Sermon Cloud

So here’s the question for this week: Why do we work so hard? Why do we work late, compulsively check email, nights, mornings, weekends? What’s going on there? And as an aside: there’s a fine balance between checking your email on the freeway at 60 miles and hour and checking your email once a month when people are waiting for responses from you… So- What’s going on here?

            Here’s where we find ourselves today: Our jobs are insecure. Even though unemployment is low, we still feel like we’re on thin ice and could be replaced any time, so… we work hard.

People at the top used to get paid 10 times the people at the bottom. Now they often get 100 times or more what the people on the bottom get. Does that lead to security? Well… people who get paid a lot need to work a lot. There

And people on the bottom often need two or more jobs to make ends meet, so they, obviously, are overworked. People at all places on the economic continuum are overworking themselves- for different reasons, but still...

            And probably one that hurts us the most: You can work anywhere, so you do work anywhere… and often are expected to. Work used to be more of a place you went- now, through our laptops and VPNs, Blackberrys and cells, work is everywhere you want to be- for a lot of people, 24-7.

            But sabbath isn't a response to modern stress- it's been around since day one. Or at least day 7.

Last week we talked about the Hebrew rhythm of life that flows out of this passage: Evening and morning. Sunset begins the day in Hebrew mind. Why?

In Hebrew language and mind whatever is first is most important.

In the Old Testament, there’s the whole concept of “first fruits”- that we give to God the first of the harvest. Why? Why can’t we say “God- I’m going to give You yours, I’m just going to give it on the back end?”  Because in their minds whatever is first is most important. The first born, the first fruits… And a Hebrew day begins with what is most important .

So- From 6am to 6pm is the time for work. From 6pm to 6am is the time for relationships and for then for rest- for sitting around the table with family and friends, for eating good food and drinking good wine, for taking walks and having talks, for reading to your kids and making love to your spouse. And that is the most important time of the day because those are the most important things of the day. Because we were made to work, but we were made for relationship.

If you think of work as the first season of the day, that is what will crowd out and supplant everything else. It will tend to become most important.

But if your day really begins with relationship, if that is what is first in your heart and mind, you will scramble to finish your work so you can get home and be with the ones you love.

This is fascinating to me, and I’m convinced that I’ll never truly get Sabbath, never truly rest until I understand this: each day, God looked at what He had done, and even though there was more to do, at least for that day He said- what I have done today? It is good.

See- our problem is that we have a hard time stepping back from the big picture of what’s left to do, what’s yet to be accomplished and just looking at what we have done and saying- it’s good. For today, I can lay it all down and REALLY start my day. Go home to family, or go out with friends, or just go home and read a book, watch a show, take a walk- but for the next 12 hours leave work behind in favor of what’s really important…

The first key to getting Sabbath, rest, is to be like God… It is good. There's still more to be done... but for now- that's good.

Hold on to that picture for a bit...

Real quickly, because I want to get on to the other half of that...

There are two complete versions of the Ten Commandments in Scripture- one in Exodus and one in Numbers. Look at

VS Exodus 20:8-11

Here’s where God gives His people a command to rest. Some of you don’t need a command to rest J But some of you do- and here it is…

Now- a question for those paying attention: What is the command here in Exodus based on- in other words- what rationale is given for Sabbath?

Yes- Exodus grounds Sabbath in creation, in the pattern that God Himself established. It tells us- Be like God- do what He did and receive rest.

Now- there’s another occurance of this command in the OT. Look at

VS Dt 5:12-15

Huh- sounds very similar- but with one notable difference- what’s is Sabbath grounded in here?

Yes- Exodus grounds it in creation- Deuteronomy grounds it in liberation. The Hebrews had been slaves- forced to work ever harder for the Egyptians, 7 days a week. And God set them free, and told them- remember that. Commemorate that. You are not a slave- I have set you free.

One of these commands is theological, one is historical- one tells us about God’s character, the other His redemption. Exodus points us back to creation and tells us to be like God- He rested- so you can rest. It’s a call back to Eden in a sense.

Deuteronomy points us back to the Exodus and tells us- remember what God has done for you- and so rest. It tells us- don’t go back to Egypt- don’t be a slave again.

There’s a theological question here: Did God need rest? Let me go ahead and propose that the answer is “no.” God was not tired out by creation, looking at the clock wondering when Friday, when the weekend was going to come. God is complete without rest. But you aren’t.

We think because we CAN work anytime, anywhere, that we should. That we must. And Sabbath comes along and tells us that neither of those things is true.

Why did God institute Sabbath from the very beginning. He’s smart. He knows us. He knew where the whole thing was going, particularly inside of us… Sabbath is a response to something deep in us- something human.

The need to prove yourself- to justify yourself. It's never done. It's never enough.

So God gave His people a command- rest.

There was a piece in the NY Times recently on Sabbath- by a Jewish writer. She said: "Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day. As the Cat in the Hat says, ''It is fun to have fun but you have to know how.'' This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation -- at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will, one that has to be bolstered by habit as well as by social sanction."

Sabbath isn’t just about bodies- it’s about our wills, our emotions…

It’s about turning off. And THAT”S my biggest problem. I wake up in the middle of the night and my mind gets going…

See- Sabbath is about deep rest not just of the body, but of the mind. There’s a rhythm- you turn it off daily for 12 hours, and weekly for 24. And so your mind and your body is protected, renewed. Do you see how it works?

But Sabbath is about more than just mind and body… Sabbath is also about deep rest of the soul. Sabbath is a picture of something... it’s not just a picture of what God did in the Exodus, but even more… Look at

VS Hebrews 4:6

What’s he talking about? When God set His people free from Egypt, He invited them into a promised land- a land flowing with milk and honey, which sounds a lot more poetic than “a land of cows and bees”… But what happened? They refused to enter. And they spent the next 40 years wandering around in the dessert…

VS 7-9

Joshua did eventually lead the people into the promised land, and if that had been all God wanted to picture in Sabbath in rest, it would have been the end of it. But it wasn’t- Today, for people following Jesus, even though we’re not bound by the OT Law, even though we don’t NEED, religiously speaking, to observe a Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday… the writer here says “There is still a Sabbath rest waiting for the people of God.” What’s he talking about?

VS 10-11

I said at the beginning of this that if you really wanted to GET Sabbath, you’d need to do two things- be like God and stop trying to BE God.

What Sabbath was all about- all along, what it pictured and pointed to and still does is this: Resting in the finished work of Christ.

See- deep down inside, we think we need to save ourselves.

We try so hard- through work, through relationships, through all the things we lean on and turn to when life gets hard- all our functional saviors. And Jesus comes along and says: Come to ME you who are weary- and I will give you rest.”

Rest from what? From the need to justify yourself, prove yourself, save yourself.

At the end of the day- what Sabbath is really about is resting in the finished work of Christ- knowing that He has come to rescue and renew all of creation and that because He died for my sin, I don’t have to. I can rest. Because He lived a perfect life on my behalf, though I strive to imitate Him and do my best, I don’t have to beat myself up when I fall short- He not only died on my behalf, but He lived on my behalf as well- He lived a perfectly righteous life, and all my shortcomings, all my failures are covered over in that. I can rest.

And here’s why physically resting, why keeping some kind of Sabbath rhythm in your life is so important: As we rest physically and mentally, we show that we get it, that we are truly able to rest spiritually.

I’m convinced that the biggest reason why people can’t rest physically and mentally is because they can’t rest spiritually- they are trying to save themselves, justify themselves and that’s such an impossibly big job- Only God can do it.

And when we cannot rest spiritually, we'll never be able to truly rest mentally, and so rest physically.

There’s this story in the Gospels…

Story of Jesus and the disciples picking grain…

I am Lord of the Sabbath- the one the Sabbath regulations pointed to. “I am the Lord of rest.” If you want rest, you need to go to Him… and if you have gone to Him, and you still don’t have rest- You just don’t understand what you have, you haven’t fully understood the Gospel. Let me rephrase that- I don’t have true rest like I should, I wake up in the middle of the night with my mind running and I can’t enjoy days off and vacations like I should because I haven’t truly understood the Gospel- the fact that Jesus is the Lord of rest.

            Through Jesus and only through Jesus can you get the soul rest, the real, deep rest that allows to truly rest mentally and physically.

And now, you can rest, truly rest, because you know God won’t- that is- He’s not going to look away, turn away for a moment, lose sight of what’s happening in your life. All the things you are holding onto compulsively, tightly, even if it’s just for a day a week- you can put down, let go of, because God will not let go of you.

You can rest now.