Let's go back to the book of
Exodus and we'll go to Exodus chapter 16. Let's ask for God's
mercies on us once again. Lord, we bow before you in recognition
of your deity that thou art God only. We reverence you. We honor you. We have been brought
by Your good providence to listen to the gospel of Your grace again
today. We thank You that You have so
favored us, to give us an interest in the things of Christ Jesus,
and to be very, very much aware of our neediness of the Savior
and of His bloody death and His resurrection, of His righteousness. Lord, we need the Savior. We seek Your face that You would
bless us with the knowledge of Christ, that You would put it
in each of our hearts to seek this Lord while He may be found. Call on Him while He's near. We thank you for the privilege
of gathering. We ask for those who have not
assembled with us today and so many are very concerned about
the virus and that sort of thing, and out of prudence for their
own health, they now watch at home. We ask for them, we ask
for all of us who gather that as we do so, you would hedge
us about, you would protect us, Lord, we fully believe that all
things are under your sovereign dominion. Nothing can ever happen
except that which is according to your will. And as we meet
to worship, we seek to be as careful as we can be, and we
ask, Lord, that You would provide protection for each of us and
for all of Your people. We recognize the hand of God
in all things, and if we don't, we should recognize the hand
of God in all things. We bow to You, and we recognize,
O God, that Nothing can live or move or exist, and certainly
nothing can touch us except that which is according to your will. Help all of your people to live
by faith and not to live in fear. We rejoice in the goodness of
God to us through Christ our Savior, and we ask that we would
have a fresh glimpse of Him again today. Reveal to us the Savior. Let us rejoice in Him, and may
the preaching of the Word of God do us good today. So we ask
for the presence and power of Your Spirit to be with us and
work with us and work in us, that which is honoring and well-pleasing
in Thy sight. These things we ask in the Savior's
name for His sake. Amen. All right, we're going
back to Exodus chapter 16 again this morning. Israel has now begun their wilderness
journey. We're very much aware of the
fact that this journey will be about 40 years as they go across
the desert. And then as those people that
God ordained enter into the land of promise, they will do so only
because of the goodness and the grace of God. This is certainly
a picture of the Lord's people as we have embarked upon our
wilderness journey. The Lord has revealed redemption
to us. He has revealed the Lord Jesus,
our Savior and Sovereign to us, and we follow Him. He is the
pillar of cloud by day, and He is the pillar of fire by night. And we follow Him, we follow
His Word, and we fully believe that our Lord will lead us safely
into that rest that awaits us in the heavenly glory. Now, as
for Israel, as they embarked upon their wilderness journey,
they did so assured that God would be with them, and God would
bless them, and God would provide for their every need. at the
end of their journey or very nearly at the end of their journey. In Deuteronomy, we read these
words, Moses said to the children of Israel, for the Lord thy God
hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand. He knoweth
thy walking through this great wilderness. These 40 years, God
has been with us. And we, he says, we have lacked
nothing. Amazing. They didn't have everything
they wanted, but they did have everything they needed. Later in the book of Nehemiah,
the Levites speaking in unison said of the Lord, and during the 40 years did sustain
our fathers in the wilderness. He says, so that they lacked
nothing. Think of that, 40 years, they
lacked nothing. In fact, the Levites went on
to say, their clothes waxed not old, their feet did not swell. Oh, how abundantly God provided
for them. And we need to remember the Israelites
were a typical people. They were a people who represented
us, who stood as we stand before God, except we stand in a nearer
relationship than all of natural Israel, because all of natural
Israel was not spiritual Israel, only a remnant according to the
election of grace. But that entire nation represented
all of God's true Israel. And God has provided all things
for us in the Lord Jesus, all things spiritual. If you need
something that is of a spiritual nature, God has already provided
that for you in the Lord Jesus, because we've been blessed with
every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And if you need something physical,
temporal, God will see to it in His time that that need is
also met. Just like He provided for Israel,
He will provide for His true Israel. I love those words in
Philippians chapter 4 and verse 19, as the great apostle wrote
to the people at Philippi. And he said, but my God, He shall
supply all your needs according to His riches in glory, my Christ
Jesus. All you need. He said, He will
supply. God will fulfill our every need. If we need it, He will give it. And indeed, He's already given
us everything that we will need in the Lord Jesus before the
world began. He has given us grace. The scripture
says in 2 Timothy chapter 1 that God gave us grace in Christ Jesus
even before he made the world. He's already given us grace.
and He's given us the Lord Jesus and in Him all things. There's
nothing that we will ever lack. Everything we need is in the
Lord Jesus Christ and in this grace that God gives us through
Him. He gives us grace, grace to save,
grace to rescue, grace to see us through this life, grace to
forgive, grace to preserve us, Grace to lift us up. Grace to
humble us when we need it. Grace through all the trials
of life. He's given us a justifying righteousness. He's given us the full forgiveness
of all of our sins. We lack nothing in the Lord Jesus,
just like the children of Israel. They lacked nothing that they
needed. And just like Israel, we have
clothes that never wear out, but we have the righteous garments
of Christ Jesus. And he will be with us throughout
the way. Now in Exodus here, in this particular
chapter, chapter 16, God gave two wonderful provisions for
Israel. Number one, he gave them food.
You'll notice, and I'll read this again for you in chapter
16 and verse 15, and when the children of Israel, when they
saw this bread, it's all over the ground, they said one to
another, it is manna, manna meaning literally, what is this? What
is this? For they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, this
is the bread which God hath given you to eat. That word manna literally
means what is it? And if you go to the root word
of manna, it means that which has been prepared and provided. That which has been prepared
and provided. And we're not at a loss as to
what this manna stood for it to who it represented. Because
our Lord Jesus identified himself as being the manna from heaven. And we get to John chapter six
and we've already made mention of the passage in John chapter
six several times. But the Lord said, I am the true
bread that came down from heaven. And you know what? He was prepared
in heaven and he was sent from heaven. God prepared him. He said, the Savior said, a body
thou hast prepared me, a body thou hast made for me. And every
provision was made for our Lord Jesus and His earthly pilgrimage
even before God ever made the world. You see, He is a prepared
Savior for a people who will be prepared to receive Him and
believe Him. Every provision that we would
ever need is to be found in the Lord Jesus who was prepared in
heaven. The scripture says he was a lamb
sacrificed before the world began. All provisions were made for
us in the Lord Jesus and through the Lord Jesus Christ. God knew
everything we would need and He made the Lord Jesus Christ,
His only begotten Son, to be all things for us. If we need
it, we have it in Him. We lack nothing in Christ Jesus. Do you understand that? We lack
nothing. What did God demand of you? He
demanded of you perfection. In Christ Jesus, we have that. What does God demand of you?
What is it that God absolutely requires? All of our sins must
be paid for. That's been taken care of. The
Savior has already died. He has already redeemed us. He
has already bought us from offended justice. Everything the holy
God demanded is provided for us in the Lord Jesus, and He
is to us the bread of life. He's the bread who came down
from heaven. He was prepared in heaven, and
He was sent from heaven, and we feast on Him. The Israelites,
they went out every morning, at least six mornings a week,
of course, and I'll go into what about the seventh day in a couple
of minutes, but they went out every morning and got the bread. They feasted on the bread. It
was angels' food, the Scripture says. And so you and I, we feast
on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our bread. He is our sustenance. He is our nourishment. He is
all we need. Everything we need, we find in
the Son of God. We've got to realize that. May
God the Spirit make us aware of that. You see, as there was
no possibility of life for Israel, as they went through the wilderness
without this bread, there was no possibility of life. Even
so, without Christ our Savior, there's no life for us. He's
the bread. We feast on Him. We eat on Him. And may we never get to the point
that the Israelites did, where they said, our souls loathe this
light bread. May we never weary of hearing
of our Lord Jesus and his substitutionary sacrifice. They would never get
tired of hearing of the cross of our Savior. And that cross,
we don't mean by that the beam upon which He hung, the tree
upon which He was sacrificed. We mean the wholeness of His
substitutionary work. No wonder we read in Galatians
6.14, Paul said, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ. We glory in Him. We glory in
all that He did for us, in satisfying a holy God for us. And in Him
we have everything that we need. And as the Israelites ate the
manna, Even so we believe and receive and we eat of our Lord
Jesus Christ. We take him in willingly and
lovingly by faith. Faith being a gift of God, not
something that we have worked up within ourselves. But also
in Exodus chapter 16, God gave them another gracious provision.
It was the Sabbath. Rest. Two wonderful, glorious
provisions. Food and rest. And remember, these are a people
who are journeying through the wilderness. And they're walking. That's true. Their shoes didn't
wear out. Their clothes didn't wear out.
That's all a fact. But they were real human people
like us, and they had to walk every day unless, that is, the
pillar of cloud stopped, and the pillar of fire, both the
same one, pillar of cloud by day, fire by night. But when
the pillars stopped, they stopped. And they were people who were
always busy walking, walking, walking. And when they did stop,
they got to put their tents up and get everything ready, and
take care of the animals, take care of the sheep, and take care
of the oxen, and all these things that had to be done. preparing
food, the bread, the manna from heaven, preparing the quail that
God gave in the evening, always busy, always doing something. And then when the pillar of cloud
began to move, Moses said, all right, pack up everything. And
again, they're busy and they're always doing something. They're
always laboring. They're always toiling. And God
said, listen, I'm going to give you one day a week. And this
is what you do on that day, just rest. But don't we have to go out and
gather the manna? We've got to get up and get the
manna. No, God said I'm providing for that. Because when you get
up Friday morning, you go out, it's the only morning of the
week that you can gather double as much. Gather all the manna
that your family needs for two days. And then, when Saturday
comes, the Sabbath, you don't have to go out and gather manna. You don't have to work. It's a day free from labor. It's a day of rest. a welcome
relief from all the working, all the walking, and all the
toiling. Now, let me remind you of something,
that these were a typical people, and all the provisions that God
gave them, all the provisions, all the offerings, all the rituals,
all the ceremonies that God gave them, pictured His grace given
to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the good things that God
has for His people. Now, let me read just a few verses
to you here in chapter 16, and I'll begin at the 23rd verse. And he said unto them, and I've
already told you, and we've of course talked about the manna
before, that gathering twice as much on Friday and not gathering
on Saturday. Look at verse 23. And Moses said
to the people, this is that which the Lord had said, and he's telling
them on Friday, he says, tomorrow is the rest of the Holy Sabbath
unto the Lord. Tomorrow is the rest of the Holy
Sabbath. That's the title of the message,
the rest of the Holy Sabbath. This is a day in which you don't
work, you don't labor, you don't walk, You don't journey, you
don't gather manna, it's a day of rest. It's a day of rest. And it's the rest of the Holy
Sabbath. God has set this day apart from
the rest. There's nothing special about
the day. There's nothing extraordinary
about Saturday. God said, I'm just giving it
to you and designating that day for you to be a day of rest. Here's what you do. Cease from
your labor and rest. It's a holy Sabbath under the
Lord. He says, bake that which you
will bake today and then seethe or boil that which you will boil
and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until
the morning, until Saturday morning. And they laid it up to the morning
as Moses bade them and it didn't stink and there wasn't any worms
in it. And Moses said, eat that today,
for today is a Sabbath unto the Lord. This is unto the Lord.
It's a day of rest unto the Lord. Today you shall not find it in
the field. If you step outside your tent,
he says, on Saturday morning, and you expect to see manna,
you're not going to see any. Because if you then went out
and gathered the manna, you'd be working. No, this is a day
of rest for you. You need it. Your body requires
it, and God commands it. This day of rest. Verse 26, six
days you shall gather, but on the seventh day, which is the
Sabbath, in it there shall be none. Now, let me emphasize this
again. All of the offerings, all of
the rituals, all the different ceremonies that God gave to Israel
in the wilderness, they were all connected in one way or the
other in a spiritual way to our Savior. And even as our Lord Jesus is
himself the manna from heaven, I am the true bread that came
down from heaven. He is also our Sabbath. He is our rest. Very simply, the law of the Sabbath
was this, thou shalt do no work. That's not difficult to understand,
is it? Thou shalt do no work rest. Now that Sabbath pictured our
Savior and that great salvation that comes to us through Him. And here is the law of the Sabbath. And in this sense, it's still
valid. Thou shalt do no labor. As far as your acceptance with
God, as far as this salvation is concerned, as far as the forgiveness
of our sinfulness, as far as our righteousness is concerned,
here's the law of the Sabbath. Thou shalt do no works, no labor. Do you understand that? Rest. Rest. in the Savior, who has Himself
done all of the work. You see, as the manna pictured
our Savior, who is the bread of life, earlier, as the Passover
lamb pictured our Savior, who is our Passover, who's been sacrificed
for us, As the water that Moses, he will later hit the rock, and
the water will come out as the rock and the water pictured our
Lord Jesus and the salvation that he gives us. As circumcision,
that ritual represented and pictured regeneration. the wounding of the heart, the
giving of a new heart by the Spirit of God, so the Sabbath
was a picture as well. The legal Old Testament Sabbath
day was established by God to be a picture and a type of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and that grace and salvation
that comes to us in Him. It's not a matter of speculation.
Well, it's just guesswork, preacher, on your part. No, not at all.
Hold your place if you want to. Look at Exodus chapter 31. Exodus
chapter 31. and verse 13. Exodus chapter 31 in verse 13. Speak thou also unto the children
of Israel saying, verily my Sabbaths you shall keep. And I'll tell
you this about the Sabbath before I read any more. There's more
concerning the Sabbath and Sabbath day observance throughout the
Old Testament. There's more mentioning of the
Sabbath and its observance than it is of any other law of the
Old Testament. And that in itself is very significant. Because you see, when it comes
to the Sabbath, and an understanding of the spirituality of the Sabbath,
that the Sabbath now is not the seventh day of the week, and
it isn't the first day of the week. The Sabbath is a person.
The Lord Jesus and that salvation which is by His grace, and the
reason the Sabbath is always stressed in the Old Testament,
and the resting in the Sabbath is because Man's natural inclination
is to believe salvation by works. And this is where Satan is always
confusing people. It's where religions are confusing. They're all mixed up. They misunderstand
the Sabbath and its significance. It represents our Lord Jesus
who has finished His work and He rested. He's resting in glory,
not out of weariness, but because He's finished the work that God
gave Him to do. and we rest in him who is our
rest. Now watch this, the rest of the
verse. He says, verily my Sabbath ye shall keep, for it is a sign. You see, that's
a sign. It's a token. It's a picture. It is a type. It's a sign between me and you
throughout your generations that you may know who I am. I'm the Lord. I'm the eternal
God. I'm Jehovah. Who is Jehovah? He's the one who saves. You must
not separate or divide the Sabbath from the Lord Jesus, the one
who saves, the one who is the great I Am. God says, I give
you all these Sabbaths as a token, as a picture. These are symbols. Symbols of Lord of what? Of me,
the eternal God, the God who saves. And as you rest on that
day, so you rest in me, the God who saves. It was a day to cease from your
labor, and rest in all the provisions
that God had given to them. Now, of course, denominations
today, most denominations, they still observe a literal day of
the week. There's the Seventh-day Adventists,
and so they're church buildings. I use that word church very liberally
now. Their religious establishments
were in session yesterday because their Seventh-day Adventists,
who in reality deny the deity of the Lord Jesus, by the way,
and the efficacy, fullness of the work of redemption that our
Lord Jesus accomplished. There are even Seventh-day Baptists. And of course, many people say
that the Sabbath has been changed from Saturday to Sunday. This is not the Christian Sabbath. This is not the Christian Sabbath. This is the Lord's day. When you get to the New Testament
in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you have lots written about and
spoken about the Sabbath. But then our Lord Jesus died. He entered into his labor. He labored for us before God. I know the old timers used to
talk about his active obedience and his passive obedience, and
by that they generally meant his active obedience is life,
passive obedience is death. I don't think he was saying anything
passive about his death at all. It was a work that God gave him
to do. and he entered into that work,
he entered into that labor and he finished and he entered then
into his rest and we rest in him who is our rest. We don't observe a day. We believe a person and we find
in him full salvation. It is ever the way of man to
take that which God gives and then twist it and make it, make
out as if it means something else. For instance, God gave
baptism. Baptism's a picture. It's a picture
of our Lord Jesus, his death, his burial and his resurrection. And you know what man does? He
misses the picture. He misses the symbolism of it.
And he says, now, if you want to be saved, you got to go in
waters of baptism. So that's the way we are. It
is only natural. Don't be amazed and shocked that
your neighbor and your friends and your relatives believe in
salvation by doing some sort of work. It comes natural. This
is just natural inclination to believe the more we do for God,
God will then give to us. God sent His Son into this world
through a virgin. A woman who never knew a man.
And what do we do? What has a lot of people done?
They miss the one who came through the virgin and instead worship
the virgin. So I don't know, why do people
do that? Because that's a natural inclination. God gave us the Lord's Supper.
The bread picturing our Lord's body, the wine picturing His
blood, the symbolism there. It's so easy for us to see that,
those of us whose eyes have been opened by grace. But there are
people who think that by taking of the Lord's Supper, the bread
is literally changed into the body of the Lord Jesus and the
wine is literally changed into His blood. It's called transubstantiation. They miss the symbolic meaning
of it. and they fail to see that the
one we eat of and whose blood we drink of is a spiritual eating
and drinking that is receiving him by faith. That's always the
way. And people get hung up on this day. I remember even as I was growing
up, We had our preacher taught and then my dad taught as well
that the Saturday Sabbath had been done away with and Sunday
was now the Sabbath. And so there were lots of things
we couldn't do on Sunday. We couldn't play ball. We couldn't
play Monopoly. All those things were out. We
were supposed to just sit around and look miserable, which is
pretty much the way we were. We were just miserable. We couldn't
do anything. I remember, and of course my dad's with the Lord
now, but one of the worst whippings I ever got. I went home with one of the boys
from our church. This was before my dad became
a preacher. I went home with him. His dad took him, and I went
with him, to a Little League baseball game because this fella,
Eddie was his name, my buddy, and he went to the same church
too. But he got play ball on Sunday, so we went to a Little
League baseball game. I didn't ask my dad's permission,
and I knew he wouldn't be happy. It's the reason I didn't mention
it. I didn't want anything said about it, but word got back to
him. I found out that's not the thing to do on the Christian
Sabbath. It was a bad one. Later on, just
to finish the story, we were in Cincinnati. My brother used
to pastor in Cincinnati. We're visiting with him. My mom
and dad were there. We got tickets to go to a Reds
baseball game on Sunday afternoon. So we're, Willie Stardew was
there for you baseball fans. We saw him hit his last home
run in Cincinnati, but I do remember that about it, but we're sitting
there and of course my mind, here it is Sunday afternoon.
My brother only had services Sunday morning. It's Sunday afternoon
and my mind goes back many years ago to that visit to the Little
League Baseball game which resulted in me getting a whipping. And
me, of course, I always open my mouth. I said, Dad, you remember. And he went, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And I said, now
here we are on Sunday afternoon watching Cincinnati Reds play
the Pittsburgh Pirates in baseball. He said, would you forgive me
for that? I said, yeah, we just laughed
about it. But he thought Sunday, back years
ago, he thought Sunday was the Christian Sabbath. No, the Sabbath. like the bread is somebody. That's what we got to say. It's
somebody. And I'll tell you this, if you
seek to observe a Sabbath, be it Saturday or Sunday, if you
seek to observe a Sabbath with this thought, God will look on
me more favorably. because I'm observing a day.
You're yet in your sins, you're lost, and you don't see your
only hope is Christ Jesus. That's the truth. He's our rest. He's our Sabbath. Now let me
give you several things. Number one, The Sabbath was given
as a token or a symbol, I should say, a picture, that God finished
his work of creation. Look over at Exodus chapter 20.
Go to Exodus chapter 20. It's a symbol that God finished
his work of creation and then he rested. That is, God was satisfied
with everything that he made. That's why he said it's very
good. And here's the law that God gave. Exodus chapter 20,
look at verse eight. Remember the Sabbath day to keep
it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and
do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath
of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work,
thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For
in six days," or here's the reason, because in six days, the Lord
made heaven, earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and
rested on the seventh day. Not rested out of weariness,
not rested because he's tired, but rested because he satisfied
with all that he did. Wherefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath day, and he hallowed it. And the Israelites on that seventh
day, They were to remember, this is associated with the creative
glories of God, who made all things by the Word of His power,
and having made everything in six days, on the seventh day
He rested, having fully completed that which He started out to
do, and God was satisfied. And I again stress this, nothing
is more important to understand than this fourth commandment.
Because Satan has instigated so much confusion and so much
information about it, he clouds the issue. The issue is all clouded. So that people still, they focus
on the day and not on the person. Our Lord Jesus is our Sabbath.
And then look at Deuteronomy chapter five. I've got several
verses to give you as time allows. Deuteronomy chapter five in verse
15. Here's something else to remember.
The Sabbath reminded the Jews of their redemption, of their
redemption. Deuteronomy chapter five, verse
15. In fact, verse 13 says, six days
thou shalt labor, chapter 5 verse 13, six days shalt thou labor
and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of
the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work
thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor any
stranger that is within thy gates, that thy manservant and thy maidservant
may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a
servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought
thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched out
arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded
thee to keep the Sabbath day." He says, you keep this day and
remember where you were when I found you. This is associated
with redemption. The third thing I want to say
about the Sabbath is it was never, never in the New Testament changed
from Saturday to Sunday. Yes, in the gospels, the four
gospel narratives, and in the book of Acts. you have the Sabbath
mentioned quite frequently, especially in the book of Acts because the
preachers of the gospel, the apostles, they would meet with
the Jews because the Jews were the first ones to receive the
gospel word, the declaration of our Lord Jesus and his finished
work of redemption. They met on Sabbath. They still
observed the Sabbath and that's the reason the apostles preached
to them on the Sabbath. But when you get to the epistles,
when you get to the book of Romans, through the end of the Bible,
the only thing you learn about, the only thing you hear about
Sabbath is in the book of Colossians, the second chapter. Where we're
told, don't let anybody sit in judgment of you regarding Sabbath,
which are a symbol. And I'll get to that more in
a minute. And here's another thing that I want to say. The
Mosaic Law. Now don't be shocked. But it is a fact the Mosaic Law
was never given to the Gentiles anyway. Understand that? It was never
given to the Gentiles anyway. The Law of God in Exodus chapter
20 was given to the Jews, not to the Gentiles. And here's something else. Go
to the book of Colossians chapter two. Look at the book of Colossians
chapter two. Don't be offended when people
judge you because of your refusal to observe the Sabbath as a holy
day or a special day. Every day of the week is made
by God for you to enjoy Him and to worship Him. And the first
day of the week is the day that the Lord arose from the dead,
and that's why the saints of God began to meet on Sunday.
That's the day of the week when most of the people are off from
work. As a matter of convenience, we
meet on this day. Not that there's anything inherently
special about Sunday. There was nothing inherently
special about the Sabbath. It was a day to remember that
God finished His work. It was a day to remember redemption. God brought them out of bondage.
God delivered Israel out of their imprisonment to the Egyptians. As I said, the Sabbath law was
one that received more attention in the Scriptures than any of
the rest of the laws. because it involved a ceasing
of labor. Every religion except the gospel
of grace. Now hear me. Every religion,
every belief regarding salvation other than the gospel of grace
magnifies working. False religion is all about works. It's works-oriented. People are
motivated by doing works. And they think, if I can do something
for God, I'll catch God's eye. and what they failed to see,
and I hope you don't fail to see this, everything God demanded
for the salvation of fallen, ungodly, corrupt sinners, our
Lord Jesus has fully answered all of those demands, and He's
entered into His rest. And we believe Him, and in believing
Him, we enter into that rest. And don't let anybody judge you
about Sabbath day observance. Look here in the second chapter,
verse 13. And you being dead in your sins
and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together
with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out
the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was
contrary to us. He took it out of the way, nailing
it to his cross. And He has spoiled, He has disarmed,
He has stripped of all power, principalities and powers. He
made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore
judge in respect of meat, what you eat, or in drink, what
you drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of a new moon, or of
the Sabbath. Don't let anybody set any judgment
concerning these things. Because look at verse 17, which
are a shadow. Do words mean anything? All of
these other things, including the Sabbaths, they were a shadow. They didn't have any substance
to them. But the body, the substance is
Christ Jesus. It isn't resting in a day. I
don't say that it's bad for you to rest on some time during the
week. Rest is good for the body. But
on the other hand, God said you'll earn your bread by the sweaty
brow, by working. You rest your body every once
in a while. It's good for it. But the body,
the reality of salvation, all these symbols in the Old Testament,
They were just shadows. I preached last Sunday morning
from Hebrews chapter 10 about the things of the law. They were
just shadows. Those sacrifices couldn't ever
put away sin. They were just shadows. Well,
who cast the shadow? Christ did. He's the body. He's the reality. And He's our
Sabbath. And I say those who observe the
Sabbath in order to merit God's favor, they're still lost. You think God will have more
mercy on you because you're observing a day? He'll put you in hell
because you're not looking to His Son. It's not observing a
day. It's not resting on a day. It's
resting in His person, the Lord Jesus. Now with this, having
said these things, look now back to Hebrews 4, that passage that
Ron read to us. Hebrews chapter 4. The Sabbath, understand this,
it pointed back not only to the Father finishing His work of
creation and resting on the seventh days, but it also pictured Christ
finishing His work of redemption and then entering into His rest.
I don't have time to make comments on all of these verses, perhaps
on another occasion I will preach through all of this, but Hebrews
chapter four, look at verse 10. He, for he that is entered into
his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works as God did
his. Who's that talking about? Talking
about Christ Jesus. He's entered into his rest and he has ceased from his works. When our Savior died upon the
cross of Calvary, he finished the work that God gave him to
do. He even said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave
up the ghost. The work was done. And he died. And 40 days later,
after his resurrection, he entered into his rest. Not the rest necessary
from weariness, but the rest of having finished, having fully
completed everything God required of us. He sat down. He sat down. Even in his high
priestly prayer, he said, I finished the work thou gavest me to do.
And I know I'm going a little long this morning, but I want
to finish this. Hold your place in Hebrews 4
and go to Isaiah chapter 11. It's just a very powerful statement
found here in Isaiah chapter 11. And it is in verse number
10. Isaiah 11 verse 10, and in that
day, There shall be a root of Jesse who shall stand as an ensign
of the people, as a banner. He calls his people unto himself. To it or to him shall the Gentiles
seek. Now look at the last statement
of verse 10, and his rest. shall be glorious. And if you have a center column,
it says glorious means glory. His rest shall be His glory. Having finished the work of redemption,
He entered into His rest, which is His glory. Now, go back, flip
back to Hebrews chapter 4 just real quick. How do we keep the Sabbath now? How do we keep the Sabbath? I'm
not talking about a day, but I'm talking about the true Sabbath.
Well, look at Hebrews 4 verse 9. There remaineth therefore
a rest to the people of God. And once again, I'll direct you
to the, in my Bible, it's the center column, and it says on
verse 9, The keeping of a Sabbath. Your Bible had that, the keeping
of a Sabbath. There remains the keeping of
a Sabbath. Jim, do you keep the Sabbath? Well, not perfectly, but I do believe him. That's
keeping the Sabbath. That's keeping the Sabbath. Not
working, but resting in Him who finished the work. One last thing. Of all the Ten Commandments,
I said this one is the most often spoken of in the Old Testament. And it had such a very very severe
penalty for breaking it. Go with me to Numbers, last reference. Numbers chapter 15. I gave you
several references on this, but I'm just going to go to this
one. Numbers chapter 15. And verse 32. Numbers 15, 32. I'll wait till I hear all the
pages turn. You finish turning, okay? Because
I want you to read this with me. Here we go, 15, 32. And while
the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a
man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. Well, that doesn't
seem to be such a big thing. gathering sticks, most likely
to build a fire. I suppose he's cold or whatever.
And they found him, they that found him gathering sticks brought
him unto Moses and Aaron and unto all the congregation. And
they put him in a ward. They kind of locked him up away
because it wasn't declared what should be done to him. We don't
know what to do with this guy. Well, let's put him over here
and lock him up for a little bit until it's decided. And the
Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death.
And all the congregation shall stone him with stones without
the camp. And all the congregation brought
him without the camp, they stoned him with stones, and he died
as the Lord had commanded Moses. You see, the penalty for breaking
God's law of the Sabbath was very severe always. No extenuating circumstances
taken into account. This is just black and white. If you do any work pertaining
to your own comforts on the Sabbath day, you're to be put to death. Now a lot of people say, that's
too harsh. Man alive, man, all he did was
pick up sticks. You don't understand what that
Sabbath day, who that Sabbath day represented. It represented
the Son of God and that it's only by His work we're saved. And you know what the penalty
for not resting, not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is?
Everlasting death. Now, do you keep the Sabbath? I don't keep it perfectly. I
don't rest in Him perfectly. Someday I will. Someday I'll
believe Him perfectly. I don't rest in Him perfectly,
but I do rest in Him. I rest in Him who rested from
His work, having finished it to the full satisfaction of God. And I rest my soul in all of
its concerns. and I rest my body and everything
that has to do with my body. I rest only in that One who is
not only my manna upon whom I feed, but my Sabbath in whom I find
rest and I find comfort in Him. Lord, bless the Word that's gone
forth. Help us to understand, surely,
Lord, it's been, I hope it's been presented, this has been
presented in a way that's understandable and clear. Not a day, but a person. A person. Oh, how thankful we
are for that one who is our true Sabbath. The one who finished the work
of reconciliation, redemption, the work of justifying us by
His righteousness