So we're going to Exodus chapter
20 and verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to keep
it holy. Six days shalt thou labour 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 the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in
them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Amen. May the Lord bless
this reading from his word. When the children of Israel left
Egypt, they were given manna to eat in the wilderness. And Moses told the people, I'm
sure you'll remember this, Moses told the people to collect enough
manna on the sixth day to feed them on the seventh day. Because they were not to collect
any manna on the seventh day. And when the people asked why,
Moses told them, tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath
unto the Lord. And this was the first time that
the Sabbath is mentioned and there are people who say, well
the children of Israel knew about this and Abraham and and Noah
and the people of the earlier ages knew about the Sabbath.
Well, they tried to make that argument, some perhaps a little
bit more successfully than others, but this is the first time that
the Sabbath is actually mentioned in the Word of God. and here
the children of Israel were given an indication that one day in
seven was to be kept separate and dedicated to the Lord as
a time of worship when all their work was to stop. Now, as far
as collecting the manna was concerned, that was just one little example. And now, a few chapters on, we
find that this Sabbath rest is codified, the practice of rest
on one day of the week is codified in the Ten Commandments. And
this is the fourth commandment. There was to be no work done
on the Sabbath day. Rather it was to be kept holy
and set apart from the other days of the week for religious
activities. And coming as it does after the
first three, we've already thought about the first three commandments
where the Lord speaks about his worship, I am the Lord thy God,
and then speaking about having no idols and bringing any idols
before him. and then not taking the name
of the Lord in vain, showing us how the worship of God had
to be solemn and serious and directed. Here we find that the
Lord gives the children of Israel this space in their week when
his worship is particularly to be considered and this time of
rest is to be had. So here we have this fourth commandment
given to us applying to the true and proper worship of God. And the Lord in the commandments
explains the extent of the law and he shows that it was to be
observed by the whole family. Not only the parents and the
children but also employees and servants, manservant and maidservant. Even the cattle of the family
were not to be put to work on this day. In fact, a little bit
later, and we'll find this when we're studying the Word of God
together, that there are other laws and there are other instructions
and there are other regulations that are given to the children
of Israel as well, indeed there are. lots and lots of them, but
we will find that there is another commandment where we're told
that even the ground was to have a Sabbath rest. And the reason
for this that the Lord gives is that the Lord himself hallowed
or set apart that seventh day and has supplied it as a pattern
because God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh
day. So that's what the pattern was
that the Jews were to follow. And over time the Lord God gave
Moses more rules about how this day was to be observed and indeed
told him about very strict punishment if the rules of the Sabbath were
broken. The people, for example, must
not carry heavy burdens on the Sabbath day. They must not travel
very far. They were not to go any real
distance. They were not to light fires
in their homes or even collect sticks to make a fire. And in Exodus chapter 35 in verse
2 we're told that whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to
death. Such was the seriousness of this
rule, this regulation, this commandment that Moses gave to the children
of Israel from the Lord. And later in Deuteronomy the
Lord tells the people another reason for Sabbath observance
and it is that he brought the children of Israel out of Egypt
with a mighty hand and delivered them from their enemies. So by
doing this, the Lord shows that the Sabbath is also related to
not simply creation, but also to redemption. And this, I think,
is significant when we begin to understand the meaning behind
the Sabbath. So this was in the time of Moses
when he was giving the laws to the children of Israel. As time
passed, by the time the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world
at his incarnation, the laws regarding Sabbath observance
had become more and more specific. Some had come from the Lord himself,
Others had come from people interpreting what the Lord said and then laying
more and more laws down as well so that people had no questions
in their mind about what something might mean but it was specified
to them. And it became very detailed and
very burdensome. So that when the Lord, with his
disciples, was walking through a field one day and the disciples
plucked a few ears of corn to eat as they walked through the
field, the Pharisees of the Lord's day condemned them and said,
you shouldn't be doing that. Plucking those few corns of grain,
that's working on a Sabbath day. And that means that you're guilty
of breaking God's law. When Jesus healed a blind man
on the Sabbath day and cured a woman who had been bent over
for 18 years, the Pharisees condemned him. And when the Lord healed
a lame man and told him to rise and take up his bed and walk,
the Jews said, you can't carry your bed because it's the Sabbath
day. And the Lord Jesus Christ had
to tell these Pharisees, the Sabbath was made for man, not
man for the Sabbath. And then a little bit later on,
he tells them, the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath
day. During the days of the apostles,
the apostles speak about the Sabbath as well, and particularly
the writer to the Hebrews talks about the Sabbath. And he says
in Hebrews chapter four, there remaineth therefore a rest, or
a Sabbath, that's what that word means, to the people of God. For he that is entered into his
rest, he also hath ceased from his own works. God did from him. And a little bit later the Apostle
Paul writes and he says to the Colossians, let no man therefore
judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of an holy day
or of the new moon or of Sabbath days. I just want to have a little
aside here for a moment, because after the time of the Lord Jesus,
some people invented what they called the Christian Sabbath. Not the Jewish Sabbath anymore,
which was the seventh day of the week, but the Christian Sabbath. And they changed the Sabbath
day from the seventh day, which is what the Sabbath means, the
seventh day, our Saturday, which God had commanded, to the first
day of the week, our Sunday, which God didn't command. And
some people even brought the Old Testament Sabbath rules about
what you can do and what you can't do into their new Christian
Sabbath. Well, I can't find any justification
for changing the day or bringing the old rules of the Sabbath
into the Lord's Day. We meet together, we worship
together on the Lord's Day because this is what the apostles did. They gathered together to worship
on the first day of the week. But I'm sure that if you want
to gather some sticks or light a fire for your home on the Sabbath
day, on Saturday or on Sunday, that is not going to be offensive
to the Lord. Here's what are some lessons
with respect to the commandment of the Sabbath. Here's what I
think we should be learning from that. As with all the law, It
was given to the children of Israel to teach them about God,
to show them his holiness and to show them how he must be worshipped
and to regulate their dealings with each other. We're going
to see that in a few weeks as we get into some of the later
commandments. But principally these early commandments
speak about the holiness of God and how he is to be worshipped.
However, we've already seen that it is impossible for any fallen
creature, whether Jew or non-Jew, Gentile, to fulfil God's law. The law never made a person righteous,
no matter how hard they tried to fulfil it. They always came
up short. So, by the law, we see God's
holiness and our sinfulness. and that's the purpose of the
law. There's something else about
God's law. There's no mercy in God's law. The law measures and
it condemns. It's strict and it's rigorous
and it's unforgiving. So the Apostle Paul tells us,
by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. That means by the works of the
law we can never be righteous, we will never be made righteous,
we will never be declared righteous. But because the law is spiritual,
it cannot be fulfilled by what we do and don't do in our carnal
flesh, in our sinful nature. The true purpose of the law has
always been to show us our need of Christ and the righteousness
of God which must be gotten by Christ and in Christ and not
from anything that we do. Here's another thing that these
verses teach us, these verses about the Sabbath. When the Holy
Spirit shows us that we are sinners, he teaches us to look away from
the law that condemns us and stop trying to please God by
our own works. In the Gospel, he teaches us
rather to rest in Christ's work, to put our hope in Jesus Christ. And we call this faith. That's
what faith is, putting your trust, putting your hope in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Faith is God's gift. And God
promises a righteousness that far exceeds and excels the righteousness
of the law to all those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. and we who trust in the cleansing
work of Christ's blood on the cross, we will have that righteousness,
even although we are sinners in ourself and we have broken
God's law. He gives us the very righteousness
of God. And when we look to Christ for
righteousness, when we look to Christ's work as the ground of
our acceptance with God and not our own works, then we cease
from trying to please God by our own obedience and we rest,
and that's the important word here, we rest in the obedience
of our Saviour, who on our behalf was obedient unto death. Here's another little point.
In Isaiah 58, the old prophet speaks about a time when the
Sabbath would become a delight to the people of God. And for
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we find the Sabbath a delight,
not with reference to a particular day, whether it's Saturday or
Sunday, but in the sense that Christ is our Sabbath, Christ
is our rest, and we delight in Christ. The Lord of the Sabbath
is the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are free from the burden and
the bondage of the law that condemns, and we are set at liberty to
worship the Lord, which, remember, is the great purpose of the law,
to teach us how to worship the Lord. We are set free to worship
Him in spirit and in truth. with gospel wisdom, with gospel
righteousness, with gospel sanctification and redemption. Everything in
fact, that God promised the Old Testament people and all people
who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as their saviour. True worship
is knowing the true God. It is approaching the true God
and dedicating ourselves to the true God in faith. It's bringing our worship to
God and that is only possible when we are perfect, holy and
justified in his sight. Perfection holiness and justification. None of these things come from
our own works, no matter how good we think we are. All these
things come by trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and it is Jesus
himself who delights our souls by making us holy and bringing
us into God's presence. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.