The Call to Rest

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Don Filcek; Genesis 2:1-3 The Call to Rest

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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I am Don Felsick. I'm the lead pastor here and I want to welcome you all to this gathering of Recast Church.
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We gather each week in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are those who believe
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Him to be our Lord and Savior and that is what we hold in common together. He came to rescue us from our sins by dying on the cross for us and He will come again to usher in an eternal kingdom for those who believe in Him and trust in Him.
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That's the core message of the Bible. That's what we hold most in common here. That good news, that glorious truth that He died for us so that we can now live for Him and we'll live eternally with Him.
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And all of this points to the glorious hope. That is what is called the gospel, the good news. This morning we are going to be spending our time in the
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Old Testament which amounts to a long historical accounting of God working in the world to bring forth that Savior Jesus Christ.
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And it's all about moving history toward the Savior and the culmination in the
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New Testament of Him coming forth and coming to be one of us. And He saw fit to demonstrate to us in no uncertain terms throughout the
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Old Testament that we are rebels against His sovereign rule and reign. And that defines us, that describes us, that talks about our hearts.
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And we see that all throughout humanity and in our history. We see that through the history of the
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Jews in the Old Testament. And that is that they point to what is true in our own hearts.
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We don't like God's way. We are corrupt in our thinking, corrupt in our actions, and corrupt in our relationships.
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And I'm guessing that all of you have experienced that to varying levels and degrees within your own life. So I'm going to be, this is all setting us up for an understanding of what we're going to be doing in the coming couple of weeks.
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I'm gearing up for a few weeks off this summer. I've mentioned a couple of times at the family meeting and I think last week kind of in a veiled attempt at this.
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But I'm going to be taking some time off this summer. The elders have graciously granted me a sabbatical and I'm going to be out for eight weeks.
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A time for rest, a time for listening to God, a time for talking to God, a time to remind myself that I'm not as necessary as I contend to think
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I am in the midst of everyday week. And so a time for that kind of refreshing.
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And so in the coming three weeks we're going to be at a process of looking at all of this together. And so I'm going to carry you on a journey that God is taking me into rest.
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And so we're going to be considering this week in the Bible God's call to rest. Next week we're going to be talking about the risk of rest.
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And lastly we're going to be talking about ultimate rest. And then I am going to have the privilege of preaching us into the book of Psalms before I leave.
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And so I'll be taking on, so I've got four more sermons before I'm going to be taking off. So just in case you were wondering when is he leaving, that's when.
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And then the elders are graciously going to be carrying us through the Psalms over the summer. And I encourage you to be here for that and to take that in.
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But you want to get into some weird conversations with Christians? Probably not. But I mean if you want to, you're just kind of curious how do
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I get into a weird conversation with a Christian? Bring up the subject of Sabbath rest. Bring up the subject of Sabbath rest.
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You're going to get some funny, weird, strange conversations, comments, thoughts, ideas, rejections, all kinds of things.
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But here's what you need to understand. It is woven, the idea of Sabbath rest is woven into the very fabric of God's creative acts.
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We're going to see that this morning. It makes it into the Ten Commandments. It is the target, if we're honest, the target of what we speak with our mouths as if rest is the target of our lives, right?
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Just working for the weekend, right? Looking forward to vacation, looking forward to retirement. But I think all of us know in our own hearts that rest, true rest, in this life is elusive.
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It's hard to find. And further, it just isn't well thought out in our lives if we're honest with ourselves.
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God has a plan for each and every one of His people regarding rest that's spelled out for us in Scripture. And yet,
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I believe that many of us have flat out dismissed His plan in exchange for our own. We've dismissed
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His plan in exchange for our own. And that's to basically not have a plan at all if we're honest.
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Just grab a few moments of rest here or there, right? As it comes at us, as we get an opportunity, as Netflix calls our name, as we get just a little moment at the end of the day or whatever it might be.
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If we're honest, we just piece together moments of rest, right? That's our culture. And my guess is that your plan for your life or your lack of a plan for rest isn't working as well as His plan for you.
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That's what my contention is this morning. So let's sit under the Word as it expresses God's good and gracious call.
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Let's all open our ears to hear God's call to us, God's call to each and every one of us to actual intervals of rest.
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To take on what He says is good for us. So I would ask you please, I'm going to have two passages.
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This is where those of you with a paper Bible get to kind of smirk at those who don't because it's a little easier to open to two passages at the same time in a paper
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Bible. So Genesis 2, 1 through 3, I want you to look at that. And then those of you with a paper
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Bible can go right away and open up to Exodus 20 as well. So Exodus 2, I mean Genesis 2 and Exodus 20.
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But I'm going to give you, I'll be gracious and I'll give those of you with a digital device some time to get there in between.
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But Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. Recast God's Holy Word.
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This is what He desires for us to take in this morning. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
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And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all
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His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it
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God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.
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And now let's see how quick we can get over to Exodus chapter 20, starting in verse 8. I'll give you just a second here.
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Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11. Remember the
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Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
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But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work.
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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.
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For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that's in them, and rested on the seventh day.
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Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
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Let's pray. Father, I rejoice in the opportunity that we have to dig into Your Word and to look into something that challenges us, that is there for our benefit and is there for our blessing, and we look at it a little sideways.
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We side -eye this text and go, Oh, really? In my busy life? In my schedule?
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With my family? With my activities? With the things that are pressing in on me? A day of rest?
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Father, I pray that You would speak through Your Word to us, calling us to the things that You are calling us to through this text, convicting where conviction is needed, encouraging, building up, strengthening, empowering, giving us a will to follow
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You into the things that You desire and have designed us for. Six days of work.
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Six days of getting after it. Six days of labor. Six days of really pushing into it.
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A day of rest. What a glorious thing it is that You offer to Your people rest.
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What a glorious thing it is that You model it for us in the very fabric of creation. Father, I stand up here and I look out and I see weary people.
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I see people who are just exhausted, working themselves to a nub, both in how they entertain themselves as well as in how they work.
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We're all frenzied. We're all divided. We're all moving in a variety of directions all at the same time.
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Father, maybe today would You be moving in us to take on more of the way that You have designed things to be.
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Maybe this would be a day of transformation for us. I thank You for the gospel that makes these laws no longer law, that we don't have to do this, but You still hold out this call to us to come and rest in intervals and to recognize
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Your work by faith and trust in what You're doing. Father, would You instill within us as a people more trust that You've got us, that You're holding us, that You'll take care of us.
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And I pray even now that as we have an opportunity to sing these songs before You together in Your assembly, Father, that You would be exalted in our hearts, not just in our mouths, not just in the things that we say, because these songs are going to exalt
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You, but I pray that our hearts would do so as well. We ask this in Jesus' name. Well, get comfortable and keep your place in Genesis chapter 2, 1 through 3.
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You can turn back over there, and we're going to start in that passage and then move over to Exodus 20. But if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, take advantage of that back there.
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You're not going to distract me. But I think I want to just start off by saying, to let you know,
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I don't think you're dumb. I think we all know the two main points of this passage, but it's good for us to review them together, really, these two passages.
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It's good for us to be reminded from time to time of biblical views and what is there.
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And despite the fact that we know it, I'm not sure how well we apply it, and so it's good for us to take on God's call to rest on us.
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God calls us to rest, and we need to understand two things that make up our outline. These are the two things I think you already know.
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The first is that rest is God's idea. We see that in Genesis 2, 1 through 3. The second one you know as well, but you might not state it this way or have thought of it this way.
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He had to command it. He had to command it. Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11.
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Rest is God's idea. First, go there. He had to command it.
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So let's start in the beginning with the account of creation in Genesis 2, 1 through 3. God has already, by the time that we encounter our text, starting into chapter 2,
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He's already declared that He's created everything. Genesis gives us an overview of the six days of creation in chapter 1, indicating that God spoke all matter and all time and all space into being in those first six days.
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As we come to verse 1 of chapter 2, we come there and we see the declaration that the heavens and the earth were finished.
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The last rays in the English Standard Version and all the host of them simply means that the vast array of different things that God would create were finished on those six days.
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We have here a declaration of comprehensive completion of God's creative acts in those six days.
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So then we come to the seventh day, right? And on the seventh day, having finished all creation, it says God rested.
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Now what you need to understand about that Hebrew word that's used there for rest, rested itself has at its core idea the idea of ceasing from activity or ceasing from the behavior that's in mention.
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So finishing His work is the resting. Being done with His work is the resting.
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So let's be clear that God doesn't, let's clarify here at the beginning, God doesn't slumber or sleep.
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As a matter of fact, the Scriptures literally use that phrase. Psalm 121 .4 states this directly. Behold, he who keeps
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Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Bible tells us
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God doesn't rest. God doesn't take the nights off. He keeps going. God is not like us.
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And I mean, when you start to think about God, any time that you think about Him in human terms, you are just merely trying to make an analogy for Him.
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But He is not like us. And yet when He speaks here of resting, we ought not to think of Him as hammocking on a lazy summer day on that seventh day.
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He has just ceased creating. He actively created for six days. He doesn't create on the seventh day is what the text is telling us.
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And in this way, verse 3 tells us that God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.
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The word holy means set apart, distinct, different. It was a set apart day because God rested, ceased creating from all the work
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He had done in creation on that seventh day. What I want to point out is that a gap is intentionally created by God here.
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He didn't need to do this. He has created in seven days with one of rest by His intention, by His design, by His plan.
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And it's mind -blowing in its implications that God would work for the six days and then declare
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Himself rested, finished, ceased from creation on the seventh. God so dramatically desires for us to have a work -life cadence that He has woven that plan into the very fabric of the created world.
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In the very creation ordinance, the way that He created has at its core a routine cadence of rest.
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His call to each one in this room. I hope you hear it clearly through this passage.
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His call to you is indeed a call to a routine pattern of rest.
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I hope you hear Him calling today. I hope He calls your heart because this is important. In our faith, in our trust, in our obedience to our
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Lord. That call began in the creation of the world. The call that I hope you hear begins all the way back at creation.
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Think about it this way. He could have ended with a six -day and we could record a six -day work week instead.
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We could just have work and work and more work. But instead,
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God organized a seven -day week with one day of rest. He has created the cadence for us.
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He has declared the balance. He has given us to some degree a very clear ratio in Scripture. He has gifted
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His creatures with intentional rest from the very beginning. Do you guys see it? Raise your hand if you see it.
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You get what I'm saying here. And I think you've already seen it, but I'm not sure you've known what to do about it.
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What's mind -blowing is that we all know or ought to know that God doesn't need any rest. As I mentioned earlier,
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He wasn't tired. His voice wasn't hoarse from speaking all that stuff into existence. He didn't need a throat lozenge.
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He didn't need to cool off with a tall glass of sweet tea. So why this rest?
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He did this in Genesis to be sure that we know that the idea of rest, the concept of rest, is
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His. He's the one who came up with it. When I consider the way this ought to hit us, I consider the way that we think about work and rest today.
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We're all over the map. This is one of the reasons that it creates really unique and funny conversations with people when you start talking about Sabbath rest.
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We're all over the place. Some are lazy and some are workaholics. And I would say that most of us work really hard.
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It's whether we work really hard at entertaining ourselves or whether we work really hard at making money. But most all of us work.
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Most of us work really hard. Some of us are slothful.
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Some need to get off their rears and go do some work. They need to take that six days seriously.
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Some need to take a break and remember the one day of rest. I'm confident that this cadence that God issued speaks to both groups with equal force.
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Work a lot. Work hard. You have six days to get your stuff done. Get after it.
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Right? One day of pure, unadulterated rest. Ceasing from getting ahead.
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Unfortunately, many of us abuse the Sabbath by taking our rest in patches as I mentioned in the introduction. Throughout the week, just an hour here, a minute there.
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A Netflix show here or there. Just kind of thoughtlessly binging on the weekends or whatever.
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Hopefully binging Netflix and not other things, but I don't know. It's all binging, right? God doesn't say,
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I've given you the evenings. A couple of hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday afternoon to cease from your toil and striving.
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Is that what He says? No. Six days of work. One day of rest.
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Six days of work. One day of rest. Six days of work. One day of rest. The cadence is His design and His purpose and His ratio.
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I love Eugene Peterson. The way that he defines Sabbath practice is this. Quitting our work at intervals to contemplate
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His. Quitting our work at intervals to contemplate
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His. Cease work to remember that He is at work.
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This is an act of faith, church. This is an act of faith. Quit striving in order to practice resting in Him.
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To some this sounds like a chance to add more time to a slothful habit of over -resting. Don't forget the six days of work.
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But to some this sounds like a recipe for getting behind. One day of rest. One day of rest.
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Some will criticize this day of rest as a lazy man's weekly holiday. But I hope you can see how utterly biblical it is from the text of Scripture.
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But it isn't. I can hear some people say, it isn't just a day for sitting around, right? Wrong. It is absolutely a day for calm.
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It's a day for naps. A day for reflection or for quiet walks. For watching some sports.
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For reading. For a jog or for a bike ride. I've had people literally say to me, it's not just for laying around, right?
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Some find so much, and this is convicting to me and it can be convicting I hope to others in the room.
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I just share it. Some find so much validation in their work that they will turn Sabbath rest into something to accomplish.
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You know what I mean? Some of you would be fine either, you would be fine with a day of rest as long as you can work real hard at it.
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But you know, I hope that was a bit of a nervous chuckle because I think that is some of us. It's a day to cease.
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Church, hear me carefully. We're talking about a day to cease from your efforts. In this sense, it becomes an honest assessment of what is genuinely relaxing and what leaves you room to reflect on God and His work.
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So what you want me to do now and what many are going to want, and you're going to be lacking at the end of this sermon. You're going to be wanting me to spell out the specifics and I will refuse to stand up here and say all kinds of wonky things about how many steps you can take.
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Whether you can take the boat out or not. Whether you can go out to eat or not. And I mean some of you, you're already starting to go, but what about this?
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But what about this? Work through it with your God. Talk to Him about it.
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But be honest in your assessment. We struggle with honesty in ourselves. Do we not?
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Wrestle with it. I would love, I expect there to be conversations after this.
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My hope and prayer is that I have some text conversations this week. I don't love talking on the phone, but if that's how you communicate,
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I'll answer the phone and we'll talk. Emails are good. Texts are good. Maybe even a couple of face -to -face meetings as a result of this, where you say, help me to work through this,
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Don. I want to do this. I want to lean into this, and I don't know how. Some will tell me, and I don't know, some will tell me yard work is relaxing.
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It's not for me. But for some of you, it might be. And I say to that, okay, okay, as long as you're honestly assessing for yourself, but make sure that you can tell me that it keeps your focus on the things that God does without you.
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As you cultivate the soil doing the exact same physical work that He was telling His Old Testament people to break from.
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What was their work? Tending the soil. Agricultural context.
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Now I recognize that we live in a different day and an age. You don't get your food from the ground. You get it from a grocery store.
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Well, it comes from the ground, but you know what I mean. So now I think it's really funny in our modern age how we take the difficulties and the perils and the labor of past generations, and now it's our entertainment, it's our hobby.
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We have a little plot where we grow our garden, and we do all this stuff. Camping.
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Imagine trying to explain to somebody on the frontier camping. Explain to somebody in Africa camping.
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We did at one point try to explain to the Africans, they have this concept because they see our media, they see things, and they're like, tell me about your yard.
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Tell me about grass. And do you eat it? Like trying to explain to them that we water this so that we can cut it, and then we water it so that we can cut it, and we water it so that we can cut it again.
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And what do you do with what you cut? Well, we try to dispose of it. Okay. We're weird.
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Assessing our culture is kind of strange sometimes internally, right? And so maybe some of these things that I'm talking about here are actually life -giving, are refreshing to you, and I won't make a rule against gardening on the
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Sabbath. I'm not here to make any rules at all. I'm here to try to be the voice of the call of God on your life to rest.
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Work it out. Talk to God about it. Be honest in your assessment of what is genuinely restful and what really points you to more trust in God's work.
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And that can be tricky in our own hearts. We can trick ourselves into thinking that things that... I'm not getting ahead by this, but I am getting ahead by this.
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So before we turn over to Exodus 20, I want to point out one more thing that you can see from these first three verses, really from v.
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3 of Genesis 2. The very first thing that God ever declares to be holy in the entire created order, the only thing
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He ever... I mean, not the only thing. The first thing He declares to be holy is related to time.
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God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. God sets rest here in the text, in v.
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3, as a blessing. It is so easy to lose sight of this little phrase,
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God blessed it. When we are looking for a tasty Christian chicken sandwich on a
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Sunday, it doesn't feel like a blessing, does it? Further though, it doesn't feel like a blessing when we have so much to do at work.
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So much homework. We have so much that needs our effort and attention and work and toil.
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Really? A day off? Yeah. But God blesses our week by giving us a day of rest.
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He sets rest apart. Sanctifies it. Makes it holy. Makes it set apart. And I believe that this is closely related with God's love for faith.
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He wants us to trust in Him. He wants us to lean on Him. He wants us to depend on Him.
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And so much of our work is really trust in ourselves, is it not? We need to work more, to get ahead more, to get more money.
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For what end? I don't know. Keep up with the neighbors. What are the neighbors going to think if our lawn is long and we're sitting there sipping some tea in the backyard?
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And for this reason, we need to turn over to the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, starting in verse 8 through 11.
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Give you a second to turn over there to Exodus 20 to see the fourth commandment here. This is the fourth commandment.
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We're coming into the middle of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, and it's simply because of our second point.
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God's calling us to rest, but the second point, it's His idea, but He had to command it.
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God has had to command us to rest. We are commanded to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
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Remember means to observe it. It's kind of funny, there's different kinds of ways we use the word remember. Not remember like where you left your car keys, not that kind of remember, but remember like, remember your anniversary, or remember your wife's birthday.
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How many of you know that's a different kind of remembering? It's not gonna suffice at 10 p .m.
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on your wife's birthday to say, no, I remembered. I've been thinking about it all day. I know it was your birthday. Ooh.
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That's not good. Remembering your wife's birthday implies that you've done something about it.
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That's that kind of remembering that we're talking about here. Remember the Sabbath day. Keep it holy. Keeping it holy tells us that we are to set aside a day.
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This seems like a good time to address, by the way, our relationship to the law and the Old Testament because, again, we're getting into a command here and it's like, am
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I gonna go to hell if I don't keep a Sabbath? Oh, no. We are not saved by law keeping.
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The New Testament is explicitly clear about this. The law doesn't bind the Christian like it was meant to bind the
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Jews to certain external behaviors in order to stay in the good favor of God. Old Covenant. You obey and I will continue to bless you as a people, as a nation.
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New Covenant, I've done it for you. Come by faith. Trust me by faith.
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Believe in the work that has been done for you. Paul is quick to point out that the law was a guardian that kept us under lock and key until the grace of Christ was sent to rescue us.
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It binds us. The law is binding on us. It is not a freedom thing.
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The law sets no one free. As a matter of fact, I'd like to read a little bit of an extended passage. You don't need to turn over there. It's going to be on the screen.
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Galatians 3, 23 -26. It's so important that you get this as we're talking about a law. As we're talking about an
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Old Testament command. That you understand how it relates to us. Galatians 3, 23 -26.
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Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
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So then the law was our guardian until Christ came. Until Christ came. Until Christ came.
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In order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
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What was the guardian just spoken of? The law. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.
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Am I up here preaching a law of rest? A law of sabbathing? Absolutely not.
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To summarize Paul's many passages about the law, here I'll just give you a summary of the many things that he says about it.
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The law was really good at showing us our need for a Savior. It was really good at showing us how we fall short.
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As we regularly rebelled against our Creator. And I find this fourth command in the Ten Commandments to mock us.
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It makes fun of us. It makes fun of us in this way. It mocks us for the infantile relationship we all have toward God.
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That's what the law does. It's really good at going, ha, look at you. Look at how silly you are. Look at how foolish you are in relationship to the
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Holy God. Why do I say that it mocks us? God here in these verses of Exodus commands us to rest.
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Let me say that again. Commands us to rest.
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And our flesh responds with the adage I've seen on t -shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers. I'll rest when
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I'm dead. Thank you very much. I'll rest when I'm dead. Our attitude towards this gracious and kind command,
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His kindness toward us in calling us into rest. How many of you would just say rest sounds kind of nice.
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Raise your hand if it sounds kind of good. Like I'm a bit weary and I could use a little bit of rest.
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He says do it. I don't feel like it. But God, do you know how much I've got to do here?
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Do you see how silly our hearts are? How much it's kind of mocking the way that we respond to God in our sinfulness?
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We're weird. He commands us to rest. Nah, maybe not. We can be commanded to do something we enjoy and suddenly we don't want to do it.
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In this Sabbath law, we see something that is true in all of our hearts. We are natural rebels.
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Command me to eat ice cream and suddenly I'm not sure I feel like ice cream right now. Oh, I love me some ice cream.
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But don't command it. You get what I'm saying? But the fourth commandment is mildly hilarious in the way that God hedges it around.
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It's funny for another reason. He hedges it around with a bunch of mini commandments in verse 10 that protect us from the many loopholes we will find to get ahead.
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Oh yes, he said, I can't work on the Sabbath, but maybe I could hire some outsiders to work on that day, work my fields.
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So verse 10, he says, not the foreigner, not the sojourner in your midst. Maybe we could pay some servants to do work for us on that day.
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Not your male or your female servants. At least have the kids get something done. Give them some chores to do.
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Not your son, not your daughter. Verse 10, at least we could set the oxen to a pole and have them thresh some grain that day.
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Have them walk in a circle. Not your livestock. You see how he's got to get after us because he knows us.
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He knows your heart. He knows your hunger and your desire to get ahead, to depend upon yourself.
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Right? This money's not going to make itself. This lawn's not going to mow itself.
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This work's not going to get itself done. Right? This is a day to cease, church, from getting ahead.
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This is a day to cease from enacting your plan. This is a day for trusting in the
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Almighty God, your Creator. To remember that your success and all of it comes from His gracious hand.
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This is a day to quit working, to cease working, so that you can contemplate His work.
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Faith and trust in Him. Note that working hard is found in this command. Look at verse 9.
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Six days you shall labor. Labor is a word for getting after it. It's hard work.
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Six days. You got six days to do that. You got six days to get the lawn mown. Six days to bank some coin.
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Six days to write reports. Six days to make sales. Six days to do your homework. Six days to grade papers.
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How about one day, says God? How about one? Could you take a day to trust
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Me? That is what God is calling. Can you hear His voice? Can you take one day to trust
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Me? One in seven. Verse 11 of Exodus This anchors the command to the
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Genesis account that we've already looked at. But it's re -emphasized here with a direct quote from that Genesis passage.
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Exodus quoting Genesis. And it's re -emphasized here that God blessed the
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Sabbath day. Blessed the Sabbath day. And made it holy. What I hope is quite clear to you is that God values our rest.
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And I would add to that, that He appears to have more than a mere concern that we don't burn ourselves out.
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A lot of times, it can be said that we just think of this as practical. We're very pragmatic.
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So I just watched a couple of videos this week that a friend sent to me that basically spelled out the benefits of resting one in seven.
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How we're kind of designed for that. And I would say, okay, well, alright. That's kind of cool.
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And it's also unnecessary. Because God is telling us in His Word to do so. And so I'm going to take for granted that this is good.
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I don't need somebody to undergo significant scientific studies to determine what our optimum ratio of rest is.
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Do you get what I'm saying in that? I don't need that. You see, I don't think that this command is given primarily out of concern that you're going to burn out.
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That you can't do it. There's no way you could work seven days a week for a lifetime.
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Not possible. And people do it. Do you know what I'm saying? Is the reason because of your frailty?
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No, nothing. Nothing in this passage says anything about our frailty. In either of these foundational passages about day of rest,
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God doesn't say, I'm doing this for your good because you're going to burn out. Because your life's going to fall apart if you work seven days a week.
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He doesn't say that. He doesn't say you need a day of rest or you're going to crash and burn. Do you see it in the text?
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No. As a matter of fact, He roots this in the exact opposite. God, who is all infinite power and strength, modeling for us a day of rest.
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He didn't need it. The rest isn't rooted in our need for rest, but it is rooted in our need to trust our
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Creator and His design. Do you trust Him? Taking a day of rest is a question of trust in Him.
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Hear me carefully. I believe this sincerely. You can get ahead by working seven days a week.
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You can. You can do it. You can get ahead by working seven days a week.
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You can make more money. Did you know that? It's true. You can make more money.
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You can get more done. You can study more to get better grades if you just study and work all seven days a week for your lifetime.
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I don't know what that produces in you. I would suggest a lot of self -centeredness, a lot of trust in yourself, a lot of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, a lot of lack of faith in God, but you can do that.
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Do you guys get what I'm saying in that? You can do it. An illustration of this is quite simple.
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Could Chick -fil -A make more money by opening on Sundays? You better believe it. They could make more money by being open today.
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Of course they could. Would they burn out their employees by doing so? Probably not likely. They'd find workers.
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They'd find people who could work the Sunday shift. Then why are they closed today? Why are they closed today?
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To demonstrate trust in God that He'll take care of them. Plain and simple.
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It's an act of trust in God. Not because they can't do it. Not because they couldn't find any workers.
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We weren't going to make money anyway, so we just shut down. No, they were going to make a killing on Sundays. Right? As everybody gets out of church and heads in there for their
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Christian chicken. Right? So an illustration of this is quite simple, right?
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So in this sense, hear me carefully church, we are being called to rest something I think all of us would kind of like as a way of trusting
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His way over our own. Trusting His way over our own. It takes a person being proactive to institute
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God's way. It takes planning to practice a day of ceasing.
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Did you hear me? It takes planning to practice a day of ceasing. It takes no effort to rest when you get a minute here or there and think you're doing fine.
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But let me just tell you, you will not stumble into Sabbath resting. You will either make a decision or you will not do it.
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It's going to take an action of obedience to Him. So my hope is that many of us might begin to rethink the way we've structured our own weeks over and against God's design.
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Most of us, if we're honest, have no plan or no structure to a work -rest balance. But applying this gets tricky.
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For me, I work on Sundays. What do I do? Well, I take Fridays off and I actually try to make Fridays a
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Sabbath day of rest. And I still have a lot of work to do on that. But many of us, to be honest, we go straight to law.
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After all, it is in the Ten Commandments, right? After all, a young man was put to death in the Old Testament for gathering sticks on the
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Sabbath. How many of you are glad you don't live under the Old Testament law? Yikes. After all, the application of the
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Sabbath laws became a heavy burden during the times between the Testaments. All of those rabbis adding laws upon laws.
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And we have just some weird things. We remodeled our kitchen a couple of years ago. Had it remodeled, we got a new stove and it has a
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Sabbath setting on it. It's got an electric starter, but it actually has a pilot light so that you don't start a fire on the
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Sabbath. Because it's against rabbinical codes to start a fire on the Sabbath. So there's already a fire there.
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You're just turning it up or turning it down. Weird laws, right? We do all these kind of weird things around the
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Sabbath. They added, how many steps can you take? I heard a story from a guy who actually claims that he was the one in the taxi cab.
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But a Jew driving taxi in New York City on the
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Sabbath, and he's like, aren't you supposed to be not working today? And he has a bottle of water under his seat and he pulls it out and he says, the rabbis tell us that you can work on the
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Sabbath as long as you're traveling over water. Loopholes.
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How many of you know our hearts go to loopholes? They look at this and they say, how can I squeeze out from underneath this thing?
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So God commands me to eat ice cream and I go to Yoppa because it's yogurt. You get what
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I'm saying? We'll find ways to squeeze out from underneath God's rules. And for those of us who were raised in a variety of conservative
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West Michigan churches, Christian reform churches have their own rules surrounding that. In this very community that are centered around here, we might have our own stories of Sabbath legalisms.
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There was a deacon at the Baptist church where I was raised, where I was saved. A good church that preached the gospel. But he would drive through restaurant parking lots and make notes of whose cars were there on Sunday because you weren't supposed to eat out on Sundays.
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I think he thought of it as his unique ministry to the church to catch people eating out on the
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Sabbath. We laugh, but it's actually weird. A camp that I know and love used to hide all the sports balls on Sunday.
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Sports ball. To keep the campers from exerting themselves on Sunday, they thought of this primarily as keeping that day set apart.
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I think it was actually from a good motivation, but it's still kind of like pointing in a direction that's like, well, sports are out on Sunday.
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You can't do that. Going out and kicking a ball is a way of relaxing for some.
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I have so many memories and stories about Sabbath legalisms that it's been hard for me personally to try to come back to the concept of Sabbathing with a biblical perspective, not an anecdotal perspective.
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Do you guys get what I'm saying in that? So many anecdotes. So many stories. So many thoughts about this.
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That's where all the weirdness comes from. But coming back to the Bible and saying, do you hear Him calling, church? Do you hear
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Him calling? Come rest. Come rest. Cadence six and one.
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Come to a day of rest. I believe that even as the early church moved their day of rest, and they did, from the first day of the week, to the first day of the week, rather, from the last day, the
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Sabbath of the Jews, to the first day of the week, in honor of the resurrection, we are not held to a day of the week.
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God loves us enough to call us to rest in Him and to trust in Him with a day of the week. And I encourage you toward that end.
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Now, hear me again saying, nobody's gonna be in hell because they refused to rest one day a week. People will be in hell because they rejected the king and the grace of his forgiveness.
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But the regular question that comes up in almost any conversation you have with a Christian about Sabbath resting, am
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I required? Do I have to do this? And that, church, is the wrong question.
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It should give way to the question, for the one who loves Jesus, what does my Lord and King who loves me desire for me?
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Ask yourself that question. What does He want for us, Recast? What is
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He calling us to? I believe six days of work and one day of rest.
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Six days of work and one day of rest. He is calling us to specific order. He is calling us to a prescribed cadence of life for our benefit, for our good, for our faith, and for our trust in Him.
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Some of you might think you're doing great at this because you take a day off. You take a day off work, maybe even two each week, but without intentionality, you, like me, will not stumble into Sabbathing.
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Your Saturday and Sunday will be a hodgepodge of work. Do you know what I'm talking about? A day off where I find myself doing a lot of work in the middle of it.
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Thoughtlessly spent time doing whatever comes at you. Either you will manage your time or your time will manage you, right?
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It will just creep up on you and all of a sudden you find yourself filling out those reports. All of a sudden you find yourself getting ahead again.
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As we seek to apply this to our really busy lives, it might be good to consider if this passage is to be applied as law.
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Is this God laying law down to us? Absolutely not, but since when has law become the reason we do something for God?
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He desires from His new covenant people an obedience from the heart. We walk by faith. We are saved by His grace and not by our law keeping, and yet this passage is still here for us to read and to ponder
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His call to rest. We're a culture that worships work or despises work, but we are all busy.
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And we can go around a table of church leaders and find that we average about 55 hours of work each week.
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We've not been encouraged to Sabbath. And to be honest, calls to do so will bring accusations of legalism.
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Even just sending this message out, I got some thoughts about legalism in this.
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Or some misunderstood passages from the Gospels about Jesus healing on the Sabbath. But our
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Lord did fulfill the Sabbath, just like He fulfilled all law. He declared Himself, by the way, to be the
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Lord of the Sabbath, but He also told us that the Sabbath was made for man and not man made for the Sabbath, which has at its core, that might be a confusing phrase.
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What is He meaning by that? At its core, we get the understanding that practicing Sabbath rest is a good and beneficial blessing toward humanity from God.
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We would do better if we took Sabbath seriously. If we're honest, our day off each week often falls short of Sabbath rest.
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It's often filled up with the things we want to get to but haven't had time to the rest of the week. It's time to get our work done, right?
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In a Christianity Today article called Sabbath as Praying and Playing, Eugene Peterson calls a day off a bastard
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Sabbath. He says, Sabbath is not a free day to do errands or go on vacation.
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It is a special time devoted to pray and play with Jesus. Peterson isn't using a naughty to be controversial.
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He uses it quite technically. A day off is an illegitimate Sabbath. Do you get it?
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It's an illegitimate Sabbath. So as we hopefully recognize God's clear call to practice weekly
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Sabbath resting, let's also take on the words of the Apostle of Jesus Christ who tells us, Therefore let no one pass judgment.
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Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ says, Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a
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Sabbath. Don't start legislating this to each other. Don't start being legalistic toward one another.
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Don't start telling others how to practice Sabbath, what they can and can't do. The very thing that the church has done down through the ages, right, is to declare what you can and can't do on this day.
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But each one of us, become convicted in your own heart and convinced of what God is calling you to here this morning.
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We're not about to make law here and we're not going to be accepting any applications for Sabbath police here, fortunately, but I am going to let this call stand here in our midst.
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It's a strong call from our God, rooted in creation, to come and trust Him. He is carving out a one in seven space in your calendar and your life cadence to rest, to pray and to play, to explore
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His care and concern for you. My hope and prayer is that God might move in all of us to truly contemplate and consider what needs to change for us to respond to this call to rest.
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The next two messages are going to be fairly vital to understanding the whole concept of rest. I've not come close to exhausting all that the
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Scriptures have to say about Sabbath, and by the end of three sermons I also will not have exhausted everything that the
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Scriptures have to say about Sabbath, but we'll have a more rounded view of this in the coming weeks. The call to a one in every seven day of rest is clear from these texts.
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And those who follow our Lord, who says that He is the Lord of the Sabbath and that it was made for your own good, that one, if you're following Him, you should be challenged to proactively seek a more
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God -honoring cadence to our lives. Sabbath leads us into communion, by the way, in two ways.
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First, we see that Jesus has secured our rest in Him, and second, He turns law into delight.
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Our Lord and Savior turns law into delight. By paying for our sins, He brings us into the wide open spaces of joy and gladness and rest.
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We can cease any and all work for our salvation. We don't have to do it. He has done it.
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We learn rest by the way He has saved us by faith alone, but also the very law that was condemning towards us while we were lost in our sin, now becomes delight as we are set free to love
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Him. Love Him with an obedience from the heart. In His body broken for us and in His blood shed for us, we see
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His great love poured out on us and that great love leads us to love Him back, right?
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The call to live God's way should strike our ears less as work and more as a call to love
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Him. And amazingly, the call here this morning, the real call, is to rest in Him.
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So let's express that resting by faith in Jesus this morning during this next song by going to the tables to take the cracker and juice to remember
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His body and blood given for us. Any who have asked Jesus Christ to be your
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Lord and Savior and are at peace with others here in this gathering, with your brothers and sisters here, feel free to come to the rest that He has bought for you.
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Breathe a sigh of relief over your life as you take the cracker and the juice this morning and then let's go out from here listening to the
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Spirit's conviction over us. I think very few of us are nailing the Sabbath rest cadence in our lives. So hear
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God's call to weekly rest and then this week, wrestle with Him about what
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He desires for you to do about it. Let's pray. Father, I thank
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You for this moment that we have here now to go to these tables and express our trust in the ultimate rest given to us in the work that we feel we have to do for our salvation has been taken care of in what
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Jesus has done for us. We come back to this place every week to remember what
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He has done. He bled and He died and took the punishment in our place so that we can be made whole and right before You.
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Father, I pray that as this, I anticipate that this message has caused questions in people's minds, that there's going to be a wrestling and a turmoil in some hearts and souls over this.
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I recognize that we're a vast and diverse community where some are mothers of young children who are going, really?
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How do I do this? Some are working for employers that are not going to acknowledge this in the least.
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Some feel just hard -pressed on every side. Some are coaches who the tournaments are being pushed on to the weekends and traveling.
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We're not a culture that respects this anymore, but I'm not sure that matters that much to You.
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So Father, I pray that You would help us to wrestle, to heed, to consider
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Your call, to rest. I pray that You would bless any conversations that could happen as a result of this where there will be a wrestling with us and a trying to figure out and hear from You, and that's just a good thing.
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So Father, I pray that that would be the byproduct of this message, and that now in our fellowship and in our gathering that You would war against any kind of divisions that something like this might produce within us, that we would not police it, we would not judge one another regarding Sabbaths or laws or rules or holidays or any of those kinds of things, but Father, we would be a unified people recognizing
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Your freedom to act and work in Your people's lives for Your blessing and for Your good.