The Third Commandment

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 8

Our Small Catechism focus this evening is the Third Commandment. As we have it in our Catechism: You shall sanctify the day of rest. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, that we do not despise preaching and His Word; but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it. Luther’s explanation is short and sweet and blessedly simple. But how we get from the language of the commandment itself to the explanation of it does require some explanation. So let’s review it together this evening.

First of all, why does the Catechism say, “day of rest,” instead of, “Sabbath Day,” as it is in Exodus 20:8? In Exodus, it reads, Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Or it could just as well be translated, Remember to sanctify the Sabbath Day. Luther used the word “Sabbath Day” in his German translation of the Bible, but not in his catechism. Why? As a helpful reminder that there is a difference between the Old Testament command and the New Testament observance.

There’s an explanation of the commandment right there in Exodus 20: Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Or, “sanctified it.”) The “seventh day,” in Jewish reckoning, was Saturday, and according to their calendar, Saturday begins on our Friday at sunset and lasts until our Saturday at sunset. During that time, the Israelites were to do no regular work.

And this was also part of the Old Testament Sabbath law. God says in Ex. 31: Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. The civil punishment in Israel for breaking that ceremonial law was death. Maybe that jars your memory about the Law of Moses. It included three kinds of law: Civil law, prescribing punishments for certain things; Ceremonial law, prescribing the ceremonies the Israelites had to observe, which included everything from the Sabbath Day, to the sacrifices, to the many special festivals they were required to attend, to the clothes they wore, to the food they ate. The Civil and the Ceremonial laws were only for the people of Israel until the coming Christ. And then there was the Moral law, the commandments that taught right and wrong for all people of all time.

What kind of law is the Third Commandment? Well, Moses already told us that in Exodus 31: And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you… Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever.” The old covenant, or the Old Testament, was between God and the people of Israel. The new covenant, or the New Testament, is for all nations. The Sabbath law itself, like circumcision, like all the Kosher rules, like all the temple sacrifices, was a ceremonial law, detailing one of the many ceremonies Israel was to observe until the Christ came. If there’s any doubt that it has no part in Christ’s New Testament, listen to what St. Paul writes to the Colossians in chapter 2: So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. The Sabbath law, the part requiring no work to be done on Saturday, was pure ceremonial law, and the punishment for breaking it was outlined in the civil law, neither of which is included in the New Testament.

But there is also Moral law to be found in the Third Commandment, which is why we’re even talking about it today, because the Moral law does still apply to us and to all people. What was the Moral law included in the Third Commandment? In Leviticus 23, it mentions something else that was to be part of the Sabbath day: ‘Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation.’ Or a “sacred assembly.” The people were to gather together for a holy purpose, to assemble around the ministry of the priests to hear God’s Word, to observe the temple rituals, and to pray, praise, and give thanks to the Lord. That’s why there were special sacrifices for the Sabbath day, and a special Psalm, Psalm 92, assigned for the Sabbath Day. That’s why synagogues sprang up after the Babylonian captivity, where Jesus Himself regularly attended to hear the Word of God both read and preached.

That’s how Luther got to his blessedly simple explanation in the Catechism: You shall sanctify the day of rest. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, that we do not despise preaching and His Word; but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it. Notice, it’s “preaching and His Word,” the preaching done by God’s ministers whom He has sent to read His Word and to preach and teach and explain His Word to His people. Reading and studying the Bible at home is excellent and necessary and part of what it means to keep this commandment. But to despise the gathering together around the preaching of the Word, around the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, is still to break the commandment.

So we have a moral command from God not to despise preaching and His Word. To put it in a positive way, God still commands us to come together regularly as Christians around the ministry of the Word—to hear His Word, to use His Sacraments, to encourage one another, and to pray, and, of course, to do it all “gladly,” from the heart, with true devotion to God and reverence for His Word, as He says through the prophet Isaiah: On this one will I look, on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word. Or as Paul writes to the Colossians, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

When should we do all this? Well, in the New Testament, there is no set time or day. Sunday has not replaced Saturday as the day on which no one is to do any work or else be put to death. The Church, early on, where possible, started gathering on Sunday because it was helpful to have a certain time and day to know when to gather. Sunday has been traditionally celebrated as the “Lord’s Day” to commemorate Easter Sunday and the Lord’s resurrection and what it means for us Christians. And it was also helpful early on to have a different day than Saturday, to make it clear that we Christians are heirs of the New Testament, not the Old. But today is Wednesday, and still we are “sanctifying the day of rest” by setting aside this time to come together around the ministry of the Word. It isn’t the day that matters, but our love for and devotion to God’s Word.

As with all the commandments, the Third Commandment, in revealing to us the attitude and the behavior God demands of us with regard to His Word, accuses us all of our sins against God; it shows us how perfectly devoted God commands us to be to preaching and His Word, and so it lays bare our sinful negligence, our distractedness, our half-hearted worship, our love for other things, even the most trivial things, that push preaching and God’s Word onto the back burner, or out the door.

And so the Third Commandment, like the rest, shows us our sin and threatens God’s wrath on all who have failed to show perfect devotion to God’s Word & the holy ministry of it. So repent and trust in Christ, whose perfect devotion to God’s Word and whose flawless worship will be counted to all who believe in Him. Remember, Sabbath means “rest.” And it was part of the ceremonial law that pointed to Christ, the true Rest-Giver, who did all the work for us to earn God’s favor and a place in heaven. To teach us to trust in Christ, to rest from our works, was the chief purpose of the Sabbath all along, as the writer to the Hebrews says: There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.

Only then, as you rest in Christ by faith and know God’s love and forgiveness and acceptance for His sake, let the Third Commandment guide you, as God’s dear children, children of the New Testament in Christ’s blood, to truly hold God’s Word sacred, and to gladly hear and learn it. Amen.