Exodus 23:12

Rest worships God and blesses others

Good evening. Last week, we began a new series on rest. We learned from Genesis about God's rest in creation and how rest is good. Tonight, we'll continue in our series on rest by meditating on Exodus 23, 12, considering God's call to his people to rest and why. So let me invite you to turn there in your Bibles to Exodus 23, and we'll be in verse 12. Hear the word of God.

Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed.

Now this verse comes after God delivered the people of Israel out of Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai. And there God made a covenant with the Israelites, promising that he would be their God and that they would be his chosen people and holy nation. And as part of that covenant, what we call the old covenant, God gave them laws about how they were to live as his people. Most significantly, the 10 commandments, but also other laws, other case laws that further exposit the 10 commandments and apply them. That's what we see here with verse 12. It's fleshing out and applying the fourth commandment that is to keep the Sabbath day holy. Now, when it comes to the Sabbath, there's different views on how to interpret and apply it today. And those are important and necessary discussions to have. We shouldn't just chalk this up to some insignificant disagreement as if it doesn't matter at all. No, we should give great thought and care to understanding God's word and interpreting it rightly. And so naturally that raises the question, is the Sabbath binding on us today? The answer is no. No, the Sabbath does not apply to us the same way it did to the Israelites. The apostle Paul makes it clear in Galatians that the old covenant had a timestamp of expiration. The law was a temporary guardian until Christ came, until he came to fulfill the law and to absorb the curse of the old covenant and inaugurate the new covenant. And under that new covenant, we are no longer commanded to observe the Sabbath in the same way that Israel did. but the command still applies to us in the sense that it's still scripture. It's still the word of God written down for our instruction, written down to reveal things about God's character to us. So with the limited time tonight, I won't be diving into all the theological details of the Sabbath. What I hope to do instead is to draw out the principle that this verse teaches us, the main idea that we can walk away with, which is this. Rest worships God and blesses others. Rest worships God and blesses others. The first thing I wanna point out is that this verse falls in a section about worship. It's a section with instructions about the Sabbath, the feasts, offerings. So it's dealing with the institutional worship that God prescribes. If you look even at the verse right after, verse 13, it forbids worship to other gods. So it's important to see that the context, the backdrop of this verse is worship. And with all that being said, let's turn our attention now to consider three things that this verse teaches us about rest. And the first is this, rest submits. Rest submits. This verse is a divine decree that God gave to his people to rest. So by resting, they were obeying God, they were submitting to him. God has the right to rule us because he created us and he redeemed us. We belong to him and he has authority over us. But we must not think of God as a king who coldly demands obedience of his subjects. I know he is a loving father who kindly speaks to us and gives us commands for our very own good. Authority can be scary. We tend to be suspicious of it. We often hear about people abusing their authority, misusing their power, but we still need to have a category for good authority. Authority that says yes to what's right and good and no to what's wrong and harmful. Authority that blesses protects and cares for. And ultimately God is our good authority who we submit to. So here's a diagnostic question. What's your attitude towards scripture's commands, especially what it forbids? Do you view those as blessings and protections to delight in or obstacles and roadblocks that hinder you? God's law is for our flourishing. It's always good, always wise, always holy and just. And that's the case here in this verse as well. God commanded the people of Israel to rest in this way for their benefit. Most basically, they needed physical rest. In the ancient world, you had to labor every day to put food on the table. You ate what you gathered, what you produced, And so the temptation for them was to break this command and to keep working on the Sabbath. That's what Exodus 16 records with the manna God provided in the wilderness. God said he would provide manna for them and he told them to go out and gather the first six days and to rest on the seventh. But the Israelites disobeyed. They went out and collected manna instead of obeying God and trusting him to provide. And so with the Sabbath, God blessed them with a day set apart to rest, to remember him and to exercise faith in him to provide. And so in that way, rest teaches us to submit to God as a ruler instead of work. We just finished the series on work. We know that it's a good thing. And even in this verse, working for six days is what's commanded first. But work can easily become an idol that rules us. Think of the person that tries to climb the corporate ladder and advance their career at any cost, or the father who takes promotion after promotion at work to the neglect of his family. Work can often turn into our master. But rest pulls us away from that. A rest helps us relate rightly to God and rightly to work because it reminds us that work isn't everything. We can rest from work because ultimately it's not us, but God who provides. Ultimately, it's not us, but God who keeps the world spinning. Rest submits to God, depending on Him instead of relying on ourselves. And rest also submits to God by recognizing that we're not like him. God is infinite. He neither slumbers nor sleeps, but we are finite creatures who need a rest. We can't go without physical rest because that's how God made us. The athlete that trains and trains without ever resting eventually ends up injured. The student that constantly stays up late and never gets enough rest ends up tired and stressed out. Refusing rest never works out in the end. It's foolish to try to get around God's design. We need to recognize that we're finite, that we have limitations. And so resting aligns us under God's wise design and submits to his good authority. It acknowledges our need to depend on God and it submits the reality that we are not like him. The rest was not just for God's covenant people, but others as well. The purpose of this command is

so that your ox and your donkey may have rest and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed.

So that brings us to our second point, rest stewards, rest stewards. In the Old Testament, the Sabbath command is often given with different intentions. Sometimes it's to echo God's pattern in creation. Sometimes it's to remember the deliverance from Egypt. But here the explicit reason is neighborly. It has this horizontal aim of caring for fellow creation and stewarding it. The scope here includes animals, servants, and aliens, that is foreigners. The ox and the donkey were used to plow fields and carry heavy loads. So they were valuable working animals. Attention is given here to the servant because Israel had been enslaved in Egypt. And so they were not to oppress or treat their servants harshly. And similarly, they were not to treat foreigners wrongly because they themselves had been sojourners in the land of Egypt. And so the common ground between these three groups is that they were easier to exploit. They could be taken advantage of and forced to work. And so God explicitly ensures that these people who are in a lower, more vulnerable position would also get to rest. So we see God's justice and kindness here. And we also see that the principle of rest is universal. God desires rest for all creation, humans, animals, even the land must receive rest in verse 11. God cares for all of creation and he desires rest for it. So if God wants his creation to rest, we must also seek to promote that as good stewards. And in particular, this verse calls us to be good stewards of those under our care, of those under our authority, because they need rest as well. So employers, would your employees say they get enough rest? If not, are there any ways that you could accommodate more time off or more rest for them? Parents, Could your child's schedule be overwhelmed with too many activities and commitments for them to properly rest? We should seek to promote rest not just for ourselves, but others as well. But rest doesn't necessarily mean stopping all work to do nothing. Often it means ceasing one kind of activity to focus on another. For example, God rested from his creating work on the seventh day, but he was still working to sustain the world. And so in the same way, the Israelites wouldn't have been rightly observing the Sabbath if all they did was just lay in bed the whole day. The time that they were resting, that they were not using the work was to be used in other ways. The Sabbath was a day set aside to remember God and to worship him. And while we may not observe the Sabbath in the same way the Israelites did, we should still use our rest to remember God, to pray and give thanks to Him, to honor Him. Because all our time belongs to God in the first place. That's why He can command when to work and when to rest. We don't own our time. Every day, every minute is a gift from Him that we are called to steward. And so rest plays a major role in our stewardship of time. But also notice that this verse has others in view. So there is a communal aspect to rest as well. The Israelites weren't commanded to rest so that they could all shut their doors and go sit by themselves. No, it was a rest from work so that they could spend time with one another, so that they could do what we're even doing right now, gathering together for fellowship and prayer. Of course, that doesn't mean there's never a time to be alone, but all too often we think of rest as me time. We need to remember that we don't own our time. It all belongs to God, even our rest. So evaluate your schedule, your calendar, consider how you might steward your rest to worship God and bless others. But rest is not just a duty that we need to do, it's a gift in and of itself, a blessing that God gives us for our enjoyment and our satisfaction. And that brings us to our third point, rest satisfies. Rest satisfies. We see this in the goal of the command, which is rest and refreshment. And refreshment goes deeper than just physical recovery. It's this idea of your soul being restored, your spirit being renewed. God created us humans as embodied souls. And so both our body and our soul need rest. As Augustine said,