"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor,
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 within 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."
There has been an awful letting-down in this country regarding the
sabbath during the last twenty-five years, and many a man has been
shorn of spiritual power, like Samson, because he is not straight on
this question. Can _you_ say that you observe the sabbath properly?
You may be a professed Christian: are you obeying this commandment? Or
do you neglect the house of God on the sabbath day, and spend your
time drinking and carousing in places of vice and crime, showing
contempt for God and His law? Are you ready to step into the scales?
Where were you last sabbath? How did you spend it?
I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding to-day as
it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been
abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the
Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing
to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes
and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. "The sabbath was
made for man, not man for the sabbath." It is just as practicable and
as necessary for men to-day as it ever was--in fact, more than ever,
because we live in such an intense age.
The sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since.
This fourth commandment begins with the word "remember," showing that
the sabbath already existed when God wrote this law on the tables of
stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been
done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still
binding?
I believe that the sabbath question to-day is a vital one for the
whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you
give up the sabbath the church goes; if you give up the church the
home goes; and if the home goes the nation goes. That is the direction
in which we are traveling.
The church of God is losing its power on account of so many people
giving up the sabbath, and using it to promote selfishness.