How Serious? — The Fourth Commandment

How Serious?

The Fourth Commandment

Keeping the Lord’s Day is serious business.

Exodus 31:12-17

And the LORD said to Moses, ^“You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’”

How serious is the Lord about this day? Very serious, indeed. We do not impose the death penalty on those who do not remember and guard the Lord’s Day, but they were commanded to in ancient Israel, before the day of grace and the Spirit. “Cutting off” Sabbath-breakers is a euphemism for killing them; it can also mean separation from the altar—and, hence, the favor of God—for a season.

The Lord has determined that honoring His day shall continue through all the generations of His people. Those who will not remember and guard the Lord’s Day show that they despise His Word and consider themselves better qualified to determine how Sundays should be used than the God Who made and redeemed them. If we will set aside God’s Law for this one day, will it not be easy to set it aside whenever, for any reason, we think we know better than God how we ought to live?

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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.