I invite you now to take your Bibles and please turn to Exodus chapter 16. We are going to read in Exodus 16 verses 21 through 36. Here the Lord continues to teach and train up Israel by providing them with daily bread. And now in this section of chapter 16, the Lord continues to establish His people and to bless this new nation by giving them the gift of the Sabbath day. Exodus chapter 16 verses 21 through 36. Hear the word of the Lord. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat. But when the sun grew hot, it melted. On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, this is what the Lord has commanded. Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake, and boil what you will boil. And all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning. So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. And Moses said, Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, there will be none. On the seventh day, some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, how long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. Therefore, on the sixth day, he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day. Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed and white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. Moses said, this is what the Lord has commanded. Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. Then Moses said to Aaron, take a jar and put an omer of manna in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate manna for 40 years till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. An omer is a 10th part of an ephah. We'll invite you now to turn to Mark chapter 2. Mark 2, verses 23-28. In our Lord Jesus' day, for many the Sabbath had been reduced to a day of legalism and just rule following, and any blessings of the Sabbath gift were long forgotten. Jesus reminds Israel that the Sabbath exists to bless the people of God. Mark 2, starting at verse 23, the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abathar the high priest and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for anyone but the priest to eat? and also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." Well, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Our God and our Helper, by Your Holy Spirit, open our minds that as now the Scriptures have been read and soon next Your Word is proclaimed, that we may be led into Your truth and taught Your will for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. You may be seated. Now, the main idea of our passage this morning is pretty simple. Through instructions about gathering manna, the Lord continues to train his people as he gives them the gift of the Sabbath day. Now, the temptation at this point, as soon as we hear about the Sabbath day, is to go into systematic theology and topical mode, and as New Testament Christians, we call this the Lord's Day. And since, you know, observing the Lord's Day has somehow become controversial and fallen on hard times, and there's a lot of issues and arguments around it, our temptation is to immediately go into some systematic treatment of the Sabbath and to have an apologetic for it. Well, there is a place for that, for sure. But if we start doing that, what's going to happen is we're going to miss out on some of the unique focus and blessing of our passage in its content. So what we're going to do is we're going to focus on what we learn about the Sabbath mostly from our passage here. And what I want us to focus on is not the yes and no's and the do's and don'ts, but what's our own heart attitude about the Sabbath? How do we feel about the Sabbath and think about the Sabbath as a gift from God? And then in just a few more chapters, you know, we'll get a chance to revisit this in Exodus chapter 20. And then, you know, we can't say everything in one sermon. Some of the things we don't get to today, we can get to then. So that's what we want to focus on this morning. It's just how do you, you know, what's your heart on the Sabbath? How do you think of it? What's your view of it? Do you view it as a gift and a blessing from God? So we only have two points this morning. The Sabbath as a gift and the Sabbath as a sign. Sabbath as a gift and the Sabbath as a sign. So first we're gonna take a look at verses 22 through 30, and we're going to see just how great a gift the Sabbath is to the people of God. If you remember, I've just been rescued out of the sin and misery and slavery of Egypt. So the instructions given to Israel were to get up and get going, to get out of bed fairly early in the morning and to go gather their portion of daily manna for them and for their family. And if they waited too long and the sun got hot, you know the mana would just melt away. Through Moses, the Lord instructed Israel to gather their manna for the day, every day, for five days. So if we're giving the days of the week, our days, what this would be, would be Sunday through Thursday. As you remember, the Sabbath was still the seventh day of the week at this time. So Sunday through Thursday, they would gather what they needed for one day, and if they kept any over until the next day, it would be rotten, it would stink, and it would be worm-ridden. And then on the sixth day, which would be Friday, they were instructed to gather two days worth of manna. In verse 23, we read, this is what the Lord has commanded. Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil. And all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning. So on Friday, essentially, the sixth day, they were to gather two days worth of manna. They were to eat the Friday portion and then bake or boil the remaining manna to be left over for Saturday morning. So then on Saturday morning, when they woke up, they could just reheat it a little bit in the pan and have some nice fresh manna biscuits or pancakes, and they wouldn't have to go out and gather anymore. Well, most of Israel obeyed, and it worked. The Saturday morning manna was still fresh, it was ready to go, and to be eaten for breakfast. However, some of the Israelites were still slow to believe, and they did not obey the Lord's instructions to gather two days of manna on the sixth day. I mean, it's easy to believe, but it's hard to believe. Moses did warn them, six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, there will be none. Well, some didn't listen, and we can just picture what happened. They had just, you know, this is probably the first week here, right? I mean, I hope they didn't do this in the second, third, and future weeks. Let's give them Let's pretend it was just the first week so we can not get our minds too blown here. But so, you know, six days came, MANA was there every day. They're supposed to get two days worth on the sixth day. Some of them didn't, so they wake up and they walk outside and they go, Where's the manna? What happened to it? Did my alarm go off? Is it too late? Did it already melt or something? Why do they have food? I mean, we can just imagine. This is pretty unbelievable to us. We do wonder if this is the same people that are slow to believe and tried to keep some earlier in the week. We don't know, but it's very likely that the same people that tried to keep extra for the next day and got rotten were the same people that said, OK, I get it. One day at a time. I'm only going to do one day at a time on the sixth day. And this is what happened. So we do see this. It is humorous for us. Yet at the same time, we see ourselves in disobedient Israel as those who are also very slow to believe and the clearest of instructions are very quick to not trust, not believe. So we will give them a little bit of grace because we know this is a picture of us. But we do see some foreshadowing here in this. We see that Israel, this generation, this wilderness generation, has a hard heart and an unbelieving heart. And this would characterize them for the first 40 years in the wilderness. So here's how the Lord responds, verse 28. And the Lord says to Moses, How long will you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws? See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. Therefore, on the sixth day He gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place. Let none go out of his place on the seventh day. So in the Lord's response, the key phrase we want to focus on as we start to apply this is in verse 29, where he says, see, the Lord has given, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. It's a gift, and earlier the Sabbath is described as a solemn rest, a holy Sabbath unto the Lord. This rest, Sabbath means rest, this rest is a gift from God to His people. He gave the Sabbath as a gift, as a present for them, a present of rest for the people of God. Now, think of what they just came from. What would it was like in Egypt? I don't even know if they knew the definition of the word rest. They were doing back-breaking slave labor, and they groaned under it. No doubt, it was seven days a week. If it's seven days a week, there probably didn't even seem like weeks. It just seemed like one long existence of slavery and suffering. Israel wouldn't get personal days, holidays, sick days, vacations. They wouldn't get any of those things. They were slaves to Pharaoh and they served only him. Well, now things are different. Now they have been rescued from the tyranny of Pharaoh. They've been liberated. They're now free to serve Yahweh in the wilderness. However, for them, this is still brand new. This is still a brand new arrangement. I'm sure that there's still a lot of what ifs and a lot of fears. Well, who exactly is this God who has saved us? What kind of stuff is he gonna ask us to do? So far, they've seen that this God is a God who hears, who knows, who remembers, who saves and provides. And now the Lord reveals himself as the God who brings his people to a place of security, worship, and rest. No longer would they break their backs in nonstop service of an evil taskmaster. Now they would have a day of rest. And in fact, they wouldn't have to go out and even gather any food on the Sabbath this day of rest. The Lord gave it to them, so they might have a day of rest, so that they would be free then to worship the God who saved them. The gift of the Sabbath to Israel was a blessing that they had never had before. They went from likely zero days off or something similar to 52 days of rest per year, one every single week. What a blessing this would have been for them. What a gift. They would see that their God, the Lord, delivers, provides, and blesses his people. Israel was meant to look at the Sabbath day as a day of rest, as a day of blessing, and as a day of worship. Our Lord Jesus understood this. He understood that the Sabbath was a gift as he told the religious leaders of his day and the disciples, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Serving the Lord meant less work. Serving the Lord meant observing a day of rest from the labors of the week. So then being a faithful servant actually meant refraining from labor and enjoying fellowship with God and His people. What a change. This is totally different. This would change their entire life. It would restructure the whole thing. This is a gift from the Lord. And as we read in our call to worship, this gift was given in creation. And now it's renewed, so to speak, or re-given in the life of Israel, and it continues to be a gift for us today. How do we know that? because the Sabbath was instituted at creation, before the fall. So it's something that belongs to this creation. So as long as this creation remains, and this creation will remain until Christ comes again, and rejuvenates it, and recreates it, and refines the new heavens and the new earth, as long as this creation remains, the Sabbath is established for it. And as those created in the image of God, all people in all places, this whole creation are to mirror the work of their Creator, which is to work for six days and to rest for one day. And for us now as New Testament Christians, the Sabbath, which we call the Lord's day, is no longer the seventh day of the week, but it's been moved to the first day of the week. We are to observe, we're still to observe it, but now on the first day of the week. Well, why the change? By the way, if you're talking to a Seventh-day Adventist, this is a helpful conversation piece for them. And if you talk to them about this, like their minds get blown. So why the change? Well, Jesus secured our eternal Sabbath rest for us when he rose from the dead. What day did he rise from the dead? On the first day of the week. And now as Christ is raised, he's been resurrected on the first day of the week, we have entered that rest in him. Christ earned that Sabbath rest by being perfectly obedient and accomplishing everything that Adam did not. That Sabbath rest was held before Adam. Do this and you will enter God's eternal Sabbath rest. Adam failed. Christ, the second Adam, the last Adam, comes and accomplished everything that the first Adam did not. He rises again from the dead on the first day of the week. So now in Christ, we have entered into the beginnings of that Sabbath rest. So Sunday is now the day that we worship. Sunday is our Christian Sabbath. It's God's gift to us. We're to label and toil and sweat for six days in this world, but the seventh day we are to rest from those worldly labors and enjoy the blessings and the fruits of the world to come. So in our passage, God gave the gift of the Sabbath to Israel, but some didn't view it that way. Some didn't view it as a gift. They didn't want to take advantage of it and they went out looking for manna on the Sabbath. I ask us this morning, I ask you this morning, what about you? How do you view the Lord's day? What is your heart? How do you feel about the Lord's day? What are your actions that you do or that you don't do? What do they say about how you view the Lord's day? On the Lord's day, are you going to rest from your labors? Or are you going to go out and look for manna? Do you view the Lord's Day as a gift? Or is it an inconvenience that gets in the way of your fun or your errands? Do you view it as a present from God who has saved you and loves to spend time with you? Or do you view it more as something that's nice but optional? Do you view it as an entire day? I mean, the Puritans refer to the Sabbath as the market day of the soul, where your soul can get fed and refreshed all day. Or do you view it as a half day or just an hour and 15 minutes? I checked off the church box, now the rest of the day is mine to do whatever I want. Now, I'm sure at times all of us need recalibration and correction to how we think about the Lord's Day. When we start to think about the Lord's Day, we should start here. We should start thinking of it as it's a present. It's a gift from our Heavenly Father. And it's a gift that also where we find feeding and refreshment for our weary souls. Yes, keeping the Lord's Day is a duty. It is a command. It is. but it's also a delight. It's a delightful duty. Our hearts should not view the Sabbath as a have-to, but as a get-to. Now some of us, granted for one reason or another, whether it's we have some doctrine that needs adjustment or some desires in our heart that needs adjustment, are not there yet. So what do you do? Well, you pray. Ask the Lord to teach you what it means to understand that the Sabbath is a delight and that it's a gift from God, a God who loves you. We also want to teach this to our children. And we do this by first ourselves working on our own views and our own hearts and view the Sabbath as a delight ourselves. And then our children will learn to look at it as a delight. Now, I know I'm in good company here. And I think everyone knows that the harshest comments or rebukes I ever give, they're always for my younger self or my current self. And I feel like a failure as a parent. And in so many ways, I feel at times like a hypocrite up here, preaching on topics like the Sabbath. And so because of that, I don't like to use myself as an example. But this week, I did think of one thing. that I think at our house we have done well to help make sure the Sabbath is a delight. So just going to share with you as an illustration. When the kids were young, I always referred to the Lord's Day as daddy's favorite day. So Saturday night, I would start with, hey kids, what day is it tomorrow? And they'd say, oh, it's daddy's favorite day. And then you wake them up on Sunday morning. Hey, good morning. What day is it today? Oh, it's daddy's favorite day. And the toddler version of Dahlia would say it, because this is when I remember it the most, was joyful, enthusiastic, and it was a cheer. You know, it's daddy's favorite day. Yes. And I'd say, yeah, it's the Lord's Day. We get to go worship him. We get to go spend time with our friends at church today. Without any warning, I tested them last night because I haven't done this for a few years now. And I said, hey, kids, there's only two of them instead of three. I'll have to test the older one later. I said, kids, what day is it tomorrow? And they said, It's Daddy's favorite day. And I said, it is. It's the Lord's day. And then they reminded me that we also made a song to go with it, too. Because the kids, they couldn't remember the days of the week, and it was driving me insane. I just couldn't handle it. And so with some collaboration, we came up with a song. And I'm sure after service, Lily would be happy to sing it for you. So this was just one little thing that I tried to do just to get our hearts right. But the Sabbath increasingly became a delight and a joy for our family. And I don't think we keep it perfectly. There's always room for improvement. But it is a delight. It is what we look forward to. And we certainly enjoy every Lord's Day. You know, that's what we want. We want to see the Sabbath as a blessing and as a gift. And I pray that as a congregation, that we increasingly, increasingly do. And so then we look forward to things like spending as much time as we can with the people of God, getting as much instruction as we can, getting an opportunity before worship, during worship. you know, fellowshipping together. If we have something in the evening doing that, these are ways to just help us to keep the Sabbath a delight. I pray that we continue just to grow in seeing the Sabbath as a blessing. So the Lord's Day is a wonderful gift from our creator and sustainer. It's also a sign. It's a sign that helps us to remember and to look forward in anticipation. The Sabbath reminds us to look backward to see what God has done for us, in history to save us, and it's a sign that also points forward to eternal rest in the promised land with Christ. This is also what the Sabbath was for Israel, a backward and forward facing sign. In verses 32 and 33, Moses said, this is what the Lord has commanded. Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. And Moses said to Aaron, take a jar, put an omer of manna in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. So the tabernacle hadn't actually been built yet, but Exodus was written after it was built. So Moses, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, inserts this in the right location. And he instructs them to take one day's worth of manna, put it in a jar, and store it near the ark that houses the 10 commandments in the tabernacle. So this was to remind future generations of Israel that the Lord rescued them and miraculously provided daily bread for them the 40 years they were in the wilderness. Someday people were going to grow up and they had no idea what manna was. Well, here's a visual representation that they save to point backward to the Lord's faithfulness. And we know that that manna appeared for six days a week until Israel came to the border of the promised land. So this would remind them, once again, that this is, you know, the other nations, they have their origin stories, they have their myths and their legends. Well, guess what? Our origin story is not a myth. It's not a legend. It's real. And you know what? To prove that it's real and that really happened, in the jar in there is some manna. And it usually spoils after one day. However long that manna has been in there, that's how long it didn't spoil. It's a reminder that God rescued them for real in history, bringing His people out of Egypt. This is the gospel of the Old Testament. So the Sabbath then was a sign for Israel, a sign pointing backwards to remind them that Yahweh saved them from sin and misery in Egypt and provided for them in the wilderness and that he delivered them into the promised land. And if it was before the promised land, that he would in the future. Now the Sabbath is also a sign that God is currently dwelling and working in his people in the present. In Ezekiel chapter 20, the idea that the Sabbath is a sign is brought up, although it's brought up in a context where Ezekiel is being a lawyer for God, a prosecuting attorney and bringing evidence against Israel. But we're just going to look at the teaching of the Sabbath as a sign here. Exodus 20 verse 12, moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths. as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them." So the instructions regarding manna pointing to the Sabbath reminded Israel that it was Almighty God who saved them and provided for them, and it reminded them that they were being sanctified. They were being called out of the world. They were being set apart to serve God and God alone. The Sabbath is a sign that points backward then to God rescuing his people. And it's a weekly sign that reminds his people they belong to him and they're called to worship and serve him. And then also it's a sign that pointed Israel as they were in the wilderness and starting to think of us in the wilderness here, and pointing them forward to their Sabbath rest that they would enjoy in the promised land. The Sabbath was a sign that was meant to form their thinking. It was meant to form their identity, who they are as the people of God. It helped them to think accurately about their past, about their present, and about their future identity as a nation holy unto the Lord. Setting up of the Sabbath and the Sabbath pattern and the Sabbath week was to do all these things. So for us today as New Testament Christians, the Sabbath still serves as a sign. It points us though all the way back to Genesis 2, all the way back to creation. It reminds us that God always intended us to enter into an eternal rest the way the Lord did after He created the heavens and the earth in six days and sat down and He rested on the seventh day. And the seventh day goes on forever. It reminds us that Adam's intention and purpose was always for him to obey and to earn that Sabbath rest for him and the people of God. Yet we know that Adam failed. He sinned and he did not enter that rest. So it reminds us now that the second Adam or the last Adam, Jesus Christ, not only paid for all of our sins by dying for us on the cross, but he rose again from the dead. He rose again from the dead, and as he did, that showed that death had no claim over him. It was evidence that he accomplished everything that the Lord had for him to accomplish, that he was a perfectly obedient son, and as the obedient son, he entered that Sabbath rest for us. And now as we are united to Christ, we have entered into that Sabbath rest in Him. The Sabbath reminds us of what Christ has already done for us. It reminds us that God is serving and providing for us each and every Lord's Day. It points us forward to that eternal eschatological Sabbath that Christ already earned for us, that we've entered into now, and we get a taste of it, we get a preview of it each and every Lord's Day. That's what the Sabbath day is for us. That's why it's a gift for us. It's an incredible reminder. It's a sign that points us to these things. And it's meant for us to form the rhythm of our lives, to form our own identities and our own thinking by looking back and seeing what the Lord has done for us, saving us in Christ, by testifying to the Lord's presence here even now this morning and working in us, and then pointing us forward to a blessed future which He has promised us in the land of Canaan, in the land of the new creation. That's mind-blowing. That's life-changing. When we realize that this is what the Sabbath gift is and what it means for us, how can we not get excited about the Lord's Day and be filled with joy? On the Sabbath, when we worship, this is how we should think of ourselves. We should think of ourselves as we are with John the Revelator, who was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and describes Christ ruling, reigning, and being praised in Revelation. I'm going to read this picture. of Sabbath worship in Revelation chapter 4, verses 2 through 11. This is where we are, even this morning. And at once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven. with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of Jasper and Carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. And around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders clothed in white garments with golden crowns on their heads. And from the throne came flashes of lightning and rumbles and peals of thunder. And before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne there was, as it were, a sea of glass like crystal." and all around the throne. On each side of the throne are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind. The first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who is seated on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne saying, Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created." This vision of John describes the ecstasies and joys of heavenly glory that we get to participate in each and every Lord's Day. The Sabbath is a gift and it's a sign that points us to the glory that was won for us in our victorious and risen Christ. This is what we should think of when we think of the Lord's Day. Our favorite day. A day of joy, of blessing, of rest, of rest from our sins. Rest and peace with God our Father. Peace for our soul. When we think of the Lord's Day, may our thoughts and hearts be lifted up to these heavenly places where Christ is seated, ruling and reigning at the right hand of God. In all honesty, there was a third point to today's sermon, the Sabbath, as a witness. But after reading Revelation chapter 4, sometimes you just have to stop. You just have to stop, and leave it there, and enjoy the glory, and the beauty, and the awesomeness of our Savior. And sometimes there are, I remember very few, But sometimes there are services that you never want to end. Sometimes there are sermons that you never want to end. And sometimes, even though you're tired, there are Lord's Days that you never want to end. So we're going to finish here. We're going to leave it here, reflecting and worshiping in the Spirit, in glory, before the throne of heaven with John. Listening to that heavenly choir sing, And now, in a moment, adding our own voices to theirs as we are united to Christ and at rest in Him, enjoying and delighting in the gift of this day. Let's pray. Oh dear God, we thank you for this gift, this reminder of who we are in Christ, of this time that we have to just be together, to rest, to be fed, and to praise you for everything that you are and everything that you've done for us. We thank you for this appetizer, so to speak, this preview of the eternal Sabbath rest that waits for us, which we know is already ours in our Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in His name that we pray. Amen. Bye.