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Deuteronomy 5:12-15  Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you.  Six days you shall labour 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 male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants 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.

God reveals to us in his Word two accounts of the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deutronomy 5:6-21.  In Exodus, Moses is giving to the people an account of what the LORD actually wrote on the two stone tablets in his fear-inducing, ‘fire and smoke’ appearance on Mt Sinai; in Deuteronomy, Moses is reminding the people of these Commandments 40 years later, after their amazing experience of God’s miraculous provision for them for this long time in the wilderness.

The reason given for the requirement of a ‘Sabbath Day’ remembrance at Sinai was rooted in Creation – God rested on the Seventh Day, and therefore they should do the same as a way of remembering that God is their Creator.  The habit of resting one day in seven therefore seems to be a good universal principle for all of creation.

But now, as they prepare to conquer Canaan and live among peoples whose lives have no thought for the one true God of Creation, worshipping figments of their own imaginations instead, to prevent God’s Chosen People from assimilating with the Canaanites and embracing their God-denying culture, the reason given for Sabbath Day observance was rooted in Redemption!  They were a special people to God, bound to him eternally by his gracious Covenant promises, epitomised in his redeeming them from bondage in Egypt, and Sabbath observance was intended to mark them off by a regular and continual distinction from the general population.

As Christians today grapple with and debate ‘Sabbath’ observance in the light of Jesus’ harsh criticism of the Pharisees’ total misunderstanding and misapplication of the Fourth Commandment, especially his well-known statement, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), it is good for us to take particular note of Moses’ (ie God’s) different reason given in Deuteronomy.

For us, Sunday marks the day Jesus rose from the dead, conquering our bondage to sin and death, so the Early Church adopted the ‘First Day of the week’ to serve the same purpose in their society and culture as the Seventh Day did in the settlement in Canaan.  Eric Liddell’s courageous stand in the 1924 Paris Olympics, portrayed in the movie ‘Chariots of Fire’, and the example of countless faithful Christians throughout history, show that our setting apart the ‘Lord’s Day’ in our culture can have a marked impact (even in high places) of what our redemption in Christ means to us.  This is not denying that every day for us is the Lord’s day, dedicated to him in everything we do, but it is a way of showing the world what our Redeemer means to us – provided we make every effort to avoid the hypocritical, inconsistent legalistic attitude of the Pharisees!

– Bruce Christian