Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO

When we were kids we use to climb a huge magnolia tree in our grandparents front yard.

One Sunday we came over after church and started playing outside.

While we were climbing my Grandfather came and hollered at us to get out of the tree.

He said we weren't suppose to climb trees on the sabbath.

Now I don’t know if you grew up being told you couldn't climb trees on the sabbath.

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Not sure what kind of experience you had with the sabbath throughout your life.

While you may have not gotten yelled at for climbing a tree one thing you can relate to is this:

When you ask someone how they’re doing what do they typically reply with?

I’m busy.

These commandments, which occur three times in the Old Testament, literally means “ten words.”

Ten words given by God to his people on how to live in the world.

Today we come to the fourth word,Remember the Sabbath day in our Ten Word series looking at the Ten Commandments.

As we walk through these commandments again we’re not to see the 10 Words as legislation from a cosmic bureaucrat trying to ruin everyone’s fun Rather as wise instructions from a loving father who knows what his kids need to thrive.

If the third word charged us to honor God with our words, the fourth charges us to honor God with our time.

Just as how we use our words reveals how we view God, so does how we spend our time.

The Sabbath command is the longest and most detailed of the ten, and also the one most mentioned in the Old Testament.

It would seem that the call to rest is one in need of emphasis and reiteration.

But how is this command to be observed today?

Does it require, as it did for Israel, that a specific day in its entirety be set aside for rest?

There is controversy over this question that has raged for centuries, and strong opinions are on every side.

Rather than attempt to resolve the disagreement, I want to focus on what we can all agree upon in principle:

that a good God has ordained regular rhythms of rest for those who worship him.

Really here is our Big Idea

Big Idea: God is honored in our rest

We are going to break down each of these commandments, these ten words in the same way

- What does this command reveal about God?

- What does this command reveal about us?

- How does it point us to Jesus?

- How does it show us the path of life?

So let’s start with first,

I. What does this command reveal about God?

What kind of God commands his people to rest?

A God who cares deeply about the physical and spiritual vitality of his people

As God gives these commands what he asks his people to do is remember.

We read in Exodus 20:2

Exodus 20:2 (ESV)

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

He reminds them of the deliverance they had experienced just 50 days earlier.

Now in this word he asks them to remember.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

But this time the charge is to recall an ancient memory instead of a recent one.

In the introduction to the Ten Commandments, God reminds Israel that he is her deliverer.

In the fourth commandment, God reminds Israel that he is their Creator.

Instead of appealing to their recent identity as slaves, God appeals this time to their basic identity as image bearers.

The practice of remembering the Sabbath requires Israel (and us) to remember what God has ordained for his children from the earliest moments of human existence:

a pattern of work followed by rest, as set forth in the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2.

Remember, says the fourth word, that the story of God’s creative act concludes with rest.

The people of God reflect him when they observe rest after labor, both by partaking of it themselves and by providing it to others.

What does this reveal about God?

How good is the God of Israel, who commands rest!

As Israel well knew, the gods of Egypt and Canaan required labor without rest, ceaseless offerings to secure their favor.

But not Yahweh.

In the command to cease, God distinguishes himself from the pagan deities of Israel’s past and future neighbors.

In the fourth word, God answers the question, “Who is like you, O God, among the nations?” with an unequivocal “No one.”

This call to rest is the first thing regarded as holy in the pages of scripture.

The first thing set apart to the Lord is the Sabbath.

Consider this.

God made man on the 6th day.

What was man suppose to do on the first full day after being created?

Rest!

Every other religion says if you want to be right w/God then get to work

God of the bible says wanna be right?

/ STOP doing and just be

Stop & remember that I’m the source of all you have / Fount of every blessing

Sabbath is a gift of grace for us to be restored, replenished, repaired

We see in this command a God who cares for his people, who fights and works for us and calls us to rest in that care.

Now what does this command reveal about us?

II.

What does this command reveal about us?

What kind of people need to be commanded to take time off to rest?

A restless people

The word sabbath means to stop.

But we are a people always in motion.

To be busy is a virtue in our culture.

Being a workaholic is frowned upon it is celebrated.

The 40 hour work week is dead

Many are working anywhere from 45 to upwards of 60 and 70 hour work weeks.

Rather then trying to carve time out to replenish and rest we try to create new ways to get more done.

The busyness crisis forces our brains into a different way of behaving.

Most notably we believe multitasking is the way in which to dig us out of the being overly busy hole.

In reality study after study shows that it doesn't work.

We now have a sleep crisis.

The devices we created to make life easier have somehow made it more demanding.

More of us are so full and constantly entertained that we aren't sleeping and the result irritability, anxiety, and depression.

The Japanese have this phrase Karoshi and it means death by overwork.

I remember the rhetoric of 2020, “I need to slow down, I need to be with my family more.

I am going to rest.”

As the years have passed we have slipped right back into our exhausting tendencies.

We are a weary people.

We are a restless people.

When we open the pages of scripture we see that we HAD the rest of God, blessing of God,

We had the satisfaction of good & gracious Father

But when our 1st parents decided to be own king, ruler, live their own way, we lost His rest.

Ever since then we’ve been a people striving for blessing, satisfaction & rest in wrong places

For some, striving for blessing & satisfaction comes not through work but recreation

Have to address because some of us bang the drum of needing time of resting.–

Some of you may be like Finally something I’m awesome at / I am the best at time off and relaxing I am so good at leisure

Some of us may even be guilty of worshipping leisure

This is a cheap rest