Jesus, our Sabbath rest, covers all our sin.

 

Sermon for Pentecost 12, August 11, 2024

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.  All who do his precepts have good understanding.  Amen.

Exodus 16:15-31  ¹⁵When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” because they did not know what it was.  Moses said to them, “This is the bread which the Lord has given to you as food to eat.  ¹⁶This is what the Lord has commanded: All of them are to gather as much of it as they need to eat.  You are to take an omer per person based on the number of people each of you has in your tents.”  ¹⁷The Israelites did this, and some gathered more, some less.  ¹⁸When they measured it with an omer, the one who gathered more did not have too much, and the one who gathered less did not have too little.  All of them gathered as much as they needed to eat.  ¹⁹Moses said to them, “No one is to leave any of it until morning.”  ²⁰However, they did not listen to Moses.  Some of them left part of it until morning, and it became full of worms and stank.  So Moses was angry with them.  ²¹They gathered it each morning.  All of them gathered as much as they needed to eat.  When the sun grew hot, it melted away.  ²²On the sixth day they gathered twice as much food, two omers for each person, and all the leaders of the community came and reported to Moses.  ²³He said to them, “This is what the Lord has said: Tomorrow is a complete rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord.  Bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil, but set aside for yourselves all the rest of it to be kept until morning.”  ²⁴So they set it aside until morning as Moses commanded, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it.  ²⁵Moses said, “Today eat whatever is left over, for today is a sabbath to the Lord.  Today you will not find any around the camp.  ²⁶Six days you will gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”  ²⁷On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather it, but they did not find any.  ²⁸The Lord said to Moses, “How long will you people refuse to keep my commandments and my instructions?  ²⁹Look, the Lord has given you the Sabbath.  Therefore, on the sixth day he will give you two days’ worth of bread.  All of you are to stay where you are.  None of you are to leave your places on the seventh day.”  ³⁰So the people rested on the seventh day.  ³¹The house of Israel called it manna.  It looked like white coriander seed, and it tasted like wafers made with honey. (EHV)

Jesus, our Sabbath rest, covers all our sin.

Dear sojourners in a barren land,

            Just what does this text have to do with us today?  If that question was on my mind when I began writing this sermon, I can imagine that you also wonder.  This is such an amazing miracle to read about, but what does it have to do with us thirty-five hundred years later?  It would be easy to pass this event off as mythology as many modern scholars do.  Or we could merely scratch our heads and walk away, but then we read the Lord’s demand of the Israelites, “How long will you people refuse to keep my commandments and my instructions?”  Again, the modern mind may respond, “Wait a minute, how can God be angry over such small infractions?”  Some people kept this miracle food overnight when commanded not to, and others went looking for it on a day God said it wouldn’t be given, but why would that be so serious?  Wouldn’t a good God give the people a break?

Ideas like that are common in our time, for most people tend not to take God’s law seriously.  Oh sure, it’s easy to condemn the bad examples we see in other people who flaunt their disrespect for God, who kill their babies, live together in sin, swindle their neighbor, cheat, steal, and lie, but good Christians like us would never do any of that, would we?  Perhaps we look at these instructions that the Israelites ignored and consider it a minor fault.  We might even ask, “What does it matter if I look lustfully at another man’s wife, or daughter?  What does it matter if my language gets a little salty when I am among friends or coworkers?  Does it really matter if I worry about how much rain we are getting, or still need?  What difference does it make if I want what someone else has?  Or maybe at the age many of us find ourselves, does it really hurt anything if we complain about the health problems God has allowed to enter our lives?  Does any of this stuff really matter in the kingdom of heaven?

In case some of you don’t remember your catechism classes anymore as I suspect there are many for whom that might be the case.  No offense, please, because I don’t remember a lot about mine either.  Yet, I know from the experience of teaching catechism classes that every command we study shows that none of us are innocent of breaking it, and in fact, even the most minor infraction is offensive to our holy God.  Furthermore, every time we break any commandment, even ever so slightly, we are really breaking the First Commandment, also, for even the littlest disobedience shows that we do not truly, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37) 

In his letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul tells us why God took the Israelite mistakes so seriously:

They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.  They all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them―and that rock was Christ!  Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them.  He had them die in the wilderness.  Now these things took place as examples to warn us not to desire evil things the way they did. (1 Corinthians 10:2-6)

The fact of the matter is that every sin, even those seemingly small and insignificant faults, are little rebellions against our holy and righteous God.  Every one of those sins, even only one sin, would be a rebellion against God and banish us from heaven.  Therefore, God was angry at what we might consider very minor sins, because that meant His chosen people were in open rebellion against their Lord. 

Considering that, how might we be in open rebellion against God?  Might it be dumb little things like going a few miles per hour over the speed limit?  Could it be enjoying our favorite movies or television shows that titillate a little, or leave us laughing at sexually suggestive material?  Might we extend that to supporting legislation that goes against God’s plan for human relationships?  If we think God was angry at the Israelites, how can He not be just as angry with us and with the culture we live in?

Dear friends, if you have been paying attention in the culture wars, I am sure you have heard some little voices out there yelling that God is indeed angry with us and we are doomed to destruction unless we all clean up our act.  Unfortunately, most of the people declaring that gloom and doom also have precious little idea how we might do that.  They will hammer the law into our heads like a railroad spike being driven into the ties, but the law won’t save anyone; it only condemns us for our weaknesses.  Some might glibly say that all those other people who are so wicked are doomed.  Yet, the truth is that on our own, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, or to satisfy God’s sense of justice. 

Still, there remains a sure and certain hope.  In this text, Moses recorded a hint at that hope as he relayed the message of the Lord, “Look, the Lord has given you the Sabbath.  Therefore, on the sixth day he will give you two days’ worth of bread.  All of you are to stay where you are.  None of you are to leave your places on the seventh day.” 

The word Sabbath means “rest.”  The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus is our rest.  Jesus is our Sabbath.  He is our perfect obedience and the promise of our holiness and life.  Those worship laws that God gave to Israel were intended to point them forward to Jesus, and to the freedom from sin and guilt that is found in Jesus.  God wanted those people to trust Him implicitly as their Savior.

Fifteen hundred years later, when the Pharisees accused Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath laws, Jesus responded by telling them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is the Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)  Consequently, St. Paul was moved by the Holy Spirit to teach us, “Therefore, do not let anyone judge you in regard to food or drink, or in regard to a festival or a New Moon or a Sabbath day.  These are a shadow of the things that were coming, but the body belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:16-17)

So, what does all this mean?  First, it is painfully evident that none of us are any less guilty on our own than those rebellious Israelites in the wilderness.  Yet, far more importantly, we have been made righteous before God though faith in Christ Jesus, and this wasn’t some decision we made, nor any work that we accomplished, nor even any attempt at obeying the laws God laid down for His chosen people.  Instead, Jesus, our Sabbath rest, covers all our sin, just as St. Paul was also inspired to write,

God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses.  It is by grace you have been saved!  He also raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  He did this so that, in the coming ages, he might demonstrate the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith―and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God―not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:4-9)

What God was looking for from those Israelites was not perfect works but complete trust in His love, His promise, and His mercy.  The second person of the Trinity was leading God’s people through the wilderness to the promised land.  Through His servant, Moses, the Lord was giving them His law and His message of saving grace through faith.  Yet, the Israelites were often guilty of willfully ignoring the God who saved them from slavery in Egypt.  The question for all of us is will we also ignore God’s mercy, or will we trust Him to provide everything thing we need for body, soul, and eternity?

This is the honest to goodness truth, Jesus came into this world to save sinners, sinners like you and me, sinners like those wayward Israelites, sinners like the Egyptians who enslaved God’s chosen people, and even sinners like the worst people you have heard of or known.  Jesus lived in perfect obedience to His Father’s will for all of us.  Furthermore, Jesus carried the sins of the world to that cross on Golgotha, and there, Jesus gave His life in full satisfaction of the law’s demand of death for our sin.  Therefore, the Holy Spirit comforts us with the assurance that “God made him, who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)  Therefore, when the Holy Spirit worked faith in Jesus in your heart, He gave you new life and a willing spirit, and the Father in heaven counted you as holy and righteous in His sight.

Dear friends, through Baptism, God has washed away our guilt and given us faith in Jesus.  Through His word of promise, the Holy Spirit continues to feed and strengthen our God-given, saving faith.  Then, with His true body and blood in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, our Lord Jesus assures us that all sin is forgiven, and we are purified to stand before God in peace.  Trusting in your Savior, Jesus, come forward this morning to eat and drink that holy meal.  Come to the Lord Jesus to taste and see that Jesus, our Sabbath rest, covers all our sin.  Amen.

After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support you.  To him be the glory and the power forever and ever.  Amen.