Created for Sabbath

[0:00] Okay. 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.

[0:14] 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.

[0:30] This is God's word. Amen. Let's pray together. Lord, as we come to read, as we come to look at the word we've just read, we ask Father that you would come now and be with us.

[0:44] We know that we cannot see all that you have for us in this text without you coming and giving us eyes of faith to see it. And so we do ask, Lord, as we look at it for just a little bit, that you would give us the eyes of faith.

[0:56] And we pray specifically, Lord, for maybe somebody here, some people here that may be coming and searching for faith. And we ask that through your word you would encounter them and meet with them today. And then for the rest of us, Lord, that you would use this passage to change us, that we would see what we were really made for and see how we can get it the only way.

[1:15] And so we ask, Lord, that you would teach us today what it really means to have a Sabbath. And we pray for this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so let's look together at this passage for just a few minutes.

[1:28] We are in a series right now on Genesis 1 and 2. And Genesis is an ancient book, a book that comes and approaches us as modern people and confronts us in a lot of ways.

[1:42] And one of the things Genesis 1 and 2 especially does is it gives us the foundations, the beginning in some sense, the grounding of who we are, what we're made for, why we exist, and we've seen so far that it really focuses on the fact that God created the world, that we humans were made in His image, and we belong to Him.

[2:02] It's probably one of the simplest ways to say the beginning couple of chapters and all that they mean. And last week, we talked about the fact that every single one of us, because we're humans, we are God's image.

[2:13] So being the image of God is not first about the fact that you can think in a way that's like God or that you have language capacity in a way that's like God, or you're greater than the other creatures.

[2:26] Not those things first. The first thing to say about who you are is that you are the image of God, human beings, male and female. It's not an aspect of capacity. It's an aspect of just being human, embodied souls.

[2:40] You're the image of God. Today, you might not have very much money. You might not dress very well. You might always say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

[2:53] You might be an awkward person, not very good socially. You might be from a class that you think doesn't have much respect. And let me say to every single human being, no matter what, made in God's image, full of dignity, full of worth, full of value, nothing that we have, nothing that we do, nothing that we fail to do, takes us out of that reality.

[3:16] And really all we're going to do in Genesis 2, this next chapter we turn to Genesis 2 today, is for three weeks, including today, have a reflection, which is what Genesis 2 does, unpacking a little bit more on what the image of God means.

[3:31] And today, the first, one of the more detailed things to say about what it means to be in God's image related to God is that we were made for rest. Every single one of us, we were ultimately made for deep rest, lasting rest.

[3:45] And so let's think about that. First, the paradox of the God who rests. And then secondly, let's look at what it means for us to enter into God's rest.

[3:57] Right, so first, the paradox, there's a paradox here in the God who rests. If you look down at the passage with me, verse 2, it says, on the seventh day, God finished the work he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all that work.

[4:12] Now, verse 2 and 3 has these three parallel lines, three verbs, three references to the seventh day. And so it reads very literally something like this.

[4:26] God finished his work on the seventh day. God rested from his work on the seventh day. And so God blessed the seventh day because he rested.

[4:37] So that's a very literal translation, if you will, of the three lines. And so they're parallel. And as soon as you read those three lines, a question could come up, should come up for all of us, and that's what in the world does it mean to say something like God entered into rest?

[4:56] So God finished work and he came and he rested. And the reason that that question is so obvious in some sense is because maybe you're not a Christian today and you're coming and you're exploring the faith.

[5:08] One of the things that Christians believe, that we think the Bible teaches very clearly, and that philosophy also shows us is that God does not have a body. God is incorporeal.

[5:20] And so when this passage comes and says God worked for six days and on the seventh day, he took a rest day. One of the first things we have to ask is what in the world could it possibly mean that God rests from labor?

[5:34] God doesn't have a body. God is not like us. God does not get tired. And so we've got a very explicit moment in Psalm 121 where the writer says, my help comes from the Lord.

[5:47] He is the keeper who neither slumbers nor sleeps. He just never gets tired. He doesn't have a body. What could that mean? Now a second question comes up here as well, and that's in verse one. It says the heavens and earth were finished on the seventh day and all the host or the vast array that God had made.

[6:05] This is the verse one of chapter two is the conclusion statement of all of Genesis one. So forget about the chapters, forget about the headings. This is the last sentence of the first story of the book of Genesis.

[6:18] And so at the beginning it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the very conclusion sentence. So God finished the heavens and the earth. So that's what we have here. And remember in verse two of Genesis one it says the earth was formless and void.

[6:33] It didn't have stuff, organization. It didn't have creatures or it wasn't filled with things. And so the first six days is God forming the space, filling the space.

[6:45] Here we have that job is done. And so what's missing here is what's so significant. On this seventh day there is no refrain that we see on the other six days like there was morning and evening.

[6:59] And God said and he saw that it was good. Every one of the six days you've got these refrains, especially morning and evening. But you come to this day there is no morning and evening.

[7:11] And that means that this it's implicit but we're to understand that this day is endless. It never stopped. The seventh day is still going.

[7:22] And immediately when you come to that two big questions, what in the world could it mean that God rests? That God has a Sabbath as the Bible will later set call it. What in the world does it mean that there's a day at the end of creation that never stops?

[7:35] That's endless. Now take a 90 second step aside from that and just let me just mention truly 90 seconds. Hopefully this helps us think about how to read the Bible actually.

[7:50] So when you come to a passage like this and you say, wait a minute, God doesn't need a nap. We realize that there's something here that strikes us that's different.

[8:02] And you come and say, how can it be a day if it never ended if there's no morning and evening? A couple of facts like that. So John Calvin, when he comes to a passage like this, he uses it to look at the whole Bible and say, when you read the Bible, you've got to think in this frame that God is speaking to you in baby talk.

[8:23] He's condescending to speak at our level in a way that we can understand. Now I have a baby at the minute and because I have a baby right now, I have seen some of you break through all barriers and enter into your baby talk, your form of baby talk.

[8:44] So you might be a very formal person or you might think of yourself as a man who would never talk, I'm not going to do my baby talk, I'll be embarrassed. But I have baby talk.

[8:55] You've got baby talk. We all have it. You have baby and you change. And the Bible is like that. When God reveals himself, Calvin says he lists like talking to a baby.

[9:08] That's the word he uses when he wrote. And that means that when you read the Bible, what it says about God, there's always something, it's true. This is God's rest.

[9:19] But at the same time, you've got to say, but there's something different. I can't just do a one to one. I can't just say, well, I rest, therefore God rests like me. Of course not. So there's always metaphor built in and metaphor doesn't take away literal truth.

[9:35] It's literal truth and simultaneously there's an analogy. There's something that's totally different as well. God is absolute spirit. Of course, he doesn't sleep. He doesn't live in, he's not bound by space and time.

[9:47] And so it teaches us here how to read the Bible. So what does this mean? What is this seventh day talking about? And the first thing, let me just tell you two things. First, in verse one, it says God finished the heavens and the earth.

[10:01] That's referencing the fact that when he enters the seventh day, it's a statement declaring that the work of creation is stopped. He's done with it. And that means that God really did in space and time finish his work of creation.

[10:17] That God doesn't create anymore. Now that might strike you strangely at first. And it should in a way. But what does that mean? It means that creation refers to God's work of bringing stuff out of nothingness, something out of nothing.

[10:30] And he did that. It says that he created everything according to its kind and gave it the ability now to reproduce, to multiply. And so you might say, well, but God didn't, he created me.

[10:42] Yes. And we're involved in that. We now contribute to the work. It's not from nothing. It's from something. And so his entrance into the seventh day, first, is the pronouncement that God created the world from nothing.

[10:57] And now he's providing for the world. So for the rest of human history, the seventh day never ends because it's the time, the season in which God just provides. He sustains.

[11:08] He keeps giving and giving and giving, but it's not from nothing. We're involved in that. We make things. We produce things. He's called us to be his partners in the providential care of the world.

[11:20] The second thing, though, and the more important thing than that is what could it mean to say, though, that he rests in that? And we're really helped here by a couple other passages.

[11:32] Psalm 95-11. So the rest of the Bible takes up this idea of God resting and explains what this passage means for us. You got to read another how to read the, you got to read the whole Bible together to really understand any one passage.

[11:46] And you come to a place like Psalm 95-11 and it's talking about the Exodus story. And it's saying that when Israel left Egypt, they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years because they hardened their heart against God.

[12:01] And it says in Psalm 95-11, they failed to enter my rest. So they refused to, God is saying very literally, I told them, come and rest with me.

[12:13] And the Israelites of the first generation after Egypt said no. And so they failed to enter God's rest with a hard heart. So they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. And then you flip over to Hebrews 4. So if you have a Bible with you, I don't do this too often, but I do want to flip over just for a minute to Hebrews chapter 4.

[12:30] Because I want to just highlight a few verses. This, this Hebrews 4, this is the key. This is where the meaning of God's rest really is unlocked for us in Hebrews 4. Verse 1 in Hebrews 4, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear that we would harden our hearts as well.

[12:47] So the first thing we learn is the promise of actually entering this rest that started in Genesis 2 still remains. God is still existing. He's living in this time, in this rest.

[12:59] And you, what we're being told here is that you can enter into that rest. And if you hop down from there to verse 3, it says in verse 3, for we who have believed enter that rest.

[13:12] If you, if you take up Christianity, belief in Jesus by faith, you can enter the Sabbath of God. We're being told there, hop down then to verse 4. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way.

[13:24] God rested on the seventh day from all his works. So the writer saying the very thing I'm talking about entering God's rest is the Sabbath day from Genesis 2. That God is still living in. That you can be a part of as well.

[13:36] And then lastly, down in verse 10. Whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Alright, so what do we learn? We learn, and we'll come to this in just a minute, that you can have the Sabbath day rest of God.

[13:50] True rest. And that tells us something about what it means that God rest. It's not a rest from activity. No, because the day's still going. God is upholding the world right now by the word of his power, by his providence.

[14:03] It couldn't be, he's, I mean he's taking a nap or something like that. No, not at all. What is it? Think about Mount Sinai. Think about the temple. Think about Jesus entering Jerusalem in the triumphal entry.

[14:15] These are all ways of seeing God entering into rest. And what is it? It's when God finishes his work of creation and delightfully and joyfully steps into the world he made.

[14:27] To be with it in exactly the way he planned. It's entering, he entered into rest. And what that means is that he came down to the world he made to delightfully be in it with us.

[14:40] It's the word of the covenants when God says, I am for you, and I will be your God and you will be my people. That's his entrance into Sabbath.

[14:52] It's his entrance into rest. It's the way that we talked about a few weeks back when you paint something, if you paint, or you make a great cake, or you make anything that you're really impressed with, you know, you're impressed with yourself.

[15:04] I can't believe I did that. You step back like an artist and you look at it and you say, this is very good. And then you want it. You want to be a part of it. That is what God's Sabbath is.

[15:16] He makes it. He steps back. He looks at it in delight and then he enters in. He comes down and he says, I want to be with you.

[15:27] And so God's Sabbath is simply this. You are made for deep, everlasting, restful relationship with the living God. And he's come to offer that. He's here. He's come into this world to offer that rest.

[15:40] That's what it means here. Okay. Secondly, finally, how do we get that? Hebrews four says, don't harden your heart today.

[15:52] Come to this with a soft heart and enter into the ultimate rest that you need in this life. So Hebrews four tells me today, tells me as the preacher, the teacher, what do I do with Genesis two?

[16:05] Well, it tells me, it tells me to say, don't let your heart be hard. Come and enter into the rest of God. How can you do it? How can you do it? And there's a couple of ways. The first thing is this, the rest of the Bible takes God's rest this Holy day.

[16:22] The third clause tells us he made this day Holy. He blessed it. And it picks up on that and says now in our world, in our time, because we have bodies, we commemorate that reality by honoring the Sabbath day.

[16:34] And so the fourth commandment says, keep the Sabbath day. Remember the Sabbath day. It's a holy day. And in the fourth commandment in Exodus 20, it says it's holy because on that day, it's holy. Because on that day, God rested.

[16:46] So it uses Genesis two as the reason for honoring the Sabbath day. And that Hebrews four says there remains a Sabbath day for the people to come. And so in this life right now, we celebrate the Sabbath day and we do it because ultimate Sabbath still awaits.

[17:04] We still haven't reached it. And so we have one day a week out of seven to stop and to look out and to rest and say there's a holy day set apart for me to remember who I am. Remember ultimately what I'm for.

[17:15] That's the command from the 10 commandments. Do you remember? We've said this a couple weeks ago. Do you remember who the first audience was that received this passage in history? The first people to ever hear Genesis chapter two where the Israelites about to enter the promised land for the second time.

[17:35] So the book of Deuteronomy is the first audience of the book of Genesis. So Moses wrote the book of Genesis sometime in between Mount Sinai in this moment that Israel is about to enter the promised land.

[17:47] And these people, their parents in particular and some of the little ones, they were slaves in Egypt. And that means the people listening, part of them were born into seven day a week slavery in the ancient Eastern world.

[18:06] A type of labor. I know some of you are tired today. We're all tired. Everybody's tired every day. That's the main thing we all say to each other. I'm tired. I'm busy. We're always tired, but we've never been tired like this.

[18:20] If you were born into an ancient Eastern context in the desert where you are a slave labor seven days a week from the time of your childhood, you've never been tired like that. We haven't.

[18:32] I remember my dad was big on the children in the house learning hard work. And when I was a teenager, he got me a job in the summer in a air conditioning unit scrap yard where we would rip open the air conditioning units with all sorts of tools and pull out the copper wiring and sell it for metal, you know, because copper is worth good money.

[18:57] And it was an average. This is Mississippi, South Mississippi. It's average in the summer of 37 38 degrees every day. There was no shade. And I worked just five hours a day.

[19:10] And I worked just for about six, eight weeks in the summer. And I remember coming home every single day and doing the same thing, going straight to my mom to plead with her that she would talk to my dad about getting me out of this misery.

[19:26] Right. And of course, from my dad, it was hard work, learn hard work and be miserable. And that's good. Right. Now, that was miserable. It really was, but not like being a slave in Egypt.

[19:40] Because, you know, I had a weekend and I had good night times and I ate plenty of food and they were starving. Now, this is the command slaves in Egypt liberated.

[19:52] Take the Sabbath day off. It was never for them a command of restriction. It was a command of liberation to be told by God.

[20:03] You used to be called worthless slave. Now I'm telling you, you take a you take a day off and you worship and you rest. Boy, freedom, utter freedom from top to bottom. And today, you know, I think I know that I have this problem.

[20:18] And I think most of us do that anybody who asked me, how are you? And a lot of you do ask me that I appreciate it. You say, I say, I'm fine, but you know, we're very busy.

[20:29] And I ask you and you say, I'm fine, but we're very, I'm very busy. And we are, we really are busy and busyness is the curse of the modern life. You know, we in the middle 20th century thought if we can create things like the internet, if we can build robots, if we can make machines, if we can have a company like Tesla come along one day, we will be freed from our labors.

[20:47] And what's happened is the exact opposite. We work more in 2024 than humans in 1954 ever did. And because of the internet, because we can work anywhere, we work everywhere.

[20:59] And so the first thing to say is you were made for real rest. And one of the ways God has explained that to human beings who have bodies is to say, take the Sabbath day, take a day off your labor is your work, because you need it, because you were made for it.

[21:15] And because if you're not doing that, then you're showing yourself, you're running back to Egypt. You're being a slave to your work. You're thinking that your work is the thing that really gives you meaning in this life.

[21:27] And so today, if you, if you like all of us at times struggle to come to worship and then go home and then pull your email back out again in a micro way and a small way, you're in bondage.

[21:39] And if you leave here as a student and you, you've got to get back to the library on a Sunday on the Sabbath day, you're in bondage. You need liberation. You need the Sabbath.

[21:51] God commands it of you. And it's not a command of restriction. It's a command of liberation. You're not defined by your work. And so be liberated. Be free from it. Come back to the Lord who gives you your true identity.

[22:04] Secondly, finally, and a little bit more deeply. What's underneath that issue that we all face because we can work anywhere we work everywhere. There's something underneath that, I think. And one of the ways to get at this is in Psalm chapter four verse eight, David says at the very end of that song in peace, I lie down and sleep for you alone.

[22:25] Oh, Lord, make me dwell in safety. Now David in that song is got an entire army encamped around him. So when he wakes up in the morning, he for all he knows is probably going to die.

[22:37] And the, but as he goes to sleep that night, he says, in your presence, Lord, I lay my head down. And so I sleep in peace. And he was not in peace.

[22:49] His circumstances were terrible. And one of the things we can learn from that is maybe, maybe a way to say it's like this. This is where this is where our faith comes to be tested when you lay your head down to sleep at night.

[23:01] You know, and many of us, we struggle to sleep because our minds are racing about what we failed to do today, about what's coming tomorrow, about the anxieties that are arising in our lives because of our physical safety, our spiritual safety, our lack of achievement, our lack in life in all sorts of ways, all the ways we can get it wrong and catastrophizing it.

[23:23] And we struggle to sleep. And really one of the ways we can test the way we're relating to entering God's rest is in what we do when we lay our heads down to sleep at night.

[23:35] In other words, what is this? What is God's rest truly offering to you today? It's inviting you to do a lot more than just stop checking your email on Sunday. It's inviting you to have, to, for your soul to come to rest.

[23:49] In order to really rest on the Lord's Day, you gotta, your soul actually has to come into a place of true restfulness. And what that means is that we've got to find rest outside of ourselves.

[24:02] In 1981, one of the great movies of the 20th century, Chariots of Fire, came out about our own Edinburgh son, Eric Little, who, Scottish Presbyterian, part of the tradition that this church comes from.

[24:19] And in 1924, Eric Little went to the Olympics in Paris and he, it's a Sabbath story so it works very well for the sermon. He decided not to race in the 100 meter, the thing he trained for the most because it was on Sunday and he went to worship instead.

[24:35] And he did win a gold in another race. But instead of thinking about him for a second, I just want to highlight his counterpart in that story, Harold Abraham's. So the movie is really a balanced story between Eric and Harold.

[24:49] And in it, Harold, who's also an incredibly gifted sprinter, we're told over and over again by the writer of the film that he runs to achieve his meaning in life.

[25:01] And he says at one point, I run so that I can know that I'm worth something, to self justify. And so there's all these different scenes where this really comes out. There's one where he's standing in front of a board at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he tells them in an argument, heated argument, he says, you know, I'm here at Cambridge because I deserve to be.

[25:23] Because of my intelligence and my ability to sprint. And he said, and all of you on this board are here because you were born into families of aristocracy and nobility. And you see Harold, he's countering early 20th century, a sort of a downfall moment of the aristocracy rule in Cambridge.

[25:41] And he says, but I'm here because I earned it. That's what he says. And then in another scene, he really wrestles all throughout, you see this all throughout, that he's, he was born, he's a Jewish young man.

[25:52] And he says that he wants to, he wants to win a gold medal to prove in England in the early 20th century that a Jewish boy deserves respect, just like an English boy.

[26:03] And he saw growing up, his dad always disrespected for being Jewish in different spaces. And you see him wrestling with this. These, these pat answers we all have for who we are, you know, my meaning and my value is that I'm a good person.

[26:19] And that I can justify myself by what I do in this life, by not doing that and by achieving this. That's what we do as human beings. And one film critic, he writes this about it.

[26:32] He said, from Little's perspective, God, he, Little says, God made me for a purpose. He made me fast. And when I run, I feel the pleasures of God. So little success comes from channeling this pleasure into a reckless abandon on the race course, because he's found so much assurance in God, he's free to run.

[26:53] In sharp contrast to Abraham's meticulous training regimen, little runs by faith, full assurance and advance of always being accepted by the only one that really matters.

[27:04] Abraham's runs by works, doubling down and groping after a feeling of acceptance and a sense of purpose that always eludes him, that he can never quite capture.

[27:18] You know, our sleeplessness is metaphorical. Maybe it's literal for you, but it's because we are racing, racing, racing, racing always to find merit and meaning in the way we perform.

[27:32] And true Sabbath is coming to the bottom of your soul and resting in what God says about you and what God has done for you already. That's the real Sabbath. And, you know, we get it.

[27:44] We get that don't work physically, take a day off, stop working, stop checking your email. But do you yet spiritually come to the Sabbath day to lay your deadly doings down, not only in body, but also in heart.

[28:00] And truly come to rest in the reality of justification, God's pronouncement, that you're cleansed, pardoned, forgiven. That you're His and He is yours and you've entered into His rest forever and that can't be taken away from you.

[28:15] And so you can stop chasing and trying to achieve meaning and merit. Lay your deadly doings down. That's real Sabbath. That's Sabbath that goes down to the bottom of the heart.

[28:26] In Mark chapter two, John chapter five, Luke chapter four, you have these three parallel moments of Jesus on Sabbath days. And in each of these passages, Jesus heals somebody or He allows His disciples to eat grind grain on the Sabbath day so they can eat.

[28:45] And in all of these moments, the Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees get very angry about it. And they say, you know, how in the world are you breaking the 39 Sabbath regulations that were written in the inter-testamental period, the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament?

[29:00] They were called the Hakala 39 rules. Never grind grain, never rub two sticks together to make a fire. Thirty, thirty-eight, seven more of those.

[29:11] How in the world are you doing this, Jesus? And they got so mad at Him and He said, the Sabbath was not made for us. Oh, sorry, we were not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for us.

[29:22] I said that exactly backwards. Meaning, we are not made to serve the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made as a gift to us.

[29:33] And Jesus says in that moment, the reason I can say that today in front of your hearing is because I am the Lord of the Sabbath. And in that moment, He is identifying Himself as the God of Genesis chapter two, who created the world and entered into rest.

[29:49] And let me just say today, what is true soul rest? What is true Sabbath to the bottom of your soul that's on offer for you today? And it is this, the very fact that the Lord of the Sabbath, the God of all the earth, who entered into ultimate delight on the seventh day, came into this world to experience utter restlessness.

[30:08] True restlessness so that you could be offered rest forever. Because we chase meaning and merit in all the wrong places, in our performance, in our religion, apart from God shaking our fists at God, Jesus Christ came into this world.

[30:25] And at the cross, there is a restlessness that happens at the cross that no 400 years in slavery and Egypt could ever understand. And He did that to offer you meaning and merit, that's a gift so that you could rest forever to lay your deadly doings down and body and soul and just know that He loves you and He's got you to lose control.

[30:50] You got to put your head down on the pillow at night and just lose control. You're not in charge. Jesus has already done it. You're okay. That's what you need. And that's justification.

[31:02] God's pronouncement over you. You're cleansed, you're pardoned, you're forgiven. And no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter what they say about you, God's going to keep you. Let me close with this last word.

[31:15] Let's get incredibly practical for a couple minutes. Until Jesus Christ returns, we await the Sabbath day. And that means that we commemorate, we look forward to what He's going to do by remembering the Sabbath day Sunday and keeping it holy.

[31:32] How can you do that? How can you, in other words, find better rest in your life through this day, Sunday, the Sabbath day? Let me give you a few ways and we'll finish. First, if at all possible, take your Sabbath day, your rest day, truly on the resurrection day, on the day that God in the New Testament has offered as the new Sabbath.

[31:51] There are some jobs that you can't do that. I do not get to take my Sabbath on the Sabbath day, though I do Sabbath in another way on the Sabbath day. And others of you, you have shift work, you work at a hospital, there's all sorts of reasons some people can't do that.

[32:05] But if you can, at all possible, make it work in your life, take Sabbath on the Sabbath day, on a Sunday. Secondly, the Sabbath day, Sunday, is a day of liberation and joy.

[32:16] And so never burden yourself or others by over-regulating what somebody should do and can do on the Sabbath day. If, Luke 4, John 5, Mark 3, I think Mark 3, I can't remember, Mark 3.

[32:32] If there's one thing that's so clear in these passages in the Gospels is that Jesus is condemning any attempt to over-regulate a Sabbath day. And so we have two very clear commands about how to honor the Sabbath day. One, worship with the Lord and His people.

[32:47] Two, rest from your labors. So it's going to look different for different people because you want to pursue something on the Sabbath day that's avocational, that's different from your normal work. Don't do what you do on a work day on the Sabbath day.

[33:00] Third, on the seventh day, God entered into creation, taking delight to be with us. And so again, come on Sunday and worship with God's people and enter into God's presence as we're about to, as we're doing now and about to do at the Lord's table.

[33:16] Fourth, again, the Sabbath day is a day of liberation and freedom. So let me just reiterate, don't be a slave to your work on the Sabbath day.

[33:27] Fifth, Jesus offered gospel-like mercy on the Sabbath day. The Sabbath day is a day to show mercy, kindness, and rest, the future rest that is to come on Sunday.

[33:39] So it's a great day to show mercy to somebody that's really in need, to feed somebody that's hungry, to clothe the naked, to give a cup of cold water to those who are thirsty. And whatever way that looks like in your life, to your neighbors, to the people you pass, it's a great day to show works of mercy.

[33:57] Six, I think, just a couple more. God entered on the Sabbath day into creation to enjoy what he had made. So the Sabbath day is a great day to enjoy what God made.

[34:09] Get outside, enjoy something beautiful, enjoy the beauty of the space that God has made. And two more. The Sabbath day is a day of accountability.

[34:20] And so it may very well be the case that one practical thing is today you need somebody in your life. I need somebody in my life, I know, to come and say, you got to stop working on your Sabbath day.

[34:33] So put your phone down, get off your email. Somebody, you need somebody. If you're married, it's a little easier. If you're not, you need somebody else in your life that can turn and say to you, hey, get off the phone, get off the computer.

[34:45] To say it, you need somebody in your life to tell you that. Because the Sabbath thing is hard work, ironically, when we're addicted to our work. Lastly, that means that Sabbath day is a day of trust.

[34:58] And so on the Sabbath day to really enter into true soul and body rest, you've got to be able to trust the Lord enough to stop working, stop studying, stop hustling, lose control, stop trying to make money.

[35:11] Enough to say God has me so I can really be at rest today. It's a day of trust. And so Jesus Christ today. He offers you every bit of meaning and every bit of merit that you can ever achieve.

[35:23] Only He can bring you to the Sabbath feast. So let's celebrate that now. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for true rest. And we know that in this busy hustle culture, we don't have it except when we run to your arms.

[35:39] And so I pray today, Jesus, you would help us to run to your arms as we prepare our hearts to come to the feast. Lord, teach us in the feast, the Lord's supper this morning, that you are our ultimate rest.

[35:50] And that it's only in your, the meaning you offer, the merit you've achieved that we can truly find our self justification, our justification, not in self, but in you.

[36:01] So we pray for these hearts now. Lord, in Christ's name, amen.