My name is John Dunkley, and this is study number 16 in the 2013 New Creation Teaching Ministry Summer School. And the title of my study is The Sign of Sabbath Rest. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. So God looked back over all that he had made with humanity at the centre of his purpose. And he said, how good it is. Nothing was deficient, nothing missing, it was complete and perfect in every way. He can now rest from the work of creating because all is complete, all is finished. not simply as a magnificent work of art, but as a creation, good and functional in every part, perfectly equipped and poised to fulfil his grand purpose that he has planned for it. About a year ago, my wife and I laboured to finish a new deck at the rear of our house. This is no ordinary deck, this is a deck with style. Quite miraculously, my eldest daughter met an American family, nearly homeless, and they spent the Christmas with us, and he's a builder, and he suggested we put the decking boards on angle, diagonally, and use hidden connectors, not screws. and make nice borders around the edges. So we never disagreed with him. We thought it sounded wonderful. And we didn't realise the extra effort and the time that it would take to do it this way. Neither did our American friend. He had a hidden connector system that he was used to in America. We couldn't get that. So we got an Australian version. And he did a few boards and then quietly disappeared from that part of the job. Still a good friend. After spending a whole day with my wife attaching four boards, my dear helpmate suggested we send the special connecting system back interstate to the company we bought it from. I said, no dear, we're not giving up. We're going to finish what we've begun. So we did, through sweat, blood, and tears. Over the next two months, we finished it. with the marriage still intact, with hidden connectors. I remember the day when we finally fitted the last few boards. It was like crawling over the finishing line after a 100km marathon. The blessed deck is finally finished. There was no great joy or exhilarating contentment in what we'd achieved. I did not have the energy to think about how we might use the deck. We'd survived and that was enough. We were in recovery mode. A few days later, when my wife and I were able to talk to each other again, I began to realise how functional, how perfectly suited the deck was for enjoying our garden and entertaining family and friends. So we began to sit back and enjoy what we had achieved. It was lovely to rest in knowing what we had accomplished, full of anticipation of the fun and the pleasure of family and friends gathering there in the years to come. And so we entered into the wonderful state of having completed what we had begun. I think that's something of how we can come to understand this rest of God. Serving coffee, food to family and friends no longer seems like hard labor, not compared to doing the deck. because it's now performed in the utter enjoyment of a perfectly finished and functional deck. So it's easy. At least that's what my wife tells me. Now, the illustration breaks down a little. God did not overextend himself. He was never in recovery mode. He didn't sweat and bleed over the creation, over humanity. Not at that point, anyway. But he did set up a creation for a purpose that it was perfectly suited for, creating humanity to enter freely into the works of his hands, to have great vocation in this creation. But the grand work that they were called to do would begin and continue with the utter satisfaction of sharing in God's joy over his brand new creation with all that it held in potential and destiny. So this is God's Sabbath rest. It speaks of the limitless and unbounded joy God has in all that he has created and of his desire for us to be with him intimately in the celebration of a full and abundant creation. So when it says God rested on the seventh day, it doesn't mean that he was worn out from creating and therefore need to rest. God does not grow weary or tired, we do. When it says he rested, it means he stopped doing what he had been doing because he had finished the work of creation. It means he ended the activity of creating. He had finished his works of creation and he stopped. He rested from all his work which he had done in creating. That doesn't mean God then took a long holiday, went on early retirement, took up another project in some parallel universe. Jesus was criticized for healing on the Sabbath. He said, my father is always working and I also am working. So God has rested from his work of creating, but as we know, ceaselessly works to sustain, provide for his creatures and renew his creation. But he does not add anything new to what he has made. That's worth considering. Now we know there are new things that God does, but in terms of the creation, humanity is the last creature he has created. and he has rested from making anything new. Now this seventh day has no evening or morning like the other days. It is unique in the days of God's creation. It is the day of God's rest, being without evening and morning tells us that the goal, the telos of creation is the seventh day. This is not a normal day, no evening or morning. It is a day that has no end in which God rests forever. So John Murray, who at this point I agree with, he says that the seventh day unquestionably refers to the six days of activity. The seventh day is also in the sphere of God's action, not the seventh day in our weekly cycle. So in the realm of God's action, there is six days of creative action and one day of rest. He says there is the strongest presumption in favor of the interpretation that the seventh day is not one terminated at a certain point in history, but that the whole period of time subsequent, after the sixth day, is the Sabbath rest. alluded to in Genesis chapter 2 verse 2. In other words, put it simply, the seventh day is the everlasting Sabbath rest of God. And God blessed the seventh day and he made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. So the day he blesses and hallows or makes holy, is his everlasting day of rest. Now, at this point, we need to remember, man has not yet fallen into sin. The ground has not yet been cursed. Every day was lived in the enjoyment of caring for the garden without the painful sweaty toil with thorns and thistles. a gardener's paradise. This everlasting day of rest is the perfect enjoyment of a creation pumped to overflowing with the glory and goodness of God. And so right from the word go, man is immediately called to share in the eternal rest of God. Enjoying God and glorifying Him forever. In fulfilling his dominion over creation, being fruitful, multiplying, filling and subduing the creation, humanity then lives in the perfect enjoyment of God's Sabbath rest. Every day, lived out in the joy and the peace and the abundance, the shalom of God's Sabbath rest. Later in the study, we will see that in Hebrews, The writer speaks of this ultimate Sabbath rest as God's rest into which we are called to enter. And the writer of Hebrews tells us that God's work has been finished since the creation of the world, so the reality of God's rest has been since the creation of the world. And what else can we say then about this rest at the beginning of creation? We can't improve on what God has made. He completed his work of creation. It was complete before we arrived. We created nothing. We were simply called to work with, develop, refashion and play with all that God built into the creation. Everything was given and yet there was a wonderful freedom to work within the laws of creation. Every field of human endeavor discovers the richness of God's amazing creation. Whether we are a poet, a musician, a gardener, or a physicist, we can only work with what God has given. Prior to the fall, there was no heady desire to usurp God's role like grand illusionists creating something out of nothing. It's all fraud. I know, I do tricks. No built-in frustration and futility because of the curse. Man would have known unbounding contentment and peace with no desire to outdo God, no exhaustion from trying to play God, no workaholics, no perfectionists, but simply the sheer joy of exploring and developing the great gifts of creation with God's wisdom and with a view to glorifying God in all that we do. Not good enough, the serpent whispered. Not good, the first couple agreed. And so man's desire to be as God brought a tragic and ugly end. Horrific. And the history of it is beyond telling. an end to man's enjoyment of God's Sabbath rest. Thinking that we could become powerful creators of our own existence, that's what the new age spirituality teaches us. we lose our sense of true rest and instead like Cain we become wanderers, restless wanderers on the earth. We've seen the terrible burden that comes upon man when he seeks to usurp the role of God and now we understand that under the judgment of death he lives in fear and utter restlessness. The wicked are like the restless sea which casts up mire and dirt Psalm 38 captures the loss of rest and peace, the deep effect even on our bodies. Because of your wrath, there is no health in my body, my bones have no shalom. Because of sin, my guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. And so this is the dreadful state of humanity, bowed down under this burden. A humanity that was built for true rest, and in fact cannot be true humanity without that rest. And if we push the limits in our own circumstances, we discover what it does, and we get wrecked, and we wreck others. Some of you have pointed out that I appear to have got out of prison. My wife bought me that shirt. I'm not sure what that means. Punishment for decking. I could tell a story about the day she nearly decked me. I think we've all been in prison. We all know what it is to be, to serve time under that burden. And the wonderful word that comes to us through the Sabbath rest is that there is a jubilee, a great liberation into this rest. And I hope that's what we will come to. It's not until after Israel's powerful deliverance from slavery in Egypt that we hear of Israel being given the gift of a Sabbath day. So this is after the Exodus. Exodus chapter 16, please follow me if you can. This is the first reference. in regards to Israel being given the gift of a Sabbath rest. And initially, it's in relationship to the collecting of manna in the wilderness. Chapter 16, verse 23, remember they were to collect manna, but they were told not to collect more than they needed for one day. If they did, it would go rotten, and they did, and it did. It went rotten. But then one time some leaders said, oh look, they're collecting two days. And Moses said, oh, look, don't worry, because tomorrow is going to be a new day of rest for you, a Sabbath. Verse 23, this is what the Lord commanded, tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath for the Lord. So bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil, and save whatever is left. And it won't go off. And they did. Verse 26, six days you're to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any. So don't go out. But they went out. Verse 28, how long will you refuse to keep my commands and instructions? Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath. That is why on the sixth day, he gives you bread for two days. Verse 30, so the people rested on the seventh day. This is a gift. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He's given it to you. Just enjoy it. And so that's the first mention. Then we go to the second mention is Exodus chapter 20. And this is in the Decalogue and it's the fourth commandment. Sorry. The Decalogue. Yes, the deck, a log. He's from New South Wales. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath for the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals. not only a gift to man, but to the animals, nor the alien within your gate, the immigrant, whether illegal or not, I'm not sure. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So this is the clear command to set apart the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath day, holy to the Lord. The reason that Moses gives for setting the Sabbath day apart is, in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the scene all, and rested on the seventh day. So it's the reason is for keeping the Sabbath He cites the Sabbath day of creation. The other remarkable thing is that God declares that this rest is not just for the men, it's for the women, it's for the slaves, it's for the immigrants, so that they have the same day of rest as a free Israeli, totally unheard of in the ancient world. Then in Deuteronomy chapter 5, Moses repeats the commands, but this is many years later, after the first generation of Israel dies in the wilderness because of their disobedience. And he speaks again the command to the new generation as they are about to enter the promised land under the leadership of Joshua. But there's a significant difference. Instead of giving the reason for the Sabbath as the Sabbath day of creation, that's not there. The reason is given as their deliverance from Egypt. The whole purpose, no one's to work, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. And I take it that God set you free from slavery, So then don't oppress your servants by requiring them to work on the Sabbath day of rest. You're now to show mercy to your slaves as I showed mercy to you. There's probably more in that. The Sabbath now is rooted not only in creation but redemption. And someone has pointed out redemption for Israel was like a new creation. Finally we need to see in chapter 31 and verse 16 that the Sabbath was to be celebrated. Not a day of gloom, but a day of joy. Celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and you and the Israelites forever. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day, he abstained from work and rested. So you are to celebrate not a day of gloom, but a day of joy and delight. In fact, feasting not fasting is the order of the day. A day of joy because the Sabbath day is the lasting and central sign of the covenant. that God established through Moses, the Mosaic Covenant. This is the central sign of the covenant. And God makes it perfectly clear, don't treat this sign as a light thing to be observed only when you feel like it. That will be a capital of offense. If you work on it, you must be put to death. Anyone asleep now? Anyone, verse 14, who desecrates it must be put to death. Whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people. Verse 15, whoever does any work on the Sabbath must be put to death. Again, in chapter 35, the punishment's repeated. They must be put to death if they're found working. And a further warning, do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day. So they would celebrate in the cold. Well, rigged up in the winter, I'm sure. Not to light a fire. This seems harsh. But whatever we can say, no Israelite had any excuse for not understanding clearly the requirement of God regarding the Sabbath. No excuse for not understanding the seriousness in which God viewed breaking the Sabbath. This is all out of the Torah, the law given to Moses. So now, with the Mosaic Covenant, It would seem that God is again calling man, not just fallen man, but redeemed man to enter into the rest of God. Remember in the Old Testament, God delivers his people from slavery in Egypt and brings them into the promised land of Canaan. So Canaan functions within salvation history as the renewed creation, a land flowing with milk and honey. Eden restored. That's how Canaan figures. The telos or the goal of entering and possessing Canaan is that God's redeemed people should enter God's rest. The rest that they had forfeited through the fall. The rest that has been opened up to them through the blood of the Passover lamb. So Psalm 95 shows us that the land was to be a foretaste of God's ultimate Sabbath rest. But Israel failed to enter because of unbelief and disobedience. And so for 40 years, he was angry with that generation. They kept on stubbornly complaining and rebelling. And he declared on oath in his anger they shall never enter my rest, the land. So since the fall, the Sabbath rest, God's Sabbath rest was closed off to humanity. But now, with God's gracious redemption for his people through the blood of the Passover, he has opened a way for sinners to return into his rest, that rest that humanity was created to enjoy from creation. So redemption is always with a view to the telos, it is with a view to new creation, it is with a view to paradise regained. The goal of the Sabbath day command given to Israel is the enjoyment of of the ultimate Sabbath rest of God in a newly perfected and glorified creation. Every day, Sabbath day, that they enjoyed pointed to the ultimate Sabbath rest and the renewal of all things. So the Sabbath day observance is not only the central sign of the Mosaic Covenant, but also the sign of the eternal Sabbath rest of God. But we know that Canaan was not the final inheritance. Weeds still grew in their gardens. The ground still only yielded its fruit with hard labour and sweat. They still built decks and got frustrated. The Sabbath, even in Canaan, was still anticipatory. One day's rest in seven functions as a foretaste, a weekly anticipation of the consummation of God's plan for a new creation. For one day a week, Israel was to celebrate the Sabbath, a day holy to the Lord, because in it they know themselves to be a people who belong to God, a people with a destiny that is larger than their own jobs. what they can achieve. A destiny that's caught up into the great works of God and his glory. The Sabbath day was to be a day of feasting and celebration because God's people, even in a fallen world, can rest in the lavish fruits and goodness of their loving creator. And that's what we've been doing these last few days. There was also the seventh year Sabbath, every seven years, and also the 50th year Jubilee Sabbath. Both commands bearing wonderful witness to the same anticipation of the eternal Sabbath. The Jubilee year, slaves were to be freed, debts cancelled, captives loosed, freedom, the trumpets blown, proclaim freedom throughout the land. All this was to prefigure the great Sabbath rest of the new creation. One commentator writes, because the Jubilee began on the evening of the atonement, it made clear the foundation of the new creation, atonement through the blood of the Lamb of the covenant. Creation and recreation were thus basic to the Sabbath. Man's rest is in God's finished work of redemption, proclaimed before time. By faith, man, anticipating the final victory and rejoicing in the present deliverance, lives by faith in the sufficiency of God. Instead of stressing and fretting and worrying every moment how he's going to earn the next dollar, And then very quickly, it sounds all good, but then one man's found collecting sticks. They grab him. What do we do? He must be stoned. They knew it was death penalty, they just didn't know how. Everyone knew the seriousness of what he had done. He broke the Sabbath. While everybody else is resting, the whole community, they did it together. This one man, despises the word of the Lord. There's no accidental slip. He knew what he was doing. He knew it was Sabbath. And he went out and flagrantly, defiantly, unblushing, arrogant, defiance in broad daylight with total disregard for the majesty of God, his Redeemer, his Creator. It's a high-handed act. This was the community that received the law on the mountain and they were afraid to come near the mountain because of the smoke and the fire. This was the community that saw the great signs and wonders in delivering them out of Egypt from Pharaoh's clutches. This is the community who saw the pillar of fire and cloud. And this man thumbs his nose up at God and he treats the sign of the covenant as a nothing. and he must be put to death. Can we understand the significance of this sign? This is no small thing, that God should take a community of idolaters, which is what they'd become in Egypt, and redeem them, and give them a hope and a promise of an eternal rest. To violate the sign of the covenant was to disown the entire covenant, So that's why they carried the death penalty for violation, both this sign of the covenant and the sign of the Abraham covenant circumcision. Remember, Moses wasn't going to circumcise. And God goes out to take his life. They must know, he must know that these signs are not... It's like if I took my ring off and threw it back at my wife, the sign of my covenant, who's got it? Sorry. I've lost it. So to break the Sabbath, even merely picking up a few sticks, is to throw the wedding ring back in God's face. Just quickly, mosaic law had an amazing, immense amount of practical mercy and grace built into it. Not just for accidental slip-ups and unintentional sins, but even sacrifices for intentional sins. There was much mercy in the law. Where a legitimate need arose, exemption was given, often. If you're caught ceremonially unclean and you couldn't go to the Passover, they gave you a second date to celebrate the Passover. If the heart was right, God's good heart was aggressive in kindness. And we don't see that often. The law scares us. Its penalties scare us. But we need to see what God was doing. He was showing the nations that this is His holy people, that sin matters, that rebellion, that disobedience. is what keeps us out of His eternal rest. The fact is, Sabbath breaking continued right on through Israel's history and rarely was punished. At least not by fellow Jews. It was one of the reasons given for the exile. It was violated again and again. The prophets continued to confront Israel. Isaiah 56, Maintain justice, do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand, my righteousness will soon be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, the man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord, a proselyte. say, the Lord will surely exclude me from his people. No, they are included. This is the grace of God. Not let any eunuch, a eunuch would be ceremonially unclean and an outcast in the community, but let not him complain, I'm only a dry tree. He will be a flourishing tree in God's house. To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I'll give them an everlasting name. And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, to love the name of the Lord, to worship Him. All who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and hold fast to the covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain. and give them joy in my house of prayer. And their burnt sacrifices and offerings will be accepted. For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. Chapter 58, verses six. Is not this the kind of fasting I've chosen, to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, to break every yoke? A part of that oppression was that they weren't keeping the Sabbath and they were making their slaves work 24-7. Verse 13, if you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, not a holiday, a holy day to the Lord. And if you honor it by not going your own way, and not doing as you please, or speaking idle words, then you will find, sorry, it's my grandson. Then you will find joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land, and a feast of the inheritance of your father Jacob. What's the inheritance? the rest in the land. So the Sabbath, we're familiar with Sabbath keeping from the Gospels, aren't they? But the Sabbath in the Old Testament was shown as a day of giving rest to the oppressed, not simply as an opportunity to display hypocritical piety. And by the time of Jesus, the Old Testament laws observing the Sabbath were added by the scribes and Pharisees, a huge number of meticulous interpretations to cover all kinds of questions as to what constituted work. So a man could not carry something in his right hand or in his left hand, across his chest or on his shoulder, but you could carry something with the back of your hand, with your foot, with your elbow, or in your ear, your hair, on the hem of your skirt, shirt, or in your shoe, or a sandal. Or on the Sabbath you were forbidden to tie a knot, except a woman could tie a knot in her girdle. So if a bucket of water had to be raised from a well, you could not tie a rope to the bucket, but a woman could tie her girdle to the bucket. If the bucket was full of water and heavy, she could lose her girdle. So it's a tragic irony that the day which was given to Israel as a delight and a joy and a real foretaste of God's ultimate Sabbath rest was idolatrously turned into a day of intolerable burden and oppressive legalism. When we seek to play God, as the Pharisees often did over the lives of others, that which was intended as God's liberating gift and as a sign of the ultimate liberation into God's Sabbath rest becomes so distorted it is unrecognisable and it dehumanises and it enslaves. And some of us would have a bogey of Sabbath keeping or Sunday observance in the back of our heads where we now feel like telling our kids off when they break it in some way. And it's there. And some, and I know dear brothers and sisters who've been drawn into groups that have made the Sabbath the central thing in their faith and believe that the rest of us are worshipping on at Babylon's day. Who are the Sabbath breakers in the New Testament? Pharisees. It looks like Jesus and his disciples are the Sabbath breakers. I say it looks like, I'm not saying they are. So here's the one who comes to heal and liberate, who in his great works of deliverance revealed the new age, Get this, in his ministry the New Age is breaking into this fallen world, pouring out grace upon grace on all who believed. He heals, he raises the dead, he stills the unruly elements of creation, he turns water into wine. In all this we're seeing the intimation of the final doing away of the curse. We see in his ministry the foretaste of the regeneration of a broken and oppressed creation. Joy and gladness accompany him as the healing and the praising goes on, good aged wine, feasting and celebration, even with repentant sinners. All signs that God's great kingdom of peace and joy, the Sabbath rest. has arrived. Jesus actually claims to fulfill Isaiah 61. They'd look forward to the fulfillment of the Sabbath jubilee in the coming of God to liberate His creation. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, the year of the Lord's favor. The captives will be set free. He healed on the Sabbath. He healed a woman bent over, bowed down. Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day? From what bound her? Why? Especially on the Sabbath day. Because she has been made for that state of rest. She is a daughter of Abraham. She's been made for the rest that God created us for, so it was most fitting that she be set free on a Sabbath day, the sign of the spiritual rest. And again and again, many of Jesus' miracles of healing, in which he comes into conflict with the Pharisees and the scribes, happens on the Sabbath. Remember, that's the Jewish Saturday. So his healings are not only acts of love, compassion, mercy, but his healings on the Sabbath are sabbatical, real sabbatical actions which show that the sign is now giving way to the reality, the fulfillment of all that the Sabbath in the Old Testament spoke of and prefigured, had been broken, had, sorry, had broken into human history, reversing the curse and setting the captives free. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from me, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light, and I am humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. So Christ himself is the true Sabbath rest for the people of God, and yet he's looked upon as one who encourages Sabbath breaking and who himself treats the Sabbath with contempt by healing on God's holy day, which constituted in their minds work. He's criticized one day the disciples are getting corn, they're picking it, rubbing it, eating it. They're reaping. They're harvesting. And is this wrong, Jesus, what your disciples are doing? And Jesus says, look, don't you remember David in the temple getting the showbread from the priests? No, they would never condemn. That was David. Remember the priests making use of what was in the temple for their own use? It wasn't the priest that was so important, it was the temple. They were serving the temple, so there was exemption. And he says, well, there's something greater here than the temple, someone greater here than David. I am the reality that the Sabbath was pointing to. I am the Lord of the Sabbath. As a police cadet, I jumped into the lift at Angus Street in the old police headquarters. Jumped in, men standing there all in suits. Couldn't tell who was who. I'd never seen the commissioner before. He looked at me, because I was facing them. Do you know who I am? I'm your commissioner. I nearly fell through 10 floors. They don't know who he is. He's the Lord of the Sabbath. He's the one who could interpret how this Sabbath should be applied. But who could tell you about the true, ultimate Sabbath? Not only that, he's the one who can bring you into it. He can give you the rest that was promised. He fulfills the Sabbath. The sign of the old covenant was the keeping of the Sabbath, the day one in seven for Israel. The old covenant has been fulfilled in the coming of Christ. The new covenant has come. The day, Judaism's day of the Sabbath, no longer fulfills its role as the sign of the covenant. It has been superseded by Christ. Now I'm going to say other things, don't stop listening to me. So the new covenant shifts our thinking of a particular day from a date, you know, which is it? The Jewish Sabbath or maybe the Christian Sunday? Is it the Lord's Day, the Day of the Resurrection or the Jewish Sabbath? The issue is not about a date but a state. The issue is not so much which day or what is allowed, it is a mode of living and not just the right observance of a particular day. Sabbath observance on a particular day and the observance of the Sabbath year was the sign of what lay behind it. Christ brings us into the reality of the Sabbath rest. He redeems us as Lord of the Sabbath to set us free from the restlessness of trying to play God. There's much I want to say, but how can I just say it now? Ah, look. Hebrews 3 and 4. There were Jewish believers probably being tempted to pull back from full faith. They're warned not to abandon the hope of the gospel, to not harden their hearts against this word. They're reminded of Psalm 95. that disobedience meant that they shall never enter my rest because of their stubborn refusal to believe and obey. So don't do it now. Don't harden your hearts today when you hear his voice. Those who went into the land of Canaan, that did not bring the final fulfillment of the rest because David well after Israel was settled in the land, says there is a day. There is yet a day. If Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God does. Let us therefore make every effort, strive to enter that rest. Wholly set your mind to know and trust the word of God and his gospel and to do his will. This is about entering the rest of God, God's intrinsic rest. This is our inheritance in Christ. It's what we can enter into now as a foretaste by faith, but one day enter fully into, and then we will understand fully what we were created to enjoy. We're in a battle here. We still battle with the flesh, the world, the devil. We're wearied in them. We labor, we suffer, we struggle. We fail, we succeed. We can't even count our merits or our demerits. We let them all go. We're justified by Christ and we're one day going to be free from all the labor just as God rested from all his work. Do you know my rest? Can you still, can you be still and know that I am God? Let it be and know that I am God. I gave to Israel a Sabbath day so that all nations might know that I alone give rest to my people and to the world. It was a sign of my eternal Sabbath, which I have planned and prepared for the whole creation and for those who love me and do what I command. Paul says one man considers one day more sacred than another. Another man considers every day alike. Each should be convinced in his own mind. We shouldn't look down on one another if we come to another conclusion. Don't judge anyone. Let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink in regards to a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day. I believe that applies. Don't let anyone judge you. These things are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ. Jewish Christians probably kept the Sabbath, Gentile Christians probably didn't. The early church fathers largely taught that the Sabbath sign had been fulfilled in Christ, and they didn't press the Lord's Day as the new Sabbath. The reformers, they looked like they followed the same approach. The Puritans took up Sunday observance and taught it boldly. Some still see the fourth commandment as having the force of the creation ordinance, that we're built into it through the creation. It reflects God's nature, our nature. But you'd still, if you held that, you wouldn't then be bound by traditions, because the flesh loves to create and dump on others. We would do it unto the Lord. and not judge one another. If the reality of these things is Christ, then the only thing that really counts is faith expressing itself through love. In the end, Paul counsels each one should be fully convinced of his own mind. And I'd like to just read a prayer as we close. And this is by Augustine. Lord God, grant us peace, the peace of rest, the peace of Sabbath, the peace without an evening. All this most beautiful array of things, all so very good, will pass away when all their courses are finished. For in them there is both morning and evening, but the seventh day is without ending, and it has no setting, for thou sanctified it with an everlasting duration. After all thy works of creation, which were very good, thou didst rest on the seventh day, although thou hadst created them all in unbroken rest. And this so that the voice of thy book might speak to us with the prior assurance that after our works we may find our rest in thee, in the Sabbath of life eternal. Amen. I've shared my view. It is not the view of everyone. There are very good theologians who believe very strongly that there is still a creational principle, one in seven, to be kept. I've wrestled with this, and it may be that we need to in our conscience, if it matters, And I believe it matters. But before God, may we do so in a spirit of love and humility. Amen.