Rest in a Busy World

The Revolutionary Nature of the 10 Commandments

Because the 10 Commandments have become so ingrained in Western civilization, it is difficult for the modern reader to grasp how different this all was. This is a key burden of Joy Davidman’s book about the 10 Commandments, Smoke on the Mountain. I think she puts it perfectly.

Everyone knew that the universe was a wild and chaotic thing, a jungle of warring powers: wind against water, sun against moon, male against female, life against death. There was a god of the spring planting and another god of the harvest, a spirit who put fish into fishermen's nets and a being who specialized in the care of women in childbirth; and at best there was an uneasy truce among all these, at worst a battle. Now along comes a fool, from an insignificant tribe of desert wanderers, and shouts that all these processes are one process from a single source, that the obvious many are the unthinkable One!

Today we’re looking at the 4th commandment which reads:

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.

And everything in this would’ve been controversial. Here are four revolutionary ideas in this one commandment:

The Modern Week

I mean these people didn’t even know what a week was. There is no natural reason why they would. A day is a natural division of time. Months are essentially lunar in character. But a week? What is a week? It is more or less artificial. That’s why throughout history, you’ll find a wide variety of practices.

Rome practiced an 8 day cycle.
The French Revolutionary calendar ran on a 10 day cycle.
The Han Dynasty ran on a 5 day cycle.
And most relevantly, ancient Egypt practiced a 9 day cycle with the 10th being a day of rest.

So right away there’s an upgrade. They are moving from a rest day every 10th day to a rest day every 7th. Which is a lot more rest days over a lifetime.

Equal Rights

Not that they would’ve had them. They were slaves. That’s another revolutionary thing about this passage.

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.

The notion of equal rights is completely monotheistic. It is rooted in the notion that all people were created by one God.

Faith to Rest

Here’s another revolutionary idea. The idea that you and I could survive working only 5 days a week is historically novel. The world has changed very dramatically in the last 1000 years. The more we move out of the pagan swamps, the more efficient we become, etc… So now for most of us, we can work 5 days and have the weekend. And we also get holidays, vacations, so forth.

But back in the time when the 10 Commandments were issued, people had to work all day every day just to survive. We have a problem of too many calories (of calorically dense food). They had just the opposite problem. The hours of labor to calories consumed ratio was very different back then.

So the very notion that the entire economy would shut down every 7 days, would’ve appeared extremely risky.

And I think there’s a lesson here. Most of the time, God calls us to be practical. To do the obvious thing. Which is work. But there will always be some instances where God calls you to do the impractical thing (or the seemingly impractical thing). That’s what we see here when it says, “6 days you shall do your labor but on the 7th day you shall rest.”

That’s a good principle to keep in mind. It shows up all the time. That’s what is going on with the tithe. 90% of your money ought to be put to obvious practical uses, 10% should be declarative – I am dependent on God…

Aseity

And then you have this idea of serving God by doing nothing. Which is an extremely profound and provocative concept. What kind of God asks you to worship him once a week by doing nothing? A God with Aseity. Which is Latin for “from self.”

We were all created. We came from somewhere. God did not. He has always been. He is not dependent on anything or anyone.

This is a key part of the Psalm of Moses (Psalm 90): “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

It’s what Jesus means when He says in John chapter 5, ”The Father has life in himself.”

It’s what Paul says to the men of Athens in Acts chapter 17: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

Isaiah 66:1-2 – “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

This is in stark contrast with the pagan deities of the day. Their idols were thought to rely on the sacrifices and rituals that their followers gave them.

And again, the 10 commandments are truly revolutionary. Especially the first four.

Our very means of marking time flows from this.
The notion of equal rights is rooted in this commandment.
And most revolutionary of all, we are presented with an entirely different kind of God. A God from self – eternal and self-sustaining. And this idea is completely different than anything else going on at the time.

Back to Davidman,

Belief in one God slew a host of horrors: malignant storm demons, evil djinn of sickness, blighters of the harvest, unholy tyrants over life and death; belief in God destroyed the fetishes, the totems, the beast-headed bullies of old time. It laid the axe to sacred trees watered by the blood of virgins, it smashed the child-eating furnaces of Moloch, and toppled the gem-encrusted statues of the peevish divinities half-heartedly served by Greece and Rome.

The old gods fought among themselves, loved and hated without reason, demanded unspeakable bribes and meaningless flatteries. While they were worshiped, a moral law was impossible, for what pleased one deity would offend another.

Then came the knowledge of God. An almost unimaginable person-a single being, creator of heaven and earth, not to be bribed with golden images or children burned alive; loving only righteousness. A being who demanded your whole heart.

Some Sabbath Keeping Principles:

Now that we know what the Sabbath is meant to teach us (to trust God, to be reminded of his self-sufficiency and aseity), I think we can see the wisdom in observing it. I have been a Christian for most of my life, and I still help learning to trust God (to be still and know that he is Lord) and also need frequent reminders that the God who is, is not dependent on me – but in some way is most glorified when I simply rest in his self-sufficiency.

In other words, it is as Jesus said – the Sabbath is made for man. Why? To rest and recover? Mostly to rest in God and recover true things about God.

I guess what I’m saying is that the Sabbath is didactic. It teaches.

So let’s talk about some practical measures for observing the Sabbath. These are things to build toward:

The Sabbath is a full 24 hours. At some point on Saturday evening, you ought to try to be home and begin to get into Sabbath mode. Don’t routinely stumble in here after a long Saturday.

The Sabbath is for everyone. Even unbelievers. Is my rest built on the backs of others?

The Sabbath is a kind of stewardship. Where you choose to be impractical, etc….

The Sabbath is meant to teach you about God’s self-sufficiency. God to church! Encounter God.

Again, my main concern is that you understand what is supposed to be happening.

II. The 10 Commandments Reveal the Contour of Salvation:

Now there’s another angle I’ve been wanting to hit for the past few weeks. It is another way of looking at the 10 commandments. Namely, that the 10 commandments reveal the nature of our salvation.

The bible explicitly describes conversion (salvation) as God writing the law on our hearts. Listen to Jeremiah 31:31

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

In some way, every believer has stood on the mountain of the Lord with smoke and fire and thunder and lightning and in conversion had God write his law on your heart like he wrote on the tablets.

What does that even look like? Like, what exactly happened? Well that’s what I’m getting at when I suggest that the law shows us the contours of conversion. Meaning, what changes when a person is born again?

Take the first commandment – you shall have no other gods before me. God has imprinted himself on the hearts of those he has saved. Do we need to be reminded to do it? Of course. But there is indeed an impulse amongst the converted to love God and get rid of all the idols.

Speaking of idols, consider the second commandment – which forbids making images of God. How can I worship and love something I cannot see? But after conversion? Well listen to what Peter says in his first epistle: "Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory." – 1 Peter 1:8

We love his name of God. We feel a real sense of conviction over misusing it. We feel a real sorrow for hypocrisy and so forth.

And what about the fourth? What about the Sabbath? How has this law been written on our hearts?

Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. – says the Lord Jesus.

Illustration: Riding bike without hands // Duck - peaceful above the water…

This is the state of the world today. Recreation abounds. Self-care is everywhere. But behind all the smiling selfies and spa days – souls are not at rest.

To be sure, the cure for most kinds of poverty is work. But there is an exception to every rule. Yes, work will fix most forms of poverty – but not spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty will only be fixed by resting in what Christ has done.

In fact, I can confidently tell you that the more you try to work your own salvation, the poorer you’ll become. You’ll only mess it up. There are certain jobs too difficult for us. And gaining acceptance with God is like that. We must put down the tools and step back and let Christ do this.

As Jonathan Edwards wrote: “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.”

So like it says in Hebrews –

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

And earlier he says, “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”

Christianity isn’t a call to abandon works all together. Christianity is actually a very works oriented religion. But it begins with the works of Christ. As I said before. We are all saved by works — but it is the works of Jesus that must save for only he is capable of doing what must be done for our sin and guilt.

So again, today if you hear his voice do not harden your heart. Enter spiritual rest. Come unto Jesus and he will give you rest.