1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000 Thank you, Kim. 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:11,360 Let's open our Bibles together now, please, to the book of Exodus and the 20th chapter. 3 00:00:11,360 --> 00:00:19,000 As we continue studying together the Ten Commandments, we'll pick up our reading today in the eighth 4 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:22,040 verse of Exodus 20. 5 00:00:22,040 --> 00:00:26,920 It says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 6 00:00:26,920 --> 00:00:33,320 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord 7 00:00:33,320 --> 00:00:34,780 your God. 8 00:00:34,780 --> 00:00:40,640 In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male or your 9 00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:46,680 female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 10 00:00:46,680 --> 00:00:51,680 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in 11 00:00:51,680 --> 00:00:55,240 them, and rested on the seventh day. 12 00:00:55,240 --> 00:01:02,480 Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 13 00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:09,720 Mark Twain made the comment, When I was younger I used to remember anything, whether it happened 14 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:13,720 or not. 15 00:01:13,720 --> 00:01:20,720 I heard a story about a preacher who was counseling one of his parishioners who was having trouble 16 00:01:20,720 --> 00:01:21,720 with a neighbor. 17 00:01:21,720 --> 00:01:26,920 The preacher said to him, Look, what you need to do is just put it behind you and forget 18 00:01:26,920 --> 00:01:29,720 about it. 19 00:01:29,720 --> 00:01:36,040 The parishioner said, Well, preacher, I did forget about it, but my memory is so bad that 20 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:38,000 I forgot I forget. 21 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:47,280 Well, you see, the problem we have as human beings is that we don't have a good memory. 22 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:53,080 We don't remember the things we ought to remember, and we forget the things that we ought to 23 00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:55,240 forget, ought to remember. 24 00:01:55,240 --> 00:02:00,840 Jesus established this table that we are coming to this morning as a means of reminding us 25 00:02:00,840 --> 00:02:02,960 of something. 26 00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:05,560 He said, Do this in remembrance of me. 27 00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:07,560 You say, Well, could we ever forget? 28 00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:08,560 Yes. 29 00:02:08,560 --> 00:02:12,840 As a matter of fact, we can forget and do forget. 30 00:02:12,840 --> 00:02:18,320 The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy in the first century and said, Remember Jesus Christ, risen 31 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:21,960 from the dead. 32 00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:26,580 We have a tendency to forget those things that we ought to remember. 33 00:02:26,580 --> 00:02:33,080 And here the Lord God establishes for Israel another means by which they were to remember 34 00:02:33,080 --> 00:02:35,040 Him. 35 00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:40,380 He says to them, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 36 00:02:40,380 --> 00:02:44,080 The fourth commandment of the ten. 37 00:02:44,080 --> 00:02:53,100 The word Sabbath means repose, a day of repose, a day of rest, a day of cessation from labor. 38 00:02:53,100 --> 00:02:58,080 I want you to think with me this morning about the significance of this commandment. 39 00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:05,040 Think of it first of all in its relationship to the world, the significance of the Sabbath 40 00:03:05,040 --> 00:03:07,000 to the world. 41 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:10,980 The Sabbath relates, it seems, to creation. 42 00:03:10,980 --> 00:03:17,040 For here in this very text, the Lord points back to the creation. 43 00:03:17,040 --> 00:03:22,560 And He says in six days He created the world and all that is in it. 44 00:03:22,560 --> 00:03:27,440 And it was followed by a day of rest. 45 00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:31,720 So someone asked, Well, was God tired after six days? 46 00:03:31,720 --> 00:03:34,080 Did He exhaust Himself in the creation? 47 00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:37,260 Of course the answer to that is no. 48 00:03:37,260 --> 00:03:40,880 God is all powerful and could never exhaust Himself. 49 00:03:40,880 --> 00:03:47,080 The reason that He rested was to show His satisfaction. 50 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:53,440 He stopped His work in order to show that it was complete and He was pleased with the 51 00:03:53,440 --> 00:03:57,200 totality of it. 52 00:03:57,200 --> 00:04:03,440 I think that we can assume that from Adam's time onward, that day was established by the 53 00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:08,160 Lord the seventh day as a day for rest. 54 00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:14,400 In Genesis 2 verse 2 it says, The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 55 00:04:14,400 --> 00:04:18,060 That is, He set it apart. 56 00:04:18,060 --> 00:04:24,600 But over time, over the generations from Adam's time, it seems to have been forgotten and 57 00:04:24,600 --> 00:04:31,680 obscured by the traditions of men as men became increasingly pagan as they turned away from 58 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:35,840 the knowledge of the true God. 59 00:04:35,840 --> 00:04:44,880 Cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon speak of sabbatu, a day of rest for the soul among 60 00:04:44,880 --> 00:04:47,140 the Babylonians. 61 00:04:47,140 --> 00:04:53,040 Some people think that that Babylonian word may be the root of the Hebrew word for Shabbat 62 00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:55,960 or Sabbath. 63 00:04:55,960 --> 00:05:02,720 Shabbatu in Babylon referred to the first 7th, 15th, and 28th days of each month on 64 00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:10,160 which the Babylonians offered special sacrifice and rested for the soul. 65 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:14,000 So what I am saying is that in the Sabbath there seems to be a significance for the whole 66 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:15,000 world. 67 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:21,040 I believe that God established the day of rest for the entire world from Adam's time 68 00:05:21,040 --> 00:05:25,280 on, but it was lost. 69 00:05:25,280 --> 00:05:34,440 Death observance then was not man's idea but God's and it was given for man's good. 70 00:05:34,440 --> 00:05:39,320 The work that man had after the fall into sin was hard work, arduous work. 71 00:05:39,320 --> 00:05:46,040 Now God designed us to work before the fall, but the work then was not the kind of toil 72 00:05:46,040 --> 00:05:54,720 that we have now as a result of our sin, for we work with the sweat of our brow. 73 00:05:54,720 --> 00:06:02,320 Because that fall involved hard work, people needed restoration and God in His grace had 74 00:06:02,320 --> 00:06:06,000 provided for this day of rest. 75 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:12,720 And so the significance of the Sabbath to the world is its commemoration of God's 76 00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:16,080 rest after creation. 77 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:22,040 Six days He worked creating the world, the universe that is, but on the seventh day He 78 00:06:22,040 --> 00:06:23,040 rested. 79 00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:28,000 And the significance of that to the world is that it reminds us that God has set aside 80 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:32,700 a day of rest for all of us. 81 00:06:32,700 --> 00:06:37,040 But then we need to look more precisely at this text in Exodus 20 and see that it is 82 00:06:37,040 --> 00:06:42,120 a part of God's covenant with Israel and think of the significance of the Sabbath to 83 00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:44,600 Israel. 84 00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:50,880 Its inclusion here in the decalogue, in the Ten Words or the Ten Commandments, incorporated 85 00:06:50,880 --> 00:06:58,320 it as a basic part of the moral order within Israel. 86 00:06:58,320 --> 00:07:07,800 Of course it already had assigned to it the meaning of creation and God's day of rest. 87 00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:11,080 And God reminds them of that here. 88 00:07:11,080 --> 00:07:19,600 However, there was also another meaning given to the Sabbath beyond the creation rest. 89 00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:25,240 And we see that in Deuteronomy 5 verse 15 if you want to turn over there in your Bible. 90 00:07:25,240 --> 00:07:31,960 In Deuteronomy 5 we have a restatement of the Ten Commandments as Moses gave them about 91 00:07:31,960 --> 00:07:37,080 38 years after they were originally delivered. 92 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:42,380 In Deuteronomy He is preaching to the people a number of discourses He gives to the people 93 00:07:42,380 --> 00:07:44,840 of Israel before He dies. 94 00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:47,400 And He reminds them of the Ten Commandments. 95 00:07:47,400 --> 00:07:51,480 And in the fifth chapter of the fifteenth verse He says, 96 00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:58,280 And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God 97 00:07:58,280 --> 00:08:03,760 brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. 98 00:08:03,760 --> 00:08:11,720 Therefore, the LORD your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. 99 00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:17,240 So you see there was an additional meaning to the observance of the Sabbath for the people 100 00:08:17,240 --> 00:08:18,240 of Israel. 101 00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:25,200 It was to remind them of the creative order, but it was also to remind them of God's 102 00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:30,280 redemptive work in delivering them from Egypt. 103 00:08:30,280 --> 00:08:36,840 And so the significance of the Sabbath to the whole world was God's rest from creation. 104 00:08:36,840 --> 00:08:46,000 The significance to Israel was additionally the commemoration of redemption from Egypt. 105 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:54,080 The Sabbath day became one of the signs of this covenant between Israel and their God. 106 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,720 There were other signs as well as we know, but the Sabbath day was an additional sign 107 00:08:58,720 --> 00:09:05,920 that God gave them so that every week they would remember what God had done for them 108 00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:06,920 in their history. 109 00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:13,880 It says in Exodus 31, As for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 110 00:09:13,880 --> 00:09:17,880 You shall surely observe my Sabbaths. 111 00:09:17,880 --> 00:09:24,400 For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I 112 00:09:24,400 --> 00:09:28,640 am the LORD who sanctifies you. 113 00:09:28,640 --> 00:09:36,480 In verse 17 he says, It is a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever. 114 00:09:36,480 --> 00:09:40,980 And so the Sabbath day had a significance beyond the creative order. 115 00:09:40,980 --> 00:09:47,680 It was a sign to Israel that they were a redeemed people. 116 00:09:47,680 --> 00:09:54,360 Obedience to the Sabbath and the laws that surrounded its observance was evidence and 117 00:09:54,360 --> 00:10:02,040 testimony of this special relationship between God and his redeemed under this covenant. 118 00:10:02,040 --> 00:10:07,440 And let me say by the way that the observance of the Sabbath in Israel did not involve a 119 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:11,840 lazy day of inactivity. 120 00:10:11,840 --> 00:10:18,880 It was a day of rest, but it was also a day when they were to have special religious observances. 121 00:10:18,880 --> 00:10:26,120 And they were to focus on that day on their concern for the welfare of others, not merely 122 00:10:26,120 --> 00:10:28,720 their own comfort. 123 00:10:28,720 --> 00:10:34,360 That's why God gave the command that not only were the men to rest, but their households 124 00:10:34,360 --> 00:10:35,960 were to rest. 125 00:10:35,960 --> 00:10:38,400 Their slaves were to rest. 126 00:10:38,400 --> 00:10:42,180 Their animals were to rest. 127 00:10:42,180 --> 00:10:48,120 On the Sabbath they were to look beyond their own needs for rest and see that others welfare 128 00:10:48,120 --> 00:10:52,040 was looked after as well. 129 00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:56,000 So the Sabbath involved all of those things for Israel. 130 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:03,920 But finally I want us to look at what the significance of the Sabbath is to the church. 131 00:11:03,920 --> 00:11:07,720 Are we as the church to observe the Sabbath? 132 00:11:07,720 --> 00:11:09,320 That is the seventh day of the week. 133 00:11:09,320 --> 00:11:13,440 Of course Sunday is not the Sabbath, Saturday is. 134 00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:14,560 The seventh day of the week. 135 00:11:14,560 --> 00:11:17,760 Are we to set that aside for some kind of special observance? 136 00:11:17,760 --> 00:11:24,280 The answer to that is no, we are not in a ritual sense. 137 00:11:24,280 --> 00:11:30,160 Nine of the Ten Commandments are restated in the New Testament in one form or another, 138 00:11:30,160 --> 00:11:33,520 but not the observance of the Sabbath. 139 00:11:33,520 --> 00:11:34,520 Why? 140 00:11:34,520 --> 00:11:45,120 Well, because it was in fact a special sign of that covenant between Israel and her God, 141 00:11:45,120 --> 00:11:47,760 the covenant of the law. 142 00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:53,240 Today we are related to God under what the writer of Hebrews calls a better covenant, 143 00:11:53,240 --> 00:12:01,200 a superior covenant that is established upon a superior, a better sacrifice that is the 144 00:12:01,200 --> 00:12:04,440 Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 145 00:12:04,440 --> 00:12:11,800 We have the new covenant with God and the Sabbath observance is not the sign of the 146 00:12:11,800 --> 00:12:13,560 new covenant. 147 00:12:13,560 --> 00:12:20,200 In fact, we are specifically warned in the New Testament not to make a legalistic observance 148 00:12:20,200 --> 00:12:24,960 of the Sabbath a matter of our faith. 149 00:12:24,960 --> 00:12:30,000 It is not for us, and we are not to judge each other on the observance of the Sabbath. 150 00:12:30,000 --> 00:12:37,240 Colossians 2, verses 9 through 17 makes that clear. 151 00:12:37,240 --> 00:12:41,280 That is not to say that therefore we should just work seven days a week and never give 152 00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:43,440 a thought about a day of rest. 153 00:12:43,440 --> 00:12:49,400 I go back to the first point, and that is that there is a significance to that day of 154 00:12:49,400 --> 00:12:53,120 rest for all of the world. 155 00:12:53,120 --> 00:13:02,200 God gave that to us for our benefit, and we, even though we are not under Sabbath observance, 156 00:13:02,200 --> 00:13:11,920 need to remember that God has ordained a day of rest out of seven for our good, and in 157 00:13:11,920 --> 00:13:14,660 that sense we ought to keep it. 158 00:13:14,660 --> 00:13:17,000 That is a day of rest. 159 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:25,760 But the early church began worshiping on the first day of the week to commemorate the resurrection 160 00:13:25,760 --> 00:13:28,680 of the Lord Jesus. 161 00:13:28,680 --> 00:13:34,440 It became called the Lord's Day because it was the day of His resurrection, and they 162 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:42,520 remembered His resurrection, and they gathered for corporate worship on that day. 163 00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:47,800 As time passed, that began to be the pattern of the church to come together on the first 164 00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:49,360 day of the week. 165 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:56,520 Likewise, it was not a day for lazy and self-centered indulgence. 166 00:13:56,520 --> 00:13:59,460 It was a day for doing of good works. 167 00:13:59,460 --> 00:14:04,560 It was a day of looking after one another as well as coming together for worship. 168 00:14:04,560 --> 00:14:09,720 As the writer of Hebrews makes clear in the tenth chapter when he says, let us consider 169 00:14:09,720 --> 00:14:15,600 how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves 170 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:23,560 together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the 171 00:14:23,560 --> 00:14:25,040 day approaching. 172 00:14:25,040 --> 00:14:31,400 So you see it was the pattern of the early church going to worship on the Sabbath, but 173 00:14:31,400 --> 00:14:38,960 to stimulate one another with good works and to encourage one another by looking after 174 00:14:38,960 --> 00:14:42,960 the mutual welfare of others. 175 00:14:42,960 --> 00:14:50,360 Now, worship on the first day of the week is not a sign of our covenant. 176 00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:54,760 It is a pattern that God has given us, and when you stop to think about it, it's an 177 00:14:54,760 --> 00:15:07,280 amazing thing that among these Jews initially, the whole pattern of their worship was changed 178 00:15:07,280 --> 00:15:09,900 in the early church. 179 00:15:09,900 --> 00:15:13,580 You would think that they would gather continually on the Sabbath, but no. 180 00:15:13,580 --> 00:15:21,520 When God did the work of redemption through Jesus Christ, it so fulfilled that old covenant. 181 00:15:21,520 --> 00:15:27,560 It so completed all of its meaning and its symbolism that a whole new day of worship 182 00:15:27,560 --> 00:15:29,520 was ordained by God. 183 00:15:29,520 --> 00:15:36,280 It's an amazing thing, but still it's not a sign of our covenant. 184 00:15:36,280 --> 00:15:41,120 You say, well, what are the signs of the covenant of grace? 185 00:15:41,120 --> 00:15:46,120 What are the signs to us today that we belong to God under the new covenant? 186 00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:49,040 Well, there are signs. 187 00:15:49,040 --> 00:15:56,880 Specifically, there are two that are ordained by our Lord Jesus Himself. 188 00:15:56,880 --> 00:16:02,120 Sabbath observance along with circumcision were the signs of the old covenant. 189 00:16:02,120 --> 00:16:05,720 We today have other signs for the new covenant. 190 00:16:05,720 --> 00:16:08,520 You know what they are? 191 00:16:08,520 --> 00:16:12,800 One of them is baptism. 192 00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:19,960 The immersion of believers into water symbolizing the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. 193 00:16:19,960 --> 00:16:25,040 That is a sign of the new covenant. 194 00:16:25,040 --> 00:16:30,720 That's why it's commanded by our Lord of everyone who believes in Him because it is an outward 195 00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:37,280 sign of their relationship to Him under the covenant of grace. 196 00:16:37,280 --> 00:16:44,880 And then there is secondly the sign of the Lord's table, which symbolizes the new covenant 197 00:16:44,880 --> 00:16:46,000 that we have with Him. 198 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:48,280 We remember His blood. 199 00:16:48,280 --> 00:16:52,040 We remember His body broken for us. 200 00:16:52,040 --> 00:16:59,800 So that as we come to this table and observe it, it is a sign to us of the new covenant. 201 00:16:59,800 --> 00:17:06,280 And Jesus said as we do this, we are to do it in remembrance of Him. 202 00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:13,140 To Israel, God said, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 203 00:17:13,140 --> 00:17:20,720 To us in the church, we are said, remember Jesus in these elements for this is a sign 204 00:17:20,720 --> 00:17:23,920 of your covenant. 205 00:17:23,920 --> 00:17:31,460 And yet having said that, the Sabbath day has no significance to the church. 206 00:17:31,460 --> 00:17:38,200 I do want to assert that the Sabbath day does have a spiritual meaning to the church. 207 00:17:38,200 --> 00:17:45,720 The writer of Hebrews again in the fourth chapter points to God's rest or God's Sabbath 208 00:17:45,720 --> 00:17:54,200 as it were, provided for us in Jesus Christ, that is those of us who enter into that faith 209 00:17:54,200 --> 00:17:58,700 relationship with Him. 210 00:17:58,700 --> 00:18:07,240 When we think of the Sabbath, it is a reminder to us that we too have ceased from our works 211 00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:16,360 as a means of establishing righteousness before God and that we are resting in the finished 212 00:18:16,360 --> 00:18:20,600 work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. 213 00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:29,360 That we are reposing upon, we are relying upon the gift of His righteousness that comes 214 00:18:29,360 --> 00:18:31,680 by faith. 215 00:18:31,680 --> 00:18:37,640 And so in part I read Hebrews 4 where it says, there remains therefore a Sabbath rest for 216 00:18:37,640 --> 00:18:40,040 the people of God. 217 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:50,160 For the one who has entered His, God's rest has Himself also rested from His works as 218 00:18:50,160 --> 00:18:53,760 God did from His. 219 00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:57,960 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest. 220 00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:02,400 Let us not let anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience that is the 221 00:19:02,400 --> 00:19:08,160 example of Israel's unbelief. 222 00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:15,600 And so the writer of Hebrews is asserting that salvation as well as sanctification, 223 00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:21,720 God working in our lives, transforming us into Christ's image, that these are the result 224 00:19:21,720 --> 00:19:25,000 of faith in the promises of God. 225 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:31,840 They do not come to us because of our fleshly works, our human effort. 226 00:19:31,840 --> 00:19:37,480 The salvation and sanctification are both the work of God and we rest upon His promises 227 00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:38,680 for them. 228 00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:46,480 Charles Ryrie says, rest in the Christian life comes through complete reliance on God's 229 00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:53,600 promises and full surrender to His will. 230 00:19:53,600 --> 00:20:01,320 And so the significance of the Sabbath to the world is that it commemorates God's rest 231 00:20:01,320 --> 00:20:04,360 from creation. 232 00:20:04,360 --> 00:20:11,760 The significance of God's Sabbath to Israel is His redemption from Egypt. 233 00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:17,560 And the significance of the Sabbath to the church is the commemoration of God's rest 234 00:20:17,560 --> 00:20:23,920 provided for us in Jesus Christ. 235 00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:28,120 And yet there are so many in the world who are seeking somehow to establish through their 236 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:31,760 own human efforts a relationship with God. 237 00:20:31,760 --> 00:20:38,400 And they think if they only try hard enough and do enough good deeds that the result of 238 00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:44,440 that will be God will say, well done, you can come into my heaven. 239 00:20:44,440 --> 00:20:45,840 But that is not the case. 240 00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:51,520 Because God has provided for us a Sabbath rest spiritually. 241 00:20:51,520 --> 00:20:58,260 That is a rest, a release from our own labors. 242 00:20:58,260 --> 00:21:04,620 That Sabbath rest is found in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. 243 00:21:04,620 --> 00:21:10,000 And when we enter that Sabbath rest what we are saying is that we are ceasing from our 244 00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:15,300 own works anymore toward being good enough people. 245 00:21:15,300 --> 00:21:21,920 Is that now we are relying alone on what Jesus did for us. 246 00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:26,040 Believing that His death on the cross is sufficient for our sins. 247 00:21:26,040 --> 00:21:33,160 That His gift of righteousness is all that we need to be accepted by God. 248 00:21:33,160 --> 00:21:39,820 Have you entered into that spiritual Sabbath rest? 249 00:21:39,820 --> 00:21:46,120 We sometimes sing the gospel song written by Norman Clayton over 50 years ago now. 250 00:21:46,120 --> 00:21:51,960 For some of us this is contemporary Christian music. 251 00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:57,520 But 50 years ago he wrote these wonderful words, my hope is in the Lord who gave Himself 252 00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:02,840 for me and paid the price for all my sin at Calvary. 253 00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:06,800 No merit of my own is anger to suppress. 254 00:22:06,800 --> 00:22:14,600 My only hope is found in Jesus' righteousness. 255 00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:21,560 Have you entered into that rest so that your hope is in the Lord not in your own labors, 256 00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:26,160 your own religiosity? 257 00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:30,540 If not I hope that you will today. 258 00:22:30,540 --> 00:22:37,080 And with reference to your Christian life my fellow believer, are you resting in Christ 259 00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:40,360 by relying on His promises? 260 00:22:40,360 --> 00:22:47,440 That means ceasing to live for yourself and depending upon yourself and striving in the 261 00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:56,740 flesh somehow to please God, to measure up to what you want to be. 262 00:22:56,740 --> 00:23:05,120 Are you instead resting upon Christ and trusting Him to provide through you the strength that 263 00:23:05,120 --> 00:23:07,660 you need to serve God? 264 00:23:07,660 --> 00:23:13,840 Are you drawing upon Jesus Christ for what you need? 265 00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:20,600 An elderly British minister had come to the end of his earthly journey. 266 00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:30,080 And on the morning of what everyone knew would be his last day a friend remarked to him, 267 00:23:30,080 --> 00:23:35,080 did you sleep well last night? 268 00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:42,280 And he said, well I did not sleep well but I rested gloriously. 269 00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:49,020 For I put my head down on three pillows, the pillow of infinite wisdom, the pillow of infinite 270 00:23:49,020 --> 00:23:54,600 power, and the pillow of infinite love. 271 00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:58,040 It was a beautiful night. 272 00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:08,200 Are you exhausted today because of your own fleshly efforts and works? 273 00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:16,960 Are you just worn out, come to the end of yourself, believer? 274 00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:22,880 That's not bad because that's the point at which you can begin then to draw upon Jesus 275 00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:23,880 Christ. 276 00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:30,080 And you can find your Sabbath spiritually in Him. 277 00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:37,560 You can rest in Him and rely upon Him now to strengthen you and turn away from your 278 00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:43,560 own efforts to serve the Lord in His strength. 279 00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:48,840 Christy has done this little acrostic for rest, R-E-S-T, telling us what rest means 280 00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:50,600 as Christians. 281 00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:58,400 First of all, rest means relying, relying on the promises of God. 282 00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:08,440 Secondly, rest means enjoying, enjoying the fellowship of the Lord. 283 00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:18,720 Thirdly, rest means surrendering, surrendering to the perfect will of God. 284 00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:31,560 And finally, rest means triumphing, triumphing over darkness in Christ, R-E-S-T. 285 00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:36,080 As we come to the Lord's table this morning, may that be the repose of our souls, that 286 00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:43,000 we're resting on Jesus, that we're relying upon Him. 287 00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:53,120 And as we come to the table, we're remembering Him because it's so easy for us to forget. 288 00:25:53,120 --> 00:25:56,120 Let's pray together. 289 00:25:56,120 --> 00:26:02,000 Lord, as you told the people of Israel in old, remember the Sabbath. 290 00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:07,720 So you have said to us, remember Jesus Christ. 291 00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:21,800 Father, just as the churches of Revelation tended to forget, so do we. 292 00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:28,600 And to some of them, the Lord Jesus said, remember. 293 00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:35,480 There are many of us this morning who need to remember. 294 00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:45,480 And so we partake of this bread, remembering Jesus and His sacrifice for us, the brokenness 295 00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:55,680 of His body, that we might find freedom from the penalty of our sin. 296 00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:01,640 And some of us come to this table this morning absolutely worn out and exhausted because 297 00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,720 of fleshly striving. 298 00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:13,920 So today may we rest in Him as we partake and remember, remember Him. 299 00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:29,560 Amen.