To have a firm foundation for keeping the Sabbath in a profitable manner, you must be convinced from the Scriptures that the Sabbath is the sacred day of God. Then you are able to wake up on the first day of the week and say to yourself, “My God has set apart one day in seven for Himself since the beginning of time. Christ declared that He is Lord of the Sabbath. I am Christ’s disciple, and because I love Him I will keep His commandments. Today is the Lord’s Day, and I will keep it holy.”

Isaiah 58:13 says, “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” (emphasis added). You will not be able to wholeheartedly pursue a profitable Sabbath day until you are convinced that the Lord’s Day is truly set apart by God as sacred time devoted to Him. You must be able to say with absolute conviction, “This is God’s holy day.” If your conscience is gripped with a sense that God commands us to honor the Lord’s Day, then you will do what it takes to honor it. And, if you love the Lord, you will do it with pleasure because it is His will.

The Sabbath was instituted by God as His holy day.¹ In the fourth commandment God says, “The seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God” (Ex. 20:10). These words remind us that God commanded us to observe the weekly Sabbath and that He claims the day as His own. As God said through Isaiah, it is “my holy day.” Not to devote the day to the purposes and activities commanded for its sanctification robs God of that which belongs to Him.

The Sabbath is a creation ordinance. Genesis 2:1–3 recounts how on the seventh day of the creation week, God rested from all His work as Creator. God, who does not need to rest, rested as an example for the man and woman He had created in His image. They were to follow His example, resting from their work as He did from His; thus it is a divine institution which God crowned with His blessing, setting it apart for all of time. A common error is to assume that the Sabbath originated with the giving of the law at Sinai. Such a view ignores the fact that Exodus 20 does not introduce the Sabbath as something new but rather acknowledges something ancient and historic that is to be remembered and observed by God’s people: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8).

What, specifically, is to be remembered in the pattern of six days of work punctuated by a day of holy rest? “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. 20:11). Every Sabbath we remember that we are not in this world by chance; we are not products of evolution. Every Sabbath God declares to us, “Remember that you are accountable to Me. Remember that you are under My authority as your Creator.” Jesus Christ owned the Sabbath. The first three evangelists record that He said, “The Son of man is Lord of the sabbath” (Matt. 12:8; Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5).

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