Covenant Faithfulness - Exodus 20:1-11

We're blessed to be here this morning. Thank you, Brendan, for prepping yesterday and all that.

Man, he put on a spread. If you need somebody to cater like a masterful breakfast, that man's the one.

It was incredible. We had every course, so do thank you.

He's a humble guy, so we appreciate that. And Dexter, thanks for leading us in the

Word, too. That was a great study, Romans 12, 1 and 2. So thank you for that.

Happy Mother's Day, ladies, and what a great day to remember our moms, and many of them aren't.

They've gone before us, and they're not here with us, but we thank the Lord for them and for their remembrance as well.

And thank you that you're still alive, that you bless your families, and we thank you for the love and care that you've shown.

Ladies, Bible study. So on the 21st, ladies, Bible study.

Men's Bible study next Saturday, 3 .30. How about that? Every Sunday, remember there's a 9 .30

Sunday school. I think we get in a groove coming to church at 11, and you might not realize that we're gathering up at 9 .30.

So great study through Psalms right now. Pastor's doing an amazing job with that, just the depth of it.

And lastly, in two weeks, there'll be an all -church fellowship at the Huffums. There's a flyer in your bulletin, so take a note of that and pass it on.

We hope to have everybody show up and be there. Food's provided, everything's going to be taken care of.

So I think it'd be a great time of fellowship and just being with your church family outside there.

So on Mother's Day, we're not only reminded about our mothers and what a blessing they've been, and the role of a mother and what

God has given them to us, but also the miracle of childbirth.

And I'd like to read Psalm 139, 13 through 16, and you can listen along. For you formed my inward parts.

You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you when

I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed, and in your book they all were written.

The days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. So what a precious remembrance of God's role and the birth of us, of His people, from the beginning.

So He knew who we were before time began, and so we thank the

Lord for His role in that and for giving us life. So would you please join with me in prayer?

Lord God, our hearts are full of gratitude for mothers, for family, for the role that you have given them in our lives, that Lord, the impacts they have made, the sacrifices they have made, the love that they have demonstrated.

God, we are so blessed, Father, and we thank you for them. Lord, we thank you that we can gather today to lift our voices, to hear the preaching of the word,

Father, that it might change our lives, Father, that we might hear the truth, that it would transform our minds, that it would renew our minds so that we might be more like Christ, because it is because of Christ that we have life eternal, and may we not forget that this day.

So God, bless those that are here. We bless those that are away, that are sick, that are not well, that are feeling not well,

Father, but we pray that you would heal them, you encourage them, that you would bless them, Father. So we thank you for the privilege of gathering together today and for the guests that are here as well,

Lord, and may you bless our time, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. How many of you like change?

Today is a day of change. The computer that shows the overheads is not minding us at all today.

So we got hymnals on the pew. So turn to hymn number 59. This morning in Sunday school, on Psalms 29, we started off by saying, give adoration to the

Lord, but the Psalm ends with the fact that you can't out give the Lord, and he says he's going to give back.

So stand together with me as we sing, I sing the mighty power of God, and that's what we covered this morning.

Turn now to hymn 25. Hymn 25,

Immortal, Invisible. Barb is going to have a word for the ladies and for the day.

Well, happy Mother's Day. Some of the joys of motherhood is from the mouths of babes, you get some real gems and jewels, don't you?

Vic and I were going out when my boys were three and four years old, and I hugged them, and they said, oh mommy, you stink pretty.

I have some real perfume connoisseurs, let me tell you, at that age. The joys of motherhood are a blessing, they really are.

We had an older gentleman we were bringing home one time, and all of my kids were in the car, and he leaned up to the front seat, and he said to us, they tell you you can't take anything to heaven, but you can your kids.

And I thought, as a mother, the joy of leading your children to the

Lord is no higher blessing and joy than to do that.

And I think sometimes instead of stinking pretty, we need to stink pretty of Jesus.

He tells us to love them, he tells us to train them, he tells us to correct them, yes, and to discipline, but isn't that how he deals with us?

So ladies, let's stink pretty for Jesus. Our ladies,

Carolyn and Lozana, have four different types of sachet.

Now men, sachet are spices, dry flowers, that kind of stuff, and you hang it in your coat closet or the ladies in their lingerie drawer, okay?

And if worse comes to worse, they can be stuffed in stinky sneakers. So if the mothers would stand, and the mothers in waiting would stand, you can pick one of the flavors that the

Lord, that both of the girls have. While they're finishing up, if you would turn to hymn number 52, hymn number 52,

Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past. Stand together with me, please.

Thank you, and you may be seated as Brandon comes to read the word. Today we'll be reading from Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, you shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

May God add his blessing to the reading of his word. And turn with me over to 455, and this is an older song, but it's new to me, and new to Barbara and I, and we mess up the timing every time.

So you're the choir today, and we might have to stop you and say, okay, wait, go back to, you know, so you're the choir.

Thank you, choir, you've been good this morning. You may be seated, and we'll dismiss our youngsters to Children's Church at this time as Pastor Iljin comes.

Before we turn to scripture, I would like to wish all the mothers here

Happy Mother's Day. This is a special day to celebrate mothers, and motherhood is a gift from the

Lord. And it is so important for children to have their mothers, raising them up in the

Lord. And they receive this nurturing love that reflects

God's nurturing character, especially from the mothers, right? Father's love too, but it is different from how mothers love.

And we celebrate that today because God has given each family a mother and a father, and they're both very important.

I also would like to make a correction from last week's sermon. I misspoke last week, and I didn't even know

I misspoke until my dear wife told me I said something funny. When I was using an illustration of a covenant union, when the pastor pronounces,

I accidentally misspoke what I meant to say when the pastor pronounces husband and wife, right?

There's only one covenant marriage union that's possible, and that's with a man and a woman.

So with that, please turn to Exodus chapter 20 verses 1 through 11.

Exodus 20 verses 1 through 11. And God spoke all these words saying,

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous

God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.

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

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, 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 is 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 on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray.

Father, we are so thankful to gather and to hear your word.

We're thankful to hear the Ten Commandments, a part of it, and that we may learn what kind of God you are and what you expect of us.

Thank you that through Jesus Christ we are made into your new people because he shed his blood for our sin on the cross.

Father, we pray for all the mothers today that they would be loved and know how important they are in all of our lives.

We also pray for the children that they would behave and that they would be loving to their parents.

In Jesus name, amen. Today we get to the

Ten Commandments or also known as the Ten Words. And these words are directly spoken by the

Lord to the people of Israel. They actually heard these words spoken by the

Lord. And my Old Testament professor said the

Ten Words, the Ten Commandments, are the original kernel that the rest of the law stem from.

They're the foundational law that the other 602 laws in the

Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books, stem out of.

And it is often believed that the two tablets that Moses receives from the

Lord contain the first half of the commandments and the latter half on the other tablet.

However, nowhere in the Bible we see that. We don't really get to see how the

Ten Commandments are divided out. It is more likely that the

Ten Commandments are actually the two, the tablets are actually the two copies of the

Ten Commandments. After all, the mouth of two or three witnesses, right, through the two or three witnesses, the truth will be established.

Second Corinthians 13 .1. Oftentimes it is believed that God gave the two stones of the same

Ten Commandments on each to establish the foundational laws to shape his people who reflect him.

Now, a little thing about the Ten Commandments and also the following laws of the

Old Testament is that compared to the laws of the surrounding pagan nations, the

Mosaic law focused on the superiority of the

Lord and also the morality of the followers. It was not just to maintain a status quo like the

Hammurabi's code, right, to have a society that's functioning well.

But the Mosaic law distinguished God's people from the surrounding nations by establishing a righteous and compassionate people of God.

While the surrounding pagan laws contained inequality of men, for example, the elites often had a lighter punishment for the same crime committed if a slave would have committed the same crime.

Not so the Old Testament law. Whether you're a foreigner or a native, wealthy or poor, slave or free, the same law applied to each individual justly.

This is why King David tried so hard to hide his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba while other kings of the pagan nations would have thought it was fine to take any woman because King David, even

King David, the great king, was under the law of God. No one went above the law of God in Israel.

Now, this is a two -part series on the Ten Commandments because there is a clear transition from the first four commands to the latter six commands.

The first four deal with Israel's relationship with the Lord. In fact, the first four, each of them mentions the

Lord, how Israel must interact with the Lord. It prescribes what type of vertical relationship

Israel must have with their God. The latter six shows the horizontal relationship among God's people, how they must interact with each other.

Now, however, it is important to recognize that these ten words need to be viewed as a whole.

Just because I'm making a two -part series doesn't mean they are necessarily separate, right?

If one of the latter six commands are broken, it also impacts one's vertical relationship with the

Lord. An injustice at the horizontal level ultimately breaks your vertical relationship with the

Lord, right? Also, idolatry at the vertical level inevitably leads to the failure to love one another.

So, this is important that the Ten Commandments need to be viewed as a whole, and when you break one, you're not just committing wrong against your neighbor, but you're sinning against the

Lord. And those who idolize false gods will end up committing wrong and committing evil things against each other, right?

It is no surprise that nations that forsake the Lord happen to be some of the cruelest and most wicked nations.

They're all together. So, the question this text asks this morning is how must

God's covenant people follow the Lord? How must God's covenant people follow the

Lord? First, we must exclusively be loyal to the

Lord who saved us. We must be exclusively loyal to the Lord who saved us.

The uniqueness of the Ten Commandments is that God directly spoke to Israel.

There was no intermediary to relay this information. It wasn't through Moses' mouth.

It was that they heard from God on Mount Sinai, and that's why it starts with, and God spoke all these words saying.

And this is crucial because it shows that the Lord is unlike other gods.

The Lord is not only capable, but chooses to speak to his people directly.

False religions revolve around one major unique individual who received a special divine revelation, supposedly, and the rest have to blindly believe that.

Not so with the Lord. He has historically revealed himself to not just one, but to many.

And Moses is not the equivalence of Prophet Muhammad because Moses received the

Ten Commandments just like the other Israelites. He was no special in receiving the covenantal

Ten Commandments from the Lord. Now, what does the Lord proclaim when he speaks to his people?

Verse two tells us, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

This serves as the preamble of God's covenant with Israel. It introduces and establishes the parties involved in the covenant,

God and Israel, the Lord and his people. The Lord, your

God, shows a personal relationship with Israel. That possessive second -person pronoun, your

God. The preamble also shows the salvific relationship with Israel as well.

This personal deity saved Israel from the enslavement of Egypt.

No other deity in the history of mankind has ever rescued a whole nation of slaves without losing a single life.

In fact, slave revolts are some of the most violent conflicts known to mankind.

The Lord's redemptive act sets the background for Israel's covenant relationship with him.

And starting with verse three, the Lord introduces the requirements for his people to be in a covenant relationship with him.

After all, a covenant relationship with the Lord must not be treated lightly, like a casual fling often portrayed in Hollywood movies.

The Lord makes it abundantly clear what he expects from his covenant people.

First, you shall have no other gods before me.

This is a clear, yet radical statement in the ancient times.

All throughout history, it was accepted for nations to have many gods.

In fact, it was okay to add a new deity into your collection.

Oh, I want to get pregnant, so let me add the goddess of fertility into the collection. There was a god for everything, just like there are apps for everything.

Anything you wanted, you could have, and you could find it in a pagan god. Now, what was not acceptable was to claim that your god is the only god.

That was a taboo. In fact, in Daniel 2, one of the more famous stories in Daniel with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, it was so unacceptable that the

Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar casted these three faithful Jewish men who refused to bow down to his gods into the burning furnace.

It was heated so hot that the guards who took them there died. Nebuchadnezzar had no problem with their worship of the

Lord. He had a problem with their refusal to worship other gods.

And sadly, the first commandment still offends the world today. The exclusivity of the

Lord infuriates those who do not belong to him. When we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, the fact that he is the only way to salvation, the fact that no other gods, no other religions, and none of our good deeds can save us from the wrath to come for our sin, except by trusting in Jesus' death and resurrection, is extremely offensive and distasteful to the world.

This is because pluralism is the tune that the world dances to today.

Pluralism is the view that it is wrong to claim that your religion, your belief, is superior to other beliefs or exclusive.

As in, your view of God, your truth, is more correct than any others.

Dr. Carson cleverly stated, which I paraphrase, the only heresy in this world is the view that there are heresies.

The world shouts the only wrong belief is an exclusive belief.

When you claim that only Jesus saves, that means

Allah doesn't. The moment you claim only Jesus' death on the cross takes away my sin, means your afterlife does not depend on karma or your fruitless effort to eliminate all the desires in your heart.

The moment we claim that Jesus is Lord, we're proclaiming that he is

God. He is the Lord who showed up to Israel on Mount Sinai, and these are exclusive claims.

And for Christians, holding on to the first commandment is to view

Jesus as the exclusive means of salvation, viewing

Jesus as the Lord of all. And this will get you kicked out of schools.

Maybe you might lose your jobs, but we must hold on to the first commandment.

Now, what does it look like to be exclusively loyal to the Lord? We must not idolize any in all creation because of who

God is. We must not idolize anything in all creation because of who

God is. The next three commandments show what it means to stay only committed to the

Lord. Here, the second commandment is the first implication of the commandment, having no other

God but the Lord alone. Because the Lord is the only God, this means, verse four, you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

The first part of the second commandment shows that God's people must not form any idols that reflect anything in all creation.

This is because there is an inherent distinction between the creator and the created.

Just as the artist is not his own artwork, the creator cannot be represented fully by the created.

The moment a carved image, a statue, represents the Lord, it replaces the presence and the place of the

Lord. It is no longer the Lord who chooses to reveal himself and appear according to his will, but the image that is bound by space and time.

It is no longer the Lord who created you, but you who created the idol.

Idolatry, in the end, seeks to control the presence of the divine.

Idolaters deify themselves and de -God the true

God. It perversely reverses the created order.

The first part of verse five further unpacks what idolatry looks like. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

This is a classic action before an idol. The worshiper would bow down and offer worship to the pagan images in hopes that the gods would be satisfied and bless them.

Having a bad day? Don't worry, go bow down to your household gods and they will make it right.

Bowing down to idols seems like an external worship, but actually it is self -worship.

It is about approaching God the way I want to, approaching

God for the purpose I would like to accomplish. In the end, at the core of idolatry, at the core of an idol, is me.

It is what I want, how I want it, when

I want it. And now, why is idolatry problematic when you're in a covenant relationship with the

Lord, your God? The second part of verse five through verse six tell us the reason.

For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousandth generation.

Of those who love me and keep my commandment. The Lord does not stand idolatry because he is a jealous

God. Jealous as in impassioned.

The Lord is jealous for his people. It is important to point out what jealousy is.

Jealousy is a passionate desire for what rightfully belongs to the person.

And we're often taught that jealousy is wrong. And that's because jealousy stems from our lack of trust in God, and it is fueled by our sense of entitlement.

However, God's perfect jealousy is holy and pure.

It is similar to a faithful husband's deep desire for his wayward wife.

He is not passive, but active in his desire to get her back.

In the same way, God cannot stand his covenant people committing adultery against him.

He will indeed keep his people accountable for that. And what does that look like?

First, this God will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate him.

Now, this at first is a shocking statement to us because it sounds like as if the son will be punished for the sin of the father.

As if the sin of the father passes on through the next generation. However, it cannot exactly be that.

Because contextually, in the first five books in which Moses wrote, Moses says the exact opposite in Deuteronomy 24, 16.

Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers.

A person shall be put to death for his own sin. Now, what this means is those who commit the same sin as their ancestors will be punished.

Which means if your father is an idolater and it passes on and you become an idolater, you're committing the same sin.

And for that sin of idolatry in which you're committing, which is the same as your father's sin, you'll be punished for that.

And that's why in the book of Kings, many kings of Israel are committing the same sin of King Jeroboam I.

The idolatrous worship of the golden calf. It started from Jeroboam I, but other wicked

Israelite kings did the same thing. Now, they're not being punished for Jeroboam's first sin directly.

They're being punished for them following the ways of Jeroboam I. Now, this means the excuse of, well,

I'm just doing what my dad is doing, will not work before the Lord. However, the more shocking verse is verse six.

I know some translations say showing steadfast love to thousands, but I think it is more accurate to say the thousandth generation because it is parallel to the third and fourth generations previously.

The Lord is so loving and kind that his love passes on to the thousandth generation.

This is unimaginable. No human being can fathom what a thousandth generation looks like.

Now, I come from a more corporate family, a Korean family, where we have kept the record of our family tree, and I am apparently the 17th generation.

17 generations is still a fraction of how extensive

God's loving kindness is according to the text.

While the punishment will go to the third and fourth generations, his loving kindness will extend to the thousandth.

This clearly shows the incomparable measure of God's mercy and grace.

While most people can imagine third and even the fourth generation, as some of you are great -grandparents yourselves, you have seen your fourth generation.

But no one can imagine what it would mean for God's compassion and mercy to reach to the thousandth generation.

That is God's loving kindness to his people. It is exceedingly extensive, and that is what we look toward when we are tempted to idolize something.

Of course, we look toward the punishment that's coming to all idolaters, but we look at his loving kindness that's deeper than the oceans and stretches higher than the skies.

His loving kindness for his people. Now, David Wells, an evangelical theologian, brings up a good point of why do people commit idolatry.

And here's what he says. Why do people choose to substitute over God himself,

God over himself? Probably, the most important reason is that it oviates accountability to God.

It cancels the accountability to God. We can meet idols on our own terms because they are our own creations.

They're safe, predictable, and controllable. They're portable and completely under the user's control.

They offer nothing like the threat of a God with thunders from Sinai and whose providence in this world so often appears to us to be incomprehensible and dangerous.

Serving idols is easy and tempting because in the end, we're serving ourselves.

It's this view of self -sovereignty. The same temptation that God, Adam, and Eve.

You could be like God. When you have an idol, ultimately, you're not just serving the statue, you're serving yourself.

The idol does not have to be a statue, but it can be your personal sin.

You go to that for comfort. You go to that to find your identity.

You go to that. But if that, whatever you're idolizing, is threatened, wrath will pour out.

You will protect it like no other. That's how we know that's an idol because your

God is threatened. Because of who the

Lord is, idolatry is not okay. To those who faithlessly leave him, he will keep them accountable for their actions.

However, to those who are faithful to him, he will remain completely compassionate to the uttermost.

There will be no end to his loving kindness. Third, we must represent

God honorably because he will not stand it. We must represent God honorably because he will not stand it.

The second implication of the first commandment is found in the third commandment.

You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. For the

Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. This commandment is what we often think of, of you shall not blaspheme.

You shall not blaspheme against the Lord. A more literal translation of this is that you shall not take the name of the

Lord, your God, for nothing. Or you shall not take the name of the

Lord, your God, in emptiness. Make it into nothing. This means to not misuse

God's name or use in a disrespectful manner.

The Lord's name is not just a form of identification. That's what we think of when we say name.

Iljin Cho, that's his name. That's how we identify him. However, in the

Hebrew culture, the name actually represents who the person is.

Everything that has to do with that person when that name is brought up.

To take the Lord's name in vain is to make his name like nothing. It would be to misrepresent the

Lord in the utterly empty sense.

It's to misrepresent the great Lord. It would, of course, prohibit hastily swearing in his name, promising that something would happen in God's name.

Now, why would this be disrespectful? Well, because God never promised it. The person who is swearing is misrepresenting

God to the people who are listening. And this would occur many times with the false prophets.

Oh, God is not judging you. In fact, he will bless you. And what happens if the judgment comes?

Well, then the people will have the wrong understanding of who God is. The people will view

God in a false light because of the blasphemer. And God's people have no business representing

God in a way that is contrary to how he has represented himself.

And what will God do if we take his name in vain? He will not hold him guiltless.

It does not spell out what he will do as punishment. But the fact that the blasphemer will have to deal with God himself is the reason not to misrepresent the

Lord. When you misrepresent the Lord, ultimately, you'll have to deal with God.

And unfortunately, many false prophets blaspheme to this day. God loves you so much that he will prosper you.

You will get your dream job. You'll marry the best person. You'll have the best wife.

You'll have the best husband. Well, frankly, he could accomplish all of those things.

And maybe he would. But what if he doesn't? Such promises paint

God falsely. And not only that, it cheapens

God's love to only a material blessing of our choice.

Again, it goes back to having another God. I can only accept

God's love as long as he provides a specific material that's on my wish list. I can only receive

God's love in the form that I want. If I get a blessing in another form, maybe a trial or suffering or disease,

I can't accept that. I have to reject that God. And many of you might have met people who have left the faith because they could not accept a blessing that came to them in suffering or trial.

Now, the problem with that is that such a view misses

God's love for us when he has provided already in the forgiveness of sin through his one and only son,

Jesus. Missing is God's love for us in adopting us into his family for all eternity at the cost of the life of his one and only son,

Jesus. How can God love us any more than he already has through his one and only son,

Jesus? Second, a more subtle way in which we bless him,

God, is not through our words, but our actions. We claim to be

Christians, yet live like pagans. We live hypocritically.

We say one thing and do another. This too misrepresents

God through our failed witnessing. When a

Christian abuses his family, he effectively misrepresents the compassionate and loving

Lord whom he allegedly professes to worship. When a

Christian sleeps around and pursues vileness for her pleasure, she misrepresents the holiness and purity and faithfulness of the

Lord whom she allegedly possesses to love. And if this is an accurate description of your life, you must repent.

You must stop your lifestyle and turn to Christ in forgiveness. Turn to Christ knowing that only he can save you from the filth that you are stuck in.

Turn to Christ knowing that he will show mercy to you that you've never experienced before.

There's no other way. The only way to defeat idols is to turn to the true

God. The most effective tool, the most effective method of destroying idols is seeking out the true

God who destroys all idols. Fourth, we rest in God through our total dependence on him.

We rest in God through our total dependence on him. The third implication having only the

Lord as our God is stated by the fourth commandment. Unlike the other two, this one is not a prohibition but a positive command.

Not what we must avoid but what we pursue instead.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Whenever Christians read the fourth commandment, our eyes gloss over and they get glassy because we do not celebrate the

Sabbath day in the same way as the Jews did. However, it is so important that the

Lord commanded it from Sinai. It was directly proclaimed to the people of Israel.

And verses 9 through 10 tell us how the Sabbath must be obeyed by Israel. Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a

Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates.

Recall that in Exodus, God has taught the concept of the

Sabbath to Israel already in the wilderness through the giving of manna.

And that's found in Exodus 16. God graciously provided bread from heaven for six days and miraculously on the seventh day they could actually save up double portion and on the seventh day the bread would last.

It won't go bad. On any other day you save up double portion it would go bad. But on the sixth day you collect double portion on the seventh day you won't be waking up with maggots in your tent.

It was to teach Israel a lesson.

It was to teach through hands -on lessons what it means to rest in God's providence.

After all, consider what the Israelites were doing for the last couple hundred years. They were professional slaves.

Working was all they did. Working was all they knew. No rest days, no weekends, no paternity leaves, no maternity leaves, just work.

The Lord knew this way of living will only lead to degeneration and ultimately death.

He commands the Sabbath for the good of his people. He commands the

Sabbath so that his people may learn to trust him on the seventh day when they're not working.

Trust the Lord that he will provide for every need even on the day you don't work.

And this would have been unimaginable in Egypt. And this would have been unthinkable with any other gods.

After all, the pagan gods in their creation history, with their

Mesopotamian gods, the pagan gods created humans in order for them to work.

The humans only existed so the gods could rest. Not so with this

God. This God gives rest to his people. This God creates rest for his people.

This God commands rest for his people. Furthermore, verse 10 tells us who will be participating.

Is it just the men? You've all heard people proclaiming the Bible to be just patriarchal, you know, against women.

Is it just the men who get to rest? No. It is their son and their daughter, both male and female.

Surely, it must be just the free people, right? No, this includes the servants who may not be

Israelites themselves. Surely, it must just be the people, let the animals work.

No, the livestock, the cattle will rest on that day too. How about we can just hire foreigners so they don't have to follow the law of Israel?

There's a loophole there. Nope, sojourners who are living inside the boundary of Israel will also rest as well.

This is the grace of God's law. It applies to everyone equally to give them life.

Doesn't matter who you are, your social standing, your gender, your background, even animals, they all benefit from God's gracious act.

And what is the reason for the Sabbath? Verse 11, for in six days, the

Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the Sabbath day.

Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. First, this is a narrative, a historical narrative that corroborates sixth -day creationism found in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1 is a historical narrative, but oftentimes people do various hermeneutical gymnastics to argue that it is not a narrative.

So, if they're really looking for another narrative, point them to verse 11. Six days,

God created everything and rested on the seventh. There's no other way to read days here than 24 hours.

Second, the seventh day is holy because the Lord rested on the seventh day.

And this is a powerful reason. God's people must rest to imitate their

God. God's people must do what their God does.

God's people must reflect who their God is by resting as the

Lord did on the seventh day. Israel would be communing with God and trusting him for all provision.

And not only that, as they imitate the Lord, everyone surrounding them would see what kind of God they worship.

A gracious God who gives rest to his people cannot be found in other pagan nations.

After all, their creation account is that they were made so that the God's wouldn't have to work.

They are the slaves, not so with God's covenant people. Now, the burning question is how do

Christians obey the Sabbath? Right? Does that mean we don't light fire, just like Israel?

Israel goes so far that elevators all become automatic on the Sabbath day because flipping the light switch would be igniting the fire.

So every floor, it will stop to open and close, stop to open and close, stop to open and close.

Is that what we need to do? Now, as you may know, we do not follow the

Sabbath the same way in which the Jews did and do. We must, however, obey the

Sabbath in which it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. After all, all the laws are fulfilled in Christ.

Matthew 5. As Christians, we obey the law by how

Christ accomplished it. We obey the law by how it was anticipated to be accomplished through the righteous work of Christ on the cross for our sin.

Any other way to view the law would be idolatrous.

As Christians, we must view the law with the lens of how

Christ accomplished it. By not viewing

Christ is to going backwards, is to ignore what the law is actually pointing to.

The laws and the prophets all pointed to Christ. Now, how does that work?

Ultimately, the Sabbath rest is fulfilled in Christ when he accomplished the righteousness of God on the cross for our sin.

When Christ took our sin and paid for our redemption to be free, he took us into the ultimate

Sabbath rest in which we no longer strive to be saved through our own good works.

It is not up to what we do or how good we are, but completely dependent on the righteous sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

And the author of Hebrews understood this when he wrote in chapter 4, verse 8 through 10.

For if Joshua had given them rest, right, Joshua was in charge of Israel after Moses to bring

Israel to the promised land, the land of rest. For if Joshua had given them rest,

God would not have spoken of another day later on. Talking about David's psalm in which

God said, there's another day. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Even after Joshua who led Israel to the promised land, the land of rest,

God spoke of another day. He's speaking of an eschatological

Sabbath rest for the people of God who enter that rest, that ultimate rest, and they have rest from works -based salvation.

And how do they enter that rest? They enter through faith in Christ who has earned that rest for us.

When we are in Christ, we enter that rest. It no longer depends on you.

It's only dependent on him. It's only dependent on what God has done for you. It is nothing that you have done, no good that you have done, no good character, no good personality, no good acts, but only on Christ's act on the cross that won you that rest.

And all those who trust in him will ultimately enter that rest in heaven.

And that is how we obey the fourth commandment as Christians.

Just as Israel depended on their God for providence, for their every need, for their

Sabbath day, we trust in Christ for what he's done to take us to that Sabbath rest, that eternal

Sabbath rest. And it's not based on our works, but on his only.

Let us pray. Father, we are thankful for the 10 commandments.

We're thankful that they're still relevant to us today, and even more so in Christ.

Father, we pray that you would help us see and live the law of God in Christ so that we may experience that freedom from sin.

In Jesus' name. Take your hymnals once again and turn with me hymn 390 and then stand together with me, please, as we sing,

May the mind of Christ my Savior live in me from day to day.

Thank you and may the words that we've just sung be our life this week and you're dismissed.