Work Hard, Rest Hard – Fourth Commandment

Work Hard, Rest Hard

Exodus 20.8-10; Deuteronomy 5.12-14

“Remember the Sabbath day, observe it, 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.”

Make the Lord’s day work for you.

God has appointed six days for us to work. All our work is to be pursued earnestly and joyfully during those six days. On the seventh day, God calls us to rest in Him. We do this by “remembering” the Lord’s day – planning for it carefully, pursuing those activities which allow us to rest in God’s creative, providential, and redeeming work, and celebrating Him alone and with His people. We also do it by “observing” or “guarding” the Lord’s day. Interestingly enough, this is the same word God used to instruct Adam in guarding the garden. We have to protect the Lord’s day against anything that might make it something other than what God intends. It’s not our day, after all, but His, the day He has set aside for Himself so that, in it, our focus on Him might be heightened and intensified, and He might be able fully to renew and refresh us for the week of work to come. If we have been faithful and diligent in doing our work for six days – all the work God has given us to do – we’ll be ready for some hard resting-up in Him on the Lord’s day.

Pray

Thank You, Lord, for this day of rest. Help me to learn to use it wisely. Prepare and renew me in it, Lord, so that I might be able to do all my work in the week to come as unto You, and for Your glory.

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is 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.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.