“What must I do to be saved?” the jailer in Philippi asked. Moments ago he had been ready to kill himself, thinking all the prisoners had escaped his jail. There was no greater dishonor for a jailer and the punishment would be harsh, and so he had decided that the best way out would be to end his own life, until he heard Paul calling, “Don’t do it, we’re all still here!” He called for lights, rushed in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
That question is a bit part of what makes that story so memorable. And that’s because the question is not unique to the Jailer of Philippi. It’s humanity’s question. Everyone asks it in one way or another. And there are endless answers that have been put forth to solve it. Most of them are some form of being a good person. But even if we were to agree that being a good person is required in order to be saved, then we’d have to look at all the ideas of what is required to be a good person and what it means to be saved. It’s actually quite overwhelming. Do I need to pray a certain number of times per day? Do I need to give a certain amount of money? Do I need to appease the right gods with the right offerings? Do I need to whip and scourge myself? Paul lists some of the great things people might look to achieve in 1 Corinthians 13: “What if I speak in the tongues of men and angels? What if I have the gift of prophecy and know all the mysteries and have all knowledge, and what if I have faith so as to move mountains? What if I give away everything I own and give up my body that I may be burned?” And he wisely says if I have all of that but have not love, I am nothing, I gain nothing.
It’s very overwhelming. What must I do to be saved?
What we find in Scripture is really something unique and wonderful, something that no human mind has ever conceived of. From the oldest of times, even at the heart of God’s law, God is not enumerating exhausting lists of all the things we must do to be saved. No, it’s the opposite. God desires that we rest.
The concept of the Sabbath Day was not new for God’s people of Israel when Moses spoke by God’s inspiration in Deuteronomy 5, our Old Testament lesson for today. Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law, and that’s actually what the name Deuteronomy means. God called Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt, and their first stop was Mount Sinai, where God gave his law. From there they went to the promised land, but instead of going right into the land they were sentenced to 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. At the end of that 40 years the old generation was gone and a new generation had risen. Moses was at the end of his life and would not be entering the promised land with them. But before his death he addressed all the people and reminded them of God’s law.
There are tons of laws in the books of Moses. Lots and lots of things to do. And at the center of the law, both at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus and here before entering the Promised Land in Deuteronomy, was the Ten Commandments. It’s a lot to do. It’s a lot to know, even before you can try to do it all. How much time have you spent studying all those laws? Is it something that excites you? Or do you look at it more like the way you might look at doing your taxes? Is this what I must do to be saved? It’s overwhelming. It’s just too much!
But then in the middle of the Ten Commandments, the Third Commandment, is this:
Observe the Sabbath day by setting it apart as holy, just as the Lord your God commanded you. 13Six days you are to serve and perform all of your regular work, 14but the seventh day is a sabbath rest to the Lord your God.
The word “Sabbath” really just means “rest” in Hebrew. But isn’t it interesting that the thing that God wants, the day he wants set apart for him, is a day of rest? It’s not a day of great strenuous work and many labors. It’s not a day for stretching yourself to your limits. Not physical limits—perhaps extreme austerity, starving yourself, beating yourself, walking barefoot across burning coals, or climbing a high remote mountain. Not mental limits—depriving yourself of sleep, praying for hours on end, reciting chapters of Scripture without missing a word. Not even spiritual limits—tests of faith, like Paul says, a faith that can move mountains.
All God desires is that we rest.
This rest was to be for everyone. No getting around it by saying, “Well, I won’t work, but my servants will.” No saying, “Well, my ox is the one who’s really doing the work pulling the plow. I’m just guiding it.” Not even, “This foreigner I brought in, he’s not even an Israelite, he can keep working.” No, everyone needs to observe this day of rest. Everyone needs to set it apart as holy.
In Exodus 20 when God first gave the law he pointed to Creation. He said, “I want you to rest on the seventh day just as I created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.” The pattern for this seven-day week was in place right from the beginning. Here instead of pointing to Creation, God through his prophet Moses points the people to their rescue from Egypt. That might seem like a strange connection to make. What does that have to do with a seven day week? What does it have to do with six days of work? What does it have to do with one of rest?
The Lord is the one who had saved them. Formerly they belonged to Pharaoh. But since the Lord had rescued them, now they belonged to him. They were his people. And what a great thing that is to be! Pharaoh was an unrelenting taskmaster, who gave them more and more work to do, and made that work harder, as hard as possible. He gave them no breaks, no rest.
But with the Lord as their God and master, their work was their own, and the one day that he claimed, the one day that was his, was not a day of work at all. It was a holy day. It was a day of rest. And this was a reminder to them. They weren’t saved by what they had done. How much work would they have to do to work their way out of slavery in Egypt? No amount of work would have been enough. There was nothing they could do to save themselves. They were saved by what God had done for them.
You never lived in Egypt. Actually, neither did most of the people Moses was speaking to in Deuteronomy. They were the new generation 40 years after they left Egypt. But the lesson of the Sabbath Day was still a lesson for them. And it’s also a lesson for us. God does not desire that you work your way to your own salvation. He desires that you rest. And not rest in the sense of sleeping in in the morning, but rest in the sense of taking a break from all the pursuits of the world to find true rest in him.
This isn’t something that comes naturally to us. The idea that salvation is something entirely outside ourselves, entirely God’s gift, is so foreign to us that no person has ever come up with it on his own. We all fill our lives up with things to do, so many works. In a way, you might say that our culture today is even worse than many pagan cultures of the past. Those pagans starved and beat themselves in order to please the gods, gods who were worthless manmade idols. But our culture is one that obsesses with works that are only done for the sake of personal pleasure. The only gods we seek to please are ourselves.
But what a lot of work that takes! We need money, gobs and gobs of it. We need big houses. We need nice cars. We need all the latest gadgets and toys. We need to go on exotic vacations. We need to keep up our appearances. We need to keep up with the frantic rat race of every appointment and obligation and activity. It can be exhausting. It can be overwhelming.
We’re so good at this that we can even turn rest into a kind of work. The Pharisees did this too. You need to rest in just the proper way in order to please God. “Jesus,” they accused, “Your disciples picked heads of grain and ate them. That’s harvesting! Harvesting is work! Why don’t you teach your disciples to keep the Sabbath?”
But what did Jesus say? “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is the Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Jesus was not saying, “Don’t tell me what to do. I can do whatever I want.” No, he was both the beginning and the end of the Sabbath. He was the divine Lord who gave the commandments. Unlike the Pharisees with all their traditions and man-made laws he knew exactly what it meant because it came from him. But he was also the fulfillment of the Sabbath. He kept it perfectly in our place. He found his rest always in the Word of the Father, entrusting himself in the Father’s hands. And by surrendering his life on the cross he became our rest, our perfect rest, our eternal rest.
The Sabbath day was a rest that came once a week and then it was over. Time to go back to work. But the rest that Jesus brings is so much greater. It’s a rest that never runs out. Our sins are taken away. They’re gone for good. Jesus has done all the work for me. What can I do to improve on his sacrifice on the cross? It was the Lord’s outstretched arm that brought Israel out of Egypt, and it was the Lord’s outstretched arms on the cross that brought me out of slavery to sin and death. He is the one who makes promises to me, in Word and Sacrament, of forgiveness, and life, and salvation.
The day of rest was part of the Old Testament ceremonies that found their end and fulfillment in Jesus. What a privilege you also have to rest in him and his salvation. You don’t have to live in the fear that your works are insufficient to please God. You don’t have to ask, “What must I do to be saved?” You know Paul’s answer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!” Salvation is his gift to you. Take time away from the endless labors and pursuits of this world to hear and meditate on and rejoice in his gracious gift. God desires that you have his rest, in his salvation now, and with him in heaven forever. Amen.
— Pastor Seth Georgson