From Sabbath to Lord’s Day — The Fourth Commandment

From Sabbath to Lord’s Day

The Fourth Commandment

A new day for our new rest.

Exodus 20:8-11

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep 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, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

“‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 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, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slavein the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.’”

From creation to the resurrection of Jesus Christ the Sabbath—a holy day for resting in the Lord’s finished work on our behalf—was observed on the seventh day of the week. Jesus was raised on the first day, and thus ushered in the full rest of God and brought His saving work of bringing new life to the world to the first stages of its completion. At the Feast of Weeks, which was celebrated fifty days after the Passover, an offering of new grain was made to the Lord on the day after the seventh Sabbath—the first day of the new week (Lev. 23:9-16). Did the first believers see in this a foreshadowing of the work of Christ sufficient to encourage them to move the day of rest to the first day of the new week?

The eternal Sabbath awaits us in the new heavens and new earth. For now, the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, has been the Christian Sabbath from the earliest years of the Church.

Although the early Christians worshiped on both Saturday and Sunday, the Church ultimately found its fullest rest on the first day of the week and has done so for 2,000 years. Just as Jesus ushered in a change in the priesthood, so He brought a new Sabbath—a new rest—to the people of God. Sunday is the Christian’s day to remember and celebrate—in corporate and private expressions—the glorious and gracious work of God on our behalf.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.