In Deuteronomy 5 is recorded what is often referred to as the second giving of the law. What we know as the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8–11) is given again in Deuteronomy 5:12–15: “Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the Lord thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and [that] the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.”
A comparison of this passage of Scripture with Exodus 20:8–11 reveals some differences: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the Lord thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates: For [in] six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them [is], and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” These are the words of the fourth commandment written on the two tables of stone by the very finger of God. (See Exodus 31:18.) This commandment, the Sabbath commandment, closes the first table of stone that was given to Moses by God.
One difference between the account of Deuteronomy 5 and that of Exodus 20 is that instead of the former saying, “remember,” it says, “keep.” “Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it . . . .” This is what you might call “ministerial license” on the part of Moses, as he attempted to emphasize a point to the children of Israel because of all the difficulties they had encountered as they traversed through their 40-year wandering experience. He is trying to make the point that they needed to keep the Sabbath holy.
Logical Sequence
The first four commandments, which were written on the first table of stone, outline for man what his responsibilities are to his Creator. As we consider these first four commandments, we can see that they are arranged in a very logical sequence of order. This is not a coincidence; God set these down in a very specific way. Seeing such a logical sequential order confirms that these are of divine origin.
The first commandment proclaims to us the true object of worship. Worship of the true God was a problem in the days of the children of Israel. A variety of other gods commanded their attention for worship. The first commandment warns against having false gods.
The second commandment outlines the true mode of worship and prohibits false forms of religion. When we look at all of the various religions and “isms” that have inundated mankind around the world, they all have their origin in this second law as to their rightness and wrongness.
The third commandment gives the proper approach to this God who has been revealed to us in the first two commandments. It gives a proper approach to worship, and it warns against profanity, irreverence, and hypocrisy in our relationship to God.
The fourth commandment designates the special time for worship by consecrating each seventh day, the Sabbath day, as a memorial of creation and as a memorial of deliverance from bondage to sin.
Egypt Symbolism
Many times I have talked with people, particularly with pastors, about the seventh-day Sabbath. Quite often someone will point out the differences found between Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 20, to let me know that these commandments are fluid and that they can change—particularly the one that deals with the Sabbath—and that it is not necessarily limited to just the creation story but that it also had implications of deliverance from Egypt.
Then I have asked, “Have you ever been to Egypt?” No, they have never been to Egypt, but they have certainly been in the land of sin, of which Egypt is symbolic. The Book of Revelation makes it explicitly clear that the land of Egypt is symbolic of sin. (See Revelation 11:8.)
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23. Moses brought this fact out when he said, “And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and [that] the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.” We, as Christians living in the twenty-first century, can relate to this verse also.
There is a difference between the two writings of the commandments. One was written by the very finger of God, in stone, so that those words could never, ever be changed. The other was contained within the law of Moses, which was written on paper, and it could be changed. It is very easy to drive a nail through paper. It is not an easy task to drive a nail through a piece of stone. You can nail a book of paper to a cross, but you cannot nail a stone to a cross, and you cannot change it. So these differences are there for a very specific reason.
In the very beginning of time, “God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” Genesis 1:3. Then, the process of creation took place. After six days of creation, Jesus and the Father rested from their work. They established the Sabbath. We are told specifically, in Genesis 2:3, that the Sabbath day was blessed. It was hallowed. It was set apart. It was a day of rest that was established from the very beginning of creation, before there was ever a Jew, before there was ever sin, before there was ever anything that would try to include it as something that was temporary. God established it, and what God has blessed is blessed forever.
Brief History
When sin took the course that it did with Adam and Eve’s fall in the garden, the plan of salvation that had been conceived in the mind of God was put into operation, right at that point. The promise of a Saviour was there, yet to be fulfilled some 4,000 years later.
The Bible records for us how that all took place. It says that Jesus came in the form of human flesh. He lived; He died; and He rose again. The Bible also tells us that when Jesus was finished with His work of redemption, when at last His head fell into the hollow of His shoulder, after crying out, “It is finished,” His body was taken down off the cross just about sundown on a Friday afternoon. Jesus Christ, the Lord of all—not only the Lord of creation but also the Lord of redemption—rested in His tomb on the seventh day. He rested from His work of reclaiming man from the bondage of sin—man who had been living in the land of Egypt, man who had been contaminated with sin.
Sabbath a Seal
The Sabbath has been given as a sign or a seal. Revelation 7 tells us about a group called the 144,000, and it says that in their foreheads is found the seal of God. That seal of God is in contrast to the mark of the beast. God’s seal is the seventh-day Sabbath; the mark of the beast is Sunday keeping, that counterfeit day of worship that has been raised up by the devil to try to thwart the plans of God.
God’s redeemed will not only recognize Him as the Creator of all, but they will recognize Him as the Redeemer of all as well. The fact that they have recognized Him as Creator and the fact that they have accepted Him as their Redeemer shows that the Sabbath is doubly binding upon them. It seals them in their decision making process, so they are never again wanting to depart from the ways of God.
Proper Balance
In order to maintain this special relationship with God, which is so vital, He has asked that, at regular times, man turn from his secular pursuits to spiritual things. Man, in his fallen condition, needs to understand that all of his time and all of his activities are planned and ordered of God; his spiritual and his physical life depend upon each other. Because of this interdependence, if we are going to be properly balanced as human beings, it is of the utmost importance that we keep the seventh-day Sabbath.
Man, because of his selfish nature, is bent on doing as much as he can for himself. Usually that means, more than anything else, spending his time for himself. God knew that man needed to have some time away from himself to focus on spiritual things. This was the wonderful wisdom of God in setting aside the Sabbath day.
If you leave off either the physical or the spiritual, man becomes unbalanced. This is one of the reasons why we see so much carnage and destruction in the world today. Man, even though he may look sane, is really insane, because all that he wants to do is direct things to himself. It is very difficult to understand that Someone else has a claim on our lives other than ourselves.
Pivotal Point
The fourth commandment, given as a command to worship the Creator, implies the absolute necessity for the setting apart of a special time to worship God. The Sabbath commandment is a pivotal point between the first table and the second table of the Law of God. It is a binding influence between the divine and the human. The Sabbath has been said to be the meeting place between God and man. This must surely be one of the reasons why the devil has attacked it so vigorously. The Sabbath, as the weekly appointment for communion and worship, brings heaven and earth together.
It is God’s Sabbath, but we men and women are to keep it. The Sabbath commandment commands our worship, but it also commands our work. Have you ever noticed that? We give emphasis to the point that we are supposed to rest on the Sabbath day. Six days of each week are reserved for work, for labor, and the seventh day is set apart for rest from our work and all worldly activities.
Living in the society in which we do, that seems to be the thing that needs the most correcting, because Saturday, the holy Sabbath day, is the time for garage sales and auctions. The grocery stores and businesses do their biggest volume of sales on Saturday. It is hard for us, especially in a western society where our minds are turned towards the accumulation of things, to set that day aside for the worship of God. But I have felt, as well as witnessed, the blessings that come from the observance of God’s holy time.
Sacred and Common
The Sabbath commandment combines in a unique way the sacred and the common, outlining our duty to God and our duty to man. It divides all time into secular time and holy time, and it defines man’s duty to each allotted share of time that God has established.
One thing that has been present in every age of this earth’s history, and particularly this age in which we live, is the need for a Sabbath rest—even the Pope recognizes this! He recognizes that there is a need for a Sabbath rest, but he has the wrong day. He claims the day on which we need to rest is Sunday.
Habit
Our lives are rushed with so many things that we sometimes fail to take the time to even think. Much of our routine is carried on by habit. Did you know that?
Each morning when I arise, I go through my routine, as I am sure you also do. Much of what we do is governed by habit, and if we have developed good habits, we are going to grow in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4. If we have developed bad habits, however, they become very difficult to change.
This is one of the reasons why so many individuals have difficulty when they are confronted with the true Sabbath of the Lord. They find it hard to change the habit patterns that they have established during their lifetimes so they can give the Sabbath time back to God as His own and, in so doing, be blessed and benefited because of it.
Innumerable people with whom I have studied will acknowledge that Saturday is the Sabbath, but because of family, because of work, because of personal preferences, they find it is inconvenient to reverence it.
Need for Rest
There is a need for a Sabbath rest. It seems that we have no time for leisure, no time for spiritual exercise, no time for study, no time for reflection or meditation, except as we decidedly acknowledge the Sabbath commandment and rest according to God’s will.
There are those in the field of marriage counseling who many times find that disorders between couples occur because they are not spending quality time together as they should. The counselor, upon learning this state of things, will say, “What you need to do, if your schedule is so tight, is to ‘X’ out a certain time, so you can spend that time together.”
God knew that a long time ago, so He “Xed” out every Sabbath day and called it holy. He blessed it and sanctified it. As we enter into that experience with Him, we will find a change taking place in our own hearts and lives. We will have a balance in our lives. God wants us to choose the time that He has chosen and not choose the time that we have chosen. He wants us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
How
Since God says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” we need to ask ourselves how this is to be accomplished. What does it mean to keep the Sabbath day holy? How do we keep it holy?
Have you ever watched a little child in clean clothes at play where there is mud and water? There seems to be a magnetic draw between little children and mud and water! If they begin to play in it, one thing is for certain—not just their hands will get dirty. Once mud is on their hands, children generally wipe it off onto their clothing.
It is just as impossible for us to keep God’s Sabbath day holy, if we are placing ourselves within proximity of sin and defilement. Just as little children’s hands are drawn to mud and water and to wiping the mud off onto themselves, man, in his sinful nature, is drawn by temptation to do sinful things. Unless we find ourselves deliberately absenting ourselves from all the secular draw and all the secular temptations that come to us, we are going to find ourselves like little children, getting our hands into it. Then we are going to get it on our clothes, and we are going to be defiled.
No Exceptions
The parallel is very apparent. God’s Sabbath day is holy. It is a sanctified day, and we are asked to keep it holy. The only way that we can keep it holy is to refrain from those secular activities that would pollute us on the Sabbath day. Those activities are covered by the commandment itself.
“Six days thou shalt labour”; six days we are to do all our work. How does that speak to the person who is retired? Well, God says, “All right, you have six days to do whatever you want to do, within reason. The seventh day is Mine.” If your wife has a “honey-do” list for you when you are retired, get it done in six days. The seventh day belongs to God.
The rule applies across the board. It does not make any difference whether you have regular employment or whether you are retired, you have six days to work.
The same principle applies to the tithe. God says that one-tenth of our increase belongs to Him. It does not even belong to us. (See Deuteronomy 14:22; Leviticus 27:32; Genesis 28:22.) A large number of people say that they are going to return their tithe to this or that church. Actually, as stewards, they are not returning their tithe, but God’s tithe.
The same thing is also true of time. The seventh day belongs to God. It is His holy day. The Bible says so. It is not our holy time to adjust our schedule however we might want it to be.
Work is Vital
Six days of work are commanded in this fourth commandment, and those six days of work are as vital as the rest time that God says should also take place.
If the concept of Sabbath keeping, as it is found in the fourth commandment, would be taught and impressed upon the minds of young children, creating in them a work ethic, it would save this old world a lot of misery and woe.
For instance, there are some people who think that they do not have to work, that they can get what they want easier by stealing something that does not belong to them. Learning the Sabbath concept would help them in keeping the commandment that says, “Thou shalt not steal,” because they would have a work ethic of working six days, rather than going out and taking what did not belong to them.
So, we are not only reminded to rest, but we are also commanded to work.
The Devil’s Attack
For the whole human family, the Sabbath commandment is really the foundation for true well-being—physical, mental, and spiritual. Again I ask the question, Is it any wonder that the devil has made such a special attack on this commandment? Even to the most casual observer, it is obvious that there is an attack upon this commandment, more than on any of the other commandments.
If the fourth commandment was observed as it should be from the standpoint of not only God being the Creator but also Jesus Christ being the Redeemer, we humans would be in a whole lot better shape. These two aspects are absolutely tied to the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath.
Character Development
There are those who stress the part of the fourth commandment that deals with rest and forget the other part that deals with labor. I would like to suggest to you that no one could be a Christian and be indolent. No one can keep the Sabbath unless he is also willing to work, because the two concepts go together. We, as Seventh-day Adventists, have been somewhat remiss in bringing out those points and emphasizing them, but they are there, nonetheless. If we put them both together, we will see character traits developed that would not be developed otherwise.
We often speak about the character formation that Jesus desires to take place. The Sabbath commandment has more to do with character development than we realize. No other commandment tells us that we are going to become sanctified by refraining from breaking it. It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, and you will become holy because of it.” But the Sabbath commandment says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” And in Exodus 31, it says that through the observance of the Sabbath, man recognizes that God is making him holy. This is the only commandment that deals with holiness, as far as that which is brought into man’s experiences because of observance.
A Special Blessing
The Sabbath has to become a special blessing to us as Seventh-day Adventists, if we are going to fulfill the role and the commission that God has given to us. The Sabbath has to become special for us.
There is at times the tendency, when Seventh-day Adventists are asked concerning their denominational affiliation, to skirt around the issue. Some may respond, “Well, I am a Christian.”
“But what kind of a Christian are you?”
“I am a Protestant Christian.”
This is a hesitancy that should not be. Sometimes it is wise to be discrete, if we know that there are existing prejudices, but the question we each need to ask ourselves is, Are there prejudices that I am recognizing, or am I exercising my own self-preservation?
The devil is very anxious to destroy the Sabbath and Sabbath keeping, because if he succeeds, he will destroy the relationship that he knows God wants to have between Himself and His people. It does not matter how rigidly Sunday keepers keep Sunday; they are not keeping God’s appointed Sabbath. The special relationship that exists between God and the Sabbath keeper is not the same relationship that God has with those who are breaking one of His commandments.
God may wink at their ignorance; God may bless them in their ignorance; but there is something that is still lacking in that relationship. This is why, when we come down to the end of time, things are going to narrow down in such a way that the focal point is going to be on the Sabbath and Sunday, because of the tremendous impact that the Sabbath has upon the lives of human beings. If we human beings are going to live with God in the kingdom of heaven, we are going to have to be observant of the Sabbath day. If that has been revolting to us, then we are not going to be there.
Joint Observance
Do you realize that the Sabbath commandment is the only commandment in which God can join with man in its observance? It would be nonsense for God to observe the first commandment that says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” So with the second and the third. So with stealing, lying, and adultery. All these have no place as far as reference to God is concerned.
But there is one commandment that, in its observance, God can join with man. This is one of the reasons the devil attacks it so vigorously. Man, of course, is following God’s example in Sabbath keeping.
Isaiah 66 tells us that the Sabbath is going to be kept in the New Earth. “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, [that] from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.” Verses 22, 23. The Sabbath is going to be kept.
New Moon
It is sometimes questioned, If we are going to keep these new moons in the earth made new, then why should we not be keeping the feast days today?
It is often easy for us to expound on the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath, but what about the new moon? How often does a new moon come? A new moon comes once a month. Is there ever a time in the earth made new that we are going to gather around the throne of God once a month? Most certainly! We are told, in Revelation 22:1, 2, “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, [was there] the tree of life, which bare twelve [manner of] fruits, [and] yielded her fruit every month,” that is, new moon.
When it talks about the creation of the new heavens and the new earth, it is dealing with this. Not only is the seventh-day Sabbath still to be a very integrated part of life in heaven, but something else that is interesting and a blessing to us is that we are going to gather around the tree of life each new moon and there partake of its fruit.
We are going to live in the country, Isaiah tells us. We are going to build houses, and we are going to inhabit them. We are going to plant vineyards, and we are going to eat the fruit of them. (Isaiah 65:21.) But then, on the Sabbath day, we are going to find ourselves back in the New Jerusalem, that place where Jesus has gone to prepare a mansion for us. And on that High Sabbath or that high occasion, that once a month gathering, we are going to partake of the fruit that is growing on the tree of life.
Validation
Do not ever tell me the Bible is not inspired! Do not ever tell me that there is no God in heaven! There are just too many things that have come together, written hundreds of years apart, which validate that there is a God in heaven. That God in heaven loved us so much, He came down to this earth and took upon Himself human flesh. And remembering the Sabbath day, from creation until the time that He died on Calvary’s cross and rested in that tomb, He says, “Here is a twofold reason why you, too, who are my disciples, need to rest on the Sabbath day with Me. It is a time when we can come together. It is a time that we can unite our hearts together. It is a time when I can make you holy.”
A retired minister of the gospel, Pastor Mike Baugher may be contacted by e-mail at: landmarks@stepstolife.org.