I. Whether the patriarchs were or were not commanded to keep the Sabbath is a thing which we can never know; it is no safe foundation for our thinking ourselves bound to keep it, that the patriarchs kept it before the Law was given, and that the commandment had existed before the time of Moses, and was only confirmed by him and repeated. For if the Law itself be done away in Christ, much more the things before the Law. The Sabbath may have been necessary to the patriarchs, for we know that it was needed even at a later time; they who had the light of the Law could not do without it. But it would by no means follow that it was needed now, when, having put away the helps of our childhood, we ought to be grown up into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. So that the words of the text neither prove us right in keeping the Sunday, nor would they prove us wrong if we were to give up the observance of it.
II. The real question, however, is, Are we right in keeping the Sunday, or are we not right? We are bound by the spirit of the fourth commandment to keep holy the Sunday because we are not fit to do without it. As the change of the day from the seventh to the first shows us what God designed for us, shows us the heavenly liberty to which we were called, so the long and unvaried practice of the Church in keeping the first day holy shows us their sad feeling and confession that they were not fit for that liberty; that the Law, which God would fain have loosed from off them, was still needed to be their schoolmaster. The bond of the commandment broken through Christ's spirit was through our unworthiness closed again. We still need the Law, we need its aid to our weakness; we may not refuse to listen to the wisdom of its voice because the terror of its threatenings is taken away from the true believer.
T. Arnold, Sermon,vol. iii., p. 184.
An allegory lies in this history. Every week has its Sabbath, and every Sabbath is to be a parenthesis between two weeks' work. From the beginning of the world a seventh of time was set apart for rest. The command to keep it holy was embodied in the ceremonial law, and began with the retrospective word "Remember!" The rest of the Sabbath must be (1) real, (2) worthy, (3) complete. It must be refreshment to body, mind, and soul; it must not infringe upon the rest of others. The rest of a holy peace must be combined with the loving energies of an active body and an earnest mind.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 204.
References: Genesis 2:3. R. S. Candlish, The Book of Genesis,p. 18; H. F. Burder, Sermons,p. 369. Genesis 2:4. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis,p. 16. Genesis 2:4; Genesis 2:5. H. Macmillan, Bible Teachings in Nature,p. 130. Genesis 2:5. Expositor,1st series, vol. vii., p. 465. 2:4-3:24. J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses,p. 77.