Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Illustration: Refueling In Rest- Cutting down trees with axes

Illustration: The Value of a good nights worth of rest

Illustration: The rise of coffee consumption from lack of rest- social issue of poverty

Illustration: Our anxious society & Psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Transition To Body

Sabbath - time of rest; seventh day of the week

The children of Israel know how to call upon the Lord but they do not know how to worship the Lord God who delivered them and brought them out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt

The background to today’s text is Moses the called servant of God has been up on the mountain top with the Lord God for almost 40 days and 40 nights.

Moses has been up on the mountain fellowshipping with God and being instructed by God on how the people are to worship the LORD God.

God has shown Moses images of grandeur, a foretaste of glory divine of what heaven on earth would look.

The people are going to be instructed on how to build a temple or a tabernacle, a place in which the Lord God can be worshipped.

These images invoke our imagination to what our experience in the church sanctuary ought to be.

Sanctuary- a place of refuge and protection, and rest.

We get our word for sanctified from the same root word which means holy of holies.

Then God has also instructed Moses on the character of those who are supposed to do the work of ministry and service on behalf of the people of God.

Servants who come from the people who do the work on behalf of the people.

Those servant leaders or workers are what we call priests or ministers.

They offer sacrifices to the Lord on behalf of God’s people.

But then God also instructs Moses on the character of those who actually help to do the building of the tabernacle- must be filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

In other words, you cannot do gods work without being filled full of his Holy Spirit.

So if we sincerely endeavor to do the work that God calls us to serve God‘s people or act on behalf of the people of God, we must be called, set aside, and chosen by the LORD.

But then we arrive at today’s text the LORD God provides one last final instruction regarding work.

The LORD God, sort of makes the shift and says yeah after doing all the work you must Take Time To Rest!

Sabbath has now been mentioned 3 times:

Exodus 20:

=13

Above all you shall keep...

Exodus 31:4

The primacy of Sabbath rest i.e. you need rest!

Body- Why Take Time To Rest (to Keep The Sabbath)?

Rest Represents Relationship (v13)

with the LORD God, and others, hence

sanctify = consecrate; dedicate to service and loyalty to God

You have been fearfully & wonderfully made

Before I formed you in your mother’s womb

(Transition: Our relationship with the LORD is…)

Rest Signifies Holiness- v14

holy = sanctuary i.e. a building dedicated in service to God, a place in which the LORD is normally present when ritual and moral purity are practiced.

sanctuary = a moveable tabernacle building, or a permanent temple building

(Transition: Because the LORD is Holy & his people are holy, so our)

Rest Methods Matter- v14

defile, profane, treat with contempt, i.e., ceremonially or ritually be common and impure in the eyes of deity and/or society, seen as a violation of covenant

dead = be dead i.e. be killed and so in a state of physical absence of life

dying

soul cut off from among his people

soul = living being, life, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion, passion

doing any work = actual work as well as striving hence not being at peace

(We need to speed time with our LORD God who makes us holy)

What does keep mean?

watch, preserve

(Transition: because true/pure holiness)

Rest Reflects Godlikeness- v15-17

“Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

ESV

https://www.bible.com/59/gen.1.26-27.esv

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

ESV

https://www.bible.com/59/rom.12.1-2.esv

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

(Transition: But the text has one more point to make)

ESV

https://www.bible.com/59/2co.5.16-21.esv

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

ESV

https://www.bible.com/59/php.2.3-11.esv

But the text has one more point to make:

Rest is a God Given Perpetual Memorial- v18

Christians are in perpetual rest from works

Our children/offspring ought to be in perpetual rest from works

Transition To Close

Illustration: Jailhouse Rest- wife doing all the work while the husband is out of work

1 Corinthians 2:7

Close

Psalm

Hebrews

-17

Tempted in the wilderness!

Tempted on the Sabbath!

Tempted by Satan through Peter!

Tempted in the Garden of Gethsemane!

Tempted on that old rugged cross!

Why is that cross old and rugged?!

Because the blood still works!

Andre Crouch sang about it this way:

The blood that Jesus shed for me

Way back on Calvary

The blood that gives me strength