Messy Church: A Series About the Heart Slowing Down through the Sabbath

Transcription

1 Messy Church: A Series About the Heart Slowing Down through the Sabbath Exodus 20:8-11 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Sermon Synopsis: The Sabbath is a command, not a suggestion. This sermon outlines why, and it could change your life. Intro: How many of you heard Be with Jesus, went home try it out, and it never materialized! Margin? No guilt, just a confirmation that We have frazzled lives Is this the abundant life we thought it was? Some of us are disillusioned, confused, frazzled. The Abundant Christian life Stress AP! Adrenaline addiction (fight or flight) Health problems 2 Relational friction leaking 3 Lack of margin Shallow community (w/others) Superficial spirituality (w/jesus) Burnout 4 1 We re running on empty, with little to no margin for what s important. We can talk about margin, but unless something changes, we won t have it. We live frazzled lives. 1 Dr. Archibald D. Hart, a clinical psychologist best known for his research in the area of stress and anxiety, notes that stress is a biological response (adrenaline) to anything that creates a state of arousal or alarm in our bodies which can include environments or circumstances that are hostile, threatening, or even challenging. This is what is often referred to as the fight or flight response, also known as stress and is generally good if experienced during emergencies and for short periods of time. The problem, Hart notes, is when we live in a perpetual state of stress too much stress reduces the body s immune system and our ability to rest. The Hidden Link Between Adrenaline and Stress: The Exciting New Breakthrough that Helps You Overcome Stress Damage. (1995) Read previous footnote by Arch Hart. 3 When we do not process before God the very feelings that make us human, such as fear or sadness or anger, we leak. Our churches are filled with leaking Christians who have not treated their emotions as a discipleship issue. Grieving is not possible without paying attention to our anger and sadness. Most people who fill churches are nice and respectable. Few explode in anger at least in public. The majority, like me, stuff these difficult feelings, trusting that God will honor our noble efforts. The result is that we leak through in soft ways such as passive-aggressive behavior (e.g., showing up late), sarcastic remarks, a nasty tone of voice, and the giving of the silent treatment. Peter Scazzero. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. 1st Ed Dr. Richard A. Swenson argues that burnout is not necessarily caused by working hard, or even too much, but when too much margin is lacking over a period of time. Biochemical stress parameters are more affected by psychological tremors than by physical stressors. Physical hard work, for example, is not really a stressor at all, as long as one has some control over it. A person can work twelve hours a day, six days a week for an entire life at physical labor and suffer no ill effects as long as that person has decision-control over the work schedule. Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2009). By Chris Lazo Reality Santa Barbara 1 of 5

2 God speaks into our frazzled condition Sabbath What is it? Origin: Genesis 2:2-3 (God rests from his work) Rested on the seventh day (Exodus 20:11) Not rest like sitting around bored, tired, needing a day off, or a vacay. Menuah (men-u-ha) is the Hebrew word for rest, but it is better translated as joyous repose, tranquility, or delight. 5 Notice rest is part of God s activity 6 a container for His delight Made it holy (Ex 20:11) Exodus 20:11 the day/time itself is holy. Unlike temples, places, and holy sites of other world religions, Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel notes, The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals. 7 Time itself is a holy container for God s delight. **God ceased working to delight in His creation Sabbath is a block of time, usually 24 hours, for ceasing work, resting, and delight. Traditional Jewish Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday. In most Christian traditions, it is observed on Sunday. Paul: doesn t matter what day (Rom 14:1-17) Sabbath Why is it? AP! 1. Rest AP! You shall not do any work (Exodus 20:9) Mean? Nah. (illus: forced naps) - He is God and we are not limits are God-given - Also to show us He is faithful that we can trust in him to take care of us Psalm 23:1-3a (ESV) The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. 2. Identity & worship - To show us He is our Redeemer He brings us out of slavery, and we worship Him God brings Israel out of an oppressive culture, and gives them a new identity Deuteronomy 5:15 (ESV) 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. This was an act of resistance by God s people against the narrative of oppressive powers. We are no longer identified by Pharaoh, surrounding culture, society, or other s expectations. 5 6 Dan B. Allender. Sabbath. (Thomas Nelson, 2009) Wayne Muller. Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives. (Bantam, 1999) This is a radical departure from accustomed religious thinking. The mythical mind would expect that, after heaven and earth have been established, God would create a holy place a holy mountain or a holy spring whereupon a sanctuary is to be established. Ye tit seems as if to the Bible it is holiness in time, the Sabbath, which comes first. Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Sabbath. (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1951) By Chris Lazo Reality Santa Barbara 2 of 5

3 B&H Photo Video, founded in 1973 and located at 420 Ninth Avenue on the corner of West 34th Street in Manhattan, New York City, is the largest non-chain photo and video equipment store in the United States. 8 Owner, Herman Schreiber, is a Hasidic Jew, who will not conduct business on the Sabbath. 9 They close their store at 1pm on Friday, and all day Saturday (biggest shopping day in the week). You can peruse the B&H website, but can t make an online order even though their web presence is huge, totaling nearly $116 million in [online] sales in Recently a customer asked the B&H director of communications how they could close not just the retail store but also the website on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year. The director simply replied, We respond to a higher authority. 11 We do not belong to the oppressive powers or principalities. We belong to God. On a much much much smaller note than Egypt, we have an oppressive culture too: busy Sabbath message is the same: we do not belong to them, but to God. 3. Delight AP! blessed (Exodus 20:11) = spiritual wellbeing 12 - Picture: God rested (delight), blessed it as a means of spiritual/emo/physical wellbeing, then made it holy (a container for blessing and delight). THEN, tells us to keep it holy. God: I know you had a hard week, and you feel the need to hustle. But you re mine. And I m fun. Unfortunately, this (delight) is not the experience of some (many?) of us. Sabbath feels gloomy! The history behind gloomy Sabbaths Wayne Muller notes that Early Christians celebrated the Sabbath on Sunday, to commemorate the day of Jesus resurrection. The Sunday Sabbath first received official recognition in 321 C.E., when the emperor Constantine, newly converted to Christianity, declared it a day of rest throughout the Roman Empire. Sadly, this inaugurated a long period of governmentally enforced Sabbathkeeping, when church attendance became mandatory. Much later, when religious reforms swept through Europe in the sixteenth century, it brought renewed emphasis on long, arduous worship services, designed in part to steer the faithful away from the more sensual temptations of a day of rest. As church fever spread throughout the New World, American Protestantism increased the severity and duration of Sabbath obligations as further evidence of a deeper piety. Small wonder, then, that so many of us chafe at the memory of such stringent Sabbath restrictions, and actually prefer to work rather than be forced to rest in such a dry and gloomy fashion. 13 This is one thing Jesus came to correct The Lord of the Sabbath tells us that the Sabbath is made for us, not vice versa (Mark 2:27) And like we saw last, Sabbath is ultimately about slowing down to be with Jesus. 8 9 B&H Photo Video. Wikipidia. Scazzero. EHL Mike Cassidy. How B&H Photo competes in the Amazon era. Bloomreach. March 10, Quoted from Pete Scazzero. EHL R. Kent Hughes. Genesis Wayne Muller. Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives. (Bantam, 1999) By Chris Lazo Reality Santa Barbara 3 of 5

4 Sabbath was meant to be a blessing. A sign of God s delight in His own creation, and the gift of delight to former slaves now called by God s Name. It dares us to see a *gasp* playful God. One author comments, in German theologian Jürgen Moltmann s book Theology of Play, he asks, Why did God create the universe if he is a free and all sufficient being? His answer, rooted in the book of Proverbs, is that we observe God playing when he made the world. Wisdom, who was from all eternity before the world began (Proverbs 8:23,25), played in the Father s presence when the world was created 14 Proverbs 8:30-31 (NIV) Then I [Wisdom] was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind. Through worship, rest, and delight, we see that Sabbath is a sign that **We belong to a God we can trust, and therefore can slow down in surrender and delight. OBJECTIONS 1. Isn t Sabbath keeping legalistic? Paul said it s legalistic to rely on the Law to justify yourself before God or others (Galatians 2:16) But it s still good if used rightly (Rom 7:12; 1 Tim 1:8) If you don t observe the Sabbath, you ll still get to heaven. But your life might be hell. 2. But isn t this part of an Old Covenant Law that we don t need to observe anymore? Question: do we think that about the other ten commandments too? No, we observe them, and Jesus even takes them deeper into the heart! (SOTM) Hebrews 4:9 (ESV) there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. First, you must be born again! (rest comes first through faith in Jesus) 15 (Anyone can take a Saturday off!) Matthew 11:28-30 (see Augustine too) Hence, Col 2:16-23 it s about Jesus if you miss that, you miss everything EXHORT: YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN The Sabbath still speaks to a weekly rhythm, a container, to be with the One who provides true rest. Yet, we have treated this command as a suggestion (you don t that with other 9) While we see it more fully explained and clarified in Jesus, nowhere do we see anyone abolishing or abrogating it. We are actually ripping ourselves off by relegating it to a concept e.g., Oh, Jesus is my Sabbath. *No wonder we are so frazzled! Scazzero. EHL. 161 Hebrews 4:1-2 states this By Chris Lazo Reality Santa Barbara 4 of 5

5 When Israel came out of 400 yrs slavery to Egypt, God didn t say, The Sabbath is within you, He said, HERE S A DAY! Set it apart, rest, delight, worship, stop working, play, laugh, eat. You may find this container of God s rest and delight spill over into the other six. 16 Enjoying the Sabbath Sabbath How do we do it? I will give you rest Don t turn it into a law. Allow it to protect you to guide you along the pathway of rest and delight. Maybe use the three points as a guide: AP! Worship rituals that remind you who God is, and your identity in Him Rest stopping the things in the week that stress you out Delight doing what brings life to your soul! Also, start small. 17 AP! 1. What activities will I refuse to engage in so that it is truly a day of worship, rest, and delight? 2. What activities bring me delight, and how will I incorporate them? (don t over-plan, or make too many demands) 3. Pick a day, ask God to help you, and see where it leads you and adjust from there. Lazo family example: - Mondays - Beach - Gym - Family outing - Nap - Cooking and eating together - Sometimes friends over - Prayer - No: , social media, to-do lists (work) You might try this and fail miserably. That s ok! You must understand, that this practice is extremely counter-cultural, and for some of you, it may just obliterate your sense of self, that has been built on busyness, stress, activity, and production. It s also a fight against principalities and powers (Pharaoh). Important: don t give up because of guilt. This is God s gift to you! Believe that He loves you Dan B. Allendar. Sabbath. 13 I found these three points by Ruth Haley Barton very helpful. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. (IVP Books, 2006). 145 By Chris Lazo Reality Santa Barbara 5 of 5