The Sabbath

[0:00] The following message was given at a Sunday celebration at Trinity Grace Church in Athens.! For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com.

[0:12] ! May God bless the preaching and the hearing of His Word.

[0:56] What is the root of all evil? Jesus spoke of a spiritual root of all evil in terms of the love of money, and that, of course, is true.

[1:10] But I am persuaded that there is a literal, physical root of all evil. It belongs to a maple tree in my front yard. I've already been at war with this root system of this particular tree, which we love, by the way.

[1:26] Don't get me wrong. Not too long ago, I had another run-in with the roots while I was trying to lay some pavers around our driveway. I got to the first half, through the first half of the pavers, and had them in a nice line.

[1:38] They all nested in about an inch or two inches deep into the dirt. It was just right. But then I encountered the root of all evil. There was no way to sink these papers down until I chopped out some roots.

[1:52] You know what I'm talking about. I used a shovel, a hatchet, a hoe, and an axe to no avail. It's one of those that were stacked on top of each other, extra deep. I worked on it, but really, it was working on me.

[2:06] Eventually, after a few hours of this, I just gave up. I tapped out and decided I was just going to try another day. Well, that's when I saw a YouTube video of a guy using this reciprocating saw to cut big roots out of his yard.

[2:22] And I was so relieved when I saw that video. I thought, man, that looks so easy. It was like a hot knife through butter, just... So I got myself a saw and a blade, and I got to work the next day.

[2:34] And then, about 20 seconds in, I just knew that that guy was using some kind of special effects in his video I didn't know about because I could not slice the butter at all.

[2:45] It was just... It was shaking. My whole arm was vibrating. And it was just... The whole thing was struggling. It was too thick of a cut for the saw blade, and it kept stalling out. It just...

[2:56] And then it started again. It just couldn't make it through. Eventually, after nearly 20 minutes of this, the saw stopped. The blade was deteriorated, and most importantly, the battery was dead.

[3:12] Things were not going according to plan, so defeated, I went inside to put my battery on the charger. And when I plugged it in, I was surprised to see the light indicator blinking a red light, which is usually there, with an additional yellow light next to it that was not usually there.

[3:29] And I thought, uh-oh. I'm scrolling through trying to remember, what does the yellow light mean? Well, it turns out that the battery was working too hard and had overheated in the process.

[3:41] I had to let it sit for a few hours. It was too much work and not enough rest. And that battery light got me to thinking, if there was a charger for people to plug into, what would the indicator light say about our work and rest?

[3:59] The categories of work and rest are something that we all can relate to. We basically shift from one to the other every waking and sleeping hour of our lives.

[4:11] They are inescapable realities that we must engage. But what are they? What is work? Something has changed, in my opinion, over the last few decades.

[4:21] And I'm not sure who the villain is, if it's the economy, if it's cell phones, if it's just being accessible. But there seems to have been a shift to go longer and to do more.

[4:34] You think that's true? Do you remember when you just ate? When you ate? Do you remember those days? But now, you feel kind of guilty.

[4:44] If you're eating and you're not doing something, it's like you're wasting time. I should be more productive. Now, the inbox is always present. And our messages, I don't know about how you're rigged up, but messages pop up on all sorts of devices.

[4:59] And they steal us away, steal our attention away. If not physically, then at least mentally. You get a message and then you can't focus on where you are. Our work seems to just seep into every nook and cranny of life.

[5:15] And what about rest? What's that, you might ask? Or maybe we should just call our jobs work and rest other work. Maybe that would be a good way to delineate between the two.

[5:27] If in our time outside of our primary vacation, a lot of times we can just be found sprinting from one thing to the next. One extracurricular, one club, one sport, one organization.

[5:38] One chore. Basically, the windows for rest have become two more days of frenzied activity and projects. Have you ever found yourself after a vacation thinking, I need a vacation from my vacation?

[5:53] You ever thought that before? Or if rest is not simply more work, then maybe we think rest must be unplugging and having me time.

[6:04] We have these pocket-sized computers where we can curate our own worlds with our own interests. Algorithms cater to our personal tastes so that we can binge on videos that we like or just scroll for hours, things we're interested in.

[6:19] And we can jump on them at any point, day or night. In fact, in 1985, a media critic named Neil Postman first published his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

[6:32] And the title riffs on that word amuse. Muse means to think. Ah negates the word. So it means not thinking.

[6:43] That's what it literally means. Amuse means not thinking. Is this rest? Does rest mean turning our brains off and just vegging out? Are there any boundaries between work and rest?

[6:59] And what should work and rest look like if we plug the battery of our lives into the scripture? What would the indicator lights reveal about our work and rest?

[7:12] Well, I think that this passage is foundational for recasting work and rest in light of our great God so that we can be truly refreshed and filled with joy as his people.

[7:24] I think the main point for us this morning is simply rest from work one day each week in order to gather with the people of God to celebrate our creator and redeemer.

[7:37] Rest from work one day each week in order to gather with the people of God to celebrate our creator and redeemer. We're going to break this out into three points. Let's propose God's rest, our unrest, entering God's rest.

[7:53] And then at the end, I'd like to propose a few concluding thoughts. So first, God's rest. God's rest. I think that it's helpful that we remember that this text was written by Moses to God's people to help them remember who they are and how they are to live.

[8:15] Contrary to culture, Moses does not advise them to look deep within themselves, and he does not encourage them, each individual, to be their authentic self.

[8:26] That's not what he does. This is a community saved from slavery by God for God. So the only way that they can rightly understand themselves is in light of the God that made them and saved them to make them his own precious possession.

[8:47] That's what he's doing. So the first thing that our attention is drawn to in our text is the stunning display of a God who works. Genesis 2.2.

[8:59] And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done. This is a unique characteristic of the God of the Bible.

[9:11] As Walt mentioned last week, other ancient literature depict the gods as kind of detached from humankind. They only had this sporadic interaction with creation in order to act on their passions.

[9:26] So it was generally understood that those in the culture who are in power were basically fat with feasting and indulging the senses, while work was associated with powerlessness.

[9:40] So in Greek mythology, you might remember the story of Pandora's box being opened, and all these curses come flooding out, such as death, disease, poverty.

[9:51] You know what else came out? Work. In the myth, work comes out with the rest of the curses. But the Genesis account goes in the complete opposite direction.

[10:03] This God, who has all power, works. He works. It's not innately evil like we see in Pandora's box.

[10:16] Work is something that God does. Work is something good. It's something we're called on to reflect as image bearers of God. And Walt highlighted this beautifully.

[10:27] The beauty and the dignity of work that mirrors God's work. If you didn't listen to the last week, you missed it for whatever reason, I encourage you to go back. So helpful on the category of work.

[10:39] Taking something formless and bringing form. That's what we're called to do. Bringing order out of chaos, just like God does in a smaller way. It's what our work is meant to reflect.

[10:50] So this would be one facet of God's character that is utterly unique. The one who has all power is a working God. But these verses also show us something maybe even more shocking than the fact that he works.

[11:10] This isn't a God who not only works, but rests. A God who rests.

[11:22] We see this pivot in Genesis 2-2. And on the seventh day, God finished his work, what he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

[11:33] What does it mean for God to rest? Was he tired? Did sculpting the Himalayas take it out of him?

[11:46] Or maybe flinging the planets into orbit and his arms are just tired? Well, this is not the rest like you and I think of when we've just climbed a bunch of stairs or did jumping jacks or something like that.

[11:58] This is not rest from fatigue. Remember, God is omnipotent. That means he has never-ending power. God did not need a breather.

[12:10] Instead, the word used here for rest means to cease from. To cease from. God simply stopped his creating activity.

[12:23] And even though he ceased from his creating activity, he was still working in a sense. He was still working to sustain the world by his power, govern it by his providence, and ensure the good of all of his creation.

[12:36] So he's still working in one sense, but ceased working in his creative activity. If he stopped working altogether, everything would dissolve into nothing. It would all fall apart. So he ceased in a very specific way.

[12:50] He rested by ceasing his creative work. If you remember, Genesis 1-1 began with, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And here in Genesis 2-1, the conclusion of that, thus the heavens and the earth were finished.

[13:07] But we need to know something about God's rest here, something more. It's not just about him stopping. The word cease is really too flat of a meaning to capture what's going on here.

[13:21] There is actually a tone of delight in this word. In the previous chapter, if you just look just barely up, Genesis 1-31, God looks back over his creation and he declares that it is not just good, but very good.

[13:40] Now the rest, on the seventh day that we're looking at here, is a form of not only ceasing, but celebrating in his finished work.

[13:52] In other words, the rest describes the enjoyment of the accomplishments, the celebration of completion. You know what this feels like, right?

[14:03] So it's that pause of viewing a beautiful painting. You just step back. Or delighting in a well-crafted meal and you think, wow, that looks beautiful, smells great.

[14:16] Or it's looking at a picture of a memorable family trip that took a lot of planning and you just admire the fruit of it. Or it's admiring a finished yard project.

[14:27] It's not just ceasing, but meditating on and celebrating the completion of the accomplishment. That's what this is getting at. So not only are we called to reflect God in his good work, but he also wants us to reflect him in this kind of rest.

[14:47] He wants us to cease from our work in order to meditate on his finished work and celebrate. This is at the heart of the rest he's displaying in Genesis 2 on the seventh day.

[15:02] In fact, God instituted this Sabbath rest of creation into the Mosaic covenant way later, way after Genesis is written.

[15:15] The laws that bound Israel together as a people set apart for God. You remember this, right? Remember Moses received the Ten Commandments? Observing the Sabbath rest is the fourth commandment that are given to the people at that point.

[15:32] It became a prescribed day of meditation to look at the finished work of God as both the creator and the redeemer.

[15:43] That's what that was intended to do. Creator and redeemer. Check this out. So if you think about the first instance where our Genesis 2 passage that we're looking at here, the first instance is introduced to the people as a Sabbath rest prescribed to them on a weekly basis is in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.

[16:04] Look at what it says. Exodus 20, 8 through 11 says this. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

[16:20] On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates.

[16:31] For in the six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that's in them. And then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

[16:44] So here, in this first time it appears as a prescribed day for the people of God, you see the Genesis rhythm of work and rest being instituted.

[16:59] It's a weekly observance for the people. It was to be holy. Holy simply means set apart for God. Set apart. It's a unique day in the week.

[17:09] They are to rest on the Sabbath in order to reflect their God who rested from all of his creative work. Their resting on this day was intended to point them back to God as the creator.

[17:26] By resting, they are remembering and displaying the God who made them creator. But it not only captured God's creative work, the day also came to be connected with God's redeeming work.

[17:43] Look at this verse in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 5, 12, and 15. It says, Observe the Sabbath day. Here it is again. To keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you.

[17:55] You shall 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 an outstretched arm.

[18:07] Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. You see what he's doing? It's not just about creation. It's not just about him being created. It's also about him being redeemer.

[18:19] It's intended to point them back to God and remember that he's our redeemer. The release from slavery in Egypt was really a major identity marker for those people who were in God.

[18:34] God, if you remember, brought them out of the oppression through his miraculous signs. All of them pointing to his supremacy, that he's the God, the one true God above all other gods, above all Egypt's gods.

[18:47] And the last sign was the Passover lamb. If you remember this. Those who believed in the promise of God placed the blood of this sacrificial lamb over the doors and their firstborn boys were not killed by the angel of death.

[19:04] Instead, by trusting God in faith, the angel passed over all those whose doors were covered in the blood. So the Passover feast was instituted to remember this great mercy of God.

[19:19] So then, after that happens, they leave Egypt and they come to the Red Sea right after that. Oh man, this is not going well.

[19:30] But again, God made a way when there was no way. And all of these things, all of these signs were to show that God was working for his people, even when they could not work to save themselves.

[19:47] God worked as their redeemer. So the goal of this restful Sabbath reflection helped God's people remember who their God was and who they were as God's created and redeemed people.

[20:08] So this rest was intended to be a holy day set apart to experience the blessing and refreshment of being saved as the people of God. That's the intention.

[20:19] It was a way to reflect on God's trustworthiness displayed in the past and by them stopping, they're actively expressing trust in the present.

[20:31] This is God's rest as expressed in Genesis and then later in the Mosaic Law, but what about us? point to our unrest.

[20:51] Our rhythm of work and rest is not incidental. Our rhythm of work and rest actually reveals something about who our God is and what we think about him.

[21:08] Let me give an example from the Old Testament, show you what I mean. In Numbers 15, while Israel was wandering in the wilderness, a man was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.

[21:26] He was taken into custody, found guilty, and eventually was stoned to death by the community. I remember reading that for the first time as a brand new Christian.

[21:38] I was thinking, whoa, what have I gotten myself into here? This is intense. Why so severe? Did they really kill the guy just for doing some yard work on the Sabbath?

[21:53] I was just imagining all the times I picked up sticks after a storm on Sunday. I was like, should someone be throwing rocks at me right now? Well, to think that about this would actually be a misinterpretation of what's going on here.

[22:07] If you read a little bit more, you find out that this guy was not aloof and just accidentally breaking the Sabbath law. He knew the penalty for this kind of work because the law explicitly addressed the very thing that he was doing.

[22:25] Exodus 35, 2 and 3, six days work shall be done and by on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.

[22:38] And here's the very thing he was doing. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day. He was gathering sticks to make himself a fire on the Sabbath day, knowing full well that this was the repercussion.

[22:50] In other words, this was not accidental. In fact, only a few verses earlier, there's an entire passage about how to handle unintentional sins that don't end in death.

[23:07] So it becomes obvious that this man is in brazen opposition to God and his law. Author Marshall Seagal describes the situation this way.

[23:19] When that man grabbed his first stick, he had defiance coursing through his veins, not innocence. It was not a mistake. The man played the part of Adam and Eve in the first mutiny against God.

[23:33] We work and rest in reliance on God, trusting his wisdom, obeying his word, battling our pride, and surrendering our way.

[23:44] Pride picks up sticks when God says rest. So there's more going on than what we initially see on the surface.

[23:56] There's something animating the pursuit of work and the rejection of God's rest. There's what Tim Keller likes to call a work under the work.

[24:12] And this is true not only of the man who picked up sticks, we must ask ourselves what is the work under our work? The reality is that we can easily get a warped rhythm of work and rest that doesn't flow from who God is and who we are in light of who God is.

[24:32] Both work and rest can become poison apart from God. Poison. I had a co-worker a number of years ago that was attempting to rebound from a hard life battling drug addiction and it became clear after a few interactions that she had traded in narcotics only to become a workaholic.

[24:58] Her work and performance meant everything to her. Everything. Every job well done became the source of immense pride.

[25:10] All she could think about, while every criticism on the other hand, was a crushing personal blow. It could take hours, if not days, for her to rebound from.

[25:22] The work under her work was a desire for approval. She worked tirelessly because she desperately wanted to measure up in the eyes of others.

[25:37] Tim Keller in his excellent book, Every Good Endeavor, wisely explained that work is not all there is to life. You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life.

[25:55] If you make any work the purpose of your life, even if that work is church ministry, you create an idol that rivals God.

[26:07] Your relationship with God is the most important foundation for your life, and indeed, it keeps all the other factors, work, friendships and family, leisure and pleasure, from becoming so important to you that they become addicting and distorted.

[26:28] You see, our working and our resting communicates something about who God is and who we think we are in relation to him. so what is the work beneath the work in your life?

[26:43] What idols do you find yourself tempted to serve that don't allow you to get rest? Is the desire for comfort and pleasure driving you?

[26:59] Do you find it difficult to stop because you're striving for a certain standard of living? is the desire for approval driving you? Does someone come to mind when you think about hearing the words job well done?

[27:13] Who's that face that you just longed to see say that? Are you fixated on your reputation? What your friends or family or even those you don't know, what they might think of you?

[27:26] Are you driven by the pursuit of power so that you can have an edge over others to be the director rather than the directed? Are you driven by a desire for control?

[27:38] Are you constantly worried and anxious about how someone else might mess things up? Do you micromanage to make sure things are going the way that you want them to go?

[27:51] Are you driven by laziness and other areas of responsibility God has given to you? Do you hide in your work so that you don't have to take up the responsibilities of being a husband, a father, or a friend?

[28:10] All of these can be the work under the work for us. And so we have to take inventory of our work and rest rhythm and ask ourselves, who am I working for?

[28:23] Who am I working for? Maybe a question that might be helpful. if someone observed the way that we worked and rested, would they see anything different in us than those in the world?

[28:42] Is there anything different about our work and our rest? Now maybe you feel like you can relate to the temptation of serving some of these idols of unrest.

[28:53] I certainly can. maybe you felt the crack of the whip that keeps driving you into work and performance. And maybe you want to rest, but you simply just don't know how.

[29:06] Well, it may seem that the answer is just stop working one day each week. Just, that's what it says. Just keep the Sabbath, plain and simple. There are some denominations that put that forward as the remedy.

[29:19] However, the external rule keeping is not ultimately the problem. The problem with the man picking up the sticks was not that he refused to observe the Sabbath.

[29:32] His actions were an overflow of something within him. Ultimately, the problem with that man was a heart in opposition to God.

[29:44] So, external conformity to the law doesn't actually change the posture of the man's heart towards God. The law does not change the person.

[29:55] It only reveals that the person is in need of change. This is exactly the issue that Jesus himself addressed in Mark 2 when he and his disciples, remember, they were plucking grain as they were going through a grain field on the Sabbath.

[30:12] And the Pharisees, they were outraged that they would work on the Sabbath. How dare they? They wanted some kind of external conformity. In fact, they had actually added way more to Sabbath keeping than what God himself had even intended.

[30:30] The Pharisees focused on the law. Don't do any work. And then, they went on to enumerate everything that could possibly be considered work or not work.

[30:41] This is work, this is not work. The result is that they spent more time obsessing over keeping or not keeping the rules of the Sabbath to the exclusion of actually keeping the Sabbath.

[30:54] Which was designed to refresh God's people by pointing their hearts toward their creator and their redeemer. That was the point. So, do you see it?

[31:05] For the Pharisees, it became more about their work and non-work than about God's work on their behalf. The Sabbath performance was not transforming them.

[31:18] It was only weighing them down with more burdens. They were missing out on the very essence the Sabbath was pointing to. They needed not just to keep the rules but to be transformed from the inside out.

[31:34] So, what about us? What about you? Are you weary? Do you want to know how to enter into God's rest?

[31:49] Point number three, entering God's rest. There's a wonderful pattern embedded in creation that's vital for us to see and to remember.

[32:02] Mankind is created on what day? Day six. This means that the very first full day after man's creation was simply a day of resting in and marveling at all of God's work.

[32:23] First full day. Nothing could be attributed to man. Nothing. He had done no work for which he could get credit or praise.

[32:36] rest. This first Sabbath rest displayed a right relationship between God, man, and the world. The man rightly understood himself as the creature, independent relationship with his creator.

[32:52] All the work that he would do was intended to come only after resting in and celebrating the work of his God. God. And he could rest knowing that the world was not dependent on him to be God, but on God to be God.

[33:13] One of the fascinating features of the seventh day in Genesis 2 is the fact that there's no closing refrain to indicate the day's over.

[33:24] If you look at it, there's no and there was morning and there was night. there's no closure to the seventh day. The implication is that God's rest never ended.

[33:41] His rest never ended. The sins of self-sufficiency and self-glorification separated man from God. So the question remains, how can sinful people ruled by unrest enter into God's rest?

[34:02] Now God's rest was often associated with the place of the promised land. It was viewed as a place where the people could dwell securely. Remember this? But Hebrews 4 makes it clear that this was not entering into God's rest in the fullest sense because the author of Hebrews says this in Hebrews 4, 8-10, for if Joshua had given them the people rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

[34:35] So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

[34:49] Interesting. So even though Joshua, after Moses, Joshua led the people into the promised land, they were still looking ahead to a greater Sabbath.

[35:01] What could provide true rest if not that? The better question is, who could provide true rest? Jesus said of himself in Mark 2, 28, so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.

[35:21] Jesus took on this title of the Messiah by saying he was the Son of Man as mentioned in Daniel, the prophecy. He claimed to be the long-awaited Savior who would redeem God's people.

[35:32] Redemption. Not only did he claim to be the Messiah, but he also claimed to be God. Divinity here. Who else in all the world, from all time, could be called Lord of the Sabbath?

[35:48] Sabbath. Jesus claimed to be the authority over the Sabbath designed to point the people's hearts to God. He's over it. He could only say this if he was God.

[36:01] Either he is a man and he's a blasphemer here, or his words are true and he is God and has the authority to open the door to true rest. The Bible leaves no room for us to guess which one is true.

[36:13] When a crowd asked him in John 6, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

[36:29] We cannot work our way back to God. Just as in Genesis, the first thing we must do is not do anything, but behold the work that has already been done for us.

[36:43] That's what he's getting at, and this is the greatest work of all. Jesus lived perfectly in obedience to God the Father. And then he took our sin, my sin, upon himself at the cross.

[36:56] And as he hung there working on our behalf, he bore the full weight of the wrath of God for our sin. And then he proclaimed with his dying breath, it is finished.

[37:12] The work was done. the price of our sin was paid, and on the third day, Sunday, he burst forth and life from the grave. So why did he work for us?

[37:27] He worked for us who are restless. He worked for us who are driven by performance. He worked for us who scramble to gain approval.

[37:40] He worked for us who have attempted to build our own little kingdoms only to see them fall apart. For anyone in here this morning who is worn down, tired, beaten, downcast, and stalemated, Jesus says to you, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

[38:07] For those who place your hope in Jesus Christ, there are two realities to the rest that he provides. There is definitely a present reality of having peace with God.

[38:22] If you are in Christ, there is nothing more for you to do in order to satisfy God's wrath. Nothing more. Done. Work done. Your sins are fully and freely forgiven.

[38:35] You are no longer a slave to sin. sin. Jesus is the new and better Passover lamb that takes away your sin by faith. You are no longer left on your own, but now you belong to the redeemed people of God.

[38:51] He will take care of you. He is the new and better bread from heaven. You can rest and you can feast on Christ. He will satisfy you forever.

[39:03] Nothing can separate you from the love of God who is in Christ Jesus. He is working, working, working all things together for your good.

[39:14] He has worked for you and he is working for you still. That's a present rest. You can rest in all of those things, all of those realities, but there's also a future rest still to come.

[39:29] One day, sin will be eradicated. Evil will be judged. Harmony will be restored. God's people will dwell together in perfect unity in the presence of God forever.

[39:43] This future rest is depicted as an eternal wedding feast celebrating the marriage of God to his bride, the beloved people of God who have been bought with a price.

[39:55] The fullness of that rest is still to come. So a few concluding thoughts for you. if we're traveling between the release from our slavery and entering into the fullness of our rest in the presence of God, those are the two anchor points of rest that are to promise, what role does the Sabbath play in our lives now in this stage of the story?

[40:23] Some quick snapshots. First, we would say that the Sabbath rest is bound to the person of Jesus Christ, not the particular day. Colossians 2, 16 and 17 make this very clear.

[40:36] Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food, drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. Sabbath.

[40:47] Sabbath. These, all of these things, including the day, are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

[40:57] Christ. It's anchored in Christ. So the Sabbath day, as put forward in the Mosaic law, was just a shadow that led to the substance of Jesus Christ. This indicates that the Sabbath day rest is one that is a matter of conscience, not law for the Christian.

[41:16] Very important. Secondly, though, even though we are not commanded to keep the Sabbath in the same way on the same day as in the Mosaic law, we the practice of the New Testament saints, as we see in Scripture, and the early church both seem to uphold the creation principle by observing a weekly Sabbath.

[41:42] Interesting. So it's not bound to the law, but it's still a weekly cycle. And it appears that the primary day to observe the Sabbath was on a Sunday when Christians celebrate the finished work of the risen Christ.

[41:57] new creation. There's creation, there's new creation rest. So in keeping with the early Christians, we still uphold a weekly rhythm because of the creation principle, not because of the Mosaic law.

[42:12] Acts 20 shows us on the first day of the week, this is the Apostle Paul, when we were gathered together to break bread. The picture is the church fellowshipping to come together on the first day.

[42:24] third, Sabbath rest transforms the work under our work and the rest under our rest. Tim Keller very helpfully wrote, the gospel frees us from the relentless pressure of having to prove ourselves and secure our identity through work, for we are already proven and secure.

[42:48] we can work not to prove ourselves anymore, but as a joyful response to the God who has worked for us in Jesus Christ and we can rest by trusting the God who created us and redeemed us.

[43:06] Fourth, the Sabbath is not intended to be observed merely in isolation, but also in community. So one of the primary goals of the Sabbath is to celebrate God's good work of redeeming a family who collectively rejoice in the goodness of God.

[43:24] That was one of the main priorities. Fellowship then in the context of the gathered church and beyond are actually completely appropriate.

[43:35] It's wonderful. Grill out. Pray together. Share testimonies. Sing. Encourage one another in the day. Enjoy God's good creation together. Thanking him again and again and again together.

[43:49] That's good stuff. That's what it's made for. Fifth, the Sabbath is not intended to be self-focused, but God-focused. It's not a day for me time to just simply crash and veg out.

[44:05] That's not the design. Personal rest from exhaustion does not necessarily declare your trust in God. God. It may just indicate that you need to do less during the rest of the week.

[44:19] Guilty. But this, on the flip side, is primarily a day to cease your work in order to celebrate God's work. So it may certainly include a nap, don't get me wrong, but even our physical rest is meant to be in connection with our thankfulness to God, not just us vegging out and binging on Netflix.

[44:40] It's an observable way to declare your trust in God as your creator and redeemer. So it's true that our rhythm of work and rest actually reveals something about who our God is and what we think about him.

[44:54] It's been said that without Christ we will work even while we are resting, and with Christ we will rest even while we are working. So it's my prayer that this text will encourage us to be a people who live with a marked joy in Jesus through both our working and our resting because our God is our creator and our redeemer.

[45:15] Let's pray. Oh Father, we come to you now in the name of Jesus Christ and we celebrate the glory of the Sabbath that has come to us. Rest has come in Jesus Christ for all those who place their hope in him.

[45:29] So Lord, we rest in you, we work, not because we have to prove ourselves, but because you have proven yourself worthy through the cross. We bless you today.

[45:41] We rest in you. In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to a message at a Sunday celebration at Trinity Grace Church in Athens. For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at