THE TEXT OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
Now that we are familiar with the symbolism of the number seven and the symbolism of the Sabbath,  we can look at the actual text of the Fourth Commandment,.

Exodus 20:8-11  “Remember the sabbath day, to keep 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; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; 11 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: It is a little known fact that this scripture is not the first historical example of the seventh day as a day of rest. The practice of resting on the seventh day actually began with the Babylonians who observed Sabbath rests in conjunction with their lunar calendar. Thus we have another example where, in a literal reading of the Bible, we find God instructing his people to do something that was already practiced by a Gentile religion. This appears to be a blatant contradiction of God’s commands elsewhere that his people should not follow the customs of other nations. But what God was really doing was using the Babylonian custom to symbolically refer to resting from religious works.

This is an example of the “first the natural and then the spiritual” principle in which God introduces a desired spiritual principle with an undesired natural practice. The natural practice, of course, is to conduct religious activities on the seventh day of the week. Since Saturday is the seventh day of the week, Jews observe the Sabbath on Saturday. It is the one special day of the week dedicated to gathering together for worship. Catholic Christians reinterpreted the Biblical text and modified Jewish practice by naming Sunday as the day dedicated for communal worship. And so, Christians consider Sunday, the first day of the week to be the equivalent of the seventh day Sabbath.

This adjustment of days has no real spiritual significance because, in God’s view, the seventh day is not a literal day. The seventh day is a picture of a heart at rest from practicing religion. The seventh day is a lifestyle for New Covenant disciples who have God’s laws written on their hearts. For Old/First Covenant religionists, the Sabbath is only one day of the week. See this link for comparisons of the two covenants.

In God’s kingdom, worship is an ongoing spiritual activity of a clean, pure heart. This is what it means to worship in spirit and truth. This is what New Covenant disciples do. This kind of worship is contrasted with physical (i.e. fleshly) worship in churches and synagogues.

In addition to the Fourth Commandment, Christians find significance in the fact that Jesus is referred to as the Lord of the Sabbath. Like the Jews, Christians honor the Sabbath as their day for regular meetings because several scriptures indicate that meetings occurred on the Sabbath. Curiously, Christians have adjusted the Sabbath from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week (i.e. Sunday). So even though Sunday does not technically satisfy the requirement of keeping the Sabbath holy, they still consider that their Sunday meetings fulfill the Fourth Commandment. This is an example of man’s religious laws superseding God’s  spiritual laws.

Observance of the Sabbath day is presented in many scriptures as lists of permitted and prohibited activities. The following tables inform us about literal, religious Sabbath rules and how to interpret and apply them spiritually:

And here is the list of permitted Sabbath activities:

These tables help us to understand the Fourth Commandment. It must be said emphatically, however, that these lists are of no value unless the spiritual intent of each listed activity is understood. Before we get to that understanding, however, we will briefly review some of the problems with the literal understandings of the Fourth Commandment. For example:

• • • Why would God command us to work for six days when it is a financial necessity for almost everyone to work five to seven days a week anyway?
    • How do modern cultures that do not include care of animals or employment of servants apply these principles?
    • What is the big deal about taking one day a week off from work? Even if our employer only requires us to work five or six days a week, there is always work to do at home the other one or two days.
    • Does God really expect everyone to avoid doing the activities listed in the prohibited column? Many of them are totally impractical.
    • How can the God who knows everything be so out of touch with the realities of life and put such demands on people?
    • Why would God need a commandment to rest one day a week? Everyone knows that our bodies need physical rest, but in some cultures even taking one day a week off from work is not possible.
    • Why do Christian cultures take their day of rest on the first day of the week instead of the seventh day? There appears to be a desire to observe the spirit of the commandment while ignoring the specifics of it. Is that OK with God?

Because the literal understanding of the commandment seems so clear, most people do not bother trying to reconcile these practical questions with their literal interpretations of the Bible. Out of a desire to be religiously obedient, many people will zealously obey the rules that they can reasonably obey while ignoring those that make no sense or are impractical to follow. In making these accommodations, they lack both intellectual and religious integrity. They not only subtract from the law, but they also show that they lack common sense in application of religious rules. And they do this because they insist on interpreting the Bible literally without looking for symbolic meaning.

Unfortunately, these intellectual and spiritual challenges are not on anyone’s religious radar. Because Christian and Jewish cultures have a long history of incorporating either the seventh or first day of the week as a day of rest, Christians and Jews assume that religious leaders past and present have the doctrine all figured out and all they need to do is accommodate their personal work/rest schedules to prevailing cultural patterns which conform to prevailing religious customs. With these attitudes firmly in place for hundreds of years, no one imagines that there is any need to investigate alternative spiritual understandings that might resolve these practical issues. Thus, having discarded reason in deference to the ways of trusted religious fathers, Jews and Christians remain ignorant of what God really intended by the commandment.