It's great to be here with you. I consider it a real privilege to be invited back again to the BWSC. It's a wonderful conference and a tremendous opportunity for all of you, as well as all of us speakers, to hear just some really great truths. and how those truths can transform our lives, and through us, transform even the world around us, as we fulfill the function of salt and light to the world. Now, I want to start by asking you all to break a rule, please. Please get out your smartphone, get it out, and turn it on. Turn on your smartphone and go to CornwallAlliance.org. That's CornwallAlliance.org. That is the website of the ministry that I lead. What I'd like you to do when you are at CornwallAlliance.org is to find over toward the right side, scroll down a little bit, you'll find a little green box where you can subscribe to our updates. Put your email address in there, and you're subscribed. Now, you will receive an email saying, we want you to confirm, do this, you know, so if at that point you decide, eh, I don't want to get this junk, you can always just not confirm, and then you won't get it. But that at least keeps any of your friends from signing you up without your permission. Oh, goodness gracious. I'm having a hard time here getting my computer reopened. This is ridiculous. I cannot do this. Oh, cat squash is on. There we go. I knew I had the right password. Okay. All right. Nope, I guess not. Now, I've asked if we can during break time today, which of course means that I'm really, really begging you to sacrifice some of your own fun to learn something more. I've asked if we can show a documentary video that the Cornwall Alliance produced last fall called Where the Grass is Greener, Biblical Stewardship versus Climate Alarmism. I'm sure all of you have heard of global warming, you've heard of climate change, you've heard of the notion that human activity is is causing climate change or global warming that is going to be devastating and that we need to spend literally trillions of dollars completely changing our entire energy system in order to fight global warming. This idea is rooted in a variety of different things, including some pagan notions of what the earth is and where it came from and how it functions, as well as some very poor science And by the way, some good science. It's a very complex issue. But in this documentary video, we have interviewed over 30 world-class scholars in climate science and economics, in physics and geophysics and oceanography and all sorts of different related fields. Discussing what's wrong with the notion that our use of fossil fuels to provide energy to lift people out of poverty is causing devastating global warming. I would really urge you to stick around for the break period, immediately after this, to see that. Now, do we have the trailer for that queued up? Is that ready to show? Is that going to be run from back there? done from the computer here. Well, oh, goodness. It shouldn't have depended on me to do anything technical, because I'm not capable. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll just not show the trailer, but I would really invite you, urge you to come and see that. The documentary is available at our table, at the Cornell Alliance for the Spiritual Creation table. We have a lot of free literature there, as well as literature and videos that you can purchase. This week I'm going to be speaking to you about economics from the perspective of a Christian worldview. And this afternoon, I'm going to start us off by talking about economics and your spiritual life. Economics and your spiritual life. We're going to start by looking at Jesus' teaching about God and mammon. Y'all, I'm sure, are familiar with Jesus saying, you cannot serve God and mammon. I'm going to lead us into that by taking a look at Jesus' encounter with the rich young man in Matthew 19, 16-22. This passage has given rise to many different interpretations. Some see it as a requirement that Christians abandon all earthly goods. Others, a specific command to a specific individual designed to point to his chief spiritual problem. But whatever else we might learn from it, We can surely conclude that a man's willingness to part with his possessions and give to the poor at Christ's command is an accurate measure of his spiritual maturity. If you would be perfect, Jesus says, and the word perfect there translates to Greek word meaning complete or mature, if you would be perfect or mature, go. Sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me." In this context, this idea of perfect, or maturity, expresses having come to that for which we were made. Having come to fulfill our purpose in life, our telos, the end for which God created. The maturity measured in this command may be defined contextually as self-abandonment, trust in God's provision, care for others, and commitment to following Jesus. Spiritual maturity and attitudes cord, and use of possessions as individuals, members of families and churches, and citizens of communities and nations, should be the goal toward which Christians always strive. It begins by forsaking the urge to serve self and trusting instead in God's provision. It leads to pouring out ourselves for others, and it culminates in following Jesus as the highest means of service. Christians are called to reenact in our own lives the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, by his poverty, might become rich." Jesus made self-denial the heart of Christian maturity. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. And here is the same progression of thought that was in Jesus' instruction for the rich young man. deny self, serve others, and follow him. Serving others is the point of taking up the cross. As Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, so the Christian's cross is his work of service to those in need. Now, Jesus began his answer to the rich young man in a strange way. If you would be perfect or mature, Now, the young man hadn't asked about perfection or maturity, but about eternal life. What must I do to gain eternal life? But gaining eternal life is not God's goal for His people, and doing the good work is not the means to it. On the contrary, while salvation is by grace through faith, not of ourselves, not of works, nonetheless, God's goal for us is much more. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. If we do not desire to attain to Christian maturity, then it's no use asking Jesus about eternal life, or anything else for that matter. For we, like the rich young man, will go away empty and sorrowful, because Jesus doesn't want to fill us was something that cannot satisfy. If you wish to be perfect, Jesus said, go, sell what you possess. In Jesus' day, as in every age, the great temptation was to trust in possessions, provisions, instead of in the provider. And the rich young man did just that. To another person, Jesus said, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Immediately, Jesus launched into the parable of the rich fool who piled up grain and had to build more barns, but would lose them all because that night he would have to answer for his soul to God. Jesus then warned against anxiety for physical needs. He urged his followers to seek for his kingdom with the assurance that all their physical needs would be met. And he concluded, sell your possessions and give to the needy, provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Jesus insists on knowing of each of us. Where is your treasure? Is it in barns hoarded away for some expected tragedy? Is it in packed shelters bearing little fruit for God's kingdom or man's needs? Is it tied up in securities that cannot secure the body, let alone the soul? Or is it at work for others' benefit, even at risk to yourself? Are you storing up treasure in heaven or on earth? In insisting that this man sell his possessions, Jesus established no universal principle requiring all Christians to give away all their wealth. That would contradict his explicit exclamation upon Zacchaeus' repentance and promise to repay fourfold anything he had defrauded, and to give half his possessions to the poor. Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. In Zacchaeus, Jesus saw Abraham's faith expressed in repentance and charity. But the rich young man lacked such faith. He clung to his possessions instead of following Jesus. Nevertheless, Jesus does set forth a different universal principle, that every believer must count following Jesus worth more than all his possessions. and so be willing to give up everything for Jesus' sake. He calls us to strip away all security but God, our possessions and families, our wisdom and knowledge, and even our own personal holiness. These and any other things on which we depend for our security must be cast aside and replaced by trust in God alone. If you would be perfect, Jesus said, go, sell what you possess, and give to the poor. Mere self-abandonment is not enough for the Christian. It may be the goal of Hinduism and Buddhism, which strive for negation of all desire and absorption in the universal spirit, but Christianity demands something quite different. We abandon ourselves not to become idle, but to become redemptively active, pouring out ourselves to serve others. Unlike idle pietism, and by the way, not all pietism is idle, charitable giving demonstrates the reality of Christian faith and life. Just as faith without works is dead, according to James 2.26, so love without works is dead. For if anyone has the world's good, and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him. How does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our heart before him." 1 John 3, 17-19 And Jesus continues, if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. There's a promise that comes along with self-abandonment for Jesus' sake. Christ does not ask us to cast ourselves away without hope, but to cast away all that stands between us and the greatest hope of all. It's simultaneously a blessing and a curse that much Christianity has abandoned the pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by mentality. That mentality represented at least as much a rejection of the Church's duty to care for the world as a rejection of worldliness itself. But the present about-face often brings with it an inversion of biblical values, placing temporal above eternal. In contrast, Jesus' attitude is unequivocal. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? Jesus equates clarity of vision with steadfast attachment to things above, not things below. Just so, Paul urges, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. The great risk for Israel on entering the promised land was that it would lose its singular attachment to its God. Immediately after impressing the great commandment on Israel, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, Deuteronomy 6, 5, and urging them to keep God's commandments the foremost in mind, Moses warned, and when Yahweh your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. And when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is Yahweh your God you shall fear, Him you shall serve, and by His name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods. Riches are as likely as anything to entice us to violate the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. The great danger is that they will gain our first allegiance instead of God, that we will trust them instead of God for security, and that when a choice must be made, we will cling to them instead of to God. That is why Jesus insisted, truly I say to you, Only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. And finally, Jesus says, if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. Now here is the height of self-abandonment. Jesus calls us to follow Him, not ruling our own lives, but obeying Him, having Him rule us. Nothing must substitute for the self-abandonment of being like Jesus, and even sharing in His work as our highest goal. Paul made that point when he wrote in Philippians 3, whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection of the dead. In a word, writes Sinclair Ferguson, maturity equals Christlikeness. Maturity equals Christlikeness. No other standard may be allowed to substitute. Following Jesus means being willing to cast aside anything he tells us to abandon. It means trusting God alone for everything that we need, pouring ourselves out to serve others, focusing our lives on things eternal rather than temporal. It means absolute, total commitment. And for anyone who longs for salvation, it is not optional. One of the most damnable heresies in the history of Christianity is the teaching all too common in every age, that Jesus can be Savior without being Lord. It belittles every command of Christ. It crashes head-on into the insistent words of Jesus, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Anything that usurps Christ's place as absolute ruler of our lives becomes his rival. It divides our allegiance and so cripples our usefulness in his kingdom. And because the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, wealth is among Jesus' most common rivals, tempting those who long for it to abandon the faith, Paul says in 1 Timothy 6.10. That is why, immediately after urging believers to lay up treasures in heaven, Jesus insists, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon, or money. Money inevitably becomes the master if a man tries to make himself its master by acquiring it for its own sake. wrote Colin Brown, and I might add, or for his own sake. Jesus does not say you must not or you ought not or it would be unwise for you to serve both God and possessions, but you cannot serve God and money. Serving both is as impossible as squaring a circle or making two plus two equal five. The Lord our God is a jealous God, and He will not share His glory with another. He demands absolute rule in our lives, and anything that challenges that rule must go, lest it ruin us. That is the sense of the covenant between God and His people. The Christian stands in relation to God as the vassal to the feudal Lord. He is bound by a treaty of suzerainty by which God asserts His absolute right of dominion over him. God has purchased him from slavery to sin and set for his demands on him. He promises blessings on obedience and curses on disobedience. So long as the vassal serves his feudal lord, he is protected and provided for. But the moment he allies himself with a rival, he faces the brunt of his lord's anger. Anything that usurps God's authority is an idol, a false god. And whenever we put possessions, whether material wealth, health, power, even marriage or family or friendship, above God, whenever we serve them instead of serving God, we commit idolatry. When we exercise godly stewardship over such things, they all become tools, like the money and the parable of the talent, for building God's kingdom and maturing in spiritual life. But when we serve them as ends in themselves, or as means to our own end, they lead us away from God. That's why Jesus said, of anyone who tried to serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Nothing is more debilitating to true Christian stewardship than allowing anything to usurp God's authority in our lives. Good stewardship requires obedience, and we cannot obey God when we rebel against Him and serve other gods. A spiritual growth is actually a prerequisite to proper economic life and conduct, what the Bible depicts as stewardship of God's possessions. So a major step toward a proper understanding and application of Christian stewardship is conquering the idol of mammon, or wealth. How can we do that? Well, I'll give you a few steps toward that. by nature children of wrath, according to Ephesians 2.3, and sin, not righteousness, comes naturally to us even though we are Christians. Therefore, first step, we must discipline ourselves for godliness. We must discipline ourselves for godliness. That discipline of which Paul wrote, gymnasia, from which we get our word gymnasium, was no easy matter. It referred to exercise in preparation for competition. It carried the sense not of transitory attention, but of consistent, long-term training that made habits out of the activities involved. Rigorous self-discipline in prayer in the study of God's Word, in submission to spiritual guidance from mature brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, and in decisive obedience despite contrary feelings. All of these are essential to spiritual growth. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. It is not a proof text for fundraising, but a measure of our devotion to God. When we intentionally invest our best time and energy in pursuing God in scripture and in prayer, we show that our treasure is in God. When we put off the pursuit of God until it becomes convenient, we put off spiritual maturity. If we pursue God heartily, our minds will be renewed and our values transformed so that we no longer worry about material possessions or needs. We must also wean ourselves from the love of possessions and train ourselves to trust and love God. That is the point of Jesus' instruction to the rich young man who made an idol of his wealth. So long as that idol remained enthroned, he could pay no attention to God's claims on his life. Therefore, Jesus insisted that he sell his possessions and give to the poor. Only radical surgery could break his bondage. But as cancers may be incipient or far advanced, so surgery may be major or minor. In the case of Zacchaeus, the tax-gatherer, health was restored by fourfold restitution to all he had defrauded, and giving half his wealth to the poor. However mild or radical, the surgery always takes the same form—giving. so certainly and powerfully breaks the bonds of mammon, money turned into an idol. Indeed, many people testify, as I can testify from my own experience, that a sure way to rid ourselves of financial worries is not to get more and scrimp more, but to give more, indeed to give more than we think we can afford. And finally, to conquer the idol of man, we must take up the cross, mimicking Jesus in service to others. So long as our minds are fixed on ourselves and our own needs, we'll worship wealth. We'll cling to what we have, thinking it necessary for present and future security. We'll envy those with more, coveting what is theirs, grasping for more and more and more. Scripture calls the believer to a wholly different way of life. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." Ultimately, worshipping wealth means worshipping self. For despite appearances to the contrary, we covet wealth not for its own sake, but for the benefit we think we will gain from it. And that perspective betrays a broader and deeper attitude in our hearts. Everything, we think, exists to serve us. And in so thinking, we put ourselves in the place of God, for whose pleasure all things were created, according to Revelation 4.11. There is but one cure to such selfishness, such self-worship, such idolatry of the self, pouring out ourselves for the sake of others. as Jesus did, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, and being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Only when we are resolved to make this our attitude are we ready to learn and apply the principles of biblical economics. Stewardship. That's what economics really is. The principles of stewardship, of taking good care of and using productively for God's glory and the building of His kingdom, what belongs to God. to bring glory to him and benefit to our neighbors. A second major part of my talk to you today is to talk about working as servants of God, the spirituality of work. The fourth commandment instructs all people to work. We think of it always as the Sabbath commandment, but it includes the command to work. For six days you shall labor and do all your work." Work is an essential economic activity, and later we'll discuss ways of maximizing its productivity. But first, let's examine some spiritual aspects of work. Work expresses who we are, what we are, and what we believe. Just as the created order, God's work, expresses His character, we read in Psalm 19, So our work makes visible our invisible spiritual nature. It shows our character, just as truly as good works make visible the principle of faith in the heart of one who possesses it. In work, we reflect the image of our Maker, Genesis 1.26. For He too is a worker, and at the very time He created us, He commanded us to work. Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." That, by the way, negates the notion that we're supposed to have a small footprint on the earth, including a small carbon footprint. This means that work, including what we think about it and how we do it, is closely related to our spiritual maturity. God's goal in believers is that we should become conformed to the image of his Son, who in turn is the image of the invisible God. It was by Him that all things were created, and in Him all things hold together. The Son of God is like the Father, whose image He is, and displays a worker, creating, sustaining, and redeeming the world." We find in John 5, 17, and Colossians 1, 15-20. Growth in Christian maturity, then, means not only increasing in righteousness, holiness, and truth, Ephesians 4, 23 and 24, but also growth as workers fulfilling God's purpose for all mankind to subdue and rule the earth, transforming it from wilderness into garden, and then cultivating and guarding it. Just as the Son of God, into whose image we are to be conformed, is Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, So there are creative, sustaining, and redemptive aspects to human work. We see the creative and sustaining aspects in Genesis 2.15. Cultivation increases and directs the earth's natural productivity to meet man's needs, while guarding sustains it against degradation. Apart from the Fall, these would have been the only aspects of work, but man's sin brought death and corruption. And so man was assigned a redemptive work as well, restoring earth's productivity by the sweat of his brow. Genesis 3.19. Work is not a part of the curse that God casts on man and the earth for man's sin. The curse promised hardship in multiplying, that is, in giving birth, and hardship in subduing the earth. the latter because the ground itself was cursed, so that its natural productivity would be reduced and perverted, but that man should work as part of his expression of the Creator's image was ordained prior to the Fall. Work is therefore a privilege, and sloth is condemned not only as rebellion against God's immediate command, but also as a dehumanizing repression of the image of God. That is part of why programs that just provide food, clothing, shelter, other things for people and ask nothing of them in return are actually spiritually destructive of those people. We'll get to that in a later talk. Implicit in the need to work is the idea of scarcity, a fundamental concept in economics. Left to itself, nature does not provide all man's needs or wants. Instead, man must work both to turn raw materials into resources, and resources into finished goods, and to conserve the effects of his works so that he can build on them. This means man bears responsibility for the manner in which he uses the world over which God has given him dominion. As John Calvin put it in his commentary on Genesis, The custody of the garden was given in charge to Adam to show that we possess the things which God has committed to our hands on the condition that, being content with a frugal and moderate use of them, we should take care of what shall remain. Let him who possesses a field so partake of its yearly fruits that he may not suffer the ground to be injured by its negligence, but let him endeavor to hand it down to prosperity as he receives it, or even better cultivated. let him so feed on its fruits, that he neither dissipates it by luxury nor permits it to be marred or ruined by neglect. Moreover, that this economy and this diligence with respect to those things which God has given us to enjoy may flourish among us, let every one regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses. Then he will neither conduct himself dissolutely nor corrupt by abuse those things which God requires to be preserved. There you have, really, the basis of an environmental ethic. Now, when God created man and woman, he said, let them have dominion over all the earth. Part of the purpose for which God created man was that man should rule over earth in order that by his care and culture he might, as commentators C.F. Kyle and Franz Delitzsch put it, make it into a transparent mirror of the glory of the Creator. A major purpose of our work is to make all the earth serve our needs and our neighbors for God's glory. In this respect, work's redemptive aspect takes on special importance. Because of the curse, earth and its plants and animals are in rebellion against man. Before the fall, work was pleasant and full of delight, entirely exempt from all trouble and weariness, as Calvin put it. Food was abundant and cheap," wrote David Chilton, and man did not have to spend much time in search of sustenance and refreshment. Instead, his time was spent in scientific, productive, and aesthetic activity. Most of his labor involved investigating and beautifying his environment. But after the fall, God's curse meant that without man's redemptive activity, the ground would become less and less fruitful, leaving even basic physical needs unmet. Work thus becomes a means of restoring the earth, insofar as possible, described in the Eschaton, to its pre-fall productivity. No, indeed, beyond that. That is, by working we begin to re-establish the dominion over the earth that God originally intended for us, but that is broken by the fall and the curse. The increase of that dominion involves the increase of provision for man's needs and, consequently, the increase of man's opportunity to rest. The goal toward which we work is the restoration of the original created order on earth. Rest is a symbol of the ultimate achievement of that goal, just as the Sabbath is a symbol of ultimate salvation. Far from being a bitter consequence of the fall, then, says George Grant, work is a vital aspect of God's overall purpose for man. In fact, a man can do nothing better. than find satisfaction in his work, as Ecclesiastes 2.24 says. In all three of its aspects—creative, sustaining, and redemptive—work produces wealth. That is, it produces goods and services—both physical, like food, clothing, and transportation, and non-physical, like knowledge, or communication, or relationship—valued by human beings. This makes work the chief means of overcoming the poverty that ensued from the curse. Work makes earth's natural fertility produce edible fruits, grains, and vegetables instead of briars and thistles. Work reshapes and recombines minerals from their natural states into bricks, concrete, iron, steel, optic fibers, and silicon chips. Work moves things from where they're less needed to where they're more needed. Work, in short, is an essential factor in reducing poverty and building wealth. It's the only means of moving up and out of poverty and, in fact, the only means of fulfilling God's purpose for our lives. Even people who own no land or capital, but are free to offer their labor in return for payment, can produce wealth. And, in general, the more wise, diligent, and energetic the labor, the more wealth it will produce. A slack hand causes poverty, says Proverbs 10, but the hand of a diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps and harvests is a son who brings shame. Work is not an option for anyone who wishes either to prosper or, since Christ is a worker, to grow in Christlikeness. Work is part of how we grow, both materially and spiritually. All must work to gain not only food, clothing, shelter, and the amenities of life, but also spiritual maturity. Those who refuse not only risk physical poverty, but also stunt, stop, or reverse their growth in Christian maturity, that is, in the restoration of the image of God that has been tarnished by sin. An important part of all Christian endeavor, then, is working wisely and diligently in helping others to do likewise. Later, we'll focus more closely on the strictly economic aspect of stewardship. keeping in mind that economics is, as Adam Smith thought, the application of moral philosophy to marketplace relationships, or as often stated in economic textbooks, the study of ethical principles and practical methods of allocating scarce resources to achieve optimal production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. We'll describe these principles and practices that can encourage work and enhance its productivity, and others that can discourage it and diminish its productivity. But first, let's consider the rest of the Fourth Commandment. When Jesus instructed the rich young man to sell all and give to the poor, he challenged him to trust in God instead of in riches. to serve God instead of mammon. He challenged him to learn the fundamental biblical principle of resting in the grace of God expressed in his providence. Had the young man done so, he would have learned that God meets the needs of those who seek Him above all else, and so he would have learned the lesson of salvation by grace through faith instead of through works. Jesus called him to strip away all security but God. The biblical command to rest requires the same thing. By resting, Christians commemorate the completeness of God's creative and redemptive work. And we acknowledge that all of our work is not for ourselves, but for the Lord and His Kingdom. Thus, when we obey the Sabbath commandment, we confirm that we depend not on ourselves, but on God to provide for all of our needs. This includes not only salvation, but also food, clothing, shelter, everything necessary to living and serving according to God's will. By resting when God tells us to rest, we testify that we serve a Master who takes care of His servants. 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 for 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." Now Jesus recasts this fourth commandment as an invitation when he said, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The commandment is no more burdensome than the invitation. Indeed, the invitation makes explicit what the commandment, because of the context in which it was given, implies. that man finds his only rest in serving God, and that the yoke of God is always easier than the yoke of man. That is why, in introducing the Ten Commandments, God said to Israel, I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The Sabbath commandment reminded Israel of its deliverance from slavery in Egypt. the seventh day is a status to Yahweh 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 gate, that your male servant and your female servant arrest 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, Deuteronomy 5, 14 and 15. While its ceremonial aspects are done away in Christ, whose finished work they prefigured, we see in Colossians 2, its substance is as important now as it was then. It reminds us of our deliverance from slavery under sin, when we conscientiously rest one day in seven. Not as a legalistic observance of ceremony, but as a grateful and joyous acceptance of the rest that Jesus offers us. We testify that his deliverance is both gracious and complete. Rest for the body, commanded in the fourth commandment, prefigures then rest for the soul initiated in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and perfected in the life to come. Well, why then, if the Sabbath commandment teaches us such a wonderful lesson, are we so prone to resist its claims on us? When we long, wistfully sometimes, for the rest that Jesus promises in his invitation to come to him, why do we find every imaginable way to circumvent the commandment reiterated in that invitation? Why do people so commonly burn the candle at both ends? working seven days a week, not six? Might we doubt the core of commandment and invitation alike, that every benefit comes from God and not from ourselves? Is it our desire to be self-sufficient, to be independent, to provide for our own needs? Is this what drives us to resent this blessed commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, on it you shall not do any work? By commanding us to rest one day in seven, God vividly reminds us that it is not by our own efforts or by our own goodness that we flourish, but by His gracious blessing. And to those who take pride in themselves, that reminder is a rebuke. But it's a necessary rebuke, for by it God portrays the gospel in physical life. Just as God provides for the physical, so he also provides for the spiritual needs of those who trust him, though in neither case do they work for him. Now the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due, and the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness," says Paul in Romans 4. Grace working through faith, not self-generated works, is the means God uses to meet all needs. Following the seventh commandment, then, helps us to experience God's providence in daily life. It teaches us to work not for ourselves, but for the Lord, trusting Him to meet our needs as we obey Him. Then we can truly rest in the assurance that, as Lederle Johnson, founder of Bible Study Fellowship, said, if I do a good day's work for the Lord, He sees that I do not lack. Then, at last, Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount can be more than a rebuke. They can be a pattern for life. Therefore, I tell you, Jesus says, Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither stone, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They needn't toil or spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them." And here is the main point of my talk. If you don't get anything else, get this. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. It's tempting, though, to say, but I understand the point of the Sabbath commandment. I understand that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, as daily food and drink and clothing are by God's providence. So why should I go through the motions of fulfilling the commandment when I've already learned its lesson?" The first problem in that thinking is, in the very wording, go through the motions. Well, it's tempting, but it's mistaken. For God, God knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103, verse 14. He knows that because we are earthy people, we do not learn spiritual things but through earthy parables, and we do not remember them but through lifelong review and repetition. We may, in other words, learn the intellectual principle of wretching in the gracious providence of God by mere study of the Sabbath commandment, but we shall only take the lesson to heart when we obey it. God calls us to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. For if you only hear it, you deceive yourself. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. For the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. The Sabbath commandment is one of those works that we are to do and be blessed. In reality, when we mouth the lesson of the Sabbath commandment, salvation by grace through faith, we don't live by it. We become like the Israelites who claimed they would hear and do all that the Lord required and then rebelled against God at every turn. And of them God said, you shall be careful therefore to do as Yahweh your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or the left. You shall walk in the way that Yahweh your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess. Indeed, the lesson goes a little deeper. Were we like God to remember our frame, that we are but dust, We might recognize more readily that we need physical renewal through rest, as much as we need spiritual renewal through faith. God has woven it into the very fabric of earth and its inhabitants, this fundamental reality. All of them get tired, and if not renewed by rest regularly, wear out before their time. Creatures don't share the Creator's omnipotence, so they must get regular rest. That's why the commandment applied not only to human beings, but also to animals. Even the earth itself was to enjoy a Sabbath every seventy years, a requirement God took so seriously that He threatened Israel with devastation if it refused to let the land rest. Seventy times seven years later, God remembered His covenant with the land, not the people, but the earth that needed restoration through rest. by sending Judah into a seventy-year exile to make up for the seventy unobserved Sabbath years. Perhaps this is why Solomon wrote, Unless Yahweh builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless Yahweh watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. for he gives to his beloved sleep. God knows his creatures need restoration by rest, and so he not only commands, but even invites us to get it. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. answer that call. Come to Jesus every day and find your rest in Him. Thank you.