[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Last week, Trent shared with us how he made a really terrible trade in his life. This day I want to kind of remind you of a trade that you probably have really loved that you've gotten to make. And that's when you finally get to trade in your old iPhone.
That's always a great day. And sometimes you trade in iPhones because you just like the new gadgets on the new one. You might like where the buttons are or the updates that come with the new phone. There's other times, like me recently, where you traded in simply because you want the phone to work.
And that's where I was. So.
And I think partly Apple did this on purpose so you could just go buy a new phone. Has anybody in here had an issue recently with the charging ports? Anybody? Okay, that's a me problem. All right, you can put your hand. The two of you can put your hands down. All right, so what happened with my phone was in order for it to actually charge, I had to, like, wedge the charger in at a certain angle. And if it was like before bed, I had to prop it up against the wall or like a stack of books and get it to where, like, the tension on the charger was just right in order for it to charge.
Now, the frustrating thing with that is in the middle of the night when the air conditioning comes on and the breeze hits it, it falls over and doesn't charge. Or because I'm a mover, as one could imagine, in the middle of my sleep. And so I roll over, I hit the nightstand and it gets off the charger. And then guess what happens when I wake up that morning, it's on red.
And so all day, if you've ever had that happen to you, where your phone never charged and all day living in red. How do you operate during the day? Well, you are constantly trying to find some kind of energy source. You're trying to find a wall at a restaurant.
In my case, I would just use the car charger, but if I turn, it gets off the charger. So like there's not really a good way when you get to that kind of point.
And the neat thing though, you know, is that if your phone does charge at night and it's been working at night, you wake up the next morning, guess what you don't think about all day.
I've got to get power to this. I've got to get a charge to this. The reason why I mention that is I think a lot of us I know I do at times live in the red.
And when you live in the red, it's constantly a process throughout the day.
You trying to find places for you to find strength, you trying to find a source of power.
And so what then happens is when you live in the red, it drains your soul.
But the other thing I want us to look at today as we dig into this fourth commandment is when we do not find rest in God, it does not just drain my soul or your soul individually, it drains our neighbors souls and those that are around us. And I'll give you an example.
I'm not gonna speak on behalf of the moms, but I will speak on behalf of the dads. Dads, have you ever had a day or a week or a set of weeks or months where you have been living in the red?
Okay. And so then you're trying to find like maybe work as a source of power or strength getting this done and this done. And you've never actually taken the time to find rest with God.
And then what happens is it doesn't just drain your soul.
I know for me, if I haven't broken away and taken that intentional rest in that time with God, it ends up impacting my relationship with my wife and my kids.
They get what's left dad and what left husband. Not the best of me.
So today what we're going to do is we're going to look at this fourth commandment and I'll go ahead and tell you.
This fourth commandment, which is to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, was a very tough one for me. And here's why.
Number one, I'm talking about rest during a time of my life where I'm getting no rest. And number two, I'm also talking about this at a time during vbs where no one's really resting.
But the other part that was a challenge for me personally with this is, well, what do I get? Bogged down in when it comes to this.
Because how we celebrate rest and view Sabbath today, yes, is different than it was for them.
But what I do want us to see, because the whole point of this series is divine connections.
Was there something God was trying to illustrate and show us that in the Old Testament and the New Testament, where he commanded people to rest and Jesus exemplified rest, that is a model and a pattern for us to understand him and love each other better.
And I do think the two are very connected. And see the reason why I believe that is because of where the fourth commandment was very purposefully placed.
God was very purposeful in the order. The first three commandments, if you remember that we've talked about, have to do with our relationship with Yahweh, right to not have any other gods, to not have any graven images, and to not take the Lord's name in vain. And Richard did an awesome job of reminding us that the taking of the Lord's name in vain is not. When I stub my toe, I say something I shouldn't say.
The idea was, how do you take God?
Do you really see him as all powerful, all knowing, all wise, strong enough to handle your situation, strong to handle those obstacles? How do you take him to be?
So that's the first three.
Well, a lot of scholars called the fourth commandment, remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy as like a link or a bridge.
Because this one has to do with our relationship with God, and when we find rest in him, it blesses other people.
So while the next few commands have to really do with our relationship with our neighbor, this one is kind of that link in between. But I'll tell you, part of the other challenge of this one, too, is this one's not talked about a lot today.
I think we all agree as we go through that list and we see thou shalt not murder, we're like, yep, don't murder. I think when we get to the part where it says do not commit adultery, we agree with that. When don't have other gods, but we agree no graven images. Absolutely.
Rest.
Well, we live in a world today that doesn't really particularly highlight rest.
In fact, I was talking with a group of people about this recently, and we were basically saying, you kind of feel lazy today if you rest. But the challenge, I think even in Christianity, is that it's easy to think that the only way we view our Christian life is this. Do more.
But what I want us to see is that from the very beginning of time, God has built into creation.
Rest.
Yes. I love what Jake mentioned, because we're going to talk about that, too. He wants us to work, but he wants us to find purposeful rest from purposeful work.
And so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna dig into this one, and I'll go ahead and tell you, this is a very different lesson for me in the fact that I love to sit on one text and just dig into it. But the challenge with this topic is there's really five main texts that talk about rest, and each one gives a different picture.
But here's what I want us to see, is that when God commands people to rest and when Jesus himself rests for us as an example, it's not just man. That's so I can go to sleep and feel good in the morning.
There is a spiritual message behind rest that I hope we can see. And so in order for us to kind of attack this subject, I want to ask this question, and I want us to have this question in our mind as we go throughout the rest of the lesson. And it's this. Will you and I trust God enough to choose rest in a world that does not stop?
I want to say that again. Will you and I choose to trust God enough to rest in a world that doesn't stop?
And so, as we think about that, I want to go ahead and give you the outline for the message, because here's the different parts we're going to focus on so we get a holistic picture of why rest is important to God and why it should be important to us and. And why it blesses our neighbor. In the book of Genesis, we're gonna look at how God himself rested from purposeful work. In the book of Exodus, we're gonna see that the two illustrations of rest point backward to creation, but also point forward to covenant. Then we're gonna look at what Jesus had to say about rest, that it wasn't meant to be a burden like the Pharisees and the religious leaders made it. It was supposed to be a gift. And then we're gonna look at Book of Deuteronomy and how rest was actually a picture and of the freedom we all get to enjoy.
So with that in mind, before we get to Exodus 20, before we see the 10 words and those words on those stone tablets given to us for us to live out. Before all of that, what you're going to notice in Scripture, the Sabbath was practiced well before it was commanded.
I'll give you the first example of where it was practiced back in Creation. If you go back to the book of Genesis, you'll notice something. You'll notice that on the seventh day, God rested. And I want you to read this text with me real quick. It says this. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work. Hold on to that word that he had been doing. On the seventh day, he rested from all his work.
Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Now, here's an interesting thing to me about all of this. If you look In Genesis chapter one, I'll just take this verse as an example. Verse 19, it says, and there was evening and there is morning. And that was the fourth day, verse 23. And there was evening and there was morning. And that was the fifth day. We see that after every single day except the day of rest, we see that the very end. Evening, morning. Why? Because what God was trying to show us is. That's in Hebrew. That was a period.
All right, on the third day I created, there's morning and evening done.
On the fourth day, morning, evening, done. Fifth day, morning, evening, done. It was a picture. Hey, what I've created is good. It's self sustaining. Like, right now, we're not wondering. There's not someone out in the water pushing the ocean tide to make it come in and out. He's like, hey, I've already done a good thing.
So it's him kind of putting a period on that day.
What's really interesting, the only day that does not have that is guess which one.
Rest. Now, there's two theories behind that most scholars point to. One of those is reminding us that God himself is a God. We see it through Jesus. That rests. It's still an ongoing thing that he wants us to do. The other part is it reminds us of Hebrews 4, which Hebrews 4 talks about that the ultimate rest that you and I will have is through Jesus Christ.
So it's reminding us of those truths. So I want us to think about for just a second though. Why would God himself rest?
Is it because he's tired?
Is he worn out?
Well, God doesn't tire. God doesn't wear out.
The reason why God rests is not because he's exhausted. God rests because what he's doing is honoring what he created.
He loves what he made.
And you can only rest if you feel like something was really, really, really good.
And so what I want us to see, his rest was not because he was fatigued is because he was very fulfilled.
This is the way I want to explain it is I'm living a part of my life I had always dreamed of living. And that is I'm not cutting grass. And it's not because I don't like to cut grass. I actually kind of enjoy it. But God gifted me with two sons, and I think part of the reason he gifted me with John Cade is I now have 18 more years of. Until I have to come back to cutting grass. So I love it so much. But one of the things that, you know, when I was teaching them how to cut the yard, there's a part of cutting the yard that I had to teach them that was equally as important as cutting the yard. And that is, after you've cut the yard, you walk to the front of the yard and stand there and just look at it.
And this is a really important part as a dad. And I remember, like, training them to understand this. We cut the yard and we're just. I'm like, come here, come here, guys. And like, what are we looking at? Shh.
Just look at it.
And, you know, and I want them to see, right? There's a joy to what was done. And the way that a dad looks at a yard and is like, man, this is awesome.
That's what God is doing when he's looking at creation, when he says, it's good. This is so good. He has built for us, made for us this amazing place. But the other thing, please don't forget that if there is not that period there, rest also reminds us of what it's like to be with God. Keep in mind all the times when Jesus broke away to rest.
So notice this, though, in the text, because I mentioned earlier, I love what Jake said, because you'll notice something in what he said.
He has called us to work and to rest.
But notice the kind of work we're supposed to be resting from, because I think a lot of us are like, well, I need to get rest because I'm busy. I need to get rest because we're going in a million different directions with our kids. That's not. We are resting not from busy work, but from purposeful work. And so if you notice in the text, there's rest underlined twice and work underlined twice.
Rest, Shabbat, or Sabbath, however you want to say it, I don't know, means to cease, to stop. This is what was used to describe also Sabbath rest, but Malacca, the work was actually purposeful work. That word, work in the Hebrew was the exact same word to describe the work that they were doing to build the tabernacle and to make it beautiful.
All the different things that went into worship. Here's the reason why I mentioned that.
When we rest, I want us to think about this. Am I and are you resting from what we would call purposeful work or busy work?
Think about that for a second.
You think about Colossians 3. It says that whatever you do, you work for who?
[00:16:13] Speaker A: The Lord?
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Right, whatever. If you are a Christian in here and you have a job, that is not an ordinary job, and we can't see it that way.
As Christians, whatever work we do, we bring God and the gospel to that work. That's what he's saying we're resting from. We're resting from very purposeful work.
Here's the other example of where it was practiced before it was commanded. Exodus 16. We don't have time to get in this, but this is when God gave them manna.
And you might remember kind of the order. And I broke it down here, since we don't have all the time to get into it today. For six days they were gathering this manna, and on the sixth day, they gathered twice as much.
That was God giving them more than enough so they could what?
So they could rest.
Now, I used to read that. I was like, well, that was nice of him. Do you know what he's trying to do there?
He's trying to say, hey, trust me, I got this.
And so that's why on the seventh day, they weren't to gather anything, that God wanted to give them rest.
So I was trying to apply this to me, and I wanted to apply it to you.
Do you think sometimes we live in a way that we think or act? Like everything depends on me.
Like, if I don't do this and if I stop, I mean, everything's just gonna fall apart.
If I don't respond to that email, like, right now, the world is gonna absolutely collapse.
And if I don't, like, keep producing something, I'm gonna lose value, and so is the world.
I think sometimes we do these two texts, but also the ones we're gonna look at in just a second show otherwise.
So when we think about why he instituted Sabbath, it wasn't because he was fatigued, but it was for us to be reminded of trust. But I also want to suggest, I think it's a challenge for us to rest because what we're also going to be doing is saying no to the idols of hurry up, speed up.
I'm going to be self sufficient. I'm self reliant. I'm defined by what I do.
To me, that's maybe a greater obstacle than some of the other things we've mentioned. Well, what about Jesus?
Now, like I told you earlier, how we view the Sabbath today is different than in the past. Okay?
And we have verses behind that. But again, the whole goal of the series is connection.
I do want us to notice that the times when, like this moment here in Mark 2, when Jesus said he was the Lord of the Sabbath, what was the context?
Well, it was legalism because if you remember, what happened was there was his apostles that were picking grain and they're like, can't do that.
That's work.
And they were missing the heart behind it. But by the way, if you look, I think it is in Exodus, God had actually given them this little bitty clause in the law that actually said you could get like work type food, like food for work. Like if you're trying to eat to make it through the day, that doesn't classify.
But they had made it such a rigid system. That's why he says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He's like, you don't define it. God is defining. And that's kind of what I'm trying to get at, that God, how has he defined it? Why has he defined rest to be something that is so incredibly important? And so for them, they kind of saw rest as like a burden, not a gift.
I know this is a challenge, but what if we could all view rest as a gift, not as a burden?
Now I'm telling you, that's a challenge. In a world that doesn't reward rest.
Like, we like to print off our schedules and be like, look at this, like God, super impressed with my schedule.
And the challenge of that busy work is it doesn't just create disorder in your schedule, it creates disorder in your soul.
And it starts to impact those that are around you.
So now we finally get to the command and what I decided to do with this. This is Exodus 20.
And then in just a second, in the next slide, we're going to get to Exodus 31 and what you'll notice in Exodus 20 when it was given, Remember how I told you that this command was also originally set up to also bless your neighbors?
Like, when I'm arrested, dad, it blesses my marriage. When I'm arrested, dad, it blesses my kids.
Notice what it goes on to say is, remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy six days, you're to do no labor.
You shall labor. Excuse me, and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord. On it, you shall not do any work. And notice this. Not just you, but your son, your daughter, your male, your female servant, your animals, your foreigner, your town's Bible project. One of the things that they said is God was basically saying, if you have your animal even out there working, or the guy that's working with you out there working, you'll be like, you know what? I might as well just go ahead and do some more work while I'm here. He's like, nope, I want you to shut it all down. Because it's going to be so easy to leave something open. And I was thinking, man, what do I need to close a door on so I get true rest with God? He was saying, listen, I want you to close up all the other doors. For in six days notice, he's pointing back to creation. He made the heavens and the earth. So in Exodus 20, it's pointing back to creation. Exodus 31. And by the way, he says here, if you don't practice rest, you're guilty of the death penalty. That's how serious God took it.
So what's the difference between Exodus 20 and 31?
So I told you guys a while back that for the engineers, and I can't stand Excel. But I told you guys that once a year I'm gonna give you an Excel spreadsheet. It has rolled around, and it's time for your Excel spreadsheet. So what I did was after I made the one last year, some of you guys were like, you didn't do it right. You did this wrong. That's why I don't want to do it. So here's what I did, is I put it in there. And there's this awesome tool on Microsoft that you can tell AI and you can say, hey, take this Excel spreadsheet I made and make it look really good for a bunch of engineers on a Sunday morning. And this is what they did. And so I think it looks awesome. And so here's the point of why I did this, is what he's saying here. And I've told you, rest is so multifaceted. It points back to creation and in Exodus 20.
But in Exodus 31, it's a reminder of a covenant that God has with us.
I got you.
I've got it handled. I'm going to take care of everything.
So again, Genesis, God rested from purposeful work. Exodus, he helps us remember creation and covenant. Jesus rested and he Showed it as a picture, as a gift, not a burden.
But this is probably one of my favorite pictures of rest, and that's in Deuteronomy.
I never thought about this until this past week, that rest was also a reminder of the redemption we all get to experience.
So I think it's really interesting in Deuteronomy, chapter 5. And if you'll turn there with me real quick, there's something I want you to highlight.
In verse 12, it says, Observe the Sabbath day. Keep it holy as the Lord commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sab to the Lord your God on it, you shall not do any work. Similar to what we read earlier. Those around you, your neighbors, your slaves, he says. He also says your donkey, your ox, livestock, the sojourner that's within your gates.
And notice what he wants them to use as their motivation.
He doesn't just say, because I told you to notice what he says next. This is what I want you to underline.
You shall remember that you were a slave.
So he's saying your motivation to rest is you remembering that back in the days in Egypt, you were a slave.
And the Lord your God brought you out of that slavery with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day holy. What he's showing us is a parallel. Egypt viewed life and its focus as production, that the whole point of people is to produce more bricks and more mortar, to build more things.
Egypt viewed people as production.
He's saying God views people in relationship.
So the challenge to me is, do you think that many Christians today live in and with an Egyptian mindset that we might prioritize? Now, work matters, purposeful work.
But do you think we prioritize production over relationships Sometimes.
There's a book that I had got to read. I'm sorry, not had to read. Got to read from school. It's called Practicing the King's Economy.
And it had this quote in it, and I absolutely loved it. It said this. If we cannot rest, if we cannot stop, it isn't Yahweh we are worshiping.
It's probably Pharaoh.
I love this illustration.
I think it kind of depicts the freedom that he wants us to have.
When a baby elephant, a little bitty baby elephant is brought into the traveling circus, one of the things that they'll do is put a chain around its ankle and put a stake in the ground.
And what then happens is, is that baby elephant can't go anywhere. The baby elephant is not strong enough to break free from that chain and that stake.
And so that baby elephant lives for so long chained up that as the baby elephant gets into a big elephant, guess what happens?
They put the chain around that huge, massive adult elephant. They put it around its ankle. They don't even have to chain it down because it was so used to being bound.
And the reason why I give you that illustration is I think that's sometimes us.
We've been so used to how the world has told us to operate that we are free. But kind of like that elephant, we don't live in it.
And so who is going to call the shots? Is it going to be Pharaoh or God?
Is it going to be Yahweh or Egypt?
So how could we practice this? Just going to give you a few suggestions, kind of using the biblical framework we just went to.
If it means to stop and decease, let's stop.
And then once you've stopped, rest, but don't stop there.
Delight in what God has done.
Remember what he's done and what he's going to continue to do.
Stop, rest, delight, remember.
Okay. To try to get even more practical, I listened to a lesson this past week, and the guy, he was about my age, and it does feel weird sometimes when you get up and talk about cell phones and things, when you know that you struggle with it too, but also when you hear it a lot, you're like, okay, here we go again. It's that angry old man with a receding hairline telling me to put down my cell phone. And he said, you know, it feels like at times we overly talk about this. He said, but the more I thought about it, I'm saying we under talk about it because that's where we're gaining so much of our energy from, so much of our strength from. And so kind of off of Trent's challenge last week. What if we started putting down our screens for the reason of picking up his presence? Did you know that rest to the Hebrew people actually meant presence?
Like when Elijah was told, you know, by Jezebel, and hey, I'm coming after you, y' all. Remember, he said, I want to die.
But he went under that tree, and what did he do?
He rested. And I just want to stop for a second. If you are running on red right now and you are absolutely worn out, tired, exhausted, you're ready to call it quits. One of the holiest things you can do is stop and get rest, because you know what happened in that night when he wasn't asleep. When he wasn't doing anything, God was working. Have you thought about how like this town that does so much stuff for all over the world, it goes to sleep and the world does not stop.
Does that not give us a picture of what God has set in motion and what he's created? Here's the other thing I want you to do, is to pause daily, build rest into your daily framework. Just like for me, I'm a better man, a better husband and a better father when I make rest, purposeful rest a part of my day.
The other thing I wanna encourage you to do is to withdraw annually. When I do premarital counseling with couples, there's two things I highlight. One of those is, is to pray together as a couple every day and to ask requests from each other, hey, what can I pray for for you? What can you pray for me? And go back and forth like that? The other thing I highly encourage them to do is every year to go on a trip. But I think anybody should this, no matter what stage of life or area of life you're in. And I'm not saying you have to go into debt.
Some of our favorite trips have been just like to random Fairfield Inn in Birmingham, just cause we got away okay?
But there is something beautiful just about breaking free. Make it your goal annually to withdraw and to get rest. And finally, sometimes in order to say yes to some really good things, you gotta say no to some good things too.
Say no in order to say yes.
So one of the verses that was mentioned this morning was this one.
Because maybe some of you are at a place in life where you are running on red right now that you've been more schedule oriented than spirit oriented.
Maybe for some of you, is that like me, you've tried to find energy at times in all the wrong things and you want to confess that. Or like the text was mentioned this morning, you want to find that ultimate rest. Jesus said this, Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
So maybe you want a prayer today specifically for your schedule to get reoriented. Maybe what you need is for God to reorient your heart that your busy schedule has not just created disorder in your life, it's created disorder in your heart and your disordered schedule has created disorder in your family.
So whatever it is, we would love to specifically pray for that while we stand and we sing this song.
