You Must Rest in Him: What is the Sabbath, and are Christians required to observe it? Should we stay at home and not do any work around the house, or are we free to do what we please seven days a week? What if you’re scheduled to work a shift on Sunday? Throughout the Gospels, Jesus refutes the legalistic interpretation of the Pharisees and their far-reaching rules for the Sabbath. Through this, we can see that the Sabbath is not a list of rules we’re required to follow. Rather, it’s an invitation to rest in and enjoy the Lord. Recorded on Feb 19, 2023, on Exodus 20:7 by Pastor David Parks.
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Ten Commandments: Learning the Law of Love is a sermon series on the most influential legal code in human history. Why should we learn about the Ten Commandments today? Because they reveal God’s will for how human beings ought to live: to love God with all our heart and love our neighbor as ourselves. Ultimately, the law of love points us directly to Jesus.
Sermon Transcript
All year, we’re focusing on Learning the way of Jesus. And today, we’re continuing a sermon series on the Ten Commandments. [Ten Commandments slide] Now, all of our sermon series this year are really trying to answer the question: if the gospel is true, how then should we live? The Ten Commandments, as part of God’s moral law, reveal to us how God wants individual people to live and, by extension, what he wants for our families and societies as well. Ultimately, this new way of life can be summed up as learning to love the Lord our God, heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love our neighbor as ourself. The Ten Commandments are really a law of love. So far, we’ve worked through the first three commands, which focus on our vertical relationship with God, including 1. You shall have no other God’s before or besides the one true God. 2. You shall not make any image or idol of any created thing for use in worshipping the one true God. 3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, or bear the name of God in a vain or empty way. Today, we have the final command relating directly to our vertical relationship with God before we move next week to our more horizontal relationships with others. So today, we’ll consider the fourth command, to keep the Sabbath day holy. What does that mean? Well, all of these commands teach us profound wisdom for how God intends our lives to work. But for several reasons, this command is especially hard for us to understand/obey in our modern American/Western culture. However, if we learn this countercultural Sabbath way of life, it will not only guard us from a life of over-work, but also a life of over-worry. Why? Because, a Sabbath way of life is a life of love/joy/true and lasting peace. If you have a Bible/app, please open to Exodus 20:8. We’ll read through this and then unpack it together.
Exodus 20:8-11 (NIV), “8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 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 male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 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.”
As we’ve said, the book of Exodus, written about 4,300 years ago, by Moses, the prophet and leader of ancient Israel, describes a key turning point of history when God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and entered into a covenant relationship with them, which included giving them the Law. Thinking about the context of this command, I can’t help but wonder how the ancient people of Israel would have thought about their work. For over 400 years, they were slaves in Egypt, and at first, it wasn’t so bad. We read at the end of the book of Genesis that the Lord had put Joseph, an Israelite, in the position of being second in command over all of Egypt. The king/pharaoh of Egypt had great respect for Joseph. But when Joseph and that pharaoh died, later pharaohs came along and dealt with the Israelites in a much harsher manner. They were treated as slaves and were forced to do the work that the Egyptians didn’t want to do, which was hard labor. Then, because God blessed the people of Israel, even in captivity they were fruitful and multiplied and grew in number. This caused the pharaoh in Moses’ day to treat his people even worse. So now, God had rescued his people, redeeming them from the abuse and exploitation of their Egyptian masters. But don’t you think that that whole 400+ year experience might’ve given the people of Israel some unhealthy/unhelpful attitudes about their work? I’m sure it did! One thing I know for sure, God would not want his people to simply carry their attitudes toward their work into the Promised Land thoughtlessly or carelessly. Just as he had established a totally new way of relating to him in life/worship, so he would want them to learn a new way of relating to him in their work/rest. The slaves would have to learn how to live as free people, but this is more difficult than you might imagine. Let’s look back at v. 8.
Exodus 20:8-10a (NIV), “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.” Ok, let’s pause here. So the Hebrew word where we get the word Sabbath literally means to cease or to rest. To sabbath means to stop working. The fourth command of the Ten is to remember the Sabbath day or the day of ceasing/resting, the Lord says, by keeping it holy. We’ll come back to what it looks like to keep a day holy, but first, obedience to this command is what established a seven day week almost universally by the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine. This command is why we have a seven day work week today. And it’s interesting because we measure a day based on a single rotation of the earth on its axis. And we measure a year based on a single orbit of the earth around the sun. But there is no basis for a seven day week according to the movement of the planets or the stars. Ancient Egypt followed a 10 day week while other cultures had different ways of tracking time. At any rate, the Lord made it clear, his people would labor and do all their work in six days, but on the seventh day, they would rest. This day was to be a sabbath to the Lord your God, a rest day to the Lord. The first command was unique because at this time, almost everyone everywhere believed in polytheism or that there were many gods/goddesses. But for Israel, they believed there was only one true and living God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And the second command was unique because again, at this time, almost everyone everywhere used some sort of image of a created thing for use in worship in their home or in their temples, but Israel believed this was not an appropriate way to worship God. Now here, even the way that they were to measure time and balance their work and their rest was to be different than their neighbors. Let’s keep going with v. 10.
Exodus 20:10b (NIV), “On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.” The whole nation, including (radically) their servants or people of a lower social class and foreigners, people who might have had completely different religious beliefs with no problem working 7 days per week, and even animals were supposed to take a day off. The whole place was supposed to be like Chick-fil-A: closed on Sundays. Now, to be fair, at this time Sunday was considered to be the first day of the week. So the Sabbath was celebrated by the Jewish people from Friday evening through Saturday evening. So Chick-fil-A would’ve been closed on Saturdays back then. But it was more than just one business, it was supposed to be a defining characteristic of the whole people/society of Yahweh God. Even if you weren’t born into this community, or into the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you were still invited into their Sabbath rest. But why? Why is this so important to God as a practice for God’s people? Because this is how God works. Look again at v. 11.
Exodus 20:11 (NIV), “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.” Moses here refers back to the story of creation in Genesis 1 where God creates all things from nothing by his powerful and creative word. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” (Ge 1:1,3) The text is then broken into three days of forming and three days of filling followed by a day of rest where God seems to sit back and judges his work as being very good. But why does God work in this way? Is he somehow bound by time? No! Yahweh God is transcendent, he is above his creation, he is outside of time and space. God doesn’t need six days to do anything. He could’ve created all things instantly and probably could’ve used a variety of means besides speaking if he wanted to. Many people over the years have raised the question of how you can even speak of a day before there is an earth to rotate on its axis. Good question. Time itself is part of God’s creation. This means that the six days of work followed by a day of rest in Ge 1 wasn’t the pattern of creation for God, but for us. God chose to work this way in order to model for us how he wants us to do our work. And then here, in the Ten Commandments, God commands his people to work and rest, just as he had done. Now, the ancient Babylonians were another people with a seven day week, but their creation story couldn’t be more different than what we find in Genesis. The Babylonians, similar to many other peoples, envisioned creation as a result of a bloody conflict or a battle among the gods. But the story in Genesis is very different. Creation doesn’t come from violence, but from a God who intentionally works like a master craftsman, forming the world, or like an artist as he spoke his poem of creation. He is not in conflict but in heavenly peace and complete self-sufficiency. He is not annoyed with his creation but created it/us to enjoy the same loving community, beauty, and goodness that God himself has enjoyed for all eternity. How different would you see the world if you saw the basis for our reality not as a battle or the result of violence, but as an invitation to join the life-giving work of God where we might enjoy and find great meaning and purpose in doing? It is here that we find a key insight in the Biblical story: work is not a product of the fall to sin. A big part of why we are here and what our purpose is in life, is to do the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. To work like how God works and speak light into darkness, and bring order to chaos, and bring flourishing life where there is no life. And we can do this kind of work whether we are in the home or outside the home, paid or unpaid, in almost any industry (education, business, healthcare, government, and so much more). So the fourth command is a reminder to remember this story and to remember our this aspect of our purpose and to remember our great God whose work has resulted in creating and sustaining our very life and breath and every good thing in heaven and earth, in the seas and the skies, both here and out into the farthest reaches of our universe. But even more, it is an invitation and a command to rest and enjoy our relationship with God. To stop our activity and our routines and say thank you and praise him together as his people.
After the first command, the second, third, and fourth commands help shape how we relate to Yahweh God in relationship to him. We are to worship him and him alone, we are to be careful and respectful to him and in representing him to others, and here, we need to take time every week to rest and enjoy him and remember all that he has done and all that he has promised for us. Now, you might wonder, why would this need to be a command? Why not just a suggestion, since it’s seems like such a blessing. Why wouldn’t people naturally prioritize this in their weekly routine? Well, I think the answers relate to the fact that this world is no longer perfectly good. Ever since the fall to sin, everything in life is to some degree affected by the power of sin and death. So our work is not always perfectly fruitful or fulfilling. Sometimes our work is incredibly frustrating and painful. It’s stressful and sometimes there are deadlines or sometimes certain positions don’t work out and we find ourselves looking for another job or even another career. But also, we are a forgetful people. In our finite nature as human beings, we have a hard time remembering and keeping at the front of our minds, who God is and what he has done for us, particularly in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So we are not suggested to balance our work and our rest, we are commanded to do this. If we don’t, if we ignore this reality of how we have been created to live and work, we do so at our own peril. Our culture today has made an idol of productivity. It’s the false god that many people worship and serve. This leads all of us to feel the cultural pull toward over-working. Working and working without ever really stopping to rest and to enjoy our relationship with God leads directly to all sorts of physical and mental health issues. And if you never stop, eventually you crash or burn-out. This is not good. And I don’t think it honors the Lord with our time or health or our work to ignore the Sabbath, even if we burn out trying to do ministry for him. In Psalm 23, it says this, Psalm 23:1–3 (NIV): “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.“ He makes me lie down. Why? Because in our sin and our fear and our struggles, we so often refuse to rest/cease/Sabbath. But in the kindness and the mercy of the Lord who is the Good Shepherd of our lives, he makes/commands us not to control us but to help us live in the freedom and the joy and the peace that he intended for us from creation.
Now finally, as we consider how to obey this command today, as followers of Jesus, we have to realize that Jesus is actually the Lord of the Sabbath. In him, and only in him, are we able to find our rest, true and lasting rest, rest for our souls. And the reason we can rest in him is because in his perfect life, and his sacrificial death on the cross for the sins of the world, and for his victorious resurrection from the dead, in his work, has already accomplished everything we need for life and love and salvation. So in Jesus, and by faith in Jesus, all people everywhere, including you all today, no matter who you are or what you’ve done or what has been done to you, are invited into the rest of Jesus. Now, in the gospels, Jesus was clear that there’s a way to celebrate the Sabbath in a legalistic way that totally misses the point. The Pharisees, or religious leaders of his day, looked down on Jesus for doing things like healing people on the Sabbath. Jesus did this to correct their understanding of this command. They had made an invitation to rest and enjoy their relationship all about the specifics of what you could or couldn’t do on that day. Jesus corrected them saying that the Sabbath was meant to serve and be a blessing to us, not the other way around. So today, how are we doing with this? Do we have weekly rhythms of work and rest? Do we prioritize worship and have a day set aside to remember and celebrate who God is and what he has done for us? This is what it means to keep the Sabbath day holy. Part of what it means to be holy is to set something or someone apart as special and for the Lord’s use. Now Christians meet for worship on Sundays, because Jesus rose from the grave on the Sunday morning. So ever since, we have continued to meet