Sermons from Lone Rock Bible Church
Stevensville, MT
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May 7, 2006

Sabbath: Remember, Rest, Refocus, Rejoice (Part 2)
Exodus 20:8-11

As we continue to trace this fourth commandment from God through the Bible and history, we will no doubt come away grateful that the Lord has sought to give us such a blessing as a special day of rest!

1. Genesis and creation: The roots of rest
2. Exodus and commandment: The rule of rest
3. Apostasy and distortion: The ruin of rest 

Exodus 20
⁸"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
⁹"Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
¹⁰but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
¹¹"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 made it holy.  

I’m going to read from Numbers 15, beginning in verse 32. As the children of Israel now wandering have received the commandments and agreed to do them and have then rebelled and been sentenced to 40 years of wilderness wandering.

³²Now while the sons of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.
³³Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation;
³⁴and they put him in custody because it had not been declared what should be done to him.
³⁵Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp."
³⁶So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Was God preeminently concerned with the activity? Is that one activity that ought to be left off our list? We shall see. If nothing else, we can talk about the economy of God with the children of Israel and their wanderings in the wilderness and His unique dealing with them as such, but say what we might about these verses, obviously the Sabbath is serious and God’s people are called to keep it.  Exactly what that means is the reason we are here. An accurate handle of scripture will help us.

We are working our way through the Bible basically chronologically. Sabbath, which means rest, is one of those words in the Bible that is not translated; it is simply transliterated. The Sabbath of the Lord is the rest with regard to the Lord. That is what the word means.

A week ago we talked about Genesis and creation, the roots of rest. We mentioned that in those opening chapters of the Bible, at creation, God ordained three institutions. One is marriage, one is work, and the third is rest. He rested on the seventh day. It is interesting that while marriage and work seem to be OK with us; the notion of rest is disputed.

Today we want to get into the book of Exodus, to talk about the commandment itself, the rule of rest. I want to start in Exodus 14, with a fairly significant verse that might be categorized as one of those mystery verses in the Bible. Occasionally we run across a mystery verse -- that’s a verse nobody knows about and so we discover that and want to point it out.

In Exodus 14, the children of Israel have successfully crossed the Red Sea. God has delivered them by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. He has executed the ten plagues upon the land of Egypt. He has impressed the Egyptians from the least to the greatest with what He could do. The sea stood up, the children of Israel crossed on dry ground. Egyptians pursued and they were destroyed in the flood that followed. An interesting statement is made in Exodus 14:30:

³⁰Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.
³¹When Israel saw the great power which the LORD had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD,

Feared the LORD -- that is, they revered Him. They found themselves with a heart for Him.

And they believed in the LORD and His servant Moses.

This has to be a brief statement of a high water mark in the spiritual life of the nation of Israel as a whole. Does it say every single individual Israelite was regenerated by the Spirit of God? Not necessarily, but they, as a people, were characterized by heart belief and reverence for the LORD because He had saved them. It is very important for us to remember the order of things.

Recall now when the children of Israel were languishing in the land of Egypt under the thumb of Egyptians and making bricks, and no straw. It was a miserable, miserable time for them. God did not come to them and say, OK, people -- I have these commandments. There are ten main ones and then there are another 600 or so that support the ten and once you have kept them, I’ll get you out of here. That is NOT how it worked! God showed Himself strong to His people, delivered them through the blood of the Passover lamb and through His miraculous power and His grace, got them on the other side of the Red Sea to a place of safety from the Egyptians. The verse says they believed Him, they feared Him. They were, in a word, right with Him and then He began telling them this is how we are going to do it.

We have to have that order established. Passover came before Sinai -- Sinai, where the law was given. First there was deliverance, salvation, rescue, redemption. Then came the rules, if you will.

The Law then, now that they are saved and out of the slavery relationship, is for several purposes. This may be review, but it is important before we get into number four commandment that we remember these things. The Law is fundamentally for God’s people to have a right relationship with Him. That means the Law, in reflecting His character, reminding us continually how perfect He is, draws us to Him while at the same time reminding us how we do not measure up. He is perfect and He is perfect in every fashion. We look at Him and stare intently at Him and we realize by contrast, “I just don’t have it, do I?” The answer to that: Correct, you do not and neither do I. That is why we need His grace.

The Law reflects His character. The Law provides our conviction of sin and our need of His grace and gives us the grounds for communing with Him. It is a wonderful thing. That’s why the Psalmist could speak about, in the 19^th Psalm, how wonderful is the law of the Lord. It restores the soul. It enlightens the eyes. It is sweeter than honey because it provides us all this beautiful truth about the God of heaven.

The second reason: As a testimony to the world. As people walk in a right relationship with God, His glory is seen in them and God even promised a unique blessing to them. The world, by design, would look at that and say, “Wow, they have a God completely unlike ours. As a matter of fact, I am not sure we have one. Let’s go see what the Israelites have. Let’s check out their God.” History demonstrates that the Israelites did poorly at that, but the design did not change. The Law was to give the people a testimony before the world. Don’t be like those peoples into whose land you are going. Be perfect as I am perfect.

Finally, the purpose of the Law -- all these people, teeming masses of people, living first in the wilderness and then occupying a land that God was giving them, the Law from the standpoint of its civil dimension helped them live in harmony with one another. So those are the purposes of the Law, the right relationship with God, a testimony to the world, harmony with one another. But all of it followed the deliverance. God did not say do all this stuff and then we will do business, not at all.

That takes us to the 16^th chapter of Exodus. Still in the wilderness, they have not yet gotten to Mt Sinai. So the Ten Commandments have not yet been given. 

Exodus 16
¹³So it came about at evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.
¹⁴When the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as the frost on the ground.
¹⁵When the sons of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?"

“What is it?” -- Ma Na. This is what it is. Ma is an interrogative pronoun “what.” and Na is an indefinite word for an object. They are saying, “What is this?” in their language, Ma Na, and that’s how it got its name. So manna is established as God’s gracious provision to these people. They feared Him, they revered Him and they believed Him. He says watch how I provide. He provides them with the Ma Na and things are looking pretty good. They say, “Ma Na - what is this?” Moses said to them, “It is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat.

I labored for many years assuming that the only thing the children of Israel ever ate was manna. They had manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna grits, manna gravy and manna bread. Just manna. But they also had flocks and herds, so to supplement the manna diet they certainly had meat and dairy. So this is what the LORD has commanded.

¹⁶"This is what the LORD has commanded, 'Gather of it every man as much as he should eat; you shall take an omer apiece according to the number of persons each of you has in his tent.'"
¹⁷The sons of Israel did so, and some gathered much and some little.
¹⁸When they measured it with an omer, he who had gathered much had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no lack; every man gathered as much as he should eat.
¹⁹Moses said to them, "Let no man leave any of it until morning."
²⁰But they did not listen to Moses, and some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul; and Moses was angry with them.
²¹They gathered it morning by morning, every man as much as he should eat; but when the sun grew hot, it would melt.
²²Now on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses,
²³then he said to them, "This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a sabbath observance, [that is what Sabbath means, Shabbat, rest] a holy sabbath to the LORD Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning."

This means that the people had a knowledge of God’s day of rest prior to the giving of the Ten on Mount Sinai. It was not a surprise to them. It was not news to them -- what He is going to say to them from the mountain. They already understood and they already had good hearts and God was providing manna for them.

They assumed there would be a Sabbath rest, which is why in Exodus 20:8, Moses can begin with “Remember the Sabbath.” This was not something he had to draw a picture for them. They already understood the seventh day, the day of rest, no doubt traceable to Genesis which had by then become a part of their heritage. So the Sabbath was not new. It was an institution not unknown to them.

Exodus 20:8 -- Remember the rest day to keep it special. Holiness is not identical with purity. Purity may be a moral expression of holiness but holiness essentially means separateness, uniqueness, in a class apart, specialness.

Remember the rest day, or the day of rest, to keep it special. Special -- it’s correct, it’s accurate, so remember that, he tells the people as the fourth of the Ten Commandments.

¹⁰but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work,

He had choices for the word “work.” It means the work of your livelihood. Lay off your job. He is not saying do not go putter in the garden. He is saying lay off your job.  

you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

Everybody, everything. Lay off your job on the special day.

¹¹"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 made it holy [special].

God set an example by resting or ceasing His activity on that seventh day and enjoining His people to do likewise. There is a day, He is saying, for you to stop, to remember, taking them back to creation. Remember whose day this is. Remember the six days He has given you in ordained, God-honoring work. Those are His six days. It is His work He has given you to do as a steward. All of this will engage your life to such a degree that on the seventh day you need to stop and remember what it is all about.

Remember that your livelihood is not just you and your frenetic activity keeping yourself afloat. Your livelihood is a gift of God. He gave it to you. He can take it away. It is His. He is sovereign over time. That is what the commandment means.

Turn to Deuteronomy 5, the second giving of the Law, for an interesting sidebar.  In Deuteronomy 5, beginning in verse 12, the Sabbath law is given a second time. It sounds a lot like the first giving with an important distinction.

In Deuteronomy 5, it does not say “remember.” Now with the end of the wilderness wandering, they are getting ready to occupy the Promised Land and he says:

¹²'Observe the sabbath day [the rest day] to keep it holy [special], as the LORD your God commanded you.
¹³'Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
¹⁴but the seventh day is a Sabbath [a rest day] of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
¹⁵'You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

Isn’t that interesting? At the close of the wandering, the principle is unchanged. The holy day, the special day, and the notion of ceasing from work stand, but He is throwing in something a little additional. Remember that the LORD your God saved you. It is a day for God’s people to remember not only His creation, not only His lordship over time and His gift of work and so forth, but to remember His saving work.

Secondly, rest -- the second key word in those verses. The first is to remember, the second is rest. Come away from your worldly livelihood. I don’t mean sinful livelihood, I mean whatever it is you do. Come away from the work you do. Every legitimate occupation is special and God-ordained. We will rule out cocaine trafficking and such like, but legitimate productive work -- come away from that, remembering the lordship of God.

Third, recall or reflect upon God’s greatness in salvation. Those are the pursuits of the day of rest, as we understand them, from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. I have listed a couple principles of what this means. We are trying to pick this material up, transport it 3500 hundred or so years forward to you and me. A week from now we will be dealing with how Jesus handled Sabbath and how the church has handled Sabbath for these many years, but the principles that are established in Genesis and Exodus and Numbers and Deuteronomy have not gone away. They are here with us.

The first principle -- God is sovereign over time. God is lord over our time. It is interesting how the Ten Commandments serve to illustrate the character of God. Commandment number one: You shall have no other gods besides Me, the sanctity of God Himself.

Secondly, do not make any graven images, no idols. Do not try to represent Me because in so doing you will be inadequate and you will misrepresent Me. Do not even try. There is no image you can come up with that will even remotely come close.

Commandment number two -- the sanctity then of worship. Do not be worshipping anything you can see because God cannot be seen.

Third, do not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. We said quite a few things about that. Simply put, the sanctity of speech and communication, reflecting who God is. Do not mess with it. He is Lord over that too.

Fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath day, the day of rest and keep it holy. Sanctity of time is among our most valuable commodities. God is sovereign over time, first with regard to work. Work was ordained by God  before the fall. He gave His new creation responsibility over nature in supervision and in work and in requiring creativity and imagination and responding to their gifts, which at that point were not corrupted by sin. It must have been an amazing time.

All work that is legitimate is sacred, is God-ordained. If God gifts and calls someone to build houses, build houses for God. Crunch numbers for God. Deliver mail for God. All work that is legitimate is sacred. It is God-ordained.

I can remember a number of years ago I had an interesting job as the refiner at a goldmine. The situation was we hired a number of drilling rigs. They run on tracks, look like a little tractor rig and they can be steered around. Then they drop this drill bit at certain points according to a grid every ten feet or so and they would start drilling on this grid. At five feet you take a dirt sample, put it in a bag. At ten feet take a dirt sample and put it in a bag. Then at fifteen feet another sample is taken and twenty feet another sample. Record on the bag where all this is as per the grid, take it back to the assay lab and figure out where the gold is. That’s how it works.

These guys that ran the drills fascinated me. It is noisy, filthy and monotonous. I remember one time I was standing out there watching this guy, dew rag under the hard hat, Marlboro hanging out his mouth, dust on everything. He is filthy, coated with dirt. He gets done. He jerks that lever, the drill bit comes out. He looks over and says, “Man, that’s a good hole!” That’s how it should be. He was delighting in the work God had given him to do and that is good. That’s how it ought to be.

It is so critical when it comes to work if you can do what God has wired you to do, that’s a good thing. That’s a gift! To be able to get up in the morning and to go out to wherever you go and realize God has this for me. That is a good thing and God is simply saying one day a week stop and remember that.

So God is sovereign over time with regard to work and also with regard to rest. God rested. He ceased His activity on the seventh day and we need to be reminded who is Lord. I do not know an adequate way to reflect and to ponder and to be able to chew on this sort of truth during activity. It takes rest to reflect well. How else is it done? We need to go on a retreat. A retreat -- that means get away where it is quiet and rest and reflect on God’s saving work, on His glory, on His goodness, and on His grace. That does not happen by accident and it does not happen in the flurry of a busy life. I have yet to meet anyone who says, “I just don’t have anything to do.” Everybody is busy. Church work is as guilty at keeping people busy as any other kind.

The only way to reflect, the only way truly to remember is to stop what we are doing. God knows that. He wired us accordingly. Without rest, how do we remember who is Lord? God told His nation out of all the nations in the civilized world in the ancient Near East in that day, I want My people, the Israelites, to rest and to remember Me.

It is for your well being, certainly for physical well being. You need a break. Your body needs to get caught up and rejuvenated. It’s a physical thing. It is an emotional thing, particularly depending on what you do. Sometimes we just need emotionally to chill out and get a break. It helps. It helps us socially because so much of what we do on a day of rest is done with others of like mind. We are able to enjoy the grace of God in the company of others. It certainly is good for us spiritually that we stop, that we rest and that we remember.

It is a day of joy to be anticipated. We look forward to it but it is kind of like when I was in the service. One thing I could not wait for was my leave time. A week or two weeks away, tickets are bought and I get to go home. A funny thing about that, for me anyway, as soon as I got home the first thing I am thinking of is, I only have ten more days. There is this unhealthy anticipation. When people get this day off after working hard or being busy, it is probably not all that unusual to say, “Tomorrow I’ll be back at it.” Won’t it be nice when some day I’ll get to rest for good. That is what God has in mind with His glorious home He has prepared for His people in heaven. Someday we will get to rest for good with Him and that day will be grand.

Principle number two: That means our attitude is absolutely everything. It is critical. It is important. It is key because God in heaven has given us a good thing. He blessed the Sabbath and He declared it to be a good thing. So He gives us a good thing and how do we handle it? There are right and wrong ways.

Let me return to Numbers 15, the story of firewood gathering. We tend to think if we do not look carefully at what is going on, that here is some poor sap and he needs more firewood. There is nothing going on, he has already had his nap, so he is just out there wandering, picking up a few sticks and somebody sees him. First thing you know they had a trial and he is out being rocked to sleep. Is that really what is happening? No, that is not what is happening because the context does not give us that.

Just prior to that episode in Numbers 15:32, we have some pretty serious laws about people who sin intentionally. We sin, hopefully unintentionally, sometimes though it is intentional and under certain circumstances God takes that intentional thing very seriously because it reflects an attitude that says, “No!” It is an attitude of overt rebellion. It is an attitude that says I don’t care about what God wants I want what I want. That is what is happening here.

³⁰'But the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.

³¹'Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken His commandment, that person shall be completely cut off; his guilt will be on him.

And then intentionally, the author inserts this anecdote to illustrate that point. I would not be surprised to learn that this individual made a living hawking wood, and he decided, “Nuts to the Sabbath. I don’t care. I know where there is some wood and everybody else is resting. I can get it first and I don’t care.” It’s that “I don’t care” attitude, that flippant, cavalier “nuts” attitude that God is concerned about, particularly for His people. So we had better care.

Attitude means more than precisely what we engage in. Saul learned that lesson the hard way and David confirmed it. Here are several examples of that attitude. The guy in Numbers 15 had a terrible attitude. Either he didn’t need God or he didn’t like God or he liked money more, but he paid. In our day, here are several possibilities:

“My work is the most important thing I do.” This is a particular problem with men, men who have this “I need to be important” sort of thing about them. So “my work defines me and makes me significant, makes me somebody, and so my work is most important.” That is wrong. Your work is a gift, a calling, from a benevolent God. Be grateful, take a day and be grateful.

“My play is the most important thing I do. I hate work, but it pays well so on the weekends, Katy bar the door. I’m out of here. I can be just as close to God up in the mountains, closer than I can be down here on the valley floor. Here I go.” That is a cavalier, flippant disregard for what God wants. My play is not the most important thing I do. It too is a blessing from God, the opportunity to rest and re-create or recreate. There is nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with the activity, but the attitude that says this is the most important -- that is wrong.

“My family is the most important. If we don’t just go be a family, why something is horribly wrong.”  No, the family is not sovereign. God is sovereign. What the family needs is an ongoing, appreciative knowledge of that fact.

How about this for a good attitude: “He is Lord, first of all. He has blessed me tremendously. He has saved me. He has sent His Son to pay for my sins on the cross and beyond that, He has been so patient with me. He has provided for me everything. He knows what I need. He knows what we need. He designed me, created me, sustains me and numbers my days. He has given me a position of responsibility in some sense, perhaps in the home, perhaps in the community, perhaps in the church. He has given me this. How best can I enjoy this day of rest? That is how we are to approach the day of rest in principle. How best can I enjoy this day of rest? Does that mean I can never go to the mountains? Does that mean I cannot carry a compound bow? What does it mean? It means the individual before God and in the light of his or her responsibilities asks this question deliberately and conscientiously: “God, you are sovereign over time, over my work, over my recreation, over my home. You have given me all of this. How best can I enjoy this blessing, this good gift of a day off?”

Go rest. It is a good thing. It is a blessed thing. It is what God has provided. How best can I enjoy it? We are to remember, so worship is important. Fellowship is important. Family is important. Relaxation is important. The diversion from the weekly burdens is important. All of these point forward to the Big Rest someday. That is where Jesus takes it. We will get there eventually, in the Bible, as we explore this.