Untitled Sermon (2)

INTRODUCTION

There is a place on this earth... there are a few places actually... where heaven and earth meet. The places are mysterious. They are uniquely glorious and so utterly incomprehensible that one loses touch with reality and assumes they have entered a dream state. A few places where the dirt beneath your feet and the air in your lungs seems... other worldly. Places that make you think of earth like a dream... or a dream within a dream... a dream that you struggle to recall and you just can't place it A few places that make you question the reality you once knew because here in this seemingly impossible world everything is new and pure and so... real. Places where the veil between heaven and earth is so thin that you could almost... almost reach out and touch the arm of God. Places where if you strain your senses enough and listen very very closely... you can barely... just barely... make it out. Shh... do you hear it? Shh.... "Holy, Holy, Holy...." There are places on this rock.. where heaven and earth are not so far apart.

Do you know some of these places? Hmm? Summer 2013, I was in a meadow in Northern New Mexico. Literally 100 miles from the nearest car, outlet, or cell phone. It was 3am. The dead of night. I stepped out of my tent into the brightness of the starlight and moonlight... walked barefoot 100 yards because the grass was that soft and stood in an ankle deep brook. And I swear that if I could've just reached a little higher, I could've held the stars between my thumb and forefinger, lowered one to my ear and heard... barely... just barely... Holy, Holy, Holy... I swear if I could've just held the haze of the meadow in my hand... I could've pulled it back like a curtain a gotten a glimpse of the night camps of the armies of the Lord of Hosts. Some sleeping peacefully. Some standing guard. All breathing in and out the same song... Holy, holy, holy... shh... can you hear it?

Do you know the kind of places I'm talking about? I've only found a few... maybe 7 or 8. They aren't all nature. A long hallway on the 5th floor of a school in China. An overcrowded dining room in Stella, Missouri. A 3 lane drive-thru at the most efficient CFA in the country... have you found any of these portals?

The Bible talks about a few of them. Some long destroyed or lost. The Garden of Eden... The tabernacle... Mount Sinai... Mount Moriah... the temple... the mount of transfiguration.

But... did you know that heaven embraced earth in other ways? Not only in geographic places. There are certain events or institutions where a channel for grace from God is uniquely opened, and the veil between heaven and earth is thinner than paper. You experienced one of those moments just a few minutes ago in communion. These are the Sacraments.

Now I suppose I should give a little context. The Biblical authors did not think or reason like us. Doesn't make us wrong just different. For them all they could perceive with their senses was part of a sphere called the raqqia. The firmament and the land. Earth. All they couldn't perceive was part of another sphere. The heavenlies. We tend to think of heaven and earth as totally separate dimensions. Earth is here and heaven is somewhere out there. The biblical authors thought earth is here and heaven is up there but there are some parts of earth and all its places and events where heaven is present, and some parts of heaven where earth is present. Those were places like Eden, or the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and temple. Places that were sacred because God was uniquely present there.

Traditionally the church has seven sacraments. Events or institutions in which God is uniquely present beyond day to day life and offers special grace. That's what sacraments means. Sacred things. They are marriage, communion, baptism, anointing of the sick, holy orders or ordination, confirmation, and reconciliation.

Protestants have only adopted 2 or 3 of these as sacred. Communion in Baptism are fairly universal in the protestant church and marriage is considered a sacrament by many (and I tend to agree). Now by this point you may be wondering why I'm talking about sacraments in a series on rest. It's because I believe that biblically, there is another sacrament (if we use the definition of a channel in which God is uniquely present and imparts grace to his people) that we should adopt and keep holy: The Sabbath.

When I started thinking about this sermon a few weeks ago... rest... I wanted to wrestle with the question: what is God's design for rest? The answer is Sabbath. So what is Sabbath. I want to give you the definition up front and then we'll flesh it out with scripture. I hope you get to learn something new!

Sabbath is an intentional pause of normal activities for the purpose of communion with God.

- Sabbath is in God's nature.

Let's flesh this idea of Sabbath out together. Turn in your Bibles to . This is the first instance in scripture that we see the Sabbath. Before the fall, rest is a part of God's nature. Let's read it.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 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.

I had this idea as a kid that when God finished creating he was so tired that he laid his head down on a pillowy cloud and started snoring... the first thunderstorm.

Ha. Maybe you had an idea like that. But... What does it mean, God rested on the seventh day? It does not mean that God closed his eyes and went to sleep. He did not take a nap. It does not mean that God rested in the sense that he became indifferent to what the man and woman were doing. We know God was not indifferent because when Adam and Eve sinned he was immediately there in the garden calling them to account. He pronounced judgment and held out hope of a Redeemer to come. Rest is not to be understood in either of those ways.

What is involved here is what St. Augustine had in mind when, with his magnificent use of words, he contrasted the rest of God with our restlessness. He said, “Thou has made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Augustine was thinking of the turmoil of the human heart. He was saying that our true destiny is to find the rest that is found in God only.

Is it not the case that what is involved here is this kind of rest? God, having completed his work of creation, rests, as if to say, “This is the destiny of those who are my people; to rest as I rest, to rest in me.”

That leads to the second point. God not only promises rest in these verses, he promises holiness as well. Holiness means to be set apart. So God sets the Sabbath day apart to teach that we are to enter not only into rest but also into holiness.

The two go together, because holiness is the opposite of sin, and sin is what makes us restless. Why is it that when we go out into the world with the gospel the world is not willing to respond to Christ’s teaching? Why is it that when we talk about rest, the world, which is restless, does not rush with open arms to embrace the gospel? The answer is that rest is connected with holiness and the world does not want holiness.

The attributes of God are always an offense to men and women. God is sovereign. That is offensive because we want to be our own sovereign. We want to be lords of our lives. We want to say, as one of the poets did, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

God is also omniscient. He knows everything. This is troublesome, too, because it means that God knows us. We do not want to be known, certainly not well. We want to be noticed. We want to be praised, built up. But we do not want to be known as we are because we are ashamed of what we are. Yet God knows us as no other man or woman will ever know us, and to be exposed in the sight of a holy God is frightening.

Men and women do not like God for his holiness, and it is this that makes the gospel so hard to preach. People need rest, yes. But they need it in the way it is to be found: by having sin’s penalty removed through the work of Christ; sin’s power broken through the power of the Holy Spirit; sin’s presence eradicated by Christ’s return, when those who believe on him shall be made like him in all his perfections.

For believers there is a sense in which the seventh day is fulfilled in us now. We enter by degrees into the rest and holiness Christ provides. But the ultimate realization of the Sabbath is to be at Christ’s return when we go to be with him and rest with him in holiness forever.

Understanding these verses is key to understanding the Sabbath. Rest is a part of God's nature. It is a part of his image. It is a part of our image then. A summary statement tells us that the creation of the heavens and the earth was completed. Since the cosmos was exactly as God wished and since the world was capable of continuing on its own, on the seventh day God rested. In resting God showed that he was neither bound to the creation for support nor limited in any way by it.

God blessed the seventh day, setting it apart from all other days by making it holy. From the premise that seven units symbolize wholeness or completeness, God’s sanctifying the seventh day certified that the creation was finished and perfect. In doing this God was expressing divine sovereignty over time. God separated time into ordinary time and holy time, for God did not want humans to become slaves to endless work. So humans are to rest one day in every seven in order to praise God and enjoy both the creation, the result of God’s labors, and the results of their own work. Holy time, therefore, adds meaning to activity done in regular time. Observance of holy time also refreshes the human spirit, adding a depth of meaning to life. God ties his deliverance of Israel out of Egypt into the observance of the seventh day (). Thus, on the Sabbath Israel worshiped the God of creation who was also the God of the exodus. In worshiping this great God regularly, humans exercise the spiritual dimension of being in God’s image.

This holy time is so important to God that he included it in his law. He made it clear that the Sabbath is a bridge between heaven and earth, where God is uniquely present. Lets take a look at that.

// - Sabbath is a bridge between heaven and earth.

Turn in your Bibles to . We're gonna jump around a bit between Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, but you can hold your place here in Exodus. Let's read it.

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Now, I'm an Ozark guy and at Ozark we say context is king. Well Jesus is king but context is a close second. The command to Sabbath is number 4 in the list. If you look, you'll notice the first three have to do with our relationship to God: Have no other gods before me, make no idols, do not misuse the name of God. Commands 5-10 deal with our relationship to one another: Honor mom and Pop, don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't covet. But command number 4... some have said... is a bridge between the two. A bridge between heaven and earth. At first I didn't buy this idea. But then I read the rest of the law. If you just flip through the pages of your bible and notice the headings, from this point forward, the sabbath is about every other page. It's mentioned more than any other command except the first one. If you look at you'll see that not only every seventh day are people suppsed to consecrate themselves to God but every seventh year the land is supposed to rest! And every 50th year, that is 7 times 7 plus one, everything is to be redeemed and restored and set free. The year of Jubilee. Obviously, the Sabbath is pretty important.

Now something that kind of shocked me in this Sabbath study was . It says,

32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.

Harsh! The dude is gathering fire wood on a Sabbath and is stoned. You could literally accidentally kill a neighbors slave and only owe a fine according to OT law. But... pick up some sticks on Saturday? Stoned to death. Why?

If we are made in God's image... and designed to have communion with him through rest... If Sabbath is, as I think it is, a sacramental event where God is uniquely present and we commune with him... a place where heaven and earth meet. Then violating something that holy... results in death. Think about it. If a priest went into the Holy of Holies... behind the curtain into the presence of God, and he was not consecrated to God and fit for worship... the holiness of God would consume him and he would die. It's the same kind of deal here. Sabbath is a place where we cease doing the normal, earthly things that we do everyday so that we can engage in the heavenly parts of the world and meet God there. And what happens during that meeting? Why did God give us this gift of the Sabbath?

- Sabbath is trust in God's protection.

Let's go first to the psalms. Turn to . Let's read it a stanza at a time.

Truly my soul finds rest in God;

my salvation comes from him.

2 Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

3 How long will you assault me?

Would all of you throw me down—

this leaning wall, this tottering fence?

4 Surely they intend to topple me

from my lofty place;

they take delight in lies.

With their mouths they bless,

but in their hearts they curse.

5 Yes, my soul, find rest in God;

my hope comes from him.

6 Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

7 My salvation and my honor depend on God;

he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

8 Trust in him at all times, you people;

pour out your hearts to him,

for God is our refuge.

9 Surely the lowborn are but a breath,

the highborn are but a lie.

If weighed on a balance, they are nothing;

together they are only a breath.

10 Do not trust in extortion

or put vain hope in stolen goods;

though your riches increase,

do not set your heart on them.

11 One thing God has spoken,

two things I have heard:

“Power belongs to you, God,

12 and with you, Lord, is unfailing love”;

and, “You reward everyone

according to what they have done.”

/ - The Sabbath is grace to allow God's healing.