Deuteronomy 5:13-14 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”

In his Ten Commandments the Lord laid his claim on practically every feature of his people’s lives. He claimed their tongues, their families, their possessions, their bodies, their hearts, and their worship and praise. With this commandment he made it clear, “God has also claimed your time, and God’s Claim On Your Time Includes Rest.”

His original plan was for his people to rest on the seventh day, Saturday. There is a certain logic to that, I believe. It follows the week of work. First work, then rest. If a different day had been chosen, say Wednesday, people would likely have begun to see that as a kind of seventh day after six days of work. I find people today who think that the first day of the week is Monday, because that is when work begins for us, and the seventh day is Sunday. Even some calendars are set up that way. But God originally chose Saturday as the day for his people to rest.

Which day wasn’t optional for God’s Old Testament people, but which day of the week was never the main thing. Taking a day of rest was. Even the name God gave the day emphasized the main point. We call it “Saturday,” a holdover from the Latin influence on our language, which named the day in honor of the god Saturn. The Germans called it “Sonnabend,” the evening before Sunday. The Scandinavians named it “lordag,” which means “bath day.” The Polynesians call it “rahoroi” or “washing day.” But God named it “Shabbat,” “Sabbath,” the Hebrew word for rest, because that is what his original plan was all about.

In spelling out the seventh day, God was treating his people like minor children. When I was a child, my parents dictated when I ate my meals, and when I went to bed. When I entered high school, this all became much more free. I might not eat supper with the family, and bed time could be later, so long as I got enough sleep. By the time I entered college, it was pretty much up to me when I ate or slept. My parents expected me to understand I needed them both.

After 1400 years and the sending of Jesus, God stopped worrying about whether his people got their rest on the seventh day. He expected them to get it because they understood they needed it. That was especially true in view of the kind of rest Jesus brought us. His death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, brings us rest for our souls. It lifts the heavy burden of sin and guilt off of our shoulders. It frees us from our fear of death. It relieves us of the tension and anxiety that God is angry at me, that he wants to stick it to me and make me pay, or that he has just decided to abandon me and forget about me because he is disgusted with me.

All of that is replaced with the peace of knowing he forgives me without limits, and he loves me without conditions. Through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice and promise my soul finds rest from thinking I have to earn my way back into God’s good graces. I can rest in Jesus’ finished work. That is why Paul could write in our second lesson this morning from Colossians not to let anyone judge you about keeping a Sabbath day. God’s claim on our time still includes rest, but our real rest isn’t found on a calendar. “The reality, however, is found in Christ.”

That concern for spiritual rest wasn’t missing from God’s original plan, either. It was the main thing. This was more than a day to stop working. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” Israel set down their tools and closed their shops to pay attention to God. And even then he was the God who delivers his people and forgives their sins.

Deuteronomy 5:12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.”

According to a survey several years ago, Americans aren’t very good at taking their time off. Only about half of us will take a vacation in a given year. For one in four, it is because they don’t think they can afford it. One in eight will not use even a single vacation day their employers offer.

We may complain that Americans are losing their work ethic. But we lack a proper rest ethic as well. My friend Frank was recruited to work for a government agency. They offered him two weeks of paid vacation at first. He told them that was unacceptable. He needed at least four. “I can get my work done in eleven months,” he said. “I can’t get it done in twelve.” Frank remembered something that many people forget. Without a proper amount of time off, without a proper amount of rest, we become less efficient. We lose our creativity. We make more mistakes. We just don’t operate as well. Fortunately for Frank, his skills were in such high demand that they gave in and granted him four weeks of vacation.

It’s not just our work that suffers when we fail to get our rest. It is hard on our relationships, both because we rob them of time, and because tired people are grumpy people. Our health suffers. The list of conditions caused or made worse by sleep deprivation is a long one: heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and obesity to name a few. Some say that failure to get enough sleep is one of the most serious health epidemics in our country.

Sometimes our failure to take time off for rest is unavoidable. We are called to address an urgent need at home or at work. Tonight is not the night to be in bed by nine. This is not the week to disappear for the next fourteen days.

But there are plenty of less noble reasons we cheat on our rest. Greed, a failure to be content with our current standard of living, drives us to sacrifice sleep and days off so that we can chase the dollar bills we desire. We miss the irony that our extra hours at work prevent us from having time to enjoy the things we can now afford.

Pride is another contributing factor. We put in the extra hours because we want our work to look the best, because we don’t want to be the weak one who has to ask for help, because we covet the respect that comes with the reputation for being a hard worker. And there is nothing wrong with work well done, getting it done yourself, and a work-ethic that commands the respect of our peers. But when we do it all for the cult of self to the glory of me, this isn’t a godly life. It is sinful ambition, a counterfeit of the self-sacrifice Jesus urges on those who follow him.

From the beginning, God recognized our need for rest. He built it in to his creation. From the very first day he turned the lights off for half the day, making it harder to keep on working and easier to go to sleep. He divided time into weeks of seven days, but the last day of that first week he put down his tools and stopped making things, though he himself needed no rest. Even the Almighty took a day to stop and enjoy the fruit of his work.

Then, in case his people didn’t get the hint, he included rest in his Ten Commandments. “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.” Although these words belong to his commandments, they really reflect his love for us. We are the ones who benefit from time to rest. It is healthy for our bodies. If we use the time to worship God and hear his word, it is even healthier for our souls.

John 3:14-15 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

Let me describe a man for you. He is filthy. He hasn’t bathed or showered in days. He doesn’t smell very good. His rather dull and unfashionable clothes are torn. He is loud. He is rough. He pays little attention to good manners. If he gets a chance to eat, he wolfs the food down as fast as he can.

He is a dangerous man. He is aggressive. He carries a gun and has even killed a few people with it. At other times he has roughed up people who threatened him.

What have I described? Perhaps you picture a street criminal, a gang member, a person for whom you would have little or no respect and avoid if at all possible.

What if I told you he was an American soldier in the midst of combat, a hero fighting to defend our country and protect your freedoms?

In order to understand this man’s actions and behavior, it helps to know who he is.

“The Son of Man must be lifted up.” This is the first time in his ministry Jesus spoke of his crucifixion, so far as we know. You probably know that not just anyone was crucified. The Roman writer Cicero, about a hundred years before Jesus, said that crucifixion was such a horrible thing that no Roman should ever have to witness it. And no Roman citizen could ever be sentenced to a cross. That may be why Paul, a legal citizen of the empire, was beheaded, but Peter, a Jew, was crucified.

Crucifixion was reserved for the worst and most dangerous. They were the criminals and enemies of the state. The Republic wanted to make examples of them. Spartacus, the famous gladiator, was crucified after he led a rebellion because officials were afraid he might inspire more slaves and gladiators to revolt.

Crucifixion slowly robbed you of your life. It was hard to breath if you didn’t pull yourself up by your arms impailed to the crossbar and push yourself up by your feet impaled to the pole. But that was painful, and eventually your muscles would cramp, forcing you to hang limp again until you were desperate for air and pulled yourself up again to breath. This went on, for days in some cases, until your heart gave out or you died of asphyxiation.

Jesus was lifted up on a cross. But not as a criminal. He was lifted up as the object of our faith, because here God himself took our place and died for our sins, the debt we could not pay ourselves. This is how it works in God’s Kingdom, different than any other kingdom, or any other religion in the world. The King’s Son dies for the crimes of his people. Believe that, see his work, and you are entering God’s Kingdom as you do.

John 3:14-17 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Here Jesus introduces us to the Father’s role in our salvation: the Lover of the world, the Giver and Sender of the saving sacrifice. This is all rather astounding in light of the world he professes to love and intends to save. This is the world that in the last century killed between 300 million and 1 billion of its fellow citizens by war, crime, and genocide, depending on whose estimates you follow. This is the world in which 5.5 billion of its 8.2 billion people live in daily open defiance of his very first commandment, which says, “No other Gods.” This is the world in which at least half the Christians are Christians in name only, and every one of them maintains a foot in both God and the devil’s camps.

This is the world that killed God’s Son when he sent him. So we can lay aside any ideas that the world had charmed God into loving it or in any way earned and deserved his affection. No reasonable human would have worked to save a relationship with another person who treated them the way we had treated God. There would be talk of toxic relationships and maintaining proper boundaries and a safe distance.

God the Father so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. He sent him into the world to save it. This not only went against the treatment he had received from the people he had made. It went against every normal instinct of a parent who cares for his child, a father who loves his son.

Fathers are protectors. In January 2018, a Rhode Island father died trying to rescue his son from a burning home. In March of 2025, an Oklahoma father carried his son to safety through wildfires that swept through large portions of the state, but the father himself died from burns he suffered in the process. Over the Memorial Day weekend this year, a father in Denison, TX drowned while rescuing his son who fell out of the boat from which they were fishing. Headlines like this are not hard to find. You may have stories of men you knew personally who did heroic things to save their sons.

In God’s kingdom, the Father loves us so much that he makes his Son a gift. He sends him into our world, fully aware of what that world will do to him. When we come to believe in the Father’s great gift of love like this, we receive eternal life from him. We become the sons and daughters he has rescued. The price he was willing to pay is proof of his love.

John 3:1-6 “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.’ In reply Jesus declared, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ ‘How can a man be born again when he is old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.’”

“You think you know who I am, Nicodemus.” Jesus is saying. “Do you really want to know who I am? You are not going to figure it out on your own just by watching me. Something needs to change inside of you. A new kind of life, with a new kind of mind and will, and a new way of thinking, has to be born in you. Then you will be able to see who I really am. Then you will be able to see what God’s kingdom is and enter it.”

Jesus wasn’t telling Nicodemus to go find this new life, with its new mind and will, himself. It has to be born in you. The Spirit has to give it birth. That’s a pregnant picture, pun intended. Birth is one of the most passive things that ever happens to us. You and I had no say in who our mother would be, or our Father for that matter. What’s the old saying? “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.” We had no role in determining when we would be born, and when the day came there was nothing we could do to stop it. At that point, there is little anyone else can do as well. My wife went into labor with our last child about three weeks early. The doctor gave her medications to try to stop the big event from happening, but to no avail. A few hours later our son appeared, alive and healthy, whether he wanted to be with us yet or not.

This is how we get our spiritual life, Jesus says, the one that allows us to see him and his kingdom. It is a kind of birth, a Spirit-birth. It happens to us. That’s not to say that we don’t understand the processes that make it happen, at least in part. The Spirit delivers this life. He mentions “water and the Spirit.” In this part of John’s gospel, baptism is a very central theme. So we believe that in baptism the Spirit is delivering new life in people. Years later the Apostle Peter also wrote about being “born again of the living and enduring word of God.” So we believe that by preaching, and teaching, and giving people Scripture to read, the Spirit is also delivering new life in people. They are born spiritually. But this happens to them. There is nothing “do-it-yourself” about the process.

Just in case Nicodemus missed the point, Jesus reaches for a second illustration. “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Ever try to control a tornado? Every try to stop a hurricane? Not much that you can do about them, is there. The weathermen can talk for hours, and the storm trackers can run around and look. With all our technology and radar we can follow and guess. But the wind blows wherever it pleases, and so does God’s Spirit. We can see where he is at work, in baptism and God’s word. But we have no control over his work. The Spirit-birth is the Spirit’s work from start to finish.

Jesus is leading us to repent of all our ideas about faith and salvation being some kind of spiritual do-it-yourself project. Maybe you have run into the gifted artist who could draw almost photographic reproductions of things from the time he first picked up a pencil, or the gifted musician who could play any piece of music she ever heard without taking lessons; or the gifted student who never had to study, but his brain just seemed to absorb and save everything he ever saw or heard–and these people were all full of themselves and their ability. They are kind of pathetic, because they act like they invented their bodies and gave birth to their talents, when it was all just a gift.

Don’t be the pathetic Christian who acts and talks as though he is somehow superior to everyone else because of a faith that was the Spirit’s gift. It’s a great thing, to be sure, but not something we have done. It is all the result of the Spirit-birth.

Acts 2:14-17, 19-21 “Fellow Jews, and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams… I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Purpose one for God sending his Spirit: He wanted his people to know. Before the completion of the Bible, he gave prophesies, visions, and dreams through his Spirit. The religion of grace isn’t something you figure out by logical deduction. We don’t instinctively believe that the way back to God is through grace, that the way past our sins is only his forgiveness, that the way to be saved is purely the gift of his Son. God’s Spirit reveals it.

Even with a completed Bible, it is the Spirit who lets us understand. I have heard the testimonies of so many Christians who will tell you they weren’t “reasoned” into Christian faith. Something happened through repeated exposure to the word. It is like a light bulb went on, and suddenly they just realized that these things they had been reading and hearing about Jesus were true. That is the Spirit’s power at work, teaching us what we need to know.

Purpose two for God sending his Spirit: He wants his people to speak. “Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” They will prophesy. That doesn’t have to refer to predicting the future. It describes any preaching of God’s message. And it isn’t limited to professional clergy. It is included in the job description of your pastor. But God has poured his Spirit “on my servants, both men and women.” You may be afraid to speak about your faith. “I’m not very good at talking,” you say. So did Moses, you may remember. And God told him, “Hey Moses, I made your mouth, remember? I can make it work just fine.” And he says to us, “Hey Christian, I gave you my Spirit, remember? He will give you the words you need to say.”

Purpose three for God sending his Spirit: He wants people to be saved. Peter uses the Prophet Joel to walk us right through the New Testament era and the rest of history to the last day. Then, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” This is what Pentecost Day is all about. This is why God sent his Spirit on us with power. It’s not about giving us the ability to create some utopia here, a heaven on earth. It is not about giving us the ability to do neat little supernatural things to impress our friends and acquaintances. It is about fortifying our own faith and equipping us to share it with others, so that people can call on Jesus’ name in faith and be saved.

Acts 2:1-4 “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

Jesus was not visibly present to explain to these people, “This is what happening to you.” But the signs, the evidence, that the Spirit had come was about as clear as it could be without a voice from heaven saying so.

First, there was the sound of the wind, but not a wind itself. The very words for “spirit” and “breath” and “wind” are closely related in most languages. The sound of a hurricane, without so much as a gust or a breeze, was a clear way for the Spirit to announce, “I’m here.”

The appearance of something that looked like fire settling on each of them took them all back to the prophecy of John the Baptist, “I baptize you with water for repentance. But…he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Is it possible to imagine this supernatural phenomenon could mean anything else?

So far all of this was just sound and vision. The clearest proof that this was the Spirit, and that he was coming with power, was the sudden change each person experienced. In an instant they became fluent in foreign languages, a lot of them. I know a little something about learning and speaking foreign languages. I’ve studied six of them. It’s not something a person just “turns on” in a moment. It is more than learning a new list of words for things. Other languages involve a whole different way of thinking, a whole different system for putting ideas together. Even the way your mouth and tongue forms sounds has to be relearned. Spanish-speaking people roll their “r’s” in a way I can’t. Swedish speakers have sounds similar to our “sh” sound pronounced in the back of your throat that I can’t imitate, and they round their lips to create vowel sounds we don’t have in English. On this Pentecost the switch was flipped, and suddenly a group of uneducated fishermen were fluent in the native languages of at least fifteen other countries–evidence of the Spirit’s power.

Where is our Pentecost? What is the evidence of the Spirit’s power in our lives? Don’t get caught up in the supernatural elements of the story. They were real, but they aren’t the main thing. I don’t have to tell you that some Christians today are set on having signs and wonders in their religion. They crave these demonstrations of supernatural power like an addict craves his fix. It’s not enough for them to live by faith. They need to see the miracles.

The problem is that people then get so distracted by the magic that they miss what Christianity is all about. Jesus performed many miracles during his ministry, but you may remember that he never did them for those demanding proof. And from very early in his ministry he actually discouraged people from telling anyone the miraculous things he had done. It led people to come to him for all the wrong reasons. He didn’t use his power to impress anyone. He certainly wasn’t interested in being their entertainer. If the miracles weren’t leading people back to God’s mercy and grace, something was missing.

In the case of Pentecost Day, the evidence of the Spirit’s coming was needed for a very specific reason. Jesus had told them to wait for it, not to start their ministry until the spirit had come. For ten days they had been waiting for it to happen. There needed to be clear evidence that now they had received the Spirit and his power. Otherwise, how would they know the time had come to go and preach?

We don’t have to wait to go and tell. The green flag has been waved, the starting gun has been fired, and it is off to the races! Do you want evidence that you have received the Spirit’s power, as promised? Look no farther than your faith. “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” The gospel has had its way with your heart. You don’t just know what the cross means. You trust the forgiveness flowing from Jesus’ sacrifice for your salvation. That means the Spirit is working in your life, evidence that his power is at work in your heart.

Psalm 90:1-2 “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.”

God has been our dwelling place. There is a comforting picture of his constant care in that statement. God has been like a home around us. The help we receive from him is not so much like going to the doctor’s office. That isn’t some place you live. It’s some place you visit occasionally when you are very ill. God is more than someone we go to for an occasional visit. He is like home. We live with him and in him. He is the one who has been our constant protection from the elements. He is the one whose grace shelters our souls.

The word Moses chose for “dwelling place” suggests that it is something of a hideaway, an escape where trouble cannot find us. Wild animals often have homes that are camouflaged and hidden to avoid the attack of predators. When we are dwelling with the Lord, we are likewise hidden away in his protection from those who want to prey on us. The devil may “prowl around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8). But wrapped in the righteous life of our Savior, covered in the blood of his forgiveness, we are perfectly safe from the devil’s accusations.

This is where we have lived all our days as believers in him. God has always been our dwelling place, not only for us, but for our parents and grandparents before us and for our children and grandchildren to follow us, ‘throughout all generations.”

It’s not as though people have ever had different options here. “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” Even before creation, our God is the one who stretches back forever without beginning. He didn’t replace some other god somewhere along the way. He didn’t come to his position by promotion, or succession, or acquisition. He has always been there, just as he will always be there. He is the only God there is. As we pray this psalm with Moses, we note that every day we have lived has been lived in his constant care.

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior, so that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.”

Political candidates campaign on promises they make to the voters. Once elected, many of them lose interest in keeping their promises. Jesus is installed at God’s right hand in heaven as rightful ruler of the universe. Does our Prince and Savior have anything to offer us today?

Peter’s words answer that question. Jesus is at God’s right hand so that he can give us his gifts. The first of those gifts is “repentance.” Jesus doesn’t spread the Christian faith by adhering to the old marketing principle, “The customer is always right.” I have been a part of paid market research focus groups in the past. Companies interviewed me and others to learn our opinions. Then they tried to tailor their products to our tastes. They assumed the customer must be right, and they changed to suit us.

Jesus does something counter-intuitive if you want to develop a following. He starts by telling you your ideas are all wrong. You and I have developed tastes and preferences that need to change. Our behavior and treatment of others is inappropriate. Our ideas about right, and wrong, and often God himself are backwards. He calls us to repent. He calls me to recognize that I am selfish, prideful, bossy, manipulative, dishonest, two-faced, ungrateful, lazy, lustful, greedy, impatient, and discontented. He calls me to stop defending it and rationalizing it, to feel genuine sorrow and regret.

But he does more than call us to repent. He gives repentance as a gift from God’s right hand in heaven. He exposes our sinfully wrong-minded notions in his word. He accompanies his word with his Spirit to convict us. He directs the events of our lives so that we are forced to come face to face with our true nature. He shows us ourselves in ways we never, ever wanted to know ourselves. He gives repentance to his people as a gift.

“Some gift,” we might think. But it is a gift, a gift of inestimable value. We will pay a doctor a great deal of money to uncover the physical deficiencies that are causing pain and threatening our lives. Only then can we get the right medicine to put us on the path to health again. How much more valuable is the diagnosis that uncovers the spiritual deficiencies that have condemned our souls!

Then we are ready to receive the other gift he gives from God’s right hand, “the forgiveness of sins.” However we have offended God, however we have hurt each other, however we have twisted God’s good gifts like sex or money, he does not hold these against us. He does not say that it was okay. It wasn’t. But he does not hold them against us. Our past does not determine how he will treat us in the future. Every day, every moment, we start off with a clean slate–as though we were as pure and as holy as an angel in heaven.

This, too, is more than an offer. It is a gift he gives–the gift he thought so valuable that he suffered death by crucifixion to make it happen. It’s more than a neat idea, a happy concept. Jesus’ sacrifice forms the real historical basis for God to forgive our sins. Now from his Father’s right hand he distributes it to us. He sends it around the world as he spreads his word. He washes us in it at our baptisms. He feeds it to us in his supper. His Spirit fans the flames of this good news so that it grows in our hearts and catches on in the hearts of more and more people. All this he does with the power and authority he enjoys from God’s right hand in heaven. Truly it is a gift that Jesus occupies such a place!