Real Rest

God Gives His People Rescue & Real Rest

6.2.24 [Deuteronomy 5:12-17] River of Life (2nd Sunday after Pentecost)

Mercy & peace are yours in abundance through your Redeemer. Amen.

This past Monday, as a country, we celebrated Memorial Day. Each year on the last Monday of May, we honor all the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in defending and securing our national freedom. But Memorial Day also serves as the unofficial marker of the beginning of summer vacation.

Technically speaking, summer vacation really only applies to schools. It’s a much-anticipated break for teachers and students. Time for them and their families to break from the normal routine, get out of their normal surroundings, and be refreshed.

Now, imagine for a moment you had to convince them to skip summer break. Impossible, right? You could point out to the teachers how much effort they put into getting everyone back in the swing of things, but I don’t think you’d convince them to skip. You could remind the kids how much they enjoy seeing their friends and how fulfilling it is to learn and apply something new.

Time for rest and rejuvenation is precious to all kinds of people—not just teachers and students. We all treasure time away from it all. Even if you’re retired, it’s nice to take time away from it all.

So you would think God commanding his people to rest would be the easiest of commands to keep. Everyone appreciates rest, right? In fact, it almost seems hard to call it a commandment. If you were being hired by a new company, they would call it part of your benefits package. You would think that Satan would have to really pull out all the stops to get people to even think about breaking this commandment & it still wouldn’t work.

But as God brought his people to the precipice of the Promised Land, he had Moses repeat all the commandments. That’s what the name Deuteronomy means—the Law a second time. (Dt. 5:12-14) Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy as the Lord your God has commanded. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On that day every person & animal in your land should rest, as you do.

Now the book of Deuteronomy doesn’t record that Moses had to pause before he recited the fourth commandment because all the people of Israel were hooting and hollering too much. In fact, when Moses gives this commandment for the second time to this second generation of Israelites, he presents a different foundational reason.

In Exodus 20, when God first gave the 10 commandments, Moses reminded the people that God himself rested on the seventh day when he created the world and that, in so doing, he blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

But here in Deuteronomy 5, he speaks far more specifically to Israel and their unique history. He reminds them (Dt. 5:15) you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. That Lord and that God was now commanding them to observe the Sabbath day. It’s natural to wonder: why the shift in motivation?

As the Israelites were entering the Promised Land, the Sabbath training wheels were about to come off. For most of the past 40 years, on the Sabbath day the Israelites didn’t journey from place to place. Not only that, but they didn’t have to go and gather manna on the Sabbath day either because the Lord provided a double portion for them on the prior day. For forty years, there was nowhere to go and nothing really to do on the Sabbath day.

But that was about to change. As they entered the Promised Land, there would be places to go and things to do. There would be fields and vineyards to tend to. There would be crops to take to market. The Sabbath would be yet another day when the people could make a profit. Doing things on the Sabbath could make their lives better.

I n Nehemiah 13, we find out this is exactly what happened. People in Judah were treating the Sabbath as a regular workday. Treading winepresses, loading donkeys, and selling their goods in Jerusalem. Not only that, but people from Tyre—a foreign city—made the trip to Jerusalem on the Sabbath to sell fish and exported merchandise. Why did they journey all that way? Because they knew the Israelites would be there conducting business as usual.

Nehemiah, who was not a priest or a prophet, recognized how wrong this was. He also realized that this was not a case where a godly tradition had been forgotten because the people had been living in exile for too long. So he rebuked them and locked the gates of Jerusalem the night before the Sabbath and wouldn’t open them until the Sabbath was over. Not only that, but he threatened to arrest the merchants who spent the night outside the city walls. Can you imagine?

Well, we can imagine that. Our community has major companies—Hobby Lobby and Chic-Fil-A—that do this very thing. They refuse to be open for business as usual on the Lord’s Day. Everyone knows why.

And maybe as an individual or as a family, you take a similar approach. You don’t go to your regular job on Sunday. That is certainly a good way of honoring the Sabbath Day as holy, set apart from the regular rhythm.

But we face a different kind of temptation in our time and place. The great temptation that most of us face is not restraining our desire to work one more day and earn a little more, though certainly some of us do. The great temptation too many of us face is using what we have already earned to amuse, please, and serve ourselves on the Sabbath.

Do not misunderstand me. It’s not sinful to enjoy time on a Sunday with friends or family. It’s not sinful to spend some of your day by the water or the grill, or at the game, or on the links, or in park or a movie theater, or just in your favorite easy-chair. God doesn’t demand that we do nothing on Sunday but worship. But it’s amazing how easily the time we’d like to spend doing those things prohibits us from enjoying time that God says he made for our good, the one activity that provides us with real rest.

It’s a lie of Satan that a person can connect with God just as much on the lake or in the mountains as in his house. The beauty of his creation cannot replace the powerful grace found in his Word and Sacraments. Imagine saying to your mom on Mother’s Day that you won’t enjoy time with her, not because you are too far away, but because you’d rather be somewhere else. Then tell her, don’t worry, when we sit down to dinner, we will think about all the meals you made us growing up. Your earthly mom wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense. Should your heavenly Father?

Another struggle we face is the temptation of distractions. We may physically be in the house of God, but in many ways, we’re somewhere else. We are thinking about work. Or projects.The game or the trip. That one video someone sent you. Or just mindlessly checking your phone.

When you go on a date does your spouse put up with that? Can you spend the whole night just staring at the game behind her head? Or staring at your phone? We should treat this time in the Lord’s house like date night. It is even more important.

A third temptation we face is being too tired. In some cases, this is the result of poor stewardship of God’s gifts. You prepare for the Lord’s day on the night before. In other cases, we’re foolishly ignoring God’s gift. This day is meant to be one of rest. God knows we all need it. But the Lord’s day, in the Lord’s house, is meant to give a deeper rest. A real rest. The kind of rest and rejuvenation you can’t get by heading to the water, or sleeping in, or even after a two-week vacation. In all those cases, your problems are still there. When you wake up, when you get back into town, all your problems are waiting for you. Some got worse.

But Jesus came to give us real rest. Remember that you were slaves to sin and unrighteousness. Remember where that left you. Guilty and looking for a place to hide. Ashamed and afraid. Weary and worn out. Remember what that did to your work. Everything you did and earned would eventually fade away into nothingness. You & your work are mortal.

But the Lord your God came and with his mighty hand he performed a great miracle. He made you alive. He gave you sight. He redeemed you. You have been rescued from your sins, your guilt, and your shame by the outstretched arms of the Lord your God, your Savior, Jesus Christ.

Remembering that rescuing is the primary purpose of the Lord’s day. We live in a world where we are told our value is established by what we do, how much we earn, and what other people think of us. God has a better Word. He tells us that what he has done establishes our value. He assures us that he has earned our salvation. He reminds us that he loves us and longs to see us live like him. Each time we gather in his house he brings an encouraging word and strength for our souls. He has called us out of the darkness of sin. The Lord our God made us his holy people, (1 Pt. 2:9) his royal priests, that we might declare his praises. He puts our work and our whole lives into proper perspective. We are reminded that our God is concerned about us. He takes care of us. He takes time to listen to our cares and worries. He responds patiently and powerfully. When we wander from his house, we lose perspective of these truths. We need them regularly, because they put our lives into perspective. The Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus, has made the Sabbath for us. So let’s enjoy this gift of God as often as we can. Let’s make the Lord’s day our priority. Let’s have the idea of skipping out on this rest be as unthinkable as skipping summer vacation would be for teachers and students.

You know how to do that. You’ve done it today. You’ve done it with lesser matters. Maybe it was little day trip fishing or hiking or sight-seeing. How did you plan and prepare? You didn’t wait until the last moment. You got clothes and the car ready. You made sure you had all the supplies, too. But that wasn’t all. You got yourself ready too. You cleared your calendar. You looked forward to the trip. When people asked if you could do something else, you politely declined and let them know you already had plans. The Lord’s day is even easier than that. Each Sunday the Lord opens his house, presents us with his gifts, & gives us real rest. Amen.