Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; February 15, 2026
Readings: Exodus 16:22-31 (children’s talk); True Christian Religion §301
Today’s sermon is about the third commandment—and there’s something a little bit amusing about preaching on this commandment. More than is usually the case, it seems that the ones who are present to hear such a sermon are not the ones who need to hear it. You’re already here, and that says that you think church is worth your time (or that someone else in your life thinks church is worth your time). So who needs to hear a sermon about it?
But the third commandment doesn’t actually say anything about church. It doesn’t say anything about praying or singing together, and not a word about sermons. Instead it says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8), and then it goes on to talk about doing no work (vv. 9, 10). Of course no priest is going to stand on chancel and say that coming to church is not important. Much more significantly, the Heavenly Doctrine says that coming to church is useful (SH §1618), and part of the life of charity (SH §§1175.2, 8252-8253[1]). Coming to church is part of how we remember the Sabbath day—but we’ll come back to that later. For now, let’s look a little more closely at what the third commandment actually says.
We’ll turn to our reading from the Heavenly Doctrine, from the book True Christian Religion, which is a discussion of the literal sense of the third commandment [read §301].
That passage calls attention to a number of important ideas. First, it underscores the idea that the Sabbath, at its heart, is about rest: the Sabbath is a day for the Lord to give us rest. Then it touches on the idea that among the ancient Israelites, the observance of the Sabbath was representative; that is, heavenly things were represented on earth when people kept the rules about the Sabbath (and that’s why the rules were so important). But when the Lord came to earth, representations ceased. And the reading concluded with a list of the things that the Sabbath is meant to be about now: since the cessation of representatives, the Sabbath has been a day for instruction in Divine matters, a day of rest from work, a day for meditating on things that have to do with salvation and eternal life, and a day of love for the neighbor. That’s an interesting list. It’s especially interesting that the Sabbath is still, even in 2026, supposed to be a day of rest from work.
The word “Sabbath” is just an Anglicization of a Hebrew word that means “rest.” So the third commandment literally says, “remember the day of rest, to keep it holy.” There’s something holy about observing a day of rest—that is, a day of rest in the Lord. Why is that? We talked about this during the children’s talk; the simple answer is that we need to just let the Lord take care of us sometimes. Actually, we need Him to take care of us all the time; but sometimes we need to stop and remember that we depend on Him—that He’s the one who gives our spirits bread every morning. We need to stop trying to do it all, and spend some time with the idea that He’s doing things we could never do. He has us in His hands, and the whole world too. To put it very simply, remembering the Sabbath is about remembering to put our trust in Him. It’s hard to do that when we’re preoccupied with our own work. Have you ever had the experience of being outside and feeling busy—because you’ve got a lot of work to do, or because you’re rushing from place to place, or because your mind is full of thoughts—and then looking up and noticing how big the sky is, and how warm the sun is, and suddenly feeling quieter inside? Remembering to look up is what the Sabbath is all about.
The third commandment tells us to regularly pause our thoughts about the things that we do, and lift our minds to what the Lord does. And this becomes even clearer when we consider the deeper meanings of this commandment—the spiritual and celestial commandments that are held within the literal sense of the third commandment. In True Christian Religion we read:
In the spiritual sense this commandment means a person’s reformation and regeneration by the Lord. “Six days of work” means the fight against the flesh and its lusts, and at the same time against the evils and falsities which are implanted in one by hell. The seventh day means his being conjoined with the Lord, and his consequent regeneration. (§302)
And a little further on we read:
In the celestial sense this commandment means being conjoined with the Lord, leading to peace as the result of protection from hell. The Sabbath means rest and, in this highest sense, peace. That is why the Lord is called the Prince of peace, and He calls Himself peace…. (§303)
The Lord is the one who regenerates us, or makes us new. And He’s the one who gives us peace. Without Him we can have approximations of peace or illusions of peace. We can convince ourselves that we’re doing just fine; but there’s something restless and dissatisfied deep down inside every feeling peace that doesn’t have the Lord in it. He’s the one who gives us that feeling of safety and lightness and freedom—peace as unconquerable as the wide blue sky. And the third commandment says “remember.” The Lord’s presence in our lives makes all the difference, yet it’s so easy to push Him to the margins of our thought. The third commandment tells us to “remember”—and more than that, it tells us to do things regularly, every week, that will remind us to stop and look up.
So how do we keep this commandment in practice? What does it mean to actually “remember the day of rest, to keep it holy?” Different faith traditions have come up with different interpretations of what it means to remember the Sabbath, and some of those interpretations have been very strict. In some traditions (at least in the past) children weren’t even allowed to play on the Sabbath—because somehow playing was considered work. Sundays were for worship, and that was it. And of course, it used to be that businesses were all closed on Sundays, and very few people were required to work on Sundays. Increasingly that is no longer the case. And it’s hard to literally abstain from work on Sundays when the world around us isn’t doing that. Besides, how strict do we really need to be? There are lots of stories in the Gospel in which the Lord is confronted by religious authorities who are offended because (in their eyes) He’s broken the law of the Sabbath—and the Lord seems to tell them that the law of the Sabbath doesn’t need to be kept as rigidly as they think it does. The message seems to be that we don’t have to be uptight about abstaining from work on the Sabbath. After all, representations have ceased, right?
We’re certainly not meant to be boneheaded about keeping the Lord’s rules. And yes, representations have ceased—worship is no longer meant to consist of symbolic actions that the people performing them don’t understand. But it’s not like all of the rules in the Old Testament have been abolished. Notably, we’re still meant to keep the ten commandments, and the third commandment still says, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy…. In it you shall do no work” (Ex. 20:8, 10). But we don’t want to be boneheaded about this commandment, so let’s look at what the Lord actually teaches in the Gospel.
There are two main things that the Pharisees and other religious authorities challenged the Lord for doing on the Sabbath: plucking and eating heads of grain as He and His disciples walked through a field,[2] and healing people.[3] Harvesting crops is a lot of work, so it makes sense that people were expected not to go out into the fields with their scythes on the Sabbath. It was reasonable for harvesting to be against the rules. The Pharisees evidently saw Jesus and the disciples plucking heads of grain and said, “That’s harvesting! You’re working!” But how much work is it, actually, to pick a head of grain from a stalk as you walk by? The Pharisees were being nitpicky. And they were missing the point: how much resting in God can you do when you’re rushing around scolding other people for their transgressions? The Lord responded by saying, essentially, that it’s okay to make exceptions to the rules when circumstances require it. A specific thing He said is that the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:8; Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5). In other words, the Sabbath is about the Lord; the purpose of the Sabbath is for us to look to the Lord, and the rules are just there to help. We’re not meant to put the rules above the Lord, or His mercy, or any of His other qualities.
This principle is even easier to see in the stories in which the Lord is challenged for healing on the Sabbath. First of all, He mostly healed by putting His hands on people, and that’s hardly work at all. But more significantly, the Lord does not want us to put our own rigid interpretation of the rules over the health and wellbeing of His people. So He told the Pharisees, “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matt. 12:12; cf. Mark 3:4; Luke 6:9). He also pointed out that everyone was already taking their oxen and their donkeys out of the stall to give them water on the Sabbath day (Luke 13:15), even though the third commandment says that oxen and donkeys shall do no work on the Sabbath. The point is don’t be rigid. Don’t make the rules more important than the purpose that those rules serve. Reasonable exceptions can be made, in the name of what’s good.
So what does it mean for us to keep the Sabbath holy, in practice? We don’t have to get bogged down by rules. In today’s world it’s often difficult to literally abstain from all work on Sundays, and that’s the way it is. Reasonable exceptions can be made, in the name of what’s good. And the third commandment still says that we’re not to work on the Sabbath. And the Heavenly Doctrine still says that the Sabbath is a day for the Lord to give us rest (TCR §301). Resting in the Lord is fundamentally an internal, spiritual thing—but if it stays at the level of the spirit and never shows up in the way we live, then it’s an idea and not a reality. If our observance of the third commandment is to be real, we need to do something about it. If Sunday looks exactly the same as Saturday, then what are we doing to keep the Sabbath any holier than any other day of the week?
So we come back to the usefulness of church. The opening reading from True Christian Religion said that the Sabbath is now a day for instruction in Divine matters, a day of rest from work, a day for meditating on things that have to do with salvation and eternal life, and a day of love for the neighbor (§301). New Church worship services are designed to help people do all of these things. The instructional component is easy to see. Church is meant to be a restful experience. The meditative component is present in the quiet portions of the service, during which you’re invited to pray and to reflect. And gathering together, as we have, means that we’re surrounded by neighbors that we have an opportunity to share something with. Though maybe that last component needs more emphasis than it’s sometimes been given; what would it look like if we truly made the Sabbath a day of love for the neighbor?
Of course the service that you’re participating in right now is not the only way to rest in the Lord. But this service, and others like it, are offered every week because of the third commandment—because resting in the Lord is important. It’s important that we stop our work and make the time to look up at bigger, holier things. As the Heavenly Doctrine puts it, the Lord is Lord of the Sabbath, “that is, [Lord] of rest and peace” (TCR §303). He wants us to remember the Sabbath because He wants us to find the rest and peace that are His alone to give.
Amen.
[1] See also the teachings on the “signs of charity:” DLW §431; Charity §§173-183
[2] Matt. 12:1-9; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-6
[3] Matt. 12:10-14; Mark 3:1-9; Luke 6:6-12; 13:10-18; 14:1-7; John 5:9-19; 7:22, 23; 9:14, 16