W. Robert Godfrey

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

And the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day."

So it's not only because of creation we keep the Sabbath day, but because of redemption we keep the Sabbath day.

We used to be slaves who had to work at our master's bidding all the time, and God delivered us from that slavery, and God gave us rest.

And so one day a week we rest in him to remember him as the rescuer of slaves.

And what we'll see is that this has resonance through the whole of Deuteronomy and through the whole Old Testament.

If we are to rest and our servants are to rest and the stranger with us is to rest, it changes the whole character of society and of relationships.

Our relationships are no longer just economic, but there's a communal spirit of mutuality.

We were all slaves.

You know, one of the great problems America wrestles with is the legacy of slavery, that some were slaves and some were not.

But here we're taught our legacy, our history, is that we're all slaves, and therefore we're all equal.

And therefore, we're all to rest before God and to enjoy his blessing.

So the Lord is warning his people a great deal about himself.

He's the rescuer.

But he's also warning us a lot about ourselves, who we are, how we're to understand ourselves, and how we're to understand our relationship with one another.

You remember one of the things out of Deuteronomy 17 about the king, he was not to lift himself in pride above his brothers.

Why is that?

Because we were all slaves in Egypt.

No nobility came out of Egypt.