Stop [The Fourth Commandment]

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Exodus 20:8-11

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 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. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

 
 

The command about the Sabbath is, along with the command to honor one’s parents, a positive command. That is, it is about doing something and not about forbidding something.

The word sabbath means “to stop, to cease.” The Sabbath is a day on which everyone puts down his tools, and it is a day for everyone in the community. Sometimes we think that the purpose of the Sabbath is to rest so we can work better in the future. Although, of course, rest is necessary, note that the purpose of the Sabbath is not work. In fact, it’s the opposite: the purpose of work is rest!

This is the logic of the fourth commandment: the Lord worked to bring order to the cosmos, and then when everything was ordered, the Lord ceased from work so He could enjoy His labor. So, work is not the point of life—living is the point of life, and work makes living possible. The Sabbath is a day when we cease producing and just start enjoying.

You can see what a disaster it has been that in America we have essentially abandoned what used to be called blue laws. These were laws that restricted forms of commerce on Sunday. What those laws did was make Sabbath possible for everybody. When those laws were repealed, the temptation to make money and get ahead of my competitors became nearly irresistible. What a loss for society that we gave up the practice of stopping one day a week.

Each Sabbath day is a little Eden, when we stop to enjoy and savor God’s blessings. I love the heart of the Lord that is revealed with this fourth commandment: God wants us to enjoy life.

For most of us, making Saturday special and different is a good goal. Starting at dinnertime Friday, what could you do in your household to make Saturday a day of enjoyment? What would it look like to cease from work on that day and just enjoy the life that the Lord has given you?