties is as though he had none. Indolence and barbarism go hand in hand.(3) For God's sake. Stewardship. 2. The duty of rest. The seventh day is to be a day of rest for the body, jaded with the toils of the week: a day of rest for the mind, jaded with the cares of the week: a day of rest for the heart, jaded with the griefs of the week. 3. The duty of worship. "Keep it holy." The Sabbath, if I may so say, is God's weekly toll on mankind, the periodical tribute which He demands in token of human fealty. II. REASON ASSIGNED. 1. Cessation of creative process. 2. The Creator's resting. Holy, blessed, festal contemplation. 3. The Creator's sanctification of the seventh day. III. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF THE SABBATH (see Mark 2:23-28.) 1. Man himself is the basis of the Sabbath. (1) (2) (3) 2. Man is greater than the Sabbath. It is to be used as a means, not as an end. Man is more sacred than ordinances. IV. TRUE METHOD OF KEEPING THE SABBATH. It is to be kept in such a way as will unfold man heavenward the most thoroughly, totally, symmetrically. The Sabbath being made for man, he must use it religiously; for the faculty of worship is man's chief definition. But full unfolding of man's spiritual nature is possible only in the sphere of edification — that is, society building. The Sabbath summons man to conjugate life in a new mood and tense; but still in the active voice. And here the Son of Man is our teacher and blessed model. No one truly keeps the Sabbath unless he keeps it as the Divine Man kept it: and He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. Indeed, I cannot conceive how a young man can unfold himself more thoroughly or symmetrically than by devoting himself vigorously to study during the week, and then setting apart Sunday as a day of restful worship, first praising God in His sanctuary, and then praising Him in works of mercy, visiting the sick, comforting the sorrowful, teaching the ignorant, reclaiming the outcast. V. CHANGE OF DAY. Saturday was the Sabbath of nature, Sunday is the Sabbath of grace; Saturday the Sabbath of a rejected, executed, entombed Jesus, Sunday the Sabbath of a risen, exalted, triumphant Christ; Saturday Creator's day, Sunday Redeemer's day. VI. Lastly: JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF IS OUR SABBATH, ALIKE ITS ORIGIN, ITS MEANING, AND ITS END. In fact, the final cause of the Sabbath is to sabbatize each day and make all life sacramental. And Jesus Christ being our true Sabbath, Jesus Christ is also our true rest, even the spirit's everlasting Eden. (G. D. Boardman.) 1. Its early Divine institution. 2. The uninterrupted observance of this day. 3. Though the day be changed under the Christian dispensation, the obligation of it remains unaltered. 4. God has eminently honoured and signally blessed this day in every age of time. "Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." II. THE MANNER OF ITS OBSERVANCE. 1. This requires, first, that we should diligently prepare for its approach. 2. We must carefully watch against the profanation of it. 3. There is required by this command an entire cessation from secular and worldly occupations. 4. The observation of the Sabbath requires the religious appropriation and occupation of all its hours. 5. We should guard against the two extremes, of excessive rigour on the one hand, and of excessive relaxation on the other hand, in our regard to this sacred institution. (G. Clayton.) II. But we proceed to show, that even when the CEREMONIAL USAGES WERE IN THEIR GREATEST VIGOUR, THE SABBATH APPEARED HIGH AND DISTINCT ABOVE THEM. For first, after the record of the promulgation of the Decalogue, three chapters of judicial statutes follow; but in the midst of these, the people are reminded of the essential importance of the Sabbath, in a manner quite distinct and peculiar. Again, after six chapters more concerning the tabernacle and its various services and sacrifices, the whole communication of the forty days' abode on the mount is concluded with a re-inculcation of the Sabbathrest, in a manner the most solemn and affecting. III. But proceed we to show that, in the latter ages of the Jewish Church, the weekly Sabbath was insisted upon BY THE PROPHETS AS OF ESSENTIAL MORAL OBLIGATION, AND AS DESTINED TO FORM A PART OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION. IV. Let us then turn from these discussions to some PRACTICAL POINTS which may affect our hearts. 1. Let us learn to give to the holy day of rest that prominency in our esteem which Moses was instructed to give it in his dispensation. 2. And to this end, let us imbibe the spirit of love and delight in the worship of God, which the Psalms and Prophets display. 3. But add to these motives the awful indignation of Almighty God against the contempt of His name and His day. (D. Wilson, M. A.) I. REASONS for observing the Sabbath. 1. We have God's command. This of itself should be enough for us. 2. We have God's example. He does Himself what He bids us do. 3. God claims it as His own day. Here is His own direction — "Not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, on My holy day." 4. God is pleased and honoured by the keeping of it. 5. It is a memorial of a completed creation work and of Christ's resurrection. In an ironmonger's shop in a country town in Scotland, the shopkeeper sat at his desk at the window. A young apprentice in the cellar below had stuck the candle which he carried in a barrel of gunpowder; the gunpowder exploded, the shop window was blown out, and the good man who sat in it was carried in the current of air to the top of the street, and there landed safely on his feet, while the apprentice was blown to pieces. It was such a wonderful deliverance that the ironmonger observed the day as a day of prayer and thanksgiving to the end of his life. Is it difficult to understand how he should have done so? And shall we not gladly commemorate our deliverance — our emancipation — the announcement that the sinner's salvation was complete, by the rising of Jesus from the dead? Shall we ever suffer ourselves to be deprived of a day that has such happy and hallowed associations? 1. It is a sin because it contemns the authority of God, and that is the essence of all sin. 2. It is a sin further against the love of God. As a father invites his children home to a family gathering because he loves to have them in his presence, so God would have us, His children, come to Him on the Sabbath day because He loves us. 3. It is a sin further against our higher nature. God calls us to remember our spiritual nature and to guard against degrading ourselves to mere sensual beings. (F. S. Schenck.) I. CONSIDER THE BLESSINGS TO OUR FELLOW-MEN. 1. The holy or religious observance of the day bestows the rest day upon mankind. The unbelieving world may rail against God and His Church, but while it does so it is receiving from Him through the Church the rich gift of the only rest day it has from grinding labour. 2. The religious observance of the day also preaches a powerful though silent sermon to the non-church-goer, telling him he is a man, not a beast of burden; that there is a God whom he should worship; that there is an eternal life beyond this fleeting one for which he should prepare. 3. The religious observance of the day does much also to educate the conscience of a community. 4. The religious observance of the day further secures the continuance and progress of Christianity in the world. The procession of secular days bears rich material gifts to man. The Holy day spreads heaven's glories over the earth. II. The religious observance of the day brings also rich BLESSING TO THE ONE SO OBSERVING IT. 1. Communion with God, to refresh and strengthen the soul. 2. A clear view of our heavenly home, the eternal holy rest from all this world's toil and care. (F. S. Schenck.) II. The second reason why this subject demands now the special attention of Christians is, THAT IF THE SABBATH IS NOT REGARDED AS HOLY TIME, IT WILL BE REGARDED AS PASTIME; IF NOT A DAY SACRED TO DEVOTION, IT WILL BE A DAY OF RECREATION, OF PLEASURE, OF LICENTIOUSNESS. The Sabbath is not essentially an arbitrary appointment, for it is required in the very nature of the animal economy that there should be periodical seasons of relaxation. We must have periodical rest in all the functions of our nature. Buonaparte once passed three entire days and nights without sleep, but he could no longer contend against a great law of nature, and sank to sleep on his horse. There is not a muscle in the animal economy that does not demand rest after effort, that will not have it. If it is not granted voluntarily, it will be taken. In demanding, therefore, that the animal and mental economy should be allowed a day of periodical repose, God has acted in accordance with a great law of nature. III. A third reason why this subject demands the attention of Christians in a special manner now is, THAT THERE IS A STATE OF THINGS IN THIS LAND THAT IS TENDING TO OBLITERATE THE SABBATH ALTOGETHER. The Sabbath has more enemies in this land than the Lord's Supper, than baptism, than the Bible, than all the other institutions of religion put together. At the same time it is more difficult to meet the enemy here than anywhere else — for we come in conflict not with argument, but with interest, and pleasure, and the love of indulgence, and of gain. ( A. Barnes, D. D..) 1. There is in the Commandment more than a Jewish ordinance. It expresses a physical law — a law of nature — and it does so most precisely. How all this suggests the beneficence of Jehovah! 2. The second suggestive consideration is the real purpose of the Sabbath as given to the slave-nation. That purpose was beneficent, from every point of view. Do you not see that in a time when men as men had no rights, this law brought a right of rest to the most helpless and defenceless? Do you not see that it imposed a check upon the greed and rapacious selfishness which is natural to those who have their fellow-creatures under their power? Without this law where would the poor slaves have been? (W. Senior, B. A.) ( T. Watson.) (A. Barnes.) ( T. Watson.) (P. B. Davis.) (Talmud.) 1443 revelation, OT 5377 law, Ten Commandments 5386 leisure, nature of 4921 day The Decalogue: ii. --Man and Man May the Third Other Gods! The Mediator --The Interpreter Weighed in the Balances Traditionalism, Its Origin, Character, and Literature - the Mishnah and Talmud - the Gospel of Christ - the Dawn of a New Day. Covenanting Sanctioned by the Divine Example. Beam on us Brightly, Blessed Day, For, Concerning False Witness, which is Set Down in the Ten Commands of The... On the Other Hand, those who Say that we must Never Lie... What Then, if a Homicide Seek Refuge with a Christian... Thus Has the Question Been on Both Sides Considered and Treated... The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close. The Preface to the Commandments The Right Understanding of the Law The First Commandment The Second Commandment The Third Commandment The Fourth Commandment The Fifth Commandment The Sixth Commandment The Seventh Commandment The Eighth Commandment |
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