I saw something positive on the internet this week.
It's kind of like a unicorn sighting when you see something positive on the internet,
but it did bring up a good question given the weekend that it is and what's on a lot of people's minds today.
A week ago, if we think back a little over 2,000 years ago, just for those of you who didn't know, yesterday was also Passover,
which means that every so often Easter weekend, Good Friday and Passover happen at the same time.
It's not consistent, but every so often it lines up, which actually means that it's biblical this weekend this year,
because we know from the Bible Christ was crucified on Passover.
A week ago, before the crucifixion, Jesus had what? His triumphal entry,
riding on the donkey with people waving palm branches and laying out their coats on the ground and singing their hosannas.
Then throughout the next week, Jesus cleansed the temple again and talked about his death several times with his apostles,
challenged the Pharisees multiple times.
It seemed like he was rather bold in that final week between the triumphal entry and his death.
It was certainly causing a stir amongst the people.
I'm sure there was heightened excitement.
I'm sure people were saying, oh, is it now time when this young rabbi is going to finally announce himself
to be the long-awaited Messiah, going to overthrow the Romans, etc., etc.
Then we get to Thursday evening.
Thursday evening would have been what we call the Last Supper.
We call it the Last Supper because that was the night that Christ was finally betrayed
and he had his prayer in the garden and they arrested him with that kangaroo court of a mock trial overnight.
It seemed like he didn't sleep.
And then so on.
Jesus, however, hadn't been caught up in the excitement and in the false hopes of what the Messiah was going to do.
Jesus knew what was coming.
Jesus knew that he was going to be betrayed and mocked and crucified and he was going to die.
He knew this.
He knew that he was that lamb that was to be slain for the forgiveness of sins.
And so a question that I came across this weekend really made me think a little bit.
If you knew that you only had 24 hours left to live, what would you do?
Sometimes we pose that hypothetical question.
You know, if you knew the day of your death and you only had so long, etc., etc., what would you do?
Well, many people would go, well, I would quit my job in glorious fashion.
I would let my bosses know exactly how I felt because I've held it in for so long.
And then I would I would travel or I would binge watch all my shows.
If you were a little bit more noble, maybe you would you would spend time with all of your loved ones and you would you would bask in their fellowship.
And you would you would pass on all of your wisdom to the next generation.
You would do various things in our society, though, I think most people would answer in a self seeking, self serving.
I'm going to go out with all the fireworks that I can kind of way.
I want to get in my last hurrahs before my eyes close.
But what did Jesus do when he knew that he had only 24 hours left to live, maybe at this time a little bit less?
What did Jesus do?
As he was in that upper room, as he was sharing that final meal with his disciples, his closest circle of followers and believers,
his friends whom he had spent three and a half years with as they were partaking of the Passover feast.
Again, he heard the rumblings of an often debated conversation.
Who's the greatest?
So this time it was, well, I'm not serving them.
I'm not helping that person.
I'm not washing their feet.
Where is the servant?
Should be Andrew, should be Peter, should be etc.
Jesus knew he was going to die in a little under 24 hours.
And what did he do?
Well, he did what he had been doing since he first left heaven and humbled himself even to the point of a servant, the Bible says.
He took off his outer clothes.
He girded himself in a servant's way of adorning themselves or dressing themselves.
He knelt down and our Savior with his own hands, with that basin of water,
washed the dirty, dusty feet of all of his apostles, even the one who was going to betray him in only a short matter of time.
If you knew that you were going to die in 24 hours, what would you do?
I would encourage us that we reflect a little bit or a lot or rather in a concentrated way this weekend.
Jesus knew he was going to die and he knew why he was dying.
And it's not because he deserved it, but he was dying for you and for me.
And he was dying for Judas and for Peter and for everybody else there.
And he humbled himself to the point of a servant and he washed and he forgave and he blessed and he encouraged.
I would like us to consider this weekend as we have whatever we do on an Easter weekend.
Please don't forget what your Lord and Savior did for you, even with death staring him right in the face.
I think that's encouraging today.
I would like to greet you in a couple of different ways.
You've already heard it.
Happy Sabbath, Feliz Sabado, Sabato in Jema, Bon Sabat, Gesegniter Sabat, and then Shabbat Shalom.
There are many different ways that we can greet each other as the calendar cycles around every seven days.
And we hit day seven and those who remember the seventh day, we have these greetings.
And I love it.
And I love the fact that as you look through the various language around the world,
we tend to greet each other using that word of Sabbath in its many different ways.
I have asked three people to come help me with the first part of our introduction today.
If those three would come join me.
We are picking up our sermon series from the beginning to the end.
And it happens to line up with this weekend and what is on our mind.
And these three fine people have agreed to help me with this.
And they're all going to answer the same question.
We'll go start with Miss Janet.
And the question I posed was, for you, what is the meaning of the Sabbath?
We need the green one turned up and on.
Is the green light on?
Oh, it's not. Let me see.
There you go.
So the meaning of Sabbath for me is so that we can spend the whole entire day talking to God and communicating.
But this Sabbath is a special day because Jesus was crucified yesterday and he was laid in his tomb.
And we really don't know on the Sabbath what happened to him, where he was or what was going on.
We only know that he was laid to rest in that tomb and the tomb was sealed.
And then the next day he rids from the grave.
All right. Thank you.
And Becky, same question.
What is the meaning of the Sabbath for you?
Well, I always make a joke and say that because I was so tired, it was a day of rest.
And so I wanted to worship on his day.
But as you were talking, I mean, he did rest in the grave on the Sabbath.
But I had a verse I wanted to read.
Ezekiel 2012 says, moreover, also, I gave my Sabbath to be a sign between me and them that they may know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.
And I just wanted to be his and I wanted to be sanctified and I wanted him to be my Lord.
Very good. And the Sabbath reminds you of that. Very good.
And Stephen, same question.
I've been blessed with 20 minutes to address this.
It's a joke with my son.
Personal history, just a little bit.
I was a fighter.
I fought against the Sabbath.
I fought aggressively against the Sabbath.
I've not been an Adventist all my life, and when I came into it, it was very, very hard for me to adjust.
I had a pastor intervene, talked with me, helped get the understanding of it clear to me.
And I started to live the Sabbath as kind of a duty in the beginning.
But now I consider it to be a gift and rest as part of it.
I think that understanding his rest on this particular day, even though we don't know how he rested,
we do understand that death is rest and I believe that he rested the entire Sabbath as dead.
For myself, this is just a wonderful gift that I've come to accept and to grow in,
and hopefully all of the rest of us have done the same.
Thank you so much, y'all. I appreciate the help.
If we were to ask each person in this room or others in our community here close to College Dale
where we have more of a concentration of Seventh-day Adventists,
you might get similar answers, but each person would probably have their own little bit of flavor to it.
I was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist. My parents joined the church when I was really little,
so I don't really know anything else.
The Sabbath for me as a child was long. It just seemed to kind of drag on.
It was rather dull for my young self.
At a certain point, I looked forward to it because then I had friends that I could hang out with,
and we could go to the park, and we could enjoy each other's company.
As I also got a little older, I could participate a little bit more in church rather than just kind of sit and listen.
It really wasn't until I was in my adult years, in my twenties,
when the Sabbath took on a different kind of meaning for me.
It meant all of those things that were shared here,
but it also meant what is going to be the focus of today's message.
The focus of today's message is Shabbat Shalom, a peaceful Sabbath,
in case you didn't know what that meant.
A peaceful Sabbath. The Sabbath is not always peaceful to everyone.
For many people, the Sabbath is boring.
For many people, the Sabbath is stressful because you've got to get up,
maybe not earlier, but about the same time,
and you're getting your family ready in a different way than you might other times of the week.
You're putting on better clothes, and are they ironed, and it can't be pajamas again,
and you can't just do this or that. Maybe you want to have a little different meal.
We've got to rush, and we've got to get on time because there's Sabbath school,
and we don't want to miss the announcements.
You've certainly got to be there for the sermon because you've got to hear the pastor.
That's the best part. I'm kidding.
Then what? Well, you have your lay activities.
That could be service in some way, but that could also be the more horizontal,
with a blanket and a pillow kind of lay activities.
Maybe if you are a youth in a church that has this, you have pathfinder outings or something of the sort.
The Sabbath can involve many different things, but it's not always peaceful.
It's not.
I would like us to consider what the Bible has to say,
so as we look at the Sabbath, as we look at this weekly day of rest,
we can pray that God move us in the direction of an attitude of Shabbat Shalom.
It can be peaceful because there is a peace to be found in it.
If you have your Bibles, I would encourage you to open it back up to our Scripture reading for today.
That's Genesis 2 and the first three verses.
We have in our sermon series now completed Genesis 1,
and so it makes sense that we would start with Genesis 2.
It lines up very nicely for this weekend, as you will see.
I want you to know up front that though we are looking at the seventh day in the creation order,
we are looking at the Sabbath. We are considering the benefits of it.
This is not a proof-text sermon.
We're not today going to prove all of the many different texts found in passages from the Bible,
how we know that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.
There are many other places you can do that.
This is certainly where it starts, Genesis 2.
You can move on into Exodus 16, Exodus 20, Isaiah.
You can go into the Gospels and observe Christ's relationship and his habits,
as it was his practice to do.
You can read through the book of Acts and see that the apostles kept doing it, and so on and so on.
There are other places that have a study into how we know that this is this.
In other words, we're going to look at the Sabbath from a slightly different direction.
If you'll read with me in the Bible, Genesis 2, verses 1, 2, and 3,
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,
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.
From the get-go, we will understand how this day is distinctly different from the preceding six.
The preceding six, if we'll recall, started with, and then God said.
That's the opening phrase for all of the previous days, 1 through 6.
Then God said, let there be light.
Then God said, let there be an expanse, a firmament between the waters.
Then God said, let there be fish and birds, and then God said, and then God said.
Every one of those. Not here. Read it closely.
On the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, he rested, and etc.
We just read it. There is no then God said, let there be.
That sets it apart from the other six.
We also notice that on the seventh day, we don't have a continuation of a pattern that we saw with the previous six.
So in the first three days of creation, God created an environment, light and firmament with waters and land and plants.
Then he populated in days four, five, and six what he had made with various physical bodies.
He said, let there be light. And then that's on day one. Then on day four, he said, here are the heavenly bodies that will give the light.
Then on day two, the firmament and the waters. On day five, we have birds and fish.
And then we have land and plants and we have the land beasts.
That's a very clear pattern that parallels each other as you go through it.
So you have a six, but then you have one that's distinct with number seven.
It breaks that pattern. It's isolated and chopped off right here.
It's another way of highlighting the specialty of the seventh day as we just read through this passage.
Also, if you will notice that this is the only day that God doesn't end with or the recording doesn't end with,
then it was evening and morning the fill in the blank day.
It doesn't end that way. I want you to remember that as we come back to it.
We also read in these three verses a very clear and distinct repetition.
Multiple times we read that the heavens and the earth were finished.
And then we have on the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done.
And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
And then God blessed it because on it God rested from all the work that he had done.
We see that verse repeated three times for a clear and strong emphasis.
When you read that, when you read the repetition, when you see this phrase come up over and over and over again,
by the way in the Hebrew it is written where that's right in the middle.
Each time that it is written, it's right in the middle.
We aren't talking about the seventh day being a day of works.
That is to emphasize the fact that God was done. He had completed the work.
In other words, at the end of creation, as God was moving into what was just going to be a period of time right there,
God had essentially said, it is finished. It's time to rest.
It wasn't because God was exhausted. It's because God was just finished.
There wasn't anything left for him to do on our planet.
He started with the Spirit hovering over the depths of the water and in the darkness,
the Holy Spirit, God had considered chaos and what was he going to do with it.
He had a plan and a purpose for everything that would follow.
Once that was put into action, spoken into being, and then populated and granted a purpose,
there was nothing left to do.
God wasn't exhausted. God does not get exhausted. He doesn't tire out.
But when the work is completed, there's nothing left for him to do except to rest in it.
Except to rest in it.
There are so many wonderful things that we can learn from these three verses.
The heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them.
God was again credited as the one who made everything that you and I know and enjoy and are blessed by.
God had completed the work and once he had completed it, he rested.
This was a day distinctly set apart. It wasn't supposed to be like the others.
We get that from verse 3.
God blessed the seventh day. He made it holy.
He sanctified it. He set it apart for a special purpose.
God rested because the work was done.
He didn't have anything else to do.
Do you think that that first Sabbath day when God recognized the completed work
and he had already declared it good and very good and then he rested in it,
do you believe that that was a peaceful Sabbath?
I think so.
I can't come up with anything other than when God has blessed and God has said that it's good,
that it's very good, that God has made it holy and that he himself has chosen to rest in it.
That it's anything but a peaceful Sabbath.
What is the implication for man when we read these three verses?
Did mankind have a role or a hand in creation?
Well, no.
Mankind was not present when light was spoken into existence and etc.
In fact, man was the crowning act of creation at the end of creation on the sixth day.
It seems that the only role that man had to play was in naming animals.
That's a high privilege.
God didn't name the animals.
He allowed his underservant, his undershepherd, if you will, of this planet
to have the privilege of naming the animals.
But that wasn't creative.
I don't know if it was work.
Adam just looked at whatever animal came before him and gave him whatever name he happened to give him.
I think that probably would have been a fascinating scene to observe.
Maybe you can just, in your thoughts, see angels or the Creator there with his crowning creation and going,
Adam, I'd like you to name this. What do you think of that one?
I'm not really sure. What would you call something with four legs and fur?
What is that thing off the back end of it? Oh, that's a tail.
He seems awfully friendly and kind.
So he names it. That seems to be all that he had.
But then what does man get to enjoy?
He gets to enjoy the completed work.
Man does not get created and then put right into hard labor.
This is very distinct.
And I mention this point because from the Babylonian creation account,
it's a rather gruesome account.
Gods fought each other. The earth was created because one god died and the victorious god
stretched the skin of the dead god around the soil.
And that's what we walk on. And the spine is the mountains that we.
It's gruesome.
But then humans are created in the Babylonian creation account.
Humans are created and they don't get to enjoy a peaceful experience out the gate.
Because the gods created humans in that account and said,
get at it, slaves, so they could relax.
So the gods could take a vacation and the humans were there just serving them.
Very different than what is recorded here by Moses.
Mankind is created and then mankind gets to rest with his god on the Sabbath.
There wasn't anything left for even the humans to do.
Everything was perfect.
And they could rest with their god.
What a blessing and how peaceful.
The Sabbath in the beginning was the celebration of a finished work.
And it was intended and given for mankind so mankind could participate
and celebrate in that same finished work.
From that point on through the rest of the Old Testament,
the Sabbath continued to be a chance for God's people to rest in him.
The Sabbath became a sign of their deliverance from Egypt.
It became a sign of the covenant relationship.
They'll be my people and the sign will be a covenant between me and them.
And they will know that I am their god and they are my people.
The Sabbath was on a cycle with many other holidays
that reminded God's people that he was the provider,
that he was their protector, that he was loving and gracious and they belonged to him.
The Sabbath was a reminder that God wanted to dwell with his people
and be present with them, not separate from them.
The Sabbath was all of that.
When we get to the New Testament, the Sabbath also takes on something extra.
If you will turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John.
In the Gospel of John, like the preceding three Gospels,
we have the account of Christ's betrayal and his trial and his crucifixion.
The Gospel of John includes, this is John chapter 19,
and we're going to look at verse 28.
This is after the Last Supper.
This is after the praying in the garden.
This is after the crowd had come to arrest him and he was betrayed with a kiss.
This is after going back and forth between the high priests.
This is after Pontius Pilate.
This is after the scourgings.
This is after the thief, the murderer, was released instead of him.
This was after the crowd that cried out, Hosanna, had turned on him.
This is after he had fallen under the weight of that old rugged cross.
This is after the nails had pierced him.
This is after he had given his mother over to his beloved apostle.
This is after he had told one of the thieves that he would be remembered in paradise.
This is right at the very end.
This is after Christ had ministered to not only the Jews of his time,
but those on the outskirts of the recognized society,
the Samaritans, the religiously kicked out.
This was after he had risen the dead.
This was after he had healed the lame and the sick and he had fed thousands.
This was after he had declared that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.
And this was after he had told his apostles that he was going to die,
but that he would raise again and they didn't get it.
But as he's there on the cross after a couple of hours suspended between heaven and earth,
bearing the weight of sin for humanity, bleeding, I'm sure hurting,
having expressed his sense of abandonment by his father,
I can't imagine going through what our Lord and Savior did.
After all of that, we read this.
John 19 and verse 28, after this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished,
said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst.
A jar full of sour wine or vinegar and wine stood there,
so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hissup branch and held it to his mouth.
When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished.
And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit, gave up his breath.
And then what?
After some time, he was taken off the cross.
He was wrapped.
He was laid in a tomb and there he lay over the Sabbath.
The Sabbath takes on a new meaning for the Christian era because the Sabbath is also a weekly reminder
that Christ's work in redeeming mankind is finished.
The price was paid.
The sacrifice offered and received.
The blood spilled.
The experience of not knowing beyond the grave, facing the possibility of an eternal death.
The separation from his father had pressed in on him.
All of that had taken place.
Jesus had already declared his father, shown his father, spoken of the love of the father,
preached about the heavenly kingdom and truths that were.
He had peeled back a lot of the hypocrisy and spoken more of what God really meant in the law and the prophets.
What else was there for Jesus to do?
And much like the creation account, when it was finished, our Savior rested.
The Sabbath takes on a new meaning for the Christian era because it reminds us that Jesus has done all the work for our salvation and now, and then he rested.
There's nothing left for you and I to do.
The good news is there never was something for us to do.
It all had to be on him.
But now it's done.
It's completed.
It's finished, Jesus says.
Jesus says, there's nothing else to do.
I've done it all.
I've done it all for them.
I've done it all for my father.
It is finished.
And then he rested.
What a wonderful thought.
What a humbling thought.
It really does, for my meaning of the Sabbath, that's what the Sabbath tells me each time I celebrate it.
Each time I put a pause on everything else that goes on during the week.
Each time I reflect on these 24 hours of sacred seconds that God himself blessed and sanctified in the beginning.
It tells me of two things.
One, that I have a Creator who loves me and did all that work for me.
I can't make myself.
I can't make anything else.
I get to enjoy a rest in knowing that.
And then two, the Sabbath tells me that when it comes to my redemption, my salvation, my recreation, Christ has already finished the work.
That's what the Sabbath tells me.
That's what the Sabbath means to me.
So now when I come to the Sabbath day, even though it might have its own element of busyness,
even though the Sabbath might bring with it a different kind of schedule from Sunday to Friday,
even though the Sabbath is different, even though it might be a little busier in some aspects because we're wrangling the kids
and we're making sure that everything looks okay and are we going to this church or that church or this visiting afterwards and so on,
even though all of that might be going on, I can do it all in knowing that Christ has done everything already for me.
And that means that he has also done everything already for you.
From the beginning, the Sabbath meant that man could rest in their creation that God had already finished.
To the end, the Sabbath means that we can rest in Jesus in our salvation because that work is also already finished.
We have one more passage to look at for this morning, the book of Hebrews in chapter four.
Talking about a rest for the people of God, the author begins with the Israelites in the desert and the promised land and so on,
and how they were looking forward to Canaan as that chance for rest because God had said,
when you go into the promised land, I'll conquer people for you, I'll give you a land that you didn't have to till and crops that you get to harvest,
that you didn't have to plant, and you will get cities that you didn't have to build.
All of that is wrapped up in what God had promised his people, the Israelites, about Canaan.
You're going to inherit a land that you didn't have to do anything over.
I've already done it, or other people have done it, it's already taken care of, I'm going to give it to you now.
But the author of Hebrews picks up in four that they missed out on that initially because they had hardened their hearts.
And that's a warning for you and I today because in verse six,
since therefore it remains for some to enter it, that is his rest.
In the previous verses in verse four, we know that God is talking about the seventh day.
That's the connection. The seventh day is the rest that we're talking about.
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, God's rest, those who formally received the good news,
failed to enter because of disobedience.
There's a connection between the Sabbath and Canaan and the Israelites who didn't go in because they didn't obey, they didn't believe.
They didn't have the faith that God wanted them to have.
Again he appoints a certain day, today saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
Today my friends you are hearing God's voice.
Are you hardening your hearts?
Every time you open up the word of God and every time you come to worship him
and every time you offer up a prayer and every time you hear the word of God proclaimed to you,
God is speaking to you.
How are you responding? Are you listening and hearing his voice?
And the warning is do not harden your hearts.
For if Joshua had given them rest, that is in Canaan, God would not have spoken of another day later on.
So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
There remains a Sabbath rest.
There remains that gift of rest that we don't have to labor over for people today the same as it was then.
And Joshua is the reference.
There remains the Sabbath rest.
For whoever has entered, God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
Until you have accepted Christ's sacrifice on your behalf and by grace you have been saved through faith,
not of works, lest any man should boast.
And up until you've accepted that, then you are trying to work your way into a good position.
The Bible is clear.
Until you come to Jesus and you recognize what he has done, until you see in the word of God that all of your good works mean nothing
and your righteousness is as filthy rags, until you recognize that, you're trying to work your way.
But Jesus has said it's finished.
It's done.
So are you resting from your works and resting in him is the question.
Are you still trying to labor your way or are you accepting what Christ has finished on your behalf?
It goes on in verse 11.
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Please note that we are not striving in.
We are not striving to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps a little bit more.
We are not striving to straighten our shoulders a little bit taller.
We are not developing whatever good we happen to have in us like some people propose.
What are we striving to do?
We are striving to enter into the rest of Jesus Christ.
It doesn't make any sense to those of us that are bent to just work hard and prove ourselves and so on and so forth.
It makes no sense to stop working and instead rest and then you're saved.
Then you have hope.
Then you have a future to look forward to.
Then you have a peaceful Sabbath.
My friends, the Sabbath from creation all the way until Jesus comes back to take us as his own.
The Sabbath continues to be a reminder that God has done all the work for us.
And we rest in him.
We rest in him in creation.
We rest in him in salvation.
We rest in him in the glory of his nature and we can't shape it.
We can just enjoy what he has already done.
And we rest in our recreation knowing that he will shape us after his own similitude.
Give up your works.
When you come into the Sabbath day, when you have looked at your calendar
and you know that Friday is drawing to a close and we count our Sabbaths by the biblical records of evening and mornings, our days.
When you come into the Sabbath day, take a deep breath.
Put the TV aside.
Set down the homework.
Turn off the spreadsheets for work or the accounting books for balancing a checkbook or whatever you happen to do.
Silence Twitter or the other corners of Facebook where you're not watching a sermon like here at Ringgold.
Get out of the news headlines that only seek to scare and anger you.
And rest.
Knowing that all of that hot mess will still be there for you once the Sabbath is closed.
And all of what we are frustrated over and hurt by and broken by in this world has already been dealt with two thousand and changed years ago by Christ on that cross.
Jesus did it.
He did the work.
He lived the life.
He died of the death.
And he rose from the dead.
And he's preparing a home for us.
He's doing it all.
He has said it is finished.
Take him at his word.
And enjoy and rest in a Shabbat Shalom.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love and we thank you for your grace.
We thank you that you could not be separated from us, that your love compelled you to come to this earth to live, to die, to rise again.
We thank you that you are looking and you are longing to redeem us back to yourself.
And I pray that we would be a people today who will accept that free gift.
I pray that we will be a people who will remember that you have done the work for us and we need only rest in you.
And Lord, I pray that we would all accept and make that choice today.
Lord, I pray that today would be a peaceful day.
I pray that today would be a restful Sabbath.
Lord, I pray that today we would find ourselves close to your presence.
And then I pray that it wouldn't be only for today, but it would be for each day moving forward.
As we ask we pray in Jesus name. Amen.