#4
“THE REST OF THE WEEK!”
TEXTS: Exodus 20:8-11; Genesis 2:15; Nehemiah 13:15-22
INTRO: Of the 10 commandments this is the one taken most lightly by both Christians and non Christians. Against the other commandments like, “Thou shall not kill”, “Thou shall not steal”, and “Do not commit adultery” it seems rather mild and innocuous.
Nothing could be further from the truth however! As the final commandment on tablet #1 dealing with man’s relationship with God it concludes all that we need to know in order to have a full life. ALL the commandments are needed for full life as God intended. God’s rightful place and man’s rightful place cannot be understood in life without this commandment.
This commandment really has two parts to it:
(1. Keep the Sabbath day holy
(2. Six days shall you work.
We cannot find meaning in work without worship, and worship without work has no practical value! It is the combination of both worship and work that creates a full humanity and purpose to life, if our work is for ourselves it has no lasting sense of purpose.
ILLUS: When my daughter Aimee was in nursery school, she’d come home each day with drawings, collages, and other projects. Next to her own name she’d scrawl the name of someone she loved--usually Mommy or Daddy, sometimes baby brother Ben. "I did this for you," she’d proudly say. As I reflect on this, I remember the apostle Paul’s exhortation, "Whatever you do ... do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Col. 3:17). If Aimee could do every school project for me or for her dad, surely I can do my "projects" for my heavenly Father. Now I often ask myself, Have I written my Lord’s name on all I’ve have done today? -- Laura DuVall Bush, New Britain, CT, Today’s Christian Woman, "Heart to Heart."
We cannot experience work as a joyous thing without realizing that our work is being done for something greater than ourselves, and worship without work gives no expression of God’s power in our lives to those of this world.
PROP. SENT: The Bible teaches us that to experience the fullness of our humanity we must both consistently worship God and work. Worship fits us to work. We must honor both parts of this commandment to know God’s best in life.
I. MAN – THE WORSHIPPER Ex. 20:8,10-11
A. Relationship 20:8
1. The first part of this commandment deals with worship before work.
a. The Sabbath was God’s final day of creation, but it was man’s first day of existence .. so man begins his journey with worship before work!
b. Worship makes a man fit to be a worker.
2. Without worship our work has no lasting value, it is only temporal.
a. Certainly nothing man can do as work has any eternal significance to it if it is not done out of a relationship with an eternal God.
3. Why is all this true?
a. Man is a spiritual being, and if what he does has not come from a spiritual perspective it has little value to it.
b. Worship frames everything in our lives by giving significance to everything beyond a materialistic framework.
4. God desired fellowship with Adam before sending Adam into the garden to work it.
ILLUS: I have asked three close friends to monitor me and tell me when I am allowing busyness to crowd out fellowship with God. -- C. John "Jack" Miller in Leadership, Vol. 10, no. 4
5. The purpose of this commandment was to prevent man who worked most of the week from losing the spiritual dynamic to his life and thus the purpose to his work and life.
a. Failure to worship will have an impact of the satisfaction of our work!
b. Worship renews our spirit which is what energizes our body!
ILLUS: Worship renews the spirit as sleep renews the body. Richard Clarke Cabot (1868-1939)
B. Rest 20:10-11
1. Worship enables us to “rest” before God.
a. This isn’t primarily a physical rest as much as it is a spiritual rest!
(1. It is a resting from saving ourselves!
(2. It is resting in God’s love and cleansing power.
b. However, the spiritual rest can have profound impact on our physical being!
ILLUS: A study was made at Harvard University of the effect of meditation on older people. They discovered that meditation lowered blood pressure, improved mental function, and extended the life span. While we may not all agree on transcendental meditation, Christians have long believed that meditation in worship made life deeper if not longer, and richer, and fuller. -- Robert C. Shannon, 1000 Windows, (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Company, 1997).
2. Too often we fail to understand the significance of worship, so many see it as unimportant since we do so many of the same things over and over in the same way when we worship.
a. We fail to understand however how important many of these “spiritual” dynamics are in the way they affect our lives.
b. To “remember” the Sabbath day and to keep it holy may mean repeating many of the same spiritual dynamics over and over in our lives, but these very exercises become the core strength that enables us to deal with a materialistic universe and the problems we face in the work place.
ILLUS: In the movie Karate Kid, young Daniel asks Mister Miagi to teach him karate. Miagi agrees under one condition: Daniel must submit totally to his instruction and never question his methods. Daniel shows up the next day eager to learn. To his chagrin, Mister Miagi has him paint a fence. Miagi demonstrates the precise motion for the job: up and down, up and down. Daniel takes days to finish the job. Next, Miagi has him scrub the deck using a prescribed stroke. Again the job takes days. Daniel wonders, What does this have to do with karate? but he says nothing. Next, Miagi tells Daniel to wash and wax three weather-beaten cars and again prescribes the motion. Finally, Daniel reaches his limit: "I thought you were going to teach me karate, but all you have done is have me do your unwanted chores!" Daniel has broken Miagi’s one condition, and the old man’s face pulses with anger. "I have been teaching you karate! Defend yourself!" Miagi thrusts his arm at Daniel, who instinctively defends himself with an arm motion exactly like that used in one of his chores. Miagi unleashes a vicious kick, and again Daniel averts the blow with a motion used in his chores. After Daniel successfully defends himself from several more blows, Miagi simply walks away, leaving Daniel to discover what the master had known all along: skill comes from repeating the correct but seemingly mundane actions. The same is true of godliness. -- Duke Winser, El Segundo, California. Leadership, Vol. 16, no. 4.
3. These are not empty rituals we go through when we sing hymns of worship and praise to God, nor is it just an “offering” of money that we collect, nor an exercise in patience to sit under a sermon – these acts of worship frame our lives and understanding of God and thus ourselves so that when we “work” in this world there is a whole different understanding of our role in life.
a. The Sabbath is thus a “rest” in God, a time for our soul to refresh itself as much as it is to prepare us for work in the world.
b. The man who fails to worship by honoring the Sabbath is a man that will not find satisfaction in life or work in the way God designed us to experience it.
4. In this sense the Sabbath was not made for God, it was made for man, a statement Jesus clearly says in Mark 2:27 “Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’”
II. MAN – THE WORKER Ex. 20:9; Gen. 2:15; Neh. 13:15-22
A. Responsibilities 20:9; Gen. 2:15
1. While the first half of the 4th commandment is “Keep the Sabbath day..” the second part is “Six days shall a man work…”
a. The full value of being a human being as God intended cannot be experienced without both WORSHIP and WORK.
b. The 4th commandment requires both.
2. A society that fails to realize that their citizen’s sense of self respect comes only from a Worship ethic and a Work ethic will fail to develop a strong society.
a. A society that is devoid of spiritual foundations will lack a sense of true mission.
b. A society that makes welfare without work will strip it citizens of dignity and purpose.
c. The human spirit must have both worship and work to know their humanity as God intended it to be.
3. Work was a part of Adam’s humanity BEFORE he sinned! (See Gen. 2:15)
a. Adam was commanded to work the garden before he fell in sin.
b. Man was not created to JUST worship, but to worship and work!
c. It is for this reason that any system to help the poor that avoids both elements, a spiritual context and a creative one will leave those who receive help “dignity poor” and lacking true self esteem.
(1. The Old Testament welfare system is a good example here of both:
(a. The spiritual context said the poor were valuable and the rich had a responsibility to them by leaving the corners of their fields for the poor to glean.
(b. By leaving the corners of the field for the poor, the poor had to work to gather in what was provided so that work was a part of the process and thus preserving their own dignity and self respect.
(c. In this way there was responsibility and dignity for both the rich and the poor. Each had to DO something.
(2. The New Testament certainly had a similar emphasis based on the Apostle Paul’s words to the Church in Thessalonica, 2 Th 3:10-12 “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.”
4. Failure of humans to worship also leaves them without true dignity and self respect, for there is no larger context to what they do than themselves!
a. Too many people assume that activity or work alone will fulfill them.
b. However, they soon discover that it is not activity that proves anything of value, only activity within a context of an eternal perspective that can add meaning.
ILLUS: Activity itself proves nothing: the ant is praised, the mosquito swatted. - Edythe Draper, Draper’s Book of Quotations for the Christian World (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992). Entries 112-115.
B. Rewards Neh. 13:15-22
1. Nehemiah understood how easy it is breaking the 4th commandment, and also how quickly God’s blessings disappeared when Judah did break it, so he goes into action to restore the Sabbath in order to restore God’s blessings on them as a nation, a nation that was recovering from captivity.
a. While they may be free again, captivity can come in other ways, and their neglect of the Sabbath was setting the stage for a new kind of captivity.
b. Since Nehemiah knew that the biggest battle was going to be with the merchants and the buyers he starts with them.
c. He forbids the doors to town to be open on the Sabbath.
d. He won’t let the merchants even in, and by closing the doors the buyers couldn’t get to the goodies!
e. He finally tells them after a couple of attempts to get their wares in that if they persist he will “make some heads roll”!
2. Nehemiah understood that leadership was needed to restore the proper place of the Sabbath in the life of Judah.
a. Dads, are you taking leadership in your homes to restore the Sabbath principle for your wife and children?
b. Once Nehemiah demonstrated his own leadership in this, he called upon the Levites to “PURIFY THEMSELVES” and to enforce it. A call for others to join him in being an example.
c. Stay at home parents do not produce go to Church children!
3. While we emphasize to our children and society the importance of “Thou shall not kill, Thou shall not steal, Thou shall not commit adultery” I wonder if we do as much to say, “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”?
4. Nehemiah’s concerns were simple, their forefathers had neglected the Sabbath and God had therefore allowed calamity upon them as a nation, if they want God’s blessings and rewards they would have to emphasize as much the Sabbath as any of the other commandments.
a. Reward came with responsibility
b. Reward came with taking God at His word about the Sabbath.
5. God was trying to raise them up as a nation, the Sabbath was meant to strengthen them as a people.
a. The world may not understand the importance of the Sabbath, but we need to show that it is important.
b. The Sabbath would raise up a nation to be all that God would have them to be.
ILLUS: Adrian Rogers, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, tells about the man who made his sons work in the cornfields while their peers spent the afternoon at the swimming hole. Someone scolded the father saying, "Why do you make those boys work so hard? You don’t need all that corn." The wise father replied, "Sir, I’m not raising corn. I’m raising boys." -- Quoted by Marvin Hein in The Christian Leader (Nov.21, l989). Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 2.
6. Just as skipping too much work has penalties, skipping the Sabbath has spiritual penalties also.
a. It is important to be faithful to worship.
b. It is important to be faithful to work.
7. How well do you keep the Sabbath?
a. Are you good at only “half” of this commandment, “6 days you will work…”?
b. Why settle for only half a blessing?
CONCLUSION: While the Sabbath was the last day of creation for God, it was man’s first day of existence with God. We begin our week with worship and then enter the week with work. God came first! The 4th commandment has 2 parts to it: (1. Worship – Sabbath, and (2. “6 days you will work” – creativity. Man is never fulfilled without both worship and work. A failure to honor both will result in loss. Do you remember the Sabbath to keep it holy?
