Culture Clash | Sunday, September 28, 2025

Amen. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Anthony and team. Good morning, everyone. You can have a seat.

We took Anthony to a Padre game this last week, and he wore a Dodger hat. He was the only one who got stopped by security, and we all appreciated that.

This morning, we are going to continue our studies together in the Gospel of Luke. If you want to take out your Bible, you can open it to Luke chapter 6. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of the ushers will bring you one. If you don't own a Bible, you can keep that this morning as a gift.

If you were with us last week, you were treated to a message about everything you never wanted to know about fasting. It was a rousing and amazing message, perhaps the greatest message ever given on the subject of fasting. I'm sure that most of you fasted most of this last week and feel great. If last week's message was epic, this one will be even more epic. We are going to talk about the just as awesome topic of the Sabbath today. Everything you never knew you needed to know about the Sabbath is what we will be looking at.

All jokes aside, the subject of the Sabbath is actually very important—one that we don't talk about frequently enough, much like fasting. These are two subjects that don't get discussed too often in many Protestant churches like ours. However, I think it is a really important topic, and it's a challenging one because we live in a culture that doesn't value rest, at least in our current moment.

It's hard sometimes for us to put a value on rest when we are surrounded by a culture that has adopted, especially in the last ten years or so, the idea of hustle culture. We definitely live in that hustle culture.

I had the privilege in my early 20s to move to Western Europe for a time. I lived in a town in northwest Germany, just between Cologne and Frankfurt, called Zegan. I was teaching at a small international Bible school there. Anytime you go into another culture, you're going to experience some level of cultural clash. Even though Western Europe...

Culture is very similar in many respects in Europe to here in the United States, but there was definitely a bit of a culture shock going there because there are some differences. We try to prepare any of our individuals who go on short-term mission trips for the experience of culture shock. Interestingly, sometimes the culture shock is really experienced when you come back to the United States. You go to another culture, and there are differences that make you think, "Oh, I don't know that I really like that." A lot of Americans don’t think we have a culture, and you don’t realize you have it until it’s challenged by another culture. A friend of mine used to say that this is really true.

When I went to Germany, I started to see these differences. Initially, I thought, "I don’t know if I like that," but then I got used to it. When I came back here, I experienced the shock. One of the differences I noticed quickly when I moved to Germany was the rhythm of life. In Germany, there is something called "Sonntagsruhe," which translates to "Sunday rest." We used to have something similar here in the United States called blue laws. Some of you may remember that things were closed on Sundays, like Chick-fil-A. In Germany, that is still the case.

When I first moved there, coming from San Diego and Southern California, life just goes on without an ending. We don’t have the same kind of cycles of seasons here. You realize you just experienced fall, and it will probably be summer tomorrow. The cycles of life are just different. One of those cycles is the idea of a rest day on Sunday. By 4:00 PM on Saturday, pretty much everything was closed, and it didn’t open again until Monday at about 9 or 10 in the morning. This Sunday closure was a bother to me at first, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I kind of liked this different pace of life. On Sundays, there was really just church, and that was about it. There was nothing open to walk around, like city galleries or malls.

Christian remembers this pretty well; he lived in Siegen for a time as well, and everything was closed. Then I came back to the United States, and I was shocked by the pace of everything. It’s funny; anytime I talk with people about living in Germany, they ask, "Did you drive on the Autobahn?" Yes, I did. That’s the freeway, and you drive on it frequently. Was it amazing? Well, no, I always had a beater car.

You couldn't really go fast. You would watch like Mercedes, super nice class cars, go by you really quickly. But man, things here seem more hectic in the pace of life than they did there, even if you're driving fast. Things had a slower pace of life, and I started to like that. But then you come back, and you're integrated back into the culture. Everything is just going constantly all the time. We plan everything out. I got to do all this. Even right now, you probably have a whole bunch of things you need to do on Sunday because Monday comes quickly. It's like, I got to go here and do this. Don't go to Costco; it's a bad place to go on a Sunday afternoon. It's chaos, total craziness. It's going to get worse here. We're going to come into the holiday season; I mean, they're already selling fake Christmas trees, so Christmas is upon us.

One of the other interesting shocks, or just cultural differences, came not too long after I had moved to Germany. A friend of mine, a German guy, said, "Well, you Americans, you're all workaholics." I thought, "Well, no, we're not." It was a fascinating conversation that we had. I never really thought of our culture in that way, but that was the stereotype they had there.

One aspect of German culture that reflects this is a concept that doesn't have a perfect translation. The word "Feierabend," which literally translates to "celebration evening," captures the idea that at the end of the workday, you're done. You clock out, and you don't think about work anymore, especially on a Friday. One of the things you discover about Germans, and maybe if you have German heritage, you know this, is that they really like strict adherence to the rules. It's very German. Their 40-hour workweek means that at the end of the week, they're done. They're not thinking about work, they're not talking about it, and they're not looking at emails. None of those sorts of things.

In our culture, we just don't really know anything of that, especially since the advent of instant access for many of you. We start to expect it. If I texted someone 42 seconds ago and I know they saw it because it says "read," it's like they didn't answer me, right? People get upset if they don't respond quickly. A friend of mine, who is a pastor up in Camarillo, was a lawyer for 25 years. He told me one time that he is very strict with all of his staff about emails. He said, "If you don't answer your email within 24 hours, you're going to hear from me." He added, "If you have a lawyer who doesn't answer his email within 24 hours, get a new lawyer."

Call all the time. Got to stay with that. Now, we do have this hustle culture here in America. Many years ago, it started to be a big thing in Silicon Valley—the idea of a 70 or 80-hour work week—and that has spread to other places. We had a little bit of a pause five years ago when we were all thrust into remote work, but now all the big corporations are saying, "No, you have to get back to work. We want you on the clock. We want you here. We want you working."

In China, they have a strict 44-hour work week. However, among many of the large firms in China, the firms pressure their employees to adopt what's called 996, which is 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., six days a week. Never to be outdone, there are American firms now saying, "Well, we're going to adopt 997: 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., seven days a week, 84 hours a week." The hustle culture is on. If you're going to succeed, you have to move fast and break things. That was the terminology in Silicon Valley, and there are other people adopting that as well.

You may know that Elon Musk took over Twitter, now X, a few years ago and fired two-thirds of the staff because we can do more and move fast and break things. Many other firms are saying, "Well, we can do more with less. You're just going to have to work more hours and put in the time." What people don't recognize sometimes is that the "move fast and break things" mentality can lead to breaking yourself, your marriage, or your family as you pursue the big exit.

The big driver in our culture right now is entrepreneurialism. All the Gen Z people and those being trained up from there are being told, "You need to be an entrepreneur." But if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you have to drive. You have to drive. You have to drive. It's not working 9 to 5; it's working 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.—5 to 9. You have to get things done, move fast, and break things because you want the big exit. However, on the way to the top and the big exit, you might find that your family exits before you.

In the new culture we find ourselves in, it's a shock. One thing is sure: when you look at it, I think we're going to see in the text here in Luke chapter 6 this morning that the kingdom and way of Christ will always clash with the kingdoms and cultures of man. The fascinating thing in this text is that the way of Christ is going to clash with the way of his culture in the day that he was ministering.

Culture was, in many respects, the opposite extreme of ours. Our extreme in the 21st-century Western American culture is to move fast and break things, working 84 hours a week. Steve Jobs used to give his team a 90-hour shirt when they reached that milestone. It's crazy. Our culture emphasizes hard work and hustle all the time.

On the other side of that, the other extreme was what Jesus confronted in the text. In the first century, there was a rigid religious rest, a forced rest that ended up not being much of a rest at all. It became such a burden that it was no longer restful. We have these two extremes: one extreme is hustle, hustle, hustle—work hard and rest when you die. A pastor told me about a week and a half ago that he used to have a sign on the wall in his office that said just that. He mentioned that they made him take it down, and I replied, "Yeah, because your HR department was like, 'That doesn't work.'"

Then, on the other hand, we have this cultural mindset that forces rest, which ultimately becomes a burden. Jesus speaks into this whole discussion about the Sabbath in this passage. When Jesus shows up, he exposes error in order to right all wrongs. Understand that this is one of the things he will do in your life. The more you get to know Christ, the more he will expose the error in your own mindset and heart. The intent of this exposure is not to beat you down or make you feel bad; it is to build you up and show you that there is a better way. The way of Christ is the better way.

When we are introduced to Jesus—this is what our whole series has been about in the Gospel of Luke, "Meet Jesus"—we are confronted with a decision. It is an either-or decision. Either we will follow him in his way, or we will oppose his authority, saying, "No, I don't want that." I don't think there is a third way. It is either to choose to follow his way or to oppose his authority.

And his rule in your life. Jesus really challenged some of his hearers, and we'll see it later on in the Gospel of Luke. He says, "Why do you call me Lord and do not do the things that I say?"

There's a lot of talk right now in our culture about Jesus as King, especially with all the Christian nationalism happening. I think a better statement would be "Jesus is Lord." The question is, is He Lord of my life? Does He rule and dictate how I ought to live? That's what we're confronted with here.

In Luke chapter 6, look at verse one. It says, "Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that Jesus went through the grain fields, and His disciples plucked some of the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them together with their hands." Some of the Pharisees spoke to the disciples, asking, "Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?"

Jesus answered and said to them, "Have you not even read this? What David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he went into the house of God and took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those who were with him, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat." Then He said to them, "The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."

It's interesting how Luke introduced us to this text. He says, "And so it happened on the second Sabbath," which begs the question, what was the first Sabbath? To answer that question, we actually have to go back several months. Before the summer, we read that Jesus, in Luke 4, was in the city of Nazareth on the Sabbath day, which was His hometown.

As was the custom of the Jews of that time, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. He was there in the synagogue in His hometown, and they already knew of Jesus as a rabbi. He was a teacher, and He already had people following Him. They gave Him the scroll of Isaiah to read and teach that day.

He read from Isaiah, what we know as chapter 61. It didn't have chapter references in the same way that it does today. He read, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," a great passage that every individual in first-century Israel knew to be messianic. They recognized it as a prophetic passage speaking about the coming of the Messiah.

After reading this passage, He closed the scroll and sat down. Now they were ready to hear because they knew when the rabbi sits, he is going to teach. He began to instruct them, saying, "Today this is fulfilled in your hearing."

Hearing this, he caused a stir on the Sabbath, which Jesus did. We are going to see two more Sabbaths in this text today. That's what he was really good at; he caused a stir so much so that they laid hands on him and took him outside of the city to a high place, a cliff outside of Nazareth, where they were going to throw him off and kill him. Why? Because he was now saying, "I'm the Messiah." They had an issue with that, and they tried to kill him.

Now, of course, in that text, something seemingly miraculous happened. He walked through their midst, and they weren't able to kill him. But that was the first Sabbath. Now, it happens on the second Sabbath that Jesus is causing a stir and revealing the reality, as I said a moment ago, that the kingdom and way of Christ will always clash with the kingdoms and culture of man.

As I mentioned previously, we are living here in America in 2025, the 21st century. Our culture is all about hustle. The culture that Jesus was ministering in was hyper-religious and focused. This first-century religious Galilean culture was fixed and focused on the religiosity of rest, the extreme opposite of where we are at.

Sabbath, the seventh day, had become, to the people in Jesus's time, an essential litmus test for righteousness. If you didn't follow the prescribed rules given by the religious leaders regarding rest, then you weren't considered righteous. But where did this idea of Sabbath come from in the first place? It came from God through Moses and the Ten Commandments.

The fourth commandment, which you can read in Exodus 20 or in Deuteronomy 5, states, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." It is a very simple statement. However, by the time of Christ, that single sentence had been expanded by 1,400 years of religious interpretation and teaching. Tradition had been added to it, expanding it from one sentence, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy," to an endless, burdensome litany of religious rules and regulations that became the test for whether or not you were righteous. If you didn't obey the rules, then you were out. This reveals a significant reality.

I think we all know well, but this illustrates it perfectly: the Sabbath regulation. Point number two is that man tends to make into a burden what God intended to be a blessing. The Sabbath is a great example of that. We make a burden out of what God intended to be a blessing. Marriage has become an example of that in our culture. Having children has also become an example of that in our culture. All these different things that God intends as a blessing, we can turn into a burden.

Jesus's view of the Sabbath, as revealed in how He lives it, is clearly different from the religious teaching on the Sabbath of His day because He keeps transgressing their traditions. He keeps stepping on what they say is the rule, the way to righteousness. Is there any question about Jesus's righteousness? I don't think so. Clearly, the way that He is living is not out of step with God's law. God said, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." That's not all that God said. You can look at it if you'd like. You can turn there; it's the second book of the Bible, the 20th chapter, Exodus 20. He says, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."

But God speaks more through Moses. He says, "Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God." The religious leaders of Jesus's day took this and viewed the Sabbath as a day of rest hallowed by God. They looked at Jesus's disciples, who were walking through a grain field, and saw them take the heads of the wheat, rub it in their hands, separating the wheat from the chaff. They blew the chaff away and ate the wheat because they were hungry. It was the Sabbath day, and they said, "You cannot possibly do that. You are harvesting grain, you are threshing grain, and you are preparing a meal. Oh, you are breaking law after law after law." They were serious about this.

I have been to Israel five times, and I think I'm going to be flying to Israel in a couple of weeks. You can still see, especially around Galilean villages, poles outside the villages with a line of string or a cord around the top of them. It is not a telephone pole or an electric pole; it is the Sabbath day's journey pole. It tells you how far you can walk on the Sabbath day. This is today.

If you are a committed Orthodox Jew living in one of those villages, you know that you cannot pass a certain line because if you do, you have committed a sin. They are serious about this. They are saying that your disciples have harvested, prepared, and freshened a meal, and they are in the wrong. This may seem crazy to us, but it was huge to them.

Notice the response of the religious leaders to Jesus and his disciples for doing this horrible thing in Mark's gospel. Mark's account of the same story says in Mark 3:6, "Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Jesus how they might destroy him because of this." So let me get this straight: the sixth commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill," but that’s okay if you break the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy." We can kill you for that. You see how serious they are about this? This is a big deal to them.

These are the Pharisees, the people you would expect to know, comprehend, and understand the Word of God and the law of God better than anyone. How is it that this group of people, the ones expected to know the law, the teachers in Israel, have so lost the plot and missed the point? How is it that Jesus's view and understanding of the Sabbath could be so counter or antithetical to their understanding of the scriptures in which they were masters of the law?

This is something for us to take note of. The more we begin to study and comprehend the scriptures, the more we have to be careful that we understand the purpose and point of the scriptures. They had become so focused on the literal interpretation of the letter of the law that they missed the heart and the spirit of the law. This is the revelation of God to us. God reveals Himself in us. We have to be careful that we don't miss Christ in the scriptures as God reveals Himself to us because we can become so fixated on some minor point of theology that we lose sight of the greater message.

I think this is the point of theology. There's a danger in this. My friend Larry Osborne refers to this as becoming accidental Pharisees, and very easily, I could fall into that. You could fall into that. We have to be careful that we do not fall into that.

So, all this begs the question: What is the purpose and point of the Sabbath? What was the heart and spirit of God saying when He commanded us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? Again, here is this passage from Exodus 20:8: "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger who is within your gates."

Why? Verse 11 explains: "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day. Therefore, because of His example, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."

Now, here's one of the challenges for us. That word "hallowed" has various meanings. One of the meanings we often attach to it is that hallowed means holy. We think of it as something mystical or spiritual. However, the challenge is that "hallowed" also means set apart or consecrated.

It's kind of like this: If you, like me, have a big bill coming in November called property tax, you understand this concept. Oh gosh, I hate it when I get that letter from Dan Brown or whatever his name is. I don't remember his name.

What's that? Mallister. Damn that guy. I don't even know him, but I have murdered him in my heart so many times. Jesus, help me. Poor man. He's just doing his job, like Levi the tax collector over there.

But I have to set apart, consecrate, and hallow money. It's set apart; it's consecrated. It's removed from the common account and put into a different place because it's hallowed. It's not something mystical or spiritual about it; it's not holy.

Consecrated has two different meanings. Here's the problem when we say the seventh day is hallowed: we think of it as holy, and if we keep it, it makes us holy. No, it doesn't. That's not the point; that's not what it was purposed to do. God separated one day from seven and set it aside as consecrated, designated for a purpose. What purpose? Rest.

Now, here is an amazing thing. What God did, because Moses in Exodus 20 is referencing back to Genesis chapter 1, the creation story, is distinct, different, amazing, and unique in comparison to the other creation stories of the same period and place. Let me explain what I mean by this. If you read the creation stories of the ancient Near East, you will see that there is agreement among the creation stories from the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, and even the Greeks and the Egyptians. I have read these creation stories. One of the most well-known is the Enuma Elish, which is from the Babylonian creation story.

In the stories of the ancient Near East about creation, it is said that the gods created man to be their slaves, to do work so that the gods didn't have to work. They all agree on this point. The biblical story is different. It says that God made everything, including man, and He made a day of rest, inviting man to rest with Him. Do you see the distinction and the difference? It's key. There is something in this difference that points to the gospel.

The whole narrative arc of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, points to the gospel. And what is the gospel? It is rest in Christ from slavery to sin and death. This invitation starts in Genesis chapter 1, on page one. He invites man into His rest. This is a phenomenal difference between the other creation stories.

We find in antiquity that the biblical story is different because ultimately that is what God is seeking to do: to give us rest from our labors.

Point number three, if you're taking notes, is that only in the Bible does God bless man with rest from the burdens of his labors. The religious leaders of Jesus's day had turned a law prescribing a blessing into a legalistic burden that nobody could bear, not even they themselves. God is saying, "I command you to be blessed." How many of you like that command? Man tends to make into a burden what God has intended to be a blessing.

So striking is Jesus's commitment to rest that he illustrates the spirit in the heart of the God of the law with a story that challenges our religious sensibilities. This interesting story that he draws out is one I love the way he puts it. The religious leaders, the Pharisees, who boasted about their knowledge of the Scriptures and of God, are confronted by Jesus. He says to them, "Have you not read the Bible?" I love it.

Oh, I guess you missed that whole thing about your favorite king, King David. You know the story; it's in 1 Samuel 21 if you want to go read it. David has been anointed king, the great king of Israel, who lived 3,000 years ago, but he is not yet on the throne because there is another king occupying the throne whom God has rejected. His name is Saul.

Because Saul knows that there is a threat to his throne in David, he is chasing David and trying to kill him. So David is on the run, fleeing with a group of men we refer to as his mighty men. They are hungry and tired, and they come to Shiloh, or Shilo, where the tabernacle was. David goes to the priest and says, "I need some provisions. We need some food."

The priest responds, "Well, the only food that I have is the showbread. It's this special bread, one loaf for every one of the tribes of Israel—12 loaves that would be made on a regular basis and put before the Lord in the holy place. All we have is this bread. That bread is not to be eaten by the common people like David. Even though he's king, it's only for the priests."

And yet, the priest gave it to David and his men, and they ate of it.

The law, the letter of the law. And yet Jesus says He had a pass. He received a pass. Why? Because apparently, the spirit and heart of the law were different from the letter of the law. He was hungry, and God allowed Him to eat.

Then Jesus says this, throwing it in to the Pharisees in verse 5: "The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath." The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. The point of the Sabbath was rest; it was not ritualistic righteousness. By keeping the Sabbath, you do not become holy. You become blessed and rested, but not holy.

I love Mark's account of this same story in Mark chapter 2. Jesus said to them, "Have you never read the story of David? What he did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him? How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and he ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and he also gave some to those who were with him."

Jesus's interpretation was that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. I love that. The God-man, God incarnate, Jesus Christ, says, "I made the Sabbath for you. I didn't make you to conform to the Sabbath. I made the Sabbath for you. Therefore, the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."

The seventh day was set apart from the rest of the days to be a restful blessing for the people of God. It was never meant to become a burden, a ritualistic requirement for religious righteousness. If you don't do this, or if you walk too far, or if you happen to pick some grain and eat it, then you have broken it, and you are no longer righteous.

To make it clear that Jesus's way is different from the religious leaders of His time, Luke gives us another story. In verse 6, it happened on another Sabbath—Sabbath number three in the story—that He also entered the synagogue. The other gospels tell us this is the synagogue in the city of Capernaum. Jesus taught there, and a man was there who had a right hand that was withered. The scribes and Pharisees watched Jesus closely to see whether He would heal on the Sabbath.

Heal on the Sabbath so that they might find an accusation against Him. Once again, the Sabbath was so important to them that they had no qualms about being malicious in their attempts to kill Him if He transgressed it. These were the most religious people of the time, and they were watching closely. The trap was set. Maybe they had set it up. They heard Jesus was coming to the synagogue that day, and they thought, "Where's that guy with the withered hand? We should put him right up in front. Let's see what He does."

They watched Him closely to find an accusation against Him. But He knew their thoughts and said to the man who had the withered hand, "Arise, stand here." Can you imagine the Pharisees at that moment? They must have thought, "Yes, got Him. We took the bait. This is it." The man with the withered hand stood, and Jesus said to the religious leaders, "I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil?"

Actually, it's never lawful to do evil. But is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? To save a life or to destroy? Because I'm reading your mind, and right now you want to do evil and destroy me. Is that right in your heart? He didn't say that directly, but that's what He implied. He asked them what was lawful: Is it lawful for you to have malice, anger, and wickedness in your heart at this very moment, wanting to destroy me? Or is it lawful for me to save this man's life by healing his hand?

When He had looked around at all of them, Mark's Gospel said that Jesus was angered and grieved by them. He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." The man did so, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. But they were filled with rage and discussed among themselves what they might do to Jesus.

Hey, I think you already know this, but let me clue you in: If your religion angers and grieves Jesus, you're doing it wrong. Point number four: God's law is a blessing to make life better, not a burden to make it bitter.

The religious leaders of Jesus's day made the lives of those who followed them quite bitter through their strict interpretation of the law. Paul noted in his first letter to Timothy, in 1 Timothy 1:8, that the law is good if it is used lawfully. There is a proper and improper use of God's law. If you use God's law to make a show of your righteousness or to highlight someone else's unrighteousness, I suggest to you that it angers and grieves God. This is what the Pharisees had done.

The lawful purpose of the Sabbath was to bring rest. It was never intended by God to be a litmus test for perfection. The fourth commandment wasn't meant to hang over the heads of the people, making them fearful that they might overstep the harsh regimen of righteousness set before them. God meant the Sabbath to be a time of rest for the people, a time of rejuvenation, and a time for them to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

For God's people, it was not only a Sabbath day; it wasn't just one day in seven. Do you realize that every year the children of Israel had a Sabbath week? We are about to celebrate it right now. Although that is not a part of our custom, if you are Jewish, you will celebrate Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a Sabbath week.

Every year, they would have Sabbath days, every seventh day, as we know it. Then they would have a Sabbath week during the time of Sukkot. Additionally, every seven years, they would have a Sabbath year, and every seven cycles of years, they would have a Jubilee, a 50th year.

Get this: not only would you have a Sabbath year and the 50th year, but all of your debts would be purged and cleaned. Now, how many of you think that sounds pretty good? Thank you, Mr. Mallister. The interesting thing is, if you do the research and study the Old Testament, it does not appear that the children of Israel really took the 50th year or the seventh year very seriously. They were very passionate about the seventh day; that was easy. It is much more difficult to release the debts of your debtors.

It's much more difficult to trust God for an entire year of Sabbath in the seventh year. But can you see this idea of rest? The seventh day, one week out of the year, the seventh year out of seven, the fiftieth year after the forty-ninth—this cycle of Sabbaths. At the heart of God's work in the law is rest. Yet, the author of the Book of Hebrews said, "They did not enter into my rest." All of these things were a shadow pointing forward to what? Christ. He is our rest.

One of my favorite passages is Matthew 11:28, which says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Point number five: the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is the penultimate rest to the ultimate rest found in Christ by the gospel. Now, what is penultimate? It means second best. It is the second best rest. The first best rest, the most ultimate rest, is Christ Jesus. In Christ, we find rest from all of our labors. The author of the Book of Hebrews says, "Strive to enter into that rest." That seems like it doesn't fit—strive to enter into that rest that is found in Christ.

Now, does that mean that we should not take one in seven as a time of rest, a time to Sabbath? No, that's not what it means. It just makes that rest all the more glorious because we are no longer burdened by our sin as slaves to sin. So, yes, we ought to rest. I will be one of the first to confess to you that it's hard for me. Why? Because I'm American, and so are many of you. We have a hard time with rest.

The Sabbath, as it was enforced by the religious leaders of Jesus's day, was a distortion of what God had originally intended. It was a corruption of His design, a perversion of His gift, as we are so apt to pervert the gifts of God.

Whether it's Sabbath, food, sex, or whatever it is, we pervert the gifts of God. God wanted His people to enjoy rest, and His way was vastly different. This is why how Jesus lived kept coming into conflict with how the religious leaders said it ought to be lived. So, who's wrong? The guy who inspired the Scriptures or the guys who interpreted the Scriptures? I suggest their interpretation was wrong, and they perverted the rest that God had given to them.

I would also suggest that our culture perverts the work that God has given to us. Let me point out that the fourth commandment is not only a commandment of rest; it also says, "Six days shall you work." Resting all the time is a perversion and a breaking of the fourth commandment. We are called to work. Work is pre-fall.

What do I mean by that? Some people think that work is a product of the fall, that after the fall, we now have to work. No, no, no. It says work will become more difficult because of the fall, but work preceded the fall. God has called us to work for His glory and His kingdom. We are called to work, but we are also called to rest. We are not God's slaves; we work for His kingdom and for His glory, and He calls us into rest.

The fourth commandment is a commandment for rest in the right way, but it's also a commandment for work in the right way. On either extreme, we are challenged because the way of Christ is different. He calls us into that. Our culture says 40 hours is part-time. Work fast, move fast, and break things. The mentality of "5 to 9" or "9 to 5" is pervasive. No, no, no. It's "5 to 9." You have to crush it. While you're sleeping, somebody else is working.

I saw a joke on social media about a week ago that greatly illustrated this point. It went like this:

"Do you wake up at 5?"

"Wow. I'm up at 3."

"Sorry, I meant 5:00 a.m. is my second run. 3:00 a.m. is my first run."

"Right. There you go. First run. And then straight into trading."

"While I'm in an ice bath."

This highlights the absurdity of our culture's work ethic.

Just made 100K. Easy. Trading. Done. Then I do my reading. Crypto. Yes. Right. An hour of meditation. Affirmations. I am rich. I am sexy. I am healthy. Five hours. Easy. Then it's 10:00 a.m. Some people just started their day; I just built an empire. Do you know what I mean? I'm finished. I'm spent. I've lived my life.

I take a little nap. Yes. Plunge pool. Right. Back out. By 6:00 p.m., I've birthed three children. By 7:00 p.m., I've created four. That's insane. But you know what? Yeah. By 8:00 p.m. I've died. Beat that. At 9:00 p.m., resurrection, right? Ice bath, right? Mhm.

Yeah. Relaxation. I mean, they're mocking it, but that's the culture. That's the hustle culture that we're mocking. The way of Christ is different, and it's hard for me. I would say for me, because I've developed the routine, fasting is easier than Sabbath. My wife challenges me about this—to shut off and disconnect.

Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." That's what we need. Our souls need rest. We live in a culture of weary souls, and Jesus is the answer for you, but also for all of those outside this building who are weary in their souls. Would to God that they would see exemplified in us that we understand, "My yoke is easy, my burden is light."

God help us. Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? God, thank you for the simplicity of your word. Help us by your Spirit to apply some of these things and to follow you into your rest. Your people, who were given the law about rest, never entered in. And so you say to us, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest." Lord, help us to find that. Help us to live that. Help us to.

Share that with others. There are so many weary souls desperately desiring rest. God, do a work in us. We pray. We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen." Amen.