Summer Session (5) Sunday School July 2

The Fourth Commandment as Household Trust in God

Study of the Ten Commandments, these ten words about Jesus Christ, and we are studying the fourth commandment. The fourth commandment is in Exodus 20 verses 8 through 11 and Deuteronomy 5 verses 12 through 15, and of course it does say, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, or observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as it says in Deuteronomy 5, but boy it says a whole lot more than that.

And as we've been studying it, we recognize it as a commandment to households to bring their entire household into submission to God and to trust in Him for their provision. They don't have to work seven days a week to make provision.

They can trust in God to provide, and although He wants them to work, He does not want them to think that they are going to survive or be kept or prosper by their work, but by His good blessings, His grace, and so forth.

And so He reminds them that He is their Creator, so rest on the Sabbath day. He reminds them that He rescued them from Egypt, therefore rest on the seventh day. They are no longer slaves. And when we go back to creation and we see the seventh day, after God said everything was very good, He rested on the seventh day.

He sanctified it and blessed it, rested the seventh day, and He only did that after everything and everyone was in their proper place and in proper relationship. Once the work was done, He rested. Everything was good, everything was at peace, everything was at rest, and so God rested.

And we see that through sin and the tumult in the world that men began to become very restless, very unrestless. There was a lot of unrest in the world, so much so that Lamech the ninth from Adam through the line of Seth was very burdened by the unrest in his world, and so he named his son, the tenth man, Noah, which means rest, which means comfort.

And we studied the story of Noah and all the plays on the word rest throughout that entire story, and to the time when when Noah came out of the ark and offered up a sacrifice with a soothing aroma, and again a word that means restful aroma, and that's what God received it as, and God made a covenant with Noah and gave him promises, and he hung up his war bow in the sky, and there was rest.

And we he gave instructions about how the rest and how the peace was to continue. The concern with the covenant with Noah was, once again, how to relate to God, how to relate to one another, and how to relate to the created order.

The Promises to Abraham and the Rest of Faith

And then God gave promises to Abraham, which he repeated to Isaac and to Jacob, and even though they wandered around all over the place, through the land, up and down, back and forth, sometimes out of the land, and then back into the land, we find these patriarchs rarely staying in one place for very long.

They were restless, their children were restless, their families were restless, and yet time and again we see God coming to them and assuring them of his promises, and he compels them to find rest in his promises.

And Jesus tells us that Abraham did indeed look forward to see the day of Christ resting in the promises. The book of Hebrews says he was looking for a city which had foundations, whose architect and builder was God.

Abraham rested by faith in the promise, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And now we've been looking at the covenant that God made with Israel, and we see that the instructions of the Sabbath begin before God makes a covenant with Israel.

It regarded God keeping his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, keeping their descendants alive in the wilderness when they had no food. And he sent them bread from heaven, manna, and gave them instructions to gather it only on certain days, gather it going as much as you needed, don't leave it overnight, gather it double on the sixth day, don't go out of your tent on the seventh day, all the work is done, all the food is provided, be at rest in your home, and trust in God's promise that he'll send you enough manna for the first day of the week, and so on.

And then we saw what a big part that Sabbath commandment plays in the covenant that God made with Israel, even so much so that he calls it an everlasting sign between him and the people of Israel, on the same level as the sign of circumcision that God gave to Abraham.

And we were thinking about last time, we were thinking about the strictness of the sign, and how they had to keep Sabbath very, very carefully. They were not allowed to go out of their homes, they were not allowed to start a fire, they were not allowed to do all kinds of normal work on the Sabbath day, and they weren't allowed to sow or plow or reap in their fields on the seventh year.

And every seventh year they let all the slaves go home, because there was no work for them anymore. Obviously to be concerned for the poor at that point, all the slaves had no jobs, but God said everyone's just gonna eat what comes up out of the field, so God says, I'm gonna farm that year.

And whatever comes up out of the field in that seventh year, that'll be what you live on. So God, time and again, assuring his people that he's the one who provides. And it was an interesting thought of mine, when we were thinking about the history of these United States, and the influence of Presbyterianism, and how they were very influential, and their particular view on the Bible, in their covenantalism, how they brought in expectations of Sabbath keeping.

Which is why Saturdays and Sundays, businesses were closed, government offices are closed, so on and so forth. Saturdays and Sundays were, you know, they have off. Why? Because you have to observe the Sabbath.

You can observe it on the classical seventh day of the week, or you could do the newfangled one, and do it on the first day of the week. But either way, here's some Sabbath observance, and blue laws were in place in many places.

And there's a lot of lament about all that being gone. I find it interesting that there's probably a closer association of Sabbath on our money, right? In God we trust. The economy, oikonomos, means household.

The economy derives from the households, and the Sabbath commandment is a household commandment. It's about what households do. It's not about them gathering together for corporate worship, it's about not working on the Sabbath and trusting God.

And on our money, we have the phrase, in God we trust. And I sure hope we believe that. But it's a reminder in our each of our households, as we are stewards of our money, you know, it's actually God's provision.

It's actually God's provision. And ultimately, we don't trust in the number of the dollar bills that we have in our possession, but we trust in the God who provides for us. So that's one thing we need to remember as we move forward, as we think about how the Sabbath shows up in the life of Israel.

David, the Temple, and the Promise of an Eternal House

We're going to talk about David, King David. And David had a difficult time coming to the throne. He was pursued by King Saul, and then even after Saul was dead, there was a civil war between David and his forces, and Ish-bosheth and his forces, until such time that finally there was an alliance, and the tribes gathered to David at Hebron and said, you are our king.

Later on, they were able to conquer Jerusalem, and it became the city of David. And David sat down upon the throne of none other than Melchizedek to continue the worship of God Most High. And when David had defeated most of his enemies, he began to contemplate a situation, and he noticed something rather curious.

He realized that he dwelt in a house. He had a home. He was at rest. He was at peace. But the ark of God dwelt in a tent. You know, and tents, and especially in Israeli history, right? Tents, you pick up stakes and you move it over there, you pick up stakes and you move it over there, and actually in the time of David, bits and parts of the tabernacle were all over the place at this point.

So it was not a great situation. Let's put it this way. Everything was not in its place when it came to the Ark of the Covenant, when it came to the tabernacle, because it had been shredded by the Philistines a while back, and it was in parts and pieces here, there, and everywhere.

And so David wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant, and therefore everything that went with the Ark of the Covenant, he wanted to bring that into Jerusalem, and of course he did, but he wanted to build a temple, a house for God.

He wanted all the artifacts, all of the art, of all of the furniture, all of the all of the pieces, the holy pieces involved in worshiping God to be put together in their proper place, in their proper relationship.

He wanted it to be at home and at rest there in Jerusalem. And so he said to Nathan, you know, I want to build a temple for God, I want to build a house for God. And Nathan says, sounds like a great idea.

And then Nathan went home and God says, nope, not gonna do that. He had to come back and say, no, we're not going to do that. In fact, Nathan came back and said, you know, nice idea, you're gonna build a house for God in which everything could be in its place and at home and at rest, but actually God's going to build you a house.

And it was a play on the word house, a royal house, a royal lineage. And it's a royal lineage in which David would rest, and the building of the temple would go to the son of David. 2nd Samuel chapter 7 verses 12 through 16.

2nd Samuel chapter 7 verses 12 through 16. When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, so you see the timing of the promise, will come when David is at rest. When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seat after you.

Who will come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he shall be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men.

Verse 15. But my mercy shall not depart from him as I took it from Saul whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.

So David is going to go to his rest holding on to the promise of the son of David reigning on an eternal throne. There's a blessed peace in the foreverness of that promise. When do you have unrest in the kingdom?

Yes, when the king dies and then you have to get the new king to the throne. That's when all the exciting things happen in the books of first and second Kings. The transition between one king and the other.

Whoa, those were times of unrest. But if you have a king who never leaves the throne, if you have a king who never stops reigning and ruling, that sounds like rest. The king is seated on his throne. The whole realm can be at rest.

So the rest is promised, but think of it another way. The promise brings rest to David. The promise is about rest. The rest is promised to him, but the promise itself brings rest. That's how it worked with Noah, Abraham, with Israel, with David.

As God is making these covenants, he's giving them his promises. He's formalizing these relationships with those he has made in his image and he is giving them promises to hold on to, to steady them, to settle them, so they may rest in him.

David's Prayer, the Broken Kingdom, and the Hope of Psalm 89

Let's consider David's response in chapter 7. We're still staying in chapter 7. Look at verse 25, 2 Samuel 7 verse 25. Now O Lord, the word which you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house, establish it forever and do as you have said.

So let your name be magnified forever, saying the Lord of hosts is the God over Israel. And let the house of your servant David be established before you. For you, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, have revealed this to your servant, saying, I will build you a house.

Therefore your servant has found it in his heart to pray this prayer to you. And now, O Lord God, you are God and your words are true. You have promised this goodness to your servant. Now therefore let it please you to bless the house of your servant that it may continue before you forever.

For you, O Lord God, have spoken it and with your blessing that the house of your servant be blessed forever. And you can tell there the quality of this promise, how it impacted David and how he is responding by saying, yes Lord, let this be.

You've promised it. Establish it. May it be forever and ever. Now we know the story of the kingdom of Israel. We know the kingdom did not last very long in its current form as under David's grandson Rehoboam, the kingdom split.

And the only reason why God didn't kill Rehoboam was because he said, he stated, I'm going to leave a lamp for David in Jerusalem. And as we track the history of Judah, the southern kingdom, wherein the descendant of David would be reigning, we come up against some very difficult times.

And eventually the true descendant of David, Jeconiah, is taken away into exile. And then you have impostors on the throne until finally Zedekiah is judged and the people are exiled and brought away. Now this is the context of Psalm 89.

You know, Psalm 89 is a beautiful psalm which talks in detail. We've been reading through Psalm 89, I don't know if you've noticed on Sunday mornings, we've been reading through and long over, it's a long psalm.

And we're reading through Psalm 89 and we're singing through Psalm 89. And it's all about God's chosen servant David and the promises that he made to David. It's about the Davidic covenant. And there's a lot of beautiful hope-filled language about this promised reigning rest brought about by God's forever King through his servant David.

And then, all of a sudden, there's a key change. Everything goes into the minor and Ethan the Ezraite begins to appeal to God about how bad everything is. Like, you said all this and you said all this and you said all this and then, oh, what happened?

Here we are. Oh, it's terrible. He's trying to reconcile that. How do these things fit together? What about all this judgment and all this disaster that we're now experiencing? How does that fit with the promises that you made?

He ends with a note of hope and appealing to God, but what does he do? He brings the promises back to the attention of God and then he lays before God the restless suffering of the people wondering when God is going to keep this promise and how he's going to keep that promise.

And in many ways, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Kethuvim, the law, the Torah also means instruction, the prophets and the writings, the writings end with Chronicles. Chronicles 2, the second book of Chronicles, and it ends with Jeconiah being brought out of prison and sat at the table with the current king, the current foreign pagan king, and then it just stops.

And at the very least, the Levites, the scribes, the people of Israel, looking at that, listening to that, okay, so God didn't throw away the lineage of David and forget about it, right? There's still, you know, there's still hope.

And they were just waiting and waiting by Daniel's timetable for the descendant of David to show up, which is why everybody was very amped and ready to go when John the Baptist came. Are you he? Are you he?

We've done the math. No, Jesus of Nazareth. Okay, so when we think about the promises that God makes to David, we, for the rest of the Old Testament, we continue to have these promises brought back again and again.

All throughout Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the promises of the coming Messiah are couched in the language of David. David's coming back. That's why Peter made his point at Pentecost. David's still buried in his tomb.

Everybody knew that because thieves had broken into it a few decades earlier trying to rob it. David was still there. The promised fulfillment of David reigning again could only be fulfilled in the Messiah himself.

And Peter stood at Pentecost and said, this word has been fulfilled in your hearing. He is now reigning. These promises have been fulfilled. Welcome to the new covenant. Okay, so when we think about, we think about those, the promises in the Old Testament talking about David coming and reigning, we should be thinking about Jesus.

The Exile, the Messiah, and the Restoration of David's Tabernacle

In Hosea chapter 3, verses 4 and 5, it says, for the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince. Boy, that happened, didn't it? Without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim.

So, they're going to be without their normal course of worship for many days. Afterward, verse 5 of Hosea 3, so we know what that was. That was the exile, right? The exile, they were taken away from the land.

No more temple. They didn't have sacrifice or sacred pillar. They had no king or prince. They were, they were away a long time. And then verse 5 of Hosea 3, afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.

So, now we remember that they returned under Ezra and Nehemiah, didn't they? And they, and they sought the Lord. They, they rebuilt the temple and they offered sacrifices and they, they got the Word of God out and read it over and over again.

They were seeking the Lord. But look, they were seeking David their king, right? Because when they got back from the, from exile, they had the temple again. They were offering sacrifices again. But they didn't have their king back.

And so, they just kept on waiting and waiting and waiting for their king to come back. They're looking for David their king. They shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. And Simeon and Anna were there to see it.

They were there to bless their newborn king. The consolation, the comfort of Israel arrived. The long-awaited David arrived. Let's read a couple more passages and let's think about what they have to do with rest.

Amos, Amos, let's go to Amos chapter 9 and look in beginning in verse 11. Amos chapter 9, beginning in verse 11. Yeah, it's kind of hard to find it. There's a little bitty, little bitty minor prophets, you know.

It's on page 1328. Verse 11, on that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David which has fallen down and repair its damages. I will raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old. Okay, so what's the tabernacle of David?

It's the house of David. Remember that God promised to build David a house? And he did build him a house. And he did promise that he would punish the descendant of David as a father would a son. Remember that?

He's gonna bring judgment against the son if he if he failed to obey, you know. And Solomon, you know, he strayed, didn't he? And Rehoboam was pretty much worthless. And there were a lot of bad kings.

It was interesting, you know, God used to say of Israel, Israel is my son. Israel is my son. And then that language gets focused down into the king. Well, that makes sense. The king stands in for the whole people.

He says, okay, the king of Israel is my son. And he's, I'm gonna deal with him. And some of those sons did good, some of the sons did bad. But eventually God kept on chastising and judging until finally there is this exile and this disastrous judgment upon them.

But God promises, I'm gonna rebuild. I'm gonna repair that house. I'm gonna build that back up. And interestingly, he's going to rebuild it. Verse 12, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the Gentiles who were called by my name, says the Lord who does this thing.

So somehow in the rebuilding of the royal house of David, there is going to be an inclusion of all these Gentiles who are called by his name. You know what Jesus was talking about? Now, let's think about rest.

Listen, listen to this description of rest. Verse 13, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper. Now imagine that scenario. Let's break it down to your, break it down to your garden situation, okay?

Brother Bill Dougherty was here this morning with his overabundance of vegetables. There's no idea why the tomatoes are doing so well. Why are these squash coming out so much? He's about to be overloaded with okra.

Well, let's say it's a really good year, okay? Like Isaac, you harvest a hundredfold, okay? When the plowman overtakes the reaper, it's because the reaper has so much to reap, so much food everywhere, he doesn't have the time to get in all of the harvest.

He's still trying to bring in the harvest when it's time for the plowman to come around and start plowing for the next year. Now that's a lot, that's a big harvest. I mean if you're harvesting tomatoes into next April, and it's time to plant new tomato plants, you don't need to plant new tomato plants, do you?

Alright, so you see the, you see the image when the plowman overtakes the reaper, and the treader of grapes, him who sows seed. It's just too much, there's abundance. The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it, alright?

The curse of scarcity and all of this is, is being undone. Well what does he mean by this? He says, I will bring back the captives of my people Israel, they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them, they shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them.

What, what did, what did Noah do after the big judgment? Plant a vineyard, enjoy the wine, too much. Verse 15, I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God.

So what's the picture that he says, you know, I'm going to reestablish the, the kingdom of David, and the Gentiles are going to be coming in. And we know this to be the Messiah, Christ, and what's, what's associated with that?

It's just all of this new wine flowing everywhere. Didn't Jesus do something like that at a wedding in Cana? Make way too much wine, just way too much. That's fun to get out the little table of weights and measures in the back of your Bible and figure out how much wine he made, way too much.

Why? Why did he make way too much wine? Because he was saying something about the new creation showing up. In Genesis chapter 49, this will be our last passage to think about, but just the idea of, you know, in the seventh Sabbath, in the seventh year, in the Sabbath year, how are they gonna have enough food to eat?

God's just gonna make it come busting right out of the ground. Can you imagine what would happen in Israel, let's say it's one of those good years, like in the days of the judges, where the land had peace for 40 years, somewhere, or 80 years, somewhere along the 14th year of this wonderful time, here they are having a year of rest, and they're all, everything's right as rain, and they're really trying to serve the Lord, things are at peace, and it's the seventh year, and they all stop working.

And then God brings more abundance out of the ground in that seventh year than they could in the previous six years. You see that picture? That's what God was doing with the patterns that he was teaching Israel.

In Genesis chapter 49, Jacob, Israel begins to speak about his children, and one of the children of Israel is named Judah, who is the ancestor of Messiah. And he says in verse 8, Judah, you are he whom your brother shall praise, your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's children shall bow down before you.

He's going to be the one in charge. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion, who shall arouse him? The scepter, the lion of Judah.

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet. The man of peace, the man of peace, the man of rest, the man who puts everything where it's supposed to be, in proper relationship to everything else and to everyone else.

Until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples, to him it all belongs. So here comes the man of peace to put everything into its proper place, and how does he come? Verse 11, binding his donkey to the vine.

Now donkeys are terrible. Why would you be tying them up to your vine? Don't you like your vine? Don't you like your vineyard? What are you doing? But look, he binds his donkey to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine.

Even worse, more energy in the little colt. Tie him up with your best vine. He washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. You're using wine to wash your clothes? Well, they're gonna be dyed a certain color for sure.

His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk. What is this talking about? This is painting a picture of such abundance that everything is at rest. You have so much wine, you have so much abundance, that you're just using all the extra wine to wash your clothes.

Your vines, you have so many vines, you just use them like ropes. You see, this is the reversal of the curse that is set upon creation, and Adam, and all the scarcity, and it's dust, and sweat, and sweat, and dust, and it's just under the old Adam, what is it?

No rest for the wicked. It's weariness. But then there's a promise of another Adam who brings rest, who brings abundance, and unlike Noah, the man of rest who oversaw the deliverance of these people and these animals into a refreshed creation, unlike Noah, Jesus handles his wine just fine, right?

He handles it just fine, and he's the one who puts everything into its place and brings it all into the rest, and so that's where, when we get to David, I think we've probably seen this pattern by now as we're going through the Commandments.

As we go through the Commandments and look at how they show up in the covenants that God is making, and consider how it is that it deals with our relationship with God and each other in the world in which we live, when we get to David, things become very, very focused and very, very pointed at Messiah, the Son of David, and this is one of those examples.

Christ, the True Rest, and the Sabbath to Come

So, the promise is that our rest is in Christ. He's the one who will put it all together and bring it all to pass, and we're going to, next time we have opportunity, to look at what did Jesus say about the fourth commandment.

That'd be something to look up. Where did Jesus talk about the Sabbath? And then even more fun, what did he do on the Sabbath? Because that got really exciting. So, that's what we're going to survey next time, the fourth commandment and Christ.

What did he say about it, and then what did he do on the Sabbath day? Okay? Any questions or thoughts as we close? Alright, well let's close by seeing the doxology together.