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?

18. Holiday or Holy day? – Part 1
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 in our series “Relationship not Rules” we come to the fourth commandment and the last command that revolves around our relationship with God, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” Exodus‬ ‭20:8‬. Of the 10 commandments this is the one that is often taken the most lightly. Against the other commandments like, “Thou shall not kill”, “Thou shall not steal”, and “Do not commit adultery” it seems rather mild and harmless. But nothing could be further from the truth. As the final commandment dealing with man’s relationship with God it concludes all that we need to know in order to experience the full and abundant life that Jesus talked about. God’s rightful place and man’s rightful place cannot be understood in life without this commandment. ‬‬There are really two parts to this command:‬‬‬‬
1. Keep the Sabbath day holy – This has to do with our worship
2. Six days shall you work – This has to do with our work.
We cannot find meaning in work without worship, and worship without work has no practical value! It is the combination of both worship and work in the right order that creates a full humanity and purpose to life. Without worship work just becomes a self-seeking endeavor that revolves around self not service and so it has no lasting sense of purpose. That is why Paul exhorted us in Colossians 3:17 that “Whatever you do, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Work without worship is waste while worship without work is a witness to laziness not to the Lord. We cannot experience work as a joyous thing without realizing that our work is being done for something and someone greater than ourselves. While worship without work gives no expression of God’s power in our lives to those of this world. We must honor both parts of this commandment to know God’s best in life. So lets look first at the:
1. THE WORSHIPPER
A. Relationship 20:8
This command revolves around our relationship not around a rule. So often when we think of the Sabbath, we make it about not working, and so we miss the whole message. It’s not about not working it’s about worshiping the Lord, and you can’t worship if your busy with work. The Sabbath is about relationship with the Lord, and when we trade worship for work it erodes our relationship with Him. We start trusting in our work and what we can do and it’s not long before we start worshiping our work. We don’t just loose perspective we lose our purpose. Life starts to revolve around riches instead of relationship. It’s not long before our lack of time for God the Father results in a lack of time for family. We become too busy to love our kids and our spouse. Because we are investing our greatest treasure, time on riches instead of relationship. The first part of this commandment provides perspective to life because it reminds us that worship comes before work. While the Sabbath was the last day of creation for God, it was man’s first full day of existence with God. We forget that man began his journey with worship before work! And so, we should begin our week with worship, because worship not only fuels us for work, it fits us for work. Worship molds us into the kind of workers we are called to be, servants. When we find ourselves being more prone to selfishness than servanthood often it’s because we have become more of a worker than a worshipper. Worship fuels our work, but work before worship drains us, leaving us empty and weak. Without worship our work has no lasting value, it is only temporal. Instead of investing in eternal treasure we invest in empty trinkets. We work really hard and 20 years later what do we have, stuff but not satisfaction, money but no meaning. Work without worship causes us to become consumers instead of contributors. What’s wrong with our culture today is not so much a lack of work but worship. We harp on a work ethic but what good is that without a worship ethic? Nothing we do as work has any eternal significance to it if it is not done out of a relationship with an eternal God. Why because man is a spiritual being, and if what he does has not come from a spiritual perspective it has little value to it. Worship frames everything in our lives by giving significance to everything beyond a materialistic framework. Today we are making work about money instead of the Messiah why? Because we are putting work ahead of worship. While we all need money, we need to remember that we need the Messiah more. Money without the Messiah leads to misery. What kind of a witness is a workaholic to a watching world? They are a witness to what self can do not to what the Savior has done. In our minds we start the week with work and end with worship on the weekend. But what if we started with worship, Sunday would not only fuel our Monday but would sustain us everyday. God desired fellowship with Adam before sending Adam into the garden to work it. Who do you have in your life that can tell you when your work is crowding out your worship of Christ? The purpose of this commandment is to prevent people who worked most of the week from losing the spiritual dynamic to their life and thus forgetting the purpose to work and life. Failure to worship will have an impact of the satisfaction of our work! Instead of serving from a place of fullness because we have been fueled by worship, we will work to try to fill our lives. We will work to try to find meaning to life instead of work based on a sense purpose. Worship renews our spirit which in turn energizes our body. So, what about you is your work fueled by your worship or is your work keeping you from worship?