4th Commandment: Remember the Sabbath

Number four, which literally is remember the day of Shabbat. Shabbat means to stop. Okay, so remember the day of stopping. Yeah, to treat it as holy. Okay. So there's a 24-hour period that in your mind you're to recognize that one's different. And how you behave in that 24-hour period should be different. That's treating it as holy. That's treating it as holy. Okay. How exactly? So for six days you'll labor and do your work. But the seventh day is a Shabbat of Yahweh your Elohim. On it you will not make or do any work. You get a list of who it is that's supposed to honor the holiness of this day of Shabbat. It's you, your son, your daughter, your male slave, your female slave, your cattle, and the immigrant who's in your gates. Is that seven? Seven. Of course. Of course. So seven is the Hebrew word Sheva spelled with the same letters as the Hebrew word Tzava, which means to fill up or to satisfy, complete. And the last line of the command, Therefore Yahweh blessed the day of Shabbat, and he made it holy. Right. And this is referring to Genesis 1. We'll recall that in six days Yahweh made the skies, the land, and the sea, and all that's in them. When God ordered all of the cosmos, he was laboring in some way? Yeah. Okay.

So God generates out of generous love something that is not God, but that is wholly contained within and sustained by God. Each day opens with, and God said, then God is making or doing something. And then it ends with saying, and there was evening, and there was morning, one, two, three, four, five, six, and he rested on the seventh day. Day seven doesn't get that final marker. And there was evening and morning on the seventh day. Yeah. It's a day that doesn't end. It's the day that doesn't end. This great day of unity and completeness and blessing and sharing in the harmony and shalom, coming into rest, a state of rest within the generous love of God. And what if, because that's such a long journey. Yeah. When is it again? The universe. When's that going to happen? Exactly. Can I put it in my calendar? Yeah. So what the fourth command is about, is about Israel, is to structure its actual life rhythms along that storyline. And then reenact the whole history of the universe every week. So that six days of labor culminating a seventh day of rest becomes a way of participating in the grand story of what God is doing and has in store for all of creation. I'm an image of God. I'm called to discover the vocation that God has for me and that he's instilled within me. But our work is not ultimate. It's not actually what has the final word about where this universe is going. So I can stop and just enjoy the good things that God's given me. Wow. Yeah. In Jewish tradition, as far back as we can tell, the seventh day begins on what today we call Friday at sundown. So from Friday to Saturday. But then Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. Day one.

Day one of the new week. A hugely important day because it marks the dawn of new creation. So the earliest Jewish communities that follow Jesus now had two days they wanted to celebrate as holy. And there were arguments about which day was truly honoring God and got contentious. But the apostle Paul saw all this coming. We talked about, hey, different ones of you are going to treat different days as sacred and holy. Surely referring to the Sabbath. And he trusted that the spirit of God would guide individuals and communities to use wisdom and to honor the days that they felt they needed to honor. So this command is for us. Remember the Sabbath. Keep it holy. And let's be generous to each other as we follow Jesus. Because I think what we all care about is the meaning of the Sabbath. Yeah. There is coming a time of rest. And you can stop and enjoy a taste of that future rest right here in the present. Music