Deuteronomy 5

You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.

The Ten Commandments in the Book of Deuteronomy 5:6-21: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

These tablets of the Testimony were to be deposited in the ark.

The ten words are pronounced by God in the midst of a theophany.

Deuteronomy 5 states, The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire.

They belong to God's revelation of himself and his glory.

And those of you who come into the Church, you realize that the Sabbath celebrates God, specifically Jesus, as creator.

But then in Deuteronomy 5, the second time the 10 Commandments was written after Moses threw it down, it celebrates God as what? Deliverer.

Creation and the cross.

It shows that you are wanted and needed, that Jesus wanted you so bad that he promised Adam that he was gonna crush the head of the serpent for him, because he didn't do it himself.

In Exodus 20:11, the reason is creation, right? God rested.

Here in Deuteronomy 5:15, it's this.

You might have missed it, and that's okay.

A lot of people do.

I'm just a weirdo.

Deuteronomy, like Captain Obvious, right? Deuteronomy 5:15, it's this: "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt." The Sabbath becomes a weekly appointment with remembering.

I talked yesterday about who carried you.

Do we, do we even remember those times? Who carried us through? We couldn't carry ourselves.

In the Decalogue, the fourth word commands Sabbath rest.

This is in Exodus 20 8-11 and Deuteronomy 5 12-15.

All are in agreement with this point.

Where debate arises is in how that original commandment to Israel relates to the rest of the Bible.

Because the Sabbath question invites an entire biblical theology, it's not easy to cover that subject with anything less than a multi-chapter book or at least a multi-part essay.

For that reason, I will not attempt to address all the relevant questions related to the Sabbath.

Instead, I will engage a portion of Bo Landers' new book, and I will show why his biblical theology of the Sabbath moves too quickly to passages outside of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, with results that leave Christians with no moral imperative to gather for worship on a specific day.

For those who are familiar with the discussion, the Sabbath question is debated amongst Christians who agree on many other matters.

And so as such, we find roots in this Sabbath day, in the Lord's day, not only in creation, but also in redemption, in redemption.

Turn with me, if you would, to Deuteronomy 5.

Many of you will know that Deuteronomy 5, or Deuteronomy, I should say, the book, is the second giving of the law as the Israelites were ready to go into the promised land.

So we find in it a republishing of the Ten Commandments.

And in Deuteronomy 5, verse 15, I want you to notice the rationale that Moses gives here for the Sabbath.

Deuteronomy 5, verse 15.

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.