#59 To Keep the 3rd Commandment is to Hear the Word and Help our Neighbor

The sum of the matter is that our Lord boldly tells the Pharisees that they do not know what it is to keep the Sabbath day and to sanctify it. According to your idea, He tells them, it is sanctifying the Sabbath day to be altogether idle and to do no work whatever. No, this is not the meaning of the Sabbath day. To sanctify the Sabbath day means to hear the Word of God and to help our neighbor wherever we can. God does not want a keeping of the Sabbath day in which our neighbor is neglected or left to suffer. For if I serve and help my neighbor, I have kept the Sabbath as it should be kept, and have done a truly good work. This doctrine concerning the Sabbath day shows us how to understand the third commandment aright, according to which we are required, not to be idle or to do nothing, but to hear the Word of God and to live according to that Word. And what does that Word teach us? It directs us, according to the second table, to love and serve one another. This God wants us to learn on the Sabbath day. Hence it must also follow that we are not desecrating the Sabbath day by such good works as these. (Luther’s House Postil, Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, Volume 3, p. 815)