10/1/17
- Eph 6:2-3, The Commandment, Pt. 9, The
4th Commandment, Pt. 1. Lesson # 17-104
The Doctrine of the Ten Commandments Related to the Church Age,
Part VIII.
Before we begin
study, we should:
1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The
4th Commandment, Ex
20:8-11; Deut 5:12-15. Cf. Ex 16:23-30; 20:8-11; 23:12; 31:13-17;
34:23; 35:2-3; Lev 23:3; 26:2; Neh 13:16-19.
This is the 4th and last of the Ten Commandments that
directly relates to the worship and service of God. It was a mandate by God to
honor the Sabbath Day and make it holy unto the Lord. It was a day during which
the Israelites were to rest from their work, i.e., the normal activities and
labors of the other six days of the week were to be avoided.
This commandment begins in Ex
20:8 with “remember,” ZAKHAR, זכַר,
in the Qal, (active), Infinitive Absolute, (intensifying the force and acts
like an imperative, as a command). It is the act of “remembrance,” in this
case, a covenantal or legal obligation that leads to a present act. It is an
act of recognition and reflection that requires an action on the part of the
servant of God to recall and reflect on God.
In Deut 5:12, it begins
with the Qal Infinitive Absolute of SHAMAR שָׁמַר that means, “to observe, to guard, or to keep.” The
underlying idea of this root word is, “to exercise great care.” It is used
often to describe the rigorous keeping of obligations, especially the commands
of God, as it is here, cf. Ex 31:13, 16;
Lev 19:3, 30; 26:2; Isa 56:4.
Therefore, the Israelites where commanded by God to make sure they
“remembered” to “observe” this mandate. That is, they were to recognize it as a
special day and honor it by doing as the Lord commanded. They were to exercise
great care to ensure they did as God commanded them to do on this day each
week.
They were specifically commanded “to think” on this day and “not
to work,” as “remember” means to think and to draw upon the resources of the
heart of your soul. Therefore, it is a command that their hearts control their
souls, and this control is the basis for the spiritual life. So God says, “You
work hard for six days, during which time you may do some thinking; but set
aside the seventh day as the “day for truly thinking about Me.”
The thing they were to think about, remember, and observe was the
“Sabbath,” that is a transliteration
of the Hebrew Noun SHABBATH, שַׁבָּת. It is related to the verb SHAVATH, שָׁבַת that means, “to
cease or to rest.” So, it means, “cessation, repose, or rest.” In other words,
they were to not do any work that they did the other six days of the week on
this day. They were to rest and remember the Lord.
There is no mention of a seven-day week or rest between Genesis 2 and the giving of the Law in Exodus 20. In fact, this word is not
used in the Bible until Ex 16:23f,
when the Lord gave them manna (bread) in the wilderness. That is when He first
established the Sabbath rest on Saturday.
Ex 16:23, “Then
he (Moses) said to them, ‘This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a sabbath
observance, a holy sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake and boil what
you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning’.”
The obligation to rest meant that the normal activities and labors
of the other six days of the week were to be avoided. Work was to be planned so
as to leave the seventh day free for worship. This last day of the week was to
be devoted to remembrance of God including worship and fellowship at the
sanctuary of the Lord, with the prime attention being directed toward the glory
and revealed will of the holy God. This day was on Saturday, from Friday,
sundown, 6 p.m. to Saturday, sundown, 6 p.m.
The “Sabbath” also came to be used to designate certain feast
days. In Lev 16:31; cf. 23:32, it is
used of the Day of Atonement, and it can also be found in reference to the
Feast of Trumpets, (first day of the seventh month, Lev 23:24), and to the first and last days of the Feast of Booths, Lev 23:39.
In Lev 25:2, 4, SHABBATH is used for the sabbatical
year, which included the idea of a “Sabbath rest” for the land that was a rest
for the land after six years of cultivation, leaving it untilled, Lev 25:6. God promised to provide for
Israel’s needs while the land lay uncultivated, Lev 25:20-22.
As a nation, Israel failed to keep the Sabbath for the land with
the result that they were taken from the land so that the land could have its
Sabbath rest, Lev 26:32-35, 43; Ezek
20:10-24. One of the purposes for the seventy-year Babylonian captivity was
to make up for Israel’s failure to observe the sabbatical years, 2 Chron 36:21.
It was also associated with the year of Jubilee, Lev 25:11.
Interestingly, the Sabbath did not apply to guard duty, 2 Kings 11:4-12, because the people
still need protection from their enemies. It was designed to commemorate God’s
grace and provisions, and freedom is part of that grace provision.
The thing they were to do for this day was “to keep it holy,” which is the Preposition LE, לְ, with the Piel,
(intensive active), Infinitive Construct, (stresses the purpose of this
command), of QADHASH, קָדַשׁ that means, “to be holy.”
In the Piel stem it means, “making it holy to God.” This is their
response to their God. It is synonymous in usage here with consecrate,
sanctify, and setting apart. Sanctification or making holy is parallel to or
involved with atonement, purifying from sin, and anointing in Ex 29:36, as well as cleansing in Lev 16:19. So, we see that God blessed
the Sabbath day and sanctified it, or set it apart for a special relationship
to Him. Thus, his people were to rest and honor that day in order to sanctify,
set apart, and make it holy, Ex 20:8.
Deut
5:12 adds to Ex 20:8, “as the LORD your God commanded you,” KI
ASHER, (according to that which); TSAWAH, (He has commanded you, [in the
intensive active Piel Perfect for a completed action]); YHWH, (The Lord);
ELOHIM (God). This is reminding them that the Lord has previously given this command
to them, Ex 16:13-34, when He
provided the manna and quails.
Next, in Ex 20:9, and Deut 5:13, “Six days you shall labor and do
all your work.” SES YOM AVADH WE ASAH KOL MELAKHAH. The “six days” include
Sunday through Friday.
It means that whatever your abilities, talents, skills, or
profession are from these you labor or work and make a profit or wage during
six of the seven days in a week.
Then, in Ex 20:10 and Deut 5:14, we have the mandate, “but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the
LORD your God.” On this day, they were not to work or labor as noted in the
explanation of what is expected of the people on this day, “you shall not do any work,” and to whom
it applied, “you or your son or your
daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner.”
Therefore, whatever their talents, abilities, skills, or
professions were, they were not to use these on the 7th day of the
week, (Saturday). All work was to stop on the Sabbath day for the purpose of
orienting to the grace of God.
The Deuteronomy passage
gives a bit more detail defining “cattle” to include “ox and donkeys,” and reemphasizes the fact that servants too are
allowed to rest; “so that your male
servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.”
In other words, they were not to be so greedy as to make their
children, servants/workers, and working animals work on this day, while they
were resting from their labors. Nor were their children to be working on this
day. Everyone was to rest and remember the Lord on this day.
A “sojourner,” GEYR, גֵּר was a resident-alien, a person who
moved into an area where he had neither land nor clan ties. Such a person would
then be without traditional tribal legal support and protection and vulnerable
to abuse. Resident-aliens formed a distinct social class in society, neither
native citizen nor foreigner nor slave. They usually had to attach themselves
to a family in order to survive, cf. Elisha and the widow of Zerephath,at whose
house he sojourned, 1 Kings 17:20.
Israel had lengthy legislation on the rights and protection of the
resident-aliens in society, and in fact, the Israelites “were once sojourners
in the land of Egypt,” Ex 23:9.
Then we have two different “justification” for the Sabbath rest
that both represent the number 4 in Scripture that stands for material things.
1. In Ex 20:11, the
first justification is that God rested on the 7th Day after
“working” for 6 days in creating the heavens and the earth. This is the
justification for the Israelites day of rest. That is, God rested from all His
works of creation on the 7th Day; therefore, the Israelites were to
observe that aspect of God, (the Creator of the heavens and earth, and all that
is in them), and remember all the provisions He made for them, and rest on the
Sabbath Day. God created all the material things to bless and provide for
mankind, and the Israelites were to honor that.
Ex
20:11, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and
all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day, (Gen 2:2-3; Heb 4:4); therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath
day and made it holy.”
Gen 2:2-3, “By
the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the
seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3Then God blessed
the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work
which God had created and made.”
The importance for Israel keeping the Sabbath as a precious and
holy day is that it was a grateful recognition that God had created the world
in six creative days and then set apart the seventh day as a special reminder
and celebration of His fashioning the entire universe in all of its grandeur.
In Ex 20:11, the word,
“made” is ASAH that means God made
something out of something. It more technically speaks of the restoration of
planet earth that encompasses six days, after its chaos due to the Angelic
Conflict.
Did God need to rest because He was tired? No. He is omnipotent,
(all powerful) and His power is infinite, (without limit or end). He rested because
there was nothing left to be done!
“Rest” is the Hebrew
Verb NUACH, נוּחַ that means, “to settle down, rest, or to pause.” Here, it is
more of a cessation than a rest, but the resting aspect is in view. In other
words, on the seventh day, God stopped providing because He had already
provided everything.
Since man had received everything by grace in only six days, and
nothing could be added to it, God rested on the seventh day to commemorate the
grace principle. The Sabbath was to be observed by the Jews to remind them that
they, too, had received everything by God’s grace. Observance of the Sabbath
was designed to teach grace orientation during the time before the Bible was
completed, Isa 58:11-14.
Then it says, “therefore
the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” The word “blessed,”
BARAKH, בָּרַךְ indicates primarily the favorable relationship between object
and subject. God pronounced it a source of blessing or intensity of happiness.
This one day of rest each week is not only a principle of blessing, it is also
a principle of freedom. Freedom and blessing go together; you cannot have one
without the other. The word “holy,” QADHASH, once again, means, “to set apart.”
Therefore, this day is a blessing to the Israelites that should be set apart
from the other 6 days of the week.
Doing no work on the seventh day was in recognition and
commemoration of God’s grace. Under God’s grace plan, He does all the work, and
the believer receives the benefit. God created the heavens and the earth and
all the provisions we need to survive. This was a memorial to His grace
provision. In like manner, Jesus Christ purchased salvation in total and we
cannot earn it or work for it, for “it
is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast,” Eph 2:8-9.
Since all blessing in time have been provided for in God’s plan, not working on
the seventh day was a very wonderful way to bring home this lesson!
Therefore, the first justification for keeping the Sabbath was to
remember The Lord God and His creation that provided everything for them. It
was to remember His grace provisions as their Lord and God.
2. In Deut 5:15,
speaking to the Israelites on the Plains of Moab, the justification was that
God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and provided them rest from the
yoke of slavery. He transformed the Israelite slaves into an independent
nation. Therefore, every seventh day they were to remember that they once were
enslaved and that God had freed them. In addition, upon their freedom He
provided them manna (bread) in the wilderness. So, God freed them from slavery
and provided for all their material needs, their logistical grace blessings.
Deut
5:15, “You shall remember (ZAKAR) that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, (MITSRAYIM), and the LORD your God brought you out of
there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God
commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”
Notice how God brought about this rest for them:
1. “By a might hand,”
speaking of the sovereignty and omnipotence of God to deliver them from a
powerful enemy.
2. “By and outstretched arm.”
This speaks of the Godward side of providing them deliverance from slavery.
This also foreshadows what Jesus Christ would perform for them and the entire
world upon the Cross through His out stretched arms that were nailed to the
Cross, so that we all could be purchased and freed from slave market of sin.
Gal 5:1, “It
was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do
not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.”
(To be continued 10/3/17 Tuesday & 10/5/17 Thursday.)
If
you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I am here to tell
you that Jesus loves you. He loves you so much that He gave His life for you.
God the Father also loves you. He loves you so much that He gave His only Son
for you by sending Him to the Cross. At the Cross Jesus died in your place.
Taking upon Himself all of your sins and all of my sins. He was judged for our
sins and paid the price for our sins. Therefore, our sins will never be held
against us.
Right
where you are, you now have the opportunity to make the greatest decision in
your life. To accept the free gift of salvation and eternal life by truly
believing that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was raised on the third day
as the proof of the promise of eternal life. So right now, you can pause and
reflect on what Christ has done for you and say to the Father:
"Yes Father, I believe that Your Son, Jesus
Christ, died on the cross for the forgiveness of my sins."
If you have done that, I welcome you to the eternal
Family of God!
Grace
Fellowship Church
Pastor/Teacher: James H. Rickard
23 Messenger Street, Unit 3
Plainville, MA 02762
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Property of: James H Rickard Bible Ministries
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