In this message we look at the earliest example of Sabbath and mans terrible track record of keeping a day of Rest.
The creation story found in the book of Genesis is foundational. There we learn that God Made the Heavens and the Earth…and all that was in it. And it was Good. After he concluded making everything, (including mankind,) He rested.
“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” (Genesis 2:2-3)
1. Think about that. God created something by resting from creating!
God consecrated, made the day Holy. It’s important to remember back to the beginning of this Day of Rest, because it sets the context for future conversations about Sabbath.
Fast forward. God uses Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. They were forced, for 400 years, to serve the Egyptians through hard, physical labor. In Exodus 16, they are free from all that…but found themselves wandering in the dessert, in the wilderness. And they were hungry.
“In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:2-3)”
2. They complained and romanticized slavery!
This would have been a great time to give the Israelites a Snickers! The problem is that this attitude wasn’t them just be hangry so they acted terrible, full of self pity.
A person’s true character shows up in the face adversity, in the face of hardship. Instead of raining down Snickers from Heaven on the Israelites, God provided them mana…wafer like stuff they could eat. It would sustain them.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.” (Exodus 16:4-5)
3. God provides for their needs, but TESTS their trust and reliance on Him.
This is one essential element to Sabbath, or what we looked at last week with fasting.
Will we trust God during this season?
Trust Him to supply?
To sustain? To strengthen?
Some of the Israelites followed the instructions, only storing up enough mana for the day, not keeping any of it until the morning. Others tried keeping some leftovers for the next day. Perhaps they were dealing with a scarcity mentality. In the morning…they did not have a tasty snack. They had maggots. (Eww…)
4. There were also special directions for the 6th day of the week.
Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’”
So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a sabbath to the Lord. You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.” (Exodus 16:21-26)
The Lord provided. Mana didn’t go bad when the people followed the instructions. They had food to eat on the Sabbath without any additional labor. No need to work. They prepared for the day of rest. They didn’t have the urgent distraction of supplying for their own needs. The Lord supplied.
Moses clarifies all this to the people in verses 29-30.
Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out.” So the people rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 16:29-30)
5. God gave man the Sabbath.
If that expression sounds familiar, it’s because Jesus says something to this effect in the Gospel of Mark.
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)
So the Children of Israel in Exodus are experiencing the establishment of the practice of a day of Rest. A few chapters later, we get the backbone of the Mosaic Law: the 10 Commandments. God gave the commandments as part of His covenant with them.
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11)
So we have the original story in the Garden of Eden at creation.
We have the practical direction in the desert concerning mana, basically “depend on God.”
Now it is formalized, codified if you will. It’s sandwiched among a bunch of “you shall nots” we get
6. “Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy.”
The Sabbath was a gift, it is a gift. Will we remember & keep it holy?
So this message is entitled Extreme Neglect. It should not be a surprise to any of us that…
7. This call to remember the Sabbath…was well, forgotten.
By the time Nehemiah comes around, it’s after the return of the Israelites from Babylonian exile.
Ezra had previously set out to reestablish the temple and worship of God in Jerusalem. Nehemiah’s main goal was to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. After all that, Nehemiah, true to his word, returned to King Artaxerxes for a time. Then asked for permission to go back to Jerusalem.
8. When Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem…it was not good. What he found was Extreme Neglect.
The Levites hadn’t been paid what they were due and they and the temple musicians (think: Worship leaders) went back to work on their fields for a living. Also, one of the priests gave an adversarial leader (Tobiah) a room in the temple, allowing him to store his stuff there.
One of the most infuriating things was the absolute toil and commerce that took place on the Sabbath. Nehemiah writes in chapter 13:15-18
“In those days I saw people in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day. People from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the people of Judah. I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this wicked thing you are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day? Didn’t your ancestors do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity on us and on this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.”
Nehemiah was serious about this. He had spent so much time, political capital and risked his life in the pursuit of protecting this land and his fellow Israelites. Protecting their ability to exist and Worship the Lord. And some of the same bad choices that landed them in exile in the first place were being repeated. The biggest of which is at the heart of Sabbath Rest.
When we “can’t” slow down and rest in God,
our lack of trust in Him begins to show.
Here is a wonderful gift that we read about in Genesis and Exodus and now here, sometime after the return from Babylonian exile, this gift is discarded for its opposite.
“When evening shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men at the gates so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day. Once or twice the merchants and sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside Jerusalem. But I warned them and said, “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will arrest you.” From that time on they no longer came on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy.
Remember me for this also, my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.” (Nehemiah 13:19-22)
At its core, working and laboring on the Sabbath aren’t about rule breaking for rule breaking’s sake. They are symptoms of a culture that doesn’t trust in God more than they rely on themselves. Nehemiah took drastic measures to shift the culture back toward trusting in the Lord. Reorienting their actions, if not by persuasion, then by threatening to throw hands.
9. In Jerusalem, REST had been replaced by WORK, labor.
Why does God give man the Sabbath? Truth is, we need it.
God can do more through us in 6 days
than we can do through us in 7.
I’ll give you a practical example from my life. If I know I have something big happening on Friday & Saturday, usually focus my attention on sermon prep earlier in the week so I’m not up late Saturday night. I do have my lovely wife to help me remember this very beneficial practice. When I don’t have that deadline, so to speak…it’s easier for me to get distracted and not be as productive throughout the week.
Like the Israelites in Exodus, the Lord provides on that Rest day. In that time of rest, we focus our attention on the goodness of God. On thankfulness. On being refreshed and renewed.
This last year I was finally able to go to the District Men’s retreat. It took my own determination to ask the church to pay for my registration. We also had to arrange for me being gone on a Sunday. It was a bit of a beta test of what we’ve done recently in preparation for Sabbatical. The men’s retreat was awesome. I was able to rest, to receive the Word through others, and gain encouragement for life as a man called to trust in God, especially when the pressure is on. Without that dedicated time, it could have been just another busy weekend that led to exhausted start on Monday.
10. The practice of sabbath, much like fasting, tithing, and charitable works, are not about the action themselves, but the orientation of the heart.
Either the orientation that goes into the action OR the orientation that is realized after the practice of it.
As we continue to read in the Bible, we see that problems occur later in history when the practice of these things become the point of doing them. A religious checklist to show how spiritual one is. As if they took the actions of Nehemiah, removed the heart behind his actions, and cranked them up to 11!
Next week we’ll hop into the New Testament and see how Jesus handles Heartless Legalism.
But for today, remember:
- God rested. He rested from making. (Genesis 2:2-3)
- He provided for the Israelites so they didn’t need to labor on the day of Rest. (Exodus 16:21-26)
- Lack of regular times of rest can point back to a lack of trust in the Lord to provide.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Viroqua Naz 
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