Sermon Cloud

September 27, 2009

Exodus 20 “Fourth Commandment- Work and Rest”

Looking Backward and Forward

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and 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. Sounds great! The trick is that we don’t know how to rest in a soul reviving way. This command is all about a rhythm that God has established from the beginning.  Verse 11 roots it there.  God worked for 6 and rested on the 7^th.  That doesn’t mean He was winded or emotionally worn out though.  In fact, I think this passage would give us insight as it looks back into creation.  He made a Sabbath for Him. 

The foundation of our command to rest and consecrate a holy day for God is that God stepped back from His work and was pleased in His reflection in it.  God delights in His own work and for Him its not prideful even a little!  In His grace, He invites humanity to step back similarly from our work and be pleased with God’s reflection in the world around us and in the work we’ve done.   We work for God’s glory whether that’s selling insurance or providing health care or managing portfolios or studying for exams or preparing lesson plans.  We work for Him and then we rest in Him.  This is the rhythm that God established form the beginning and is reaffirmed here as God moves His people into the land of promise.  In fact, when they get into the land, it is sometimes described as “rest.”  The land was a picture of the rest that follows the difficult travel. 

But it doesn’t stop.  Look at how the NT develops this theme of rest.  Hebrews 4:8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  Hmm.  So Joshua’s rest was real.  A good off day is good and real.  But that’s not all there is.  There is another greater rest that the rest rhythm points towards:  Resting in God’s finished work in Jesus.  We rest from our work of trying to approach God on our merits and instead rest from our works.  So spiritually we are now called to do what the OT pointed God’s people to do physically.  It’s been given by faith in Jesus!  And then when we die, we enter total rest in Jesus.  This is why a lot of the old hymns would talk about crossing the river Jordan.  They’ve captured this redemptive theme.  Just like Israel was moving towards a physical Sabbath rest as they crossed the Jordan river into the land of promise where they could safely enjoy the weekly Sabbath rest, we cross over spiritually into a much greater rest.  What a picture!  No more pain.  Just rest and abundance and perfect unity together in worship of God.  That’s beautiful.  Sabbath points back and forward.

Wow, this is practical!
            This is good stuff, no?  God was establishing a rhythm from the beginning that would be used to reveal more about Himself as time went on. 

1. Rest and Salvation. First, you can vacation all you want and take good off days, and you will miss the spiritual revitalization that happens when we Sabbath well.  To do this and to find soul rest we have to make sure we’ve gone to Jesus like Hebrews 4 taught us.  Have you?  Are you still depending on your niceness to be ok here?  So let me point you to Him first.  Only in Jesus will our off days and naps give us soul rest.  This is the real solution to our rest problem:  We can work and rest rightly when we consider the work that Jesus finished on the cross and our rest that is secured by Him.  We can get a taste of our final rest in Him when we work hard for His pleasure and then rest in Him and know that while there are things to do, nothing needs to be done.  I want to make sure you catch me here that you miss the point of the 4^th command if you just protect off days better.  The gospel is the spring we drink from to work and rest rightly. The trick is that because Sabbath rhythm is about our relationship with Jesus, how we actually live out work/rest rhythms likely shows how those eternal realities are progressing (or not progressing!) in us. 

2.  My story.  Preparation for this sermon was almost nothing but repentance.  Short of a couple of weeks to the mountains this summer, I can’t think of a single day until the past Saturday where I didn’t have any work to do that related to my job.  Here’s the problem with allowing work to creep in to every pocket of your life:  Its one of those sins that we are a little proud of.  A lot you are thinking, “I am a little worried about you, but on the other hand, attaboy!”  So my heart is very capable of confessing my sin here, but wearing it like a badge of honor.  The problem is that the last year of my life has been a horrible reminder that even though I have on a macro level embraced Jesus’ rest for my salvation, I have done a terrible job of living out a life that demonstrates a healthy rhythm of work and rest that images my soul rest in Jesus.  Trust me, this is not a badge of honor

            I hit a wall with it all about a few weeks ago.  It was a somewhat typical Saturday in the Thompson house.  Actually, it was a relatively calm one.  I had a good friend in town.  Amy took Roman to get a bday present for a friend, we had Shawn and Chase and Brit over for lunch.  The lunch runs long.  I have to eat my fajita as I am putting on my suit to do a wedding.  Amy has JJ and our friends over, so her mom comes over to bail us out on getting Roman to his friends’ birthday party that is happening at the same time I need to be at the wedding. I jokingly thanked her for helping in the middle of our two minute drill.  She wasn’t trying to be mean, but she responded, “Your whole life is a two minute drill.”  Or maybe she did!  Ouch.  I was miserable in my regular 5 nights of commitments a week and she just hit the nail on the head.  Would my life image out a healthy balance of work-rest rhythms that originates in a soul that is working and resting in the right way?  I don’t think it part of my home is in the least bit attractive to my non-believing friends or helpful to any of you.   So why do I struggle with it?  If I believe that I am enough and that I can rest in Jesus because of His cross, then what’s my deal?

3.  What’s really driving this?  Good question. But let’s go back to lots of you in here that have some serious work issues.  We talked last week about looking at the sin beneath the sin.  What is that here?  You can’t stop emailing on Saturday morning.  Why?  You set up one more meeting.  Why?  You work late.  Again.  Why?  And you know it’s not just for a season, but it’s a pattern.  The reason I think you’ll see is that you have lots of identity tied into your productivity or success.  You feel bad about yourself when you aren’t accomplishing.  Or you are so focused on the bottom line of success that you just can hardly step away?

There are lots of you that are thinking, “Excellent!  A sermon about taking more vacations and having more downtime and more naps!”  Well, for some of us, we are well rested alright.  I seriously doubt that your soul is rested though even if you are getting plenty of sleep and having plenty of fun.  Part of the reason that I say that is because these rhythms go together.  Good rest where you step away from your work and look to Jesus and enjoy Him and people close to you gives you new energy for your vocational work and for the work of the kingdom.  You might actually put better effort in your classes or job.  You might get a little less sleep sometimes.  You might take time for people that cost you some ease of life.  So living a life with lots of rest with little work is a killer and is a dead end.  Naps and vacations won’t save you.  Having 7 nights a week of family time is no more life giving than my 5 nights of commitments. What’s your sin beneath the sin of failing to work well?  Maybe comfort, predictability, ease.           

4.  What rest looks like.  Most of us in here need to look to Jesus and honor Him by demonstrating this sort of rhythm on a weekly basis.  Your schedules are the same.  So for you, work hard and then put the iphone down and spend time with your friends and family and separate out time to rest in Jesus.  When you say “no” to work then, the only reason you’ll have when it could cost you money is because your work before Jesus is done because Jesus finished His work on the cross!  So good Sabbathing is radically gospel centered!  It’s not just a day of football, although it almost always includes it for me.  Historically, lots of Christians have done this on Sundays.  Worship with the church, spend time with your family.  Sabbath isn’t necessarily an individual sport!  But it is looking to Jesus and saying no to work.  It could be Thursday or whenever.  Don’t worry about when, but just rest your soul, mind, and heart.

            Saying no might be the most God honoring and sanity giving thing you can do.  On the other hand, lots of say no to everything and have obsesses vacation and family time and your rest isn’t real rest because it’s not driving you to good work and mission.  Too much of either will kill you in different ways and proper gospel rhythm that plays itself out in proper work-rest rhythm will bring life to you and the world around you. 

5.  Exceptions.  But lots of don’t have Monday-Friday 8-5 type gigs.  Some of you are getting killed in med school or trying to go to school while working part time.  Farmers and football coaches get smoked right about now and then they’ve got lots of time on their hands at other times.  Moms with kids in diapers at home can wonder what happened to those restful Saturday mornings a few years ago with their coffee and Bible and, um, quiet.  What does Sabbath look like when your work needs to feed every 4 hours?  Let me encourage you guys for a minute.

            First, if your work is seasonal, then your rhythms may be less weekly and more seasonal.  If you have to get cotton out of the ground, then it may be 24/7 for a few weeks. Planting season may require total attention.  But you have down times that require relatively little.  Sabbath deeply there.  You are a teacher.  Summer needs to be rejuvenating to the body and soul as you look to Jesus in a focused and prolonged way. Model the gospel by having good work-rest rhythm.

            Second, if there is no end in sight because of life stage issues, remember that Sabbath was made or man, not man for the Sabbath (Jesus told us this!).  Work for Jesus and know the residency will end, the kids will grow and mature, and sanity will be restored.  Make it your aim as soon as you have freedom of schedule to restore rhythm.  In the mean time, mom, ask your husband to take the kids for donuts and put some bubble bath in and light some candles and put a worship CD and have 30 minutes of Sabbath and enjoy Jesus.  A little will go a long way!

            No, we aren’t bound to observing the Sabbath in the same way as the Jews of old, but these rhythms are for our good and remind us of eternal realities.  Let’s not deny the gospel by believing that our work is never finished.  It is.  Let’s bust it this week and then rest well for His glory.   Communion seems like a good way to acknowledge Christ’s work and our desire to work for Him and rest in Him and His finished work!