Most Christians - and Jews - would agree that the Ten Commandments provide a necessary foundation for moral order among human beings.

Those who violate these laws hurt themselves and others. Failing to maintain these standards imperils a society.

This is true with respect to each commandment, including one that receives little emphasis today. Exodus 20:8 says, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" (NIV).

A professional football player once justified to me his participation in games on Sunday by saying, "A person is not saved by keeping the law." I agree. I am not, however, discussing what one must do to be saved. I am concerned about our living life as God says it ought to be lived. And I am concerned about the effect our conduct has on the social order of which we are a part.

God laid down as a basic law that one day in seven should be different from the rest. The Jews set Saturday apart as that day. Christians generally recognize Sunday as the special, seventh day.

That day is to be holy. "Holy," in its simplest sense, means set apart to belong to the Lord. The seventh day is to be a day set apart as belonging especially to God.

Our standard with respect to the seventh day's use must not be what is good for me or what I enjoy, but by what is good for God and what pleases Him. It is not a period in the week designed primarily for our respite and recreation. It is much more clearly a day for a cessation of other pursuits in order to have time to seek the Lord and to know Him better.

We need a day each week during which we concentrate upon the Lord. The knowledge of God is the source of eternal life. Fellowship with God is the richest privilege afforded to man. The worship of God is life's loftiest vocation. The help of God is our most precious resource. Yet all influences of the physical world around us dim our vision of the Lord. The daily demands we face distract us from intimacy with Him. Responsibilities related to work, education and family easily can take all our waking hours. Our need for sleep, rest and recreation consume our hours.

Without a special day set aside for God, a day in which we set aside other things to seek Him, we are likely to miss Him completely. Thus we can be robbed of our greatest treasure: an increasingly vital union with our Creator and Father.

Also, our world needs the testimony to God's importance that is provided by our giving honor to God one day in seven.

Proverbs 29:18 says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (KJV). This verse says that without a consciousness of God a people will start to disintegrate.

When people lose sight of God they become lawless. Morality is undermined. Forces of disintegration begin to tear apart society from within/

Those of us who know God have a responsibility to honor Him among men, conspicuously, so as to remind people of His existence and to call them to a consideration of their accountability to Him.

When we give God one day in seven we say that God still reigns. We testify that He is still a factor to be reckoned with and a Person to be considered.

Many Christians have abused what we believe to be our liberty in Christ. We think ourselves entitled to do just about anything we please on the Lord's Day - sleep, play, travel, buy, sell and work.

But we ignore God's law to our own loss and harm. And we contribute to the growing secularism that is drawing society toward its destruction. Our misuse of the seventh day is serious.