Our Bible Reading

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 6, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 48.

Our Bible Reading

The Sabbath and the Law

1. Where is the law of God found as spoken from heaven?

In Ex. 20: 1-17.

2. How many precepts has it?

Ten precepts, called in the literal original Hebrew, ten words; commonly known as the Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue.

3. What is the fourth precept of that law?

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20: 8-11.

4. Where in the law is that precept placed?

Right in the very heart of it. God anticipated a time that men would say the Sabbath was no part of His moral law, consequently He hedged it in so that disobedient mortals must pass over three immutable commandments on the one side before they can touch the commandment guarding the Sabbath, and six commandments on the other side. These nine immutable precepts like invulnerable walls enclose it about in order that men may forever know that the Sabbath is a part of that irrefragable, immutable, eternal law.

5. To what great event does that Sabbath law refer?

To the creation. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.”

6. What day does it definitely point out?

His blessed rest-day. “Remember the SABBATH day.” On the SEVENTH day He rested. “Wherefore the Lord blessed the SABBATH day, and hallowed it.”

7. How are His people to keep that day?

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

NOTE.— It will be observed that the commandment uses the definite article “the” and points out a specific day. The manner of keeping the day is equally specific. It does not say that we are to make the day holy; it does not even imply, as some declare, that we can keep holy any day. The Lord demands that we shall keep a certain day holy. He has already hallowed it before. Man can only keep holy what God has made holy, and holy men only can keep holy what God has made holy. Every effort therefore on the part of civil government or combinations of any kind to seek to compel men to keep the Sabbath, is contrary to the simple truth of Scripture, because no day can be kept holy by compulsion. It must be a full heart task to keep God’s Sabbath as He Himself has given it; and He only can make men holy so that they can consistently observe a holy day.