Well, there are the handouts for the scripture text. We have three different readings this morning, and obviously you can turn to them in your Bibles. It's exactly the same, but if you want it all on one sheet, there's a little handout. I'll give you a minute if you want to grab that. I think we should have enough back there. But if you don't have a sheet, first turn in Genesis 2, then we'll go to Exodus and Deuteronomy. We're talking about the fourth commandment. This is one of the sermons in our series on the ten commandments, and we're up to the fourth commandment. And Lord willing, we'll also have another sermon on the Fourth Commandment next week. It's a two-part sermon. All right, so there are three different texts in Scripture, and these all come from the Old Testament. First, the one is at creation, and the next two readings come from the period where Israel was in the wilderness, at the beginning and end of the wilderness years. So that's the historical context this morning. All right, Genesis 2 verses 1 through 3, and pay attention for the same themes in these verses. This is God's word. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So that's Genesis 2. Now you can go ahead to Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11, the fourth commandment in Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11. 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, 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, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Now the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy 5. Deuteronomy 5, verses 12 through 15. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath through 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 who is within your gates, that your male servant and your 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." God's word. There was a man who called his pastor on Monday morning. He didn't get an answer. Called him again in the afternoon, then again at night, and he got no answer all day. He was trying to reach him on the phone. Now Tuesday, this man finally got a hold of his pastor, and he said, you know, where were you on Monday? I was really trying to get a hold of you. And the pastor said, well, Monday's my day off. I typically, you know, don't come into the study and I typically just take a day off. And the man was a little upset and he said, well, you know, the devil doesn't take a day off. And the pastor responded, and if I didn't, I would be just like the devil. Now, I'm not sure if that story is true, but the point is good and right. Rest is a good thing for us. It's good for us to rest. In fact, that's taught in the Bible. We just read in Genesis and in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, there's this rest principle in the Bible. And it especially comes in the fourth commandment. Again, we read the fourth commandment in both different places. This is God's law for his people back in Moses' day, but even before Moses' day, there was this Sabbath principle in the Garden of Eden, even before sin came into the world. So what we're going to do in the next two sermons, Lord willing, today we're going to look at the fourth commandment in the Old Testament and do some application work. Fourth commandment, Old Testament application. Next Sunday, Lord willing, we'll look at the Sabbath in the New Testament and then do some application from there. Okay, pretty straightforward. The next two Sundays we'll be talking about the fourth commandment. Now today, my plan of attack is Genesis, we'll do the Genesis verses first that you have, and then Exodus, and then Deuteronomy, and then some other places in the Old Testament. And we'll see what this means for us. All right, well first of all, the Genesis text that we read, now you have to understand that Genesis 2 verses 1 through 3, this was before Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Okay, so sin had not yet come into the world. And it says that God worked for six days and then he rested on the seventh day. And did you see what else it said in 2 verse 3? He blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Why? Because he rested on it from all his work that he had done in creation. Pretty straightforward, you've heard that before. Now, when it says that God rested, we don't want to think that God was sweaty and tired after a long day or a long week of work. That's not what we need to think. But He rested means He stopped or ceased His labor, His toil, His work of creation was finished. And He stopped working. He ceased from His labor. Now, actually, the term Sabbath is, you know, Hebrew is Shabbat, and it means cease in its basic form. And so people take sabbaticals today. It means, you know, ceasing from normal toil. And just one little note, we'll talk about this more next week, Lord willing, but when there's this rest principle before the fall in Genesis, Hebrews also talks about the rest principle, and he talks about the eternal rest that we have in Christ. We'll talk about that next week. Now in Genesis here, it says God blessed the seventh day. Now if you read Genesis earlier, it says God blessed the animals, told them to be fruitful and multiply. God blessed Adam and Eve, told them to be fruitful and multiply. Then he blessed a day, the seventh day. He's pronouncing his divine favor on the seventh day. This was a special day to God. It's a blessed day. And then Genesis 2 verse 3 says he made it holy. Now if you have an older translation, he hallowed it. Now, remember, there was no sin yet, so it's not like there were unholy things or unholy, you know, people. But here, to hallow something or make something holy means to set it apart. It means that elsewhere in Scripture, too. To set it apart. Like God set Abraham and his children apart from the other nations. Like God set the temple things and the sacrifices apart. And so he set a period of time apart. This is a holy day. Think about it this way. The first full day of their lives for Adam and Eve was a special day, a holy day. The seventh day in the Bible is actually the first thing that is made holy. Time is holy before space or place. That's interesting. So when you're thinking about Genesis 1 through 3, of course, we should think about the creation truths, the historicity of Adam and Eve. We should stand up for the creation truths. But we don't want to miss the seventh day. It's pretty significant in that first week. Okay, look at the fourth commandment now in Exodus 20. You have to fast forward in history, obviously, for quite a few years to Israel in the wilderness at the beginning. Now, when you read Exodus 20 in light of Genesis 2, you're gonna see a lot of parallels. That's why the text is there if you have a handout that's together. Okay, there's similar language. Look in Exodus 20, verse 8. It says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Right? Same language. And then in verse 10, it says, you shall not do any work. Essentially, you shall rest. And the question is, well, why should you not do any work? Why should this day, Israel, be holy? Well, the answer is in verse 11. In six days, God made everything, and he rested the seventh day. Therefore, he blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Now that's very obvious that Moses, that God is talking about creation, isn't he? There's a very clear reference. He's pointing them back to that time. This day is a special day that belongs to God. It's sacred time, even for Israel. Now, in Exodus 31, actually, we don't want to go deep into this, but the seventh day is called a sign that this is God's day, and a sign that these are God's people. Now, one thing to think of, just a little side note here, some Christians say that this Sabbath principle, this day of rest, only started with Moses. But I would disagree with that, based on what we read in Genesis 2. And also, you can do this on your own sometime, but in Exodus 16, before the Ten Commandments were given, remember when the manna came? They weren't supposed to gather it on the seventh day, because it said it was a day of rest. That was before the Ten Commandments. Okay, so that's basically the Sabbath and the fourth commandment in Exodus 20. Now look at Deuteronomy 5. It's a little different if you didn't notice that. Here it says, Observe the Sabbath day in Deuteronomy 5.12. Observe means preserve or guard it. Keep it holy. Again, creation language. And then it says, In six days you shall do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord, and nobody in your house, none of your animals, no people that you have in your household should work. But what's the reason in Deuteronomy 5? What is the reason? Okay, in Exodus 20, the reason for them to stop working was the seventh day of creation. But what is it in Deuteronomy 5? Well, look at verse 15. 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. So, do you see what's going on here? In Exodus 20, it looks back to creation. In Deuteronomy 5, it looks back to the Exodus, redemption. And so creation and redemption have everything to do with the Sabbath day for Israel in their life. It was a day where they'd stop from their labors and remember creation and redemption. Now, you probably, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, it says, you know, stop working, rest from your work. And you ask, well, what does that mean or what did that mean for Israel to stop working? Well, it would be, you know, the normal daily toils, like plowing fields and fixing fences and doors and wagons, you know. Israel couldn't go to the market or butcher animals or go out and work the crops. And so sometimes, you know, when you hear about the Jews and the seventh day or Sabbath day, you hear all these rigorous laws that they had. There's some, you know, Jewish laws that say you can't walk a thousand steps or more, that you can't fill a cup with water and, you know, all those things you've heard maybe. Those actually didn't come into play until after the Old Testament time, sometime between the Old and New Testaments. Originally, this command to cease from working meant your ordinary toil of the week. And so the Old Testament Sabbath was a day for sacrifices and festivals and worship, but it wasn't a day of work and toil and labor. So when we look through those three texts, you can see that this seventh day Sabbath rest principle was big. It had everything to do with creation and redemption. And so maybe in Israel back then, if a little boy or a little girl was growing up, a little girl would say, you know, mommy, why is dad not in the field today on the Sabbath day? And she would say, well, because God made the world in six days and he rested on the seventh day and because God brought us out from Egypt. You know, Pharaoh was such a terrible, cruel slave master that he made us work ourselves to the bone all the time. We couldn't rest. But God rescued us and he said we could rest. That's why daddy's not in the field. or a little boy, you know, Daddy, why aren't you fixing the plow today? Well, because God said to rest. He made the world, and then he rested the seventh day, and he redeemed us from Pharaoh's bondage. So that's the kind of thing that the Israelites would be thinking, creation and redemption, rest. Well, that's all that the Old Testament says about the Sabbath, right? No, it actually says quite a bit more, and we're not going to do all the work here, but the word Sabbath, or a word that's related to it, it comes up about a hundred times in the Old Testament, actually. A lot more than this. So there are Sabbath years, Sabbath festivals. You can read in Exodus 21 about a man who broke the Sabbath and he was put to death because it was a serious violation. And you can read in a lot of the prophets where God told the people of Israel, if you keep the Sabbath, it will be a blessing to you. It will be good for your life as my people if you keep the Sabbath. But then the prophets also rebuked Israel for not keeping the Sabbath. This is one of the sins that God punished them for. This is one of the sins that God sent them into exile for because they didn't keep the Sabbath. So Ezekiel 20 says, I gave them my Sabbaths, but they greatly profaned them, for their heart went after idols. So breaking the Sabbath and idolatry were kind of tied together in the Old Testament for Israel. They'd break the Sabbath, they'd go after idols. They went hand-in-hand quite often. Now there's one more reference in the Old Testament I want to point out, and this happens way at the end of the Old Testament times, around 450 or so BC. Nehemiah, remember Nehemiah? This was when Israel came back from the exile and they were rebuilding Jerusalem. We talked about this in Haggai a little bit. But Nehemiah, one of the leaders in Israel, noticed that the Israelites, the Jews, were making wine and loading grain and bringing food to the market and doing business on the Sabbath. And Nehemiah was very upset and he confronted Israel and he said, what is this evil thing that you're doing profaning the Sabbath? And then he goes on to say, isn't this why God punished our fathers? Isn't this why we were in exile in the first place? What are you doing? Desecrating the Sabbath. So Nehemiah stopped the Israelites from doing their worldly business on the Sabbath. Now when you think about the Sabbath principle, at least growing up when I thought about this, you think, God's a little harsh, right? I mean, a punishment for breaking the Sabbath? Is it really that big of a deal to go plant on the Sabbath? Or, you know, for Israel to go to the market and to sell some of the, you know, crops before they rot? What's the big deal? I mean, God is being a little rough here. The death penalty? Right? In Nehemiah's day, the people lived in a dog-eat-dog world. You better go to the market on the Sabbath or you're not going to keep up. What is God doing? Well, that's kind of the wrong approach to thinking about the Sabbath. Okay, we never want to, and not just when we think about the Sabbath, but any time in life, we never want to put God on trial or put Him in the dock and think that man is innocent. We never want to give man the benefit of the doubt, in other words. And so we think about it this way. God, in His sovereign goodness, gave His people the Sabbath as a gift. We'll look at that more in a minute. He said, six days are yours, and one is mine. It's the one you can rest on, you should rest on, you will rest on. And so when God's people in the Old Testament would break the Sabbath, think about it this way, they would be not imitating God by resting on the Sabbath. They're supposed to imitate God, they would not be when they work on Sabbath. And when they would not set apart this day for God, it's kind of like they were stealing from Him. They had six and they wanted one more. And then if they continued to labor on the Sabbath, they'd forget God their Creator and Redeemer like they were supposed to think of on the Sabbath. And they would be ignoring the sign, that Sabbath sign, that they were a set-apart people and they'd become just like the rest of the world. Breaking the Sabbath would be bad for their bodies and their souls. And so breaking the Sabbath in the Old Covenant was kind of like starting to walk away from God and focusing on a person's own things. And that's why it's such a big sin in the Old Testament. One commentary told a story, and this kind of will help us understand this. Let's just say that a man was walking down the street, and a beggar was there who needed some money. And the man who was walking down the street, he thought, yeah, that guy could probably use a couple dollars, so he pulled seven dollars out of his pocket, and he gave this beggar six dollars. Can you imagine if the beggar punched him and took the seventh dollar? You'd say, how evil and cruel and wrong that would be. He gave you six, what are you doing taking one more? That's essentially what the Israelites were doing when they broke the Sabbath. So that's a very basic summary of the Sabbath in the Old Testament. And I know that a lot of evangelical Christians really don't talk about the Sabbath, and sometimes I wonder why, because it's such a big part of the Old Testament. And it's part of the whole counsel of God that Paul says we should teach and learn. So let me just briefly summarize, then we'll do some application work. Okay, so what we learned from the Old Testament is that the Sabbath was holy, a day of rest. God made the world, and God redeemed his people, and those were two things that they need to remember on the Sabbath as they rested. That's the basic theological principle. And so God gave it to his people, as I said, for their good. That's what we have to remember here. It wasn't like God was giving them this harsh and unfair rule that would make them, you know, bristle like when they were under Pharaoh's rule. The Sabbath is not like a Pharaoh at all. In fact, our catechism says that God ordained the Sabbath to be a means of blessing for us. How is it a means of blessing? Well, I want to just apply this to us by saying that it's a day of rest physically and a day of rest for our spiritual good, physical good and spiritual good, body and soul. Think about it physically for a minute. A rest once a week. That's good for a person's body, isn't it, biologically? It would be good to stop working, especially in Israel's days. They were an agricultural society and they were always working outside. You know, there was no desk jobs in Israel. They were always working with animals and fences and crops. The women had to work to the bone, their muscles and joints and mind would get weary. And so God said, here, have a day to rest. Not a half of a day, not a couple hours in the morning, but have this a day, once a week. Observe it, keep it, rest. Especially since the fall, even before the fall they had a rest principle, but especially since the fall, now that there's weeds and toil and frustration, oh, how much humans need a rest. Our bodies would not last long if we never rested, would they? Nobody in the world can keep going and going and going. Doctors will tell you, you need to rest. Your stress is high, your body's wearing down. If you do weight training or running, your trainers and coaches will tell you, take a day of rest to let your muscles catch up. And so God says, I'm going to give you a day of relief. You can set your plows down, your hammers down, your shovels. Let your kids rest. Let your workers rest. Take a breather. Now, we'll talk about this next week, but in the New Testament, Jesus said that he was Lord of the Sabbath, and then Jesus said that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So Jesus understood that it's a good thing for men. Now, I mentioned this earlier, sometimes in the Christian faith, when we think about a day of rest, we bristle at that a little bit. Well, why can't I do anything that I want all the time, anytime? Because in our culture, we think that time is ours. We think that we're in control of time, and we think that we can do with time what we want. Isn't that our cultural thought? But God is wise and loving, and he gives laws for his people good, just like a parent's rule to a kid. They can't go on a busy street with your bike. The kid will think that's unfair, but it's really a good rule. And so it is with the Sabbath. This Sabbath principle, this day of rest principle, will grate against that thought of society that we are the masters of our own time. Okay, that society says time is money, but the Sabbath says time is God's. And it will help us remember that. It will help us remember that God is the creator and redeemer. It will help us remember that we are not in control of our time. God wants us to rest. We need a day where we don't work and toil and sweat. We need one day that's not packed with activities and bustle and worldly things. I remember last week we talked about Mary and Martha and Luke. Martha was the one who was always busy. Mary was the one who stopped and listened. A day of rest will help us be like Mary. Listen instead of bustle all the time. So it's good physically for our bodies, isn't it? But I just hinted at this, it's also good spiritually for us. It was good for Israel to have this one day to remember God is their creator. One day to set aside their daily tasks and toil and sweat and headaches and remember God created all things and God redeemed them from that hellish tyranny of Pharaoh. Remember that. Observe the Sabbath, keep it holy. If there wasn't this principle of rest one day a week, the Israelites would have just got absorbed into the other cultures and nations around them, in the market, in the fields, working. They would forget about God, in other words. They would lose this sign that they were God's people. They needed to remember that they were God's people, so there was a Sabbath. Now I know in some areas of life we need a short memory, don't we? If you're a baseball pitcher, you need a short memory so you don't remember two innings ago you got lit up and gave up two home runs. You need to forget that. Or if you're just married and a husband maybe needs to forget some of his wife's meals from the last couple of weeks. It's good to forget in some areas of life. It's good to have a short memory. But in the Christian faith, a short memory is a bad thing. We want a long memory. And the Sabbath will help us remember God as creator and redeemer. We don't want to forget God. And so God says, here, have a day of rest and remember what I've done in creation. And remember what I've done in redemption. And from a New Testament perspective, we don't just think of the exodus, but we think of the greater exodus that Jesus won for us by his death and his resurrection and the rest that we have in him. It's a gospel day. And we are forgetful people, aren't we? Even if we have a calendar on a piece of paper or on our phones, we still forget things. I forget things. It's in our nature to be forgetful. And so we need a reminder every week of who God is and what he's done for us. And so when we think about Sabbath as a reminder that God is creator and redeemer, the Westminster Catechism says that God is creator and redeemer is a short abridgment of religion, the true religion. That's what the Sabbath reminds us. So we can think of the Sabbath rest day like a spiritual memorial day. Remember God. Remember what he's done for you. Set aside your worldly tasks and toils and headaches and sweat and remember what God has done. Now, one more thing to think about here. The Sabbath principle would help the Israelites and us, then, have a biblical worldview. God is creator and redeemer. Now, today, a biblical worldview is obviously very much in the minority position. Today, people think man is creator. We know this in some of the horrible events that we've just seen on videos and things like that. People think man is the creator that can mess with life in the womb and embryos and cells, right? We have this common cultural view that man is creator and can do anything. But the Sabbath helps form a biblical worldview and says, no, man is not the creator. Remember, I am the one who made all things in six days. Rest and remember that. And today, the common worldview of people is that man is not just the creator, but man can redeem himself. That technology and medicine and government will be the savior of mankind. But the Sabbath helps us to fight that. It says, no, man is not the creator or the redeemer. God is. He brought his people out of Egypt, and he brings sinners out of bondage and hell through Jesus. So the Sabbath is good for us, body and soul, physically and spiritually. There's an article in the 1997 Time magazine where there's an interview with Bill Gates, you know, one of the richest men in the United States, I believe. They asked him, well, why don't you believe in God? I think his wife was a nominal Catholic or something. And they said, well, what about you, Bill Gates? Why don't you believe in God? And Bill Gates said one reason was because in terms of time management, this is what he said, religion isn't very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning. Religion's not very efficient, he said. There's a lot more he could be doing on Sunday morning. In other words, he was saying it's counterproductive for me to stop and worship God and rest. That's America, I guess. Always in a business consumer mindset. But then God's word, the fourth commandment, comes to us. So we don't think like that, like atheists. It's not counterproductive for us to rest. It's actually good for us, body and soul. It helps us remember our God, our Creator and Redeemer. It helps us worship Him. And a day of rest helps us look forward to that eternal rest that Jesus promises to give to those who come to Him. Let's pray.