Audio Worship, 8/2/2026, "Fourth Commandment - What is Required" Exodus 20.8-11

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1741

August 2, 2026

Exodus 20.8-11           Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“Fourth Commandment – What is Required”

 

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 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. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 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.

 

  • Remember

 

The Fourth Commandment in the book of Exodus begins with the word remember. This certainly includes the negative form as well, as in do not forget the Sabbath. One of Israel’s constant sins was failure to remember. They would not remember what God had done for them in their deliverance from Egypt, and in that selective amnesia, they either took credit themselves or gave credit to the beasts of burden that led to the worship of a golden calf. The word remember is a positive command and is given because it is to our advantage and benefit to remember the Sabbath. In one sense the command to remember is a way to help us prepare for the Sabbath, and secondly, to plan our week around the Sabbath. Every day belongs to God, but the Sabbath is the Lord’s day in a special way precisely because it has been set apart for the reasons given in the Commandment.

Culturally we are encouraged to look forward to the weekend. For many people it is five days of work, Wednesday is hump day, and then on to TGIF. That pattern is perhaps not as prevalent as it once was, but what if we, the people of God, emphasized more the anticipation of the Sabbath? What if we thought ahead enough to plan our week around Sabbath? Too often, Sabbath Sunday is an afterthought. It has become just one day of the weekend and for so many people it is a day to sleep in and it is treated as a day to get some things done rather than the day set apart by God for worship and rest.

I do not want to rebuke anyone today! But I guess I just did. Some people criticize the church for a lot of the problems of the world today. They say we have not stood up against the tide of worldliness and failed to seize the day in the public square, and they might be correct in some ways, but one of the things we have done is failure to keep the Fourth Commandment as God intended. We do tend to treat the Sabbath with a sense of carelessness, neglecting the witness it can give to the world. God set this day aside, made it sacred, holy, and therefore extremely important. In Exodus 16 God commanded the Israelites to gather twice as much bread (manna) and prepare it before the Sabbath so that they would not gather or bake on the Sabbath day. We have a tendency to lighten the requirements of Sabbath.

Remember the Sabbath day. The Sabbath day was established as a part of the created order. The Sabbath day points us back to creation and points us to redemption in Christ as well. Sabbath helps us not only remember the day, but all the significance of remembering the Creator and the Redeemer. So the Psalmist speaks of the coming Messiah, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. 24This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118.22-24). And in Acts 4.10-12, Peter spoke these words to the religious leaders about that same cornerstone, “let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” This truly is the day the Lord has made and we are to rejoice in it because this is the day that Jesus was raised from the dead. It is the Lord’s day that is to be remembered because God is our Creator and our Redeemer.

We remember that God worked for six days and then rested from His labor. God blessed the seventh day. The Sabbath day became a gift to creation, a gift to us, that we might find rest from our work. The Fourth Commandment looks back to creation.

We remember the slavery of Israel in Egypt. Israel was set free from the bondage of working seven days a week. Deuteronomy 5, the other list of the Ten Commandments, adds, not a reference to creation, but to the exodus: “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 an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (15). We so easily become slaves again: slaves to the idols of consumerism, idols of work, idols of production. All the idols of this world seek to make us forget the Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath.

We remember creation and freedom from slavery – and we remember the gift of Sabbath, a time to rest, to reflect, to re-create, to pray, study. Sabbath offers us the opportunity to imagine a world different from the one we see daily on our televisions, on social media, and all the other mediums of the world. Sabbath invites us to the reality of God’s kingdom, a kingdom of abundance and rest, of rhythm and time, of ceasing and resting, of feasting and embracing the finest that God has for us. The first verb is to remember the Sabbath. The second is to keep the Sabbath holy.

  • Keep

 

To keep the Sabbath holy we are to set Sunday apart from the other days. We are to practice a Sabbath rest. We are to sanctify this day. Keeping Sabbath is a commandment toward a beautiful rhythm of life. Some people want to argue that we are not practicing the Sabbath on Saturday, but the resurrection of Jesus changed that and there is a tremendous amount of evidence that the early Church worshiped on Sunday, the first day of the week. Acts 20.7 is one example, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them…” To the Corinthians Paul wrote about taking up a collection and the implication was that it would be done when the people gathered to worship, “Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come” (1 Corinthians 16.1-2). We keep the Sabbath on Sunday because Christ was raised on Sunday.

Revelation 1.10 speaks of John having his vision on the Lord’s Day, a day that quickly became regarded as the day Christ rose from the dead. This too is a part of our remembrance, the resurrection of Christ. We set this day apart to keep the gospel before us each Sunday, to keep the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ at the forefront of our thoughts and devotion. We worship the Messiah who gave His life for sinners. The Sabbath, therefore, reminds us of the story, the larger narrative of the Bible. God created, Adam and Eve sinned, Jesus redeemed, and the promise of creation restored. We keep this day holy because of the holiness of God and to remember all that He has done in the history from Genesis to Revelation.

 

  • Work

I want to say a brief word on what the Fourth Commandment says about work. We emphasize rest and worship most of the time, but the Commandment also commands work. Work is a part of the rhythm of life given to us by God who Himself worked six days in creation and rested on the seventh day. Sometimes I am asked how this relates to those who have retired from their “work”. One possible answer is that our work in service to the Lord is never done. We are still at work with God to nurture those around us, and in particular in the family. To mentor, to assist, to advise, to resource, to encourage, to give witness, etc. In that sense it relates to doing all to the glory of God, work or retirement. 1 Corinthians 10.31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” We are all equipped to do the work.

 

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,” (Ephesians 4.11-12).

 

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3.16-17).

We may retire from our employment, but that does not mean our work is done!

 

  • Rest

We are sometimes wearied by our work, a lot of the time we are wearied by the constant bad new in the world. We are tired of sin and all the corruption and crooked ways we see generation after generation. We are wearied by our own sinful weakness. We need rest from all these things. God rested on the seventh day. This day is blessed by God for the sake of rest. The Hebrew word for rest is naphash and it means to be refreshed. It comes from the word nephesh, which means soul, life, self, person, and a few similar meanings. The basic meaning of what God does in rest is to get refreshment of self. This is so foreign to us because we never would consider God expending energy in such a way that He has to get any energy back. But the Hebrew is courageous this way. It is the thought that God worked six days of creation and on the seventh day He rested.

That God rested is clear in the Commandment. But what does that mean? We know what it means for us. We know what it is like to get tired and need rest. We know what it means for us to get refreshed. Perhaps we just let that notion about God remain a mystery, and “let it rest”! There is the story of 2 Samuel 16.14, when king David was refreshed, “And the king, and all the people who were with him, arrived weary at the Jordan. And there he refreshed himself.” He got some “self” back!” When our work takes energy and life from us, when we are wearied, rest restores the life, the nephesh, like getting our life returned to us, that which has been spent or expended work. The refreshment here is like a breath of fresh air. It is God breathing life into Adam or Jesus breathing upon the disciples in John 20. It is the trust we place in the Lord, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones” (Proverbs 3.5-8). Consider Proverbs 3 as closely tied to keeping Sabbath. In keeping Sabbath holy we are trusting the Lord and not leaning on our own understanding. We are acknowledging Him as Creator and Redeemer. We remember the Sabbath in order to revere the Lord and turn away from evil. The result of keeping Commandment is this: “It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones”

 

Sabbath allows us to reorder our time, to reclaim our time and space and align our lives with the divine rhythm of work and rest. Sabbath is a gift wherein we reclaim our life. Sabbath is the Command to which we can rededicate our lives in order to find our life again, to be refreshed.

On the Sabbath we receive the blessings of knowing that God loves us and redeems us. We are reminded today, around the Lord’s Table, to come to Jesus and find rest. That is a communion invitation and an invitation of the Sabbath day. Make this Sabbath day a day to remember, to keep it holy, and to be refreshed. And then, do it again next Sunday. Amen.