Summary 

In our productivity-obsessed culture, the Fourth Commandment's call to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy challenges our assumptions about work and rest. The Hebrew word for Sabbath means to cease or stop, but this commandment requires more than mental acknowledgment—it demands action that sets apart one day specifically for God's use in worship.

God's design includes both work and rest. The commandment begins with six days of labor, recognizing that we are created in God's image as workers and creators. Research confirms that we were designed to work, as unemployment correlates with increased mental health challenges. However, we were also designed to rest, with studies showing productivity decreases after about 50 hours of work per week. The Sabbath should function as our Christian holiday—a day of celebration and delight rather than burdensome restrictions.

Transcript

Father in heaven, we come before you and we ask God for you to work, for you to speak. And I pray that we would be those who can, having been with you and tasted of the things of God, and heard from your word, say that your law is sweeter than honey and to be more desired than gold and silver, and that it is our joy to walk in your ways, to delight in your paths, God to follow the ways of our Lord Jesus. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. Or we think of how you tell us that the. The grass withers and the flowers, they fade.
Things of this world are passing, but the word of the Lord stands forever. So God, speak to us. We pray now. Amen. All right.
I want to suggest to you that we keep time in all kinds of ways. It's not a hard suggestion. This is something you can get behind easily. Many of us keep our time by the rhythms of the school year. Messiah students graduating.
There's fewer people this week.
So many of you educators, you are understandably tired. And you have been running the great marathon. It is like the 25th mile. Just keep going, okay? It is soon to be here.
The end of the school year is just around the corner, which also means summer break is soon here, which for you mothers may induce a little bit of anxiety. And for your children, you're jumping up and down, you're like, yes, sleeping in. And what's most of all, no homework. Many of us keep time, of course, with sports, maybe Penn State games, maybe Hershey Bears season, more likely your own children going from volleyball to basketball to soccer to baseball to swimming to.
And you can think of other seasons that we observe. I know for some of you and others beyond who I'm looking at theater season, a whole season. And you've given your life to this, to devoting yourself to learning your parts, your words, your blocking, all of that. I know quite a few of you have been involved in various plays. All of us, in a way, what I'm suggesting to you is we keep time to one degree or another, around days and weeks and months and years, or as Ezekiel and Hosea and the Chronicler and Paul, writing in Colossians chapter two, says, festivals and new moons and sabbaths, right?
We keep time. We keep our time by our birthdays, by our years, by our decades. I find that as I get older, the birthday each year doesn't matter as much, but the fifth one seems to kind of get me a little bit. Maybe some of you are to the point where you're like, it's not the fifth one, it's the 10th that you kind of mark. We keep time by the jobs we've had, the children we've borne.
We keep time, of course, around civic holidays like Memorial Day and Independence Day and Veterans Day and Juneteenth. Much of the church keeps time by the great works of God. Christmas, the birth of Christ, Easter, Pentecost. And today is Mother's Day. Mother's Day was first celebrated on May 10th.
Not this. May 10th. May 10th, 118 years ago in 1908. It was actually recognized, though six years later, by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. And the first day that it was recognized was a Sunday that was again May 10th.
What happened was that Anna Jarvis had established it initially in honor of her mother. Her mother had passed away two years prior, in 1905. And her mother was a remarkable woman. She also bore the same name, Anna Jarvis. And her mother had borne 12 children, almost all of whom had died of various diseases.
Diphtheria, I read, and others. But Anna Jarvis's mother, who's also Anna Jarvis, this gets a little confusing, maybe had begun, particularly right before and after the Civil War. Women's work clubs and women's work days, and these existed for the blessing of their neighbors. She knew the pain of childbearing. She knew the pain of child loss.
And she saw the plight of so many women around her and sought to love them and care for them and also to gather them together to love and serve one another. And actually, one thing I read, which I thought was lovely, is that. So this was. She lived in West Virginia, and one of the commitments of these clubs was that they cared for Union and Confederates the exact same. They said, we are going to love all of our neighbors in these acts.
We're not going to discriminate on who gets our care. We are going to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so her daughter started this day that we remember today, May 10, 2026, in her honor, in her remembrance. And one of the things that she did actually, from the get go, was she said a white carnation is the symbol of this day because her mother worked towards the peace and care of others. So a white flower would symbolize this day.
Just out of interest. This actually isn't even in my notes. One of the things that I read is that she sort of detested the card industry that came up around her day. But then in her older age, she didn't have much money. And, you know, who paid her nursing Home bills, the card companies that made so much off of Mother's Day.
Anyway, that's not in my. I don't know what that has to do with what necessarily what I'm talking about today, but today is a day of remembrance, right? It's a day of remembering and it's a day actually of celebrating peace and efforts towards peace and a day of remembering those who bless others and who give of themselves for the well being of those about them. In a way, we could say even Mother's Day is inappropriately a kind of Sabbath. And while I don't think that as I kind of talk about Sabbath observance, I don't think that many of you have serious quibbles with days to remember.
The general idea that we have certain days, that we remember certain things and that we celebrate them and we observe them. You don't probably push back on the idea of Mother's Day too much if you do it all, or celebrating your anniversary if you do, don't tell your spouse. Or maybe the establishment of days that remember help us remember, like the birthing of our nation and the history of our nation. You probably don't have a lot of problem with that kind of thing. You probably don't have a lot of problem with Christians celebrating the birth of Christ or his crucifixion and resurrection.
But there are a lot of people that have a lot of quibbles around the idea that right there in the middle of the Ten Commandments, near the middle of the Ten Commandments, we are told. No, it's not just that we are told. It is a moral command. It is part of the moral law that we believe is actually in nature itself that God gives us a rhythm to life, a day to observe. One day in seven.
Honor the Sabbath day. Keep it holy. Truth is, there's been a lot written about the Sabbath. One of the things I told Melissa is that I'm kind of nervous about this sermon because there is so much that could be said. There's so much that could be read from the Didache in the early church, to John Mark Comer today, from John Calvin to Wendell Berry's wonderful Sabbath poems, from Martin Luther, who wrote about the Sabbath, to Dan Allender, who's written about the Sabbath.
There's just a lot.
But I also want to suggest to you that as you read the Ten Commandments, it may be the commandment, the singular commandment, that you kind of go, wow, okay, I understand how they're all summ by love God and love your neighbor, but what about this one? You're like, don't have other gods. Don't make idols. Don't take his name in vain. I understand how that, like, I'm not always sure how do you apply that, but I understand that that relates to loving God.
You go on the other side, you go, you know, don't lie and murder and covet and adultery. You're, like, applying it. Interesting, the fact that it has to do with loving our neighbors. I think it's a given. Right.
But then right here you have this one in seven, day rest. What does that have to do with God and neighbor and us and all that? Well, like, I've said that there's a lot more that could be said than I have time. Unless. Do y' all want to just skip brunch?
You want to settle in? No. Okay. So this morning, what I'd like to do is I'd like us to consider the commandment here with sort of just basic. Some basic questions.
What, how and why. Okay, what. What is this commandment? Well, what are we told to do? Well, it's kind of simple.
Verse 8, if you have your Bible open, it just says this. Remember the Sabbath day. Keep it holy. So it says. It says to keep it holy, but it says, keep it holy.
That word is actually just one word, to keep it holy. Remember Sabbath day, keep it holy. Sabbath. You may know this, but it comes from the. It's just the Hebrew word that means cease, rest, stop.
So we're supposed to remember ceasing.
What this assumes is that ceasing and resting had already happened. It had already been a pattern, and it had at least two ways. We know that it had been a pattern already. One way that ceasing one day in seven had already happened was through the story of the gift of manna. And it's just a few chapters earlier, in the book of Exodus, you'll remember that God's people were brought out from slavery and brought.
And they were in the wilderness. They're being brought to Sinai, where they would receive the covenant and the law and all this. And they don't have food. And God provides for them, and he provides for them this manna, and they are to gather it up. In a way, you could say that God was working and they were working.
But then God says, on the sixth day, gather enough for the seventh day, because I'm going to rest from providing it, and you're going to rest from gathering it. You can say both God's provision and their gathering ceased. God's work and their Work, they took a break. But remembering goes back further. It certainly goes back further for those who observe the Holy Scriptures.
We're going to come back around to this a little bit. But they are to remember that God not only saved them, but the God who redeemed them out from slavery was also the God who made all things. And He Himself finished His work of creation and he ceased from doing it. And he observed a time of just stopping, resting, delighting in what he made. So.
So we're called to remember. And we're specifically called to remember by ceasing. We're called to remember God's creation and his preservation, his creation and his redemption.
But here's what I want to suggest to you. So when I say remember something, primarily, probably what you're thinking is, oh, I'm going to think about it.
Imagine with me the newly married couple. One year into their marriage, their first anniversary. They wake up in the morning. Husband doesn't say much to his wife, has his coffee, heads off to work. They both come home, they make dinner, they go on a walk.
They watch the next episode of the Office. Because who doesn't? They get ready for bed. And lying there in bed, he turns over to his wife and looks at her. And he's attentive enough to see that her eyes are swelling up.
They're becoming red. They're gathering water. And he says, what's wrong? What's wrong?
Well, I thought you would remember that today is our anniversary. I did.
Where are my flowers? Where is my card? Why didn't we go out to dinner? Why didn't she buy me something? And his response is, honey, I was remembering all day long.
I was thinking about just how wonderful it was when we said our I dos. Isn't that what remembering is anyway? What's going to be her response? No, no, that is not how we remember.
So we're called to remember Sabbath. And Sabbath is a ceasing, it's a resting.
But the second thing that we are told when we come to this. What? And this will begin to lead us into the how a little bit, okay? Is that we're to keep it holy. We're to Kadesh it, we're to consecrate it.
What does this mean?
Because it's not just a mental exercise, right? Sit here and think.
This word to make holy means to set something apart for God's use. Particularly for God's use in worship. Okay? Specifically for God's use in worship. It's very easy.
I just did a quick word study of this Word in the book of Exodus it comes up 24 times. And one of those probably isn't for necessarily the sake of worship. All the rest could be possibly, maybe there's two that maybe aren't. Every single use of this word kadesh after this command, all 19 of them that come in the second half of Exodus have to do with consecrating something, setting it aside, making it holy, kadeshing it for the use of worship in the place of God's worship. So utensils are kadeshed for the tabernacle and the gowns that the priests were supposed to wear and things like that.
But I share that to say that the what here is. It is. There is a ceasing from our normal life, but it's a ceasing that is Godward. It's a God word ceasing.
Years ago there was somebody here at our church. I'm not going to say their name, even though I don't think many of you would know them because it was a little while ago. Let's call their name Peter. Just for illustration's sake. So Peter hadn't been in worship for a little while, maybe had come here and there, but mostly had been absent.
And I saw Peter and I said, hey, I haven't seen you around a little while. What's going on? And Peter replies, I just needed a Sabbath. And by which that was implied. What I needed was a break.
And that break needed to include worship. I needed a mental break, maybe a physical break in life. I've been overwhelmed. And that needed to include the gathering together of the saints of God.
That is not Christian Sabbathing. Okay, let me just be like really frank. We are commanded to gather together to make it our habit to be with the Lord's people. And this command specifically is setting aside time a day, it is for rest. We're going to get into a little bit of that, I hope with.
With all the time that we have. But this is a Godward ceasing. And it is a Godward ceasing that at least includes gathering together with God's people, consecrating ourselves in the place of worship. There have never been faithful God loving commandment honoring Christians who have taken it to mean ceasing from that.
In fact, when God's people have done that and when we have used the day for our own pleasure, as the scriptures tell us, it invites God's correction. So what is this command? This command is to remember. And that is an act of remembering that is primarily oriented Godward. How do we live our Life in a restful way, ceasing from our normal way of being in the world towards God.
Okay, so the next thing is how? Look with me down at verses nine and ten now. Okay, so verse eight said, remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. Verse nine, six days you shall labor and do all your work. 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. Okay, the first thing that you'll notice when we ask this question, how, how do we observe Sabbath and keep it holy? Is the first thing is labor. Interesting. The first way that we apply this in a way is you work.
It says six days, you may. It doesn't say may, does it? It says, you shall work six days. Work. In the Bible to image God is to be a worker, to be a creator, to be active and moving things and shaping things, nurturing children, teaching, writing laws, all the various things that we use our mind and our bodies for to bless this world.
We can say a lot of what it means to be made into God's image. There's a lot that's been written about that. But the first six days, the sixth day in which humankind were made male and female in God's image, was the sixth workday of God. So at least we can say that part of being made in the image of God is laboring and finding laboring to be actually part of what we are made for. Just a year and a half ago, in the peer reviewed journal Frontiers in Public Health, there was an article that was published and this is the name of the article.
Unemployment and Mental Health. A global study of Unemployment's influence on diverse Mental Disorders. This is what I found wild about this study is that this study studied 201 countries from the year 1970 to 2020. It was a 50 year long study around mental health and unemployment.
The results are not that surprising. What is the mental health of somebody who is not working well? Greater anxiety and greater depression, of course, but also there's correlations with eating disorder and with drug use. And then the thing that I actually was somewhat surprised by is that there's actually a correlation between bipolar disease and unemployment over this 50 year study. That was one of the things that they found.
The bottom line is that you were actually made to work. You were part of being made in the image of God is labor. Six days.
This is one of the hows. How do we observe this commandment. We devote ourselves to the work we've been given to do.
But we also know that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and often Jill a widow. So just after we're told to work, the how of applying this commandment is devote yourself to the work that God's given you to do. But we're also told, so we are to rest.
It's kind of wild that what the Bible says is that you are not just made to be productive in your life.
The Sabbath thing is not a very productive thing, but it's a very necessary thing. I read this week that Bill Gates, when asked why he didn't believe in God, he said this just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I would be doing on Sunday mornings. The thing that's probably most indicting about that is that there's a lot more that Christians would be doing on Sunday mornings than gathering together to worship the Lord. But probably many of you are aware of the various social experiments of the French Revolution.
Much of them was pushing religion aside, as you are likely aware. And so part of that was pushing aside this Judeo kind of Christian pattern, which we do actually believe is rooted in the scriptures, even though it's become an international reality of the seven day work and rest pattern, the six days of work and the day of rest. And so the French Revolution moved that into a 10 day work week. What happened? I mean, the economy plummeted, suicide rates skyrocketed, productivity went down and they had to stop it.
It did not work. The truth is that as much as you were made to work, you were also made to rest.
What I also read this week is that there's a certain amount of work hours in a week that once you hit them, your productivity either stagnates or it actually goes down. Does anybody know that number 50, which is more or less six days of work? Consider that for the great majority of the world, you couldn't work once the sun went down.
World history.
One study found that there was zero difference in productivity between workers who logged 70 hours and those who logged 55. Zero difference in productivity. So work and rest. Work to the glory of God. Rest to the glory of God.
But also, my guess is you are also saying, but how do I apply this? Maybe you're thinking of the Pharisees, right, who got so mad at Jesus all the time because he's healing on the Sabbath. Or the story that we read in Mark, chapter two, where his Disciples plucked a grain. Grain, right. And they ate it on the Sabbath.
Now, Jesus knew that that wasn't part of the command. But what the Pharisees did is that they labor. They layered on command after command so that you wouldn't work on the Sabbath. And they actually had 39 different commands applying this. And one of them is, don't even pluck grains because you were working.
Maybe you've heard that in the Qumran community. Probably many of you have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those were from the Qumran community. The Qumran community took it. Than the Pharisees.
They were the really devout ones. And so you couldn't carry your child around on the Sabbath. You couldn't help an animal who went into labor on the Sabbath. Maybe some of you have read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Remember Alfonso saying Sunday was not a day for working or playing.
It was a day for going to church and sitting still. And you might remember how the characters in that book just thought of the Sabbath as a burden and not a delight, because all it was for was reciting the catechism. So how do we apply this?
Isaiah 58 tells us that we are to call the Sabbath a delight. How do we make the Sabbath a delight? What I want to suggest to you is that beyond this pattern of work and rest that we're called to, and beyond it being primarily focused, and firstly focused in worship, because it is a day set apart as holy, consecrated kadesht to the Lord. It is the Christian holy day. Which is to say it is the Christian holiday.
Okay? This is the Christian holiday.
And actually, if you get. If you. If you look back with me at verse 10, what does it say? But the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work.
You or your son or your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your livestock, the sojourner who is within your gates. It is for all of the laborers to have a day off, have a holiday. Why did Labor Day begin? Right. What do we do with like July 4th?
We all take a break and we celebrate what's happened. Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister in the mid part of the 20th century, he called the fourth commandment, the first and greatest workers protection act in history. This is a labor movement act way before the Industrial Revolution, invited us to ask questions about labor union rights. This is the beginning of it. This is a holiday.
It's a break. Yes. Work. Amen. Yes.
Rest and mark your rest by worship. Amen. Do not neglect the Gathering together of saints on this holy day. But make your Sabbath. I want.
This is the question I would love for you all to talk about around your. Your lunch tables. Okay? How can we make the Sabbath or the day that we set aside for God a little more like a holiday? Should we eat ice cream?
Yes, we should. You know, should we reserve maybe the best bottles of wine for Sundays? Amen. Right. What do we need to do to say this is a holy holiday?
This is a day to celebrate God's work of creation, his work of redemption. Eat your favorite food on this day. Reserve it for this day. Delight yourself in the goodness of creation on this day. Okay, so some of the what, some of the how, now the why?
Okay, let me get to this a little. Little bit. Well, why? Think with me. Why do you keep the time that you do?
Why do we keep time around sports?
Maybe we're building a certain kind of culture around that. We're demonstrating our loves through that. The things that we think define us and make us who we are. Why do we observe Independence Day or Juneteenth?
Why do we think it's important to gather together on these days?
Why do we do these things?
I would suggest that we are telling certain stories that make us who we are. We're telling about our past and how we've gotten to where we are. But we're also desiring to be a certain kind of person in the world and people in the world.
We're marking our lives not just by our time, but we use our time based on what we love and what we cherish and who we desire to be, what we aspire towards. How you mark your time says an immense amount about your heart.
Immense amount about your heart, what you dwell on and what you desire. So verse 6, or sorry, not verse 6, verse 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. But a lot of you also know that actually the Ten Commandments aren't just found in the book of Exodus, in Exodus, chapter 20, but they are also found in the book of deuteronomy in chapter five of Deuteronomy. And when we get to chapter five of Deuteronomy, this is sort of the why. Verse 15 of chapter five, it says, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and with outstretched arm.
Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to Keep the Sabbath day. So why do we keep. Why keep one day in seven? Well, one of the things the Bible doesn't say is it's good for your mental health. It's good for you to work six days and have a break.
You're less likely to live into anxiety and depression. You're less likely to have bipolar disease, these kinds of things. And, you know, it doesn't say your productivity more or less flatlines in the 50s anyway, so just take a break.
The Bible doesn't present it to you as practical, but as theological, which I would suggest to you. It has to do with our relationship with God, which has to do with our relationship with our heart, our love.
Why? Why do this? Because the Creator God loves you like the One who made all things. He put a pattern into the world that reflects him. And he desires for you to live into his image, to reflect him because he loves you.
But he also redeemed you, right? Deuteronomy says it was because you were once a slave, which is to say your identity was in the fact that you worked and you worked incessantly, and that was all that was who you were, and that is no longer who you are. You are not a slave any longer. Freed person. Your identity is not bound up in just what you accomplish and what you do and all of your productivity.
I freed you from that. Your life is oriented around what I have done and what I've done for you.
Why were they told to observe this commandment? Because they were defined now by their relationship with this God, this Creator and this Redeemer. He's the one that shaped their life, made them who they are.
No doubt some of you may think that this is the one of the ten Commandments that changed when Jesus came here. We can keep the rest of them. It's probably good to not encourage people to murder. Coveting, we know is bad, but you're like, I don't know about this, the Fourth Commandment, I don't know about this. Or maybe you think it went, you know, maybe you think it went away altogether.
Probably many of you know that early, early on, actually, as soon as we know, sort of in the Book of Acts, the community around Jesus shifted when they gathered together. And actually in the New Testament, multiple times it's called the Lord's Day. They shift this idea of Sabbath to a day called the Lord's day. In fact, B.B. warfield, the great 19th century Princeton theologian, said Christ took the Sabbath into the grave with him and he brought the Lord's Day out of the grave with him on that resurrection.
Morn. Why do we believe that this pattern is still a good pattern and something actually to be delighted in and to be sought after? We should actually seek to work and to rest and to ob this commandment. Part of it is that we worship the Creator God, the One who spoke the world into being, and he lives into this pattern. Part of it's because he brought us out from slavery, where we just find our identity and the things that we do, the work that we accomplish, he's brought us out from that.
But most of all because he has invited us into the rest that was accomplished on the cross and the resurrection, where Jesus says himself on the cross, it is finished. Jesus gives us a whole new meaning to work and to rest. He comes into the world to finish the work of the Father. And because his work is finished, we actually are invited to enter into his rest. So that is everlasting.
As Hebrews tells us, on the basis of his love, we are not defined by what we do, but by what he has done. On the basis of his work, we can find rest for our weary souls. On the basis of his work, we're brought from slavery to freedom, from death to life.
The great why of why we do this is because Christ rose from the dead. If you want a reason to have a holiday, a holy day for Christians, there is no better reason, right? Every Sunday is an Easter in a way. Every Sunday, Gosh, wouldn't it be great if every Sunday y' all all made cakes and we all toasted? But part of what I'm saying is do that in your, in your life.
Ask the Lord, how do I do that? How do I celebrate a little bit more the reality that I was brought from slavery to sin, to new life in Christ?
What, how, why, why do we do all this time keeping.
If you think back on Mother's Day, if you think of Mother's Day today, I love that that woman was so persistent, Anna Jarvis, that it got the attention of the President and that she wanted to mark it with a white flower that marked peace because she said this is a necessary thing to celebrate. We must celebrate those who pursue peace, nurture others in well being and well living. I mean, I don't know how you can't hear that story and say, yes, that is a good thing. Brothers and sisters, enter into the rest of Christ, work hard, but rest well. Jesus has accomplished it.
You don't have to keep treading. He invites you into his rest. Let's just collectively say, let's love and delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it and put it on and seek to live for him. As we think about how do we rest one day in seven. Let me pray for us.
Lord, thankful for the pattern of life that you've given us. God, we know that applying it is so tricky, but I pray that you give us creativity and grace, that we would follow in the way of Christ, who healed so often on the Sabbath because it was a day of recreation, a day of healing, a day of grace. God, I pray that we would be those who desire to meet with you on this holy day, that we find our life in you. That calling the Lord's Day a holiday would not be something that makes us scratch our heads or question or be be disgruntled about, but something that we desire and pursue.
That your work on the cross and the empty grave would mark our lives just as the many other days that we observe mark them. God, would this be our reality, our being, that we were made in the image of the true God who made all things, that we were brought out of slavery to yourself and we were brought from death to life in the cross and resurrection of Christ, whose name we pray. Amen.

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