10 Commandments Today, 5of14

~ Keep The Sabbath Day Holy ~

Key Passage  ~  Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.  I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).

Old Testament Command (#4)  ~  “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.  For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.  Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-11).

“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.  In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.  And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:12-15). 

New Testament Responsibility  ~  Jesus said, “Now it happened that He went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain.  And the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’  But He said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?’  And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.  Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:23-28).

Additional Passage  ~  “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

Comment  ~  God knows man needs rest.  We are created “in His image” (Genesis 1:27, 5:1).  God, the Creator, rested on the seventh day following the six days of His work of creation (Genesis 2:2-3).  We are to be “imitators of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). 

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

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