Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to serve as your Bible teacher every day on this great radio station, on today's edition of Pathway to Victory. You know, God, thousands of years ago, came up with a solution for the physical, emotional, spiritual dehydration we experience every week. That solution is the Sabbath. It's a time for us to resist work, to refresh our emotions, and to renew our relationship with God. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, computers and smartphones indeed have helped us become far more connected with each other.
But the benefits of technology also come with drawbacks. Sometimes we fail to take the time to slow down. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress reminds us that observing the Sabbath is essential to our spiritual and even our physical health. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Between work, family, and social obligations, hardly a moment of your day goes unaccounted for, right? So, in our non-stop world, is it realistic to set aside a day of rest? Well, today we're going to learn why the Sabbath is still relevant to life in the 21st century. Speaking of taking a Sabbath, did you know that Pathway to Victory is preparing an unforgettable vacation for you? I'm referring to the once-in-a-lifetime adventure on the Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska.
The dates are June 15th through 22nd. As your eyes take in the majestic views, you'll feel as though you stepped into a masterpiece painting. The forested hillsides, the snow-packed mountains, the marine life, the quaint ports of call, all of these gorgeous scenes provide the ideal backdrop to reconnect with your Creator. And we have some special guests on board with us. Recording artists Rebecca St. James and Michael O'Brien, comedian Dennis Swanberg will be with us, and I'll be opening God's Word so that we can study together.
So, take a look at all the details and make plans to join us by going to ptv.org. Now, just after today's message, we're going to give you details on how you can request my brand new best-selling book for this series. It's called The Ten.
The subtitle is How to Live and Love in a World That's Lost Its Way. You know, far too many people see the Ten Commandments from God as nothing more than a repressive list of thou shalt nots. But in reality, these ten moral guardrails were never intended to restrict our freedom, but rather to enhance our joy. In my new book, The Ten, I'll restore your respect and enthusiasm for God's plan.
You can request your copy today by giving a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Now, let's open our Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. I titled this next message in the series The Fourth Commandment, Thou You, God's Day. I don't have to tell you we live in a harried and a hurry-up culture. Technology like cell phones and iPhones have allowed us to remain connected 24-7, constantly receiving emails, texts, social media posts. All of that means we can go, go, go without ever stopping.
But that's not necessarily a good thing, is it? I'm often reminded of the story of the man who went to Africa, a traveler, and he told his guide that he wanted to move in a fast pace. And so the guide recommended they hire some local tribesmen to help carry all the stuff the man had brought over. So the man met with the group and he said, now we're going to go fast. We're going to get up before the sun rises.
We're going to go all day and keep going until the sun sets. And the next day they did just that, up early, push, push, push, push, exhausted at night. The second morning of the trip, the man was ready to go, but he noticed the porters were sitting under a tree and not moving. He said, it's time to get with it, let's go.
They refused to move, and finally he asked the guide what was going on. The guide said, well, you pushed them so hard yesterday, they're waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies. You know, God has designated a way for us to wait until our souls catch up with our bodies. In fact, there's one day a week we're going to do that. It's called the Sabbath. And it's the focus of the fourth commandment we're going to look at today. If you have your Bibles, turn to Exodus chapter 20, beginning with verse 8, as we look at the fourth commandment, which in essence says we need to value God's day. Now remember in our series on the Ten Commandments, we saw these commandments were not given for God's benefit. God doesn't get anything out of the Ten Commandments.
They're made for our benefit. The first four commandments deal vertically with our relationship with God. The final six deal horizontally with our relationship with other people. Let's look at the fourth and final command that deals with our relationship with God. It's found beginning in verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall do your labor and all of your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. God is basically saying there's one day a week that we're not to do any work.
We're not even to think about working. Instead we're to substitute for work, rest, relaxation, and focusing on God. Now before we look at the meaning and the application for us today, I want to make three observations about this fourth commandment.
Write them down on your notes so you remember them. First of all, more space is devoted to this command than any of the other ten. Now that's interesting when you think of it. More space is devoted to remembering the Sabbath than there is to adultery, theft, murder, or any other sin.
That's talked about. That tells you this is something important to God. It's not optional.
It's essential. In fact, this command is repeated as much as any other command throughout the Old Testament. Today the Sabbath is still observed in Israel. As you know, I was there for three or four days this last week. We arrived last Saturday on the Sabbath and many of the stores were closed.
The money exchange places were closed. If you go into a hotel, you find many Jews using this little elevator that's called a Shabbat elevator, a Sabbath elevator. It's programmed to stop on every floor so that you don't have to press a button. Why shouldn't you press a button? Well, the rabbis determined that it is work to press an elevator button and therefore it's violating the fourth commandment.
So people still take this very, very seriously. The second observation is Jesus never repeated this commandment. Did you know of the Ten Commandments, Jesus repeated nine of them in the New Testament, but there's one commandment he didn't repeat and it was this one to remember the Sabbath.
It's not because it's not important, but here's the reason. The Sabbath for the Jews was the seventh day of the week, Saturday. But after Christ rose from the dead, the day changed from Saturday to Sunday.
But even though the day changed, the principle has not changed. We're still to set aside one day a week in order to focus on our relationship with God. That's what the Sabbath is about. The third observation I would make is this commandment is only one of two commandments stated positively.
Two are positive, eight are negative. Thou shall not commit adultery. Literally in Hebrew, no adultery. That's all it says. Thou shall not commit murder. In Hebrew, no murder.
No, no, no, no. Have you ever heard people say, no, you Christians are too negative. You need to quit being so negative. Well, God's negative about some things.
He says, no, no, no, no. But when it comes to the Sabbath, it's positive. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. It is a positive command, again, for our benefit, not for God's.
And yet we have taken what really is a positive, a good thing, and we've turned it into something negative. When you think of the Sabbath, you probably think, if you grew up in a particular culture like I did, of all the things you can't do. States like Texas, they have blue laws, certain things you can't buy on the Sabbath, certain things or services you can't take advantage of.
It's all of these things. Even right now in the state of Texas, there's an argument about lifting some of the blue laws regarding alcohol and so forth. It's seen in the negative context, but not only legally, culturally, we've developed all these things in our mind that you can and can't do on the Sabbath. For example, I grew up in a Baptist culture, and watching television on Sundays was okay, especially if it was a football game, because football games are religious programming here in Texas.
And so it's okay to watch those. But there's one thing you can't do on a Sunday, at least in the Baptist culture I grew up in. In fact, the most debauched thing any Christian could ever do on a Sunday was go to a movie theater. You didn't dare go to the movies on Sunday.
It was just unheard of. My grandparents are in heaven. They would come to visit us on Sunday afternoon sometimes. My granddad would sit in the recliner and watch the football game, but my grandmother had no interest in that. So she would get in the car and drive to downtown Dallas, later to North Park, and go to the movies. I couldn't imagine such a thing. You see, they were Methodists. And I'm going to tell you, I never more wanted to be a Methodist than on Sunday afternoons when my grandmother was going to the movie, and I was going to training union at church. Now where did we come up with all these ideas of what you can and can't watch?
You can watch television, you can't go to the movie. Where did we come up with that? We just made it up. Just like the Pharisees made up hundreds and hundreds of things that you can't do on the Sabbath. They got all these hundreds of things from one command, remember the Sabbath, and do no work. That's why Jesus came and he turned the Pharisees thinking upside down about the Sabbath. And in a very insightful incident in Mark 2, look at what Jesus said about the Sabbath. Verse 23, And it happened that Jesus was passing through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and his disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to Jesus, look, why are your disciples doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?
Now look at what Jesus said. He said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
That's key to understanding this. We were not made to fit into the Sabbath regulations. The Sabbath was given for our benefit. So that raises some questions about the fourth commandment.
Let me answer a few of them. First of all, what is the Sabbath? I used to think that the word Sabbath meant seventh, as in Saturday, it doesn't. The word literally means to resist, to cease from any kind of labor. Somebody has said it's not only ceasing from labor, it's to cease from any thought of labor.
Making your to-do list for tomorrow. Any kind of labor you're to cease one day a week from. In Exodus 20, verse 8, remember what God said? Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy? And then he gives the basis, the model for that. Verse 11, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
God spent six days in creation, the seventh day he rested. Why? Did he say, oh, I'm worn out. I just can't do anymore.
I've worked myself to death. Is that what was going on? Was God tired? Of course not. God is omnipotent.
He doesn't lose any energy. Is it that he ran out of ideas? He couldn't think of anything else to do? Well, no, there are many things he could have done. I mean, he created male and female, those are the two genders. He could have created three, four, five, six, seven genders if he wanted to, but two was enough. He could have created more kinds of trees if he wanted to, more kinds of plants. He could have created more galaxies in the universe. There's much more he could have done, but he didn't do because he was teaching us a principle.
God said everything that he did was good, it was enough. And there needs to be a time when we say our work for the week, it's not that we can't do anything more, but we've done all we need to do, and that's what the Sabbath is about. I have a little amber indicator light in my car that's been on all week. That little amber light is a reminder from the manufacturer that it's time for me to stop driving and to take my car in and have some maintenance done on it to have the liquids replenished and replaced to make sure everything's running as it should.
That indicator light was installed by the manufacturer not for his benefit, but for mine so that my car could run efficiently. God has said for each of us, there's a certain maintenance schedule. There is a time once a week that we need to quit working and allow ourselves to be refreshed physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That's what the Sabbath is all about. Second question, what does it mean to remember? Why did he say remember the Sabbath?
Well, that means recall from memory. But you may be thinking, well, wait a minute, if these are 10 new commandments God is giving, how are they to remember something that didn't exist before? Well, the fact is it did exist in Israel. In Exodus 16, remember the children of Israel had left Egypt. They were in the wilderness, and God said, I will provide for you manna to eat. Every day I'll give you enough manna, your daily bread, so to speak. But then he gave this command in Exodus 16, verses 22 to 26. Now on the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread.
That's Friday. They gathered twice as much bread as they needed. And then Moses said to them, this is what the Lord meant. Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.
Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil. And all that is left over, put aside and kept until morning. So they put it aside until the seventh morning, as Moses had ordered. In other words, God said on Fridays, you're to take as much manna as you need for both days and save it so that you do no work on the seventh day. And then when we get to Exodus 20, God enshrines this principle as a part of the top 10. Remember that Sabbath and keep it holy. Now it's interesting to me that God never commanded Gentile nations to keep the Sabbath. This was a special commandment between God and Israel. And in Colossians 2, we find that we are no longer under the strict restrictions of the Sabbath day. Colossians 2, 16 to 17, Paul said, therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. Things which are mere shadows of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
This is so important to understand, folks. We don't go back into the Old Testament and keep the Old Testament dietary restrictions and observe the festivals and the holy days of the Old Testament. I do not understand Christians who want to go back to the Old Testament.
I just don't understand it. No, it's not that it was evil. Those things were good, but they were simply shadows pointing to Jesus Christ.
And now that Jesus is here, why would we go back to things which were just a shadow? We don't need those dietary restrictions. We don't offer sacrifices.
We don't follow the festivals. We don't even obey the Sabbath day, that is, with the restrictions. But even though we're no longer under the requirements of the Sabbath, the principle still is one we live by, and that is one day a week we need to devote to worship and relaxation. Thirdly, what is the penalty for violating the Sabbath? Well, under the Old Testament, individuals who violated the Sabbath were stoned to death.
Numbers 15. Nationally, Israel was to keep the Sabbath. Did you know that? God said in the book of Leviticus, chapter 26, that every seventh year they were to allow the land to remain fallow and not plant or harvest any crops. Once every seven years, that was to give the soil a chance to be reinvigorated and regenerated. But the Israelites didn't keep that command. They kept working and working and working the land. They violated this regulation for 490 years.
Think about it. If they're to give one day off every seven years, one year, for every seven years, that means over 490 years, they broke this regulation 70 times. Seventy times seven years is 490. That's how long the Israelites had to remain in exile in Babylon. Seventy years because they broke this law about the Sabbath for their land 70 times.
Well, that was the Old Testament. You may be thinking, well, I'm sure glad I don't live under those restrictions where you get stoned to death for breaking the Sabbath. Well, there may not be that punishment for breaking the Sabbath, but listen to me.
We all pay a penalty when we violate this principle. When we refuse to focus on God once a week and refresh ourselves emotionally and physically, we pay a price for it. And that's why we're to keep the fourth commandment. Let me give you several reasons specifically for obeying the Sabbath today. First of all, the Sabbath affirms human dignity.
Write that down. It affirms human dignity. Before the Sabbath, God gave the Sabbath, human beings were nothing but beasts of burden who worked 24-7. Think about the Israelites in Egypt as slaves for over 400 years. They had no Sabbath. They got no rest, no ceasing of work.
The only rest they would get was when they died. When you don't take a Sabbath, you're no better than an indentured servant. I mean, the millionaire who works seven days a week is just as enslaved as the day laborer who has no money at all. But the Sabbath reminds us that we are more than animals. God has created other aspects of our life that we're to enjoy. You know, I think it's important to stop here and make it clear that there's nothing wrong with work.
In fact, there's everything right with work. Do you know some Christians actually believe work is a curse from God? They interpret the Bible that after Adam and Eve fell in the garden, God gave them work to do as punishment. No, work was commanded before the fall in Genesis 3. In the first two chapters of Genesis, God said to Adam and Eve, you are to cultivate the ground and keep it. We were created to be workers because we're created in the image of God who is a worker. We find fulfillment in our work.
That's great. But after the fall, work became more difficult. Because of Adam and Eve's sin, it was an uphill battle to get your work done. Ever since that time, even up until today, there's a worldwide curse of sin that makes everything in our life difficult. And work is difficult because nature is working against us, not for us.
Relationships are strained. All of these things make work hard. It's like a headwind, and for that reason, we need rest. One day, we're going to work in heaven and never have to rest. By the way, you do know you're going to be working in heaven, don't you? But it's going to be pleasurable work because all of the resistance to our labor is going to be removed. But because it is difficult here on earth, God says you can't work all of the time. There needs to be once a week when we say, I'm going to stop working.
It's not that I've done everything I can do, but I've done everything I need to do. There's much more I want to teach you about valuing God's day. So please make plans to join me next time for part two of my message on the fourth commandment. Now before our time slips away, I want to say a special word of thanks to our Pathway Partners and anybody who supports Pathway to Victory. I'm thinking of partners like Gene and Dan, who listened to Pathway to Victory from Indiana. They wrote, Thank you, Dr. Jeffress, for standing strong for our faith in Jesus Christ and helping lead this nation to the Christian foundation on which it was born. We hope that with your help and those of other outspoken pastors, our country can be turned around. God bless you and your ministry team, and God bless America.
Well, I can hear listeners all across our nation agreeing with Eugene and Dan. Most of us long to see our beloved country return to its Christian foundation. And I believe, of course, it begins with giving due reverence to God's name and every other one of His Ten Commandments. That's the reason I wrote my brand new book called The Ten, How to Live and Love in a World That Has Lost Its Way.
Let me send you a copy today. It can be yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. When you give, you empower Pathway to Victory to broadcast these messages all across North America and even around the world. Together as partners in ministry, we are piercing the darkness with the light of God's Word.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. A copy of the brand new book by Dr. Jeffress titled The Ten, How to Live and Love in a World That Has Lost Its Way is yours today when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Call 866-999-2965 or make your request online at ptv.org.
Now when you give $100 or more, you'll also receive the complete collection of audio and video discs for this month's teaching series, The Ten, along with the corresponding study guide. One more time our phone number, 866-999-2965, or go to ptv.org. You could also send your request by mail. Write to P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, inviting you back for Part 2 of the message on the Fourth Commandment called, Value God's Day. That's coming up Friday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.
