Most Christians accept the binding obligations of the law of God. Reference is made constantly by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike to the necessity of obeying the Ten Commandments, which God took special pains to engrave with His own finger upon the tables of stone at Mount Sinai. Why, then, should there be any controversy over the validity of the fourth commandment of the ten? What does that fourth commandment of the Decalogue say? Here it is; read it carefully:

"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 in 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" (Exodus 20:8-1 1).

Really, the statement set forth in this commandment needs neither explanation nor apology. It is as clear as words can make it. The Sabbath of Creation is God's answer to all those who, like Pharaoh of old, ask this arrogant question: "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?" (Exodus 5:2). Looking down across the centuries of time, the Lord said, "Remember." "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it." Many professed followers of Christ and believers in God are too willing to forget that which our Maker has commanded us to remember.

There are those who say, "Well, the seventh-day Sabbath was given to the Jews, but for Christians it doesn't matter which day they keep, so long as they keep one in seven." Others are emphatic in affirming that we must observe Sunday as God's holy day of rest. When so much depends upon our careful obedience to all the requirements of God, it is a tragic situation, indeed, for so much confusion to exist regarding the Sabbath commandment.

Many people who are sincerely seeking to obey God are confused. Many have never stopped to consider just what God does say regarding His day of worship. They worship on Sunday because they have done so all their lives, or because everybody else does. In their observance of Sunday they are following a custom that has prevailed in Christendom for more than 1500 years. However, custom or tradition in matters of the worship of God is not a safe guide. We must look to commands of God as given in the Holy Scriptures. Jesus spoke on this very point in Matthew 15:3, 6, 9. "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? . . . Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.... But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."

In order to obtain more authoritative information as to when the seventh-day Sabbath came into being, and for whom, and why it was made, we need to go to the book of beginnings-Genesis. Notice carefully how the wording of this scripture agrees with that of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. The work of the first six days of Creation having come to an end, the Creator saw fit to designate the seventh day of the week as a perpetual memorial of His creative work. So the inspired writer says, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work, which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made" (Genesis 2:1- 3).

Notice also the similarity of expression in these verses. When God wrote the Sabbath commandment, He had the Creation Week in mind.

Now, whose Sabbath is it that He speaks about in the fourth commandment? It is "the sabbath of the Lord thy God," the day He made for His people to keep holy. It is the "Lord's day" of which John speaks in Revelation 1:10. It is the holy Sabbath of which Isaiah, the gospel prophet, spoke in this statement: "Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil" (Isaiah 56:2).

The Sabbath was not exclusively for the Jews. The foreigners-or Gentiles, "the sons of the stranger"- were to keep the Sabbath, too. "Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of praver: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people" (Isaiah 56:6, 7).

Dr Augustus H. Strong, then president of Rochester Theological Seminary, said of the fourth precept of the Ten Commandments:

"The Sabbath is of perpetual obligation as God's appointed memorial of his creating activity. The Sabbath requisition antedates the decalogue and forms a part of the moral law. Made at the creation, it applies to man as man, everywhere and always, in his present state of being....

"Neither our Lord nor his apostles abrogated [did away wth] the Sabbath of the decalogue. The new dispensation does away with the Mosaic regulations as to the method of keeping the Sabbath, but at the same time declares its observance to be of divine origin and to be a necessity of human nature" ( Systematic Theology, pages 408, 409).

Some people have said that the Sabbath was not known until God gave the Ten Commandments to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, that humanity was not required to observe the Sabbath until then. But why did God tell the Jews to 'remember the sabbath" when He spoke to them at Mount Sinai if they had never known anything about this holy day? One cannot remember something that one has never known. The Israelites had been a nation of slaves in Egypt. In their bondage most of them had lost sight of the requirements of God. The cruel pressure of their servitude caused the minds of many to forget the fact that there was a God in heaven, and that He was the Creator of this World and those who inhabit it. When Moses was called by God to lead His people, he doubtless instructed the elders concerning the necessity, of obedience to the principles of the law of God, including the commandment about the Sabbath. When he went to Pharaoh, one of the charges that the monarch pressed against Moses and Aaron was, "Ye make them rest from their burdens" (Exodus 5:5). In the Hebrew text the verb "rest" used here is shabath, the same word that is rendered as "rested" in Genesis 2:2, 3. Literally the text reads, "Ye cause them to sabbatise from their burdens." The noun corresponding to the Hebrew verb is shabbath, which is translated into English as Sabbath." It appears, therefore, that Pharaoh was complaining because Moses and Aaron had taught the people to keep the Sabbath by resting as God had commanded. "Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord" (Exodus 5:17).

There is other proof that Israel knew of the Sabbath prior to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. Abraham, called "the Friend of God" and the "father of the faithful," who obtained righteousness through faith, was obedient to God's law. The Lord could say of him, "Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws" (Genesis 26:5). Abraham knew about the seventh-day Sabbath, for the fourth commandment of God's law specifically required the observance of the seventh day.

In Exodus 16 we find indisputable proof that the seventh-day Sabbath was observed by the people of God prior to the giving of the law at Sinai. Thirty days before that majestic event, the Lord tested His people's willingness to obey His law by putting them to the test on the matter of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath. He fed His people in the wilderness during their wanderings by raining manna from heaven for them on each of the first six days of the week. The manna gathered the first five days had to be used before the following morning, else it would breed worms and stink. Therefore the children of Israel were to gather no more than they needed from day to day. The Lord said, "I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that 1 may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or not. And it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily" (Exodus 16:4, 5).

"And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread . . . and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord bath said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the Lord: bake that which ye will bake today, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said, Eat that today; for today is a sabbath unto the Lord: today ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none" (verses 22-26).

Thus God did "prove" Israel to see if they would walk in His law or not. The test was on the question of Sabbath observance-the keeping of the seventh day. By the miraculous giving of the manna in this manner, the seventh-day Sabbath was marred off as a definite day of the week for nearly 40 years. There can be no gainsaying the evidence.

Some of the Israelites did not take what God said very seriously, and they went out on Sabbath morning to gather manna and found none. "And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord bath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day" (verses 27-30).

Furthermore, what a blessed promise God made to His people back there, saying that if they would keep the Sabbath holy, He would provide them with as much food on the sixth day and would preserve it so that there would be no spoilage on the seventh day. God will do great things for His people today if they honour Him by properly keeping His day holy. "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it" (Isaiah 58:13, 14).

"The sabbath was made for man" (Mark 2:27). God has never told humans to do the impossible. With every command He has also made provision for the performance of what is required.

But the issue of the Sabbath is much more than a matter of two 24-hour days. The real issue is our loyalty to God. Will we do what God has asked us to do, or "will we set ourselves up in the place of God and do what we want to do regardless of the Lord's plan? That is the root issue of all sin, really. Will I let God control my life, or will I insist on being my own master?

The course of this present world is just about finished. Soon will be established "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Peter 3:13). In that new world the seventh-day Sabbath will be observed by all the redeemed, even as it was kept when our world came pure and beautiful from the hand of the Creator and when the Sabbath was made for the human race. Isaiah records the words of God accordingly:

"And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord" (Isaiah 66:23).

Shall we not begin preparing now to live with God in that beautiful place by loyally observing the day He has set aside as holy?