But It's My Day Off!! Series

What If They’re Wrong Series Exodus 20:8-11

“But It’s My Day Off”

It’s a fact of Scripture that we don’t have to observe the Sabbath.

The reason we don’t have to is that we are not Hebrew.

The Bible says, "The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant." (Exodus 31:16)

Because we don’t have to observe the Sabbath, it’s tempting to ignore this commandment altogether.

It’s tempting to say, "Well, since I’m not an Israelite, I’m not bound by this commandment. It really has no relevance in my culture or my life."

Does this commandment have significance?

Is it relevant for us today?

Our culture says no. It doesn’t have any relevance today.

Every day is the same as the next.

There’s nothing special about a day, except that the weekends are "mine."

"Sunday is my only day off. I should be able to spend it the way I want."

God’s word disagrees with that answer!"

The answer to each of those questions is "yes."

Yes this commandment is relevant.

Yes, it is significant.

Why?

Because we are still God’s people.

You might remember in Verse 2 that God said, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."

The letter of the law might not apply, but the principle of the law is just as valid and relevant today as it was when God gave it to Moses.

We might not need to observe the Sabbath, that period of time between 6pm Friday and 6pm Saturday, but we do need to observe "The Lord’s Day."

That’s the day that has significance for us.

That’s where the heart of the law is.

Setting aside a full day to worship the God who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in it.

We observe Sunday, the first day of the week, as the day we set apart for God because that’s when our Savior, Jesus Christ, rose from the dead.

Or do we?

There are two extremes governing the work ethic in our culture today.

A. The first extreme is to work 12 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.

That’s not good.

Look at the example God himself left for us.

God created everything in the universe in 6 days.

Now, you might disagree with me that God worked for only 6 literal days.

You might think that God did his work in "6 long periods of time" rather than 6 - 24 hour periods.

You might buy into what some people call "The Gap Theory" where God worked for a while, then waited for the dust to settle, then did some more work.

You might believe the earth is millions upon millions of years old.

I do not.

I believe that when God says in Genesis that he did it in 6 days, and he continually confirms those 6 days throughout the Bible, He did it in 6 literal days.

God set an example for us.

Work 6 days, then rest.

Work 6 more days, then rest.

And so on, and so on...

Wouldn’t have been much of an example for us if he had worked for 6 million years then taken a break.

Why did he do that?

Two reasons:

1. He understands better than all of us how the human body works.

After all, he built it from the ground up!

The body needs rest.

A human body just cannot tolerate repeated abuse.

At some point it will crash.

Look at how most people act when they’re tired:

The more tired a person is, the grumpier he is.

The more tired a person is the less alert he is.

The more tired a person is, the more dangerous he is.

Have you ever taken a long trip in your car?

Ever drive for hours and hours without a break?

What happens?

Your body begins to break down and you lose your focus.

Without rest, the body will break down and make you give it some rest.

You wouldn’t think of running your car 24/7, why would you do that to your body?

Fact is that in most cases we do it for money - whether ours or someone elses.

We’ve all heard of bosses that make their people work long hours like that without a substantial period of rest.

Owners of companies like that think they’ll lose money if they don’t work their employees to the bone.

You’d think they would want them to rest so they could work more effectively and efficiently, but lots of employers don’t think like that.

Our culture seems to have adopted this "work them until they drop, then get rid of them because they don’t work" sort of attitude.