Morning with Ebenezer

TEN COMMANDMENTS 4

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Exodus 20:8-11 NIV

David Guzik's on his Commentary of the fourth commandment wrote the following: The seventh day (Saturday) was commanded to be respected as a day of rest. This rest was for all of Israel - servants and slaves as well as visitors.

This is an important principle that might be too easily passed over. Here God declared the essential humanity and dignity of women, slaves, and strangers, and said they had the same right to a day of rest as the free Israeli men. This was certainly a radical concept in the ancient world.

God established the pattern for the Sabbath at the time of creation. When He rested from His works on the seventh day, God made the seventh day a day of rest from all our works (Genesis 2:3). But the most important purpose of the Sabbath was to serve as a shadow of the rest we have in Jesus.

Some claim that Christians are required to keep the Sabbath today. But the New Testament makes it clear that Christians are not under obligation to observe a Sabbath day (Colossians 2:16-17 and Galatians 4:9-11), because Jesus fulfilled the purpose and plan of the Sabbath for us and in us (Hebrews 4:9-11).

This morning, God wants you to know that Jesus is the Lord of Sabbath. There are questions on whether which day is good for Christians to observe the Sabbath of the Lord. Some suggests that it  should observed on Saturday and others on Sunday. For us Sunday is more appropriate because of these following reasons.

It was the day Jesus rose from the dead (Mark 16:9), and first met with His disciples (John 20:19), and a day when Christians gathered for fellowship (Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2). Under Law, men worked towards God's rest, but after Jesus' finished work on the cross, the believer enters into rest and goes from that rest out to work, to work for the Lord and advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

****Morning Prayer****

Pray this prayer with me by faith and God is going to answer your prayer....

Heavenly Father, I thank You for your Word. Lord I'm asking that You may give me strength to observe all of your commandments according to your Word.In Jesus' Name, Amen.