Indeed, he will hold us fast. We are in the middle, for those of you especially that are new or visiting, we're in the middle of a sermon series on the Ten Commandments. And one of the things we learn, we've gotten through the first three commandments, we also considered the prologue. One of the things we learn and understand is that Ten Commandments are not just some list of rules or of ethics and They are God's moral law. They are binding upon us, even in this day and age. But it is what we call a covenant charter or a covenant document that spells out that God has made his people his own, and he is their God. And this, then, is how they live in praise and thanksgiving, in response to God's grace for what he has done. They are rules of life and truth. And we are thankful for how God reveals himself in them, how he instructs us how we might know him and show our love towards him and towards one another. and how he confronts us with our own sinful failures, but how he also promises us forgiveness in Christ Jesus. And so this morning, we find ourselves at the fourth commandment regarding the Sabbath, or the Lord's day. So our text is from Exodus 20, verses eight through 11. This is God's word, let us give it careful attention. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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 or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. This is God's word, let us pray. Father in Heaven, we thank You for Your Word and its truth and what it reveals to us. We ask now that Your Spirit would come and would work through Your Word as it is proclaimed, that for those who know You, who are trusting in Christ, whose faith is in Him, who are resting upon Him, that you would strengthen that faith, that you would encourage them, that you would build them up in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and shape them all the more into His image to the praise of the glory of your grace. And Father, those who know you not, we ask that you would stir their hearts, that you would convict them of their unrighteousness, and show them that they cannot make themselves right with you, but you have provided the means that they might be right with you, and know your blessings forever. And that is in Jesus Christ, our living Savior and King. plant faith in their hearts, give new life to them through the power of Your Spirit, through the means of Your Word, as it is proclaimed. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. It is true. We are restless people who live in a restless world. When we scramble about our lives in such a frenetic pace, people are always moving, always active. from our family lives to our careers and relationships and school and education. So many other things and events fill our time, fill our lives. We're always on the go. We never seem to have enough time in the day and in the week. And then you add to that our experiences with suffering. and sorrow, and pain, and hurt, and discouragement, and despair, and anxiety, and the reality that we understand that as humans, we do live in a sinful, fallen world, and we too are sinners ourselves. No wonder, with all of us, our hearts really are restless. But God, in his mercy and his grace, knows that we have restless hearts. And he has graciously provided an answer to that so that we might find real and everlasting peace in the midst of all this chaos and this confusion that life brings. That gracious rest that he has graciously provided for us is what this fourth commandment is all about. Sadly, though, amongst all the Ten Commandments, this commandment, the Fourth Commandment, might be one of the quickest to be dismissed and ignored and thought of not really applying to us today as Christians. Even within the church, there is much confusion that reigns about what this Fourth Commandment requires of us to do And some even reject it outright. But the reality is this. If all the Ten Commandments, including do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, are still true for us today, then so is the Fourth Commandment. It's still true for us. it's still binding upon us. In fact, the observance of the Sabbath day is the most often repeated of the commandments in the Bible, in the first five books of the Bible, which is called the Pentateuch. We see the Sabbath observance commanded at least 11 times. And in the Old Testament, it's spoken of or mentioned over 100 times. And then you go to the New Testament, and we find that Sabbath is at the center of Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees. And so this fourth commandment does matter. The Sabbath does matter. And we ought to give it consideration since all of the Ten Commandments are God's moral law and truth and still binding upon us today. And like all the commandments of God, we find that they are not some sort of restrictive binding rule that is a great weight and makes us slaves, but they set us free. The fourth commandment sets us free from the restlessness of our hearts so that we might find true rest in Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so the very first thing we learn about this or from this fourth commandment is about God himself. And what does it reveal to us about God? It shows us that God graciously knows that you have a restless heart and he provides an answer for it. God graciously knows our need to rest, and he provides a time for us to do so. What stands out immediately when you read this fourth commandment, that it is framed in the positive, unlike the first three we have read. God doesn't prohibit something immediately here. He says, remember or observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now, unlike those first three commandments that are prohibitions, this is a positive commandment to do something, to remember something, to keep the Sabbath holy. And what that means, even with that word remembrance, is this, is that Sabbath must have existed before these Ten Commandments were given to the people of Israel at Sinai. And indeed it did. The principle of Sabbath is not something God institutes at Sinai, but it existed long before that. And he is calling his people then to remember what he has done in this Sabbath principle. You see, Sabbath, the idea of it, is rooted in two acts of God, in His creation and His redemption. Let's consider those. So, first of all, God's creation. The Sabbath is rooted in God's creation. As a way of keeping the Sabbath, God instructs his people to not labor on it, and then we get in verse 11 a reason for that. He says, because God rested from all his works on creation. For six, 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." So out of the void or the chaos of nothing, God creates all things that exist in the space of six days by the word of His power. But then on the seventh day, He rested. Now think about that for a moment. God is almighty and unchanging and self-existent and eternal. He has no need of any kind. And He certainly has no need to rest. He doesn't have to recover energy. He doesn't grow weak like we do when we work too much. He's not weary. He has no physical body. God is a spirit. But after the heavens and earth are all made, and he fills them with all life, and he hangs the planets in their place, after he does all of that, God takes time to rest. And that should make us ask the question, well, why? Why would God rest if he has no need of it? Well, Genesis 2-3 tells us why. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all the work he had done. And that's exactly what we see here in Exodus 20 as well. God blesses and sets apart this idea of a Sabbath day by resting on it himself. He is consecrating it, setting it apart, saying that this time, this period is different from any other period, any other time, any other day of the week because I have rested on it. I have made it holy. In other words, God has ordained the Sabbath to be a means of blessing then for His people. I mean, think about this. We have so many man-made holidays or holy days, which is what holiday means, right? We're coming up upon them. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, the 4th of July. They're all fun and good things to celebrate. But there is only one divinely appointed holy day or holiday. It happens 52 weeks of the year. It is the Lord's Day. It is his Sabbath. Because God rested on that day and set it apart to show us that he is providing this day for us. But God's resting on the seventh day goes much further than simply establishing this pattern for our work and rest as his creation, as humans. When God placed our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the garden, he gave them a mandate, a task to fulfill. Sometimes it's called the dominion mandate. And that was to be fruitful and multiply. In other words, what they were to do was to expand the blessing of the garden and fill the entire earth with it and to fill it with other image bearers of God so that they might enjoy God's provision and His presence and the peace, the rest that that brings forever. And they were to rest from that labor, just as God rested, to show others what it means to know God. They were to work for that rest and to bring about this end goal or eschatological, which is the big word, goal of creation. Because rest comes when we know God and his peace and his blessings forever. Now we know what happened. The fall into sin happened. It brought corruption into the world. It brought about restlessness. Adam failed to work to obtain this joy, full rest, and enjoy God's presence forever. But God wasn't going to leave the world in that state because He is a gracious and merciful God. And so He made a way then for His people to obtain that rest in His presence that they so desperately need, especially now that restlessness has entered the picture through sin. And we enter that rest not through work like Adam tried to do and was supposed to do but failed, but we do it in a new way. We do it simply by trusting God's grace, by resting in what he has done. In other words, God provides the rest for his people. We don't earn it. That's the principle of the Sabbath that is rooted in creation, but not just creation, also redemption. In fact, if you go over to Deuteronomy 5, where you also find the list of the Ten Commandments as God's covenant charter to his people, we find God gives a different reason why the people ought to observe the Sabbath. This is what it says in Deuteronomy 5, 12-15. He says, Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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 or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock or the sojourner that is within your gates, that your male servant and female servant may rest as well as you. 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. See what's different there? He doesn't go to God's work of creation, but when God, again, reminds his people of this fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath, He points to his rescue, his salvation of them from slavery in Egypt. And in doing that, he's saying the Sabbath is a sign of my covenant that I have made with you to make you my people, that I have redeemed you from bondage. So remember that on this one day. Just as God set apart the Sabbath day by resting on it, thus making it holy, consecrating it during his work of creation, so he sets his people apart through his work of redemption. And that's the force behind this command, to remember, to remember the Sabbath day, to remember what God has done in the past, and that because of that, there is a present reality that you can enjoy. You can rest in God's provision because of what he has done. And we find that in God's presence. And so the fourth commandment then reveals to us that God certainly knows our need. He knows that we have restless hearts, that there are so many things that make that so. But He wants us to have peace, and He opens up a means for us to do so, that when through faith we come to Christ, and rest on the Lord's day in Him, we find that peace. This brings us to a question then, what does the fourth commandment instruct us to do? Or in other words, how do you keep the Sabbath day? How do you consecrate it and set it apart as holy just as God has? How does it instruct us? What are the duties that are joined to this fourth commandment? And what sins does it imply which are forbidden? Well, we get a sense of that within that word holy. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Again, holiness has to do with otherness, separateness, being utterly distinct from everything else. So whatever we are to do, it's to be different from all the other days of the week, and that is exactly what we see in the Bible. The Sabbath day was to be a day that was kept in two ways in particular. It was to be a day of ceasing from ordinary, normal, Labor and activities that go on throughout the week. And it was to be a day that filled with worship. We'll remember what God has done. We praise him for it and enjoy his blessings as his people. So let's consider those two things. A day of rest from normal labor and activity. We see that, of course, here in Exodus, in verse nine, where God prohibits Israel. He says, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son. So he's saying don't work as you did during the rest of the week. In fact, the very word Sabbath in Hebrew means a ceasing, a stopping, a pause. It's laying aside those things you would do any other day that makes them ordinary days because this day is extraordinary. It's a day where you get to rest in God's goodness and mercy and remember what he has done. And of course, that ceasing from work also meant there was a pause in commerce. People didn't go out and shop like they did before. In fact, you see in the Old Testament that when Israel fell into sin and forgot that they were God's covenant people, they filled the day like any other day and engaged in enterprise and commerce. but when they would cease from all their work and all their activities. Israel was demonstrating to the world that God's rest is not earned by human effort, but is given by the grace of God since he has established it from creation. Now, there were exceptions, of course, to that, because there are things that must be done, and we see in the Bible that permitted labors are those of necessity and mercy. Necessity meaning work which must be done, because if it's not done, it's gonna cause harm, it's gonna cause problems. You can understand what those would be in our modern context, medical care. Hospitals have to stay open. police work, even the maintenance of certain utilities that without them we would not have the lives that we have. Mercy is work that is done for the care and benefit of others. It can be preparing a meal or hospitality. These are things that are permitted and even good to do on the Sabbath. But the point is that all ordinary labors, and commerce and activity, those things were to cease. Anything that would distract one from being able to actually enjoy the day as a day of rest and so a day of worship. You see, a lot of times people ask the question, at least Christians, well, what can I do on the Lord's day? That's not the right question to ask. What we should be asking is, if I do this thing, will it prevent me from actually resting in the Lord and worshiping Him? And if it does, it's probably not a good thing to be doing on that day. Because it is also a day of worship. It is, after all, God's Sabbath. And you see that language all throughout the Bible. My Sabbath, my Sabbath. And later when we get into the New Testament, it is the Lord's day. It is a day that we worship him. Remember the grounds for the Sabbath are both creation and redemption. It is to be a day then of joyous celebration of what God has done for his people in saving them and making them his own. And that kind of joy ought to fill the whole day, both publicly and privately, praising God for what he has done and finding our joy in it. In the Old Testament, we see God's people doing this through the singing of Psalms. In fact, Psalm 92, if you look at it in your English Bible, it looks like it's just a title, but that title is actually there in the Hebrew, and it's called a song for the Sabbath. And it exalts the Lord for his works, for what he has done in giving his people peace and rest. And interestingly, we see that the Old Testament Sabbath celebration also involved the gathering together of God's people in what they called a convocation to praise Him. Leviticus 23.3 reads, 6 days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest. a holy convocation, a gathering together of the people to praise God. We also see, and this is interesting in the Old Testament, that the people gathered together to hear the word of the Lord, specifically on the Sabbath. 2 Kings 4, verse 23, We learn that God's Word customarily was given through the prophets to the people on the Sabbath. And when the exile began and the temple was destroyed and the people could not gather there to praise the Lord, they began to gather in synagogues where they would hear God's word proclaimed. And that was a practice that continued into Jesus' day upon the earth. And Jesus himself would go into that worship on the Sabbath day to proclaim the word of the Lord to the people. And so the Sabbath day, then, is a day of resting and of worship. But this makes us ask a really important question. Because we see all in the Old Testament, seventh day, seventh day, seventh day, which is Saturday, right? Why as Christians, then, do we gather on Sunday? Why is that our day of rest, our Sabbath, to hear God's word and to praise and worship him? What changed the Sabbath day from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week? And if it changed, are they one and the same? Yes, I believe they are. I believe there's evidence for that in the Bible. What changed it? Jesus did. Jesus changed it because Christ changes everything. You see, Christ rose from the grave on the first day of the week, on Sunday. And it would become known, even within the early church, as the Lord's Day. When John writes the book of Revelation, he says that he writes that on the Lord's Day. Just as God's Word came to the prophets of old to proclaim to the people on the seventh day, it comes to John on the first day, the Lord's Day. Also, consider this. The Sabbath was given by God as a sign of his covenant to his people. They were supposed to remember what he had done to make him his own. That's his redemption. And just like other signs of the covenant that were under the administration of God's grace in the Old Testament, so they change to a different administration in the New. Right? Circumcision. becomes baptism, but it still points to what Christ has done and that through him we are washed clean of our sins. Passover. no longer needs to be celebrated as it was, but we have the Lord's table as a meal that proclaims to us the redemption that is ours in Christ Jesus. And so the Sabbath day moved from the seventh day to the Lord's day, to the day that Christ Jesus rose from the grave. In fact, when you go to Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20, And there we are told that Jesus rose from the grave the first day of the week. It's interesting to look at that language in the Greek New Testament, because it doesn't say first day of the week. You know what it says? A literal translation. It's really hard to render in English, but it's literally the one of the Sabbath. So when the Gospels were written, The church understood that this one day of the Sabbath, the day after, the Sabbath day plus one, that day was Sabbath, it was rest, it was worship. They were already recognizing that this first day of the week was the day they should gather as God's people. And we see the church doing that in the New Testament. We see the early church celebrating Sabbath in much the same way as Israel did in the Old Testament, with prayer and with singing of psalms and hymns and listening to God's Word. Acts 20, verse 7, and 1 Corinthians 16, 1 through 2. make mention of believers gathering together on the first day of the week. And if you want to go to an extra-biblical source, you can go to the Dedeke, which was like an early book of church order. And we find there in this document from the mid to late first century that the Lord's Day was to be the day of gathered corporate worship. Furthermore, Both the Sabbath day and the Lord's day are connected to God's activity of creation and redemption, and both were considered feast days, days of celebration. And so for us Christians then, today, this fourth commandment is still a call to us to enjoy this day as a day of joyous celebration, to set aside our normal work and activities and rest in what God has done for us and praise him for it through Jesus Christ our Lord. We are required then through this commandment to delight in the Sabbath day as both a day of public and private worship and we're required then to prepare our hearts for that day with foresight, knowing that is coming. And considering that we are going to celebrate a different day, we won't be doing the same things we do throughout the week because this is a special day. Think about this. We as humans plan for our holidays, don't we? I mean, you know Christmas is coming, what do you do? You go Christmas shopping. If you're like me, you just wait to the week of Christmas and that's when you do it all. Or if Thanksgiving is coming, what do you do? Do you just wait and people show up and hope there's food? No, you prepare. You prepare ahead of time. And that's the idea here with the Lord's Day, with the Sabbath. We prepare ourselves. We know that day is coming. It is to be special, not a day of drudgery where you can't do anything, but a day where you actually can rest from all that gives you trouble and care and find peace in Christ as you worship Him. It's especially true, and this is going off script here for a moment. For those of you that have young children, prepare for the Lord's Day. Prepare for it. Make it a special day, too, so that your kids learn that, hey, this is the day we get to go worship and fellowship with Jesus and have rest. I have a friend, he's an associate pastor in Mississippi. The way he does this is the only day his girls can have chocolate milk is on Sunday, on the Lord's Day. It's pretty cute, but what are they doing? They're saying, hey, this is a special day. The Lord's given us a day to rest and to enjoy him and all of his blessings, and you know what? We're gonna enjoy chocolate milk and praise God for him giving that to us on the Lord's day. So do things like that. Make it special. It ought to be, our Sabbath rest in Christ on the Lord's day ought to be more special to us than Christmas. or Valentine's Day, because it's the Lord's Day, we get to be with our Savior and worship Him. But this fourth commandment confronts us with yet another facet of our fallen humanity. Because we realize when we look at what it's calling us to do and what it requires of us, that boy, we fall far short. And this is why the Sabbath day, the fourth commandment. It confronts us with the fact that we try so often to earn God's rest through our efforts, our labor, instead of learning to trust God with the rest he has given us. In ancient Israel, the penalty for profaning or making the Sabbath day just like any other day of the work was very severe. Exodus 31, 15 through 16, six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. J.V. Vesco, who's a theologian, says that the reason there was a death penalty for profaning the Sabbath was because that person who worked on the Sabbath was telling the world he could enter into God's rest by his own efforts, by his own way, rather than God's grace. He's saying, I don't need your grace. I can do this on my own. Watch me get my own rest. I don't need you. to do this for me. Remember, the Sabbath rest was something that Adam failed to do through his work in the garden. And so God granted then that rest by grace, not by works that we may try to do, but just like ancient Israel, we think, yeah, I can earn that rest. Let me just work hard at it. And when we do that, we distort the Sabbath. Bill Gates was once asked why he did not believe in God. And his response, I think, reflects an attitude of many people today in the world. He said, well, just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more things I could be doing on Sunday morning. He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the rest that he needs, and I guarantee you his heart is very restless because of that. You see, we cannot find the rest we crave when we never stop working, and worrying, and fretting, and fussing, and trying so hard to achieve it, and get this peace through our own efforts. I mean, the idea of stopping all of that for a Sabbath rest just gets in the way of our plans to get what we want, what we think will give us peace and rest. We will find our own joy and pleasure and peace on this day, and we'll work hard to get it instead of trusting what God has already given to us. But the trouble is, when we do that, despite all the energy and all the time and sacrifice and effort we throw into it, at the end of the day, you realize, I never really got that rest in peace. There's still restlessness, there's still sin, there's still sorrow and suffering. Sometimes, We treat the Sabbath just like the Pharisees did during Jesus' time. You know what they did? They added rule after rule after rule, man-made rules, to the fourth commandment and said, well, if you do these things, you'll fulfill the fourth commandment and you will earn God's rest. But as we've seen, that's not what it's about. It's about God graciously giving rest, not us trying to earn it. Because you can't do that. And when the Pharisees did that, you know what they were doing? They were lowering, actually, the standard of the fourth commandment. They were actually profaning it, making it so it was not holy. Because they're lowering it to something they could actually do. They were pretty good at it. But when you lower God's law, you're just breaking his law. rather than seeing it for the high standard, the holiness that it calls for. And so no, we cannot earn God's rest. It is only given, and it is given by him to his people. And so what do we do then? Where do we find that? Where do we go when our restless hearts condemn us that we have broken God's law? Because we have tried to get that peace all on our own. Well, we go to Jesus. We go to the Christ of the commandments where there is great mercy. See, Jesus accomplished his work so you can find your rest in him, both now and for all eternity. Jesus accomplished his work so that you can rest in him. And what was Jesus' work? It was his work of redemption. It was becoming flesh and dwelling among us and dying for us, rising again to new life so that we might have life in him. In his high priestly prayer that Jesus prays in John 17, he prays to the Father as the Son, and he says, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do. And in John 19.30, as he hung upon the cross, he uttered those authoritative words, it is finished. The job is done. The work has been complete. Redemption is done. I have won God's people to himself through my sacrifice. He had borne the wrath and suffered the guilt and paid the price for the sins of many. So that through faith in him, all of our empty labors that wear us out of trying to earn our own peace, all of those can end in Christ. And get this too, where is Christ now physically? He is spiritually here with us, but where is he physically, his physical body? Hebrews 10, 12, when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. He sat down. He sat down a posture of rest, of the job being done and completed. He did all he needed to do. so that we can cease from doing all these things we try to do to earn that peace we want, and we find it in Him. Yes, Adam failed to gain that eschatological, that end time, never-ending rest in the presence of God for the whole world, but Jesus prevailed where Adam failed. And he did that through his work of redeeming sinners from their sin. So in closing, what does that mean for us? It means that the only thing you have to do is to rest in Jesus by faith. And you find that faith strengthened when you observe this commandment, when you keep the Sabbath day as the Lord's day, not as your day where you try to gain your own peace, but finding that peace in Christ from worshiping Him. And so we gather together to worship the Lord through prayer and song and hear his word, confirming our faith and strengthening it. We fellowship together and celebrate together what God has done for us in Christ. You see, the Lord's Day, our Sabbath, is a taste, a little taste, of that rest that is yet to come, that rest that remains for the people of God. On the Sabbath day, on the Lord's day, the curtain of heaven is pulled back, but for one day, and we taste and see the goodness of God's grace that comforts and sustains us and gives us some peace in this world, God's peace. And one day, our weekly Sabbath rests will give way to that great eternal Sabbath rest, where there will be no more crying or sorrow or pain, where we won't lament, where we won't have to suffer death any longer. There will be rest from every conflict, every war will end, All tragedy and pain will be gone. There will be rest from all sin and all guilt. The presence of sin will be gone forevermore. And there will be one great, eternal, joyous day of celebration as the saints of God cry out, worthy is the Lamb that was slain, who has redeemed us to God. And so until that day, Let us gather and celebrate. Let us rest from our labors and find joy in what God has done till that day when Jesus, who says that he is the Lord of the Sabbath, returns and our restless hearts will find everlasting peace in the grace of God. Let us pray.