Life in the Desert: A Case for the Sabbath

Listen in as we look at Exodus 20 and see how Jesus leads us toward rest.

Sermon notes/quotes:

Reading: Exodus 20:8-10 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

“(In Sabbath) drudgery gives way to festivity, family gatherings and occasionally worship, the machinery of self-censorship shut down, too, stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach.” —Judith Shulevitz

“God rested, and in doing so He built a rhythm into the DNA of creation. A tempo, syncopated beat. God worked for six, rested for one. when we fight this work-six-days, Sabbath-one-day rhythm, we go against the grain of the universe. And to quote the philosopher H.H. Farmer, “if you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.” - John Mark Comer

“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any 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 sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)

“They (the Israelites) invented the idea of social equality. The Israelite Sabbath institutionalized an astonishing, hitherto undreamed-of notion: that every single creature has the right to rest, not just the rich and the privileged. Covered under the Fourth Commandment are women, slaves, strangers and, improbably, animals. The verse in Deuteronomy that elaborates on this aspect of the Sabbath repeats, twice, that slaves were not to work, as if to drive home what must have been very hard to understand in the ancient world. The Jews were meant to perceive the Sabbath not only as a way to honor God but also as the central vehicle of their liberation theology, a weekly reminder of their escape from their servitude in Egypt.” —Judith Shulevitz

“If you want rest you have to go to Him and if you think you’ve gone to Him but you don’t have any rest you don’t know what you have—you still haven’t taken ahold of what you have.” - Timothy Keller

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

“Sabbath, Anything to index your heart toward grateful recognition of God’s reality and goodness.” -       John Mark Comer