Sabbath Rhythms: Maintaining Margin for Life Series: Discipleship Practices for Kingdom Living Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 w July 11, 2015 w Faith Church Introduction Today we re finishing our series on Discipleship Practices for Kingdom Living by focusing on the Sabbath. Now, whenever the topic of the Sabbath comes up, we have to navigate between two errors. When I lived in Colorado I had the opportunity to climb a few 14ers. A 14er is a mountain whose summit is over 14,000 feet above sea level. And inevitably, when you climb a mountain, you ll get out on the ridge on the way to the summit. This is a view of the summit ridge of Mt. Yale, which I climbed with one of my church elders about a decade ago. You can see the steep drop- off on either side of the ridge. Slip off the side, and you might fall 1,000 feet. Here s a view from the top. Even here, a few steps to the right or the left will result in catastrophic injury. As we think about the Sabbath, we want to avoid falling off either side of the mountain. On one side, the drop- off is legalism, which tries to take the Sabbath seriously, but focuses more on what you can and cannot do. This usually leads to a perspective that that Sabbath is restrictive and no fun and motivated by guilt. The chasm on the other side is license. It says It s all grace, so keeping the Sabbath doesn t matter. This view ignores the Sabbath altogether, doesn t take seriously that we re commanded to keep it, and consequently misses its intended blessing for us. Irreligious people ignore the Sabbath altogether. It s just the weekend a day to do whatever they want. Religious people might come to corporate worship occasionally when they feel like it. Or perhaps they re consistent to worship, but they want to get in and get out so they can get on with their free day. à And so even church- goers can treat the day essentially the same as irreligious people after their occasional or token tip of the hat to God through attending a worship service. So one chasm takes the Sabbath seriously but makes it oppressive. The other chasm simply doesn t value it. Both errors miss the point and miss out on its intended blessing for us. We re going to try to avoid both chasms today and stay on the path in the middle that stresses that the Sabbath is a gift to us. It is important for our relationship with God, and it is a great blessing for our lives. 1
But not only is the Sabbath a gift to us, the Sabbath is a command to us. This isn t a contradiction. The command is a gift, because it s in our best interest. A lot of times we think that rules are oppressive. They emphasize what we can t do. Sometimes we feel they cramp our style. Kids: Do your parents have a rule about what time you are supposed to go to bed? Why do you think they have that rule? Is it because they are mean? What do you suppose will happen if you stay up too late too often? Have you ever seen a little kid that is screaming and whining about not being tired, but they re really irritable and grumpy because they are over tired? Yeah, as hard as it is to believe sometimes, our parents sometimes know what s good for us better than we do for ourselves. That s even more true about God. He always knows what s best for us. And so, like a good parent, he gives us rules for our own good. Rather than a fence restricting our freedom, God s commands are a guardrail to preserve our lives and well- being. They keep us from falling off the cliff! Proverbs 19:16 says, Whoever keeps commandments keeps their life, but whoever shows contempt for their ways will die. Over and over again, God stresses that the point of the law is that it may go well with you (cf. Deut 4:40; 5:33; 6:18, 24; 12:28; 30:15-20; etc.) The Sabbath is so important for our good that it makes #4 in the list of Ten Commandments. It s an emphasis. There are over 120 mentions of the Sabbath in the Bible; it s not a minor theme. So I want to try to show this morning that a proper perspective and practice of the Sabbath is both life- giving and transformative. That s because it reflects the way God designed us to live. And it is an essential part of nurturing our relationship with God it s an important spiritual practice. We re going to reflect on the Sabbath by looking at the two versions of the Ten Commandments in the OT. 1. The first is the account in Exodus 20 recording when God originally gave them at Mount Sinai after the Exodus. 2. The second is in Deuteronomy 5 when Moses restates them 40 years later right before Israel was preparing to enter into the Promised Land under Joshua s leadership. The command to keep the Sabbath is nearly identical in these two accounts, but the rationale and benefit for keeping the Sabbath is different between them, and so they beautifully complement one another. We need to consider both texts to fully appreciate the importance of the Sabbath. The first point we want to consider is that Sabbath rest is I. Part of God s Creational Design Beginning in Exodus 20:8, we read: 2
8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 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. (Exodus 20:8-10) The version in Deuteronomy is virtually identical to this, except that it adds this at the end of the statement: that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. (Deut 5:14b) The word Sabbath is derived from the Hebrew word for cease. It literally means stop. Both passages indicate that we should not work on the Sabbath, and Deuteronomy makes it clear that this is so we can rest. We are a society in desperate need for rest. A few hundred years ago, there were natural boundaries placed on our work. When the sun went down, work was over for the day. With the explosion of technology, our work has become unrestrained. Not only do we have things call lights that allow us to work later into the night, even more recent technology has made it possible for most of us to work any time and anywhere. Have you noticed that it is extremely difficult to keep work from spilling over into every hour of your life? I love the Onion. Are you familiar with this Website? It offers a scathing, satirical take on current events. Check out this tongue- in- cheek article: The headline is Laid- Back Company Allows Employees to Work From Home After 6 PM. It reads: Underscoring the benefits of working for a laid- back company like SocialFire Marketing, founder and CEO Matt Avalon told reporters Tuesday he had instituted an office- wide policy permitting employees to work from home anytime after 6 p.m. If it helps them be efficient and get more done, I have no problem with people working remotely once they ve left the office for the day, said Avalon, who noted that as long as they re doing their jobs, the location where his staff members choose to work between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. is completely up to them. That s the kind of relaxed culture we strive to create here one where you can even be working from your living room couch at two in the morning if you d like. Avalon added that since they don t have to be in the office for any meetings, employees are free to work from home on weekends and holidays as well. Can any of you relate to that? But not only does work press in our ability to rest. Technology in general does. Whether it s music, our smartphones, email, TV, or other forms of entertainment, there is rarely a moment in our day that we are not bombarded with information or messaging of one sort or another. ABC s Good Morning America ran a story citing a study that indicated people check their phones 150 times a day. That s every 6 minutes. A British newspaper reported on a study surveying 2,000 smartphone users. It found that: 3
The average user reaches for their phone at 7:31 am in the morning. These users check personal emails and Facebook before they get out of bed. Can you relate? And almost 40% of users admitted to feeling lost without their device. Work, technology, information. What s the result of all of this? We forget rest. We have no room for rest. We end up stressed, anxious, and overloaded. We are slaves to busyness. And for many of us, busyness has become an idol we pride ourselves on how busy we are; it s like a badge of honor for some of us. When do you rest? When do you make time to relax? To spend time with family or friends? To have more than a couple minutes to meditate on God s Word? To take a step back and reflect on your life and get re- centered? Mankind has always needed a healthy balance of work and rest, and we are desperate for it today. Why? Why is rest so important? Exodus 20 tells us that God designed us for rest. Look at verse 11: 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. (Exodus 20:11) God himself set this pattern of 6 days of work and 1 day of rest, and he calls us to follow his pattern. It says he blessed the Sabbath day. Blessing carries the idea of God causing something to prosper; to flourish. Do you want your life to flourish? One foundational resource for that to happen is to Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. That spiritual practice is a means of receiving God s blessing. Theologians call the Sabbath a Creation ordinance. It s one of the handful of things that God established in Creation to regulate human life. It s part of how we re designed to operate. Rest was given to us before the Fall. If it was an important part of our lives before the Fall when our work was completely life- giving and a joy, how much more important do you think it is after the Fall when our work is characterized by sweat and thorns and thistles!? When we push ourselves to constantly produce with little rest, we kill ourselves. Our health breaks down. We burn out. Our quality of life diminishes. Do you ever tell yourself, If I just get everything done, then I can rest. It never happens, does it!? There s always more to do. More laundry to fold. More emails to return. More projects to do. And so we never get around to rest. We just can t get to it. An insight I picked up on a couple of years ago is that God s creation design is for us to work out of our rest, rather than rest from our work. Work out of our rest, rather than rest from our work. What do I mean by that? 4
Back in Genesis 1 when God created man and woman, he gave them a job to do. They were to cultivate the Garden, exercise dominion over the rest of God s creation by ruling in a way that reflected God and his kingdom, and multiply and extend God s kingdom throughout the whole earth. A pretty big task! On what day did God create mankind? The 6 th day, right. Not just the 6 th day, but the end of the 6 th day. So God creates them and gives them a job. Exodus 20 indicates that they were to work for 6 days and rest for 1. But they were created at the end of the 6 th day. So what is their first full day of existence? The 7 th day the Sabbath. God is telling them, You have work to do. But before you get to that, rest. Enjoy my creation. Spend time fellowshipping with me. You can get to your work tomorrow. I always operated from the notion that you work and work and work, and then when you run out of gas, you crash. Rest happens when you run out of steam and you have to take a break. But God s design for us is to abide rest trust him that he will take care of us. And from that place of rest and perspective, we enter into God s work to exercise dominion in the way he has called us to work. And then a week later, we recalibrate and start the cycle over again. The Sabbath is grace. It s a gift. God promises that he will give us 7 days of provision for only 6 days of work. It may seem that you can t afford to take a break. There s still more to do. You can t afford to not work on the project or write that paper for school or send that email. Will you trust God to take care of you if you follow his creation design? Now, a qualification: There have always been exceptions. People with certain vocations have to work on the Sabbath. In the ancient world, shepherds still had to take care of sheep. Today, if you re a nurse or policeman or have some other job that requires you to work on Sundays, you may have to work. Find another day that you can regularly rest. For the rest of us: make a point to set aside the self- imposed stuff the stuff that you have control over. Make plans to go to the grocery store or knock out your chores or other things like that on another day. Not because it s a rigid, legalistic rule and you re a bad person if you don t. But because you need it. Protect the day so you can take advantage of the gift of rest God has called you to observe. So first, Sabbath rest is part of God s creational design for our lives. Second, Sabbath rest is II. A Celebration of Our Relationship with God The Sabbath is not merely a day of rest. That s an important aspect of it. But at the heart of the Sabbath is an orientation to God. Look back up at Exodus 20:10: but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God (Exodus 20:10) It s a day of rest for us, but it is a day to the Lord our God. It is a day consecrated to him. Rest is a blessing for us, but it is a blessing that we experience with God. The New Living Translation renders it: a day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. 5
And so in addition to using the day to rest and be with family and friends and do things that charge our batteries, the heart of the day is focused on spending time with God, celebrating our relationship with him because of the redemption we have through him. That s the emphasis that the Deuteronomy 5 passage brings out. After commanding us to not do any work so that we can rest, Deuteronomy 5:15 gives us the rationale: 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. (Deuteronomy 5:15) Moses is reminding them of the Exodus. This was the central redemptive event of the OT. It is the highest expression of God s salvation until the coming of Christ. That s why the celebrate the Sabbath day. It s not simply about stopping work for a day; it s stopping work in order to celebrate what God has done! This side of the cross, we don t only celebrate the Exodus, we celebrate and even greater redemptive event that the Exodus pointed forward to. We celebrate redemption through Jesus: God himself becoming a man in order to identify with us in our spiritual need and the brokenness of this world. All of his teaching. His example of life lived the way it ought to be lived. His death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. His resurrection from the dead conquering death and establishing new life. He ascension into heaven where he sits with all power and authority at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. His sending of the Spirit to indwell and empower us to live as his Body on mission in his world. That s what we celebrate on Sundays. That s who we celebrate on Sundays. Every week, we not only take a break from our normal activities to rest. We celebrate God And the gospel and our relationship to him on the basis of his grace And our fellowship with one another as his spiritual family. And we recalibrate to engage in his kingdom purposes for our lives in the week ahead. Conclusion So in summary, remembering the Sabbath observing the Sabbath is how we live in resistance to what our culture is screaming at us all the time to do. Our culture demands that we be busy all the time. It promises to reward those who work longer and harder than everyone else. It connects our importance and self- worth to how busy we are. The Sabbath is a gift from God to set us free from all of that. The Sabbath is not fundamentally about what you can t do. You can t do this, or you can t do that. Nor is about the other chasm just a day for ourselves to do whatever we want. The Sabbath is a day for what we need. 6
It is fundamentally about establishing a break from the normal pattern and demands of our work days to rest and focus on our relationship with God and others. It s not optional for God s people. It s a command. It s part of the Ten Commandments. But it is made for us, not we for it. Like the care of a good parent for their children, God commands us to observe the Sabbath for our good. I want to close by offering a few suggestions for what this might look like. Please please please don t take these as rules. I don t want to sneak legalism in the back door at the end. But if you re wondering how to make Sundays more meaningful, you might consider some of these points. Implications for observing the Sabbath: 1. Make consistent corporate worship a priority. Of course there will be times when you can t make it. Something s going on or whatever. More and more activities are scheduled on Sundays than at any time before. You may need to make some hard choices to prioritize observing the Sabbath over recreation or other activities if they consistently cause you to miss. In other cases there will be only occasional conflicts, so that s not so much an issue. But the point here is to encourage your to prioritize corporate worship with God s people and do everything you can to make missing corporate worship the exception rather than the rule. Hebrews 10 reminds us why we celebrate the Sabbath when it tells us beginning in verse 19: 19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. That s what we celebrate on the Sabbath. But what s that look like? How are we to celebrate the reality of what God has done for us in Christ? Look at the next two verses: 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:19-25) The bottom line is that consistent participation in corporate worship is one of the primary means of grace in our lives. It s not an issue of obligation; it s an issue of spiritual necessity. When we grow lax in the spiritual practice of corporate worship, we almost always inevitably stray in our faith. 2. Rest. Do whatever recharges your batteries. Take walks. Watch a game. 7
Take a nap. Make it a family day. Enjoy the day. The flip- side of that is: 3. Intentionally avoid work- related activity. This assumes Sunday is not a normal work day for you. If there s an emergency at work, take care of it. There may be a reason you have to put time in for work. Fine. But if that becomes more than norm than the exception, prayerfully reconsider your priorities. What do you have control over that you can adjust in order to rest with God? It also may be good if you focus on getting your household chores and maintenance done on another day if possible. Then again, for some of you, spending time in the yard or tinkering the garage is a great way to rest. 4. Focus on God. Certainly you ll do this in corporate worship. But the whole day is devoted to God. That doesn t mean you re only doing Bible reading and prayer. But: Engage your kids or your spouse (if you have them) about what they learned at church: Sunday school take- home sheets, take- aways from the sermon, thoughts from themes around the singing, and the like. Don t just come as a family, tick the box, and then move on with your day with no intentional focus on God. Catch up on your Bible reading. Extended time for meditation, reading, prayer. 5. Connect with others. You might not do this all the time, but Sundays often give us the opportunity to connect with others in ways that are not possible throughout the rest of the week. Maybe you grab lunch with someone else after worship. Maybe your small group meets on Sundays. Maybe you take in the game or some other activity together. However it works best for you, the point is to find ways to consider the entire day the whole of the Sabbath as a life- giving and transformative gift that: reflects rhythm of rest that God designed us to keep, and is an essential spiritual practice to help nurture our relationship with God. Lay down your obsession with busyness. Stop constantly having to knock more things out. And receive the gift of God s rest. 8