Sunday, May 28, 2023 PM

To our Lord and Savior. So Exodus chapter 20 will get us going looking again at the fourth commandment. Let's begin with the word of prayer. Father we thank you for the day. We thank you for giving us your word.

We thank you for calling us to follow your Son. We thank you that he is all our righteousness, our solid rock, our only plea. We pray all these things in his name. Amen. Exodus chapter 20 is one list of the Ten Commandments.

Deuteronomy 5 is the other. I only know that because 10 times 2 is 20 and 10 divided by 2 is 5. That's the only way I remember that. Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. We're studying the Sabbath day. So let's read that commandment again and kind of review what we talked about last time.

Verse 8 of Exodus 20 says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who was within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. So Deuteronomy says much the same thing, only more intensely, with more specificity, and reminds the Israelites not only of creation, but the fact that they were delivered up out of Egypt.

They used to be slaves. They used to work 24 -7, but God rescued them, so now they work 24 -6. So they're going to have one day and seven to rest, namely the seventh day, Saturday, the Sabbath. Now in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, the focus is on the household.

This is not a commandment that details the manner in which Israel is to worship God, whether at the altar or at the tabernacle and so on. The fourth commandment is not about having a day of worship where people gather together and sing psalms and read the Bible and hear a sermon.

It is about the household and the responsibility of the head of the household to arrange everything into subjection to the Lord God. So this is a similar feel to the last commandment, do not covet anything in somebody else's household.

And this is about a man bringing his entire household into submission to the Lord before he brings his children in submission to him. So the fifth commandment is honor your father and mother. That's a household commandment as well.

But first, before it's important that children honor their parents, it's important that the whole household honors God. So that's what we studied last time and we thought a little bit about what does it mean that God rested on the seventh day.

It said that he rested on the seventh day and was refreshed, is the language that Moses gives us in Exodus 31. And so we thought about what rest meant, given that God made everything. It was only after everything was very good and man was in right relationship to God and to each other, Adam and Eve.

It was not good for the man to be alone. So God made Eve and it was very good. And then man in proper relationship to the created order. Once everything was in right relationship then God rested. No more work to do if everything is right in its place and correct in every aspect.

There's nothing on the to-do list. When God says it's very good, there's nothing left on the list. Rest. Everything in its right relationship, in its right place, nothing wrong. And so the rest commenced.

So we need to think a little bit about, therefore, what this Sabbath looks like moving forward out of creation. We have the commandment there in the Ten Commandments, but as we see from the Ten Commandments, there are some things to think about the Sabbath before we get to God's covenant with Israel.

There is the creation model. There is the redemption up out of Egypt. The idea of Sabbath rest didn't just pop into existence when God spoke to the people of Israel at Sinai. There's a lot of background to it.

So we've looked at rest in the creation week. Now we need to think about creation, not just creation, but God's covenant with Noah and creation and where rest, the idea of Sabbath, shows up in the story of Noah.

So that's our goal moving forward. And then after that, think about Abraham, God's covenant with Abraham. Think about God's covenant with Israel and see all the things about the Sabbath. There's a lot of Sabbath in the covenant with Israel.

And then God's covenant with David and so on. Because we're studying the Ten Commandments, which are the quintessential testimony of God's covenant with Israel. The covenant that God makes is a restoring and revealing relationship that the Creator formalizes with man.

Why? Because he made him in his image. A man fell into sin. After that, God starts making covenants with man. And so when we look at the Ten Commandments, we're looking at God saying to Israel, hey, this is what it means to live in the image of God.

This is how I'm revealing it to you. This is what it means to live in the image of God, love God supremely, love your neighbor rightly, steward the creation responsibly. It seeks to restore that which was lost in Eden, and it reveals that which is coming in Christ.

So there's a bunch of prophetic value to it. So Sabbath and rest. I'm going to go ahead and fill that in first right here. What are some words related to Sabbath? We're going to go ahead and put that on there since that was obvious.

But what are some other words that are related to Sabbath? Holy, right? Because it was set apart and made holy, right? So labor or no labor, right? Where was it? Did they all have a copy of the Scriptures in their tent?

Right? Moses hadn't finished writing the thing, right? And even after the Scripture was written and copies were made, it was given to the Levites, correct? The Levites had it. The Levites were the ones who were trained, who were literate, and who would read.

And then what did God do with the Levites? Put them in a salt shaker and seasoned the whole land of Canaan. They're a Levite city, they're a Levite city, and the Levites were the salt of the earth, the salt of the land, right?

And then what would happen? Well the Levites would have copies of God's Word and they would read for the people, wouldn't they? It would be consulted to know what the Word of God was. Yes. Yeah, so when, so remembrance definitely, let's talk about remembrance, because what were they to remember?

Hey, God redeemed us up out of Egypt. God created everything. He is the God of, and they were to reflect upon who God was, right? And because of who God was, they were to do no work, shut down the household.

Because God makes everything He provides for them, they don't have to run their household ragged, 24 -7, just to make ends meet. Take one day off and recall God's provision for them. Same lesson being delivered up out of Egypt.

So remembrance. Remember the Sabbath day to keep holy, right? So remember what it's all about. It was indeed a sign. It was the sign of the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai. It was the covenant sign.

Circumcision, the sign that God made, gave to Abraham when he made a covenant with Abraham. Rainbow was the sign God gave to Noah in creation, that covenant. Temple, the sign that God gave to David at that covenant.

Yeah, say shadow. Yes, yes. So it's about remembering God, isn't it? On the Sabbath day, why do they stop? They're remembering God. Okay, so in keeping that in mind, 7th would also be a good word to have.

It was the seventh day. It wasn't one day in seven, it was the seventh day. It was a particular day of the week because of the nature of creation, right? So the sign that they were to observe was rooted in an actual history that occurred.

There was an actual six days of labor, and then there was an actual seventh day of rest. Because of that actual history, the Sabbath is on the seventh day, and as far as that goes, the seventh day Adventists are correct.

Sabbath is the seventh day. Never t 'was anything else. Now, let's think about what goes on with the story of Noah. With the disruption of the image of God by sin, several themes become evident in chapters 3 through 5 of Genesis.

So Noah's story is, you know, 6 through 9, but before you get there, a lot of things begin to develop that make the Noah story make sense. God promised death as the consequences of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Death is what's going to happen. Spiritual death, relational death, physical death begin to manifest. And once mankind is cut off from the garden, cut off from communion, cut off from the tree of life, the relationships between Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, are broken.

So when this relationship is broken, everything else falls apart. And pretty quickly, after God says death is the consequence, chapter 4, murder is the first thing that happens, the first big thing that happens.

Murder. Murder is the highest form of rebellion against the Creator. It is the strongest breach of human relationship, and it is the acceleration of the curse against creation. It lies at the very heart of the Ten Commandments for a particular reason.

And again, when Jesus described what Satan did to the human race, he said he was a murderer from the beginning. And so let's read Genesis 4 verses 8 through 14. Now Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.

Verse 9, then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

What's happened so far? Cain is not listening to God. He had warned him earlier, and Cain's not listening to God. And now when God confronts him, he lies to God. So there's a breach between his relationship, between him and God.

He's murdered his brother. He has shattered his relationship with his brother and with his whole family. And then God says, the voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. So all three vectors of the relationship of the image of God is in effect here.

They're all being shattered all at once. Verse 11, so now you are cursed from the earth, God says, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hands. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you.

A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth. And Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely you have driven me out this day from the face of the ground. I shall be hidden from your face.

I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me. So in the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, determining good and evil for ourselves, in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, death is the result.

Now Cain, given over to his sin, commits murder. He's not just afflicted with death, he brings death. He causes death his own brother's death. And as with the fallout in the garden in chapter 3, so also here, this great sin is against God, against his brother, and notice it's also against the ground.

It's also against the ground. Cain is cursed from the ground, which drank his brother's blood. Cain must now wander and be a fugitive, a vagabond. Cain says he's hidden from God's face. So you see how this horrendous sin shatters the image of God every which way, all three ways.

So what is he? What is Cain now? What is Cain if God and mankind and the earth itself is against him? He's a dead man walking. Dead man walking. Death is the primary characteristic of every relationship in Cain's life.

He is restless. Restless. He's homeless. He's homeless. No God, no family, no land. Now that's why it is a nauseous experience when you're trucking through in your car and there's just homeless here, homeless there, homeless here, homeless there, homeless everywhere.

Why does it feel so wrong? And why do pagans celebrate, sacralize, and want to enshrine homelessness as, you know, this is just, you should have more of it, and you should be right in the midst of it?

Because Satan hates the image of God. It is not right. It is not good. It is not proper. Nothing that we should ever be comfortable with saying homeless, right? Of course, there's a story behind each thing, but you know somehow, some way, sin is involved, right?

First homeless man we have is Cain. No God, no family, no land. He's restless. He's homeless. He's a dead man walking. Now, a lot of this we could have waited till we got to the, you know, the central, the Ten Commandments, do not murder.

However, I think it's important background information to the Sabbath theme of rest, which comes up in Genesis 6 through 9. The restlessness, the homelessness of Cain, we find protracted and may worsen by Lamech, the fourth from Cain, and all who follow him until the earth is filled with violence.

The whole earth is filled with violence, defiance against God, destruction of one another, disaster upon the earth. What we read about in the beginning of Genesis 6 is nothing is at home. Everything is displaced, and so God displaces everything with the flood.

In Genesis 6, it says that the earth was filled up with violence, so God fills it up with water. So now, how does Noah factor in? Well, there's the Lamech that came from Cain, the first polygamist, but there's a Lamech that comes from the succession of Adam and Seth and Enosh.

He's the ninth man after Adam. The ninth man from Adam is a man named Lamech, and he has a son, the tenth in the line from Adam. Nice number of completion, kind of like seven. And Lamech has a moment to reflect and to consider what goes on in his world, and to make hopeful application of God's promise to Eve, which was, the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

There was a hope that one of the ones born from Eve, eventually the seed would come, and there would be some turnaround. And so he, in hope of that promise, names his son what? He names his son Noah. So Hebrew, you read from right to left.

There's the N, there's the O, there's the A, there's the H. Noah. He says, okay, we're gonna name him Noah. Why? Genesis 5, 28, Lamech lived 182 years and had a son, and he called his name Noah, saying, this one will, noham, comfort us concerning our work.

We're gonna call him Noah, which means rest. What did God do on the seventh day? He rested. What's the problem in the world in which Lamech is living? Restlessness, disaster, violence, murder. He says, we need rest, right?

What is Cain cursed with? That he's laboring in the ground, and it's not producing anything because of the blood in the ground. What's happening, what does Lamech says? We need rest. This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.

Oh, we need rest from this curse. I'm gonna name my son rest in hopes that we will finally have rest. After he begot Noah, Lamech lived 595 years and sons and daughters, so all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

Everything about Lamech was desiring rest. I need that seventh day of rest again. I need, we need rest. So he names his son Noah, and he says, may Noah comfort us, which has the idea of, oh, right? That kind of comfort, right?

Just a repose, a kind of relaxation, rest. So he says, I'm naming Noah because we need, I'm hoping he will bring comfort to us. So Lamech seeks reprieve in the seed named rest. Lamech knows that the answer to the curse is rest.

The creation has been cursed by, tainted by blood, and so there's the need for someone to bring relief, to bring rest, something new. Will there be a new creation? What role will blood have in the making of such a new creation?

These questions are being laid out early in Genesis. So the earth is filled up with violence, men shedding man's blood unrighteously, so God plans to fill up the earth with water. So Noah is tasked with building an ark, and God gives a remnant of mankind and animals rest on the ark.

How long did they rest from toiling on the cursed earth? How long? So if an Israelite was reflecting upon that, maybe a Levite, maybe reading the beginning of the scroll of Genesis before he would read it to the folks in his area, and he's reflecting on it, and he's responsible, of course, to stir up the devotion of the people of God and observing all of the feasts and ceremonies and demands of the covenant.

As he's reading this, what would a Levite think to himself, but, oh, it's like a Sabbath year, you know? Remember every seven years, you're supposed to let your fields completely rest, or you don't work your fields at all, right?

And so you can imagine a Levite saying, ah, it's kind of like a Sabbath rest, and what was the name of the guy who was in charge of the ark? His name was Noah. Rest. Makes sense, right? It wasn't a Sabbath year, but it was a year of rest.

So we don't read the covenant at Sinai back into what was going on back here. Noah wouldn't have known what that was, but the Levite would be making connections. The rest on the ark was temporary, because when they get off the ark, God tells Noah the creation mandate is still in order.

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, right? Get back on task. Keep being the image of God, right? So the rest was temporary, but the creation mandate still applies. So Noah, on the ark, knows that we've got to get back to what we were doing, and he seeks a return to the earth.

Let's look at Genesis chapter 8. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 4, then the ark rested in the seventh month. So we have Noah, we have Noham, and then we have Noah. Moses is just filling up the puns here, okay?

So Noah's ark rested. Noah's ark, Noah, rested. Noah's ark rested in the seventh month, in the seventeenth day of the month, in or meaning among the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month.

In the tenth month, in the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. Verse 6. So it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, and he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.

He also sent out from himself a dove to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. But the dove found no resting place. No resting place. So Noah, Noham, Noah, and this one is Mah-nu-ha.

We're still having the N and the H over and over and over again. But no resting place yet, no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned to the ark to him. For the waters were on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her and drew her into the ark himself and waited yet another seven days. And again he sent out a dove from the ark. Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth, and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.

He waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return to him anymore. So the man of rest sends forth the dove to rest upon the new creation. Sound familiar? The man of rest sends forth the dove to rest upon the new creation.

Sounds like Acts. Where's the dove later on at the baptism of Christ, manifesting the Holy Spirit. Remember that? God was writing things into history that later on would make a whole lot of sense. It's not allegory, it's history, and then later on it makes a whole lot of sense.

Now what are our metaphors for peace? The dove and the olive branch? Where'd that come from? It came from this story. When Noah receives clarity that God has brought an end to his judgment, when peace has now been established between God and man, what was central to that?

The dove, symbol of peace. The olive branch, symbol of peace. Still with us today. Rest is achieved when the ark comes back to the earth to rest and when the dove finds rest. So we move further in Genesis 8 verses 20 through 21.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar and the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. A soothing aroma. And this one is Nihoah.

But we're still dealing with the root that means rest. And the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. Although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

So notice that man deserves to be wiped out again. This judgment that I've brought has not changed the fundamental violent heart of man. We still have Chicago and other places. Clearly another flood is deserved.

But God promises not to do that again and he gives a sign, a sign of compassion and mercy. He says when he looks upon that sign, the sign of the rainbow, he remembers and he restrains his just wrath. And where is the rainbow?

We see the rainbow at TAG the other week. We had a brilliant rainbow out here. All the kids very excited. We saw a couple of rainbows on our vacation. But where in the Bible do we end up seeing the rainbow?

When's the last time we see the rainbow in the Bible? All around the throne. And we behold our God and the lamb who was on the throne. The rainbow surrounds the throne where the man of rest rests, seated at the right hand of God, having satisfied God's wrath with a soothing sacrifice.

The covenant that God makes with Noah, and he makes it with all creation detailed for us in Genesis 9, focuses on what? Focuses on the shedding of blood. If an animal sheds blood, man's blood, then the animal must die.

If a man sheds man's blood, murder, then by man, that man will die. Capital punishment. So the covenant that God makes with Noah in all creation deals with the shedding of blood and the need to do things correctly in the light of the image of God and the creation mandate.

Being fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it as the image of God in right relationship with God, one another, in the created order, what could possibly be more antithetical to that than one man killing another?

All at once, you take the whole basis of morality into your own hands. I will determine good and evil down to the very marrow of what life is, and I will take somebody else's life because I have determined that that's right for me to do.

And in so doing, in rebelling against God and destroying somebody else, this brings a wretched consequence to the world around you. Later on, when we read in Deuteronomy 19, 2 Kings 24, and so on, when we read that this is not followed, and people are getting murdered and killed, innocent blood is being shed, and nothing's later is that the people who live in a land that is soaked with innocent blood are not at rest there.

They end up being displaced. Many nations on planet earth today are filled with all manner of innocent blood. We have our own share of that in our own country. Restlessness is a sign of a lot of innocent blood having been shed.

A lot of refugees. We were studying the country of Jordan last week in school, and how a third of the people in Jordan are from places like Syria and Palestine. Why are they there in Jordan and not where they grew up?

Because of so much blood that has been shed that wasn't answered for, and people are on the run, restless, displaced. When we think of rest, we're thinking of the Sabbath. We're thinking of rest when everything isn't right in its place.

We should be mindful of the name Noah, who was named Rest. The whole story of the ark, and the flood, and then the return to a refreshed creation, and then the covenant that God made with Noah, is all information that we should think of under the heading of Sabbath, of Rest.

What does it mean that God, on the seventh day when everything was very good, rested? Any questions or thoughts as we close? That's a good question. So how does the Sabbath apply to us today? Well, as we think about the words of Christ, as he was dealing with those who were insisting that the Sabbath be observed with regulations, he said, coming to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. What is he saying there? He says, come into me and have rest. Rest is a keyword of the Sabbath.

It's coming to me, and you find rest. Even in our labor in Christ, we find rest. The very next thing that happens after the end of Matthew 11, the next thing that happens in chapter 12, is Pharisees accusing Jesus and his disciples of breaking the Sabbath, and Jesus has to school them on what the Sabbath means.

They are plucking grain and eating it, but Jesus says, yeah, but David's men ate the bread of the presence, and they were with him, so it's okay. He also says, but there are priests in the temple sacrificing, doing heavy labor, slaughtering animals, but they're fine.

Why? Because they're in the temple, and these guys are with me, so how could they be breaking Sabbath when they're abiding with me? So he shows the meaning of the Sabbath by pointing out that he fulfills the sign of the Sabbath, even as he does the sign of the rainbow, sign of circumcision, sign of the temple.

What did he say about those things? How did he deal with those things? So how does the Sabbath apply? It applies to us in Christ, and he says what? We are to rest in him. We are to rest in him. There is wisdom in the fourth commandment in that we ought not be working 24 -7 and pushing our households and so on and so forth, not trusting God, but being anxious and trying to answer our anxiety about having enough by working.

There's wisdom there, but it's also prophecy. It's also pointing forward to Christ, and that's how he explains it, and so we are to rest in him. Everyone around him was trying to work their way to keep approval with God, and he's saying he's the approval with God, and we come to him and rest in him.

Man was not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath was made for man, and he said he's the Sabbath. So he is given to us as our rest, and so that's the ultimate way that it applies to us. I think there's certainly wisdom in that on the first day of the week, which is the first day of the new creation, Christ is risen from the dead, and that it was the habit of Christians to gather on the first day of the week, usually after they got off work, because they were all working on Sunday.

They had their meetings at night. But is there any better way to rest in Christ and to abide with Christ other than with his people? What a functional, practical way to abide in Christ and rest in him and to rejoice in his completed work for our behalf, strengthening our faith in him.

What better way to do that than with each other, remembering his resurrection from the dead, having in his ascension, and it completed all the work for us. I think that would be the most first way we would think about how does it apply to us today.

Absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology.