"GOD GAVE ONE DAY IN SEVEN FREE FROM WORK TO DEMONSTRATE THAT HE ALWAYS CARES FOR HIS PEOPLE."

103. Q. What does God require in the fourth commandment?
A. First, that the ministry of the gospel and the schools be maintained[1] and that, especially on the day of rest, I diligently attend the church of God[2] to hear God's Word,[3] to use the sacraments,[4] to call publicly upon the LORD,[5] and to give Christian offerings for the poor.[6] Second, that all the days of my life I rest from my evil works, let the LORD work in me through His Holy Spirit, and so begin in this life the eternal sabbath.[7]
[1] Deut. 6:4-9; 20-25; I Cor. 9:13, 14; II Tim. 2:2; 3:13-17; Tit. 1:5. [2] Deut. 12:5-12; Ps. 40:9, 10; 68:26; Acts 2:42-47; Heb. 10:23-25. [3] Rom. 10:14-17; I Cor. 14:26-33; I Tim. 4:13. [4] I Cor. 11:23, 24. [5] Col. 3:16; I Tim. 2:1. [6] Ps. 50:14; I Cor. 16:2; II Cor. 8 and 9. [7] Is. 66:23; Heb. 4:9-11.

Scripture Reading:
Gen 2:15-17
Ex 16:13-30
Jn 6:48-51

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 136:1,13
Psalm 34:4
Psalm 23:3
Psalm 42:1,3,5
Psalm 145:4,5

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

The Sunday is under violent attack in today’s western world; few are the people in our land who today refuse out of principle to work on the Sunday.

In the face of this attack, brothers and sisters, it is critical that we realize that the Sunday does not stand by itself. In the fourth commandment God gave a day free from work to spell out how much He cares for His own. To confess that fact is to acknowledge our dependence on God, our trust in Him. We demonstrate that trust, that dependence, by keeping the Sunday holy….

I preach to you the gospel of the fourth commandment using this theme:

We pay attention to three aspects of this command:

1. the purpose of work
2. the extent of God’s care
2. the behaviour for the Sunday

The fourth commandment makes us think of the Sabbath day, that Old Testament seventh day of the week that has become the first day in the New Testament dispensation. And mention of the Sunday awakens in us thoughts of church, of the need to go to church, what we should and should not do on Sunday, etc. That the fourth commandment would encourage our thoughts to revolve around the Sunday and church attendance is promoted by LD 38; here we confess that God requires in the fourth commandment "first, that...I diligently attend the church of God...."

Yet, beloved, the fourth commandment deals with far more than the Sabbath and Sunday behaviour. It’s true that God begins this commandment with telling us to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." But in this command God also goes on to speak about the other six days of the week: "Six days shall you labour and do all your work," He says. The seventh day stands in contrast to the other six in that on the seventh "you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter...." Central to the fourth commandment, then, is the concept of work; six days you do work, one day you don’t.

Work. What is the purpose of work? We experience that one must work in order to eat, work in order to live. Sure, there’s those in our society to manage to live without working (be it because they’re on the dole, or have their pot of gold), but we realize that’s the exception. General experience is that one needs to work in order to obtain an income, to pay off the house, buy the groceries, save for the holiday and for retirement. Work: we have to, in order to enjoy the weekend. Or, as the notice would have it on Albany Hwy: "First retire, then live."

But is this thought so Scriptural, beloved? Would the Lord really have us think that we need to work in order to eat? Work in order to enjoy the weekend? Work in order to retire?

We read together a portion from Gen 2. The Lord God had placed the man and his wife in the Garden of Eden, with specific instructions "to till it and keep it." It was for Adam and Eve to take care of the Garden, to develop it, beautify it, and by that means to subdue, have dominion over all things in that garden. We realize: God’s instruction "to till it and keep it" meant that Adam and Eve had concrete work to do. Even in Paradise Adam and Eve did not live a life of constant vacation; the first two people had to work hard and much. True, though: their work was pleasant; they met none of the frustrations we meet as a result of the fall into sin.

But why did Adam and Eve have to work? Did they have to take care of this garden in order that they might have something to eat? No, congregation, they did not have to work in order that they might earn a crust. I say that because of what I read in vs 16. God told Adam and Eve that they could "freely eat of every tree of the garden," except that one in the middle of the garden. The implication is that there was in the garden sufficient available for Adam and Eve to eat, even before they began their work. They did not have to work in order to eat; rather, God saw to it that there was food even before they began their work. That is, in Paradise the order was not: work, and therefore food, but rather: food, and therefore work.

Things changed when the human race fell into sin. For I read in Gen 3 that God said this: "cursed is the ground because of you.... In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread..." (Gen 3:17ff). That is: the ground would no longer freely supply food; people would now have to sweat, labour, in order to wrestle food out of the ground.

Yet, congregation, Gen 3 is not the end of the story, and is not the reality under which you and I live today either. For the Lord God has followed this fall with His work of redemption in Jesus Christ. Through His sacrifice on the cross, the Saviour has undone the curse of the fall, so that believers are reconciled to God again; God has become our Father for Jesus’ sake. This God –Father for Jesus’ sake- cares for His children perfectly. That care includes that He freely gives His own the daily bread they need.

Here I draw your attention to Ex 16. You know the context. The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt, subject to very hard labour. They experienced it most bitterly: if they didn’t work, they didn’t eat; in fact, if they didn’t work, they were beaten, hard. But God redeemed this people out of Egypt, claimed this people as His, promised to care for them, love them. How, now, does God show His love and His care? Indeed: He freely supplied them with food.

Granted, it’s not that Israel in the desert could loaf around. Their necessary daily work involved packing up the tents, tending the flocks and herds, marching to the next campsite the cloud would indicate. The people were busy, and certainly did not have the time to search the desert for food. Yet God was pleased to reward Israel’s labour; every morning He put manna on the ground.

Of this manna we say: this was something special. And it’s true. Yet what is special about the manna, brothers and sisters, is not that the Lord was pleased to feed Israel each day anew. God has done that since the beginning of the world! What is special is that God provides Israel with food in this unusual way. Normally, God gives food through, say, causing a harvest to grow on the land as a result of human labour. But note: such food still comes from God’s hand; man can plant, man can even water, but it is God who gives the growth, the harvest. This time it’s different; this time God rains food down from the skies. So God underlines that food, all food, comes from God. It was He who in Paradise told Adam and Eve to help themselves to every tree in the garden – and so provided an abundance to eat. It was He who uttered a curse on the earth after our fall into sin – and so withdrew the easy gift of food He’d given in Paradise. And it was He who opened the skies to rain down food for His people Israel in the desert – so that His people-by-covenant might never lack.

So we are confronted, beloved, with God’s order of things. He does not want His people to think in terms of: I must work in order to eat – as in: the purpose of work is to eat, to live, to retire. Rather, it is God’s promise that He will freely supply His people with food. So: it is for God’s redeemed people to do their work – not in order to earn a crust, but in order to care for God’s world. And as we care for God’s world, we may believe that God will supply the food we need day by day.

To impress this point the more upon His people, congregation, the Lord gave Israel the particular instruction in Ex 16 about not gathering manna on the Sabbath. They were not to gather it on the sabbath, for they were not to work on the Sabbath. "Six days you shall labour, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work." Yet that does not mean that Israel was to go hungry on the sabbath. They would not go hungry on that day of rest because one does not work in order to eat in the first place. Israel’s covenant God would supply their food. That’s why God promised to supply them on the sixth day with sufficient food for two days – and the extra of the sixth day would not spoil on the seventh either. So: six days one labours, takes care of God’s world. Meanwhile, God provides daily food 7 days, cares for His people.

It’s to be fixed in our minds too, congregation, that this arrangement –that God provides daily food- was not meant to be valid only for the time that Israel travelled in the desert. The command to work six days and rest on the seventh was valid for Israel also once they entered the Promised Land. That it was God who would supply the needs for daily living was made more clear by God’s specific instruction to Israel that, once they were in the Promised Land, they were to work the land six years and leave it fallow the seventh. Every seventh year God’s special people were to forego sowing their fields and pruning their vineyards (Lev 25:4); Israel had to observe a sabbath year. Did this command mean that God would have His people starve that year? Not at all! Says God in Lev 25: "if you say, what shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?" then God’s answer is this: "I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years" (Lev 25:20f). Never was Israel to think that work earned food, that one worked in order to live. No, Israel had to know that the God who made that covenant with them at Mt Sinai kept them alive, supplied for all their needs. That’s the instruction implied also in that promise of God that if Israel should fail to obey His commands they could work as hard as they wished, but they would still not have enough, for God would curse and not bless. "Cursed shall be...the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle.... The Lord will smite you with...fiery heat, and with drought, and with blasting, and with mildew..." (Dt 28:17ff). And that’s equally the instruction implied in that promise of God that if Israel would obey His commands, He would bless. "Blessed shall be...the fruit of your ground...." For "the Lord will open to you His good treasury of heaven, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands" (Dt 28:3ff). It is a refrain in Scripture, beloved: God’s ordinance is that our work does not earn us a living. Instead, that living is given, graciously given by a faithful covenant God for Jesus’ sake. That is why Jesus, when He taught us to pray, told us to say, "Our Father in heaven..., Give us this day our daily bread."

"Six days you shall labour," said God to Israel. "And the seventh day is a sabbath." We understand it now: implicit in this commandment is God’s promise that He supplies the needs of His people. With this commandment God would have His people know that they don’t have to sweat around the clock, seven days a week, to look after themselves, for God looks after His own. Here is instruction that God’s people may not think in terms of being dependent on the self, on own resources – with the worries and ulcers that come with that. To underline how much we depend on God, the Lord told Israel that they didn’t have to work on the seventh day, simply because their survival and prosperity did not depend on their own sweat but instead on His care and faithfulness. In a word: the fourth commandment proclaims gospel, the gospel of God’s care for His people by covenant.

We 1ive today in the New Testament dispensation. But the fact that we are dependent on God, the reality that the God of the covenant cares for His children, has not changed over the centuries. The truth of the fourth commandment is very much valid for today as well. That is what makes the push of today’s society for Sunday work so tragic. People want shops open –why?- because the thought prevails that working is necessary for financial security. We are, society believes, to take care of ourselves. And there is no trust that God supplies, there is no desire to pray in childlike faith that fourth petition: "Give us this day our daily bread." On that lack of trust there can lay no blessing from God; society shall taste that a lack of trust invariably earns God’s displeasure.

But that lack of trust, brothers and sisters, must not be present among those who say they believe in the Lord God. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cares for His people, so that we don’t have to look after ourselves. We know it –is it not, congregation?- and that is why we pray the fourth petition: "Father, You give us this day our daily bread." But if we’re going to pray that, then we also have to show that we trust God to supply our daily needs, and that means in turn that we don’t work on the Sunday – as if we had to look after ourselves.

That’s true, boys and girls, in relation to homework for school. You think you need some extra hours on Sunday to get your homework together? Not so, says the Lord; do your work six days, and trust Me, I will supply, says the Lord. It’s equally true for earning the dollar you need for further education, or for getting a deposit on the house you want to buy, or supplying the food and clothes for your children. You think you need the job that’s available on Sunday, or a part-time Sunday job to bolster the income of the week? Not so, says the Lord; do your work six days, and trust Me, I will supply, says the Lord. This is the question that must come to the foreground as a seven-day workweek becomes more common around us: do I work in order to eat, or do I trust that my God supplies for my needs? It’s a question that each one of us, older and younger, must answer.

I move on to our second point:

The fourth commandment, then, reveals God to be a God who cares. How wonderfully rich the gospel of this commandment is! Yet it’s not just food that He supplies. God would have us know that His care extends to all areas of life.

We learned from Ex 16 that God’s gift of daily manna was for Israel instruction to trust in the Lord. It’s noteworthy, now, that chap 17 tells us of God supplying more than manna; He gave Israel water (17:1-7), also gave them protection from the Amalekites (17:8-16). The point is this: food, water, protection from enemies all comes from God. It comes from Him because the fourth commandment teaches at bottom that God cares for His people, and God’s care is never inadequate, or restricted to one part of life alone. So it was also very much in keeping with the lesson of the fourth commandment that the OT saints, when they felt dejected, down, longed to be in the temple, for that is where God was, the God who supplied their every need. Ps 42: my soul is cast down, the floods overwhelm me, troubles threaten to drown. So what does the psalmist do? "My soul thirst for God, for the living God." Because the psalmist knew the Lord to be that caring Father did he throw himself into the protecting, comforting arms of the God of the fourth commandment.

And shall we, beloved, do any different? We live after the events of the wilderness, after the psalmist, after Calvary. The psalmist found security in God; said the psalmist to himself: "Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my help and my God." But we, we have seen Jesus Christ rejected by God so that we might be accepted by Him. In Paradise we had offended God, with as result that we could not count on God’s protection, God’s care; the ground was cursed. But, in keeping with the gospel of the fourth commandment, God so cared that He sent His only Son. And this Son is the bread of life (Jn 6:48). In Christ, we receive the food we need in the midst of life’s deepest cares. For He secured atonement for us, forgiveness of sins and so reconciliation with the God we once offended! It is with this gift as with anything else our heavenly Father gives: it’s all grace, apart from works; what counts for food counts for salvation, what counts for salvation counts for food - it’s all given to us by grace alone, undeserved, not earned.

That means, brothers and sisters, that the gospel of the fourth commandment comes down to what the Lord said to His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount; "do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on.... Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all" (Mt 6:25ff). And this Father cares; to Him we are of more value than the birds of the air.... Only, "seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well" (vs 33). Seek first His kingdom. That, in NT terms, says the same thing as what God commanded Adam about the Garden: "till it and keep it." Seek first His kingdom, and that’s to say: take care of God’s world for God’s glory. And the promise in the covenant remains: all you need will be added to you.

Such is the message, the gospel of the fourth commandment. How easy, beloved, does God make life for the humble, dependent child of His! How easy, when we place ourselves with our ups and downs into the hands of our heavenly Father.

Now yet our last point, briefly:

Given that the Sabbath command teaches God’s care, teaches that all things needed for body and soul come from God, what shall we do on that day when we need not work – and therefore may not work? Shall we consider that to be a day for ourselves?

But how, brothers and sisters, could that be?! Given that all we need is graciously given to us by God, is it possible to have a day without God – particularly this one day that symbolizes God’s care so fully?! God has given the Sunday free from work to underline that it is He who supplies our daily bread –and every other need as well- and so it follows that this day is not our day; here is rather a day to focus particularly on the God who supplies our every need, to pay special attention to the fact that we 1ive out of His hand. Here is a day for special thanksgiving! Small wonder that in the Old Testament God wanted a special burnt offering on the sabbath (Num 28:9f). And how understandable that God commanded His people to spend the Sabbath in the house of the Lord (Lev 23:3; Num 28:25). The saints of old understood this; they longed eagerly to go the dwelling of God, and lamented when they couldn’t. In that temple they gave thanks for that which they graciously received in the week past. And in that temple, sabbath after sabbath, God fed them the word of Life, encouraged them with the gospel of forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake, and so with the assurance that all they needed in the coming week would also be provided by the Lord - be it forgiveness or food, grace or clothes, health or wealth, life or death.

So it cannot be otherwise, beloved, than that we too, aware of our dependence on God, desire to spend the day in Church, with God. It is as the Catechism says: we want to hear God’s word, that word about forgiveness and grace for Christ’s sake, that word about God’s dai1y care for us. We want to use the sacraments to be reconfirmed in our conviction that yes, God does care. We want to call publicly on the name of the Lord, for we want to thank Him for everything He graciously gave, and we want to testify of our conviction that we are fully dependant on Him alone for the week ahead; we ask Him to provide everyday anew our daily bread. And we joyfully give Christian offerings for the poor, for we realize not only that what we have received was undeserved; we also realize that God may be pleased to use our contributions to feed others of His chi1dren.

Sunday: God cares. In truth, how rich is that gift of Sunday! Our world throws the four commandment away, but I wouldn’t want to do without it for anything in the world! I understand: the Sunday is the symbol that He cares, that I’m dependent on Him. In the ups and downs of life, what comfort I receive in that gospel!

Sunday: my God cares. That is why I cherish the Sunday, and will keep that special day holy. For I want to demonstrate publicly my trust in Him; I’m sure that He supplies all my needs, always.

Sunday: my God cares. In fact, He cares so much that every week anew He gives me a special reminder of how much He cares – Sunday!  Amen.