Why would a day of rest be included in the ten commandments? The answer is given in the commandment itself. We are told to remember the sabbath day when God rested on the seventh day after his work of creation over six days (Genesis 2:1-3). His ‘rest’ involved enjoying the goodness of what he had created, in particular, mankind. God wants us to rest, not just in the sense of physical recuperation but to reciprocate God’s enjoyment in us through worship. We see this in the structure of the creation account. In Genesis 1 we see God bringing order to chaos. God’s rest is the culmination of this, which means that rest is associated with the subduing of chaos. This is what happens when we submit to God in worship. The chaos of our lives is subdued as we yield to his authority. In Hebrew writing a set of seven creates what is called a chiasm, that is a centre point, and the centre is often the key moment in a chiastic text. In this case, it is the fourth day when God created lights in the sky “to mark sacred times, and days and years”. The key point is that God wanted the lives of his people to be structured around rest and worship. Previously they had been slaves and as such their value was associated with what they produced. But God was telling them here that they were now to be identified, not by what they produced, but by their worship. The fourth command is a command to make worship the culmination of our week.
Plan to prioritise our Christian day of worship and find sabbaths in every day to stop and worship God.
Read Exodus 20:8-11 & Matthew 11:28-30
