Sermon Text: Deuteronomy 5:12–15
Date: June 2, 2024
Event: Proper 4, Year B
Deuteronomy 5:12–15 (EHV)
Observe the Sabbath day by setting it apart as holy, just as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you are to serve and perform all of your regular work, but the seventh day is a sabbath rest to the Lord your God. You are not to do any regular work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock or the alien who resides inside your gates, in order that your male servant and your female servant may rest like you. Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the day of rest.
Rest Is God’s Eternal Blessing
This week I came across a brief video of a guy bragging about being awake, working at 2am because he was dedicated. The implication was that other people were weak for sleeping … or something? I’m not sure. I didn’t pay much attention to it because it seemed kind of bonkers. Because, after all, rest is important. Ask any parent of a newborn how important it is to get some rest whenever you can because the baby’s arrival means a complete upheaval to your sleep patterns.
Now, are there times when you need to buckle down and get things done, be it that essay for school, that report for work, or setting the house back in order after a long day? Sure. But perhaps with slightly better time management and flexible priorities, you can both get things done that need to be done when they need to be done and get the proper amount of rest. Taking care of your body’s physical needs is not a foolish weakness; it’s a wise strength.
And this is not just some modern worldly wisdom that people have come up with after years of study and observation. These are truths that God, in his infinite wisdom, built into creation and emphasized repeatedly in his Word. God designed the world so that day and night would divide each day into working time and resting time. When Elijah was falling into the pit of despair and depression, God didn’t try to reason with him. He tells him first to sleep and eat and then sleep some more. Even Jesus, as true man, grew tired and often withdrew from the crowds to rest. At one point, he was so exhausted that he was sleeping through a massive storm on the Sea of Galilee while in the stern of the boat!
So important was rest that God even built it into the Ten Commandments. It wasn't just about taking a nap or spending time with the family. God had a very specific, spiritual reason for this command. Through it, he worked great blessings for his people then, and he continues to work for us today.
Our First Reading this morning is taken from the book of Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law to the generation who would inherit the Promised Land after they wandered in the wilderness for forty years because of the previous generation’s lack of trust in God’s promises. But when God originally gave this command to his people right after their rescue from Egypt, he included this detail and explanation: For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. In this way the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy (Exodus 20:11).
So the origins of this rest command take us all the way back to the very beginning, to creation. In the book of Genesis, at the end of the initial account of the creation of the universe, God explains the seventh day this way: The heavens and the earth were finished, along with everything in them. On the seventh day God had finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as holy, because on it he rested from all his work of creation that he had done (Genesis 2:1-3).
We get a better understanding of what God is commanding in this Sabbath day command when we know what he’s basing it on. God wasn't tired when he rested on the seventh day of that creation week. God is all-powerful; he doesn’t run out of energy or need to take a breather. No, when God rested, he stopped his creative work because it was perfectly done and he enjoyed the work that he had done.
Maybe you can appreciate that. I can remember in school finally getting that big paper done, printing it out, stapling it, and then just leafing through it to enjoy the fact that the project was complete. Even this past week, I cleaned the garage at home and used a leaf blower to do an incredibly basic floor cleaning. It’s not impressive at all, but how many times do you think I admired how the cleaner floor looked in the garage as I came and went this week? These small moments of rest and reflection can bring us joy and satisfaction, just as God enjoyed his creation on the seventh day.
God created the entire universe in service of a special relationship with the crown jewel of his creation—people. He created them his own image—in perfect harmony with him. And so that seventh day of rest was a day to be done creating and to start enjoying fellowship with Adam and Eve.
Israel’s Sabbath day commandment echoes this purpose. Though sin has completely ruined people's relationship with God, God promised to fix it. Right in the Garden of Eden, not long after the first day of rest, God promised a Champion who would crush the serpent’s head and rescue every human being from their sins. In many ways, the Sabbath day of rest was just a little glimmer of what God would do. And that promise was fulfilled in Jesus, who observed the Sabbath perfectly and became our eternal rest, providing us eternal rest in him.
Note that our First Reading does not mention what specific things you can or can’t do. As the centuries passed, different hedge laws were added around this Sabbath day law. These man-made traditions set limits on what type of actions were allowed on the Sabbath and even, at times, how many steps you were allowed to take. None of those restrictions are in God’s command. God’s command was to take a day off, a day of rest, trust that he would provide even if you didn’t work on that day, and spend that time focused on him and his promises. Perhaps that would mean worship at the Tabernacle or Temple. Perhaps that would be longer times of family discussions around what we might call home devotions. But the Sabbath’s design was one of blessing—as Jesus said, the Sabbath was for man, not the other way around—and it was much less about following rules and more focused on what God would do.
And so we jump ahead to our day. Paul was clear in our Second Reading that no one should be willing to be judged by a Sabbath day celebration. We are not obligated to observe a complete day of rest on Saturday because Jesus has fulfilled that law for us. He has brought the real rest from sin and death that the Sabbath day only pictured. Paul reminded us that you don’t continue to stare at someone’s shadow when you have the person standing in front of you, We are not required to stare at the shadow of the Sabbath day when Jesus is right before us.
That said, the spirit of the original Sabbath day still applies. We may not be required to observe a day completely off from our regular work, but fellowship with God, time surrounded by him and his promises, is vital. Martin Luther picked up on that spirit of the Third Commandment when he wrote his explanation of it in his Small Catechism: We should fear and love God that we do not despise preaching and his Word, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it.
We don’t need to limit this to one day! There can be little sabbaths for you every day. Perhaps a time of devotion and prayer with your morning coffee, meditation on God’s promises and blessings, and prayer before bed. Here in worship on a Sunday morning, Bible Class with your fellow Christians, time in the Word after dinner. There are so many times to gather at our loving Savior’s feet and hear anew all that he has done and will do for us!
All of these sabbaths point ahead to the real rest that is coming. Not an hour in a pew or a day off of work, not a quick prayer before bed or a lengthy study of God’s Word. No, the real rest comes after this life. Jesus didn’t come to give us occasional rest from the rigors of our day-to-day existence; all of his promises point to the future, eternal rest that we will have with God forever in heaven.
This is good because even though we’re not required to observe a specific day of rest, your mind is likely racing with times when you haven’t kept the spirit of this Third Commandment. Have I avoided attending church because I felt I had better things to do with my time? Have I been in church but let things other than restful time with my God be my priority? Have I ignored personal time in God’s Word or just seen it as another task to get done rather than the blessing that it is? We can all give a hearty, yet shameful, “yes” to those questions.
And so we look at Jesus, the one who not only taught the truths about the Sabbath—it’s for doing good and receiving God’s blessings!—but also kept this commandment perfectly for us. Jesus was always dedicated to worship, regular in prayer with his heavenly Father, and sacrificed his time and energy to bring God’s Word to the people around him. Jesus was flawless in his obedience so that he could give that obedience to you.
The shameful “yes” to those questions of neglect is not the final answer because Jesus kept this command in our place. So when God examines us and how dedicated we have been, he doesn’t see my flaky attitude to his Word or your failures to prioritize it. No, he just sees Jesus’ perfection. And those times that we have failed to do what we should are washed away in his blood, shed for us on the cross.
And that’s when the purpose of the Sabbath rest comes into focus. This was not and is not a rule that had to be followed to show obedience; no, this rest is for our eternal good. It is a time to meditate on how Jesus saved us from our sins. It is a time to repeatedly prioritize hearing God’s amazing love story, how he cares so deeply about us that he would sacrifice his only Son to rescue us from our sins.
Like nearly everything God does, this direction of rest and time in his Word looks ahead to eternity, when God will provide real rest from everything that causes pain or sadness. In eternal life, we will have unending rest and fellowship with our Creator and Savior God.
So take your time with God, not as something you have to do but as a blessing you get to do. Sit at Jesus’ feet and hear again and again how he loves you. The message of our salvation is not always pleasant to hear because we’d much rather be told that we had nothing bad in us from which we needed to be saved. But the end of that story is always a perfect joy because it ends with a perfect rest won on Jesus’ bloodied cross, which is proved by his empty tomb.
Lord, hasten that day of eternal rest! And until that day, help us find our rest in you for all the days of our lives. Amen.
