4th Commandment

Today's text is from the book of Exodus, chapter twenty, verses one through eleven.

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep 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, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

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

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

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

My name is James Rathman, I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's a joy to gather together with you all this morning on the Lord's Day.

This week, the elders went on our annual retreat, which is like one of the most joyful times of the year.

We go to John's family cabin up in Steamboat and uh talk about the church, reflect on where we are and look forward to things.

And it was a really joyful time.

And I think we came back and our hearts were just so full.

Um and one of the things that that I just wanted to share from this retreat that I think we would all we would all share is we are just so thankful for this church.

We're so thankful for for you being a part of it.

We are uh I was just thinking and reflecting on the drive down.

I just wouldn't want to be at any other church.

This is this is my favorite one by far.

And I just can't believe I get to be a part of it and uh get to worship with you all.

And uh uh we're we're just I just had this sense of just overwhelming gratefulness for this church and and getting to be a part of it.

And so I just wanted to share that um uh after the after this retreat uh that we got to have um retreat to move forward.

That's from 30 rock.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we are so grateful to gather together as your people on the Lord's day, to get to worship you, to confess our sins to you, to hear the voices of our of our friends and of our family sing praise to your name together.

Lord, this is this is such an incredibly joyful and wonderful gift that you have given to us.

Lord, I pray that you would teach us to uh fully receive the Lord's Day as you have given it to us.

Lord, and all the gifts that are associated with it.

Lord, help us to learn to keep it holy and to honor you with all of our time.

Lord, we thank you for these times and seasons that you have given to us.

And Lord, I thank you for this time and season for our church, Lord, that uh all of us are brought together for such a time as this to encourage one another, to build one another up in love, Lord, and to learn to obey you and all your commandments and all that you have taught us.

Lord, we praise you for your continued work in your church.

Lord, that you have you have not stopped interceding, you have not stopped guiding and leading and ruling and preserving your people, and you never will.

Lord, you will continue to bring your church into the fullness of glory, such that we are washed with the word, and we are presented as a bride for you, Lord.

We pray that you would set us apart, make us holy for that glorious, glorious role.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we are on the fourth commandment now as we're moving through Exodus uh this fall, and we've arrived at the Ten Commandments, so it's the Ten Commandments fall, and we are uh now on the fourth commandment, and this is the conclusion traditionally of the first table of the law.

So the first table of the law corresponds to the first uh uh the greatest commandment that the that our Lord taught us, which is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And so these first four commandments are the heaven word, these are the really God word commandments.

And the uh final six commandments correspond to loving your neighbor as yourself.

So these are about our interpersonal relationships.

Now, all of them are about all of them, uh, but these are still helpful parsings that we see within the Ten Commandments.

And this is the final one, and this is about the day that is associated with the worship of the Lord, a day that is set apart for holiness.

Now, I've asked uh uh a lot of folks, like uh how many of you have heard a Ten Commandments series or ever heard the Ten Commandments preached?

I I hadn't uh heard the Ten Commandments preached until I'm I I'm hearing them now as I'm doing it.

But uh I I I'd never I hadn't sat under that that sort of teaching, and and that was ordinary for, I think for most people that I've talked to haven't heard a series on the Ten Commandments.

And there's a strangeness there because this is the center of Christian ethics.

This is, I think, for uh like an ordinary person walking off the street or looking at a church, and you'd be like, hey, what do you think they're talking about in there?

They'd probably be like, Yeah, I don't know, like the Ten Commandments, you know?

And little do they know we're not.

And we probably should be.

Uh, this is the traditional way of making disciples throughout church history, and uh this is the way that the um reformers would often teach how how to pray.

This is a format of prayer, is praying through the Ten Commandments.

And when you consider what the Great Commission itself is, it's teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

Well, then how could we do that without teaching the Ten Commandments?

It seems very strange that we've lost this in our vocabulary.

And I think we've lost a lot when we've lost the Ten Commandments in our in our vocabulary.

We we've lost uh our moral grounding.

And especially I think we've lost a sense of what it means to be Christians that are directed in the whole of our lives towards God.

And that's what this commandment is really about.

Uh now, interestingly, I think the the Sabbath, although it is pro it is in practice or or for it in recent memory has been such a neglected commandment, the Sabbath is having a bit of a moment uh right now in Christianity.

Do you do it do you guys sense it?

Yeah, I got a thumbs up.

That's all I need.

Let's roll with it.

One thumbs up.

Yeah, the Sabbath is the Sabbath is having a having a bit of a moment.

Good for the Sabbath.

Um now, this return of the Sabbath, I've noticed it takes place in a in a very particular frame.

I still think that a lot of the fullness of the Sabbath is being neglected with this great Sabbath return.

Now, it makes sense that there is a return of talking about the Sabbath because uh we're all uh we we have lost any sense of time boundaries in our lives.

We are now all on call 24-7.

And being on call used to be reserved for like a small band of humans that are emergency workers.

And they they are on call, not all the time, but but they're on call when like their shift was to be on call.

Most of the even their lives, they were not on call.

We, all of us, every one of you, is on call 24-7.

That's insane.

And we're all very tired because of it.

We are uh all, in a sense, like perpetual emergency workers with incredibly boring emergencies, but with the same level of cortisol.

And so this is not a so you could see that there's this, because there's this, there's no differentiation between our between our days, between our time on or our time off.

There's no going home without also being at work, there's no being at work without also being at home.

We are these this totally flattened, totally blended type of creature.

And so, because of that, uh you can see that there would be this desire to receive some sort of definition around our time.

Because the people are tired.

The people are very worn down, but not in like a cool, like I just summited the mountain that I've been trying to climb, so now I'm tired for a couple of days, type of thing.

We're all just like tired with no stories.

This is uh this is a bad sign.

Something's gone terribly wrong.

And the Sabbath has sort of rushed in within this frame of uh answering this restlessness.

It's been uh there's been something of a retrieval of the Sabbath, but I think that the the risk that that we're running with this Sabbath retrieval is that the Sabbath is being retrieved as a technique that can allow us to participate in the uh absurd uh uh human-machine race in a better way.

Here's like some new technique that you can incorporate into your life, and if you incorporate this into your life, then this will be an antidote uh to the burnout that your other machine humans will experience.

And then while they're burned out, you will be able to continue on and and you will you will finally be able to serve the market uh in an even better, more full, more complete way.

The clickbait headline would sound something like this the key to beating burnout is unlocking this one ancient habit.

And now the Sabbath, what it is, is it's just uh another another one of those techniques.

You know what when when I finally incorporated this one ancient habit, then I was able to outperform all of the uh people around me.

And it can even be presented as sort of like a trick.

It's like it you can you're able to fully live within machine life, you're able to fully incorporate yourself into machine world, put perfectly optimized for your market output by just, it turns out we need to just sprinkle in a couple ancient uh rhythms, a couple ancient patterns.

And if we just sprinkle those in, then you will be able to even outperform or be be more fully the the market production machine that in your heart of hearts you you really are.

Right.

And so with that, there's like this this trick of the of the Sabbath going on.

And the trick is that we are using the Sabbath in order to uh in where framing the Sabbath as a way to still be in service to whatever the gods of this age are.

And the gods of this age are for you to be a pure production slash consumption machine.

That this is this is what you are, this is what you are meant to be.

This is how you are to assess yourself.

You're to be a pure production or consumption machine.

Now that the machines are taking on so much of the production parts of humanity, at least in theory, at least while we're raising money, the machines are taking on so much of the production parts of humanity.

Uh so then you really, really even more fundamental, you're just a consuming thing, right?

You're just uh just here to consume things.

Well, the Sabbath, break from this production, break from this consumption, when you add it in, you'll really be able to participate in all of that for longer, better stretches, more fully.

And another way that it can present itself as is even perhaps even more subtle or uh or even worse, there's this myth in our culture that is so strong, which is that the human is a machine that, if given the perfect optimal inputs, will be able to achieve rest and peace and satisfaction.

And you are moments away from that.

You are moments away from your life being so machine-like regimented, perfectly ordered, where your sleep scores are high.

You know, like when you greet a friend and it's like, how are your sleep scores, buddy?

And they're like, hi, and then you high five, and you go drink a matcha.

I don't know.

It's just the most repulsive thing I could think of, so I wanted to say it.

Then we all have to hear it.

And then if we optimize all of these things, now think of this.

Now the Sabbath is one in seven, it's it's prescriptive, it's temporal.

If you this can be a part of your optimization strategy.

And you can be in and once it's achieved in this this area of your life, and you're within this six days of work, one day of rest, you're in this rhythm, this, this, this frame, and you're able to participate in that, then, and once, and once that's mastered and all in all its its realms around it, and then you will finally be able to achieve rest.

And so the Sabbath then becomes a technique that slots into the all the regular old optimization that you're being fed in all the old places, and and just on the other side of that, you'll be able to rest.

You'll finally be able to rest.

I can tell you that even if that plan wears the Sabbath like a skin suit, there will be no rest in that plan.

The rest that it is promising is not there.

Insofar as the Sabbath is a technique that fits into our culture's uh uh method of optimization and rest being just on the other side of realizing that there will be no rest.

And that's because the problem is worse, the our problem of restlessness is worse than the incessant pinging of our phones.

Uh the this isn't this isn't a problem that is that is so modern as uh uh the the invention of the the Facebook news feed that becomes the you know, whatever the dopamine story is, whatever the most recent dopamine story is that you're being told, this problem is deeper than that, the problem of your restlessness.

The problem is, I think, best articulated by Saint Augustine.

At the beginning of his confessions, he famously says, You have made us for yourself, O Lord.

And our heart is restless until it rests in you.

It is possible to implement the Sabbath in your life as a sort of practice and miss the whole heart of the Sabbath, completely miss the heart of the Sabbath.

Because our rest is in God.

That is where our rest is.

That is where the rest for your soul, for your heart is.

It is in God.

So if our Sabbaths are not fundamentally a Godward orientation, there is no rest.

So let's look at the Sabbath.

And let's see its commands to remember.

Let's see its command the command to keep it holy, and then we'll talk practically about uh what is uh prohibited and commanded on the Sabbath.

So Exodus 20, verse 8 says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Exodus 20:8

This is the first of the commands that is a positive command in the Ten Commandments.

We have been told to uh have no other gods.

So you're gonna have another God.

No.

Right?

Negative command.

No carved images.

Uh uh, so don't worship God by the manner of images.

And third, don't take the Lord's name in vain.

But here it's a command to remember.

The first part of the Sabbath command is remember.

It's a positive command, it's an active thing that you are being told to do.

This is not just a mere prohibition, it's an active thing that you're being told to do.

Remembering is active.

We think of remembering as something that just happens to us.

Remembering does not just happen to you.

What you're thinking of is forgetting.

Forgetting is the thing that just happens to you.

Remembering is active.

You know, when when we uh uh we remember the Fourth of July, there are many documents that have been signed in world history.

Most of the dates of those I don't remember.

But I remember the signing of the Declaration of Independence because once a year, throughout my whole life, we've I've celebrated it.

Fireworks.

So that was an active participation in it, and because of that, we remembered.

When you have traditions in your home, you are actively remembering.

Remembering is active.

You call to mind.

That's what remembering is.

You're in a it's not like hard drive storage.

That's not the way to think of remembering.

That is the way we think of remembering.

Because we we even call it memory.

Isn't that weird?

Huh.

Probably doesn't mean anything that we use these brain-human metaphors to describe our machines.

I don't foresee any negative ramifications from that.

The we uh what we we we call to mind.

We uh uh we we i okay here it's even better.

I I just thought remembered this.

You you know what it is?

Do you hear it in the word?

Remember.

It's like it's a part of you, and you pull it back into the hole.

That's what remembering is.

This part of you which would have fallen off and died, is pulled back, it's re-incorporated, it's remembered.

So that's what we're doing.

We're called to remember the Sabbath day.

What is the Sabbath day?

Well, it's helpful to think, well, what would the Sabbath day have been to have been to the hearers of this uh command that's coming from the mouth of the Lord?

And they just not very long ago were complaining in the wilderness that there was no food.

And so the Lord made them a promise and began giving them food from heaven.

He had manna come down from heaven each morning.

And the way that the Lord distributed this manna from heaven was six days you would go out and collect enough manna for.

You for that day.

And there was some work associated with that.

The manna would come down from the heavens, and then you would go out and collect it.

But on the seventh day, there would be no manna.

And you were to have collected twice as much on the sixth day.

And that twice as much that you gathered on the sixth day would be sufficient for your for you and your family for the seventh day.

Because on the seventh day there was to be no collecting.

There's to be no work on the seventh day.

So it was very easy to participate in, in one sense, because on the seventh day you would wake up and there'd be no manna, and so you wouldn't go collect it.

In Exodus 16, 23 through 26, this is where the story, that story happens, it says, Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.

Bake what you will bake, and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.

Then in verse 25, Moses said, Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord.

Today you will not find it in the field.

Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.

Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be one.

Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest.

So in the very pattern of the Lord's distribution of food to the people of God, we see that he's not just distributing their food, he's also distributing their labor.

And in his distribution of their food, he gives it to them in the pattern of six days of collecting and preparing.

And then the seventh day is a day of solemn rest.

It is not a day of fasting, but it is a day of solemn rest.

They are to eat on it, they're to feast on it with the food that was prepared before.

But it is a day of solemn rest, which means that they are not to participate in their ordinary labors.

So this is the pattern of their lives that they are living in, the people of God.

They are living in this pattern of six days of work, seven days of rest.

And when the seventh day of rest shows up again each week, what they are being commanded to do is to remember it, participate in it.

That they are to remember the Lord's provision for this day.

They are to remember that on this day their ordinary labor is to cease.

And they are to remember it for a particular purpose, which is described also in this verse, Exodus 20, verse 8, says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Exodus 20:8

Why are they to remember it?

For the purpose of keeping that day holy.

This day is not an ordinary day.

This is a holy day.

And a holy day is a day in which it is to be set apart so that they are to more directly than on an ordinary day, consider the works of God.

Consider the presence of God in their lives, consider the worship of God, give their hearts and their minds to the worship of God on this day, because it is not an ordinary day.

It is holy, which means that it is set apart.

Now, what we see within this is you can sort of see there's the creation of two things, or at least two categories, which we need in order to live in the world, and that is holy and ordinary.

The six days are ordinary.

The seventh day is a holy day.

God has structured the time of his people into ordinary time and holy time.

And he does this by the Sabbath.

Now, this is this is uh the opposite of our way of thinking.

We do not like thinking in terms of categories of holiness and ordinariness.

We do not like those structures being imposed onto our lives or being placed within the world.

Here's what we would here's what we would much rather do.

The reason is we are enlightenment types of people.

And enlightenment types of people like flat stuff.

We like things that are flat.

You know, we're moderns.

You know, modern art?

It's flat art.

These are flat things, no flourishes.

You know, it's like Apple computers.

Flat.

Minimal.

Minimalism.

Ugh.

When you see it, when you hear minimalist or minimalism, you should think death.

These people love death.

That's what you should think.

When you hear maximalism, you should think life.

That's what that's what you should think.

And because we are minimalist types of people, we're flattening types of people, that means we like no distinctions anywhere.

No distinctions.

And so here's what would feel good to us, to hear, to people like us, to moderns like us.

What would feel good to us is the Sabbath, the holiness of the Sabbath, is a picture that all days are holy.

All of your life is meant to be a day of holiness.

All days are to be called up into the holiness and the wonder of God.

And that is the true Christian life.

That is the way of Christian living.

Oh, wow, isn't that great?

Didn't that feel good to say and to experience?

This is wrong.

Because you know what that means.

It means now they're they're ordinary again.

If they're all holy, they're ordinary.

This is not the way that God has structured our time.

God has structured our time with ordinary time and holy time.

This is helpful to know.

There is ordinary time.

Doesn't mean it's bad.

It just means it's not holy.

And then there is holy time, which is set apart from that ordinary time.

You know, this is uh this is frustrating to us because as flattening people, we don't want there to be distinctions.

We don't want there to be uh we don't want to consider, yes, that day is a holy day, and this day is just a regular day.

In fact, we think that to make distinctions like that is to place something arbitrary upon the real world.

That's the way we think of that.

That we are placing arbitrary distinctions upon the real world.

Now, the reason we think that is because we think that everything fundamentally is arbitrary, that the most real is the most arbitrary.

Let me give you an example of this.

This is part of our flattening.

What we do is we like to describe things in terms of their parts, and then once they're described in terms of their parts, we say that is the reality of the thing.

I've said this before, but I'm going to keep using it because I like it.

This is Neil deGrasse Tyson's one trick.

This is what he does.

He says, he takes something and then he describes it according to its parts, and then he says, that's what it really is.

You know, a sunrise, we say sunrise, it's really an earth turn.

You know, because that's the parts of it, the way that the parts are all working together.

But I I saw the sunrise this morning, and I can tell you, I could tell it was a sunrise just by looking at it.

You know, uh, when people played, well watched my kids play soccer last night.

You know, soccer is just people running around on a field kicking a ball.

You know, it's the parts.

It's all it is.

Isn't it?

Can you believe how arbitrary this is?

This is just soccer, it's just people running around on a field kicking a ball.

But I do you guys remember this past summer?

The uh World Cup, all the Europeans coming to America, air conditioning.

Remember how much fun?

That was not just people running around on a field kicking a ball.

I could tell, I could tell by looking at it that that it was more than that.

Much more than that was happening.

And to to drop down a level and describe it according to its parts, I think it actually it's it's that is not revealing the reality of what's happening.

It is hiding the reality of what's happening.

And so when we say, you know, all days are just days, there's no difference between this 24-hour period or this 24-hour period or this 24-hour period.

There's no difference.

It doesn't, it doesn't, there's no meaning within them.

There's no meaning that takes place within any of it.

That may feel like we are uncovering the reality of existence.

That we are peeling back some sort of uh human-imposed arbitrary distinction layer.

But that's not what's happening.

We are not peeling back, we are covering up.

We are hiding.

Oh, the way to think of it is we are dismembering.

That is what that way of thinking is technically doing.

It is dismembering the parts from the whole so that we can no longer participate in the world as it has been given to us.

Because you know, a fetus is just a clump of cells.

Right?

We're just a uh a crowd gathered together that happen to be singing the words on the screen, aren't we?

Isn't that really what this is?

You know, it feels like it's revealing, it's hiding and covering up.

And what we need to see is that the Sabbath day, the argument for the Sabbath day in Scripture, this is not an imposition of an arbitrary distinction onto the parts of existence, the real parts of existence.

This is the least arbitrary thing.

Because it goes back to the very work of God in creation.

What I what I what I want us to be able to see here, here I'll just read it.

Exodus twenty, eleven, this grounds the command.

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

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

The Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

You know, there were some other things that he did that week.

Like, for example, the he said to the ocean, uh just stop right there.

And then it and then it did, it stayed there.

He said to the sun, once a day, you know, and the sun was like, come on, I can't like once.

And the sun was like, okay, great, I'm gonna love it.

And then today the sun, like a strong man running its race, is tearing across the sky.

So those are some other things that the Lord did on this week, and those are things that he made.

And those things that he made, we don't think, well, those are arbitrary.

We think, no, no, they were precise.

They were just right.

They were they were from the mind of God from eternity past.

They're disclosures of his glory for his people.

They are they are the real world that we have to interact with and to enjoy and to participate in and to make with.

We don't think of them as arbitrary at all.

Well, what he did on that week is he saw the seventh day and he rested on it and he made it holy.

What I want us to see here is that the Sabbath day is as real as the coastline.

It is as real as the heavens above and the earth beneath.

It is that real.

You know, there's a lot of argument about those.

And what was the pattern of the Lord's creation?

Of God's creation?

It is the pattern of on six days he worked and he made everything, and on the seventh day he rested.

Now, there's a lot of argument over six literal days, six twenty-four-hour periods, six, you know, what is this, what are we saying for the creation of the world?

What is this, what does this mean?

And what would be nice is if I said right now, you know, wherever you fall on those, these are these arguments don't matter, but that's not the way I like to do things.

Here's why it's obviously six literal days.

The reason it's obviously six literal days is because, well, if he didn't make them then, when did he make days?

If it wasn't six literal days, when he blessed the seventh day, what's he blessing?

What's he setting apart from the other six?

Like we think here's the we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine that he made stuff.

You know, it's fine that he made the stuff, but he didn't make time.

He obviously didn't make time.

Yeah, you know, look, he's making time.

This is where the time was made.

You know, it's not like there was time and God was like, I'll go make my stuff inside the time.

No.

This doesn't make any sense.

And then, like he does with the space, where he sets apart some of it as holy, a holy place, so he does with the time.

And we're not like, oh, he didn't actually make the stuff.

But for some reason with the time, we're like, yeah, he didn't actually make the time.

This is my argument.

I think it's good.

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

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

This is the argument for the fourth commandment.

So this means that there is an actual day in the pattern of creation, which is set apart by God for holiness.

Set apart for rest and reverence of God.

Just as he did with space, right?

He creates all of creation and then he creates Eden, right?

And Eden is not like the rest of creation.

It's holy.

The Lord walks in Eden.

There's the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

There's the sacramental food and worship of God whose presence is right in Eden.

It's a holy place.

You know, the type of place that you could get kicked out of.

You could go east of it.

And when you're east of it, you're not in the holy place anymore.

Well, so the Lord did with time.

He took the days of the week, and he had six of them.

These are ordinary, regular land, you know, all the land outside of Eden.

But then there's holy time, a holy day that he made where our hearts are to be directed towards him in a not ordinary way.

The Lord loves distinctions.

The Lord loves mountains and he loves valleys.

He loves dry land and he loves oceans.

He loves men and he loves women.

He loves distinctions.

He loves work and he loves rest.

He loves those things.

He loves those things.

He loves times.

Here's what God is like.

He loves times where you're focused on the problem at work.

And it and it's it has your attention, it has your energy.

You know, because it's like your problem.

And then he loves the time where where you your mind is not on that problem anymore, and your mind is on him.

The Lord does not require that your thinking is is like um uh this this constantly like two thoughts at the same time type of thing.

This is not required of you.

It's not required of you to be like, okay, I've got to uh um fix this swamp cooler.

To the glory of God, I've got to fix it.

You know, I've gotta get here's this thing to the I've gotta get this part to the glory of God.

Glorifying God while I'm doing this.

To the you know, no, this is not, this is that's not a you don't have to do that.

What you have to do is you do the ordinary and you do the you do the ordinary.

And then you turn your mind to focus on the Lord.

You honor him, you remember his ethic, you labor, you give your attention to the things that he has called you to.

You know, this is tied up into the glory of him in wonderful ways.

Our labor is not in vain in the Lord.

All those promises, all those, all those promises.

But there is a particular time where it is required of you to turn your attention to the Lord in a unique way, a way that cannot be done in ordinary time.

And there is a time to do that.

And the time to do that is on the Sabbath day.

Now, the Sabbath day was the seventh day of creation.

But there's been a new creation that has taken place.

And so the Sabbath day for the Christian has transferred to the Lord's day.

This is why all the Christian worship since the resurrection has taken place on the Lord's day.

And that is the day of resurrection.

We're here on Sunday doing Sabbathy things, but we're here on Sunday, this is the first day.

And what is the difference?

The difference is that the seventh day is you rest because your work has been concluded.

You are at the end of the week.

God rested because his work was done.

Your work today, I bet, I bet your work is not done.

I bet that there are things that you could go home and work on right now.

And it and it you and you probably want to.

You might have planned on it when you walked in here.

And our work though, has shifted.

There's this glory that has been revealed in Christ.

Because you know, you you know the the uh the fourth commandment when it's relayed to us in Deuteronomy chapter 5, at that time it doesn't say that you shall rest.

Deuteronomy 5 · chapter mention

On the seventh day, because on the seventh day God rested.

It doesn't use creation to ground the Sabbath.

What's used instead of creation to ground the Sabbath is redemption.

Why is it that in Deuteronomy they are told to rest on the Sabbath on the Sabbath day?

It is to remember that they were slaves in Egypt, and that God rescued them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

That's why they rest on the Sabbath.

They rest on the Sabbath not just to remember the pattern of creation, but they rest on the Sabbath to remember that they were rescued from the place of perpetual work.

They were rescued from the place where, as slaves, there was no opportunity for rest.

They were rescued from the place of being under the tyranny of other gods.

On the Lord's Day at the resurrection, when we remember the resurrection, and we focus our hearts together as Christians on the Lord's Day, on the resurrection, we are remembering that we have been rescued from the tyranny of the other gods.

That the market that I would desire to receive my satisfaction from when left to my flesh, that I do not, I am freed from that market.

That the righteousness that I would like to be able to provide of my own, to give to the Lord as a reason that I might be saved, has been provided for me by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so I enter into his rest.

It says, 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, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

Disobedience to the Sabbath is a way of saying that God is not the God of creation, and it is a way of saying that you and your work is finally responsible for your salvation.

So that means that God is not the God of redemption either.

But participation in the Sabbath means that our hearts are situated in such a way where we are saying that God is the God of creation.

He is the one who is able to make distinctions within it.

And God is the God of my redemption.

He is the only rest that I can truly come into.

And when you come into that rest, you realize that this is not the type of rest that once I finally integrate this system, or once I finally integrate this uh, you know, add this one ancient practice to my life, then my life will finally be optimized and I won't feel bound by this terrible stress, or uh uh the pains of machine life will finally be worn off.

No, it's not that type of rest that you're entering into.

It's not like once you get the Sabbath, then you'll be able to rest on the Sabbath.

You shouldn't think of it like that.

The way to rest on the Sabbath, you can rest now.

It is a rest that has been purchased for you.

It is a rest which has been built into creation and then restored to you by the blood of Jesus Christ, so that all of the things that encroach upon that rest, all of the all of the little tyrants in your life, they will get exposed like crazy while you're practicing the Sabbath.

They will rear their heads.

And it is saying to all of those tyrants, my rest has been purchased by Christ.

I can rest now.

In fact, you ought to rest now.

And then, so this is this is the the first things that I want us to see with the with regards to the Sabbath first is this ratio of days of labor to days of rest.

The Sabbath begins with the six ordinary days.

These are to be six days of labor.

If you don't labor with this ratio, what this shows us is that God gives us work.

This is one of the commands in which God gives us work.

And it turns out that work is very good and can be taken in incredibly high doses.

In fact, it's good to be taken in incredibly high doses, like six to one.

That's a high ratio of work to rest.

And if you don't work at a like ratio to this, then what happens is you will you will rot.

And then if you don't rest with the and I want to be really careful with this, because here's what I here's what I want to say.

If you rest, here's what I don't want to say.

If you what I don't want to say is if you don't rest, then you will burn out and you'll really fall behind.

That's what I don't want to say.

I want here's what I want to say.

If you don't rest and you work machine-like with no rest in you, you may advance far beyond any of your peers that are resting on the Sabbath day.

You may be outrageously more productive than them.

You may have far more to show for it by dishonoring the Sabbath day.

Okay, I want I want us to hear that so that we don't use the Sabbath as a trick to serve the market God.

By following the Sabbath day in the market, you may fall behind.

You may achieve less.

You may get less.

But what is your life?

Is your life not more than possessions?

Is your life not more than food and clothes?

This is the wonder of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath, I think, for our culture, it does this thing where it pushes you into and it's like, what are you?

What is your life?

Is it not more than food?

Is it not more than clothing?

Is it not more than production?

Is it not more than work?

Is it not more than labor?

I think that if you disregard the Sabbath, you may be better off in all of those things.

You may gain the world.

But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

What if instead the Sabbath was a real day and it was set apart, made holy to the highest thing?

Now, what is the highest thing?

What if the highest thing was worship of the Lord?

Considering his great work of creation, his great work of redemption.

Do you know what you had to do with his great work of creation?

You weren't even there.

Do you know what you had to do with his great work of redemption?

Jesus paid it all.

Do you know how you receive these and honor him in them?

You rest.

You worship and praise.

You receive with gratitude.

You enjoy the great gifts of the people and the family, the friends that he has given you.

You encourage them, you build them up, you talk with them on this day about the highest things.

So we rest, we worship, we don't neglect the assembly, we remember his creation and his redemption.

And then here's what I want you to can to I'm gonna say one more practical thing.

This will require, as you're as you're experiencing the conviction of the reality of the Sabbath, that it is really here, and the reality of our stepping into the rest of Christ or neglecting it by the neglect of the Sabbath, uh, you will need to talk with your spouse.

Okay, now who needs to do that?

So uh you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

The following of the Sabbath is a responsibility of the head of the household.

So the the head of the household, the father in the house, is the one who says, we're doing the Sabbath today.

So that means you you are taking the labor off of all of those in your charge.

That's what the Sabbath is, that's the way we are able to participate in the Sabbath.

So that means you will need to defend against those other tyrants which will creep in.

So, fathers, especially, protect the Sabbath in your home.

Okay, the last word that I want to leave us with in consideration of the Sabbath, and just to sort of prime your conscience with regards to what you do and what you don't do on the Sabbath.

Um, I'm not just giving gonna I'm not just gonna give you a list that you want.

Here's what I'm here's what I'm going to do instead.

I'm going to say, the Sabbath is a holy day.

You did not you did not make it a holy day.

Humans do not make the Sabbath a holy day.

What you put on the Sabbath, you are calling holy.

What are you calling holy?

And if you put it there and you make it holy, it will be.

It will be.

So that should be a helpful filter.

Should be a helpful filter.

All right.

Remember the Sabbath day.

Keep it holy.

Let's pray.

Father, we praise you because you are the creator and the redeemer.

Lord, let our hearts be focused on you as the true highest good, as our true highest God.

Lord, we see that and I I don't I don't know if this is like this in every civilization, but in ours, Lord, this command feels like it pushes us up against some of the deepest idols that we have.

What the other gods, the other tyrants of our culture, who would never let us rest, but would demand our attention on them for freedom.

Lord, would we see what they demand of us?

And would we see that compared to the free redemption that you have given us in Jesus Christ?

Lord, would you teach us to fix our attention on you on this day to make the Sabbath day holy?

Help us remember it.

I think the stakes are very high, Lord.

Would you help this to settle on our hearts?

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.