In meditating on this passage, we shall notice three things :
I. The origin of this special day.
II. The manner of its observance under its negative and positive aspects.
III. The reward or rewards for obedience.
I. The Origin of this Special Day.
The word Sabbath means “rest,” for on it God rested from His labours after He had created the world in six days. God hallowed it and blessed it. He consecrated it to His own worship. It was to be set apart for fellowship and communion with Himself. One day in seven for spiritual duties was surely not too much to demand for Himself from the creatures He had created. Rest here is not an excuse for sluggishness. It means a rest in God—a rest of soul. The spiritual powers of man ought to be more active on this day than on any other. Heaven is full of activity. Worship is going on there continually without any weariness because there are no earthly bodies to clog the saints in their praises of the Most High. Paul calls the rest of the saints in the next world a sabbatismos or “Sabbath-keeping.” It was the distinguishing mark of the Jews in the Roman world that they kept their Sabbath as is referred to by Juvenal in his satires. There were blessings annexed to its faithful observance and curses were threatened and fulfilled for defiant breaches of this law. Adam was able to keep it perfectly by the constitution of his nature but since he fell from his first estate no one but the Second Adam has been able perfectly to keep it. We are guilty of breaking it together with the rest of the law of God in thought, word and deed. It was heavenly love that inspired and gave the Decalogue on Mount Sinai in the centre of which the Sabbath is firmly embedded. If it is difficult for us to keep, that is entirely owing to our corrupt and depraved nature which was ruined by the Adam-fall. It was not a man-made institution and it is not to men that we are responsible for its breach but to the great Judge of the quick and the dead. When Israel honoured the Sabbath they honoured Jehohovah and He in turn blessed them. His honour and glory were bound up in the strict acknowledgment of that day. On the other hand, when Israel flagrantly violated its sanctity God showed his displeasure and anger by applying the sanctions of war, famine and plague. It was that the land might enjoy her Sabbaths He sent the Jews to Babylon for seventy years where they had to hang their harps by the willows and found it hard to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. When the Sabbath was transgressed the true worship of God was abandoned and the way was paved for the most gross idolatry, such as the adoration of the sun and the queen of heaven. The door was opened also to impurity which necessarily accompanied idolatrous rites, as it does to-day in the Roman Catholic Church. France neglected the Lord’s Day and the result is Popish idolatry and uncleanness. Their recent Prime Minister lately published a book advocating temporary unions for young people to indulge in the lusts of youth before settling down to permanent unions. So that is an index of morality and religion across the Channel. The reviewer criticised our leading politicians for not being so progressive as to follow the lead of the French statesman. Scotland was pre-eminent among the Reformed countries for the strict observance of the Lord’s Day and this called down a blessing on our nation that was unexampled anywhere. The continental churches were more lax in their views and did not shine with the same lustre as the Reformed Church of Scotland.
II. The Manner of its Observance under its Negative and Positive Aspects.
The manner in which the Day should be observed is presented to us clearly in Scripture. There is no excuse for ignorance for anyone who can read the Bible. All merchandise or profit-making was emphatically forbidden. No burdens were allowed to be carried into the city or out of it. The gates of the city had to be locked against Sabbath desecrators as the gates of glory and Emmanuel’s Land will certainly be locked against them. Each household was responsible for the servants and strangers and beasts of burden within their gates. Men will have to answer for forcing their animals to work unnecessarily on that Day. The irrational creation is groaning on account of man’s oppression in this matter, and the Most High will yet demand satisfaction and take vengeance for the misuse of His creatures in the service of sin. It was likewise forbidden to seek pleasure on His holy day. “If thou keep thy foot from the Sabbath,” means that no idle walking was allowed or idle visiting to friends’ houses, far less travelling for long distances into the country. Each household was separate except at the stated diets of worship when all were congregated to worship publicly. The Saviour was certainly not admiring the beauties of natural scenery, or on a health-hunting expedition when His disciples plucked the ears of corn, but evidently on His way to divine service in the sanctuary as was His wont every Sabbath day. To make this a pretext for Sabbath desecration is blasphemy and God will reckon with sinners for it one day. It is an old saying that health won at the expense of God’s day is cursed health. Travelling on profit-making conveyances to Church is also a flagrant breach of God’s law, however disguised and apologised for by the servants of Satan who come as angels of light but are wolves in sheep’s clothing. God cannot be mocked by any jesuitical casuistry although men daringly try to do so. We as a Church have so far, by grace, resisted this inroad of the enemy and it is to be hoped that this testimony will be upheld till the end. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” Worship after Sabbath travelling or secular work is only a farce, and purely formal “not in spirit and in truth.” God can be sought in private dwellings if a place of worship is too far away in the providence of God. He is not unreasonable. We are not to have thoughts about the world or to speak about the world. Alas! how far short men come of what God requires. We cannot be too narrow or exclusive in the things of God. We are in danger of being too lax even compared to the standard set by our forefathers in these matters. Scotland has backslidden terribly from her former attainments even within living memory. How much idle chat and gossip there is among professing disciples of the Lord to-day on the day of rest from worldly affairs! A godly man of bygone days was in the company of ministers who were chatting about worldly topics on the Sabbath. They noticed him looking for his bonnet and when they asked him what he was looking for he said it was the Sabbath. So he had to go outside in pursuit of the Sabbath. The positive aspect of observing the Lord’s Day is to call it instead of a weariness, a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable. The regenerated soul is able to call it thus and to act accordingly. The Holy Spirit makes the Sabbath a heaven on earth to all whom He calls from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. It is now too short instead of too long as it was when the person was unrenewed and unsanctified by God’s grace. Not only the love of God is poured into the hearts of His people. There is love to His law imparted in them because it is a law of love. The love of God the Saviour cannot co-exist with the love of sin in any form. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” If people did this their peace would be as a river and their righteousness as the waves of the sea. Parents should train up their children to honour the Lord in His Day by spending the whole time in public and private devotion except the works of necessity and mercy as the Shorter Catechism says. We have to put the Most High’s honour and glory before any earthly gain and even losses. God will recompense any temporal loss a person may have to suffer for conscience sake by giving a hundredfold in this life, and in the world to come everlasting life.
III. The Reward or Rewards for Obedience.
The rewards are temporal and spiritual. He promises that the soul will delight himself in God and He will give Him his heart’s desire. If you feel you are at enmity with the Almighty and cannot love Him He will enable you to do so Himself. As there is a curse pronounced on Sabbath-breakers there is a blessing for those who keep it in spirit and in truth. It is a discipline for the whole man. Those who fear the Lord sufficiently to avoid evil thoughts and words and actions on that day will likely try to flee from every appearance of evil on other days. It is hypocrisy to hold a fast and smite with the fist of wickedness. The self control exercised by former generations of Scotsmen on the Lord’s Day was what made them so upright and trustworthy in all their dealings with their fellows. The national character was made by the meticulous regard for the Sabbath in public and private life and as a reward God exalted us to a name and a place above all nations. “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” We got a precious heritage and woe betide us if we do not jealously guard it and hand it down to generations yet to come. It is the most valuable inheritance that we can give to future generations. Our poor Church has to suffer ridicule in the press and scorn from high and low for endeavouring to maintain a testimony in a backsliding age. If we are not ashamed of Christ and confess Him, He will not be ashamed of us when the heavens are no more. Satan is evidently bent on destroying our Church, if he can manage it, both by external and internal opposition, on account of our standing against Sabbath desecration. Whatever faults our denomination may have, we have resisted this flood of ungodliness by a public testimony. Mis-spent Sabbaths and lost opportunities will yet confront men either in mercy or judgment. Let careless souls take heed before it is too late. There can be no repentance of a saving kind in eternity. There is no hope for the impenitent sinner on the other side of death. It is now, in this world, that we have to exercise repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Would that there were many Ephraims smiting on their thighs for mis-spent Sabbaths!