EXODUS - Living & Working for God's Glory - Exodus 31:12-18

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everyone to enjoy Christ for the glory of God. If we can serve you in any way

then visit our website at citychurchmanchester.org to find out more.

Our Bible reading is going to be coming from two places, two parts of the Bible today.

So Genesis chapter 3 verses 16 to 24, it's the first book in the Bible.

Genesis 3:16–24

Genesis chapter 3 verses 16 to 24 and Exodus chapter 31 verses 12 to 18.

Genesis 3:16–24 Exodus 31:12–18

Exodus 31 12 to 18.

I'll start with the Genesis chapter 3 16 to 24.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

To the woman he said, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe.

With painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

To Adam he said, because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree

about which I commanded you, you must not eat.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

Through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground.

Since from it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living.

The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

And the Lord God said, the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil.

He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

After he drove the man out he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim

and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Exodus chapter 31 verses 12 to 18.

Exodus 31:12–18

Then the Lord said to Moses,

Say to the Israelites, you must observe my Sabbaths.

This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come

so that you may know that I am the Lord who makes you holy.

Observe the Sabbath because it is holy to you.

Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death.

Those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.

For six days work is to be done but the seventh day is a day of Sabbath rest,

holy to the Lord.

Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.

The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath,

celebrating it for generations to come as a lasting covenant.

It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever.

In the sixth days the Lord made the heavens and the earth

and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.

When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai,

he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law,

the tablets of stone inscribed by a finger of God.

Thanks very much Chris and good afternoon everyone.

Welcome to City Church and if you are new,

a particularly warm welcome to our series in Exodus

that we've been going through over the last few weeks.

Do keep your Bibles open because we're going to be working through

this passage that speaks particularly about the Sabbath.

But why don't I pray before we begin.

Heavenly Father we do thank you so much that you are a good God who speaks to us.

You know the details of our lives,

you know what we've been through this week and you know what lies ahead for us.

And so that we do ask that as you speak to us today,

we would find comfort where we are broken,

we would find challenge where we need to repent and turn back to you.

Amen.

Well the global church, you know the church right across the world

and throughout history has always been involved in big gun fights

when it comes to the question of what does it mean to thrive as a human?

What does it mean to thrive as a human?

And when it comes to that question, what does it mean to thrive as a human?

When it comes to modern day debates within the church,

we could talk about the debate over sexuality

or we could talk about the debate over transgenderism.

But there is one aspect of the human thriving question

that both sides, both sides of those debates will immediately shut down

because the implications are too hot to handle.

And it's this.

Humans were not created to be restless.

The solution, trust in Jesus and take a weekly Sabbath.

Let me say that again.

Humans were not created to be restless.

The solution is to trust in Jesus and take a weekly Sabbath.

Now I've got three points for us this afternoon

and I want to get straight into it because we've got a lot to cover

and the first point is this, the rest that we were made for,

the rest that we were made for.

Now in order to understand the solution to restlessness,

we need to kind of retrace our steps

and we need to go back to the moment our rest was lost

because there was a time, there was a time way back in the creation

when we had the rest that our heart longs for today.

And it all links back to Genesis 3.

We heard Chris read the very end of that chapter

but it all works back to Genesis 3, the third chapter in the Bible.

And it's a moment when God, he'd made a permanent time of rest.

He'd made creation and on the seventh day we're told that he rested.

And his desire for all of humankind was to have a perfect relationship with him

as the creator, to have a perfect relationship with each other, with other humans

and a perfect relationship with the world around them

that they were to work and nurture and look after.

But the Bible describes how Adam and Eve, they failed to trust in God

and you can read all about this in Genesis chapter 3

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

and as a result, well as a result,

they and the rest of humankind following them were expelled from the garden,

as Chris read.

And ever since that day we have wandered restless across the world ever since.

Now restlessness is more than just being physically fatigued.

Restlessness that I'm talking about, it speaks of our hearts being permanently unsettled

or our minds being continually switched on.

And not in a good way but in a way that makes us overwhelmed and exhausted at every level.

One definition of anxiety that is a symptom of this restlessness of our hearts

is anxiety is an uncomfortable fear triggered by a real or an imagined threat

where you don't feel that you have the wisdom, strength or capacity to cope.

You see call it biology or call it learned human experience,

people who are fearful in their hearts do not sleep.

A modern way of saying that is people who are anxious are always switched on.

When Adam and Eve took the fruit that they were forbidden to eat,

back in Genesis 3 it resulted in three sources of anxiety

that contribute to restlessness that we've struggled with ever since, every single one of us.

You can read all about it in Genesis 3.17 which is our first one

and this was the first source of restlessness, our relationship with work.

It says this, cursed is the ground because of you,

through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

This was one of the first consequences of that broken relationship with the world

because of their distrust.

And what it means is this, whether you are trying to make enough money to stay above the poverty line

or whether you are stretching the gifts that you have in an environment

that always wants more that you can sensibly give to it

or whether you are unemployed here today

and the waiting for a way out of that is eating you alive.

All of that comes under the heading of painful toil

and it all contributes to our restlessness and it all goes back to Genesis 3.

Secondly, the second source of anxiety that came out of the fall

is found in verses 7 and 12 of Genesis 3

and it's about our relationship with others.

It should have been perfect but when Adam and Eve took the fruit

our relationship with those around us also broke.

And we read that when sin entered the world

blame and shame became two terrible cancers to afflict every single relationship

whether it's with family members or with friends.

The word nakedness, which is a word that comes up in Genesis 3

as a cost of Adam and Eve turning their back on God

describes a lack of contentment not only with our own bodies

but with our very identity.

It is the vulnerability of always being aware of all the possible ways that you could fail.

It is the insatiable comparison of envying others

that whispers to us daily, you are not enough.

And all of that contributes to the restlessness that we feel in our hearts every day.

Well, the third source of anxiety that contributes to our restlessness

that came out of Genesis 3 is found in Genesis 3 verse 23

Genesis 3:23

and it's about our relationship with God.

It should have been perfect but it was broken too

and it describes banishment from intimacy with our Creator.

It describes how the access to a place of perfect rest was denied.

The writer C.S. Lewis very helpfully reminds us

that the longing that we have to find a place where we can be at total rest

of a stillness deep into our soul as Josh was singing

is built into us because it actually exists

and it is a place that we were actually designed to dwell.

And the reason it hurts so much is because we just can't get back through the door

to experience that perfect rest that we long for.

I was at a carol service many years ago

and it was a type of place where the band was there,

we had a choir, strung fairy lights, it was beautiful.

But there was a guy at the back of the venue who wouldn't come in,

he wouldn't come and sit down with everyone else at this carol service,

he just wanted to stand at the back.

And it was dark and kind of atmospheric for Christmas

and he was all dressed in black, black top, black trousers, black shoes,

pressed into the very corner so that he could not be seen,

almost as if he was trying to hide, that he just didn't want to be noticed.

And I spoke to him and I invited him, come on in, take a seat with everyone else,

it's going to be a great evening. He was like, no.

He looked me in the eye and he said, I have done a lot of bad things in my life.

I have taken a lot of sons from a lot of mothers

and God would not want me drawing close.

That was a tragedy to hear that.

But what you have with that gentleman is a fellow who is convinced

that the door to rest, the door to rest from his guilt,

the things that he had done wrong, the access to peace that he longed for,

well, he believed that door was barred to him

and that's why he just had to remain in the darkness alone at the back.

You see, the marks of being banished from the garden,

the marks of being expelled from this Eden paradise of rest

that we were ultimately built for,

the marks of having an intimate relationship with our Creator broken

would be things like the feeling of guilt, the experience of fear,

knowing frustration or sadness or lack of contentment,

gnawing on our life or unstoppable overthinking

or limitless comparison with others around us.

These are all the marks of having our relationship with God broken

and it's like we're obsessed by a fury to somehow get back into the garden,

get back through the door to a place of permanent rest that we lost.

And yet everything we do, everything we try,

it's just like pounding on the door to rest, yet it never opens.

It never opens, it never opens.

And it continually contributes to our heart sense that we are restless,

deeply restless.

Can you begin to see Sabbath is a resistance against anxiety in a broken world?

That gives us a little bit of a back story,

but I need to say that because it makes sense of the passage today

which is from Exodus 31.

And that takes us to our second point this afternoon,

the rest we can taste.

Now we need to go back to Genesis 3 to understand Exodus 31.

And I want you to look firstly at verses 12 to 13.

So many years later, the Lord says to Moses,

say this to the Israelites, you must observe my Sabbath.

This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come,

so you may know that I am the Lord who makes you holy.

Now the Sabbath, the Sabbath is a day set apart to be different from any other day of the week

because it was a day that the Israelites were told that they must not work.

Now as a culture, it's important to say that we kind of have grown up with the weekend, haven't we?

We've all kind of been raised with the joy of the kind of Friday feeling.

So when Friday comes along, it's kind of a fist pump to the air,

the weekend's on its way, yes it's Friday.

But that is because a long time ago our nation was built on many of the principles laid out in the book of Exodus.

But for the tribes and the nations of the ancient Near East, like these Israelites,

the idea of a day off once a week would have been as unimaginable as a concept

as if they had seen a self-driving Tesla.

It would have been absolutely too crazy for them to try and wrap their heads around one day off where you don't work.

You see the Sabbath day was designed as a perpetual weekly gift from God.

It's a gift with holiness at the centre.

Did you see that when Chris was reading it?

Because holy is repeated three times. Three times.

This day is to be holy.

Now holy is a little bit of a Christian jargon word.

What does it mean? Well, holy, it's a relational word.

We're not to be intimidated by the word holy because holy means to be special to someone.

It means to be set apart for a particular person's personal delight.

Set apart for a particular person's personal delight.

Look at me at verse 13 of Exodus 31.

Because God makes the people holy, that is, he makes the people special for his delight,

we're told that therefore they should keep the Sabbath.

Do you see that?

Look at me at verse 14. Because the day is holy to you, the people,

that's what it says in the passage, that is, it is a special day for the Israelites' personal delight.

They are told that they must keep the Sabbath.

Look at me at verse 15 of Exodus 31.

Because it is holy to the Lord, that is, it is a special day of delight for God,

therefore you must keep the Sabbath.

In effect, in effect is God saying to the Israelites, he's saying to them,

look, because you are so special to me, I want you to have with me,

I want you to share an experience of me that you guys haven't tasted since Eden.

In other words, one day a week, the door of Eden will open just a fraction, just a fraction.

And I want you guys, the Israelites, to take one step in.

You can't saturate yourself in it, you cannot permanently dwell there,

you cannot fully comprehend it, but one day a week,

you get to taste something of that Eden rest that you had, but then was lost.

And the flavours, the flavours of that day of rest, well you can see,

look with me at verse 15, rest from all work.

Look with me at verse 16, it is a celebration of the goodness of God,

it's a celebration, it's going to be a flavour of this day.

And verse 17, refreshment, it's going to be a day of deep, deep refreshment.

Now that is pretty amazing, right? That sounds very nice, very nice.

But haven't we got a problem with verse 14?

Look with me at verse 14 in your Bibles because it's a little bit of a mood killer.

Verse 14 reminds us that if this is a gift,

it's like lending someone your state of the art sports car and saying,

look go and enjoy it, this is a wonderful gift, have fun, drive it up and down the roads of Manchester

as late at night as you like, wonderful, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

But if you fail to do it, I will kill you.

Why so serious?

Well the answer is in verse 13,

So you may know that I am the Lord who makes you holy.

It means one of the ways that God shapes you or restores you or fits you

so that he delights in you and that you can properly delight in him

is by keeping the Sabbath.

Why so serious?

Because like a husband who cares nothing about delighting his wife,

he does not care a jot what she thinks or whether she's happy or not.

Well you would say their marriage is dead.

Well a person who cares nothing to delight in God or be delighted in by God,

you would also say that their faith is dead.

And they do not belong to the people of God.

Why so serious?

Because of this, once a week the Israelites were told to really express their trust in God

by not gathering food and not working.

You see they were told that one day a week you would be economically, reputationally,

professionally disadvantaged in the eyes of the world around you

all because you Israelites collectively chose to focus a day on particularly

and intentionally enjoying the Lord and trusting that he would provide enough for you and your family.

Therefore think about it like this.

If you're worried that this is too serious, think about it like this.

Imagine if any Israelites in Exodus told themselves, let's just sideline what God says.

Let's just put God's promises and instruction aside.

And what if they said to themselves, hey look if we just work a little bit harder,

then we can reach the promised rest on our own.

Or if we can just get through that next promotion,

or if we can just get through this next project that I'm working on,

then we can get to the promised rest that God has offered us.

Imagine if that person then persuaded other people in the community to also believe them.

Imagine if that person persuaded others around them to also sideline God

and go their own way in finding rest.

It would mean that whole community would die and perish in the desert.

Can you see why the Sabbath was so serious?

Because to work seven days a week, to work seven days a week,

is to declare to the world that God does not keep his promises.

To work seven days a week is to declare that the Israelites are not God's special heart delight.

If you work seven days a week and you're an Israelite,

you are proclaiming to the world that to survive in the wilderness,

you have to go it alone and you can depend on no one but yourself.

Do you see how the Sabbath is a resistance against the idolatry of self-dependence in the world?

So we've seen what went wrong in Genesis 3.

We've seen how God in Exodus 31 says,

actually I'm just opening a crack in the door back to Eden that you long for, to find that rest.

Well, let's go to our third and final point today, which is actually the rest for today.

What does it mean for us today? How do we get this rest today?

And I guess the question that you're probably thinking this afternoon

is, is the Sabbath still a rule for Christians today?

And my answer to that is yes and no.

Because as you've heard me say before, as we've gone through our Exodus series,

Exodus was written to a really specific group of people about 3,300 years ago.

And although the practical application for the Israelites is right here in the desert all laid out,

the principles have a timeless echo.

And that's what we have to particularly pay attention to today for us.

And we find their fullest meaning, these principles, as we look to Jesus.

In Matthew chapter 12 verses 1 through to 8,

Matthew 12:1

you'll find Jesus describing himself as the Lord of the Sabbath,

meaning when Jesus stands up, he says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath.

He's standing up and saying, I'm the King of rest. I'm the King of rest.

Or in Matthew 11, 28, Jesus says to all who are listening,

he says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

And what he means in an utterly mind blowing way is that the Eden encounter with God,

where you can experience intimacy with God again and true rest and true restoration

is no longer limited to one day a week.

But because Jesus is the door, because Jesus is the door back to Eden,

wherever Jesus is, you can enter true rest.

And the key to the door is by faith in Jesus.

Therefore, if you want true rest, go to Jesus.

Now, of course, what we experience in Jesus today is a taste of the rest

we will experience in full in the new creation when we see him in person.

Today, we get a taste of it. We get a glimpse.

But one of the things that we get to taste today, which I think is really exciting,

is that the sharp edges of those three pieces of anxiety from Genesis 3,

they all get blunted. They don't get eradicated in our lives,

but they get blunted by resting in Jesus.

Let me give you an example of how that works.

For those of us who trust in Jesus, we know that we have peace with God,

even when we don't feel it.

For those of us who trust in Jesus, we know that work successes or failures,

when we're out there in the world or whether we're at home,

they no longer define us, even when we feel hard,

even when we feel like it's impossible.

As a Christian, we know that the experience of shame is not how God sees us,

even if that's what we feel when we look in the mirror.

That is the amazing privilege of the rest that we can experience today

if we put our trust in Jesus.

That has got to give us a little bit of our men in our hearts, right?

But some of you may well be saying,

hooray for Jesus, because of Jesus I get to work seven days a week

and no one can tell me not to.

But remember I said the principle still echoes today.

Imagine husbands out there, imagine you say to your wife,

look, because of the permanence of our marriage certificate,

I'm not going to celebrate our anniversary this year.

Now for those of you who are at any doubt, that will not go well for you if you try that.

Just like that, the Sabbath is still a marker of relational health between you and God.

And to ignore the Sabbath is absolutely a warning light on the dashboard of your heart

that something is not well between you and the Lord.

You see, your refusal, your refusal to send emails on your day off,

your refusal just to finish that project on your day so decide to enjoy the Lord,

or your refusal to revise on the Sabbath,

or your refusal to treat the Sabbath day like any other day of the week,

whether you work or not,

well that is a line in the sand to say that I trust the Lord.

It is a firework to every network and friendship that you belong to

that states loud and clearly, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Do you see the nuance of Sabbath as it applies to us today?

Let me run it quickly. Should we keep one day of the week to rest

and particularly intentionally enjoy the Lord? Yes.

Does it have to be a Sunday? No.

Does the pattern God laid out for humans since the very beginning of creation

mean that we should protect this day and make it special to us as a day that stands out in the week? Yes.

And yet after everything that I've been sharing with you this afternoon,

will you take a Sabbath day? Probably not.

Why? Well, let me speak to you personally about this.

I struggle with the Sabbath. I really struggle with the Sabbath

because I struggle to trust that God has my best interests at heart

when it comes to work and not doing it.

And so I struggle not to check my email. I struggle not to finish a talk that I'm writing

or at least thinking about it. I struggle not just to kind of do this last little bit and that.

And the thing is, I know the research. I know the practical research that says that

actually working anything over 40 hours a week is largely redundant

because the quality of your decision making is terrible.

And it leads to feelings of being overwhelmed, insomnia and other health issues.

I know all of that.

Yet my default, my default personally, is to ignore or downgrade the Sabbath

because like some form of idolatrous Stockholm syndrome,

I'm actually quite comfortable with being a slave.

I'm quite comfortable with being a slave to my job.

I'm quite comfortable with the idea, the idea that I've lived with all of my life

as being part of an immigrant community that ingrained into me a narrative

that said you are never enough. You must never give them an excuse to sideline you.

You must always run faster and faster and faster.

I am comfortable being a slave to that.

Which means when Jesus says to me and he says, look Matt, come to me.

You who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

I want to look to Jesus and say, I'll take your forgiveness.

But please don't ask me to stop. Please don't ask me to slow down.

Because I can't bear the consequences of that.

And I grip my chains even tighter.

But what changes me, and I've had to do the hard work as I've been preparing this

just to not be a total hypocrite before you.

What leads me to unclasp my shackles, to put the laptop away,

to delete the email app on my phone, and to go through the door of rest

that Jesus opens wide for me, not as a slave but as a son.

Well, it changes actually when I remember what it cost him to open that door to me

in the first place.

Look back at Exodus chapter 31.

Exodus 31 · chapter mention

We're told that the restless one, the one who refuses to rest

in the Israelite community is put out of the camp, cut off from the people,

they are killed.

And if I had been there 3,300 years ago in that Israelite community,

that would have been me.

Based on my unrestrained work habits, that would have been me.

You see, I am the one who declares that God will not keep his promises or provide for me

by the way that my work habits are.

I'm the one who is role modelling to the rest of the community around me

that in order to survive in this world you have to endlessly graft or hustle

and always depend on yourself.

That's me.

And yet Jesus, Jesus the one who actually invented rest,

took my place and experienced the three sources of restless anxiety

that we saw in Genesis 3 in full in my place.

The restlessness on the cross, the restlessness of shame as he was stripped naked on the cross

as he took my place.

The restlessness of the cursed creation as the thorns and briars

that are a mark of an unhealthy, relentless attitude towards work

are twisted as to be a thorn crown and placed upon his head.

He took that in my place.

The restlessness of being cut off from God the Father

as heaven shut the door to him and expelled him from the Eden joy of intimacy with God.

He took that in my place.

And as a result, as a result, I do take a weekly Sabbath.

For me it's on Saturdays.

And I do plan to do things on that day intentionally that reminds me of the goodness of God.

And I get excited.

I get excited about tasting the new creation in advance of being there in person.

And it hasn't magically fixed me or my family, though we are healthier for it.

But the Sabbath does make all the difference.

You see, to a world, to a world that says to us every single day,

your work is your master, Sabbath is resistance.

So will you join the fight?

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you so much

that though we lost the rest through our own sins,

through our own selfishness, through our own rebellion against you,

a rebellion that echoes from Adam and Eve in our own hearts through to today,

we thank you that Jesus offers us a way back to true rest,

a rest that we can sample now,

a rest that we know we will experience in full, full wonder and glory in the new creation.

Father, we're aware of the cost of what it means to trust in you

and to declare the world that you are a good God and a good promise keeper.

We know the cost of saying, I will not depend upon myself.

We see the invitation to delight in you and so quickly turn our backs to you.

And we are sorry for that.

As we hear this exhortation from Exodus 31,

may you lift our hearts with courage again

to enjoy the gift of the Sabbath day every week. Amen.