Man's Rest (continued) en and I will give you rest . . —a Sabbath, a perpetual rest for your soul. The heart that has never received Je sus Christ as Saviour from sin is na turally restless and in misery. God made our lives to be in fellowship with Him, and through Christ ,our Sabbath, we are given that blessed communion. Now, while there has been much dis cussion, by certain groups, on the keep ing of the Sabbath Saturday, the sec ond important part of this Command ment if often overlooked, subverted, or forgotten. Many of the 93 words in these verses deal with the necessity of a proper balance of work. We are liv ing in a period of time when it is not so much the high cost of living as it is the cost of high living. Both mother and father simply have to work in or der to get some of those labor saving devices. (They used to be called lux uries). But we wear ourselves to .a frazzle trying to get enough money to gether to buy another questionable nec essity. It is a materialistic era in which we live and often Christians, unwarily get confused, not realizing there are many things we can do without. Paul, in writing to Timothy declared, “if any man provide not for his own, and es pecially for his own family, his own household, he is worse than an infidel and hath denied the faith. God help us to care for our families. It’s not so much the amassing of a fortune, or the building of a name or reputation for ourselves, but how we are molding the human clay of those precious lives God has entrusted to our care. We can sin in this area not only by not work ing enough, but also by working too much. It is not more of dad’s pay check the children need, it is more of Dad. If he does not provide for his own, more than just in the monetary sub stance, the Bible says he is worse than an infidel and hath denied the faith. There are some who contend that Sunday was ordered by a religious hierarchy in early centuries of the church. Throughout the New Testa ment, however, we see that Christians
observed the death and resurrection of Christ on the first day of the week. Look at I Corinthians 16:2; Acts 20:7, and Revelation 1:10. Saturday could never qualify as a day of worship for the true Christian because it was the very day on which the Lord Jesus Christ was in the grave for a full 24 hour period. Our hearts declare with the Gospel song writer, “I serve a risen Saviour, He’s in the world today. I know that He is living, no matter what men say.” There is one further, and very in teresting point, and that is, of all the Ten Commandments God gave to the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, they have each been repeated, restated, and set on a much higher plane by the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testa ment . . . all except one, this Fourth Commandment. The reason we are not told “Remember the Sabbath day,” is because Christ Himself has become our Sabbath, our rest from the hopeless work we may strive to carry on to vain- lessly earn salvation by our own mer it. The . Sabbath worship was given only to the Children of Israel. Some will doubtless say, “Yes, but there were laws which predated the Sabbath wor ship long before the Israelites. But for the record, there is not one verse of Scripture given before Exodus 20 which states that men were to spe cifically keep the Sabbath. It is true that in the Book of Genesis we read that God rested on the seventh day. But nowhere does it say that this was a command for man to follow. This Fourth Commandment, a part of the “All Scripture given by God,” gives us a spiritual principle. Haven’t you heard some people try to rationalize, “Yes, the truth of the matter is, but Sunday is the only day I have.” My friend, Sunday is the only day you don’t have! It belongs wholly and holy to God. We are told that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together with other believers as the manner of some is but so much the more; in ready fellowship, as we see the day of our Lord’s return ap proaching. 26
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