Be Still.

(This is part two of a four part series. The rest of the parts will be collected on our Lord of the Sabbath page after they are posted.)

Exodus 20:9-11, Psalm 16:9b-10

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Last week we started talking about Jesus as the Lord of the Sabbath. Today I want to unpack the second major rest theme in the Bible with you. We find this theme thousands of years after the creation, when in the book of Exodus, after God has freed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, he’s leading them through the wilderness where he commands that for six days they are to labor. But on the seventh day, that is to be a day of sacred rest. (Exodus 20:9-11) A day where they are to do no work at all, there to be perfectly still so that they can have a time of sacred assembly to hear God’s Holy Word.

Now, how good are you at holding still? It’s kind of a fun experiment to have with toddlers, actually. Tell them to hold still. And the more they think about holding still, the more and more they fidget. Or maybe if you’ve been carted into an MRI before and had to sit in that tunnel, and the last thing the operator always tells you is hold still. And it’s the moment that they say that, that all of a sudden you’re so consciously aware of that itch and it just drives you nuts. We’re not very good at holding still, are we?

Spiritually speaking, we can’t hold still. God says, be still. Let me do all the work. Let me do all the labor and heavy lifting. But our human reason, our human logic says, no, no, no, no, God, I’ve got to do something. I got to contribute. It’s got to be my faith or my faithfulness, or my good works that somehow contribute to me being saved. Or God says be still. Just trust in me. And you know what? The more I think about holding still, the more I think about I gotta trust in God. I gotta trust in God. The more I worry. I’ll even start to worry about my own faith. Whether or not my faith is trusting enough in God. We can’t hold still. That’s why Jesus is your Lord of the Sabbath. He’s the Lord of holding perfectly still. In fact, we see Jesus perfect trust in God, quoted in Psalm 16 When Jesus says,

My body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. (Psalm 16:9b-10)

Jesus went into death. He died in perfect trust, trusting himself into his father’s hands. And the most beautiful moment after Jesus death is when Jesus fulfilled all of those commandments from Exodus by holding perfectly still as his body laid in the tomb on the day we call Holy Saturday. Jesus did no work. He didn’t even lift a finger. You see, for you and me, we can never have perfect trust in God. But what we can do is we can run to Jesus, who is our perfect trust, our perfect stillness, our perfect rest. And for all the times I’m lying awake at night and all the times I’m troubled, I run to Jesus and rest in his perfect stillness Amen.