In this series on goodness you have been reflecting on what it means to become good like God. Most of us have grown up with subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle message--Be good. With some bribery, some badgering, and the well-placed argument "because I said so" that might work with a child. But what is our motivation for a lifelong pursuit of goodness? Most people don't know that I started off at college to become an English and Speech teacher. My grandmother was a grammarian. She taught English grammar, so I was expected to learn my grammar as well as my manners. From an early age I learned the difference between indicative verbs and imperative verbs--indicatives describe an action and imperatives command an action. Little did I know that my grandma's grammar lesson would so profoundly shape my theological thinking. In my study of Scripture, I have learned that the imperatives almost always follow the indicatives. That is, before God or any writer of Scripture commands hearers or readers to do something, they are reminded of what God has already done for them. That is certainly true in Exodus 20. Before God gives any of the 10 commandments or imperatives, He reminds His people of WHO He is ("I am the Lord your God") and WHAT He has done ("who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery"). God is the starting point of goodness.
Today we want to unpack this text from Exodus 20:8–11 to see how we apply its meaning in our lives today: 8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
John Piper portrays God's intention of this command for the people of God in this way:
"Let my highest creature, the one in my image, stop every seven days and commemorate with me the fact that I am the creator who has done all this. Let him stop working and focus on me, that I am the source of all that he has. I am the fountain of blessing. I have made the very hands and mind with which he works. Let one day out of seven demonstrate that all land and all animals and all raw materials and all breath and strength and thought and emotion and everything come from me. Let man look to me in leisure one day out of seven for the blessing that is so elusive in the affairs of this world."
The Jews in Jesus' day had turned this into a religious ritual of rule-keeping with a Sabbath day observance of do's and don'ts when what God intended was for His people to rest. It is an invitation to rest in their relationship with Him, to find their delight in Him, to focus on Him who is the fountain of all blessing.
But the Sabbath commandment means more than ceasing from labor one day a week. Look at what is inserted in the second giving of the Law in Deuteronomy 5:15: 15 "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day."
Moses is saying, "Look at what God has done. He delivered you. He saved you. "Therefore keep the Sabbath Day." Sabbath observance in the Old Testament was not merely a ceasing from work on the seventh day, it was a commemoration of salvation.
In a Seminary Lectureship on the Psalms a couple of years ago, John Witvliet of Calvin Theological Seminary described what it meant in a Hebrew culture to remember, "To remember is to savor the effects of a past event which has shaped our present reality with significant impact on the future."
How could God's people miss the point that Sabbath keeping was a call to savor their salvation when they were accustomed to remembering the Passover, savoring the effects of their deliverane?
In Exodus 31:12–13 we see a third reason for Sabbath-keeping, 12 "And the Lord said to Moses, 13 "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."
The Sabbath was to be a sign between God and His people from generation to generation that would show that it is God who sanctifies; he sets His people apart; He consecrates them.
What all of these texts share in common is a clear picture of what God does and what His people are to do. Who is it that creates? Who is it that saves? Who is it that sanctifies? That is what God does. What are God's people to do? Respond. Remember.
I don't know how you have typically heard Sabbath teaching applied to Christians in the 1st century of the 21st century but my experience has been that we typically substitute the Lord's Day for the Sabbath Day and we assume we keep the Sabbath on Sunday. Please hear me clearly, as important as gathering together on the Lord's Day is, I think that misses the point.
The sabbath message is this--God invites us to rest in Him, in His salvation work, in His sanctifying work. The pressure is off of us to earn salvation based on our works or to arrive at an appropriate goodness quotient. Instead we are free to enjoy becoming good, knowing that the work of salvation has been done on our behalf and that God invites to keep growing, to be sanctified in the freedom of his grace and love.
I want to illustrate that truth in what I have discovered as twin texts in the New Testament. They are found in Romans 12 and Hebrews 12. They are not identical twins but they have some close similarities.
1 "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1–2, ESV)
28 "Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-29, ESV)
See the similarities:
Both are summary statements as seen in the use of the word "therefore."
Both call Christians to make an appropriate response in worship.
Both describe worship that is "acceptable" or "pleasing" to God.
Before we are too critical of those who turned sabbath-keeping into a work by which they would be saved, how many of us grew up with the idea or still have the idea that we come to worship one day a week to get God's mercies. Somewhere in my growing up I got the idea that there was a correlation between how many services I attended and how many stars would be in my crown. The unspoken, subtle message was "Be a good boy and go to church. If you do, you get brownie points with God."
For years I missed the point Paul took 11 chapters in Romans to extol the mercies of God that are ours only through salvation in Jesus Christ. He made it clear that apart from Him, none of us is righteous. You see the same argument in Hebrews. In 12 chapters the writer shows how because of Jesus we have a superior high priest, a better covenant, a better sacrifice, an eternal Kingdom. We don't do what we do to try to earn our way into God's Kingdom. Notice what he says, "Since we receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be grateful and offer to God acceptable worship.
For Paul and for the writer of Hebrews, worship is not something we do to get God's mercies or to punch our ticket to get into the Kingdom. It is the only appropriate response to mercies already received and a kingdom being received.
But just as the appropriate response to the Sabbath commandment was not merely a weekly observance, so the appropriate worship response is not setting aside one hour a week to the Lord on the Lord's Day. But rather in Paul's words, "present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." The New Testament never uses the word "worship" to describe what Christians did on the Lord's Day. Worship is a way of life; it is what we do after we say "I believe."
The Hebrews writer calls his readers to "offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe." Why? Because God is not only a God of mercies but He is also a consuming fire. He cautions against what some of God's people have always done and that is playing games with God. A life of acceptable worship responds appropriately to Who God is and what God has done
The final verse of the old hymn "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" offers the only proper response to all that God has done for to save us and to sanctify us. It goes like this "Were the whole realm of nature mine that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life my all."
God's saving work is complete but His sanctifying work is still incomplete. Our sabbath response is to rest in God's salvation but as Michael Wilkins described reality, it is a "restful dissatisfaction" as we continue to become sanctified. We are still growing and becoming what God created us to be and to do what He saved us to do.
I want to close with one of my favorite stories. It is a true story that happened several years ago when Stacey King was a rookie playing with the Chicago Bulls with team mates Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. He played in the game when Michael Jordan scored 69 points. In the post-game interview he was asked, "What are you going to remember about this night?" He replied, "I'll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined for 70 points." I share the story not to elevate Michael Jordan to God-like proportions but to put what we do in proper perspective. If God and I team up for 70 points, I will take credit for one thing--I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, my Lord and my Savior--and God gets the credit for all the rest. May our response to Who God is and what He has done reflect His grace and goodness to others.