The Fourth Commandment
*The following post was originally written as a meditation for our Confession of Sin during Lord’s Day worship.
Confession of Sin
Acknowledging our guilt; resting in His grace.
The Fourth Commandment:
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. (Exodus 20:8-11)
God’s Sabbath commandment calls his people to three primary things:
To take rest from our own work,
To give rest to others from their work,
And to devote the fullness of the day to God’s worship both publicly and privately.
For this morning, we will primarily be considering only the first of these.
In the frantic pace of our world, and in the intense pressures we place upon ourselves (and allow others to place upon us) in our vocations, we desperately need God to forbid us to work on His holy day.
We are called to obey God whether we fully understand or agree with the reasons standing behind his commands or not. He is Lord, not us. Yet, it is not hard to see why we desperately need this holy commandment to cease from our work and recenter our lives upon our God.
• This commandment reminds us that: Our identity is not to be found in what we produce.
Are you restless when you are not productive?
Do you find it very difficult to disconnect from your work?
• This commandment reminds us that: Our sense of value is not to be found in what worldly positions, possessions, or status’ we hold.
Does your position or do your possessions make you feel like a somebody? Would you feel like a lesser person without them?
• This commandment reminds us that: Our sense of peace is not to be found in the lie that our own determination and effort is what is holding our life together.
Do you frequently find yourself exhausted, stressed out, and frantically trying to control all the details of your life?
• This commandment reminds us that: Our sense of security is not to be found in what we think we can provide for ourselves.
What does the ordering of your life say you are really trusting in to be your provider and to meet your needs?
• Lastly, this commandment reminds reminds us that: For our own good, our loving Father in heaven demands that the ordering of our lives not be dictated by the pressures and desires of this world, but by the God for whom both we and this world exist.
Not theoretically, but practically, what is at the center of the way your life is currently structured/organized?
All of these false notions are sinful because they rob God of the glory He alone deserves by competing for the faith and devotion of our hearts. They seek to obtain from our hearts those things which only rightly belong to God. They seek to claim lordship over our family dynamics, our time, our thoughts, our concerns, our commitments, and ultimately our worship.
The final verse of this command (Exodus 20:11) recalls where all things began in order to remind us that:
Our God is the Creator of all things.
He is the Sustainer of all things.
And, He alone is the Provider for His people.
He knows our needs, and He has called us to trust Him and obey Him in how we order our lives according to His holy Word.
Let us come to him in confession now, knowing that he is gracious and kind, tender and forgiving. All of us need his grace, and he welcomes struggling sinners like us when we come to him in faith and repentance. Let’s run to Jesus.
We invite you to privately confess your sins before the Lord now. — (A TIME OF SILENT CONFESSION)
Assurance of God’s Forgiveness
37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. (John 6:37-39)