Sabbath Services
Today in our study of Mark’s gospel, we begin a three-part miniseries on Jesus’ relationship to the fourth commandment: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. [9] Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: [10] But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: [11] For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11). This is the longest of the commandments, which being longer than the other nine, necessarily gives more explanation to its observance. However, this commandment loses ground to the briefer statements such as “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “thou shalt not steal.” When we think of the commandments, we give greater weight to these than the fourth, and think we have more latitude to disobey the fourth than the others. Most Christians are callous towards the fourth while appalled at anyone who carelessly misbehaves with six through eight. This way of regarding the commandments is backwards from Jewish practices in the first century.
The fourth commandment became the Jews’ test of faithfulness to the law. This command was at the center with the others revolving around it. It was the grand symbol of their piety, and thus many added restrictions were part of its observance which defeated God’s purpose of making it spiritually healthy. The Sabbath was their greatest burden not their greatest joy in worshipping the Lord.
Most of us would not feel right if we posted the Ten Commandments on the wall only to discover with closer inspection, we left out the fourth. The Ten Commandments are not the ten, they are the nine. Surprisingly, many good Bible teachers are agreeable to this. They struck the fourth commandment from the law leaving us without a specified sanctified day to worship the Lord. I could call the names of these proponents who would be familiar to you, but I shall leave them anonymous. This temptation is detrimental to the church. The result of the missing commandment is the lack of shame for missing corporate worship. There is no shame for taking the Lord’s Day to use for us.
In the early days of Christianity in this country, the expectation of every church member was to hallow the day by making sure they were present for worship. There were disciplinary measures taken for its neglect. The church will certainly act against murderers, adulterers, thieves, and an idol in the backyard. We are less likely to make a fuss or enact disciplinary measures because a member misses a few Sundays. In our defense, we do have a lenient time limit, but admittedly do not often treat it as seriously as the others.
This failure to hold up to the standard leaves us where we are today. While you would not easily fornicate (I hope), you will easily absent yourself from worship. The double standard with the fourth commandment has gradually eroded the church so that we feel uncomfortable speaking of it. I believe most of you expect me to give greater attention to the others and leave number four alone. Thus, we have nine commandments not ten.
The Jews of Jesus’ day were wrong in their perversions of the commandment. They were, however, correct in considering it as important as the others. Though Israel was guilty of breaking all the commandments, it was commandments one, two, and four that God held over their heads and sent them into captivity. By the time religious parties formed among the Jews in the intertestamental period and the memory of the captivities and their current occupation by a foreign power was on their minds, the benchmark of their piety was in place. The Sabbath Day was the pinnacle of their religion. We do not want to repeat their mistakes, but neither do we want to miss the mark and come short of the glory of God with disobedience to the command to reserve the Sabbath rest for public worship.
Pastor V. Mark Smith