Please turn with me in the Word of God to Exodus, chapter 31. We'll take up the reading at verse 12. I've been told that next week, for the first week, we will have, as Pew Bibles, the new English Standard Version of the Bible. And so I thought, since the scripture reading this morning is a little short, we'll read first from the NIV, and so if you want to look in the Pew Bible, and we'll read from the NIV, and then I'll read it again from the ESV. And if you want to follow along as I read from the ESV in the NIV, you can see what kind of changes are indicated. You will discover, I trust, that on the one hand, the changes are really quite slight, so you don't have to worry overly about this change. But I hope you'll also see there are a little, a few differences. And actually, I think in this text, the ESV is a little better than the NIV. So I do think we're making an improvement in the change. But we'll read the word of God first from the NIV translation of Exodus 31, beginning at verse 12. Let us hear God's own word. Then the Lord said to Moses, say to the Israelites, you must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come so that you may know that I am the Lord who makes you holy. Observe the Sabbath because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death. Whoever Whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people. For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death. The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested. When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God. And now to read that same portion again from the ESV. And the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, Above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Anyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made the heaven and earth and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. And he gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. So far the reading of God's word. Week by week, we read in our worship service a summary of the law of God, and we do that so that we might understand something more about our God and His holy character, and that we might also understand something about our sinfulness and the way in which we should be walking before the Lord. And it is important for us to remember that that law is a gift of God to us. Sometimes we may cringe under the law. Sometimes we may recognize and focus primarily on how far short we fall from that law. And that's a very appropriate response. But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that the law itself is a great gift to us. so that we might know what is God's will for us. And as that is true of the law as a whole, so it is true of each part of that law, including the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath unto the Lord your God. That fourth commandment is also a gift to God's people. It is a gift of truth, of course, as God tells us of his holy will for the way in which we should pattern and organize our life. But it is also a gift of a day for us. The gift of a day for God. The gift of a day to be spent with God. And as I was thinking about what I might preach today, I thought, in the world in which we live, we have to keep coming back to this particular command. I think because this particular command is one so often neglected, not just in the world today, but neglected in the churches today. Fifty, seventy years ago, almost all serious-minded Christians in America believed that Sunday was a Christian Sabbath that had to be set apart as holy to the Lord. But today, that conviction is greatly diminished in American Christianity, and it is increasingly only the Reformed and Presbyterians who are continuing to uphold that historic conviction about the continuing relevance of the fourth commandment for the life of the Christian community. And as increasingly a careful observance of Sunday as a Christian Sabbath is attacked by many, is ignored by many others, we have to continually be rebuilt and encouraged in a conviction that this is the will of God for us. It's not just our peculiarity. It's not just our tradition. It's not just the way we happen to do things. Because those kinds of traditions will inevitably die out if they're only traditional. And I think it's very important that from time to time we be renewed in a sense that this is God's holy will for the life of his people. That this is what the word of God teaches. And I believe Exodus 31 is one of the passages that helps us to see the significance of the Sabbath day for us with a particular fullness and a particular clarity. And so I want to preach to you this morning on the meaning of the Sabbath day, the Christian Sabbath for us. We'll see some differences from what was given to Israel and what is now given to the church. But what I want us to focus on this morning is particularly the continuity of the meaning of a day given to us by the Lord as a gift. And the first thing we see in this passage is that this gift of a day is a separate day. A separate day. A day set apart. We are told that this day is holy. And that's said to us in that sense of holiness as set-apartness. Often we think of holiness primarily in terms of purity or in terms of goodness, and that's true of holiness. But there's another profound sense of holiness in the Bible, and that is the sense of the holy as that which is set-apart for God. The temple was holy because it was a building set apart for God. And so it is that the Sabbath is a holy day because it is set apart by God and is set apart for God. It is not an ordinary day. It is a special day because God set it apart. And in that sense, he made it holy. And we need to recognize that this is part of the pattern that God established right from creation. Many Christians will tell you today that we don't have to keep the fourth commandment because it was a commandment just given to Israel, just given to Moses at Sinai. But when we look carefully into the Bible, we discover that is not true. The Sabbath wasn't originated at Sinai. The Sabbath was originated in creation. Genesis 2 tells us that. But the commandment itself in Exodus 20 tells us that. And this passage in Exodus 31 reiterates that point. The Sabbath day is holy because God created in six days and then he rested in one day. That was his creation pattern. And that was the pattern that he laid down then for us. We are told he blessed the seventh day right at the beginning in creation and set it apart. He made it holy. And it has always been that. Before Israel got to Mount Sinai, in Exodus 16, they were told that when they gathered manna, They were to gather manna six days a week, but on the seventh day they were not to gather manna because it was the Sabbath. The Sabbath existed before Sinai. It is grounded in creation. It's grounded in our very nature of the way God made us. And that's why it is crucial not just for our spiritual well-being, although it is certainly crucial for that. It's crucial for our whole humanity. That we recognize that we were created to live out a certain pattern of life. A pattern of work and of rest. A pattern of focusing on what we need to do and then of focusing upon God who has given us all that we possess. This day is set apart. It's holy, we are told. And it's holy as a day of rest. Now, we could have a long discussion about what exactly that means, about exactly what you can do and what you cannot do on Sunday. What's very clear from the Old Testament and very simple from the Old Testament is that we are to leave off our ordinary activities that provide for our ordinary life and rest from those things so that we may turn our hearts and our minds to God. So, it is a day when the ordinary activities of life, particularly the activities of earning our living, are set aside. And God wants those things set aside so that we may rest in Him. It is a day of connecting with Him. We're told in this passage that the day is holy to the Lord and it's holy to us. He has established it in holiness as the day that connects us with him. And that's why the prophets would criticize the people when they didn't rest properly. Some people in Israel over the years would close their businesses, but they'd spend the whole day saying, how long is this day going to last yet? How soon will this day be open so I can open my business again? And so they kept the day formally, closing the business. But they never left the business behind. Their minds were still filled the whole day with the business. How soon will this day be over so I can get back to work? The prophet said, that's not keeping the day holy. That's not really resting. That's not really ceasing from your ordinary activity. And that's why in this short passage, we are told three times to keep the Sabbath day, to observe it, to let it be what it is meant to be by the institution of God for us. A day set apart, a day of rest, a holy day. That's what the Lord asks of us. And that's why uniquely that fourth commandment begins with the words, Remember. Remember the Sabbath day. Why does the Lord put the commandment in those terms? Because it's so easy to forget. It's so easy to let that day slip out of our minds. It's so easy to let that day seem like every other day. And when you think about it, it is rather intriguing that the Lord has, by his creative actions, structured our lives in terms of weeks. You know, we really only know that by revelation, don't we? You don't need revelation to figure out a year. All sorts of calendars of all sorts of peoples all through history understood a year. Something to do with the sun establishes a year. You don't need revelation to establish a month. The moon establishes the month and calendars of all sorts of people through all history who had no revelation could understand a month. We need revelation to have a week. There's nothing grounded in nature that we would have a seven day week. This is God's revelation to us as to who we are, how we've been made, how we function best when we follow him in six days of work and one day of rest. And how then we fellowship with him. So why do we remember the Sabbath day? Why do we keep the Sabbath day? Why has the Lord set it apart? Well, he tells us not only is it a separate day, but it's a significant day. In the old sense of significant, it's a day of a sign. Twice in this passage we're told the Sabbath day is a sign to us. It is a sign to us. And that Hebrew word sign seems etymologically to derive from a word that means beacon. You know what a beacon is. It's a fire that marks something significant. A light that helps you see something you wouldn't see otherwise. That's what this day is. It's a sign. It's a beacon to us that comes around week by week. And what does it say to us? What does that beacon mean? It's a beacon that says we have a covenant with the Lord. we have a covenant with the Lord. It is a sign of that covenant. And that reminds us that the Sabbath day is not an end in itself. We are not given the Sabbath just to think about the Sabbath. In fact, it's kind of intriguing when we sing Psalm 92, the song for the Sabbath. There's no mention of the Sabbath in the psalm. Why is that? Because the Sabbath isn't given to us so we can think about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is given to us so we can think about God. And Psalm 92 is all about God. About how the sign of the Sabbath draws us to God and draws us to think, above all, that he makes us holy. That's what we're told. It's a sign that the Lord makes us holy. how holy do you feel today? Have you thought about being holy today? If I asked you to rate your holiness, if I passed out a pen and paper, I said on a scale of one to ten, how's that holiness thing going today? How holy are you? You might be able to judge how pious you are on how low a number you gave yourself. I think that's often our sort of Calvinistic attitude. I'm so holy, I know I'm only a two. Well, I'm a lot holier than you are because I know I'm only a one. And there's an appropriateness to that as we recognize our continuing struggle against sin. But in this sense of holiness, in this sense, when the Sabbath says, the Sabbath is a sign that the Lord makes you holy, the Lord sanctifies you. The Bible is telling us, every one of us is a 10 today. Every one of us who knows the Lord. Every one of us who have been redeemed by the Lord. Every one of us is a 10 today. Isn't that good? Isn't that great? Do you feel like a 10? You ought to. Because the Lord has taken us from our sinfulness. And he has set us apart as a people. He has set us apart, each one individually, by his saving work. That's what holiness particularly means here. Now, this is in no way to undermine that we need to be pursuing holiness. We need to be growing in holiness. But that's not the point being primarily made here. The primary point here is you need to pause on the Sabbath day to remember that God has done for you all that needs doing to make you his people. To set you apart unto him. To make you belong to him. That Jesus Christ has done for you what you could never do for yourself. And that's why on one day a week, he asks you to pause and to reflect that it is not your working that establishes your relationship with him, but his working that establishes your relationship with him. It is his working that makes you holy. And we have to let that seep in, don't we? We have to let that grab us. We have to let that direct us in the way that we think about ourselves and about our lives and about our God. That's why Jesus said to sinful people, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I will give you rest to your souls. And we know that that day, great day of rest, comes at the end of history, don't we? When Jesus Christ returns in glory and there's a new heaven and a new earth and every tear is wiped away and all sin is removed and we will be a holy people completed in holiness. And we will enter into an eternal rest. But until that day comes, the Lord has still given us a sign. He has still maintained that creation pattern that we are to pause weekly from our labors. We are to pause weekly from our ordinary activity so that we can celebrate the work of God. That's what's fascinating about Psalm 92. You know, a lot of the critics read Psalm 92 and say, oh, that title doesn't really belong there. It's not really a song for the Sabbath at all. There's no reference to the Sabbath. And it's the critics who show themselves not to know what they're talking about. This is a perfect psalm for the Sabbath. Because in verses 4 and 5 we read, as the reflection that ought to characterize us on the Sabbath day, For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work. At the works of your hands I sing for joy. How great are your works, O Lord. Your thoughts are very deep. And then just to underscore how important this is, Psalm 92 goes on to say, The stupid man cannot know. The fool cannot understand this. it is part of the foolishness of this fallen world never to pause to think about the work of God. Never to honor God as the creator, who by the work of his power brought the world into being. Never to honor God as the redeemer, who by the work of his power on the cross saved us from our sins. That's the foolishness of this world, never to pause, never to think, Never to reflect. But God calls us to be better than that. God calls us to be his image bearers. God says we have a unique relationship with him. All of creation is his. All of creation has a relationship to God. But in that whole creation, only one part of the creation, humankind, are said to have been made in his image. And are called to live out their lives as reflectors of God, in fellowship with God. And that's part of what the Sabbath day signs to us. That's part of why the Sabbath day is significant for us. It is part of the way in which we bear the image of God. God worked six days and rested. And he calls us to work six days and to rest as part of bearing his image. Now, one of the really intriguing things about this text, and it's translated a little better in the ESV than in the NIV, is the end of verse 17. Exodus 31, verse 17 says, it is a sign forever. That is, the Sabbath is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth. And on the seventh day, he rested. So far, very traditional language. We could read that from any number of passages in the Old Testament. But then something unique. And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed. Now, the NIV weakens that a little bit, I think. NIV translates it, he abstained from work and rested. what the NIV would really have us read is, and he rested, and he rested. Abstain from work and rested. That's just the same thing, said with slightly different words. But they're not slightly different words. They're quite different words in Hebrew. And the sense is, he rested. And because he'd worked so hard, he was tired. And he got refreshed. Now, boys and girls. How long does God have to work before he gets tired? How long does God have to work before he gets tired? You know the answer to that, don't you? God can work forever and not get tired, right? Isaiah 40 tells us, the Lord does not grow weary. So what does this verse mean? It means that God is presenting himself in words we can understand so that we can understand what we're to do in relationship to him. What happens to us when we work hard for six days? See, these are not hard questions, boys and girls. Don't you wish you got these on tests at school? Questions this easy. What happens when we work hard for six days? We get tired. We need to be refreshed. We're weary. And God says, you know, I present my working and my resting so you'll know about your working and your resting. And so that you'll be able to image me to the world as a people who follow their God in working and in resting. You know, God sometimes gives us pictures of himself so that we'll understand ourselves better. We almost have a little example of that in verse 18, don't we? And God gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. Boys and girls, how many fingers does God have? God doesn't have any fingers, does he? God's a spirit. The Bible says that over and over again. God's a spirit. But then sometimes we read about the arm of God is mighty to save. Does he really have an arm? No, it's a picture for us of his power so that we'll understand his power. The finger here is a sign of how personally and intimately he was involved in the giving of the law to his people. So he didn't have somebody else write it for him. He wrote it with his own finger. That's how personal it is. Not because God has a finger, but because it's a sign to teach us of how personally he relates to us. And so when it says God rested because he was weary, it's saying he's showing us how we're to live. He's picturing for us our life that we might be in his image, that we be workers and resters so we might have fellowship with him. You see, the Sabbath day is rooted not just in creation and in redemption, but it's rooted in our nature and in our intimate relationship with God. God can think of many things at once. God can even, I believe, work and rest at the same time. We can't do that. We have to focus on one thing at a time. And God has understood that. And he said, you can focus on your life for six days. You can focus on the work you need to do to sustain your life for six days. But one day in seven belongs to me as a holy day, a separate day. So that you and I can fellowship. So that you and I can remain connected. And so that you can remember, I am the one who created you. I am the one who redeemed you. I am the one who set you apart. I'm the one who makes you holy. And for the old covenant people, that was the seventh day. And if we had a lot of time, and you may begin to worry, I'll take it. If we had a lot of time, I think I could show you that it's changed in the New Testament to the first day of the week. It's a celebration of Christ's resurrection. But it's still a day, a separate day, a significant day, a serious day. The NIV translates the beginning of our text in verse 12, or rather verse 13, you must observe my Sabbaths. The ESV a little more literally translates it, Above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. Interesting, isn't it? God's given a whole series of laws to his people in the book of Exodus, and then he says, Above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. It's a serious day. It's a day God has focused and highlighted for us to keep. And for Israel, it was so serious that you were subject to the death penalty if you violated it. That's how serious it was. And we don't keep the Sabbath. We're not obligated to keep the Sabbath with that kind of seriousness in the new covenant. But it remains for us a day for which there could and should be discipline when the Sabbath is not kept holy to the Lord. It's a serious day. The Lord takes it with great seriousness. I was struck in reading Ezekiel chapter 20, where the prophet criticizes the people for their failure to keep the Sabbath day holy. And he quotes God as saying, Ezekiel 20, verses 23 and 24, Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries because they had not obeyed my rules but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths and their eyes were set on their fathers' idols. Now, what's interesting about that passage is God, first of all, criticizes his people because they've rejected his law as a whole. They haven't done very well with any of it. But then he focuses in on the Sabbath. The Sabbath, as if it were, you see, a sort of test case. I can test the spiritual life of my people by how well it's going with them in the whole range of my law, by how seriously they've taken my Sabbath. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Above all, you shall keep my Sabbath. It's a sort of test case of the seriousness of our devotion to the Lord. And where the Sabbath was not kept, we're told the people wandered away into idolatry. It's a very serious day. in the life and economy of God's people, in the development of our spirituality. If you're concerned not only to be set apart as a holy people, but if you're concerned to be growing in holiness, then above all, keep my Sabbath day holy, says the Lord. And so we see that the Sabbath is given to us as a duty. Again, three times we're told, keep the Sabbath day holy in just these few verses. But that duty must never overshadow that much more fundamentally the Sabbath is a gift and a blessing to God's people. It is a gift to pause and reflect that Jesus Christ has done all the work to save us from our sins. and that God our Father has created this world of goodness that we may enjoy and fellowship with him. The Sabbath day is a gift of time for God. But even more, it's a gift of time with God. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we are so thankful to acknowledge your wonderful ways with us. How richly you have worked to provide for us all that we need for body and soul. And how richly you have provided for us a pattern for living. So that we do not just trudge through this life. working, working, working. But that you have given us a day to pause and to reflect and to be refreshed. Refreshed in your work. Renewed in your truth. Resting in Jesus Christ alone in his finished work on the cross for our salvation. Oh God, give us joy in the Sabbath day. Give us confidence that it is your pattern and will for our lives. And bless it to us that it may be time with you. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.