Exodus 20:8-11; Ezekiel 20:19,20; Leviticus 26:27,28,31-35
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, 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 manservant, nor thy maidservant, 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.
I am the LORD your God; walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the LORD your God.
And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury…And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.*
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We believe that God sends all pestilences, let them come how they may; and that He sends them with a purpose—And we conceive that it is our business as ministers of God to call the people’s attention to God in the disease and teach them the lesson which God would have them learn.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The pestilence is God’s messenger.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): We live in days when anything like strict Sabbath observance is loudly denounced, in some quarters, as a remnant of Jewish superstition. We are boldly told by some persons, that to keep the Sabbath holy is legal, and that to enforce the fourth commandment on Christians, is going back to bondage.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Is it not tragic beyond words to witness not only the general indifference of the vast majority of professing Christians unto the claims of the Holy Sabbath and to the world’s awful profanation of it, but also to find that many influential men among the reputedly orthodox sections of Christendom should oppose those who are striving for the preservation of this spiritual heritage? These men are seeking to destroy its very foundations by teaching that the Sabbath is only a Jewish institution, and therefore is not binding upon us today.
J. C. RYLE: Let us settle it in our minds, that the fourth commandment has never been repealed by Christ, and that we have no more right to break the Sabbath day, under the Gospel, than we have to murder and to steal.
A. W. PINK: The Christian Sabbath is specifically designated “the Lord’s Day” in Revelation 1:10…To be guilty of desecrating the Holy Sabbath is therefore no light matter. The violation of the Fourth Commandment is a sin of the gravest and blackest kind; yet, sad to say, the profanation of the Lord’s Day has become one of the most common crimes of our perverse generation. So general is its pollution that few have any conscience on the matter, but placidly take it as a matter of course. The world has turned the Holy Day into a holiday, and even the majority of professing Christians join hands with them therein. No wonder God is displeased with us as a people, and is more and more evidencing His displeasure against us.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Oh! ye ministers of the sanctuary and faithful magistrates of the people, may the Lord encourage your hearts and hands to bring back the hallowed Sabbaths of the Lord to their original sanctity.
WILHELMUS à BRAKEL (1635-1711): We sin when we make a workday out of this day, if we occupy ourselves with the work of our profession; and we sin when we transform this day into a market day; this pertains to buying and selling. And we sin when we make this day a day of worldly pleasure. The sabbath is a delight—however, a “delighting in the Lord.” It is a dreadful desecration of this day, however, when we abuse it by delighting ourselves in worldly things and in the lusts of the flesh, or to the entertaining of one’s self with such things that are lawful at the appropriate time and place, in the appropriate company, and with the appropriate objective.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): They are no benefactors to the community who seek to break down and relax the stringency of the prohibition of labour. If once the idea that Sunday is a day of amusement takes root, the amusement of some will require the hard work of others, and the custom of work will tend to extend, till rest becomes the exception, and work the rule. There never was a time when men lived so furiously fast as now. The pace of modern life demands Sunday rest more than ever. If a railway car is run continually it will wear out sooner than if it were laid aside for a day or two occasionally; and if it is run at express speed it will need the rest more. We are all going at top speed; and there would be more breakdowns if it were not for that blessed institution which some people think they are promoting the public good by destroying a seventh day of rest.
A. W. PINK: It is an incontestable fact that the times when the Sabbath’s sanctity was most faithfully proclaimed and maintained in the British Isles—and we may add, in the U.S.A.—were those in which true spirituality was healthiest and vital godliness was in its most flourishing state…A right observance of the Lord’s Day lies at the foundation of national happiness and prosperity. So prolific of good is this blessed day that its powerful influences on the well-being of our country vitally affects its spiritual intelligence, the morality of its social order, and the liberties of its people…The Lord is very jealous of its sanctity, honouring the nation which respects it and visiting His indignation upon those who pollute it.
D. L. MOODY (1837-1899): No nation has ever prospered that has trampled the Sabbath in the dust. Show me a nation that has done this and I will show you a nation that has got in it the seeds of ruin and decay. I believe that Sabbath desecration will carry a nation down quicker than anything else. Adam brought marriage and the Sabbath with him out of Eden, and neither can be disregarded without suffering. When the children of Israel went into the Promised Land, God told them to let their land rest every seven years, and He would give them as much in six years as in seven, (Leviticus 25:3-6, 18-22). For four hundred and ninety years they disregarded that law. But mark you, Nebuchadnezzar came and took them off into Babylon, and kept them seventy years in captivity, and the land had its seventy sabbaths of rest. Seven times seventy is four hundred and ninety. So they did not gain much by breaking this law.*
A. W. PINK: A yet more decisive consideration is found in our Lord’s words, “The Sabbath was made for man,” Mark 2:27. This cannot mean less than that the Sabbath was made for man’s observance and for his benefit…God has graciously sanctified it for the good of the whole world.*
D. L. MOODY: You can give God His day, or He will take it.*
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*Editor’s Note on Scientific Confirmation: According to an April 2, 2020 article in The Atlantic magazine, the earth experienced 30-50 percent less seismic activity during the world-wide shutdown due to the Covid-19 virus. The drop was immediate, and even the oceans were quieter as shipping traffic decreased; “researchers working in Canada’s Bay of Fundy found that over the course of just a few days, when the noisy waters calmed, right whales in the bay experienced a drop in their stress-level hormones.” Air pollution also dropped dramatically, and satellites detected “a significant decrease in the concentration of nitrogen dioxide, which enters the atmosphere through emissions from cars, trucks, buses, and power plants.” That decrease is estimated to have saved tens of thousands of children and elderly people from deaths “resulting from stroke, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses.”
When mankind ceased its labours by a shutdown imposed in response to God’s providential pestilence, all the economic gains of many years were lost, while “the land rested, and enjoyed her Sabbaths;” a Sabbatical rest long denied to the earth because of modern man’s disobedience to God’s commandment to keep His weekly Sabbath day of rest. And Christians are not blameless in that sin. Do we not often buy and sell, and indulge in worldly pleasures and holidays on the Lord’s day? Therefore God’s judgment must begin with us; and have not the Covid-19 restrictions on our Lord’s Day church services brought our “sanctuaries into desolation?”
