The Fourth Commandment

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour 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 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)

The Sabbath was set aside by God as a time for rest and spiritual rejuvenation. He wanted us to have a fixed time in our week to enhance our relationship with Him, to learn how we can love, worship and relate to Him better.

"So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read" (Luke 4:16). Jesus used God's Sabbaths for their intended purpose. After Christ's death and resurrection, His apostles followed his example in observing the Sabbath day.

Today, however, most people who claim to follow Christ do not follow the example set by Him and his apostles. Most people do not know that the large scale rejection of the Sabbath as the Christian day of worship did not start until approximately 300 years after the time that Jesus walked this earth.

The decision to change the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday was a political one made by Roman Emperor Constantine, who legalised Christianity. The changing of the Sabbath day took place despite there being no reference in the Bible by God or Jesus ever granting permission to change the Sabbath from the 7th to the 1st day of the week.

The Sabbath day is vital to our relationship with Him. It shapes the way we perceive and worship Him, and it also reminds us of the week of Creation. The Sabbath may be a day of rest from our normal routines and work, but it is not a day to do nothing as some people think. On the contrary, the Sabbath is a special day on which we dramatically change the focus of our daily activity to focus on God. God wanted the Sabbath to be a day when we drew closer to Him.

To "delight yourself in the Lord" (Isaiah 58:13) is one of the key reasons we should observe the Sabbath. Any relationship takes times to develop and have success with, and this applies to our relationship with God too.