When Moses received the law of God as contained in the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy contained more words than any of the other commandments.
In 94 words the Lord was very specific in this commandment. It is interesting that the first two commandments taken together have the next largest number of words. These two commandments assert that we are to have no other gods before Him and that we are not to worship anything of the world or serve any gods of the world.
The third commandment affirms that we are not to take the name of the Lord in vain.
It is easy to see how these commandments relate to each other. If we seek to follow inappropriate activities on the Sabbath or place worldy means or desires ahead of Sabbath observances we are really choosing "other gods" and taking the name of the Lord "in vain."
In commanding obedience on the Sabbath day the Lord makes reference to the creative periods involved in forming the earth, and then says:
"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." (Ex. 20:11.)
A reading of the scriptures about the creation, both in Genesis and Moses, shows that after each step or period of creation "God saw that it was good." Then with the completion of His work we read:
"And I, God, saw everything that I had made, and behold, all things which I had made were very good. . . ." (Moses 2:31.)
Then came this divine affirmation to Moses:
"And on the seventh day, I, God, ended my work, and all things which I had made; and I rested on the seventh day from all my work, and all things which I had made were finished, and I, God, saw that they were good;
"And I God, blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it I had rested from all my work which I, God, had created and made." (Moses 3:2-3.)
It is also possible for us to do "good works" in six days and then on the seventh seek to be sanctified. The Moses text uses "sanctified," while the Genesis text uses "hallowed." In either case the seventh day or period of time is to be different and special from all other days.
According to Webster's dictionary the word "sanctify" means "to set apart for a sacred purpose or to religious use; to free from sin; to give moral or social sanction to." These words are given as synonyms: consecrate, purify, and holiness. The way we can sanctify this day is to let it sanctify us and cleanse our hearts and minds of worldliness.
One of the major events on the Sabbath should be the partaking of the emblems of the Lord's supper that assists in our sanctification. If we are not in the Lord's house on the Sabbath we miss the opportunity to partake of the sacrament.
President Joseph Fielding Smith observed of this:
"These six days give ample time for men to care for the temporal needs of their bodies, to clothe and feed themselves and their dependents, and the Lord has asked us to take the seventh, or Sabbath, to feed the spirit. The great majority of men and children today are not content to take only the six days for the purpose of the physical needs of the body and are starving their spirits. If we go without food, we get hungry; if we go without sleep, we get weary and ill; but we seldom think that the starving of the spirit is anything that should worry us. When we do this, we feel no pain, no misery, unless it is that our conscience troubles us. If we persist in the violation of the Sabbath day, the time comes when our conscience becomes seared, and we fail to heed its warnings or its call for spiritual food. Surely it is not unreasonable for us to be commanded to obey the Sabbath when the Lord has given us six-sevenths of our time for all temporal purposes." (Answers to Gospel Questions, Vol. 1, p. 103.)
Someone once said: "In the day of our grandfathers it was the Holy Sabbath. In the day of our fathers it was Sunday. In our day it's just the weekend." How sad and true that seems to be.
May we make the events of the six days in our life times for doing "good works" of a temporal nature, and then on the Sabbath sanctify ourselves from the world and gain the spiritual strength we need to face the world for another six days ahead.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEnJ%2BuqpOdu6bD0meaqKVfZ31xfI5qaGhpYWR%2FdH6Tbmpvb1%2Borq%2Bv06KdsmWfqr%2B0scuvnKxn