“A Rest Relished”
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Exodus 16:23-29; Psalm 46
Introduction: Last week we talked about how the Sabbath, this Sunday worship we come to each week, has been instituted by God as a day of rest, but even more as a day to connect with God by remembering how God has created all things, how God has chosen us to be His people, and to remember that God has redeemed us from our sin. Today I want to look a little more at the idea of Sabbath and this idea of rest.
This morning I want to talk about how we are to rest. What does Sabbath rest look like in our lives? And I want to do this by talking about 2 different extremes: The first picture comes from the show Seinfeld. In one particular show, George Costanza hires a contractor to build a napping area under his desk at work. His morning consists of a nap under his desk, and then lunch. Is this Sabbath rest? The second picture is what an Orthodox Jew has to go through to celebrate Sabbath. The Rabbis took this idea of “no work on the Sabbath” to mean that you can’t even push a stroller or carry anything over a certain weight. Is this Sabbath rest? With these extremes in mind, I want us to tackle two questions: What are you “not” supposed to do as Sabbath? What “are” you supposed to do as Sabbath?
I. What Not To Do As Sabbath- (Exodus 16:25-30, 35:3; Numbers 15:32-36; 1 Peter 1:15-16)
a. Prohibition- Let’s start by looking at the Sabbath prohibitions
that are given in the Old Testament; at what God says to not do on the Sabbath. The first mentioned prohibition is found in Exodus 16. Now if you know the Scriptures, you know that the Ten Commandments were not even given to the people until Exodus 20, so God is giving direction about the Sabbath before it becomes part of the 10 Commandments. This was in conjunction with God providing food (manna) for His people, and the instructions that went with this. Listen to Exodus 16:25-30,
“Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a Sabbath to the Lord.
You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to
gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”
Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather
it, but they found none. Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will
you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Bear in mind
that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day
He gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on
the seventh day; no one is to go out.” So the people rested on the
seventh day.
God had manna come down from the sky for 6 days, but on the Sabbath, God didn’t want the people to go out and work by collecting the food, so God provided a double portion of food on the sixth day to last for the seventh day as well. In the beginning, some of the people didn’t believe that there would be enough food for two days, and so they went out on the Sabbath ready to collect food. But to their surprise there wasn’t any food to be collected. This prohibition was to remind the people of their dependence on God; God would provide all that they needed.
A little later in Exodus, 35:3, after the 10 Commandments had been given, there is another prohibition regarding the Sabbath: “Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.” So they couldn’t collect manna, and they couldn’t light a fire.
So the simple command is not to work. And at its core, it was about providing for yourself. Any of the normal activities that you do to sustain your existence is considered work, and you can’t do them on the Sabbath.
So let’s transfer this over to us. What does the Sabbath mean for us? It too would be the things that we normally do that sustain our life. Now this is completely counter-cultural to us. All you have to do is look around and see how much time and energy most people spend on what they consider to be activities to sustain their lives. To live the Sabbath is to live against the culture.
The thinking in our culture is that if you are not completely exhausted at the end of the day, you have not put yourself into your work like you need to. We are not allowed to be rested. It really is against our culture.
However, Sabbath is to be more than just not doing work. Think back to the Seinfeld show and George Costanza sleeping under his desk. That’s not Sabbath. Even though he was not working, even though he was resting, it wasn’t Sabbath. There was nothing for George in his resting that showed dependence on God. His rest was just for himself.
b. Why God prohibits some things- The famous atheist Bertrand
Russell, who wrote, Why I Am Not A Christian, once said: ‘To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.’
But Sabbath rest is not just about leisure. In a culture where we are obsessed with entertainment and recreation, Sabbath is deeper than incorporating these activities into our lives. It is more. Shortly after Moses gave the command not to light a fire on the Sabbath, that restriction was tested. Let us read Numbers 15:32- “While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him.”
Here we have a guy who wasn’t building a fire, he was just collecting the firewood. Was he breaking the rule? Technically, probably not. But it still was a big deal. Listen to verses 35 & 36: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.’ So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.”
Wow. This seems pretty severe, doesn’t it? God commanded His people not to work on the Sabbath. Lighting a fire is one of the restrictions. So this guy knows the rules, and yet he still does the work of collecting the firewood, probably with the intention of building a fire. He didn’t break the rules of building a fire, but he did break the Sabbath.
We could debate the justness of this act. But the more important point is that Sabbath is about more than just following the rules. Sabbath is more than just taking a rest, or coming to church. It’s more than sleeping under your desk, or not pushing your stroller.
Sabbath is about knowing who God is, and giving yourself to God to know Him better. It is about knowing that it is God who sustains us. Sabbath is about setting ourselves as God’s people, apart from the culture. In 1 Peter 1:15-16 it says, “Instead, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You are to be holy as I am holy.’” To be holy is to be set apart for a Godly purpose. Are our lives really that different from the culture around us?
On the whole, the answer would be “no.” We are not that different than our culture. We wear the same clothes, go to the same movies, listen to the same music, for the most part talk the same way. We don’t prohibit ourselves from much. It is often difficult by just looking at someone’s lifestyle whether or not they are a Christian; a follower of Jesus Christ. They may have some belief, but can you tell by their lives that they are a follower?
II. What To Do On the Sabbath- (Psalm 46:1-11)
a. Be still- We’ve looked at how God prohibits things from us that
would keep us from Him, or that would keep our mind from remembering Him. But let’s take some time to think about what we should do on the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn’t about sitting in a chair and doing nothing. We are supposed to do something. What is it we are supposed to do on the Sabbath to make it a Sabbath?
Let’s use Psalm 46 to help guide us in this. Psalm 46 is a beautiful psalm because of its close connection with the Sabbath themes we have been talking about. I’m not going to look at every verse, but a select few that will explain more about Sabbath and living it out. And then look at how it is a model for Sabbath.
The first part of the Psalm talks about God as a refuge in the midst of natural chaos. Let’s read verse 2: “We will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” The author of this psalm looks to God as sovereign over the natural forces of creation. This connects with the first reason given to observe the Sabbath: because God has created the world. But then the psalm moves on to talk about God as a refuge in the midst of foreign enemies. Verse 6 says, “Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.”
God is sovereign over creation, but he is also sovereign over nations. Even though enemies pound at Israel’s gate, God’s voice melts them with a word. This connects with the second reason given to observe the Sabbath: because God has redeemed Israel from life in Egypt. So the Psalm begins by asserting God’s control over nature and nations, reminding God’s people that they can trust Him in each of those circumstances.
Then comes the finale of the Psalm in verse 10. It reads: “Be still, and know that I am God.” ‘Be still.’ The word in Hebrew here definitely carries a sense of stillness, but it also carries a sense of stopping some activity that you are currently engaged in. That’s why the New American Standard Bible translates this, ‘Cease striving.’ It has to do with stopping whatever frantic activity you are engaged in. It is like a command. Another way to say this could be, ‘Stop all your crazy activity and just be.’ But do we know how to “just be?” That is a challenge.
These are the words we need to hear. Sabbath starts with stopping. Stopping the work that we do. Stop pretending we have it all together. Stopping living by the cultures values. Stopping from the busyness of life. Sabbath starts when we stop.
b. Know who God is- Can you imagine really stopping? It might
require you to turn off your cell phone, choosing not to answer the phone, turning off your computer, not checking e-mail, not returning phone calls for just that one day. Of course, this is all about one thing, and that is knowing God.
Illustration: The well known write A. W. Tozer once wrote this prayer:
“Father, I want to know You, but my coward heart fears to give up the toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hid from You the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shall You make the place of Your feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You, Yourself, will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” (…Tardy Oxcart, p. 308, Charles Swindoll)
Sabbath is more than leisure, because it is about knowing God. And whether we understand it or not, we cannot have anything competing for our worship. As A. W. Tozer was saying, he was struggling with giving up his toys, so things he cherished in his life. There are some things that hold a deeper place in our heart than God does.
So Sabbath is about fostering a genuine relationship with God. So to honor the Sabbath, you need to find a way that you can relate to God that helps you to foster this relationship with Him. For some, it might be reading the Bible. For others it might be an extended time of prayer. For still others it might be looking at art that depicts biblical themes. This stopping and doing that which brings you closer to God is what the Sabbath is to be about.
I know for me that it includes my family as well. When I can spend time being with my family, then I am reminded of the blessing God has given me in them. As I look at my relationship with my children and spend time building my relationship with them, I am reminded of the relationship I have to God, and how God longs to be close to me.
What does it look like to stop and relate to God? You have to answer that question for yourself. You have to find that practice, that experience that allows you to draw closer to God. And don’t let it be anything that becomes a routine, because routine will ruin the freshness of the relationship. Maybe it is a walk along the ocean. Maybe it is reading a book about the attributes of God. Maybe it is sitting on a bench watching the sunset. These could all come under the guise of “Be still and know that I am God.”
Example- There is a story of Martin Luther having a conversation with his friend Philip Melancthon. His friend Philip was talking to him and said: “This day, you and I are going to discuss the governance of the universe.” Martin Luther was not averse to theological discussions, but it was the Sabbath, and so Luther said back to his friend: “this day, you and I will go fishing and leave the governance of the universe to God!”
What does it look like to be in dependence on God? That is what the being still is for; that is what the Sabbath is for.
Conclusion: And so in our time this morning, we have talked about what not to do on the Sabbath: not working, taking a break from our regular activities that sustain our lives. We’ve also talked about what to do on the Sabbath. We need to stop. We need to relate to God. George Costanza had it wrong; it isn’t about sleeping under your desk. The Sabbath rest is about relating to God.
As we think about what we are doing here together in church, we need to understand that this time together is meant to be with God, getting to know God, and relating to God. Together, we are to remind each other that God has set apart this time for us to love God, and love each other. We gather together to celebrate our dependence on God, and rejoice that God sustains us in life and ministry. We practice the Sabbath, individually and with other people to experience the fullness of the life that God has for us to know. How can you better rest? I hope you think about this more this week, and seek to find ways to practice it. Amen.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Exodus 16:23-29; Psalm 46
Introduction: Last week we talked about how the Sabbath, this Sunday worship we come to each week, has been instituted by God as a day of rest, but even more as a day to connect with God by remembering how God has created all things, how God has chosen us to be His people, and to remember that God has redeemed us from our sin. Today I want to look a little more at the idea of Sabbath and this idea of rest.
This morning I want to talk about how we are to rest. What does Sabbath rest look like in our lives? And I want to do this by talking about 2 different extremes: The first picture comes from the show Seinfeld. In one particular show, George Costanza hires a contractor to build a napping area under his desk at work. His morning consists of a nap under his desk, and then lunch. Is this Sabbath rest? The second picture is what an Orthodox Jew has to go through to celebrate Sabbath. The Rabbis took this idea of “no work on the Sabbath” to mean that you can’t even push a stroller or carry anything over a certain weight. Is this Sabbath rest? With these extremes in mind, I want us to tackle two questions: What are you “not” supposed to do as Sabbath? What “are” you supposed to do as Sabbath?
I. What Not To Do As Sabbath- (Exodus 16:25-30, 35:3; Numbers 15:32-36; 1 Peter 1:15-16)
a. Prohibition- Let’s start by looking at the Sabbath prohibitions
that are given in the Old Testament; at what God says to not do on the Sabbath. The first mentioned prohibition is found in Exodus 16. Now if you know the Scriptures, you know that the Ten Commandments were not even given to the people until Exodus 20, so God is giving direction about the Sabbath before it becomes part of the 10 Commandments. This was in conjunction with God providing food (manna) for His people, and the instructions that went with this. Listen to Exodus 16:25-30,
“Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a Sabbath to the Lord.
You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to
gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”
Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather
it, but they found none. Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will
you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Bear in mind
that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day
He gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on
the seventh day; no one is to go out.” So the people rested on the
seventh day.
God had manna come down from the sky for 6 days, but on the Sabbath, God didn’t want the people to go out and work by collecting the food, so God provided a double portion of food on the sixth day to last for the seventh day as well. In the beginning, some of the people didn’t believe that there would be enough food for two days, and so they went out on the Sabbath ready to collect food. But to their surprise there wasn’t any food to be collected. This prohibition was to remind the people of their dependence on God; God would provide all that they needed.
A little later in Exodus, 35:3, after the 10 Commandments had been given, there is another prohibition regarding the Sabbath: “Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.” So they couldn’t collect manna, and they couldn’t light a fire.
So the simple command is not to work. And at its core, it was about providing for yourself. Any of the normal activities that you do to sustain your existence is considered work, and you can’t do them on the Sabbath.
So let’s transfer this over to us. What does the Sabbath mean for us? It too would be the things that we normally do that sustain our life. Now this is completely counter-cultural to us. All you have to do is look around and see how much time and energy most people spend on what they consider to be activities to sustain their lives. To live the Sabbath is to live against the culture.
The thinking in our culture is that if you are not completely exhausted at the end of the day, you have not put yourself into your work like you need to. We are not allowed to be rested. It really is against our culture.
However, Sabbath is to be more than just not doing work. Think back to the Seinfeld show and George Costanza sleeping under his desk. That’s not Sabbath. Even though he was not working, even though he was resting, it wasn’t Sabbath. There was nothing for George in his resting that showed dependence on God. His rest was just for himself.
b. Why God prohibits some things- The famous atheist Bertrand
Russell, who wrote, Why I Am Not A Christian, once said: ‘To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.’
But Sabbath rest is not just about leisure. In a culture where we are obsessed with entertainment and recreation, Sabbath is deeper than incorporating these activities into our lives. It is more. Shortly after Moses gave the command not to light a fire on the Sabbath, that restriction was tested. Let us read Numbers 15:32- “While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him.”
Here we have a guy who wasn’t building a fire, he was just collecting the firewood. Was he breaking the rule? Technically, probably not. But it still was a big deal. Listen to verses 35 & 36: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.’ So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.”
Wow. This seems pretty severe, doesn’t it? God commanded His people not to work on the Sabbath. Lighting a fire is one of the restrictions. So this guy knows the rules, and yet he still does the work of collecting the firewood, probably with the intention of building a fire. He didn’t break the rules of building a fire, but he did break the Sabbath.
We could debate the justness of this act. But the more important point is that Sabbath is about more than just following the rules. Sabbath is more than just taking a rest, or coming to church. It’s more than sleeping under your desk, or not pushing your stroller.
Sabbath is about knowing who God is, and giving yourself to God to know Him better. It is about knowing that it is God who sustains us. Sabbath is about setting ourselves as God’s people, apart from the culture. In 1 Peter 1:15-16 it says, “Instead, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You are to be holy as I am holy.’” To be holy is to be set apart for a Godly purpose. Are our lives really that different from the culture around us?
On the whole, the answer would be “no.” We are not that different than our culture. We wear the same clothes, go to the same movies, listen to the same music, for the most part talk the same way. We don’t prohibit ourselves from much. It is often difficult by just looking at someone’s lifestyle whether or not they are a Christian; a follower of Jesus Christ. They may have some belief, but can you tell by their lives that they are a follower?
II. What To Do On the Sabbath- (Psalm 46:1-11)
a. Be still- We’ve looked at how God prohibits things from us that
would keep us from Him, or that would keep our mind from remembering Him. But let’s take some time to think about what we should do on the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn’t about sitting in a chair and doing nothing. We are supposed to do something. What is it we are supposed to do on the Sabbath to make it a Sabbath?
Let’s use Psalm 46 to help guide us in this. Psalm 46 is a beautiful psalm because of its close connection with the Sabbath themes we have been talking about. I’m not going to look at every verse, but a select few that will explain more about Sabbath and living it out. And then look at how it is a model for Sabbath.
The first part of the Psalm talks about God as a refuge in the midst of natural chaos. Let’s read verse 2: “We will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” The author of this psalm looks to God as sovereign over the natural forces of creation. This connects with the first reason given to observe the Sabbath: because God has created the world. But then the psalm moves on to talk about God as a refuge in the midst of foreign enemies. Verse 6 says, “Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts.”
God is sovereign over creation, but he is also sovereign over nations. Even though enemies pound at Israel’s gate, God’s voice melts them with a word. This connects with the second reason given to observe the Sabbath: because God has redeemed Israel from life in Egypt. So the Psalm begins by asserting God’s control over nature and nations, reminding God’s people that they can trust Him in each of those circumstances.
Then comes the finale of the Psalm in verse 10. It reads: “Be still, and know that I am God.” ‘Be still.’ The word in Hebrew here definitely carries a sense of stillness, but it also carries a sense of stopping some activity that you are currently engaged in. That’s why the New American Standard Bible translates this, ‘Cease striving.’ It has to do with stopping whatever frantic activity you are engaged in. It is like a command. Another way to say this could be, ‘Stop all your crazy activity and just be.’ But do we know how to “just be?” That is a challenge.
These are the words we need to hear. Sabbath starts with stopping. Stopping the work that we do. Stop pretending we have it all together. Stopping living by the cultures values. Stopping from the busyness of life. Sabbath starts when we stop.
b. Know who God is- Can you imagine really stopping? It might
require you to turn off your cell phone, choosing not to answer the phone, turning off your computer, not checking e-mail, not returning phone calls for just that one day. Of course, this is all about one thing, and that is knowing God.
Illustration: The well known write A. W. Tozer once wrote this prayer:
“Father, I want to know You, but my coward heart fears to give up the toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hid from You the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shall You make the place of Your feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You, Yourself, will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” (…Tardy Oxcart, p. 308, Charles Swindoll)
Sabbath is more than leisure, because it is about knowing God. And whether we understand it or not, we cannot have anything competing for our worship. As A. W. Tozer was saying, he was struggling with giving up his toys, so things he cherished in his life. There are some things that hold a deeper place in our heart than God does.
So Sabbath is about fostering a genuine relationship with God. So to honor the Sabbath, you need to find a way that you can relate to God that helps you to foster this relationship with Him. For some, it might be reading the Bible. For others it might be an extended time of prayer. For still others it might be looking at art that depicts biblical themes. This stopping and doing that which brings you closer to God is what the Sabbath is to be about.
I know for me that it includes my family as well. When I can spend time being with my family, then I am reminded of the blessing God has given me in them. As I look at my relationship with my children and spend time building my relationship with them, I am reminded of the relationship I have to God, and how God longs to be close to me.
What does it look like to stop and relate to God? You have to answer that question for yourself. You have to find that practice, that experience that allows you to draw closer to God. And don’t let it be anything that becomes a routine, because routine will ruin the freshness of the relationship. Maybe it is a walk along the ocean. Maybe it is reading a book about the attributes of God. Maybe it is sitting on a bench watching the sunset. These could all come under the guise of “Be still and know that I am God.”
Example- There is a story of Martin Luther having a conversation with his friend Philip Melancthon. His friend Philip was talking to him and said: “This day, you and I are going to discuss the governance of the universe.” Martin Luther was not averse to theological discussions, but it was the Sabbath, and so Luther said back to his friend: “this day, you and I will go fishing and leave the governance of the universe to God!”
What does it look like to be in dependence on God? That is what the being still is for; that is what the Sabbath is for.
Conclusion: And so in our time this morning, we have talked about what not to do on the Sabbath: not working, taking a break from our regular activities that sustain our lives. We’ve also talked about what to do on the Sabbath. We need to stop. We need to relate to God. George Costanza had it wrong; it isn’t about sleeping under your desk. The Sabbath rest is about relating to God.
As we think about what we are doing here together in church, we need to understand that this time together is meant to be with God, getting to know God, and relating to God. Together, we are to remind each other that God has set apart this time for us to love God, and love each other. We gather together to celebrate our dependence on God, and rejoice that God sustains us in life and ministry. We practice the Sabbath, individually and with other people to experience the fullness of the life that God has for us to know. How can you better rest? I hope you think about this more this week, and seek to find ways to practice it. Amen.
posted by Logan's Blog at 2:26 PM
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