Our passage is Exodus 23, and I hope to go through all of chapter 24 as well today. We'll see how it goes. But if you would find Exodus 23 and 24, I'm going to read a few verses in 24 in just a minute. This is our third week studying the book of the covenant, which we're going to finish today. And this larger section breaks down this way. I've shown you this before, but there's a slide there for the Bible knowledge commentaries. organization, their outline of this section. The outline of the Mosaic Law in Exodus is that we had the Decalogue. Chapter 20, verses 1 to 21, that's the Ten Commandments, that's what we call that. Then the Book of the Covenant is what we're studying here. It goes through, depending on how you outline it, they say through verse 11 of chapter 24, I think that's as good as any. And then some ceremonial regulations and getting into the tabernacle, and that's where we're headed next week and beyond. So that's where we are in the book of Exodus, and because of the length of this passage, I'm not going to read it all right now. We'll read it as we come to it, but I will read a few of these verses, so hopefully you've had a chance to find it, and would you stand with me please? I'm gonna read chapter 24, beginning in verse three. So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words which the Lord had said we will do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And he rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel. Then he sent young men of the children of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and they said, all that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, this is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words. Let's pray together, please. Our Father, we come to you through the shed blood of Jesus. We come to you knowing that we are unworthy in and of ourselves, but we are worthy in Christ. Lord, there are many words here in these chapters, and we're asking for your help to understand them today, that you, Holy Spirit, would highlight exactly what each person in this room and anyone else online needs to hear. Your word is living, your word is powerful, your word is sharp, and you have said it will do what you send it to do, and that's what we're asking for today. that your word would illumine our hearts. You would light us up to know ways in which we may need to change to be more like Jesus. Holy Spirit, I ask for your help to think and speak clearly, to say what you want to be said. Give us all ears to hear and hearts ready to obey. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. I'm gonna offer you an outline of these sections, and then we'll dig into them, but first we have this section in chapter 23, verses 10 through 19, of Sabbaths and Feasts. Remember, Sabbath means rest, so we're gonna talk about that a little bit, and then some Feasts, there were three of them that they needed to come together for. Then the second section is from verse 20 to 33 of chapter 23, and there we're gonna read about the Promised Land. And interestingly enough, we're gonna read about hornets. So we'll see about that when we get there. And then the covenant ratification, when they agreed to the covenant, begins in chapter 24 and runs from verses one through eight. And then finally we see these references to the glory of the Lord that Moses is invited to come up into the presence of the Lord on the mountain and what that looked like from the people looking on from below. The glory of the Lord, that's verses nine through 18 after 24. the overview, the high-level view of what we're going to look at today. But within that, I would like you to remember this, because you may not remember those things, maybe you wrote them down. But maybe one of these will be something you can take with you this week. These are the main points. Number one, we experience rest in Christ. Number two, we express thanks to God through corporate worship and giving. And I don't usually try to alliterate these, these did all happen to be E's this week. So we have experiencing rest, and then we have expressing thanksgiving. Number three, we experience victory in Christ. And number four, we enter God's presence because of the shed blood of Christ. Those are some of the big ideas. And we will see them again individually as we go, starting with the first one. We experience rest in Christ. In past studies, those of you who've been here, when we studied the fourth commandment, for example, we talked about Sabbath rest. When they first received manna, they were instructed, you need to gather it for six days. So this is not a new idea, per se. There's some new information in this section about this Sabbath day, and then there's a Sabbath year, so let's look at this. We're in chapter 23, starting with verse 10. Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. So we've seen this pattern multiple times, haven't we? We have six and then one, six and then one. In Leviticus, God promised that the harvest of the sixth year would be enough to provide for the seventh year and the eighth year. It would be an abundant harvest that would get them through to the eighth year when they had the next harvest. So in other words, even though this is strange to us perhaps, what I want you to get is that obedience required faith and brought blessing. Obedience required faith. It took faith in that seventh year not to plant. Because they weren't going to get a harvest if they didn't plant. That's kind of logical, right? So just as it took faith for them to take the seventh day off or to get double manna on the sixth day, these other things that we've seen, it took faith, a lot of faith, for them to plant, water, harvest, six years, and then not do so on the seventh. But God blessed them in that sixth year. Obedience requires faith and brings blessing. Now, who was this for? Well, there was benefit here to the land, the poor, and even the animals. It seems like what's happening, it's not spelled out here, more of a tradition thing, explains to us that perhaps it was a crop rotation. It's not that if you're a farmer, and most of them were, that you don't do anything at all the seventh year. Probably you have your fields set up different ways, so this one's on for six years, off for the seventh, and so on and so forth. Or maybe you're doing a different schedule from your neighbors. But the idea was that in that seventh year, the poor of the land would get the volunteer crops that came up. They could glean those and that's how the Lord provided for them. And because it was staggered, we think, that meant that each year there was something for the poor. Isn't that a great provision of the Lord? So that's how this is set up. Now, when we get to Leviticus 25, and you don't even have to turn there, but that tells us about another set of provisions. years, when they had gone six years and a seventh off, and they do that six times, then that gets us to the 50th year, and that's called the year of the Jubilee. So, there's a Sabbath day, six days of work, one day of rest, there's a sabbatical year, six years of work, one year of rest, and then there's a Jubilee year, the 50th year, after six seven-year cycles, there's one year of rest. Is this making sense? When we talked about the indentured servants, the slaves going free that seventh year, I think that was offset as well. It's not that they were on a strict seven-year rotation with that. After you had served for six years, you could go out free. The 50th year, any land that had shifted around went back to the original owner, and all servants went free. And that's for a different day, but just to let you know, that's what God built into this theocracy, this special form of government for his people, the laws that we're studying here. What's interesting is that they didn't do this. If history tells us accurately, they didn't observe those seventh year rests. And you know what happened? They went into captivity, into Babylon. Because you can look it up on your own, But we read in 2 Chronicles 36 that the 70 years that they were in captivity were because of the 490 years they had lived in the land, and they didn't obey God's law about every seventh year resting. So God said, I'm gonna give the land the rest that I intended for it, and you go have a time out for 70 years. That's how that worked. Back to our passage, verse 12. Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and that the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed. So we have a repeat of the fourth commandment, and then an additional reason given, and that's refreshment. Rest, refreshment, for whom? Your animals, your servants, your household. It's not just that you get to rest, everybody gets to rest. on the seventh day. We'll see when we get to chapter 31 that this Sabbath was the sign of the covenant, this promise, this agreement that God's making with them. The sign of it is the Sabbath. That was to show, you are my people, you're going to live differently from everyone else. You're gonna rest on the seventh day of each week. God commanded his people to rest. Can you let that sink in for a minute? I won't ask you to raise your hand on this, but some of us struggle to rest. I am one of them, I would put my hand up. And God's saying, this is the way we're gonna set up your schedule for the week, this is the way we're gonna set up your schedule for a seven year period, and this is the way we're gonna set up your schedule for a 50 year period, because I want you to rest. We read in Hebrews, there remains therefore a rest for the people of God. It's not that we won't have any work to do in heaven, but it's not going to be work with toil and difficulty like we have here. And he's promising rest. You know what else? Jesus promised rest. He invites us to come to him for rest. Who was he talking to? He was talking about the people at that time, particularly the religious leaders, who were trying to keep every jot and tittle of this law, do it all, let's add to it, let's make it harder, let's make it a burden to everybody. Jesus says, no. Stop. You can't keep it anyway. You know where you're gonna find rest? Come to me. You know where you're gonna find salvation, is what's pictured there? You know where you're gonna find salvation? It's not by doing more, it's not by doing better. It's by coming to me and finding salvation in me and finding rest in me. That's what he said, Matthew 11, 28. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Why? Because my yoke is easy, my burden is light. And if you're like me, you're still trying to figure out what does that look like, what do you have for me, Lord? I'm resting in you spiritually, I know my only source of salvation is in you. What does that look like on a day-to-day basis? Because here's what I think Jesus is saying. This is my paraphrase. Stop striving. Stop trying to save yourselves. Find salvation. Find rest in me. Verse 13, back in our passage in Exodus. And in all that I've said to you, be circumspect. Look around. Beware. And make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth. Don't even talk about those other nations' gods. Those are false gods. Let them be forgotten. Don't talk about them. Don't name them. Now we shift the focus from resting to feasting. This is our second main idea for today. We express thanks to God through corporate worship and giving. I will ask you to raise your hand on this. How many of you would say that your favorite holiday is Thanksgiving? That you enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving? Okay, good. We're gonna see they have kind of free Thanksgivings in the year. That's what I see here. They were supposed to bring some sort of thank offering as thanksgiving to God. Verse 14, three times, you shall keep a feast to me in the year. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. You shall eat unleavened bread seven days as I commanded you at the time appointed in the month of Abib. For in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty. and the feast of harvest, the first roots of your labors which you have sown in the field, and the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when you've gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field, three times, there it is again, in the year, all your males shall appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until morning. The first of the first roots of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Any questions? Not really. We'll get to that one. Give me a few minutes and we'll come back to that boiling a young goat. But first let's talk about three times. Attendance at the tabernacle first they were about to set up the tabernacle So when they got into the promised land they set up tabernacle and then later at Solomon's temple Those who lived within a certain distance of that all of the men had to come three times a year And I've been reading Deuteronomy this week and before that Leviticus, and it's been kind of nice to see some of these things repeated and clarified. So you can check it out on your own. But this is saying that for these three festivals, Unleavened Bread, Harvest, or Pentecost, and In Gathering or Tabernacles, that they're supposed to appear. So I went ahead and gave you the different names because they're called different things. When we get the New Testament, it's called Pentecost instead of Firstfruits or Weeks. They have different names. The only thing I want you to get from this right now is that they were supposed to come and appear before God when it says all the males, they had to come. That didn't mean the ladies or the children couldn't, but it meant the men had to come, and we even have examples of Elkanah at the beginning of the book of Samuel. He brought his family in the New Testament. Joseph and Mary and Jesus came to celebrate the Passover, that kind of thing. So we see examples of that. But the males were required to come. So let's put these two sections so far that we've looked at this morning together. We've talked about rest, and we've talked about worship. Those of you who were here when we studied the fourth commandment, we said that there's supposed to be a routine, a rhythm in our lives of work, rest, and worship. Does that sound vaguely familiar? Hopefully, if you were here for that. If not, now I've said it. Rhythm of work, rest, and worship. As New Testament believers, we are not bound by a Sabbath day. It's not a set day of the week. We are still supposed to have periods of work, rest, and worship. but it's not observing the Sabbath the way they did. But those patterns of work, rest, and worship will reveal the priorities of our lives. It'll tell us whom we're worshiping. What's more, these folks had to make pilgrimages three times a year. When you go on a trip, some of you have pets and you have to plan for that, or maybe you have your mail held. There are things you have to do to prepare for that, right? Well, three times a year, they had to come and appear, later on, in Jerusalem for these feasts. And that meant that in an agricultural society, I need to provide for my fields, my family if they're not coming with me. This required faith. Everything's gonna be okay on the home front. God's gonna take care of that because I'm obeying him and coming on this pilgrimage to worship him. So it required planning, it required preparation. I'll say it again, their corporate worship, because that's what this is, required planning and preparation. What is our corporate worship? It's not a trick question, guys. You're sitting here in it, okay? We have a weekly Sunday morning service, and you're here for it. Praise the Lord, thank you for being here. It takes some planning and preparation to be here, doesn't it? When our kids were younger, back in Maryland, the church there was a little more traditional, a little bit more formal, frankly. And Saturday nights, Rochelle was figuring out, okay, do the girls' dresses need to be ironed? Do the boys know where their shoes are from last week? Basic things, why was she doing that? So that we would be ready to go out the door as a family on Sunday morning so that we could go worship the Lord together. On time. That was good, too. Another, I was trying to think different ways to illustrate this. Two weekends ago, I mean, last weekend, a week in the past, time change, right? It required some preparation. A lot of us have automatic clocks and phones and things now, but still, you have to know this is coming. I don't get into a lot of sports, a lot of you know that already, but if I'm gonna watch something, I'm gonna watch basketball. And the game that night was the Celtics and the Lakers. Celtics fan in case you're wondering. It started at 8.30 and we were losing an hour. So, if I'm going to stay up and watch a game, that's the game I'm going to stay up and watch. That night, I'm not saying I always do this or always do it right, that night I went to bed and got what sleep I could because when I get up here on Sunday mornings, I really need all the help and all the sleep that I can get. And I'm not saying something legalistic here that you need to do it that way. What I'm saying is, in your life, in your situation with your family, your household, whatever, your schedule, your routine, what kind of preparation do you need to make so that you can be here, ready to worship God with your church family? What did God say, or what did we say, I guess I should say, these festivals were, they were like times of thanksgiving. We're gonna see later on a feast. So there were days set aside, weeks actually, when they were supposed to gather to praise and worship. And so when we come together to praise and worship, there should be thanksgiving involved. we should be thanking God throughout the week, because isn't that part of God's will for us? That in everything give thanks? There are those short little verses in 1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice always, that's a good one. Pray without ceasing, that's another good one. And then what does it say? In everything give thanks, why? For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. And before we move on, I'd like to make a practical application to us where we are in this place today. on March 16th, 2025. There's a phrase in verse 15 that really grabbed my attention this week. And here it is. None shall appear before me empty. None shall appear before me empty. What did that mean for them? It meant that they needed to bring their sacrifice at Thanksgiving, or at a different time of year, the first fruits, the best and first of their crops, or their first born lamb, or whatever the case was. Don't appear before me empty. So what does it mean for us? Anybody bring your first born lamb this morning? Good, because I wouldn't know what to do with it if you did. But it means in addition to the planning and preparation we just talked about, God's people were supposed to bring an offering when they worshiped God for the three yearly feasts. And we've talked about giving. It's come up a few times already. It's gonna keep coming up because this is the section of Exodus that we're in. So ask yourself, am I giving God a portion of my material possessions, my money, on a regular basis out of thanksgiving and praise to him? And either you are or you aren't. If you are, great, praise the Lord. You're obeying. If you're not, if that doesn't describe you at all, I never do that, then you're disobeying. And you need to make a change. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We live in an age and in a society filled with consumerism. Even in our worship. Have you ever heard somebody say, I didn't get anything out of worship today. I didn't get anything out of that church service. Maybe you've said that. It's the wrong question, folks. The question isn't, what can I get out of coming to this building on Sunday mornings? Because worship is not about me, and it's not about you. It's about God. We need to change that mindset. If that's how you're thinking, then I pray that you will seek God and ask him to clarify this for you because worship isn't about us. It's not about how I feel when I come. It's not how I get attention from others when I come. I'm gonna share a hypothetical situation right now. I wrote this down with no one in mind. Don't think I'm trying to go after somebody, I'm not. But this is just pretend, are you ready? Imagine that I, see I'm making it me, imagine that I walk in here five minutes before the service starts. Or maybe five minutes after the service starts. And the first thing I notice is that the coffee is cold. And that we don't have any of the kind of donuts that I like. And then I see somebody sitting where I like to sit. And then during the greeting time, nobody comes and talks to me. And then when we finish the service, it's raining outside, and there's a big pile of stuff to be loaded into somebody's truck that's in my way on the sidewalk, and I can't leave easily. I'm making this up and making it very exaggerated to try to prove some points here. What's wrong with that picture? It's the self-focus, it's the selfishness, because life is about loving God and about loving other people, serving them. And that's what we should apply to our church service. We should come with hearts that are prepared, we should come ready to hear from God, ready to thank and praise him in worship, and we should come with hearts that are ready to give and share, share one another's burdens, bear one another's burdens, pray for one another, encourage one another. That's what this should be about. But we shouldn't come empty, that's what the passage says. I'm gonna say one more thing, though, before I leave that. There are weeks when you're going to come in empty. You're drained, it's been a crazy week, something's happened, an emergency in your family. That's okay, please come. And those weeks, those of us who have come ready to pour out into other people, let us pour out into you. But please come. And whenever possible, don't come empty. Does that make sense? All right, what about this kid in its mother's milk? What is this here for? If you read the other writings of Moses, I think it comes up three more times, because I just read it in Deuteronomy yesterday or today. So what is this, don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk? Say, praise God, I've kept that commandment all my life. Right? We got one, woo! Scholars and historians are uncertain about what this means or why it's here. But we think, what makes the most sense to me, is that this was part of a Canaanite fertility ritual. That they would boil a kid in its mother's milk, that's backward, right? Because the milk is supposed to give sustenance to this baby goat, and instead it's being boiled in it. That just seems wrong. But they would then take those drippings and then put them on their fields or on their trees or whatever in the hopes of getting a good crop. Can you see why that would be a problem for God's people to do that? Okay, because who was gonna give them a good crop? God, he promised that if they obeyed, he would send the rain. He would bless them, he would provide for them. So this would be worshiping another God, and that, we already know, is a big no-no. And what's interesting is that later, Jewish authorities decided that this means we should never have milk and meat in the same meal. because then they might go into our stomachs and the juices would be like boiling the meat with the milk. So we therefore will eat, this is one way of eating kosher, I will never have a cheeseburger again. Isn't that sad? I was thinking about that this week. There are people who voluntarily never have had a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. But understand that that's not what this was saying. I can't tell you 100% sure what it is saying, but that's an unfortunate misinterpretation that has become a way of life for many people. All right, we're on point three. We experience victory in Christ. Verse 20 says, Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if you indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries, for my angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hevites and the Jebusites, and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. Who is this? an angel, my angel, it is most likely the angel of the Lord. We would call that a Christophany, when Jesus appeared before he came as a baby. We see that in other places in the New Testament. Why would I think that? Because it says he forgives sin, or in this case it's actually worded he won't forgive your sin. I don't know of any other place in the Bible where an angel was able to forgive my sin, do you? I don't know that. I don't think there's any other instance of that. And then it says the Lord's name is in him. That also suggests, what is the representation? It's who that person is, right? We've talked about that. The power, the authority is in this one. Well, that's Jesus. Those of you who were here in our Colossians study a couple weeks ago, we talked about that. In him, that's Jesus, is the express person. It's God come in human flesh is the way it's worded in John chapter one. What about this thing with the sacred pillars that we're supposed to tear down? Those were probably the stone markers of ancient shrines, and God didn't want them to leave any part of the worship of false gods, lest they be tempted to worship those false gods. And for us, as we've said in other studies recently, women study here a couple times, when God reveals idols in our lives, what should we do with them? Get them out, destroy them. That's what he was telling them to do in this situation. Verse 25, so you shall serve the Lord your God and he will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. So I will bless you for worshiping me in the way that I've told you to do. And what would that look like? It would look like water coming in the form of rain to water their crops, to give them food, to give them water to drink for that matter. The springs would be there and would flow. And to give them physical health. and to give them babies that would be healthy. All of that is promised here. But let's also understand what it's not meaning. God gave these promises, someone said, to a specific people at a specific time in a specific place. This isn't saying, Bob, keep the commandments and you will always have all the food and water that you want. It's not a one-to-one kind of thing. It's not saying that you will never get sick, you'll never starve, you'll never have, you will always have lots of children, you'll never have miscarriages. And the flip side of that is that nowhere in the Bible does it say that all sickness or disease is because that person sinned. So let's not confuse what God is saying. He's saying those people at that time obey these laws and I will bless you. Okay, verse 27. I will send my fear before you. I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come and will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. They'll run away. And I will send hornets, there it is, before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and you inherit the land. He's saying, I'm gonna do this gradually. Because if I did it all at once, you wouldn't be able to take possession of the land all at once. So it's a gradual process, kind of like our sanctification. God doesn't just download, I wish he did, he doesn't just download a new operating system into us when we get saved that we never sin again. Rather, he shows us, this is a way you're not being like Jesus. You need to stop that, you need to start that. And the Holy Spirit over time shows us, oh, I've been doing this so long, I shouldn't be doing that. And he grows us, he teaches us. And that's kind of what he was doing for them with the land. What is this idea of hornets? Well, some people think that it's literal hornets. And I do not have a problem with that. because wasn't it literal flies and literal gnats and lice and all that back in Egypt? So that may be what he was doing, using hornets. I wouldn't want to be plagued by hornets. Or some people think this is figurative, that it's parallel to the fear of the Lord in the previous statement, and some people think that it's a symbol representing the Egyptian army or the Assyrian army. Whatever it is, the point is that God would give them military victory in the land And God gives us spiritual victories as we trust in and obey Him. And if you want to study that out some more on your own of spiritual victories and how does that work, I would encourage you to look at Romans 6 or Ephesians 6 this week on your own. Read about the armor of God, read about the fact that if we walk in the Spirit, will we not obey the lust of the flesh? That would go with Galatians as well. He gives us victory, it's only in Him. If they went in on their own, it was not going to go well. Read forward to the book of Numbers. It didn't go well when God was not with them. But he was with them. And what would their borders be? That's what that next little section's about. The Red Sea. The Sea Philistia is the Mediterranean. The river is up north to the Euphrates. And one other thing I'll say here is that they were supposed to make no covenant. They were not supposed to make a treaty. Joshua and the others blew that later with the Gibeonites. But they weren't supposed to make a treaty. Have you ever wondered why? God told them elsewhere, and we've already seen it, don't marry people from Canaan. God's not, we would use the modern term, racist. That's not the point of this. He was preserving a godly seed so that the line of the Messiah could be traced to fulfill that promise. But beyond that, in a wedding ceremony, if it was two different nationalities, if it was two different cultures, then they would take vows in the name of each other's gods. Well, that couldn't happen, and we already know what happened with Solomon, that he was tempted by his multiple wives that he married from other countries, He worshiped their God. So here, why not make a treaty? Because that treaty, that peace agreement would be, I have to swear in the name of your God and you have to swear in the name of my God. And God was not gonna put up with that. Go back to first and second commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. So it would not work. God could not be consistent and allow them to make treaties with other countries. Now that just got us to the end of chapter 23, so that's where I'll stop and I'll pick it up here next week. We will get to our fourth point and talk about this ratification of the treaty and the feast that they got and the presence of God. We'll continue that next time. But for now, let's review those three main points we've talked about, that we experience rest in Christ, that we experience thanks to God through corporate worship and giving, and that we experience victory in Christ. And I would encourage you to think through those this week. Lord, where do you want to give me victory? Where do I need to obey you in this battle with my flesh, with sin? Lord, where is my worship of you falling short? Where am I too focused on myself? Lord, am I appearing before you empty? Or am I coming with eyes on you and a heart for the people around me and their needs? And what if you're just dog tired? Lord, what do you want me to change in my life? How do my priorities need to change to have that balance of work and rest and worship? Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? First question I'd like you to ask yourself, have you experienced spiritual rest in Jesus Christ? Are you a child of God through faith in the finished work of Jesus? If you are, praise Jesus. Thank him right now. If you're not, you can come to him by faith and talk to him. We call that prayer, but you're just talking to God and saying, God, I've broken your law, I've sinned. But I believe that Jesus came to my rescue. He lived a perfect life that I couldn't, and he died the death I deserved. And I'm putting my faith in him. You can do that today, child or adult. You can put your faith in him, and I encourage you to do that. And if I wanna talk some more or look at some additional verses, I'd be glad to do that. Believers, are you expressing thanks to God through worship and giving? Are you experiencing victory in Christ? with Holy Spirit's leading you to do something different, talk to Him about it. If you need to confess sin, do it. If you need somebody to pray with you, we'd be glad to. Our Father, we're grateful to be able to gather in your presence today because of what Jesus has done for us. Lord, may we rest in that. Please help us not to fret. Please help us not to think that we have to work to save or sanctify ourselves. Lord, there are some strange commands here, some that we barely understand. And yet there are some clear commands and principles that do apply to us. So would you bring those things to our remembrance today and this week? And give us grace to obey. We cannot do this apart from you. Lord, if there's anybody here or anybody online today who doesn't know you as Savior, please draw that one by your Holy Spirit to know you, to know everlasting life. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.