Rested and Refreshed

Grace Covenant Reformed Church

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Well, one of the most famous lies, famous, famous lies, in all of history comes from Act 3,

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Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

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In this particular scene, the character of Hamlet launches into a monologue that is around the nature of life and death.

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And most of us are familiar with the statement in which Hamlet opens this monologue.

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The statement is, to be or not to be. That is the question.

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Now, while neither the works of William Shakespeare or the words of Hamlet have any bearing on our study in Exodus this morning in the way in which

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Shakespeare is using it, it does bring a point to a question that we must ask regarding the topic that we find in our passage.

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For many years, this has been a subject of much debate.

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It has been the subject of much mistreatment. And even today in the

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Christian world, when we come to the topic of the Sabbath, we are confronted with the questions of should we or shouldn't we observe the

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Sabbath as it is prescribed in the pages of Holy Writ.

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Now, of course, as with all Scripture, there is certainly some bearing that this teaching has on the church and the people of God today.

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As we look back through church history, we see a couple of different approaches that have been taken in regards to the

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Sabbath. We see either, typically, a complete separation from the idea of the

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Sabbath and no emphasis on truly gathering and setting aside time to the strictest form of Sabbatarianism.

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Now, not all Sabbatarianism falls into this strictest form, but we see it beginning in the early years after the

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Reformation, and the Oxford Christian Dictionary of the Christian Church gives us this picture.

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In the beginning of the 17th century, it was connected with the publication of Nicholas Brown's 1595

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True Doctrine of the Sabbath. This particular book called for an advocate of strict enforcement to the

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Old Testament truth of the

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Sabbath. Of course, this book created somewhat of a controversy, but it ended up ultimately assuming political importance when

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James I in 1618 issued what is known as his Book of Sports, which enjoins cessation of work, but allows for lawful recreation.

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These are legal statutes in England where the government actually got involved, and the

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Church of England got involved in exactly what the Sabbath looked like.

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When in 1633, Charles I reissued the book and created a massive protest and ultimately was burned by Parliament in 1643.

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After that, we see the Puritan Sabbath begin to make waves in successive acts of legislation, beginning in 1644, going through 1655, which actually prohibited any kind of recreation on Sunday, even going for a walk.

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Now, after the restoration, the observance was slightly relaxed under Charles II.

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The Act for the Better Observance of the Lord's Day, which was done in 1677, forbade all work and travel by horse or boat on Sunday, but it was silent on recreation.

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Now, why do I bring all of this up? The reason is, is because we have something commanded in Scripture, and we need to understand as the people of God how it impacts our life today.

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It should only take a few moments of looking around at the world and even the Christian church to see that we have moved in a direction that has taken us to the far left of all of these things, where the observance of the

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Sabbath of the Lord's Day has truly become optional in the minds of most people, including most people who would identify themselves as Christians.

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It has become simply another day, as the church has sought to be more relevant, more friendly to the world.

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This is one of the first things that gets sacrificed on the altar of relevance and compromise.

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And while I am not necessarily saying that we are called to observe the Lord's Day in the same manner in which the

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Jewish people were called to observe the Sabbath, there is much here that we do need to take note of and that we should be very serious in our pursuit of.

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By the time Christ was born, the Pharisaical way of honoring the

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Sabbath had become a mountain of do's and don'ts, where the

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Pharisees had literally taken the law and expounded on it to the point where if you went 99 steps, it wasn't work, but 100 was.

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Or if you wrote something on a piece of paper that was permanent, that was work, but if you wrote it on sand where it could be wiped away, that was not.

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Or carrying more than a certain amount of weight constituted work. And so you see the idea there is, begins to get way into the legalistic side of things where it becomes more about ensuring that we obey the rules instead of honoring

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God. And so this morning as we return to the text in Exodus chapter 31, we find after the naming of Betzalel and Aholiab as those who would guide the construction of the tabernacle, the entire piece of the tabernacle and in fact the giving of the law on Sinai to Moses is concluded with our verses for today, which are found in Exodus verse 31,

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Exodus chapter 31 verse 12 down through verse 17.

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There's one final act that occurs in verse 18, which we will take a look at week after next.

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So if you will, if you have not already, turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 31 and in so doing rise for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient and complete word.

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In Exodus 31 beginning in the 12th verse, we find these words, Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, but as for you speak to the sons of Israel saying, you shall surely keep my

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Sabbaths for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that the

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I am Yahweh who makes you holy. Therefore you shall keep the

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Sabbath for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.

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Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to Yahweh.

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Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death.

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So the sons of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant.

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It is a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever. For in six days

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Yahweh made heaven and earth. But on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.

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Our prayer this morning comes from the valley of vision, the Lord's day.

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Great and merciful Father, for this is your day, it is your ordinance of rest.

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The door of worship is opened, the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ, the seal of the

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Sabbath to come, and the day when saints unite in endless song. Father, we bless you for your throne of grace, where access to your presence is made possible by the blood of Jesus.

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For the veil has been torn and we can now enter into that holiest of places.

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As we enter, Lord, we find you ready to hear. We find you filled with grace.

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We find you inviting us to pour out our petitions and our desires before you, knowing that you are able to give abundantly above all that we ask or need,

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Lord, even as we exalt you. Shame and confusion are ours.

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We recall our past abuse of sacred things, our moments of irreverent worship, our daily ingratitude, and all of our cold, dull praise.

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Father, we are thankful that Christ's blood has been applied to all of our failings. We pray that our time together this morning sees deep improvement within each of us.

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Lord, we pray that as we glorify you, we are blessed by your truth and your word.

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May our hearts be tightly bound to your word against the worldly thoughts or cares, that our minds are flooded with your peace that passes all understanding, that our meditations be sweet in your sight, that our acts of worship be our very lives filled with all joy, that we come to drink deeply from the streams that flow from your throne, that our food be none but your word, our defense the shield of faith, and our hearts be knit more closely to Jesus, for it is in his precious name that we pray.

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Amen. You may be seated. Matthew Henry rightly remarked regarding the observance of the

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Sabbath for the children of Israel when he said, The observance of the

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Sabbath is indeed the hymn and hedge of the whole law.

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Where no conscience is made of that, farewell both godliness and honesty, for in the moral law it stands in the midst between the two tables.

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A hymn or a hedge carries with it the idea of something being encapsulated or enclosed, but thus the

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Sabbath here, as Matthew Henry is saying, stands as a pair of bookends or a surrounding of the law being given by God on Sinai.

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Before Moses ascended Sinai, we see scripture clearly identifying the

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Sabbath as one of the moral laws that God has written on the hearts of men since the very creation of the world.

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Recall the words of Genesis 2, verse 1 -3, Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their hosts, and on the seventh day

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God completed his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.

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Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his work which

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God had created in making it. You should also recall from a little earlier in the book of Exodus as we have gone through this study in the 16th chapter, in the 23rd verse we read,

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And he said to them, This is what Yahweh has spoken, Tomorrow is a

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Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to Yahweh.

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Bake what you will bake, and boil what you will boil, and all that is in excess put aside to be kept until morning.

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Then of course in Exodus chapter 20, verses 9 -11 we have the actual giving of the

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Ten Commandments, the fifth of which is the commandment regarding the

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Sabbath. And as you will notice, it has been considered and is still considered the bridge between the two tables of the moral law, that thing which joins our relationship with God to our relationship with people.

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And finally, in Exodus chapter 23, verse 12, it is brought into the judicial law.

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So even the casual reader of scripture, one who simply opens the book and begins reading the word of God, cannot help but to notice that there is an important level regarding the observance of this day, that there is more here than just a casual cursory glance.

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It is this truth that should drive us to study deeper, to understand exactly what this has to do with us here today.

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But the question arises, when we encounter it here in chapter 31, the question arises at the conclusion of the instructions regarding the building of the tabernacle.

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Most commentators and theologians agree that this purpose for being here is quite plain and quite clear.

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Now if you'll notice, we use two words in Matthew's Henry's quote, hymn and hedge.

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Both of these, again, carry with it the idea of encapsulating or enclosing something, but a hymn serves an additional purpose.

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You see, when you think about a hymn in your clothing, it is not there to make a fashion statement.

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It is there to keep your clothes from falling apart. Much as the

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Sabbath is here and was instituted to keep the people of God from unraveling, to remind them that in their zeal to build him a dwelling place, that they should not rush so far ahead of themselves and him that they fail to observe his command to rest.

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And so as a continued look at this passage, let us dig a little deeper into exactly what this means for us today.

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As the passage opens, you may have noticed, hopefully you noticed, if you've listened to any of the last five or six sermons, you should have noticed.

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If you didn't notice, you need to go back and notice how this passage begins. Once again, we see the words in verse 12, and Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, again, this is akin to, thus saith the

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Lord. Again, this is a reminder that these are God's words, not

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Moses' words. I find it fascinating that Moses, in this final section here, this final run to the end of this, continually reminds the people that these are

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God's words. And I think, in fact,

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I know that it is because we as people so quickly forget.

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You see, saying, thus saith the Lord, carries with it the authority that these are the words of God, absolutely.

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It also carries with it the reassurance that these are the words of God. But the continual repetition of it is so we, as knuckle -headed people, don't forget that these are the words of God, because our tendency is to go 100 miles an hour and quickly forget the things of God, how easily our affections are drawn away.

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Today we term this with the wonderful term attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or simply attention deficit disorder, or one of the many different versions of that that exists now.

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When I was a kid, you just were a bad kid. You couldn't focus, you couldn't pay attention.

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But at the root of every single individual, there is the reality of this, especially when it comes to the things of God, because our nature does not pursue the things of God.

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And apart from a divine work, it will not pursue the things of God.

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And then even when that divine work has happened, and our nature has been changed, and our desires have been changed, our flesh clings on, and we still falter at times to pursue the things of God.

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And so we need this reminder daily, that this is the eternal word of the eternal holy

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God. And as such, as we say every

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Sunday morning, it's sufficient, it's authoritative, it's complete, it does everything that you and I need, gives us everything that we need, as believers, to live.

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Not just to live according to this, but to live in general, to have true life.

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After this statement, verse 13 goes on to open up with this command to Moses for him to go and speak to the sons of Israel.

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And as he goes and speaks to the sons of Israel, he is given a specific command to give to them.

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The command is to remind them regarding the Sabbath. And then

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God identifies the Sabbath as a sign between him and the sons of Israel.

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And in the identification of this, we see this word sign that literally is the common word, the general word that we see used for sign throughout all of Scripture.

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From Genesis to Revelation, it's the word. It's used in many different senses, in many different formats, everything from something as simple as a common street sign, all the way to what

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God said in Genesis 9, 12 -13, and then verse 17, where God said to Moses, this is a sign of the covenant, or to Noah, this is a sign of the covenant which

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I am giving to be between me and you, and every living creature that is with you for all successive generations,

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I put my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth.

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And God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.

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And so a sign then here is in the sense of a physical reality, an observance of a day that points forward to a spiritual reality.

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Ultimately, for the people and the children of Israel, it served as a reminder that God is the one who delivered, that God is the one on whom they depend.

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It keeps them grounded, it keeps them focused, it's the fact that they were called one in days to simply reflect that the creator is truly at the heart of the

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Sabbath. Notice in verse 13, the purpose that God gives for this sign.

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Verse 13, it says, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am

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Yahweh who makes you holy. That whole last clause is a purpose statement.

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It tells us why this was a sign. It was a sign so that the people of Israel would know that He, Yahweh, is their

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God and it is He and He alone that makes them holy.

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In Isaiah chapter 56, verse 2, we read, how blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the

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Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil. By its very nature, this command serves as a reminder to God's people that one that would stand for all generations a perpetual statute, an everlasting covenant.

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Along with being a sign and serving this particular function throughout all generations, we also note something else that is very interesting about the description of the

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Sabbath that we see in these verses. Now it is not uncommon for us to see the word holy in Holy Scripture.

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Typically when we see the word holy in Holy Scripture, it refers to things that have been set apart by God, for God, or it is being used in a way to describe

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God, or it can even be used, as it is in part of this passage, describing the result of what

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God does in our life in making us holy. So it's no surprise that towards the end of this passage we see that the

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Sabbath is holy to the Lord, that it is set apart from profane or common use and is used instead to honor and glorify

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God. In fact, the word that is translated profane here literally speaks of the exact opposite of honoring

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God. What's interesting to note here is in verse 14 we see something a little different.

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Notice the first clause. The first clause here in verse 14 says, Therefore you shall keep the

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Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Now as we read that clause, we need to do some work.

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The first thing we need to realize is that the word therefore is this conclusive conjunctive, this word that links what comes before to what comes after and helps us to understand that what comes after the word therefore is a conclusion based on what led up to the word therefore.

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So we need to go back up to verse 13. We've got to understand what led into this. So verse 13, the one we were just looking at, concludes with that you may know that I am

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Yahweh who makes you holy, therefore since you are now made holy, keep the

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Sabbath. That's the command and here's the reason. Because then we run into another one of those conjunctive words, the word for.

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Again, this tells us why we're doing something. Why are we doing it? We're doing it because it is holy to you.

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Now what's interesting here is that we need to think through what we are being confronted with.

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Therefore causes us to look upward, both figuratively and literally.

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Literally we're looking up in the passage, figuratively we are looking up to the heavens, to God for his truth, for his reality.

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This thing that is to stand as a sign or a reminder to the people that Yahweh was the one who made them holy and since they are holy they keep the

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Sabbath but they do so because it is holy not just to God but also to them.

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Now hopefully your mind is racing a little bit and it's racing all the way forward to the

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Gospel of Matthew or Mark or Luke but specifically this morning to Mark where we find in the second chapter in the 27th and 28th verse

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Jesus speaking to the Pharisees saying the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the

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Sabbath. We know the story, right? This is the

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Pharisees accusing Christ of breaking the law of the Sabbath because he and his disciples were walking through a grain field, they were hungry and so they broke some ears of corn or heads of wheat, whatever kind of grain it may have been that they were walking through and they ate and it was on a

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Sunday or a Sabbath, excuse me. And by Pharisaical law that was a no -no because they committed work and so they were confronting

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Christ and Christ responds in this way. We often talk about all things being for God's glory and our good and for us this is a picture of that.

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The Sabbath is a thing for God's glory but it is also for our good.

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The Sabbath, this one in seven that was set aside by God for God was also done by God for his people.

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It's almost as if the creator was aware of the needs of his creation.

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One final note on just commentary regarding the passage, there is a very clear message here regarding the seriousness with which

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God viewed Sabbath observance. If you note verses 14 and 15, we read these words, beginning in the second clause, the second sentence of verse 14, everyone who profanes it, being the

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Sabbath, shall surely be put to death. For whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.

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Six days' work may be done but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to Yahweh.

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Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death. Now when we read these words, they seem to our fleshly nature to be harsh, to be hard but the truth of the matter is that this is always the result of sin.

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The wages of sin are not to be put in a corner in time out for 20 minutes or one minute per year of your age which means that some of us would spend almost an hour but it is death.

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Those are the wages of sin and so as we look at this passage, it's interesting to note that if you go back and you study all the other passages that we've talked about this morning that have mentioned the

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Sabbath, not one of them addresses a punishment.

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Now obviously we can infer from the text, right, but here at the completion of the instructions regarding the tabernacle,

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God says, you know what, we're going to remove any inference. There's no misunderstanding that can be had here.

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What's going to happen if you do not obey my Sabbath? You will be cut off from your people. You shall be put to death and what's interesting is

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I don't think Israel took God as seriously as he meant for them to take him just as we don't take him as seriously quite often as we should as he is meant to be taken because a little bit later, in fact in Numbers chapter 15, we find an incident that demonstrates for us

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God's seriousness regarding this particular thing. Numbers chapter 15 in verse 32 through 36, we find this, now the sons of Israel were in the wilderness and they found a man gathering wood on the

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Sabbath day and those who found him gathering wood brought him near to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him.

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Now I want you to stop right here, let's just stop for a second. It had not been declared what should have been done to him.

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They didn't know how to respond. This guy is breaking the law of the Sabbath. The Jewish people didn't know how to respond.

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That shows you that they did not understand the seriousness regarding this and so they bring this man to Moses and Aaron and Moses and Aaron didn't even quite get it and so all the congregation,

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Yahweh said to Moses, the man shall surely be put to death.

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All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp. So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones just as Yahweh had commanded

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Moses. The Lord God was serious regarding the observance of the

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Sabbath. When we choose to profane things that God has set aside for himself, to treat things that God has set aside for himself as ordinary, this is sinful.

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We need to understand that applies to our worship, our study of his word, our very lives because by being one of his people, chosen before the foundation of the world, you are set apart.

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The spirit is working within you, sanctifying you, growing you in Christ -likeness.

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Growing you so that one day you stand before the throne in glory and to profane that, to profane that is to sin and we should recognize that and our cry should be that of David in Psalm 51, against you,

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O Lord, alone have I sinned. I want to draw your attention backwards for just a moment to the questions that we began with.

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What does this mean for the people of God today? What does it look like?

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Are we commanded to have this strict observance of the Sabbath in the sense of the

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Old Testament commands? What is the difference between the

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Sabbath and the Lord's Day? The first thing that we need to remind ourselves is that all things in Scripture have truth for us.

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Anytime we are studying the word of God, there is some truth, some understanding that can be gleaned from the text regardless of whether that text is a prescriptive text.

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In other words, it is commanding something or it is simply a descriptive text where it is describing something.

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There is still a truth for the people of God today from Genesis to Revelation.

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There is no exception. All Scripture is profitable. And so as we approach it with that understanding, in the case of this particular passage or in a text where we have a command like we do this morning, we need to understand first who the command was originally written to.

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I think in our reading and our study so far, we've identified that this command was originally written to the sons of Israel.

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Secondly, we need to identify the purpose behind the command.

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Now, as we said a moment ago, the command is written to the sons of Israel, but as we have discussed in the past, when we are dealing with the moral law of God, there is the underlying purpose that transcends the specific time and specific people to whom it is given.

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This is why we know that the moral law contained within the two tables of the law given to Moses' own

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Sinai still is relevant to us today, because the truths that are found there transcend all of the other stuff, and these words are still written on the hearts of men.

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Now, there are specific truths that we see in this passage that do truly only apply to the nation of Israel, such as the passage, we're not going to take you out and stone you if you miss us, but there is a seriousness to which we should see these things.

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Now, underlying this specific command to the specific people is a purpose that surpasses the constraints of a specific nation and focuses on the true nation of Israel, the church.

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And what we find here, regarding the bride of Christ, regarding Israel, the true

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Israel, is that this purpose is explained and reiterated and expanded for us right here in verse 17.

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You see, verse 17 reads that it is a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever.

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And in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.

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Now, these two adjectives that we find at the end of this passage actually give us the information regarding the way that this impacts us as people today.

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Both of these adjectives are what are known as anthropomorphic terms, meaning that they are human pictures trying to describe something for us.

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So God himself is describing something for us in human language so that we can try to understand it. It's not that God needed to rest.

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It's not that God needed to be refreshed. He's self -sufficient. He has no need of anything.

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But there is something here that is needed by us.

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Now, as we've talked about, as we've worked through much of Exodus, we've seen that we are dealing often with types and shadows.

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And in all reality, the Sabbath is a type that is found throughout the Old Testament and is a type that points ultimately to the final fulfillment, the final rest that we will experience.

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But we have to be careful with this term rest.

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Because you see, if we apply this term rest using our idea of rest and we move on, what we end up with is

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God telling us to take a day where we don't do anything except for lay around and goof off and slack off and just do nothing, that there's this physical lack of doing.

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And so we get so caught up in making sure that we are not doing that we move into the same problem in the opposite direction.

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Right? The idea of counting our steps to make sure that we aren't breaking the rules. Well, if I get up off the couch and I go to the refrigerator, am

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I doing work? I guess it depends on how big the sandwiches I bring back, right? If it weighs over eight pounds, it's work.

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If I tote it in my left hand, it might be work. These are the ideas that come along with diminishing this understanding of this word rest.

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Rest here is speaking of abiding in Christ.

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It's speaking of the true rest that we find in Christ. Ultimately, it points forward to that rest which we see revealed for us in the final chapters of Revelation, right?

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Where we dwell with God in New Jerusalem. But again, we are in an already but not yet context, right?

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This is another one of those things that has been partially fulfilled, but we will not see the final fulfillment until New Jerusalem.

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And so here in the middle of this, we have this impact that it has on our lives today.

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And as we look at the world, one of the things that we should be very easy to see for us is the restlessness which exists.

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The constant motion that has to happen. The constant change. I think back over the last 50 years, and it is astounding the level of change.

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And to me, and this may just be because I'm getting older, it seems that change is happening faster and faster, and the world doesn't want to sit still.

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Isaiah 57 verses 20 through 21 states,

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But the wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet.

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And its waters toss up refuse and mud. There is no peace, says my

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God, for the wicked. How true are these words of the world today?

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The world that's constantly in motion, churning just like a raging sea, bringing up things from the depths, refuse and mud.

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Why? Because it's lost. Because it's lost.

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Because it does not know God. Because it does not have that foundation, and the lack of rest of the world is tied directly to the lack of peace.

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Both of these things find their foundation in Christ. Jesus speaking to the woman at the well in John verse 13 says,

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Jesus answered to her and said, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. This statement has everything to do with this idea of resting in Christ.

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The physical waters of this world, the physical things that get chased after in this world, will never provide the rest.

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That's why the world is restless. That's why the world is constantly in motion. A .W.

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Pink quotes, or not quotes here, A .W. Pink writes in regards to this, It is not until the

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Spirit of God has shown us that all under the sun is but vanity and vexation of spirit, and has convicted us of our sinful and lost condition, has shown us our desperate need of the

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Savior, and drawn us to him that we hear the Lord Jesus saying, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

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And then it becomes true that we which have believed do enter rest.

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That's Hebrews chapter 4 verse 3. So what has this got to do with modern day observance of the

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Lord's day? Everything. It has everything to do with how we worship on the

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Lord's day, with how we observe the Lord's day. We are called daily, absolutely, 100%.

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You are called every single day to partake of the word of God, to praise God, to give him glory and honor, to live and do all things for his glory.

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But this day, this one in seven day, set aside to drink deeply from the well, to step away, to focus solely on him, to be reminded of his providence, of his provision, of his faithfulness, of his holiness, of his majesty, of his glory.

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And what we find is that when we rest, and when we properly observe, then we move to that second descriptive word that we see here.

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That second adjective, refreshed.

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Now that word refreshed is an interesting word. In fact, it only appears three times in the entire

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Old Testament. The other two times that it appears, it is speaking of either men or animals.

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This is the only time that it appears in reference to God.

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It is this truth that we see.

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And so, as we are reminded that the work of Christ has secured for us eternal rest, that we literally rest in the arms of the

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Almighty, that as we gather on the Lord's day, that this is a dim reflection of what the future will be when we gather in New Jerusalem.

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Zephaniah actually describes it for us in verse 17 of chapter 3, where he says,

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Yahweh your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will be joyful over you with gladness.

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He will be quiet in his love. He will rejoice over you with joyful singing.

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Then we have this idea of being refreshed.

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The word is formed from a root word that deals with life or soul or breath.

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And literally, the translation could be rendered that God took a breath.

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Now, at the end of a long week, you've been working, dealing with stuff at home, dealing with other situations of life, running the rat race, as we call it.

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Time has been challenging. We've faced one obstacle after another.

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Maybe it's one of those weeks where everything goes wrong. And you finally get to a point where you can just breathe.

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If you've ever experienced that, this gives you a little picture, just the smallest picture of what

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God's talking about here. Because you see, being refreshed, being restored happens only as a result of taking a rest.

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And God has given us the time.

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As we entered our discussion regarding the tabernacle, one of the things that we talked about was that the tabernacle was the culmination, the building of the tabernacle was the culmination of God's purpose in Exodus, that he would dwell with his people.

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And we know that that looks forward to that time when New Jerusalem will descend and God, once again, will dwell with his people in a different manner than the way in which he dwells with us today.

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But the other thing that that speaks of is completion. And so if you think back to the events surrounding creation, it was on the seventh day, when he was finished, that he rested.

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C .A. Coates, who was quoted by A .W. Pink, wrote these words,

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God was making a material universe and this in itself could not afford him refreshment.

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But he was making it so that it might be the scene for the introduction of the holy order of the tabernacle, which represented the vast scene in which

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God's glory is displayed in Christ. And in view of the introduction of this, he was refreshed.

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The Sabbath speaks of things being brought to completion so that there is no more work to be done.

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All is finished. And there is holy rest for God and for his people.

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So the question is, what does this mean as we observe the

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Lord's Day? It means that as we observe the Lord's Day, as we come together on Sunday, on the

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Lord's Day, first day of the week, the day in which Christ was raised, we come together resting in the finished work of Christ, abiding in the presence of the

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Almighty, and we find that as we do that together, we are refreshed, we are restored, and we are prepared to face another week in the trenches of life.

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And so the question, does this mean we are held to a strict observance of the

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Sabbath? Well, yes and no. Obviously, if you've paid any attention, the

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Sabbath occurred on Saturday, the last day of the week. We worship on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day that our

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Lord was risen from the grave. And so while we don't observe the

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Sabbath on Saturday in the sense of a day of the week, we do gather on the

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Lord's Day, and yes, it is part of being a believer. There should be a desire.

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Listen to me very carefully. There should be a desire of the people of God to gather on His Day, on the

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Lord's Day, to gather to worship, to praise, to adore, to magnify, to exalt, to glorify, to lift

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His name and praise, to study His Word together, to sing His Psalms together, to read

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His Word together. This is not optional for a believer.

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Now there are situations and there are circumstances that prevent people from gathering sometimes. We understand those things.

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But that desire should remain. And it should really hurt when you can't gather.

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And now I want you to, I want to be clear here. I'm not talking about Wednesday nights. I'm not talking about Monday nights, Tuesday nights,

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Thursday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, Saturday mornings. I'm talking about the Lord's Day. When the church is gathered in one place together to worship in His holy name.

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Unfortunately, it is seen by many as a punishment. But it should be and is a blessing to be in the presence of each other.

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John Currid closes out his commentary on this particular section of Scripture with these words.

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The problem, of course, is that keeping the Sabbath or the Lord's Day is often painful, difficult, or inconvenient.

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We all know the story of Olympic runner Eric Liddell and how his stand for the Sabbath almost cost him the chance of a gold medal.

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But he was willing to pay the price. Currid had an acquaintance who was an all -American soccer player in college.

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And he was selected to play for a major professional team. And although he underwent great ridicule by the media, he refused to sign with the club unless there was a provision in his contract for him not to play on Sunday.

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The team signed him to a contract. But the question that has to be answered by each of us is are you willing to do the same?

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Are you willing to put everything on the line to obey the commands? And so as we close, we should be reminded the

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Sabbath was not given as a burden, but as a blessing, not as a chain to bind us, but as a gift.

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It was and remains a sign that points beyond itself to the greater reality of God's covenant love for his people.

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It was established at creation. It was enshrined in the law.

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It was emphasized in the building of the tabernacle because it meant to serve as a hymn and a hedge in the life of God's people to keep them and us from unraveling into self -reliance and forgetfulness.

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It was God's way of saying, rest in me, for I am the one who makes you holy.

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I am your creator and I am your redeemer.

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For Israel, this command came with very weighty consequences.

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Those consequences helped to underscore how seriously God views the devotion of his people.

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But for us who are in Christ, the Sabbath finds its temporary fulfillment in the

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Lord's Day. A day where we step aside from the pursuits of this world and rest in the finished work of Christ.

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Here, true rest is not idleness. It is abiding in him.