Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/darrelljohnson/sermons/7869/the-sabbath-gods-gift-of-sanity/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Sometimes it takes getting away from a place to actually discover what is really going on in a place. And one of the most significant benefits of my time away this summer has been coming to see again just how insane life in Southern California really is.

[0:16] Is insane too strong a word? I think not. The trouble is the insanity is powerfully addictive, fueled by the constant hype of the electronic media.

[0:28] Go, go, go, now, now, now, hurry, hurry, hurry, don't miss, don't miss, don't miss. As we made our way back from three weeks of camping in Northern California, we took Highway 101, which you may know at times comes along the coast.

[0:43] That particular day, the air was crystal clear. There was no coastal fog anywhere. The ocean sparkled with a delicious blue. I've never seen Pismo Beach so spectacularly beautiful, nor Refugio State Beach up near Santa Barbara.

[0:58] And then we hit the San Fernando Valley. I turned on the radio in time to hear the phrase that you've heard many times, traffic every six minutes, every six minutes.

[1:11] I'm home, I said to myself, and took the line as an audio symbol of our lifestyle. Now, don't get me wrong. I like it here. I belong here.

[1:24] It's just that now I'm going to allow myself to call a spade a spade. It's insane here. And what makes things worse for me is that a big part of me feeds on the insanity.

[1:38] But having gotten away, I realized again that the busyness, the noise, the rush is not healthy. That's putting it mildly. It's killing us.

[1:50] Literally. Literally. Literally. Physically. Emotionally. Relationally. And spiritually. I submit to you today that the insanity is due in large measure to ignoring and disobeying the fourth commandment.

[2:08] And I submit to you that the gift of the fourth commandment, the gift of the Sabbath, is a gift which restores sanity.

[2:19] I submit to you that obedience will bring a huge measure of healing to our culture. Our text today is Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 through 17.

[2:32] If you are able and willing, would you stand for the reading of God's law? The Ten Commandments, which the psalmist says are perfect, restoring the soul, sure, making wise the simple, right, rejoicing the heart.

[2:51] Hear the word of God. Then God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

[3:02] You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

[3:15] You shall not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

[3:31] You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses His name. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

[3:44] Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall not do any work, you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

[3:57] For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

[4:08] Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the day that the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

[4:22] You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or male or female slave or ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Lord, have mercy.

[4:38] And by your mercy, cause your law to come alive in us in a fresh way today. For we pray in Jesus' name.

[4:49] Amen. You may be seated. Amen. Amen. Here's how I'd like to grapple with the fourth commandment today and next Sunday.

[5:02] Note the word commandment, by the way. Fourth commandment. Not a suggestion. Not friendly advice for weary and stressed out people. But commandment.

[5:15] What I want to do is ask three questions of this commandment. Questions one and two we'll work with today and question three we'll work with next Sunday in the context of the Lord's Supper.

[5:29] Question one. Who is this who gives this command? Who does he think he is? Who is this lawgiver? Question two.

[5:41] What is his purpose? He has not just spun these laws out of thin air, so to speak. Ah, let's see. I think what they need is a rule about, yeah, let's see.

[5:51] Six days they'll work, one day they'll rest. No. He has a purpose. What is it? And question three. How can we obey this command in our time?

[6:02] Centuries ago, when God funded the law from Mount Sinai, everything was very different. Life was different. Relationships were different. Cultural dynamics were different.

[6:13] Even 40 years ago in our own culture, the situation was such that we could render obedience relatively easily. Stores and gas stations and movie theaters were not open on the Christian Sabbath.

[6:26] How can we possibly obey this command in our time? Is it possible for doctors and for nurses and for television sports producers and plumbers and police officers and mothers of little children to obey this command?

[6:38] How can we be Sabbath keepers in a postmodern world? So, three questions. Who is this lawgiver? What is the purpose of this fourth commandment?

[6:49] And how can we obey in our era? Today we'll work through the who and the what. Who is this Lord of the Sabbath, as He calls Himself when He is incarnated in our flesh?

[7:00] And why has He called us to this sabbatical living? Which is another way of asking, what are we missing? Okay. Who is this Yahweh who orders us to live by a six plus one rhythm?

[7:15] Who is this one who also orders us to have no other gods before Him? No other ultimate allegiance, no other ground of hope before Him. Who is this one who orders us not to commit adultery or steal or murder or covet?

[7:28] Well, first of all, He is our Maker. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God.

[7:39] You shall not do any work. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth. The lawgiver made the universe and all that is in it.

[7:49] The lawgiver made us. The lawgiver made you and me. The lawgiver designed the human species. Which means that He knows us. Yahweh knows what makes us tick.

[8:02] He knows what it is that causes us to work at optimum strength. We can therefore look at the Ten Commandments as the manufacturer's specifications.

[8:14] In the law, the Creator tells us how the species functions in the created order. Which is why violating the commandments hurts so badly.

[8:27] We are not turning away from friendly advice. We are turning against reality. We are violating creation. Jesus says in His Sermon on the Mount, Do not think that I came to abolish the law and the prophets.

[8:42] I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the slightest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law until all is accomplished.

[8:53] Jesus there grounds the law in creation. The law is as permanent as the created order. For in the law, the Creator has revealed how the created order is put together and how it works best.

[9:07] To ignore or violate the Creator's commands is to ignore and violate reality. Now this is very clear with regard to the sixth commandment. You shall not murder.

[9:17] Clearly violates creation. But so too with the seventh commandment. You shall not commit adultery. It's not spoken to kill joy, but because adultery always kills joy.

[9:30] There used to be a sign in the San Francisco International Airport which read, As you slide down the banister of life, make sure all the splinters are turned the other way.

[9:43] Slide against Yahweh's law and the splinters are turned against you. Slide against Yahweh's law and you will always get hurt. We are violating the manufacturer's specifications.

[9:55] The machine will not run any other way. You can see then that in the fourth commandment we are being given a gift of revelation. The Creator is revealing a mystery.

[10:10] Yahweh is revealing the inherent structure of reality. I say reveal because this six plus one pattern we would have never deduced from observing nature.

[10:22] We can easily recognize other natural rhythms like night and day as we watch the earth rotate on its axis. The month as the moon revolves around the earth.

[10:33] The year as the earth revolves around the sun. But the week. What in nature works according to the week? What in nature works on this rhythm of seven?

[10:45] The fourth commandment tells us that everything in nature works on that rhythm. It's as though God were saying from Mount Sinai, I'm telling you a mystery.

[10:56] You would have never figured out by observing nature. The mystery is that nature works in sevens. Six plus one. This is the bio-rhythm of creation.

[11:09] In the law, the Maker is telling us something very profound about ourselves. And as you read the rest of the book of Exodus, you discover that this six plus one rhythm is true of animals.

[11:20] And it's true of the earth. The earth will only yield its produce if it's let to lay foul one year out of every seven. Lo, I tell you a mystery.

[11:32] The Maker built the six plus one rhythm into the fabric of our being. Now, the lawgiver is also our redeemer.

[11:43] What is the first line of the law? I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

[11:54] The lawgiver is the one who wants to set people free. Thus, when Moses repeats the Ten Commandments in the book of Deuteronomy, he adds to the fourth commandment these words, Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and outstretched arm.

[12:14] The lawgiver is the one who really wants human beings to be free, free from all oppression, and free for a joyful relationship with Him.

[12:24] This is so crucial to grasp about the law. God gives us His law so that we can live in the freedom for which He set us free. Now that I've redeemed you, now that I've made you mine, this is the way to live free.

[12:41] Law makes us free? Yes, without law, without commandments, we are not free. Free to do our own thing never leads to freedom.

[12:52] It leads to profound confusion and terrible bondage to forces beneath our dignity. A kite is free to fly only when the string is solidly attached to it.

[13:06] Cut the string and the kite is not free. It is now helplessly at the whim of the wind. Tied to the string, the kite has great freedom.

[13:17] This, I think, explains the paralysis of the so-called free world. The free world is hardly free, and the third world sees it.

[13:31] There's no string anymore. There's no common agreement on what is right and wrong. Charles Colson, who alerted the hard way, writes this. On the surface, a value-free society sounds liberal, progressive, enlightened.

[13:47] But when the public square is naked, truth and values drift with the winds of public favor, and there's nothing objective to govern how we are to live together. Why should we be shocked, then, by the inevitable consequences?

[14:00] Why should we be surprised to discover that society yields what it planted? Why are we surprised that crimes soar steadily among juveniles when parents fail to set standards of right behavior in the home, when schoolteachers will not offer a moral opinion in the classroom, either out of fear of litigation or because they cannot come from a position of what is right and wrong, as one New Jersey teacher put it?

[14:23] Why are we horrified at the growing consequences of sexual promiscuity, including a life-threatening epidemic, when sex is treated as casually as going out for a Frosty at Wendy's?

[14:33] Why are we shocked at disclosures of religious leaders bilking their ministries of millions when they've been preaching a get-rich-quick gospel all along? Why the wonderment over the fact that for enough dollars or sexual favors, government employees and military personnel sell out their nation's secret?

[14:50] Why is it so surprising that Wall Street yuppies make fast millions on insider information or tax fraud? Without objective values, the community or one's neighbor has no superior claim over one's own desires.

[15:04] Whether we like to hear it or not, we are reaping the consequences of the decades since World War II when we have, in Solzhenitsyn's words, forgotten God. What we have left is the reign of relativism.

[15:17] The reign of relativism only leads to confusion and finally paralysis. And then Colson ends, When there is no rule book, how do we know how to play the game?

[15:30] Again and again, our Redeemer says to us, Here, here's the rule book. Here is the way. Walk in it and you will be free. It is the Liberator who commands us.

[15:44] Six days you shall work and labor, but on the seventh you shall not do any work. He says it for our freedom. And then the lawgiver is also our lover.

[15:57] Again, the first line of law. I am Yahweh your God. I am Yahweh your God. It's a wonderful line, for it says that before He gives us the commandments, the issue of relationship is already settled.

[16:12] I am your God. He chooses us for Himself before He even speaks His law. which means then that He gives us the Ten Commandments, not because, or, sorry, which means that He does not love us because we are going to keep the Ten Commandments.

[16:28] He loves us, period, and then out of that love gives us the Ten Commandments. He does not speak the law and then say, Okay, now if you'll keep them, we're going to be friends and I'm going to love you.

[16:39] No, no, no. He loves us and then speaks that law to help us understand what this love relationship looks like in everyday existence. This is crucial to grasp, too.

[16:51] The one who orders this six plus one rhythm of life is our lover, our jealous lover, as He says in the Second Commandment. Not a jealousy born of frustration or envy or spite, but a jealousy born of a zeal to protect a love relationship.

[17:09] Someone has said that married persons who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adulterer into their house would surely be lacking in moral perfection, for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage.

[17:21] God's jealousy is of that sort. He is zealous to protect something priceless. The lawgiver wants the very best for us and will not settle for anything but the best.

[17:31] We saw last Sunday in our study of John 17 His passionate desire that we enter into and experience the Trinitarian love, and so He speaks His good law. Torah is the Hebrew word, and Torah simply means to point the finger.

[17:47] I made you. I redeemed you. I love you. Now here, here is the way our love relationship is going to work itself out. Six days you shall work and do all your labor, but the seventh day is a special day.

[18:03] It's my day. It's our day. And on that day, you're not going to work. Which brings us then to the question, what is the purpose of the fourth commandment?

[18:16] What specific purpose does our Maker, Redeemer, and Lover have in mind when He gives this commandment? Well, we have been given two forms of the commandment. One in Exodus 20, the other in Deuteronomy 5.

[18:30] The Exodus form grounds this 6 plus 1 rhythm in creation. We are called to this rhythm because this is the rhythm in which Yahweh made the world. In the Deuteronomy form, this 6 plus 1 rhythm is grounded in redemption.

[18:45] We are to follow it because we have been redeemed from the powers. Taken together then, the purpose of the Sabbath is to remember God's work of creation and redemption and then to intentionally enter into and enjoy the benefits of His work of creation and redemption.

[19:09] Thus, Psalm 92, the so-called Song of the Sabbath, which we read earlier in the service, verse 4, For you, O Yahweh, have made me glad by your work.

[19:20] At the works of your hands I will sing for joy. The purpose of the Sabbath is to shift the focus away from our work to God's work, which alone makes our work possible.

[19:35] The Christian Sabbath, of course, remembers and celebrates God's greater works of creation and redemption. The Christian Sabbath remembers and celebrates the great exodus when Jesus Christ, Yahweh Himself to the rescue, delivered us from all the powers that enslave us.

[19:54] The Christian Sabbath celebrates the great benefits of forgiveness and reconciliation and justification and the giving of the Holy Spirit. And the Christian Sabbath remembers and celebrates God's new creative work, which took place on Easter.

[20:09] Remember that Easter morning is not just the first day of a new week. It's the first day of a brand new world. Easter morning was the first day of a whole new creation, with the risen Jesus now as the prototype and head of a new humanity, which explains why the early Christians, who were for the most part Jewish, slowly shifted the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, from the seventh day to the first day.

[20:38] They did that because more important now than the last day of the old creation is the first day of the new creation. The purpose of the Sabbath is not just to stop work and rest a while.

[20:52] The purpose of the Sabbath is to reorient our lives away from our work to God's great work. Now, it's not that God doesn't like our work.

[21:05] Quite the contrary. God created us to be creative. Our work, in fact, can be an offering of worship as we demonstrate how wonderfully creative the Creator is.

[21:16] God is not devaluing our work. After all, He commands us to work six days. You ever notice that? The commandment is to rest, but the commandment is to work six days.

[21:27] Sometime, we need to wrestle with the implications of our leisure society. Why is it that in a leisure society, boredom is the number one mark of our culture? It's because we were created to be creative six days a week.

[21:44] So, this fourth commandment is not negating the importance of our work. It's just that the really important work is not our work, but God's work. And the purpose of the Sabbath is to shift the focus onto what God is doing.

[21:58] You see, the fact of the matter is we can become addicted to our work. Anybody know about this? We can become addicted to our work, which is to say we become addicted to ourselves as the Creators and Redeemers.

[22:18] God calls us to this six plus one, especially the plus one, to keep us from becoming workaholics. Why do we work all the time? Because we say it's all up to us.

[22:31] It's going to fall apart. I've got to keep everything together. No, says the Sabbath. It's not all up to you. You don't keep everything together.

[22:42] Stop and enjoy the one who does. Therefore, it's important that we use vocabulary correctly and that we not call the Sabbath a day off.

[22:57] When we call it a day off, the logical question is, day off from what? And the answer is work, which means that work is still the primary thing, our work.

[23:08] Day off language makes work number one. Sabbath language makes worship number one. A missionary friend of mine recently came through the estates on furlough and he referred to Southern California culture as a culture of play.

[23:25] And I said, right on, and then went on to sadly observe, but the play does not refresh us. Why is that? Because another astute observer says of our culture that we worship our work, we work at our play, and we play at our worship.

[23:46] We worship our work, we work at our play, and we play at our worship. We've got it all out of balance. The Sabbath helps us get it straight so that we work at our work, and we worship at our worship, and we play at our play.

[24:03] You know, the Sabbath even helps us play. The New Jerusalem Bible translates Psalm 92.4 this way, It is good to give thanks to Yahweh, to play in honor of Your name, Most High.

[24:18] The Sabbath helps us to play because the Sabbath helps us realize that we do not hold the world together. We never have and we never will.

[24:29] In fact, we don't hold anything together. The Sabbath helps us realize that we are being held together by sovereign and gracious hands. Sabbath keeping then keeps us from addiction to our work to free us for worship and for play.

[24:47] We are freed to become, as Mike Dennis puts it, human beings and not human doings. The Sabbath helps us reorient and therefore re-root our lives in the eternal.

[25:04] The Sabbath command calls us to stop or cool it, as Eugene Peterson puts it. Cool it and attend to God. That's the key word, attend.

[25:16] Redirect the energy. Refocus on the Maker, Redeemer, and Lover and re-root the roots of our lives deep into the soil of His love.

[25:27] The end of Psalm 92 celebrates the benefits of the Sabbath. The psalmist writes, The righteous flourish like a palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house and they flourish in the courts of the Lord.

[25:41] They flourish in the drought and heat of the other six days because they took a whole day to sink the roots deep into the eternal. Why a whole day?

[25:53] Why not a half a day? Why not just a couple hours a week? Because relationships take time. Young life workers have the phrase, Love equals time equals love equals time equals love.

[26:11] Any relationship takes time to develop and nurture. Sharon and I have a regular date built into our calendar, and we cherish that very sacred block of time.

[26:22] But even in it, it takes time for the relational stuff to happen. That first hour while we're sitting at the restaurant, we're talking to each other, we're not hearing each other. We're just disengaging from the day.

[26:34] It's in the second hour and then the third hour that the relational stuff begins to connect. So too with our relationship with God. It takes time.

[26:44] We can't just run into intimacy. In those first moments, our minds are too profoundly distracted to enter into intimacy with God. Every week, I take three or four hours on a morning to be alone in prayer.

[26:59] And that first hour, my mind is just everywhere. Second hour, sometimes it's everywhere. But by the third hour, by the third hour, I begin to hear the voice and receive the blessing.

[27:11] In it, you shall not do any work. A whole day. A whole day away from distractions of work. Now, what helps me is to remember that for the Bible, the Sabbath day begins on Saturday evening at sundown.

[27:32] It's part of another rhythm built into the fabric of our being, the rhythm of the night and the day. For the Bible, the day begins with the night. Genesis 1.

[27:44] It was evening and morning, day one. It was evening and morning, day two. The day begins with going to sleep. That's a way to put everything in proper perspective.

[27:56] We don't run the world. So we begin the day by going to sleep and then wake up with the day already in progress. I need Saturday evenings free in order to prepare for the Sabbath blessings, in order to prepare myself to be attentive on the day that the divine lover comes calling.

[28:18] It requires that much time because relationship with God, as Eugene Peterson says, needs unhurried space. Again, that's why we must not call the Lord's Day a day off.

[28:31] A day off is just as filled with activity that is just as distractive. The Sabbath is a day on, a day on to attentiveness, intentionally stopping the competition to get in touch with life himself.

[28:50] And it takes time, leisurely time. And I think then that explains why so many people do not find Sunday refreshing.

[29:01] We are sandwiching an hour of worship in between other activities that are distracting us from being attentive. Eugene Peterson says again, the Sabbath is not a day to get anything done.

[29:16] It's a day to watch and be responsive to what God is doing. And a one-hour worship service on Sunday is not enough.

[29:29] That does not constitute the Sabbath. It's only the beginning. Well, the purpose of the fourth commandment then is to once again connect us to the work of the triune God, to once again sink the roots deep into the Trinitarian love, to once again get in touch with what the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are doing in the world.

[29:52] Psalm 95, verse 4 again, For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your works. At the works of your hand I will sing for joy. The important work is not ours, but God's.

[30:06] And the shift of focus then puts a powerful spin on those other six days. They become less frantic, less weighty, less insane, more creative, more hope-filled, and more God-filled.

[30:27] Someone has said that excessive activism is typical of those who do not live by grace. The Sabbath teaches us to live by grace.

[30:39] Jonathan Edwards put it so well. God hath made it our duty by His institution to set apart this day for a special seeking of His grace and blessing, from which we may argue that He will be especially ready to confer this grace on those who thus seek it.

[30:55] Then he writes this, The Sabbath day is an accepted day, a day of salvation, a time wherein God especially loves to be sought and loves to be found.

[31:09] Six days you shall work and do all your labor, but the seventh you shall not work, for it is a holy day. It is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

[31:21] It is a commandment so that we will have sanity and so that we will remain in love. Isaiah 58, God gives a great promise.

[31:36] If because of the Sabbath you will turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, a holy day for the Lord honorable and shall honor it desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, then you will take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.

[32:01] The question is, how do we do it? And we'll do that next Sunday. I conclude for now with the way a Puritan spoke of the gift of the Sabbath.

[32:13] You know, the Puritans get bad press. Puritan Sabbath in our memory is a very bad deal. Listen to this Puritan speak about the Sabbath. Hail thou that art highly favored of God, thou golden spot of the week, thou maker day of souls, thou daybreak of eternal brightness, thou queen of days, the Lord is with thee.

[32:37] Blessed art thou among days. Oh, how do men and women flutter up and down on the weekdays as a dove on the waters and can find no rest for their souls till they come to thee, their ark, till thou put forth thy hand and take them in.

[32:52] How they sit under thy shadow with great delight and find thy faith sweet to their taste. Oh, the mountains of mind, the ravishing happiness of heart, the solace of soul, which on thee they enjoy in the blessed Savior.

[33:05] Well, I think we have about five minutes for some questions. Would you want to ask me anything by way of clarification of where we've gone so far?

[33:16] Anybody want to say anything about this? You want to argue with me? You want to argue with the Lord? I shouldn't have put it. Put it that way. Anyone?

[33:28] Something not clear of what I've done so far? Eating lunch on the Sabbath out in a restaurant. Next week. I have mixed feelings.

[33:47] See, we're in a multicultural context. And that's difficult. And what I'm going to try to argue next week is that I think that the major concern that God has for us is the rhythm, six plus one.

[34:05] I think there are times when a Sabbath can be honored on another day. So like doctors, nurses or something who have to work on weekends. So if that's true, then as long as that waiter is getting a Sabbath sometime, then it'll be okay.

[34:23] But if he's not or she's not, see, they're not whole. I want them to be whole. So I guess I'd say if you go out to dinner today, just sort of ask, when do you get your Sabbath?

[34:35] Get my what? I've got good news for you. I have a mystery to tell you. You've been built in such a way. We'll wrestle with that more next week. Good question.

[34:49] What about preachers? Am I not working this morning? And I've really wrestled with that in the summer as I put this together. And here's where I've come. No, I'm not. I am worshiping this morning.

[35:01] I live to preach. This is not hard work for me. Now, yesterday was hard work, getting it all done. And during the week, the research is hard.

[35:13] And trying to put the outline together and try to discern how much not to say and what to say. But I think those who know me well know that Sunday morning is not a work day for me. I can hardly wait for Sunday morning.

[35:24] And so I take my sermon as I've now given a great act of worship. That's why I go home jazzed and full.

[35:38] Pooped, but full. See, that's, I think, the distinction. Now, I hope I'm not playing games with the word on that. All right?

[35:51] There's one over here. Someone's pointing. Yes, Linda? A job that starts Sunday evening, but when did you get...

[36:07] Yeah. The question is, what do you do with a job that starts on Sunday evening?

[36:20] Well, my response would be, that's perfect. Because the Sabbath begins Saturday evening. So I think it wholly appropriate that come sundown or come evening on Sunday evening, which is, and this is my rhythm, Sunday evening, I take out my calendar and I get out all my notes and I get out everything and I start putting things together for the week.

[36:41] Sabbath's over. I'm raring to go. So, in a way, you kind of got a nice arrangement because you have Saturday off, Saturday night off. All right? See, that's when it starts.

[36:57] All right. Let's... Now, last... Oh, yes, one more. Good question. If Christ is...

[37:08] You started by saying, if Christ has come to fulfill the law, if He is the end of the law, why then do we put ourselves under the law still? And in particular, why pick one out of all the possible laws?

[37:21] Good. Boy, that will require a little more time on my part. But I will say this. I think that there has been a misunderstanding of what it means for Christ to be the end of the law.

[37:33] The quote is from Romans chapter 10, verse 9, and where Paul says, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Meaning by that, that the law now is not in the...

[37:47] The law had become in the minds of the Pharisees the means by which I might be right with God. I'm not right with God until I perform all the law. Christ comes. His sacrifice is what makes us right with Him, with God.

[38:01] And so the law is now no longer needed for that. It was never needed for that. But Paul says, Christ is the end of the law. And the word that's translated end is the Greek word telios.

[38:14] And telios means that for which something was created. The telios of an acorn is to become an oak tree. And so what Paul is saying there with Paul, with Christ becoming the end of the law, is that Christ now shows us what all that law means.

[38:33] He embodies it. He fulfills it. And calls us to follow Him then. And then I think that He, in fact, then calls us in the Sermon on the Mount to continue to live the law that's once revealed.

[38:46] Now, the Sabbath day's journey stipulation, I don't put in the category of law. That seems to me to be a legalism that the early Judaism added to the Sabbath.

[38:58] And I'll deal with that next Sunday. Just because we live by grace does not mean now the law is irrelevant. In fact, now that we live by grace, we can finally live the law.

[39:13] Hmm. Yes, I think so. Now, He does some things on the Sabbath. They get Him in trouble. And that's what I'll look at next week.

[39:25] In fact, a fact of history is Jesus gets crucified because of what He does on the Sabbath. But He brings us to the original intent of the Sabbath, and I'll try to show that next week.

[39:38] Oh, boy. Good questions. Now, let's do this. We have some songs that we want to sing. Just take a few minutes. And what I'd like you to do is don't think of these songs now as the end of the worship service.

[39:55] Instead, think of these songs as preparation for the rest of the Sabbath day. All right? Let's worship. Thank you.