The early reference to the Sabbath in the Book of Genesis is no proof of its early institution, for there can be no doubt that in the Pentateuch Moses felt himself at perfect liberty, while using ancient traditions and documents, to introduce additions, explanations, and comments of his own. Although there are many references to weeksin the Book of Genesis, there is not a solitary passage which even suggests that the patriarchs kept the seventh day or any other day as a Sabbath. Even if such a commandment had been given to Adam and recorded in Holy Scripture, it could not have any greater authority for us than the commandment given to the Jews. The Jewish revelation has become obsolete, because a nobler revelation has been made in Christ; but the Jewish revelation itself was nobler than any previous revelation, and if Moses has vanished in the Diviner glory of Christ, all that preceded Moses must have vanished too. Dismissing, therefore, all arbitrary fancies as to a primitive Sabbath, consider the characteristics of the Sabbath as given to the Jews: (1) The Jewish Sabbath was founded on a definite Divine command. (2) The particular day which was to be kept as a Sabbath was authoritatively determined. (3) The purpose of the day was expressly defined. (4) The manner in which the Sabbath was to be kept was very distinctly stated. (5) The sanction which defended the law of the Sabbath was most severe.
The only similarity between the Lord's Day and the Jewish Sabbath is that both recur once a week, and that both are religious festivals. To the idea of the Jewish Sabbath rest was essential, worship was an accident; to the idea of the Christian Sunday worship is essential, rest an accident. The observance of Sunday as a religious institution is a question of privilege, not of duty.
R, W. Dale, The Ten Commandments,p. 87.
I. The first word of the Fourth Commandment reminds us that the Sabbath Day was already established among the Israelites when the law was delivered on Sinai. That law created nothing. It preserved and enforced what God had already taught His people to observe by another method than that of formal decrees.
II. In this commandment work is enjoined, just as much as rest is enjoined. Man's sin has turned work into a curse. God has redeemed and restored work into a blessing by uniting it again to the rest with which, in His Divine original order, it was associated.
III. God rests; therefore He would have man rest. God works; therefore He would have man work. Man cannot rest truly unless he remembers his relation to God, who rests.
IV. It is not wonderful that the Jews after the Captivity, as they had been schooled by a long discipline into an understanding of the meaning of the Second Commandment, so had learnt also to appreciate in some degree the worth of the Fourth. Nehemiah speaks frequently and with great emphasis of the Sabbath as a gift of God which their fathers had lightly esteemed, and which the new generation was bound most fondly to cherish. His words and acts were abused by the Jews who lived between his age and that of our Lord's nativity, and when Christ came, the Sabbath itself, all its human graciousness, all its Divine reasonableness, were becoming each day more obscured.
V. Jesus, as the Mediator, declared Himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath, and proved Himself to be so by turning what the Jews made a curse into a blessing. He asserted the true glory of the Sabbath Day in asserting the mystery of His own relation to God and to His creatures.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons on the Sabbath Day,p. 1.
References: Exodus 20:8-11. J. Vaughan, Sermons to Children,4th series, p. 177; H. F. Burder, Sermons,p. 386; R. Lee, Sermons,pp. 399, 411, 421; J. Oswald Dykes, The Law of the Ten Words,p. 87; F. D. Maurice, The Commandments,p. 50.