God's Holy Day

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Amen. Is this text really necessary? Structurally, verse one, really it belongs to day six.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. That is everything God had made. It was done, the heavens and the earth. It's tying a nice bow atop the gift of creation that we read about all through chapter one.

It's telling us that God has finished his work of forming and filling. That's why it's there. From a literary perspective, we could move, remove verses two and three, and really not think much about it.

The story would move actually rather naturally from God creating and blessing his image bearers, which we looked at last week at the end of chapter one. It would move from there to telling the story that unfolds with Adam and Eve, which begins in verse four.

Now, I'm just speaking from a literature perspective here. If we were to take out verses two and three, we'd have the nice tie-off of verse one to day six, and then we'd have verse four.

Now, here's the generations of the heavens and the earth, and begins to tell us a little bit more about these first creatures, human creatures that God made.

So, does that mean that we wouldn't lose anything if we were to remove these two verses? If we were to just maybe skip over them in our study?

Would anything be lost is what I want you to consider. Now, of course, those of us who are wholly committed to the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, and I hope that's every single one of us in the room today, which I see as only members of our church at this point.

So, if you don't believe that, you lied when you became a member of our church. Of course, we would say no.

We would never say something like that. We would reject that idea. Still, I wonder how many of us, or how many Christians we know, live their lives as if these two verses are basically unnecessary and carry no real significance to our lives.

Now, I want to argue this morning that the seventh day of creation is loaded with far more significance than you might imagine.

It's written so as to stand out, actually, in the creation narrative. Everything about it is distinct from the other six days. Let me just give you a few examples of that.

One is that it doesn't follow the same formula that the other six days follow. There was a particular pattern that we got used to in chapter one, wasn't there? And God said, and what God said happened.

It gives us a report of it, and then there's an evaluation of it, a pronouncement that it's good, and so on and so forth. The formula is laid out for us. We get to this seventh day, and it's not that Moses has just forgotten the formula.

No, he's doing something different here. This stands out as distinct. There's no formula to follow, at least not the same formula. You may have noticed that there's no end to this day.

Every other day, all the six, at the very end, what do we see? There was evening, and there was morning the first day. There was evening, and there was morning the third day. There was evening, and there was morning the sixth day.

We get to day seven, and there's no evening and no morning. Some have suggested that the day continues even now. It's an indefinite period of time that's open to us.

That's a break from what else we've seen in these six days. Notice there's no corresponding day. Do you remember that part of the pattern that we saw in chapter one?

Day one is corresponding to day four. Day two, corresponding to day five. Day three, corresponding to day six. We get to day seven. There's no corresponding day.

It stands on its own. It's distinct from the others. We see here it's the only day in the whole narrative.

It's the only day that is blessed. There's a blessing not only on the things done on the day. There's a blessing on the day itself. That stands out in the text, doesn't it?

There's a symmetry here as well. We've talked about that already at some other points in our study of Genesis 1. There's a symmetry even to these two verses.

The first three lines in the Hebrew text are parallel to one another. Each has seven words. Each has seventh day right in the middle of the line.

There's something of effort and beauty that Moses is doing so as to cause us to stop and think. There's something significant about this day.

There's something significant about what we're to understand about it. But above all of those things, the significance of the seventh day rests on the fact that God himself blessed and hallowed it as a pattern to be followed by his image bearers.

It is God's holy day. And it would be both a tremendous loss and a serious sin to disregard it or to remove it or to ignore it.

So what I want to do is I want to show you how the seventh day of creation, how in it God sets forth a pattern of life for us that is spiritually fruitful and blessed and good and embedded with gospel significance.

That it's not merely a ritual that we follow week in and week out, but it's something that God has established for us in order that he might bless us and tell us more about himself and more about his gospel.

That's the goal. First thing I want you to see is I want you to see God's principle established. God's principle established.

Now we get to these two verses and we have to acknowledge first and foremost what the text is about. The text is fundamentally about God. There's no explicit command here.

There's no mention of man directly in the text. What Moses is doing is describing for us how God himself treated and ordained this seventh day of creation.

We have to acknowledge that first. This is about God. What we find out about ourselves, what we do ourselves flows out of the fact of what God is doing, what God has done and who God is here in this text.

So that as his image bearers, we then see in this text an enduring principle for how we are to pattern our own lives in imitation of our creator.

Are you with me that far? The text is telling us about God. And since we've just learned that we are image bearers, we then come to the text and say, okay, this is what God has done and he's done some significant things on it.

Therefore, as his image bearers, we are going to follow this pattern that he has set as a principle for us here in the text. You with me? Remember, Genesis is a book of foundations, isn't it?

This is another example of how it is laying the groundwork for more explicit commands and promises that are going to come later in the scriptures.

It's important. We can't just take it out. It's important for us. Now, the pattern that we see, the principle that we see here, it can be seen ironically in three actions, three action verbs of the text.

The first thing we see God doing, we see God ceasing, God resting, God resting. Look at verse 2. Rest.

Now, the idea here is not that God had to take a break after an exhausting week of creative activity. Some of you had an exhausting week this week. If you're not sure what an exhausting week looks like, you should talk to Chris Baez after the service today, and he'll tell you all about what an exhausting week and weekend looks like.

Rest from fatigue is exactly what Chris needs right now and what many of you probably need. That's not the idea here. This is not rest from fatigue.

The Bible's clear. God has inexhaustible energy. Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 28. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary. Do you hear Isaiah's logic there? That God didn't grow weary or faint even in creating all that exists.

He certainly is not going to grow weary or faint in anything else, particularly in his redemption of his people or in the keeping of his covenant. God doesn't, he doesn't get tired. That's not what this rest is about.

That God rested here, it means that he ceased. It's a cessation of something. That's literally what the word means. He ceased from his creative activity.

The rest is not about fatigue. It's about completion. His work is finished. And it's perfect.

Kent Hughes adds that God's rest was one of deep pleasure and satisfaction at the fruit of his labor. And so he stops.

God rested from his creative work because he was totally satisfied in it. And then what he does for us in the narrative is he marks this cessation of creative activity as a seventh day.

Why? So that he might set a pattern for us to follow. And as we'll see in a few moments, the rest, the principle here means that our weekly rest is really less about recovery, even though that is a blessing that Chris may enjoy today.

It's less about recovery. It's more about the intentional cessation of work for a greater purpose. And God is beginning to show us what that is.

It's a principle. God is resting. Second, God is blessing. God is blessing. Verse 3. So God blessed the seventh day.

God blessed the seventh day. Now this should stick out to us. Up to this point, God's blessing in the whole creation narrative has been reserved for his living creatures.

Here, he blesses the day itself. Now what is the nature of that blessing? Now throughout the creation narrative, if we keep it within that context, we're trying to let the scripture speak for itself in the way that it was given to us.

Every time we see blessing, it's in reference to the ability and responsibility to be fruitful and multiply. Well, a day can't multiply.

A day can't procreate, can it? What are we meant to understand there? I think God's blessing of the seventh day then, it seems to be his unique favor in making it a day that is fruitful for us.

Spiritually fruitful in the lives of his image bearers. It is productive in a way that is utterly distinct from all the other days that he gives us for our work.

It's productive, but it's productive according to his favor. And this blessing is linked to the final action that we see God taking, setting forth this principle.

We see God is resting, and then we see God is blessing, and finally we see God is hallowing. He's hallowing. Verse 3. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

He hallowed it. Now that God made the seventh day holy means more than just setting it apart from the others. We understand a wooden definition of holiness is that.

It means to set apart, right? And of course, God is doing that. He's setting this day apart from the others, but it means more than that. It means that God is consecrating this day to be a day that is devoted to himself.

It's sacred in that sense. It's a sacred day devoted wholly to God's purposes. It's a day of worship, a day of celebration of the God who created all things so wondrously through the power of his word.

And not only did he create them, but he created them in perfection and in completion and in beauty for his glory and for our good. This day, God is setting apart.

He's hallowing it as a sacred day for us to look to him now and worship him as creator. And that God made the day holy shows that we, as his image bearers, are more than the functions described on day six.

Our lives are about more than sex. They're about more than work.

They're about more than consumption. We are fundamentally worshipers designed by God to commune with him.

And God blesses and sets apart the seventh day as a day for us to cease from our other labors, from our other functions, in order that we might specially worship and enjoy him.

Him, it's hallowed. It is a day that is holy to the Lord. Now that's the principle. We're looking at what God did.

Not thinking yet about what we do. We're looking at what God did. God ceased. He rested. God blessed. God hallowed.

But how exactly does this principle then apply? Well, that's the second thing. We've seen the principle established. Now we're going to see God's pattern applied. We see it applied.

Now, if God blessed the seventh day and God hallowed the seventh day, who exactly is to receive the blessing of it? Who is supposed to treat it as a day that is holy unto the Lord?

In Genesis 1 and 2. Who? His image bearers. Isn't that the clear answer? On the seventh day, God established a principled pattern for us.

You and me. His people. And like the God we image, we are to set apart one out of every seven days to cease from our labors, to worship our creator, to commune with our God and his people, and to enjoy the blessings of the rest that he has provided for us.

That's the pattern. That's the pattern. Observing the Sabbath principle that is established here is one way that we image God. Making it in some sense part of what it means to be human.

This pattern of work and rest that God gives us here. And through the scriptures, we see the principle is applied in different ways, but the principle itself endures.

We understand it to be part of God's moral law revealed explicitly in the fourth commandment. Andy read it just a few moments ago for us.

Exodus chapter 28 to 11. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. On the seventh day, it's a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter or your servants or your livestock or the sojourner who is with you in your gates.

Why, Moses? Why? For in six days, the Lord made the heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day.

Therefore, God says, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Now, that's really important for us. Here we see the summary of God's moral law being given.

Jesus says the two greatest commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. We get to the Ten Commandments, and we see that law summarized there. The first four showing us how we love the Lord our God with all our hearts.

The second six showing us how we love man and love our neighbors as ourself. When we get to this fourth commandment, and people can be so quick as to just dismiss it to essentially say, well, really, God only gave us nine commandments.

I don't think we should think of it like that. This is part of God's law. Notice that it's grounded and rooted in Genesis 2, 2 and 3, meaning that the principle as it is applied in Exodus 20, 8 through 11, is grounded in God himself.

It sets a pattern for God's image bearers to follow. And what does this pattern look like throughout the scriptures? We don't have time to work all of this out.

I trust that you're reasonable people, and you can do this in your study. But at least for our sake this morning, at least to acknowledge that under the old covenant, Israel set apart Saturday to apply this principle.

It's very clear in Exodus 20 and in other places. It was a day for them to cease from their labors and to worship their creator and redeemer. From Christ's resurrection moving forward, we find Christians gathering together not on the last day of the week, but now gathering together on the first day of the week in commemoration of Christ's resurrection.

They call it the Lord's Day. And under the new covenant then, Sunday then becomes the day that God's people observe the seventh day principle.

The principle endures in the unfolding storyline of the Bible. It's applied in unique ways and in distinct ways. The principle itself endures.

Now, how exactly are we to follow that pattern then? What does this actually look like for us? We need to think about it in terms of the threefold principle. God rested, God blessed, and God hallowed.

Which means that first, we follow the pattern by ceasing from our labors. We cease from our labors. Again, remembering that God's rest wasn't a recovery from fatigue.

It was a cessation from creative activity. To follow the pattern that God gives us in this principle means first, a general cessation from normal work.

And patterns of labor and productivity. It's not a rest of idleness. But it is an intentional ceasing from labor that is reserved for the other days.

Now, immediately we begin to think at this point, right? Okay. Well, I work a job that sometimes requires me to work on Sunday. What am I supposed to do with that? Jesus is really kind with us here, isn't he?

You get to Matthew chapter 12, and we see all of these instances throughout the Gospels where Jesus is interacting with the Pharisees about this. And we can discern from Matthew 12 that Jesus allows for various kinds of work to actually take place.

We see works of necessity there. Notice in one of the ways that the Pharisees were trying to trap him is they were trying to see if he would heal someone on the Sabbath day. And interestingly enough, as you read through the Gospels, how often do we see Jesus healing specifically on the Sabbath day?

It's as if he was trying to make a point. And he looks at the Pharisees and he says, which one of you, if you had a sheep that fell into a ditch today, wouldn't go and get the sheep out of the ditch?

And, of course, the answer is all of them would do that. And Jesus is saying, and that would be okay. There are certain urgent works of necessity. If you got up this morning and a pipe burst in your house, I would expect you to stay and keep your house from flooding rather than coming to the 10 a.m. worship service.

It's a work of necessity, right? Sometimes things like that come up. Jesus is very kind to us to actually highlight that for us, isn't he? He talks about works of ministry or works of piety.

He points to the priests who are serving in the temple Sabbath by Sabbath. And he says, in a technical sense, they're desecrating the day, but not really.

Meaning that there is a kind of works of piety, works of ministry that are perfectly good and allowable on this day. Then he gives us a third one.

It's works of mercy. That's in the good things that Jesus was doing for others on that day. Some of you, and there are others in our church who are not here this morning because they work such jobs.

They are jobs that are fundamentally works of mercy. That to be there to care for people today, or at least those people are going to be lost in some way or hindered. Of course, Jesus is making allowances for that.

But the principle persists. The general principle is, insofar as our labor doesn't fit those three categories, we're to cease from those labors on his day.

There's a second thing. Following God's pattern also means receiving the blessing of the day. Receiving the blessing of the day.

The rest is blessed for our good. And he made it fruitful, not merely for our bodies, but for our souls.

It's a blessed day, and that is a gift to us. We tend to think of the Sabbath principle as a restriction. We really only have one lens sometimes that we look through, and we just think of all the things that we're not supposed to do that perhaps we would rather be doing.

God's not giving us this day from that perspective. That's not how we're to think about it. Our resistance to it is really an indication of our idolatry.

Our rebellion against what God has said. We make idols of work. Andy prayed about this just a few moments ago. We make idols of work.

Sometimes we make idols just of general productivity. We just can't handle a day that we don't squeeze as much productive work out of it as possible, whether it's with our normal job or some other thing.

We make idols sometimes out of leisure, which is another kind of problem with the way people may approach the day. God's blessing seems to us sometimes not to be a gift but a hindrance to what we really want to do.

I think we need to hear this. It's not the proper perspective. That God blessed the day means that his intention is that we understand this to be a gift from his hand.

And what a gift it is. On this day, he has made us free from our labors. Free from our studies.

Free from those things that we would dedicate all the other days for productivity to so that we might enjoy the gift of his rest and that we might delight in it.

The Sabbath principle is not something to dread or begrudge. It is something to delight in. And to delight in the gift of the day is to delight in God himself.

I want you to hear what Isaiah says about this. And I fully recognize that this is set underneath the old covenant paradigm. But the truth remains the same.

Isaiah 58, 13 and 14. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord.

Do you see the connection? As we come to delight in the gift of God's holy day, it increases because of what we're doing.

It increases our delight in the Lord himself. And as our delight in the Lord himself grows, guess what else is going to grow with it? Our delight in the gift of this day.

They're linked. Why? Because it's rooted in the person of God himself all the way back in Genesis 2. This is how we image him. This is how we delight in him in part.

It's a gift for us. But then there's a third thing. Applying God's pattern means not just ceasing from labor, but dedicating the day to communion with God, to worship.

It's a sacred day. It is a day that is holy to the Lord, devoted to his purposes. I mentioned sometimes we have the idol of leisure or an idol of recreation, both things that can be rightly and appropriately enjoyed as a gift of God's blessing on his day.

Sometimes we make it out as if this day is fundamentally about my physical rest. And it's not.

That's a benefit. It's not the aim. It is a day that is devoted to the Lord, not fundamentally to leisure.

We don't set it apart just to do whatever we want to do. We set it apart as a day dedicated, as our confession of faith says, to the exercises of worship, both public and private.

What does that mean? What does that look like? It looks like doing what you're doing right now. Gathering together with God's people in corporate worship and in Christian fellowship.

It means communing with God in devotion personally and in discipleship with our families and with other Christians focused on glorifying him.

So we see the principle is established for us in God himself. And then we see how it's applied that way. We can look at a lot of scriptures about that. But just thinking about Genesis 2, 2 and 3, how is it applied?

Well, we cease as God ceased. We receive the blessing that God intends it to be. And we make it holy. We devote it to the purposes of the Lord. Perhaps a couple of just practical notes would be helpful at this point.

Are you with me still? Your mind may already be racing to decide what you should or should not do today.

Maybe you're even envisioning a piece of paper with a list on it right now. Just thinking, okay, can't do this, can't do this, can't do this, can't do this.

Maybe your mind is actually racing to find a way to justify the things you had already had planned to do the rest of the day. Can I just try to help you as your pastor here for a moment?

I want to shepherd you for a moment on this. You may be thinking, is it okay for me to watch football today? Or is that the kind of idleness that actually takes away from a devotion to the Lord?

Is it okay if I check my emails or respond to a few to get a head start on the week? Is it okay if I catch up on some laundry?

What about going for a run? Should I cook a meal at home or is that too much work? Or should I go out to a restaurant where other people are being forced to work?

Maybe you just shouldn't eat today. These are the questions that we're concerned about, aren't they? And they're important questions.

I'm not inclined to answer them. Because I don't think that's the right approach. Making a list of all the things you can or cannot do on Sunday puts you firmly on the path of Phariseeism that Jesus so routinely confronted and condemned in the Gospels.

That was their problem. It's not that they wanted to honor the Sabbath day and the Sabbath principle. It's that they wanted to honor their own regulations that they had assigned to that day.

That's a problem. If that's what you're trying to do, you're going to immediately go wrong and you're going to put yourself on a path of anxiety, number one, that doesn't trust so much in the finished work of Christ, but trust in whether or not you're doing all the right things on the right day.

And you need to refrain from that. It might also put you on the path of looking at everybody else that doesn't do it exactly like you do it and thinking less of them as if they're lesser Christians and more of yourself as if you're a greater one or better one.

Is that not the Phariseeism that Jesus was confronting? If our approach is just to immediately make a list of all the things we should do and shouldn't do, that's where we're going to end up.

I think there's a better approach for us. And we need to remember that Christians have thought differently about this through the centuries, about how to apply the principle.

We need to give space for conscience, for the Lord to inform and shape individual conscience in this. But here's what I would encourage you to do. Instead of making a list, I want to encourage you to ask this question.

Does what I'm considering doing fulfill the purpose of the day? And does it honor the God to whom the day is supposed to be devoted to?

Now you could look at each of those questions that I could just gave you. And if you look at it through that lens, the answer could be yes and it could be no. Because some of this is going to be a matter of your own heart.

Is what you want to do, is it about being productive so that the day doesn't feel like a waste or a loss? As if the real blessing that comes from it is what you can get out of it rather than what God has provided to you as a gift in it.

I think you need to weigh that out in your own heart. Is this recreation something that I'm receiving with thanksgiving to God as a blessing for me to enjoy and to receive the benefits on this day?

I think you need to weigh that out in your heart. Big question. Does it keep you from prioritizing the public and private exercises of worship?

Am I going to follow this thing or do this thing or do that thing so as it actually prevents me from gathering with the church? So that actually is going to prevent me or keep me from engaging throughout the day in thoughtful worship privately and discipleship with my family and with other Christians.

We got to weigh that out. The issue is not usually going to be the thing itself. It's whether or not it follows God's pattern for ceasing from normal labors, receiving the blessing of his rest as a delight and prioritizing the day as a time for worship.

That's the pattern applied. There's one more thing for us to see here before we finish. I want you to see God's promise embedded in this. God's promise embedded.

Now who's the first audience of Genesis chapter two? Israel. Ancient Israel wandering in the desert of Sinai, what have they just come out of?

400 years of bondage and what was the nature of that bondage in Egypt? Hard labor. They got worse and worse and worse and worse and then what happens?

God gave them rest, didn't he? He delivered them from the bondage of that labor. He brought them through the Red Sea on dry ground.

He delivers them into this wilderness place of wandering where they are then looking forward and anticipating an even greater rest that is going to come to them in the land of Canaan.

When Moses gets to the second giving of the law in Deuteronomy chapter five and he's rehearsing the Ten Commandments all over again, there's a shift in the way that he writes about the Sabbath day in Deuteronomy five.

In Exodus 20, it's rooted in worshiping God as creator. In Deuteronomy five, he says, you're gonna do this and you're gonna set apart this day as a memorial of the fact that God brought you out of slavery and labor in Egypt.

The day for them was a day of worship for God in creation, a day of worship for God in their redemption. And as they worshiped their creator and their redeemer, they anticipated the day that he would bring them in to this land of promise.

And so it is for us. So it is for us. Every Lord's day as we gather together, it is a time to worship God as creator in reflection of Genesis chapter two.

It is a time to worship Jesus as redeemer who has delivered us from these same works. And as we wonder here in this life, we observe this principle, Lord's day by Lord's day, in anticipation of God's promise of rest in eternity.

Thus our purpose on the Lord's day is to memorialize what God has done and to anticipate what he is going to do. For loved ones, if you're a Christian, there remains a Sabbath still yet for you, an eternal rest that awaits us in the new heavens and the new earth at Christ's return.

When we gather Sunday by Sunday, we're looking back to what Christ has done and we're looking ahead to where it's all gonna terminate. It's gonna terminate in the new heavens and the new earth, an ultimate rest.

And today is to be a taste of it. It's to be a taste of it that creates in you a longing not to just be done with the job that you hate, but a longing for that eternal rest and the eternal delight in the creator and redeemer that we worship on this day.

But there's more. Remember, God did not cease from work because he was tired. He ceased from his work because he was finished.

His finished work established rest, blessing, and communion with him for his creatures. And in the same way, Christ's finished work on the cross restores that blessing of spiritual rest and communion for his people.

Jesus himself is our rest, and in him alone do we find rest for our souls. We can cease from all the insufficient attempts of earning our salvation by resting in what he has done for us.

And he invites us to enter into this rest by faith. It's no coincidence that right before Matthew records Jesus' teaching about the Sabbath in Matthew 12, that at the end of Matthew 11, Jesus says this, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your soul.

He is our rest. Now let's piece it together in the shape of the gospel. For example, our violation of the Sabbath principle is enough for us to stand before God guilty and condemned.

James says if you violate the law in one point, you are considered a violator of the whole law. For us to desecrate God's holy day is enough for us to go to hell.

But the good news is that Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled the moral demands of the Sabbath on behalf of all who will trust in him.

He can give rest to our souls because he fulfilled the law in every day, that every way that we have broken it, and in every way that we will break it.

And then he suffered God's wrath in the place of sinners like us. And by trusting in him, you will receive true rest for your soul, forgiveness of your sins, and peace with God for all eternity because Jesus himself is our Sabbath.

He is our rest. He provides it through his finished work on the cross. That he satisfied the demands regarding this principle does not mean that he abolished the principle itself any more than his satisfaction of the legal demands to not murder abolishes the law that we should not take life.

The principle endures. But what I want to help you understand through the gospel is that you don't have to live in anxiety from Lord's Day to Lord's Day wondering if that thing you put in the crockpot today is a violation that's going to anger God.

You know why? Because Jesus took care of that for you. It doesn't mean you shouldn't care. It means you're free. Your righteousness is rooted in his, not in your ability to fulfill this law and the requirements of it.

And what a joy that is. You know what that makes me want to do? It makes me want to delight in this day. It makes me want to gather with God's people to celebrate the fact that my righteousness rests in his.

It makes me want to worship. It makes me want to live in light of his promise. It makes me want to rest in him and then to live like him and let this promise and this principle shape my life into his image.

So what would be lost if we removed or ignored Genesis 2, 2 and 3? So much. So much would be lost. It lays the foundation for later commandments, of course.

We would lose the fact that those instructions are rooted in God himself if we didn't have these two verses. That would be a problem. We might also miss the promise of eternal rest that's embedded here.

A rest that is secured for us by the work of Christ and that awaits us still yet in the new heavens and new earth. We might miss the significance of the Lord's day being a day of celebration and anticipation rather than a mere ritual or demand of the law.

The text is a call. It's a call for us to embrace God's pattern for his glory and for our good. And we should long to observe it Sunday by Sunday, Lord's day by Lord's day, ceasing from our labors, that normal pattern of work, delighting in his blessings and communing with him as creator and as redeemer.

Let's pray together.