Pentecost Week 12 - The Fourth Commandment

Aug 10

3 min read

Scripture Reading

*Explain the context: “This week, we will continue to read about God giving Israel his instructions at Mt. Sinai after God had freed them from Egypt.”

Exodus 20:8-11

Big Idea (For Parents)

The Fourth Commandment helps us not violate the first three commandments by instructing that we routinely renew our right relationship with God through worship, rest and festivity.

Family Reflection

(Read aloud or summarize)

As we’ve seen, in the Ten Commandments, God’s first three instructions begin with negative commands (“Thou shall not...”) and address three types of idolatry (covenantal idolatry, liturgical idolatry, and the “practical” idolatry of hypocrisy). In the Fourth Commandment, God gives the first of two positive instructions which will help his people not commit those idolatries.

Here, God positively commanded Israel’s Sabbath observances. The name “Sabbath” refers to “stopping,” and they were to stop from their regular six days of productive work to have one special day every seventh day, which for them was Saturday.

What were they supposed to do on those Sabbath days? Along with other parts of the Old Testament, the command to “remember” the Sabbath as “holy” told Israel that their Sabbath days should include corporate gatherings for worship (see Leviticus 23:3). The Fourth Commandment says Israel’s Sabbath pattern flows from God’s creation pattern of six days of work and a seventh day of “rest,” so their Sabbaths should include rest like God’s rest. God’s Sabbath rest includes his intention to be present with his creation, enjoying that which he has made and evaluated as very good. So for his people, too, Sabbath “rest” rightly includes being in and enjoying God’s creation in nature and mankind’s proper development of the same in culture. The extension of the weekly Sabbath system into Israel’s annual religious feasts further shows that the “rest” in view includes enjoyment of God’s world in nature and culture (“recreation”) and not merely stopping all activity other than very specific corporate worship rituals (see Deuteronomy 14, 16). Since God freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and gave them rest, any Israelites in authority over others must also give those under them rest as well. In sum, in order of priority, the Sabbath was a day for worship, rest, and festivity.

Good and faithful Christians have had different views as to how the Church should observe these principles today. One helpful view is that as Christians in the New Covenant in Christ, we have a transfigured Sabbath observed weekly on the day Jesus rose from the dead, “the Lord’s Day,” Sunday (see Hebrews 10:24-25, Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:1-3; Revelation 1:10-11). On it, unless unable because of necessary work or providential hindrance like illness, we should engage in corporate worship, rest, and festivity. The Bible appears to allow some room for disagreement about Sabbath observance now, so we should be patient and charitable with other Christians’ views (Romans 14; Colossians 2:16-17). Regardless of the specifics, we should follow the Fourth’s Commandments general principles of regular patterns of life in which we routinely set apart time for corporate worship, rest and festivity. Doing so recenters us on the grace and goodness of the true God which is an important way in which God holds us back from the idolatry to which we are otherwise sorely tempted.

Discussion Questions

(Choose 1-2. Adjust for age.)

1- How does corporate worship focus us on the grace and goodness of the true God?

2- How does resting and giving rest to others focus us on the grace and goodness of the true God?

3- How does festivity, or enjoyment of nature and culture, focus us on the grace and goodness of the true God?

Practice—Remember the Sabbath…Ahead of Time!

As for Israel, so also for us today, faithful Sabbath observance requires planning ahead. Plan as a family how you’ll observe Sabbath together in the coming week, ensuring that any necessary prep work is knocked out ahead of time so that the Sabbath time can be spent on that for which God intends it: worship, rest and festivity. Pray and ask God to bless your planning and prepping, but also to keep you humble and cheerful even if he ends up altering your plans for his own purpose.