The Ten Commandments
Remember the Sabbath Day
The fourth commandment calls us to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy, setting apart regular time to rest from our labour and to turn our hearts to God. It is the longest of the ten and the only one that begins with remember, as though God knew we would be quick to forget. In a world that measures us by our output, this command is a gift as much as a duty: a rhythm of rest that declares we are more than what we produce.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”Exodus 20:8
What it meant to Israel
The pattern was written into creation itself. In six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Israel was to imitate their Maker, working six days and resting the seventh, because rest was woven into the fabric of the world before it was ever a law.
For a people just released from slavery, the sabbath was also a proclamation of freedom. In Egypt they had been worked without ceasing, their worth measured only in bricks. Now God commanded rest, and He extended it to everyone: thy son, thy daughter, thy manservant, thy maidservant, the stranger within the gates, even the cattle. No one under Israel’s roof was to be ground down by endless labour. One day in seven, the whole household stood equal before God, free, and at rest. The sabbath was a weekly rehearsal of the truth that they belonged to God, not to their work.
The sabbath also set Israel apart from every nation around them, a visible sign that they belonged to the LORD. While other peoples drove their servants and beasts without ceasing, Israel’s weekly stillness declared that their God was not a hard taskmaster but a giver of rest, and that even the lowest in the household shared in His gift. To keep the day was to preach, week by week and without a word, that the God of Israel had made His people free.
What it forbids and what it requires
The commandment forbids treating every day alike, as though life were nothing but labour and gain, and it forbids using others, or ourselves, as mere engines of production. To keep no sabbath is, in a sense, to act as if the world depended on our striving and as if we were slaves still.
Positively, it requires that we set apart holy time. The day is to be kept holy, which means both rest from work and turning to God, in worship, in gathering with His people, in remembering who He is and what He has done. The sabbath is not idleness for its own sake but rest aimed at God, a space cleared so the soul can breathe and look up. It teaches trust, for to lay down our work is to confess that the world is upheld by God and not by us.
How Jesus deepened it
By Jesus’ day the sabbath had been buried under rules, and the day of rest had become a burden. Jesus cut through it with a word that restored its meaning: The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. It was God’s gift, not God’s trap. So He healed on the sabbath, defending mercy as the very thing the day was for, and declared Himself Lord even of the sabbath day.
Deeper still, Jesus offered Himself as the true rest the day had always pointed toward. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The New Testament teaches that the sabbath was a shadow of things to come, and that the substance is Christ. In Him the soul finds the rest that no single day could finally give: rest from striving to earn God’s favour, for the work that saves us is already finished.
How we fall short, and are met by grace
We break the sabbath in two opposite ways. Some of us cannot stop, driving ourselves without rest, proving our worth by our productivity, quietly believing that everything depends on us. Others treat all time as our own, giving God no space at all, and letting the soul starve for lack of any turning toward Him. Both forget the God who gave the day.
The commandment gently exposes our restlessness and our self-reliance. And it drives us to grace, for the deepest rest is not something we schedule but something we receive. Christ has done the work; we come to Him and rest. The One who kept every sabbath perfectly now says to the weary and the driven alike, Come unto me, and I will give you rest. The law that commands rest points us to the Saviour who gives it.
How to live it today
Christians have long kept the Lord’s day, the first day of the week, in memory of the resurrection, gathering to worship the risen Christ. However we hold the day, the wisdom of the commandment abides: we are made for a rhythm of work and rest, and we ignore it to our harm. To live this command is to build regular, unhurried time to stop, to worship, and to be with God’s people.
It means resisting the tyranny of the endless to-do list and trusting God enough to lay our work down. It means guarding time for the soul as fiercely as we guard time for the body’s needs. And it means letting rest be joyful, not grim: a weekly return to the truth that we are loved for who we are, not for what we produce, and that the world is safe in God’s hands even while ours are still.
It also invites us to receive rest as worship rather than mere recovery. To stop is to confess, with our bodies and our calendars, that the world is held by God and not by our striving. In a culture that treats busyness as proof of worth, a kept day of rest is quietly countercultural, a lived sermon that our value does not rest on our output. To honour this command is to let ourselves be loved for who we are, and to let the soul catch its breath in the presence of God.
How it points to Christ
The sabbath was always a signpost, and Jesus is where it points. He is the Lord of the sabbath and the rest it promised. Every seventh day, for centuries, God was teaching His people to long for a rest they could not make for themselves, and in Christ that rest has come.
On the cross He cried, It is finished, and then rested in the tomb through the sabbath, before rising on the first day to open a whole new creation. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God, says the Scripture, and we enter it by faith. To come to Christ is to cease from our own works, to stop striving to be good enough, and to rest, at last, in the finished work of the One who loved us and gave Himself for us.
And the rest He gives is not only for a day but for eternity. The sabbath was a weekly taste of a rest that has no end, the everlasting peace of the new creation where labour and sorrow are done. Those who belong to Christ live now with one foot in that rest, working from His finished work rather than for it, and looking forward to the day when they enter it wholly. The command that set apart one day in seven was always pointing to Him in whom every day, and the age to come, is at peace.
Questions people ask
What is the fourth commandment?
The fourth commandment, Remember the Sabbath Day, the fourth commandment calls us to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy, setting apart regular time to rest from our labour and to turn our hearts to God.
Do Christians have to keep the sabbath?
Christians have long gathered on the Lord’s day, the first day of the week, to worship the risen Christ. The commandment’s wisdom, a rhythm of rest and worship, still holds, and its deepest rest is found in Christ Himself, who gives rest to all who come to Him.
How does the fourth commandment point to Jesus?
Jesus kept the whole law perfectly, in our place, and bore its judgment for our failures. The commandment shows our need, and He meets it with grace, giving a new heart to all who come to Him.