Sabbath: Remember His Provision

Morning all. Thankful to be with you this morning, whether physically here or in cyberspace. Hard to believe we are already in March it is crazy to believe two months and some have already gone by in 2023.

Prayer for Bobby and Crosspoint, church planting church, maybe in Utica?

Last week, Daniel unfolded Hebrews 4:1-13 for us. For those of you who missed out, the primary focus of that passage is Sabbath Rest. It is the rest that God entered after he finished creating the world. It is a celebration and enjoyment of the completion of the work he had done. It’s this rest, the rest God currently enjoys, that He calls us to enter alongside him, both now and in the future. We are going to continue to talk about that rest this morning. However, we will be moving outside Hebrews for a few weeks. We will spend most of March looking at what scripture says about this rest and what entering into it looks like here and now. I will be splitting my time, talking first about an introduction to the series, and then talking about the first time we see Sabbath commanded by God in the Old Testament.

Sabbath is more than “rest”

The word we’ll be using is the word Sabbath because that is the word scripture uses. By that, we usually mean a 24 period of rest, like what God commanded the Jewish people to practice, in fact throughout this mini-series we will be focusing on the places in the Old Testament where God gives his people the commandment to practice the Sabbath. The Hebrew word for Sabbath is shabbat, and as is usually the case, it has a much wider meaning that the English word rest. In fact, it can be translated with four different English words: Stop, Rest, Delight, and Worship. And you may hear us bring those four words up again because they act as a very practical guide, a helpful guide to the practice of the Sabbath. One seems to follow the other. Usually, we can’t rest until we stop, we can’t delight until we rest, and we can’t worship until we delight. So when you hear the word Sabbath, think of a Stop/Rest/Delight/Worship complex, a simultaneous state of stopping our work, resting in the gospel, delighting in the goodness of God and his creation, and worshiping him for all he is. This is in contrast to what we may associate with the word rest in our cultural context, which is in fact probably better described as luxury or leisure. When we say Sabbath, we are also talking about practicing those things. Just like we need to repeat an action many times before it is integrated into our experience, muscle memory, or we have to repeat a line or phrase over and over until it is stored in our long-term memory, we must practice this Stop-Rest-Delight-Worship rhythm constantly until we have it spiritually memorized, and our soul can repeat and play out those truths at a moments notice.

Sabbath is important to God

There is something that is important to address at the outset. Myself, Pastor Daniel and Pastor Matt, and our families have been committed to following this commandment and learning about committing to this rhythm in our homes and for our families. It is our opinion that this is a beneficial practice for us as Christians. We have seen so much beauty and benefit for our families yet not without confusion and humility and sacrifice at the same time. I do want to be very clear: if you do not take part in this practice, you are still a Christian, God still loves you, and eternity is still open to you. Jesus rejects legalism on all levels- the call to practicing sabbath rest is an INVITATION, a drawing in, a calling into something beautiful. Committing to the sabbath isn’t a contract but a covenant and comes with an infinite promise of wonder, mystery and blessing.

We read in the Gospel of Mark 2:27 that “the sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” But, if you would allow it, let me try and convince you for a moment about the wisdom of this practice. The institution of the practice of the Sabbath precedes the giving of the Law to the people of Isreal. It proceeds even the 10 commandments. When the 10 commandments are given in Ex. 20, the central among them seems to be the Sabbath. It is common in Hebrew for the most important bit of a literary movement to be in its center, which is where we find the commandment of the Sabbath. Many of us would be quick to affirm that the 10 commandments encapsulate God’s moral Law and that Christians should follow them today, but what do we do with the fact that right beside things as central to the Christian ethic as do not worship idols, do not lie, steal or murder is the command to remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy. The sabbath is built into the fabric of creation. As God rested on the 7th day, we are called to rest every week on the seventh day. While Isreal had 7 other feasts which they were called to celebrate, all of them had as a central building block the practice of Sabbath.

I really do think God intended us to see the Gospel as a fulfillment of the Sabbath. We read in Matthew 5:17 that Christ has “not come to abolish [the Law or the Prophets] but to fulfill them.” Now fulfillment can mean a few different things. In some cases, it will mean that a requirement is fulfilled and that certain practices need to be done no longer. But I don't think any of us would put the 10 Commandments into that category. (missing the point if celebrated outside of Christ) We are going to have a whole Terra Talk devoted to this conversation so I will cut myself off now. But let us say this, Christ’s fulfillment of the Sabbath is in many ways like his fulfillment of the Passover feast. We remember often, here at Terra every week, how Christ fulfilled the Passover, we do so through communion. His fulfillment of it is not an invitation to forget about it, quite the opposite actually. We are called to remember and reflect on it because it is for us a window into eternity and a means of grace.

Sabbath is the same. It is no coincidence that the wording of the 4th commandment is quite focused on remembrance. Ex. 20:8 , the 4th commandment says “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” This is helpful because we often get so wrapped around ourselves. We need to take our focus off us and put it back on God. Trust me, a sabbath focused on you is exhausting, I have tried it. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at the passages where God tells his people to keep the Sabbath, and we will see that he ties that practice to something true about himself. It is tied to remembrance. For us to Stop, Rest, Delight, and Worship, we must first do the work or remember, of reminding ourselves and each other, what is true about God. Let me give you a foretaste. Over the next few weeks, we will learn that Sabbath rest is experienced when we remember God’s provision, his goodness, and his deliverance. And we need to practice doing that because we are forgetful by nature. So, we set apart a 24-hour period, we keep it holy, and as we practice remembering these things, they will start to spill over, quite naturally, into the rest of the time allotted to us. The rest of the gospel will invade our weeks, sometimes briefly, and sometimes in significant ways.

Sabbath is a means of Grace

What do I mean by means of grace? Essentially, it is a way that God blesses us. He made our bodies and souls long for rest. Often we just look for our rest in other places, and that’s called idolatry. Can I give an example that was incredibly striking to me when I first heard it? Seventh-day Adventists are a group of people who, among some questionable doctrines, hold to a very strict keeping of the Sabbath. Now when you think about it, committing to this practice is a huge commitment. It’s 24 hours every week. The average life expectancy in the US is just over 75 years. If you engaged in this practice your whole life, then you would spend 3,900 days Sabbath-ing, or approximately 10 years. Does anybody want to guess approximately how much longer 7th-day Adventists live than an average American? About 10 years. I don’t what else to say about that, other than when you give your time to God, when you give anything to God really, he multiplies it.

Sabbath also demonstrates incredible patience on God’s part. The creator of the universe, the one who holds everything in His hand, deserves every hour of every day. It is his right, and he could demand it of us and be completely just. But he knows how fragile and weak we are. So he starts small. Psalm 103:8-14 reminds us that“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” He could demand all of us all of the time and rightly punishes us when we do not obey but instead, he says, “Start with 1 day a week. We’ll work up from there.” God is patient and loving. God meets us where we are, he’s a realist in that way. But he is also an optimist. He wants you to give his all to him, and he knows you can. But he knows you can’t right now. (this ends in eternity) He’s ready to join you on that journey. So what do you say? Are you guys ready?

Sabbath: Remembering God’s Provision

Let’s go to the first place in which God instructs his people to keep the Sabbath, Exodus 16. For some context, Isreal has literally just been delivered from Pharaoh, like one chapter earlier. Chapter 14 is the culmination of the escape from Egpyt, most of Chapter 15 is a Psalm of worship, and we are about to read chapter 16. It is a long passage, but I want to read it all because God’s word is always a better teacher than I am Please stand if you are able, and if you feel like you must sit at only point, please do. Ex. 16:1-30

Exodus 16:1–30 (ESV)

They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’ ” And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’ ”

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’ ” And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. 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. 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 a 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.

Take a seat if you haven’t already.

I’ve already spent a lot of time speaking, and I took the liberty of reading that text in its entirety so we could see the full picture. So for the last couple minutes here, I’d like to break apart this idea of God’s provision, how the Sabbath is a chance for us to remember and rest in it. There is a cycle that we progress through as we begin to rest in God’s provision. We are called to trust in God’s provision, then we are tested to see if we do trust, and then we are taught based on the results of that test. So goes the cycle. So let's step through this process together quickly. Trust, Test, Teach.

Trust

(Sabbath begins with trust)

This passage, wildly, starts with God’s people grumbling against Moses and Aaron. They have gone a while without food, and they are beginning to doubt that God is able to provide what they need. Just to recap, these people have witnessed firsthand a barrage of miracles, signs, and wonders. Not the kind that can be explained away by naturalistic or scientific explanations. There is absolutely no way that the Israelites doubted that God was real, but what they doubted was that God was present and caring for them at that moment.

Our natural inclination here is to judge and mock the Isrealites for their lack of faith. We think that if we were in their shoes that we would not have forgotten God’s miraculous provision, that we would have trusted God to provide. In fact, we may even be thinking, “If God would give me signs and wonders like he gave the Israelites, then, of course, I would have faith. It’s harder for us now because we don’t have those things.” I get that sentiment, and that is truly the default path my brain takes. But let’s examine this for a second. it has been about 45 days for the Israelites since they had been delivered from Egypt. January 15th was 45 days ago. I don’t know about you guys, but I have no clue what happened on January 15th. Do you guys remember what Daniel preached on January 15th? I don’t, not without looking back at my notes. Time is weird, isn’t it? It does a great job of causing us to forget and reprioritize. What was important to you on January 15th, has probably slipped off your radar by now. What was your new year's resolution? You may have been keeping it Janurary 15th, but are you keeping it now? The novelty of the new year and the refreshment that brings has completely faded away, hasn’t it?

Our memories, even without the effect of disease just can’t be trusted. We are quick to forget what was revealed. In fact, we often retell stories from the past based on our interpretation, rather than facts. We convince ourselves that what we thought happened actually happened. This is being proved by scientific research all the time. Our memories aren’t fixed, they are always changing and being altered. Who here keeps a journal? Go back and read your entry from January 15th, or around that time, and you’ll find that even over 45 days memory started to fade. This is why it is so important to continually come to a place we are reminding ourselves of what is important.

What does it look like to remind yourself that God is trustworthy? Honestly, writing it down is a good place to start. The act of writing commits things more reliably to our long-term memory. Plus we can go back and reread it. Keep a journal, and fill it with your thoughts, desires, prayers, and experiences of God. When you fill it, take a moment, perhaps on your Sabbath to review it, and remind yourself of how God has been active and present in your life. Also, be quick to attribute stuff to God. We are quick to explain things away because we understand the circumstances or chain of events that led up to something happening. But if I study Steph Curry’s 3-point shot, and break it down to its fundamental scientific level, and I know exactly what each muscle and tendon is doing when he makes that shot, should I be less or more impressed that he is such a good shooter? Understanding how something happened doesn’t diminish the magic of it actually happening. We have a God that makes use of science, human relationship, cultural dynamics, and world events to accomplish his will. Be quick to attribute the happenings in your life to him.

The Sabbath Box has been helpful for our family. At the beginning of Sabbath, we take a sheet of paper and write a box on it. Then we take a few moments to pray and answer three questions. What have you left undone this week? What do you want? What are you afraid of? Essentially it’s a to-do list, a list of desires, and a list of fears. We write them down each sabbath, pray them over, and then dedicate them to God. Now, we have been throwing them out after Sabbath recently. But, I’ve convinced myself that we should keep them, as a sort of Sabbath Journal, to mark God’s influence on our lives over time. As we keep track of God’s faithfulness to us and take time to remind ourselves of it, we grow to trust in him more and more. In this way Sabbath is formative it helps reform us into the image of Christ, which is to say a complete and utter reliance on God.

Test

(Sabbath is a test)

What do I mean when I say test? We have all attached some level of anxiety to the word test. Images of late-night cramming and studying and pots of coffee come to mind for me. But that is not the most helpful way to think about it. A test is about revealing quality. A blood test, for example, is taken to show the facts of what health problems may or may not be lying under the surface. How many of you when you were younger, or even now, were into collecting minerals? I was. I remember this piece of “fool's gold” or pyrite I had. It looks a bit like real Gold, hence the name, but there are a couple of ways you can test it to determine if it is real gold or not. One of these was a streak test, you take the piece, and scratch it against something hard like asphalt. If it leaves a greenish-black streak, it’s fools gold. If it leaves a yellowish-white streak it is Gold, and you probably just ruined it. This is what God is talking about when he says he will test his people by the Sabbath. Let me read that part of the passage again. Exodus 16:4-5

Exodus 16:4–5 ESV

How is raining mana from heaven a test? Think about it with me for a moment. God, for six days, rains bread and quail from heaven, a remarkable show of his provision. But, he says, don’t gather too much and hoard it, for fear that I will not provide for you the next day. I had a friend growing up whose Father grew up very poor. Up into his sixties, he still stashed food away in secret places in the house, a habit he learned when he was a child. Because he never knew where his next meal was coming from. God invites his people to trust in his provision, and not only that gives ample proof that he would continue to do so, and that should they try to hoard the food it would rot anyway. The test here is simple: do you trust me? Do you consider me faithful? Many still hoarded the mana nonetheless failing the test.

The practice of the Sabbath will test us in this same way. We don’t trust God, so we try and secure ourselves, justify ourselves, and free ourselves. We don’t have the power to do any of those things. Let me give an example. As you can probably imagine, practicing a Sabbath with young children is not easy. My wife is a stay-at-home mom. She loves being home with our girls, but, as you can imagine, being loved and needed by an infant and a toddler all day every day is not necessarily conducive to settling into a good book and a hot cup of tea. Kristina and I often take turns with the kids, while the other takes an hour or two over at coffee planet, or at uncommon grounds, or something. What that has often degraded into, however, is a nagging anxiety for either of us that we won’t get the time we “need” to really rest. And presto, there we are working ourselves into a tizzy trying to secure that rest for ourselves.

What is it that you find yourself anxious about? The nature of the Sabbath, taking a day to trust in God’s provision is that he will show you very quickly where you think he is not working quickly enough or efficiently enough to bring about what you think you need. That is the test. Will you rely on God’s provision? Or will you try and do it yourself? Will you horde or trust your resources? Or God? This could be true of money, time, energy, and anything that we have a seemingly limited supply of. One way this manifests for me is that I don’t know how to enjoy my rest time without spending money. Don’t know where that came from, but it's true. I have this built-in reflex, if I am to find rest, I need to spend. Meals out, coffee, pipe tobacco you name it. I don’t trust God for that, I trust in money. I trust in money to provide for me only what God can. You’ll find stuff like that, that’s the test.

Teach

The question becomes, do we learn what God’s test teaches us? We talked about having a soft heart two weeks ago, you may want to revisit that sermon. God’s tests are not like your college exams, where you cram just to pass the test and then forget it all. No, his tests serve a purpose. Prov. 17:3 “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.” Silver and gold are put into crucibles and furnaces to shape and refine them. To make them beautiful and fit for use. That is exactly what God is doing in you when he exposes the ugly sides of your heart, he is refining you and giving you a choice to weed that part of you out. He is making you more beautiful, he is helping you look more like Jesus. And he is forming you, shaping you, making you fit for service in his Kingdom.

We need to listen though, we need to soften our hearts and receive and apply God’s rebukes. Hebrews 3, if you remember, is an exposition of Psalm 95, in view of that passage is the passage immediately following Exodus 16. Let me read a section of that for you:

Exodus 17:1–7 ESV

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Even after God so miraculously provided food, they still doubted. It is this unbelief if you remember, the author Hebrews cites as the reason for the Israelite's inability to enter the promised land, the rest promised to their Fathers. We are then warned to take care, lest we suffer the same fate. Whatever eternal rest looks like, we cannot enter it if we do not have faith in God. That is why practicing the Sabbath is so important. It helps us to grow in our trust, grow in our faith, and just become better obeyers. It makes us more sensitive to the voice of God. If we don’t practice obedience and trust, we are practicing disobedience and unbelief. There is no neutral.

‌I haven’t necessarily painted a rosy picture of the Sabbath, have I? Part of the reason for that is that God will not let us enter into his rest under false pretenses. Joy, delight, and rest are to be had in this, but we must lay a suitable foundation for it. The only suitable foundation for our joy, delight, and rest is Christ. He is Lord of the Sabbath. Let me speak to my family's personal experience again. Since we started practicing a weekly 24-hour sabbath in December, we have experienced more freedom, growth, and joy than we have ever seen. We have also experienced more conflict and a need for repentance than we have ever been aware of before. These things we not created by our practice of the Sabbath, they were revealed by it.

This isn’t a bad thing, those idols need to go. We tend to think of this type of “failure” as a catastrophic thing. And it can be, if we don’t harness the power of that failure to bring you closer to the place you need to be, closer to Jesus. In weight lifting, you will see someone repeat an exercise until they fail. They repeat it with perfect form until their body gives out and can’t accomplish it anymore. Do you know why? It is only in those final moments that the muscles are fully engaged, and failure is a sign that they have achieved as much muscle growth as you will be able to achieve in that session. We don’t need to view failure as a negative. A failure to trust God that is now part of your awareness is much better than one that had before lurked under the surface. We should be quick to confess this, so that it does not linger, both to God and to sisters and brothers. Pastor Tyler Staton had some good words that I heard of his recently about confession that I’d like to share as we close here, and the band comes back up.

In some ways (confession) is (a downer). It is the acknowledgment that there's this ever-present gap within me, between who I am and who I really intend to be and want to be. But to confess is not to wallow in shame and despair. It's to invite Jesus to wash over my failure by his grace, it's good news. A lie that I think the church often believes is that as I grow up in Christ I need to confess less because I've got less to confess. But it is the opposite, I become more aware of how much I have to confess. But the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus means that confession isn't a white flag, it's a victory flag. Confession is the means to my redemption.

And that is another practice we take part in weekly here at Terra Nova, communion. We take time to remember, Christ's crucifixion, his resurrection, and what that means to us. We need the reminder, don’t we?

One more thing. If you commit to this practice, and I think you should, it will be hard. But you will not be alone in it. We have people in our church already committed to practicing this. Raise your hand, if you are one of those people. If you have questions ask someone, if you don’t know where to start, ask someone. We have found that our sabbath is night and day better when we start by having an intentional sabbath meal with somebody. The family of God is essential to practicing his rest. Rich Villodas, a pastor in Queens, uses the analogy of redwood trees when he is talking about spiritual formation. Redwoods can grow up to 400 feet tall, but their root systems are only 6 to 7 feet deep. What keeps them from falling over? Well, their root systems spread out horizontally about 100 feet, entangling and intertwining with the redwoods near them, creating the root system that works together to keep these giants standing. Let's be each other's teachers, while we listen to the Spirit of God. Let’s enter into that rest with one another.

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