The Ten Commandments Lesson 4: The Holiness of the Sabbath | Devin LaBay

Long time ago in the mountains of West Virginia, there was a lumberjack.

And he was known throughout the area there as being able to really chop a lot of wood.

He had built a reputation of being a guy that could, I mean, he could he could stack the wood.

He could really swing the axe.

And there was always people out there, fellas out there trying to kind of trying to compete with him a little bit.

But they just couldn't, they couldn't chop the wood like this guy could.

We thought he he probably could chop more wood in this old lumberjack.

And so he challenged him very openly to a contest, see who could chop the most wood in the day.

And so they started chopping the wood.

And the young fella, I mean, he's swinging that axe real quick and making a lot of wood, but when he noticed the the other guy, he he just wasn't moving all that fast.

Didn't seem like he was keeping up with him.

And you know, he'd take a little sip of water and then he'd look over, and the older lumberjack was sitting down under the shade, having a nice cool drink of water, and he just keeps on swinging that axe.

Well, lunchtime rolled around, and the younger guy he he pulled out his sack lunch and he he woofed it down real quick and then he went right back to work.

But when he looked up over at the older guy, the experienced lumberjack, he was just having a nice, easy lunch.

Well, at the end of the day, the young lumberjack was really surprised to figure out that the old lumberjack had actually chopped more wood than he had.

And he just couldn't figure it out.

And he asked him, he said, How in the world did you chop more wood than I did?

Because every time I stopped, I mean, just looked, I didn't stop at all.

I looked up, and you're over there just taking a long sip of water, and you took a long, easy lunch break compared to what I did.

How in the world did you chop more wood than I did?

And the old lumberjack just put his arm around him and smiled.

He said, Because when I was taking a water break and when I was taking my lunch, I was also sharpening my axe.

Today we're going to take a look at the Sabbath.

And we're going to look at it a little differently, maybe, than you've looked at it before.

And we're going to focus on some things that maybe you haven't focused on in the past.

And the Sabbath is of great importance.

The concept of the Sabbath is of great importance.

And so this morning we're going to look at the fourth commandment and we're going to take a deeper dive and see what how it applies to us today.

What it meant then, you certainly don't want to step over that for sure.

We need to understand why God instituted the Sabbath for the Israelite people, but we also very importantly need to understand how it applies to you and to me today.

So before we get any deeper this morning, let's let's join together in prayer and invite the Spirit to be with us in the message this morning.

Would you please pray with me?

Our Lord and our God, we're we're privileged to be here together this morning.

We're thankful for those that are visiting with us this morning here at Central.

We certainly hope and pray that they have felt at home and hope that they will come and be with us again.

Lord, we're we're thankful above all, Jesus, for you, for your sacrifice for us, and Father, for your willingness and your love for us to send Jesus to come and to be that perfect sacrifice and example for us.

Jesus, you didn't have to do that.

You could have refused.

You're a free will agent, just like any of us are.

But because you love us and you love the Father, you chose to come.

You chose to live as we do.

You chose to suffer.

You chose to be tempted in every way as we are, and yet lived a perfect life and a perfect example for us to follow.

Spirit, this message I hope and pray is yours that you will touch us in our hearts and our minds to see the fourth commandment in maybe a little different light, in a way that helps us to apply it and to make use of it in our life today and to be a blessing to others.

Lord, we we love you so much for all that you do for us, and we offer this prayer together in the name of Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, our brother, and our King.

Amen.

You know, I remember when I was growing up, we'd get up in the morning on Sunday morning, and and we would we would get ready to go to Bible class and worship.

And when I woke up in the morning, I smelled lunch cooking.

And we would get we'd go on the on the Bible class and we'd go on to church, and and we would come home after after church, and as soon as we walked in the door, I knew what my job was.

Go get the leaves for the dining table.

That was my job.

And so I would go to the to the hall closet and I'd pull out those those leaves for that table, and I would start putting the leaves in the table because my brothers and sisters and in-laws, they would all be coming over for Sunday lunch after church.

So we didn't go out to we didn't go out to lunch during that time.

We might go out one Sunday a month to give mom a break.

We'd go to Luby's cafeteria, and uh, you know, I always had my usual that I would get, you know, we all do that.

But anyway, we'd come home for lunch, and I knew exactly what we were having.

We would have the same thing pretty much every Sunday for lunch, but you didn't complain, you looked forward to it.

We'd have pot roast, carrots, potatoes, salad, dessert, and homemade rolls.

It was fantastic.

I'd give anything to have that meal now.

And so we would all come home and we would eat lunch together.

We would share that time together on Sunday after worshiping God.

And I can remember after lunch, it it was it was really kind of interesting.

All all the men folk would separate and go to the living room where the TV was and start watching the Cowboys game.

And then all the ladies, my mom had they would they would hang out in the kitchen and whatnot, and uh just they would help my mom get everything straight, you know, straightened out and cleaned up and whatnot.

And I can remember sitting in there with the fellas, and we're trying to figure out, yeah, well, you know, the cowboys are going to win this week.

And this was back when Tom Landry was coaching, and the games always started at 3 o'clock.

So you could work a little bit of a nap in before the game came on.

Anyway, I remember that, and I can remember hearing the ladies, my mom and my sisters and sisters-in-law, talking about in the kitchen what they needed to get at the store tomorrow.

Because all the stores were closed on Sunday.

That's just the way that it was.

This was a time that's that's gone now.

It's gone, and it's it's not coming back the way that it was, and many of you remember that time.

When families got together on Sunday after worshiping God together, and you spent your time with one another, and it was a wonderful time.

It was a wonderful time to be alive.

I can remember also about 5 o'clock, 5 30 in the evening, it's time to go to evening service.

But the cowboy game ain't over yet.

And so, well, maybe it'll be over before we get it.

So we turn on the radio and we'd listen to the game as we're going to church.

And I have to admit, there are some times that we would stay in the car after church began because the game was almost over.

I repented of that a long time ago.

But I remember those things.

And those were things that we did.

It's things that we did on Sundays, and it was, it was, again, it was a wonderful time uh to be alive and to be with family.

You know, the stores were closed.

It was inconvenient, sure.

But you know what?

Today, Sunday is pretty much like any other day of the week in a lot of ways.

And family, I'm pretty sure that's not what the Lord intended.

The fourth commandment is very straightforward.

Very straightforward.

In Exodus chapter 20, verses 8 to 11, that was read just a moment ago.

Exodus 20:8–11

Listen again to what it says.

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant, maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Family, of all the commandments, I think it's quite possible that this one may be the most controversial.

And there's a spectrum of arguments surrounding the fourth commandment.

Such as, well, the Sabbath day's always been Saturday.

It's always been the sixth day of the week, and it should continue to be the Lord's Sabbath.

We should continue to worship on the sixth day, not on the seventh day, not the first day.

There's Christian groups who hold that argument.

You have any friends that are Seventh-day Adventists?

You know what I'm talking about.

But the majority of the Christian groups today that make that argument that Sunday, the first day of the week, is the Sabbath day, is because Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

This position is reinforced by the argument that the Sabbath requirements were nailed to the cross when Jesus was crucified.

You see, when that happened, family, we were no longer bound to the old law, according to Colossians chapter 2, verses 13 and 14, which should be on the screen.

Colossians 2:13

Now, for a technical pursuit of that, you can look at several different sources, but if you look at the book A Single Chord, The Unraveling of the Church of the Bible, in lesson three, what we find out is that this argument and a lot of other things that the Christian world has subscribed to goes all the way back to one single problem.

It's a failing to rightly divide the word of truth.

And a lot of time could be spent in perpetuating the debate.

The first day of the week or the last day of the week.

Today I want to look at four practical principles that we can take away from the fourth commandment.

The first principle that the fourth commandment shares with us this morning is that we should work productively.

We should work productively.

Church, this is something that a lot of people miss.

A lot of people miss in the context of the fourth commandment.

Again, listen to what the Lord says in verse 9.

He says, six days you shall labor.

Six days you shall work.

Family, the Lord expects us to work.

In fact, he commands us to work.

And we need to understand that productive labor is a part of God's plan for us.

God always intended that for us.

And we see this from the very beginning of biblical time.

If you remember, Adam and Eve, even before sin entered the garden, were given a task from God of working the garden.

You see, after sin entered the garden, their labor became much harder.

There's a lot of people out there who think, well, you know what?

If Adam and Eve hadn't blown it for all of us, we wouldn't have to work.

That is not true.

That is not true.

Adam and Eve were commanded to work.

They were commanded to work the garden that God had provided for them.

Church work is a gift.

Work is a gift from God and an opportunity for us to be productive.

And to give something back to the Lord.

Family, the bottom line is this: we can't truly appreciate rest until we've truly worked.

You know, as much as we all look forward to retirement, I haven't met too many people that haven't looked forward to retirement, and as much as we look forward to that, and the day that we don't have to work anymore, think about that for just a minute.

In light of what we've been talking about.

Is that a biblical concept?

To stop working.

You know, people have asked me on a number of occasions, Devin, when do you think you'll retire?

And my answer is always the same.

I'll retire when I take a dirt nap.

For me, work is a part of life.

And even I, if I get put out to pasture like a lot of older ministers have been until very recently, I'm going to serve.

I'm going to serve wherever there's a need.

And if people will put up with me.

And that's going to happen until I die.

I guess that's something that I got from my grandfather.

You may have had a grandfather like I did.

My grandfather retired for the first time when he was 65, and it lasted about three months.

He was bored out of his mind.

I think he figured out that he was going to work harder at home than he was at work.

So he went back to work.

He worked another five years and he retired again.

But after that, I can tell you this, he never missed an opportunity to remind you the day you stop working is the day you start dying.

I can remember after he retired for the second time, he would volunteer work out at the cemetery where all of our families buried in Russ County, Texas, and I'd go with him.

I remember working in the cemetery with him.

He would do that, and he would raise his garden and give away most of it.

You may know people like that, and you may have a grandfather like that.

But he was always working.

And he was going to work until the Lord called him home.

Family, God's formula here is pretty simple in the fourth commandment.

Work for six days, rest for one.

And there's something that I've discovered about that.

While motivating people to work is one thing that's very prevalent in our society today, convincing people to rest is another altogether different challenge.

Church, so many people are consumed by their work.

They're consumed by it.

And in the fourth commandment, God reminds us that we need to rest.

We need some downtime.

We need some escape from all of the labor and the stress of the job.

Family, let me tell you something.

Being a workaholic is a man-made badge of honor that too many people are striving to wear.

Think about it.

I have never in my life ever heard anyone say on their deathbed, man, I wish I'd have just worked a little bit more.

You ever heard that before?

I have never heard that.

The 60 to 70 hour work week has become the norm.

And church, whether the motivation comes from our personal desire to get ahead or it comes from the company's bottom line, this motivation lacks biblical priorities.

Church, the reality is that we've allowed our schedules to become so full that we just don't have any time to take any time off.

Does that sound familiar to anybody?

We seem to think that this is a problem that's just kind of crept in over the last 30 or 40 years.

That's not true.

This was a problem for the people of Israel.

Even after the commandment was given.

Notice what the Lord says to Moses in Exodus chapter 31, verses 13 to 17.

Exodus 31:13–17

The Lord says, Say to the Israelites, You must observe my Sabbaths.

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.

Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you.

Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death.

Whoever does not do any work on that day must be cut off from his people.

For in six days work is to be done.

But the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord.

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

The Israelites should observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant.

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

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.

My dad grew up in Port Arthur, Texas.

It's in the southeastern part of the state on the coast.

There's a lot of oil.

Well, there's three oil refineries located there.

And there was a bridge there that oil tankers could go underneath, and World War II battleships could go underneath it.

It wasn't a drawbridge, it was a really, really tall bridge.

And so oil tankers would go up the Natchez River to take on oil to go back out into the Gulf.

And that bridge that was built there was built in 1938, and it's still there today.

That bridge is called the Rainbow Bridge.

And one look at it, you can see why.

And when he got to the top, he had to come back down.

And so he decided to let it go.

And this was a time before 10 speeds.

This is before freewheels.

And so when you get going down the hill, those pedals are spinning, okay?

And you don't dare touch them.

You just put your legs up on the handlebars and you just ride down the bridge.

And that's exactly what he did.

Because if you tried to stop, you're going to lock those brakes up and you're going to be doing this all the way down the side of that bridge.

And so he's flying down the bridge.

And when he gets to the bottom, he blows right past his friends who had dared him to do it.

And he rode that thing out for about a mile before he had to pedal again.

Family, he got himself into something not fully realizing what he had gotten himself into.

And all he could do was hold on and ride it out.

You know, so many people that we know, so many of us are speeding down a never-ending bridge of work.

And we're either too afraid to stop, or we've forgotten how to stop.

We push so hard, and we never take a break.

We never take any time off.

And we've forgotten how to relax.

We just hope we can ride it out.

How many of us feel guilty or uncomfortable when we get some downtime and we wind up saying to ourselves, man, I need to be doing something.

Church, God created the world.

He worked six days.

And then he rested.

And he calls us to do the same.

Family, if we really want to, we can finish our work in six days, or at least we can find a reasonable stopping point because the work will always be there.

If God set aside a day of rest for himself and saw the need for rest and has commanded us to rest, then church, we need to rest.

The fourth commandment also tells us that we should worship regularly.

Church, the Sabbath is designed to bring us back to the most important thing in our life.

Once per week, believers are commanded to stop.

To stop and reflect on their creator and their Savior.

This is the holiness of the Sabbath.

Now notice that the commandment says that it is a Sabbath to the Lord.

The word translated there as Sabbath in the English comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat, and it literally means intermission.

In other words, it's not about us.

Family, but it is about dedicating one day of intermission out of the week for the Lord.

You see, during Moses' time, the Sabbath was primarily a day of physical cessation from labor for the purpose of remembering their forced labor and their forced slavery in Egypt.

Now, the formal traditions and the communal synagogue worship and the structured liturgy that was developed much, much later in Jewish history.

That all came about in the sixth century BC during the Babylonian exile.

Worship makes the Sabbath more than just a day of rest.

It makes our day in our life holy.

One day per week, we're to come back to the center of our life.

We're to return to the Lord to rest from our labor and to worship him for his work in our life.

Has God been working in your life this week?

Man, I hope so.

And worship is our opportunity on the Sabbath day of rest, on this day, the first day of the week, that we worship God to return to him and to thank him for his work in our life.

We need it because it calms our soul.

We need it because it restores our spirit.

We need it because it resets our priorities in life.

Church, the reality is that too many people and too many times don't realize that.

They don't realize that until they find themselves stressed to the max, poor in spirit, their priorities confused, and their life is running them instead of the other way around.

Church, our schedule reflects our values.

Plain and simple.

We schedule work time.

We schedule recreation time.

We schedule our doctor appointments.

We schedule our kids' activities.

Family, we schedule the things that are important to us.

Church, God wants us to be at least of the mindset that He is as important to us as our work, as our recreation, as our family, even our health.

In fact, God commands that.

Finally, the fourth commandment leads us to the truth that true rest is found only in the Lord.

We can take all the vacations we want to.

We can get away as long as we want to, but true rest is found only in the Lord.

Family, this is something else that is associated with this commandment that we really don't think about.

In Hebrews chapter 4, verses 7 and 8, we're told that true, the true Sabbath rest is found only in Jesus.

Hebrews 4:7

True rest is experienced when we choose to rest our souls in the finished work of Jesus on the cross.

And we enter that rest when we put him first, when we name him as our Lord and Savior.

And all of our worries and troubles and guilt and sins are cleansed through immersion in his blood.

Listen to the words of the Hebrew writer.

Therefore, God again set a certain day, calling it today.

When a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.

There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.

Paul further illustrates this point in Colossians chapter 2, verses 16 and 17.

Colossians 2:16

He says, Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day.

Notice what he says next.

Don't miss it.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come.

The reality, however, is found in Christ.

Church, what that is asserting is that the purpose of the Sabbath was to ultimately connect us to Christ.

The temporary physical rest of the Sabbath day was always intended to connect us with the eternal spiritual rest of Jesus' resurrection on the first day of the week.

Church, this is where the true understanding of the Sabbath rest begins.

When we realize that apart from Jesus, separated from him, disconnected from Jesus, there is no real rest in our life.

Jesus' invitation to you this morning, to all of us, is this.

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke, take my teaching.

That's what that means.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Let me ask you some questions this morning.

Are you physically and spiritually weary today?

Do you feel like that eight-year-old boy flying down the side of that bridge?

Life is running you instead of the other way around, and you just don't think you can stop.

Is it time to rest?

For your sake, for the sake of your family, for the sake of your soul.

The Lord commands us to rest.

Do you need to rest?

Do you need us to pray with you and to pray for you to get that rest?

To ease that burden, to slow it down, to truly connect with Christ.

More so than you have in so long.

Because you've been disconnected because of all the stuff that's gotten in your way.

Is your life running you?

Or is it time to put Jesus back in control?

I can't answer that question for you.

Only you can answer that question.

And if you need us this morning, your shepherds will be here at the front.

I will be at the front.

And we'll be here to welcome you, to embrace you, to love you, to pray with you, to pray for you.

After service, find one of us if you need to.

We'll take the time and we'll hear you out.

And we'll offer the comfort that we can.

If you're looking for a church home this morning and you're visiting with us, we'd love to have you here at Central.

We'd love to have you as a part of our church family.

If you have a need this morning, please don't resist the Spirit.

Respond to the Lord's invitation as the Spirit calls you while we stand and sing.