Ten Petitions and Praises about the Sabbath

The prayers of a Sunday morning service offer a perfect context to encourage both gratitude for the Sabbath and renewed ambitions for the Lord’s day. If you are a pastor or elder seeking to encourage thoughtfulness about the fourth commandment, perhaps consider a sampling from these suggestions – or praying something similar, but better suited for the needs of your church. (Some of these prayers and petitions are drawn from Scripture. Others are drawn from Westminster Larger Catechism 120 and 121.)

1. O Lord, we admit today that even as we consider your goodness, we also see our failures. We find faults in our working, when we do too little, or do too much. We see wrongs in our resting, when we treat each day alike, or shrink your day down to a sixty-minute Sabbath. And so we come to you on your day, confessing that we are weary of our foolishness and tired of our sins. Lift our heavy hearts by your Holy Spirit, and give us the true rest we need. Pardon our sins because of the work of Jesus Christ. And then so bless us this day that we will show forth your Lordship every day, until we reach the promised rest purchased for us by Jesus Christ Our Lord, in whose name we pray.

2. Gracious Father, we acknowledge that we struggle to keep your day. It comes once a week, and many activities come in between our rests. Good tasks both distract us from the blessing of your day and keep us from preparing for it. Please help us by your Spirit to prioritize your day, and then be glorified as you answer our prayers.

3. Lord, help us to understand both your day and our difficulties. Help us to see that if we find it hard to keep the Sabbath, that it does not make us legalists to keep trying. Give us the insight to see that all of your commandments are hard to keep – and that this does not make any of them unimportant for your people.

4. We thank you Lord for your generosity, that you made your day for us, and not us for your day. How good you are to us!

5. We praise you Lord that you are equitable, and then some! For you gave us six days for our own affairs, and reserve only one day especially for yourself. Will you help us to keep your day without grudging, but with joy.

6. Help us to be a church that remembers the fourth commandment. Help us by your Spirit to be careful to keep this one commandment, so that we might better keep all the rest of your commandments. Help us to see that we are stronger together when we spend more of our day in worship, more of it in fellowship, more of it resting and reading so that we might be better equipped and oriented for the work of our callings and our witness before the world.

7. Gracious Lord, thank you for the testimony of your Word to the richness of your day. Thank you for the way in which Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 bear witness to the one commandment that helps us to honor you both as our creator, remembering the pattern you have set, and as our redeemer, recalling our deliverance from slavery.

8. Thank you for giving us the Sabbath as a gift and as a symbol. How we thank you that like your Supper, your Sabbath points us back to the rest that Christ has won for us. How we praise you that like your Supper, your Sabbath points forward to our eternal rest. Teach us to treasure your day more deeply as it roots us in these historic and heavenly realities.

9. Our Lord, teach us by your Spirit to thank you not only for the weekly Sabbath, but for the symbols of the Old Covenant feast-day and first-day sabbaths. Thank you for giving your people of old the sabbath of the feast of tabernacles celebrating the end of wandering and the beginning of life in the promised land. Thank you for giving them the feast of the first-fruits, marking the beginning of the harvest, and the feast of weeks, celebrating its end. Thank you for the feast of unleavened bread, marking the departure from Egypt; and the feast of trumpets, celebrating rest itself. We praise you for setting apart these great blessings with sabbath days, teaching us too that rest and rejoicing belong together. Help us in our day to celebrate the fullness of our privileges by pausing to rest, reflect, and worship on your day.

10. Gracious Father, thank you for sending your Son, the Lord of the Sabbath and our Sabbath Rest. It is to him that all pictures point, for he is the one who tabernacled among us; he is the one who marks the beginning of a great harvest; he is the unleavened bread of life; he is the one who offers us the greatest rest of all, that final Jubilee where all his people will be given rest and the captive prisoners will be set free. He is the one who will be announced with trumpet sound, as he brings all those who trust in him, into their final rest. Thank you giving us a day that reminds us of our Savior each week. Will you help us by your Spirit to rest in him? We know that you will, for we pray this in Jesus’s name.

Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn is Professor of Church History and Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte. A leading expert on the work of the Westminster Assembly.