4 Work and rest

The 10 are not some ancient rule with an irrelevance to society. As we read the text of Exodus 19-20, you cannot but be impressed by the fact that these Ten are deeply significant to God. They are said to His special people at the most significant place at the most significant time of their history. This is the Children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob listening with their own ears to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The place is Sinai, where Moses had met God who revealed himself as I am who I am and as the saving and redeeming God. Moses brought the people out of Egypt to hear what God had to say to them – that was the specific purpose of the Exodus as negotiated with Pharaoh. The Promised Land is what follows. The time is at the point when the family that had become a nation has left Egypt behind and now is looking forward to that Promised Land.

Lets read bits of the dialogue in Exodus so we get a glimpse of the significance of the Big Ten.

¹In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt—on the very day—they came to the Desert of Sinai. ² After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.

³ Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, "This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ⁴ 'You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. ⁵ Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, ⁶ you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."

Verse 9

⁹ The LORD said to Moses, "I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you." Then Moses told the LORD what the people had said.

¹⁰ And the LORD said to Moses, "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes ¹¹ and be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. ¹² Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, 'Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. ¹³ He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live.' Only when the ram's horn sounds a long blast may they go up to the mountain."

Verse 16

¹⁶ On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. ¹⁷ Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. ¹⁸ Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, ¹⁹ and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

Chapter 20:1

¹ And God spoke all these words:

² "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

³ "You shall have no other gods before me.

⁴ "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

⁷ "You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

⁸ "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labour 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

¹² "Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

¹³ "You shall not murder.

¹⁴ "You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵ "You shall not steal.

¹⁶ "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.

¹⁷ "You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."

¹⁸ When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance ¹⁹ and said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die."

²⁰ Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning."

We are working backwards through the Big Ten, as it were building from the bottom up. We have already been told that coveting and envy are wrong. That we are to be people of integrity and honesty, that other’s personal property is to be respected. We have been told, by Jesus that not only sex outside of marriage is wrong but we should not even fantasise about it. He also told us that killing comes from hatred so we must learn to love even those we have reason to hate. We are told to respect our parents because that is the central relationship and therefore that respect needs to permeate all relationships.

Today we are challenged about how we spend our time.

Time! “ I haven’t got time!”; Tempus Fugit or ‘Time flies’; “It’s all go”; “The week has simply flown”; “I don’t know when I am going to get the time to do it all”

Paul Simon put it this way:

“I was 21 years when I wrote this song,

I’m 22 now and I wont be for long.

Time rushes on

And the leaves that are green turn to brown.”

“Is that the time!”

I want you to notice, because it is important to do so, that Time management comes before property and money management is God’s Big Ten.

In our society we sacrifice time to make money and to spend it on things and pleasure. We work longer hours than any generation before us, so that we can be wealthier so we can have the luxuries that we haven’t time to enjoy!

Time is not money. It is much more important than that. Money can be replaced. Time cannot. Time is priceless. The time you spend you only spend once whether it is at work or asleep or enjoying your friends company or enjoying God. But today we are caught up in a technological rush. You go for a quiet walk and you can be on the phone, listening to your favourite music, even watching a film or buying and selling on e-bay or whatever. Some have to have two or three phones to deal with all the urgency of today.

So what does God have to say about time management. As always, the Big Ten speaks about key matters and leaves us to extend that to other relationships.

So what does God say?

1. Copy me! Verse 11 refers to Genesis 2:1-2

¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

² By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested^] from all his work. ³ And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

God created rhythm! The Lion King talks of the cycle of life and we tend to fight the rhythms of our lives. We want strawberries on February, apples in May, Ice creams in June, Sainsburys ships it in from all over the world so barely recognises the seasons unless it can make money out of it. We reject the rhythm of the seasons and we reject the rhythm of the week. In many jobs the weekend is merely an extra shift. But God created weeks because he knows that it is good for us. We were created to have one day not labouring in every seven. I am not about to argue that the days of Genesis 1 were 24 hours long and so on. God, however, wants you to imitate his rhythm. If you want to keep in step with the Holy Spirit, you have to pay attention to this command because God works for 6 days and rests on the seventh day and if he rests and says you should imitate him then work 6 days and rest on the seventh day. It is as simple as that.

Work and Rest are acts of worship.

This command has two elements which are significant: you are to work six days a week and you are to rest one day a week. Both Work and Rest are commanded.

So lets look at them one by one.

Work is service to God and to your fellow man. In our self centred world we forget this, but economists will tell you that we are an integrated society and your work is one part of the jigsaw which makes it up. And your earnings , as you spend them, provide employment and income for others. Just like the church, where we are taught that we are the body if Christ and each one is part of the body, so society reflects that. So secular employment is as much a calling from God as religious employment. To be a carpet layer or a sales assistant, a bank manager or an office cleaner is no different from being a doctor or church pastor or even the pope. God calls each of us to a role in life. Now you may struggle in some roles and I am aware that jobs can become very stressful and debilitating. It is not wrong to change jobs but it is wrong to think that the workplace is somehow different from church or home. God sanctifies work and in the New Testament that principle is advanced even for slaves. We read 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10

⁶In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching^[a] you received from us. ⁷For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, ⁸nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, labouring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. ⁹We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. ¹⁰For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

Also in Ephesians 6:5-9

⁵Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. ⁶Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. ⁷Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, ⁸because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

⁹And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

At Job Seekers’ Club I meet a number of depressed people. Morale is low simply because without a job people are both short of money and short of motivation. And in the present climate, with David Cameron proud that he is making fewer people redundant than a Labour Government would have done, there are few jobs available. Some agencies have no jobs on offer in a given week. The gutter press will go on about spongers but most people who are long term unemployed have lost hope, defeated by lack of opportunity. If you live in a ex- mining town in Yorkshire, most of the population is unemployed so any job could have 2000-3000 applicants. Round here it is only 100-200 applicants for some jobs. As a nation we should be serious about job creation rather than cutting the wage bill. A company can make you redundant but the nation cannot. The unemployed simply have to be paid by tax payers to be idle. Unless you think those who loss their jobs should starve.

We do need to make the point that the danger about work is that we become defined by our job so when we lose it or retire we lose our identity. God addresses that by the rest of the command as we will see. You are defined by your relationship with God and your fellow humans not by your job. And that is important because not everyone can work. Just to list a few examples:

you have retired;

you are too young;

you are unable to work;

you are unable to get a job because of the recession;

you are working unpaid to care for children or elderly parents;

you are working‘doing voluntary work’.

This command is long enough without exemptions. When Paul was talking to the Thessalonians and said

"If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

He was speaking to people who had opted out of work even though they were perfectly capable of it. If you do not have a job for the reasons I have just listed then it is very important to understand that you are loved by God whether in work or not. Your identity is in your relationship with God not in your ability to earn money or have a defined role in community. But what I have said about rhythm and worship apply just as much to you as to others who are working. You are part of the body of Christ, so synchronise with the rest of the body as best you can. Recognise that your life is an act of worship. That can transform a boring day! So as we move on to ‘rest’ it is important that you apply the command in that area just as much as those in formal work.

Rest.

The principle of rest is set out in the command! This is because God understands how you work. You are not a sparrow, that flaps its wings four times and then folds them up for a rest. That is why it has that dipping flight. It has a rest in flight! Or your heart which has a rest between beats! You were created to have a rest one day in seven. What that rest involves we will come to. But the principle is that a day off is good for you and it is good for the company you work for. Some companies have turned there back on God’s way and think that they own you 24/7. Even on holiday they believe they can ring you up or at night. It’s nonsense. You don’t work that way.

Jesus understood the need for a break in Mark 6:31 we read

³¹Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."

Mind you they didn’t get the rest, quite the way they planned! (Read on)

So the Bible says STOP working one day a week. And not just you but everybody in your family and workplace and any visitors your have. That is the implication of :

On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.

You could cheat by employing a Jew and a Muslim. That way you can have two out of three of you in work on any day! But that is cheating!

The problem we have is how we rest. And that cannot be made a rule based system. A gardener rests by not gardening, but an office worker may rest by gardening. A professional footballer works when he plays football, a machine minder does is for fun. Listening to music may be relaxing, making music is work.

So lets look at the command to see what is fundamental to our rest.

Two words here are key. “Sabbath” and “holy”. Sabbath or Sabbat comes from the word ‘cease’. God ceased creating and we should cease what we are doing the rest of the week. It can be held to mean ‘do nothing’ but I think that rather narrow and impractical. But that is the direction we should be heading. God says ‘take a break’,. But the second word is ‘Holy’. Holy means ‘set apart’ or ‘different’. Your seventh day should be different and set apart from the day to day routine of life. But God goes further. He says:

the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.

It is not a day for the family or a day to do nothing, it is a day set apart for God. In our natural self-centred thinking that is a bit of a shock. We have come to redefine Sunday by the world’s standards, not God’s. It is a day for leisure and family and catching up. The idea that God has some say in our day is vaguely offensive even to Christians. How dare he spoil my plans with ideas about Sunday being a day for him!

Of course if are a religious sort you can make up all sorts of rules about being in church and not doing washing or cooking or playing games. That is what we have been reading about in Galatians, going for a rule based system rather than a relationship based way of life. Last week you were told to ‘live by the spirit’ and ‘keep in step with the Spirit’. To do that you have to think through how you develop your relationship with God. And he says one day a week you cease work to him. What does that mean?

Jesus addresses this issue in Matthew 11:28

^Matthew
11: ²⁸"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

If you want a proper Sabbath, a real rest, you have to spend it with Jesus. How you do that is a matter of choice and opportunity. Here you have an opportunity to meet with other Christians and spend time with Jesus morning and evening. In other parts of the world, that may be one grand event which includes worship, Bible teaching, fellowship meal taking 4 or 5 hours. The point I want to make is that going to church does not make for a Sabbath or a holy day. It is setting your eyes on Jesus that makes the difference. Going to church makes a difference because being with other Christians and worshipping together enables us to set aside the time we spend with Jesus. But again, being in church is not the whole day and sometimes I believe we would be more in tune with the Holy Spirit of we availed ourselves of the opportunities we have to worship, in particular in the evening Communion and also for some, getting here to pray at 9:30am. Maybe we should change our pattern to better enable us to be set apart for God. The call is for each of us to examine the way we spend Sunday so that we may be more in step with the Holy Spirit.

Rest brings a better perspective on life.

I want to go a bit further and point out that the rest principle applies to more than just Sunday observance. It applies to your sleep. The Psalmist occasionally mentions that he meditated on God in the watches of the night. So what do you do when you get to the end of a day? Do you collapse in front of the TV and watch the ‘chewing-gum of the eyes’ until bedtime? Better to turn it off 30 minutes before bedtime and relax with Jesus. Thank him for your day, reflect on the good, ask forgiveness for the sin, and surrender the anxieties of the day to him. Sleep is much healthier when you allow the pressures of the day to get into perspective. And that is a great value in rest. Sunday is a day for getting the week into perspective. Your Quiet time either morning or evening does the same for the day. Your holiday is good for you because it allows you to step out of the rat-race and get a balance in your life.

So God centres his time-management on rest and recuperation with Jesus.

And then we go back to work with renewed vision and vigour and greater balance in our lives. Work is God-given, rest is God-given. Make sure you are doing both in step with the Holy Spirit.

Return to top