Exodus 20:8-11
“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”
It’s here after we have looked at the worshipper that we can talk about the:
2. THE WORKER
As we look at the worker, we see first the:
A. Responsibilities
While the first half of the 4th commandment is “Keep the Sabbath day..” the second part is “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” The 4th commandment requires both worship and work. The full value of being a human being as God intended cannot be experienced without both WORSHIP and WORK. 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. Their loss of spiritual foundations results in a lack of a sense of purpose and direction. A society that institutes welfare without work strips its citizens of dignity and purpose. Work was a part of Adam’s humanity BEFORE he sinned, as Genesis 2:15 reveals:“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Man was not created to JUST worship, but to worship and work! 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. Welfare is destructive not productive because it makes people dependent while stripping them of dignity. Welfare focuses on the problem instead of the person. And because it focuses on the money instead of the mission it places the value on the purse instead of the person. When we look to the Old Testament in Leviticus 23:22: “When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God.” What we discover is that unlike our welfare system God’s Word deals with both the spiritual context and a creative one. The spiritual context said the poor were valuable and as such those with resources had a responsibility to help them by leaving the edge of their fields for the poor to harvest. While the poor didn’t have the land, money, or means to plant a crop they could work to harvest one. Because the poor had to work to gather in what was provided it meant that work was a part of the process thus preserving their own dignity and self-respect. In this way there was responsibility and dignity for both the rich and the poor. Each had to DO something. Instead of a handout it was a hand up. The New Testament provides a similar emphasis as we look at 2 Thessalonians 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.” 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! Too many people assume that activity or work alone will fulfill them. It is not activity that proves anything of value, only activity within a context of an eternal perspective that can add meaning. Activity in and of itself proves nothing, the ant is praised, the mosquito swatted. It’s not about being busy it’s about Gods business. Many today are miserable in their work because their motive revolves around me. Work for me leads to misery but work for the Master is meaningful. Not only is there a responsibility to work but also:
B. Rewards
Nehemiah 13:15-22
15 In those days I saw men of Judah treading out their winepresses on the Sabbath. They were also bringing in grain, loading it on donkeys, and bringing their wine, grapes, figs, and all sorts of produce to Jerusalem to sell on the Sabbath. So I rebuked them for selling their produce on that day. 16 Some men from Tyre, who lived in Jerusalem, were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise. They were selling it on the Sabbath to the people of Judah—and in Jerusalem at that! 17 So I confronted the nobles of Judah. “Why are you profaning the Sabbath in this evil way?” I asked. 18 “Wasn’t it just this sort of thing that your ancestors did that caused our God to bring all this trouble upon us and our city? Now you are bringing even more wrath upon Israel by permitting the Sabbath to be desecrated in this way!” 19 Then I commanded that the gates of Jerusalem should be shut as darkness fell every Friday evening, not to be opened until the Sabbath ended. I sent some of my own servants to guard the gates so that no merchandise could be brought in on the Sabbath day. 20 The merchants and tradesmen with a variety of wares camped outside Jerusalem once or twice. 21 But I spoke sharply to them and said, “What are you doing out here, camping around the wall? If you do this again, I will arrest you!” And that was the last time they came on the Sabbath. 22 Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and to guard the gates in order to preserve the holiness of the Sabbath.

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 as a result of rejecting God. 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. Since Nehemiah knew that the biggest battle was going to be with the merchants and the buyers, he starts with them by forbidding the doors to the city to be open on the Sabbath. We have the same capitalist’s consumer problem today. And because Nehemiah understood that leadership was needed to restore the proper place of the Sabbath in the life of Judah, he leaned on the nobles those who had influence through their position and power. Dads, are you taking leadership in your homes to restore the Sabbath principle for your wife and children? Nehemiah didn’t just preach a sabbath principle he practiced it. Look stay at home parents do not produce go to Church children. I want to encourage you to get involved. While we emphasize to our children and society the importance of “Thou shall not kill, steal and commit adultery” I wonder if we do as much to say, “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”? Why does the sabbath matter, because without sabbath we end up in slavery. Nehemiah’s concerns were simple, their forefathers had neglected the Sabbath and God had allowed calamity to fall on their nation. If they wanted to live in the rewards and not regret, they needed to return to worship before work. Reward came with responsibility. There is a story about a man who was criticized for making his sons work in the cornfields while their peers spent the afternoon at the swimming hole. They 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.” Just as skipping too much work has consequences, so skipping the Sabbath has spiritual consequences. We are called to be faithful in both worship and work. How well do you keep the Sabbath? Are you good at only “half” of this commandment, “6 days you will work…”? Why settle for only half a blessing? If we want to reap the rewards, we need to put God first. So let me ask you is your worship fueling your work?

Exodus 20:8-11
“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”
As we continue to look at the Worshipper we discover that worship doesn’t just impact our relationships but also our:
B. Rest
Worship enables us to “rest” before God. Resting in Him results in relying on Him. Resting results in trusting but running results in trying. Many of us are trying to worship through our work, instead of letting worship fuel our work we are working to fuel our worship. Working to try and get God to love us instead of worship that reminds us that we are loved. This rest isn’t just a physical rest it’s a spiritual rest. It is a resting from trying to save ourselves through our works. Its resting in Christ’s finished work on the cross. So, let me ask you are relying on works based salvation or resting in the work of the Savior? When we rely on our work to get to heaven our worship is replaced by work, we become workers for God but not worshippers of God. Resting reminds us that we are limited but the Lord is not. It reminds us to do life in the Lords strength not ours. The reason many of us are serving out of weariness is because we are doing things for Jesus instead of doing things with Jesus. In Psalm 23:1-3 David says: “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul.” The first thing the shepherd does is lead His sheep to lie down. Notice he has to make them lie down, rest doesn’t come naturally but wrestling and being restless does. Instead of resting in Jesus some of us are wrestling with Jesus. Why do the sheep need to lie down, so they can ruminate. They have to regurgitate what they have already taken in and chew their cud so they can get the most out of it. When we rush into work without ruminating and really digested God’s Word we go on a partially full stomach. And when we only get part of the nutrition it’s not long before we become malnutritioned. REST protects us from running on empty. This is illustrated in the following story about two woodcutters named Peter and John. Who decided to hold a competition to see who could cut more wood in a day. They both took up their positions in the forest and started chopping away as fast as they could. This lasted for an hour before Peter suddenly stopped. When John realized that there was no chopping sound from his opponent’s side, he thought: “Ah Ha! He must be tired already!” And he continued to cut down his trees with double the pace. 15 minuets later John heard his opponent chopping again. John was starting to feel weary when the chopping from Peter stopped once again. Feeling motivated and smelling victory close by, John continued on, with a smile on his face. This continued the whole day. Every hour, Peter would stop chopping for fifteen minutes while John kept going relentlessly. So, when the competition ended, John was absolutely confident that he had won. But to John’s astonishment, Peter had actually cut down more wood. How could this be? After all Peter kept stopping, but what John failed to realize was that while Peter rested, he was sharpening his axe. Today everybody, everywhere seems to be busy. But most of them are too busy doing and trying to achieve that they do not take the necessary time to renew themselves, to learn and grow and sharpen the “axe”. We overwork ourselves amidst the overwhelming tasks at hand. We feel drained, exhausted and our productivity declines. Do we simply take a break and relax? No that isn’t sharpening the axe, that’s just putting the axe down. The blade will still be dull after your break. Yes, the woodcutter needs to relax but real rest, rest in the Lord is what sharpens the blade and allows us to become more productive. Today we are skipping the Sabbath because we think if we just work more, we will be more productive. But it hasn’t led to productivity its led to problems. Instead of a productive nation we have become a destructive nation. A problematic nation not a productive one. Do you want to be a productive person or a problem person? Not only are we skipping the Sabbath to work but also to play, to escape work. But just taking a break and relaxing doesn’t sharpening the axe, that’s just putting the axe down. Which is no wonder that we feel worn out when we have to pick it up again on Monday. We are not resting we are just running from work. Which leads to living for the weekend instead of living all week. Remember that every day is a brand new opportunity to rest in Jesus so that we can not only be recharge and renew but so that He can refine us. Sharpening the blade involves grinding away the old dull edge. Sometimes it results in a little friction heat and sparks. Renewing sometimes involves removing. Even when it doesn’t feel good, we need to rest in the Redeemer. Let me encourage you to devote time to sharpening your axe instead of chopping away doggedly. Are you working out of weariness or out of worship? Working smarter instead of longer starts with spending time with Jesus. How sharp is your axe? Five years ago I took a Sabbatical, which at the time was radical for our church. But it change me and made me a more effective pastor, because it gave God time to sharpen the axe. Spiritual rest has a profound impact on our physical body. Worship combats worry, because it’s hard to worry when you are resting in God’s Word. 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. The one who fails to worship by honoring the Sabbath will not find satisfaction in life or work in the way God designed them to experience it. 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 ma, not man for the Sabbath.’” So what are you resting in, is it the Almighty or you’re ability?