The Sabbath is a creation ordinance. It was instituted by God at the beginning of the world’s history and was intended for man’s spiritual, moral, mental and physical good. We are told in the Word of God that God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.” It pleased God in His infinite wisdom to set apart one day from all the other days of the week as a day of rest and worship for man. None knew man’s need as God did, and He saw that the keeping holy to God of one day in the week for the worship and service of God would tend to man’s highest good. The fact that it was given to man as a day specially dedicated to the worship of God of necessity made it the queen of all the days of the week. And man, as long as he retained his unfallen state, counted it so and looked forward to its weekly recurrence.
As we begin another year it becomes us to remember anew to the praise of God this privilege which he has bestowed upon us and upon all mankind. Men have an inalienable right to the Sabbath day for the worship and service of God. It is a high privilege which God has given to men and ought to be highly valued as one of the most precious gifts that God has bestowed upon mankind. Our Creator is in this way our Benefactor and we ought to recognise it and render thanks to the Lord for His goodness in this provision for the children of men. In a life of seventy years in this world a person enjoys ten years of Sabbaths. God has so ordered it and, if men used this privilege aright, what a blessing it would be to them.
This creation ordinance of the Sabbath came to be enshrined in the ten Commandments given by God on Mount Sinai to Moses for His people Israel. The two tables of the law were written with the finger of God and the Commandments stand or fall together. If men break one of the Commandments of God they are guilty of all. They are found law-breakers.
In our day men think they can discard the Fourth Commandment without affecting any of the other Commandments. Yet how evident it is that, when men begin to take liberties with the Sabbath day, before long they are taking liberties with the other Commandments as well. The unrestrained licence which men demand in our day with regard to the Sabbath day has its repercussions in every department of man’s life in this world. Let us cast off the fear of God, man says, and before long the consequences of such an attitude are only too transparent. Men hold up their hands in horror at the violence and murder and other evils which have broken out in the land but do not recognise that much of it may be attributed to the rejection by men of the law of the Sabbath. The law of the Sabbath is a door which, if once broken through, lets in a multitude of other evils.
Men need to be reminded of the law of the Sabbath. This commandment begins with the word “Remember” because of man’s forgetfulness of it. The law itself is a weekly reminder to men that they are not their own rulers but are subject to the rule and authority of the God of heaven. Fallen man would be wiser than God and set up his own law by establishing the rules which he thinks are a sufficient guide for his life, whether or not these rules may be in opposition to the rules which God has set up in His law. Such is the folly of man! Yet man has to learn either by bitter experience or by judgment, as Nebuchadnezzar had to learn in his day, that there is a God in heaven that “doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” Men may fight against God and do fight against Him, and contemn the Most High, and trample under their feet the law of Heaven, but a day of reckoning is coming when men will be answerable to God for the liberties they have taken with His holy law. Well may men reflect upon this and tremble at the thought of it. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” There will be no escape for men in the day of Judgment from the consequences of their dishonouring of the law of God.
The Sabbath has been given to men for rest from the burdens of other days, so that they may be free to be taken up with the things that belong to the glory of God and the good of their never-dying souls. Only such time as has to be occupied in the works of necessity and mercy is to be otherwise employed. The things belonging to the Sabbath day are as high above the things of this world as the heavens are above the earth. God is giving men a special opportunity of being taken up with those things which belong to His kingdom and glory. From having his mind set for six days of the week on the things of this world, man has the opportunity on God’s holy day of having his mind lifted up above the things of earth, above the things that are seen and temporal, to those things which are unseen and eternal and which can only be viewed by the eye of faith. These are things that are heavenly and in the contemplation of them, the soul is drawn out to them and ravished by them.
We may ask what is the substance of those things with which the soul may be taken up on the Sabbath Day. It is the revelation of the glory of God in Jesus Christ. It is in this that the exercised soul finds what is substantial and real. It is a revelation of the mercy and love of God in Jesus Christ to sinners, ready to perish, and undeserving of the least favour of the God of heaven. The soul is led into the wonder of redeeming love and this opens up an ocean-fulness of wonder which it will take an eternity fully to unveil. The believing soul is led into the scheme of redemption which infinite wisdom devised, and sees in it how God can be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. The soul is brought to wonder at the revelation given of the Divine Redeemer as the One who satisfied all the claims of the divine law and justice in the room and stead of the guilty. Sinners had so dishonoured that law and here One comes who is willing to restore that which He took not away — and do it in such a way that Heaven would be eternally satisfied with it. What glory is opened up for the soul in the atoning death of the Lamb of God as He stood where His people should have stood — the place of condemnation — and there did bear in His holy soul and body the pains of hell on the accursed tree in order that His people might go free. So, too, is the soul led into the wonder of electing love, the fountain from which all other blessings flow. Why me? Why me? the soul says in the light of revelation of electing love when they remember that they, too, deserved to die eternally. And how much more is the soul led into, including Christ’s resurrection, ascension and continual intercession at God’s right hand. How few must the Sabbaths be, even of those who live to enjoy ten years of Sabbaths in this world, for the contemplation of things so glorious, so divine. The whole work of the Spirit of God in the application of redemption would of itself afford ample scope for ten years of contemplation, yea, for an eternity of it.
In the light of all this how miserable, how sordid is the life of those who know nothing of the spiritual rest and spiritual enjoyment of one Sabbath day in time. How blind are such to the exhortation of God in His Word through His servant Isaiah! — “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure of my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” How many live and die without experiencing the fulfilment of that promise, only because they refuse to honour this commandment of the law of God, and live in rejection of the mercy and love of God as revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us then as we begin another year seek to honour this Commandment — Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy — as well as all the other commandments of the law of God. Yet let us not base our acceptance with God upon our keeping of the divine law but upon that perfect keeping of the law by Christ and the infinite satisfaction He rendered to offended justice. And being justified by His grace let us seek to honour the Lord in the keeping of his Commandments out of love to Him who, as His people can say, loved us and gave Himself for us, and who says to all His people, “If ye love Me, keep my Commandments.” And do we not have an additional reason for keeping holy to God the Sabbath day by the change in the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day of the week to commemorate the rising again from the dead of the Son of man.