Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Exodus 16. We’re going to look at several scripture passages this morning, but the biggest chunk is going to come from Exodus 16, so you can go ahead and turn there.
For the past several weeks we’ve been talking about developing spiritual disciplines. Daily and weekly habits that work to help you develop more and more into the image of Christ (Romans 12:1-2). The first week we worked our way through John 15, and we talked about how Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches on that vine. God tends to our spiritual lives like a master gardener tends to his vineyards. Our job is to remain on the vine. We do that through disciplines such as regular scripture reading, prayer, commitment to a community, and accountability. We call those the Habits of Abiding.
But when you look at John 15, God’s Word says that every branch that produces fruit, God prunes, so it can produce more fruit. [show pruning shears]. So there are some habits we develop in our lives that allow God to prune and set limits and give boundaries. We call these Habits of Pruning, and we’re going to look at the first one this morning.
SABBATH. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you see the word Sabbath? Sunday? Day of rest? Go to church? Chick-fil-a is closed? All good things. As we get into this, let’s first get an understanding of what the Bible means when it uses the word. And let’s understand first that before it was a noun, to talk about THE Sabbath, it was a verb. The Hebrew word Shavvath means to rest. When you Shavvaht, you stop working. Now, it became the name for the day of rest when God made it one of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20:8 says “Remember the Sabbath Day” (yom shavaath).
Coincidentally, or maybe not—maybe this was how the language evolved, the Hebrew word for “seventh” is similar to shavaath—its shevee-ee.
Now I say all this to remind us that Sabbath is both a noun and a verb
Yes, it’s a day that is set aside for us to honor the Lord. But it is also something we do. And I think one of our biggest problems as a society and one of our biggest sources of stress personally is that we don’t do it enough. Sabbath is missing from modern life.
Missing from modern life
Once upon a time, people believed that advances in technology would allow us to have more leisure time. In 1967, testimony was given before a subcommittee of the Senate on time management. The essence of it was that because of the advance in technology, within twenty years or so people would have to radically cut back on how many hours a week they worked, or how many weeks a year they worked, or else they would have to start retiring sooner. The great challenge, they said, was what people would do with all of their free time.”
That was fifty years ago…Here we are in 2021, and would you say you struggle with what to do with all of your free time? Is that what brought any of you to church this morning? Unfortunately we don’t have more free time, our lives haven’t slowed down since the 60’s, they’ve sped up, and we can’t seem to fit enough into our days. We have less time available because we are trying to do too much, and we wonder where all the time goes.
So we compensate by hurrying up, not slowing down. We tell people we are talking to to get to the point. When we come to two lanes at a traffic light, we pick the lane behind the Corvette instead of the Buick because we know they will gun it as soon as the light turns green. You listen to audiobooks at double speed so you can get through it faster.
There’s something almost blasphemous about the idea of totally resting, totally unplugging, making yourself totally unavailable for phone calls or email or anything work related for a time. It used to be that the status symbol was being part of the “leisure class.” But now, we’ve made being busy all the time a status symbol. Be honest: if you are at a party, or catching up with people that haven’t seen you in awhile, how many of you, when someone says “How are you?”, your first response is “Good… just really busy.”
Why do we do that? Are we trying to impress the other person? Are we trying to validate to ourselves that we are essential workers?
John Ortberg puts it this way in his book on spiritual disciplines:
Again and again, as we pursue spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry. For many of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.
John Ortberg
God offers a different way. And He modeled it at creation. Look at Genesis.
Modeled at Creation (Genesis 2:1-3)
Genesis 1 gives us the record of God’s creation of the earth. Everything we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell was created by God in six days. The last thing He creates is people, then He steps back, in verse 31 pronounces it all “very good” and then look what happens:
2 On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation. (Gen. 2:2-3)
Understand that God didn’t rest because He was tired. God doesn’t get tired. He doesn’t slumber or sleep. He rested because He was finished. And he rested so He could model rest for the people He just created.
Now, put yourself in Adam’s shoes for a minute (which you can’t really do, because he was naked, but work with me!). Realize that Day seven for God was Day One for Adam. I can imagine Adam jumping up and saying, “God! I am so glad you created me! I am rarin’ to go! What are we gonna do first?”
And God says, “Rest.”
And Adam must have been thinking, “But God, I just got here! I’m ready to go! It’s a whole new world! Don’t you want me to, like, name some animals or something?”
And God says, no. The first thing you are going to do is rest. Because that is going to remind you that I really don’t need your help to run the world. I’ve got this. You rest.
Actually, the modeling goes even deeper than that. Have you ever noticed that with each day of creation in Genesis 1, the Bible says, “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.” And so on.
You ever thought about that? In our thinking, when does a day begin? That’s right. Day begins with the morning. But in Hebrew thought, the day begins at sundown. When the Jews observe Sabbath, it’s from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday.
I think this is intentional. God wanted to remind His people that the world would still spin without them. So he said, “You know what the first thing I want you to do at the beginning of each new day is? I want you to go to bed. I want you to start the day with eight hours sleep. And let that remind you that I’m going to sustain the universe without your help. And I never slumber. I never sleep. I’ve got this. Sabbath was modeled at creation.
Second, Sabbath was Mandated in the Wilderness (Ex 16:21-30, 20:10-11; Dt 5:12-15)
This week, in my read the Bible through in a year plan, I’m in the book of Exodus. And I noticed something I truly had never noticed before. I’ve known that the Ten Commandments are in Exodus 20. And I knew that “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy” is the Fourth Commandment. But I had never noticed that God actually gave the command to observe a rest from work before the Ten Commandments.
In Exodus 16, the Israelite community had been in the desert for about six weeks. Just one chapter before, they had crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, and had seen the entire Egyptian army drowned when the water closed back over them. Now in chapter 16, they look around and they’re like, “We’re in a desert! We’re hungry! Where are we gonna get food?” So God provides bread for them in the morning, and in the evening, flocks of quail came down every night and covered the camp. So they had carbs in the morning and protein at night. Perfect!
The people were instructed to gather only enough to feed them for a day. If they tried to gather too much, it would spoil. But on the sixth day, God told His people to gather twice as much as they did on the other days. Check out the instructions, beginning in verse 22:
22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much food, four quarts[d] apiece, and all the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He told them, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Tomorrow is a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil, and set aside everything left over to be kept until morning.’”
24 So they set it aside until morning as Moses commanded, and it didn’t stink or have maggots in it. 25 “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you won’t find any in the field. 26 For six days you will gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.”
As you read the Bible, it’s always a good exercise to pay attention to the first time a word or a concept is introduced. And so here, Exodus 16:23, is the first time the word “Sabbath” is used in English translations of the Bible. To be clear, shabat (rest) has been used ever since Genesis 1. But the Sabbath Day as an observance is something new. And I think this is huge. God told His people to take a day of complete rest in the middle of the wilderness!! In the middle of one of the most hectic times in their history, God says, “I want you to take a day off.”
We would have done it differently, wouldn’t we? We would have said, “Look, I know things are really crazy right now. You’ve just come out of 400 years of slavery. The Egyptian army has been at your heels trying to recapture you for six weeks. You’re still forty years away from the Promised Land. So this is probably not a good time to be talking about a day off. BUT, when things settle down, it would be a really good idea for you to carve out some “me” time.
No. It was in the midst of their wilderness wanderings. It was when they were at their most “bewildered” (props to Stacey for that one—she pointed out to me this week that the origin of the word “bewildered” is the feeling of being lost and aimless in a wilderness)—it was when they were at their most frazzled and stressed and bewildered that God said stop working. For a whole day, rest, and remember that I’m in charge. Once again, God says, “Take a day to remember I’ve got this!”
When we are bewildered, Sabbath helps us get “dewildered.”
Four chapters later, God made it a commandment. Not just any commandment—it made God’s Top Ten list! On top of that, the commandment to remember the Sabbath is the longest of the ten. It has more verses, more words, and more mentions elsewhere in Scripture than any other commandment. More attention is given to keeping the Sabbath and breaking the Sabbath and how to make sure you keep it and what kind of punishment to give to people that break it than all the other commandments combined!
Why is that? Maybe because it’s so counter intuitive. I imagine it had to be hard for the Israelites, just coming out of slavery, to take a day off. They hadn’t had a day off for four hundred years. That’s not too hard for us to understand in our modern world, is it? We are slaves to so many things—work, school, sports, schedules, status-- that the idea of fully and totally resting is hard to wrap our heads around. I think that’s why God says, in Deuteronomy:
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Dt. 5:15)
Were. Not are. Was. Not is. God says, take a Sabbath to remind yourselves that you aren’t slaves anymore. I’ve rescued you! I’ve ransomed you! And in me, you truly find rest.
And that brings us to our final point. Sabbath was modeled in creation. It was mandated in the wilderness. But number three, Sabbath is …
Made Complete in Christ (Hebrews 4:9-10)
Do you remember what we said at the very beginning of this sermon, about why God rested on the seventh day? It wasn’t because He was tired. It was because He was finished. The work was done. And in the New Testament book of Hebrews, the writer picks up on that same image. The writer says, in Hebrews 4:9:
9 Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. 10 For the person who has entered his rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from his.
Just as in Genesis God finished the work of creation, on the cross God finished the work of redemption. When Jesus came to live and die for us, He completed the restoration project that God set in motion the moment we rebelled against Him in the Garden. That’s why the final words of Jesus on the cross were “It is finished!” (John 19:30).
What is finished? The work of salvation. In His death and resurrection, Jesus has done everything needed to unite us back to God the Father. There is not a single thing to add, but there is everything to receive. Justin Whitmel Early put it beautifully. In his book The Common Rule, he says “It is finished is the lullaby of all things, our restless hearts included.”
Oh, beloved church, don’t you need that reminder today? God commands you to rest, not just to remind you that He’s got this, but also to remind you that He’s got you. You aren’t anyone else’s slave. You don’t have to live your life to please anyone else. If you have surrendered your life to His Lordship, repented of your sins, and trusted Him for salvation, you are God’s child, you have His favor, you don’t have to perform for Him or measure up to Him. All you have to do is rest in Him.
Which is why it’s so important to not make the Sabbath into some kind of legalistic checklist, where we wind up exchanging one kind of slavery for another. I think of all the commandments, this command to remember the Sabbath day has been the most abused and the most misunderstood. We’ve made it into a checklist: I went to church. I didn’t go shopping. I didn’t mow the lawn or wash the car or go see a movie. I remembered the Sabbath day, and kept it holy.
Now, those aren’t bad things. In fact. For all our talk about getting back to Christian values in America, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea for us to take the Sabbath a little more seriously. Maybe we shouldn’t go shopping or out to eat on the Lord’s day, at the very least because you are forcing someone else to break the commandment just to accommodate you. Maybe you should tell your kids’ travel ball coach that you aren’t going to play in tournaments or practice if it’s going to keep you out of church.
Maybe, before we get all knotted up about the government not allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public property, we should ask ourselves how serious we are about displaying them in our personal lives.
But Jesus made it clear that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). Jesus never shied away from helping someone else on the Sabbath. He made the lame walk on the Sabbath. He made the blind see on the Sabbath. But he also made sure he took time to get away and get some rest with His disciples. And the Bible makes it clear that He didn’t just do this when things slowed down. In Mark 6:31, God’s Word tells us that
because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
The point is, we don’t just “remember the Sabbath,” we have to “remember to Sabbath.” One day a week, we are to cease our work. We are to rest. We are to remember that God’s God this.
And He’s got you.
[INVITATION]
