I imagine if I asked you, which is the sixth commandment, unless you happen to have learned

a catacism you might have to go back to the beginning and count them out on your fingers.

But there are one or two commandments, many of us know, just by their number.

And the fourth commandment is one of them.

It's the commandment about the Sabbath day.

And maybe of all the commandments is the one that gets some Christians hot under the collar.

No stealing, no adultery, no bearing false witness, no coveting, we get these.

We never dream of openly ignoring them.

But keeping the Sabbath, we certainly could take the whole week on this commandment, couldn't

we explain it, discussing it, trying to clarify what it says, and also what it doesn't say.

And I don't plan to do that.

But let me say just a couple of things that I hope might be helpful.

The first is this.

It's a mistake to think that the Sabbath commandment is either only about one day in the week,

or all about one day in the week.

If you think about it, the truth is it's really about every day of the week.

Six days you shall labour and do all your work, and one day rest from that labour.

I sometimes think that what this law means is that God is giving us a kind of time and

motion tool for balancing our lives.

So if you were to ask me, is it okay to do this on Sunday?

Unless it's clearly unbiblical, I would respond, well, tell me, why are you thinking of

doing that on Sunday?

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