“Remember” the Sabbath – The Fourth Commandment

“Remember” the Sabbath

The Fourth Commandment

We need to get our minds around the Lord’s Day.

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.”

The first giving of the fourth commandment is distinct from the second in two ways. First, the commanding verb in our text is “remember.” In Deuteronomy 5 it is “guard.”

“Remember” means more than simply to “bear in mind.” When we are told that God “remembers” His covenant with Israel, the meaning is something more akin to “active attention.” We are to “remember” the Sabbath, not merely to keep it in mind (so we don’t forget to go to church?), but to “attend actively” to it. We are remembering the Sabbath as the Lord intends we get our minds around what this day is, what it means, and what it’s for, and when we apply ourselves diligently to making the most of the Sabbath according to the Lord’s intentions.

It will be difficult to “remember” the Sabbath in this way if we allow all manner of worldly diversions to crowd in—boisterous, frivolous, and amounting to nothing—to keep us from the business of actively attending to the day God has set aside for us to rest in Him.

The second difference between this and the Deuteronomy account is in the motive for the Sabbath. Here we are to “remember” the Lord’s Day as a reminder of the creation and God’s rest upon completing His work.

Here I think a twofold focus is in order. The Sabbath should lead us to consider the wonders of creation and to see them as the works of the Lord, manifesting His glory and calling us to worship. These, in turn, should remind us that God has rested from His work and calls us to join Him in that rest. As we rest on the Sabbath, reflecting on God’s work and His rest, we reorient our souls to the proper framework for working out our salvation: This is our Father’s world, and He has brought us into His rest in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Use the Lord’s Day actively to concentrate on and celebrate the work and rest of God, and you will be prepared for the week to come as the Lord intends.

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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.