Exodus 31:12–18

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together, we have a little bit of coffee, we get into God's word, and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2023, we'll make it from Genesis through, do you remember the third book of the Bible? Genesis, Exodus? Leviticus. Leviticus, that's right. We'll make it through Leviticus.
I'm so glad to be with you this morning. We'll have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll jump into God's word. I guess she's not drinking coffee this morning. All right. So we are at Exodus chapter 31. The second half of the chapter here. Deborah, I'm going to have you read verses 12 through 18 there. Okay.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak also to the children of Israel, saying, Surely my Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death, for whoever does any work on it that person shall be cut off from his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work On the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.
Covenant. Covenant. Good job. Covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. And when He had made an end of speaking with Him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two Two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. Okay, so we got three questions. A, what is this about? Good. B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? Called to do. Good. So what do you think this is about? What's this whole passage talking about? Sabbath the Sabbath. That's right.
So do you know what the word for seven is in Hebrew? No, right? Shabbat English translation, please Seven so why do you think what we call the Sabbath? Why is this Sabbath? the Shabbat Shabbat Because it used to be on Saturday. Well, because it's the seventh day.
How many days did it take God to create the heavens and the earth and everything in it? Seven days. Ooh, close. How many days did it take him to make everything? Oh, six days. And then on the seventh day, he rested. He rested. And so God puts us back in creation. Right? It's a creation ordinance. And so he has a creation ordinance. And so he gives us a pattern one in every seven days. What are we supposed to do?
We're supposed to rest. Why? Because God rested. Because God rested. That's right. God rested. Now, the Westminster Shorter Catechism we'll talk about from the creation of the world. to the resurrection of Christ. This was on the sixth day of the week. You're right. But from the resurrection of Christ. So he comes again. It's on the first day. Right. So now it's because of the resurrection, that's the Lord's Day that we celebrate the Christian Sabbath.
But here's a question. All of this has been talking about the tabernacle. What does the Sabbath have to do anything with the tabernacle? What do you think? Because they'd go there to worship. That's right, because they'd go there to worship. So part of keeping the Sabbath is also worshiping. Right now. So this is all this. What was kind of the penalty for this if you didn't keep the Sabbath in Israel? Man, that's pretty serious, isn't it? Death penalty or exile. You think God takes us seriously? Yeah, I think he does. But you want to know something cool?
The Book of Hebrews tells us all of this was pointing us towards an eternal Sabbath. And you know who we have our eternal rest in? Jesus. specifically Jesus. Jesus is our eternal Sabbath. And so we go and we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. We worship God together on the Lord's Day, remembering that someday we'll have a rest that we enter into perfectly, eternally.
So what do you think is most interesting about this whole passage? You can't think of anything? You know, I think it's really interesting that God says it's the covenant, but this is, this is one of the signs of the covenant. I thought that was interesting, right? His people would be marked by how well they kept the Sabbath, right? People would know them as weird, as holy people set apart different than everybody else. If they didn't work one in seven days. Well, What would, what do you think if you had to underline something as the best verse to, for this, what would you underline? Probably verse 12. Oh, verse 12. Okay.
And the Lord spoke to Moses saying That's what you had underlined. I think you should at least underline verse 13 also And then this is actually where we find out that God in verse 18 as well wrote these on the tablet stone with his own finger This was a covenant, but did you know that that was something that Kings back then used to do? If they came into a covenant with people, they would write out the covenant on a piece of stone and the king would keep one stone and the other people would have the other stone. And so God has two stones written with all these different commandments, these 10 commandments. And he gives them to the people.
We'll find out more what happens from there. All right. You ready to pray? Yep. Okay. Father, thank you so much that you have given us our rest in Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that you would teach us to walk in your ways, to worship you, to love and follow you. In Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may God bless you today. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ. I hope that you and Deborah both wake up this morning And have a great day. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.
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