Intro:
One of our
challenges for 2014 is to learn and live all 50 commands
of Jesus. Jesus told us that following
his commandments is a way to love him and a way for his love and his joy to
fill our lives (John 15:9-12). In his
Great Commission, Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of all nations,
teaching them to obey everything he commanded us (Matthew 28:19-20). So each week in this year we are learning and
living one command of Jesus. Here is our
command for this week...
Week 10:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do your work,
but the seventh is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…” (Exodus
20:8-10a).
Application:
This is a really important command for us to talk
about. I think it may be the commandment
that is broken the most in our contemporary context. More than that, I fear that many people view
breaking this commandment as acceptable or even necessary. But there is a reason God gave us this commandment
and we would be wise to learn and live this command.
The Sabbath commandment is about rest. We are commanded to take time for rest and
renewal. The commandment was Good News
for its original recipients. God gave
the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel after they were freed from slavery
in Egypt. Slaves do not get the luxury
of rest. They are worked to exhaustion
day in and day out with little if any adequate rest. God delivered the Israelites from slavery and
established rest a regular part of their routine.
God made us and knows that our bodies need rest in order to
function at our maximum potential. So
God included the command to rest in our top ten.
Fast forward two thousand years and I wonder if we have
become slaves again. Everyone is “busy.” We have so many things demanding our time
that the thought of taking a day of rest seems almost unrealistic. Perhaps we have become slaves to our
schedules, to our desire for more, to our sense of competition, to societal
pressures and norms, to our age of information and technology. We get trapped in an endless cycle of
do-do-do, go-go-go, rush-rush-rush. It’s
exhausting!
We might think that’s just how things are, but that is
not how they have to be. We have a
choice. If we choose not to rest, we pay
a high price. In all the busyness, we
often do not make time for the most important things – quality time with God, self-care,
memory-making with friends and family – and these things suffer. If we burn the candle at both ends, it’s only
a matter of time before we get burned.
Jesus was a busy guy.
He did a lot, taught a lot, helped a lot. But he made time for rest. He often invited his disciples to go to a
secluded place for a time of rest after intense periods of ministry. One of my favorite stories is of Jesus snoozing
on a boat. Jesus spent time in the
morning and at night resting in God’s presence through prayer. Jesus spent his Sabbaths worshiping in the
synagogue.
How about you? Do
you have a healthy pattern of rest in your life? If not, here are a few application ideas for
how to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy…
1.
As much as possible, get a healthy amount of
sleep every night. Most adults need 7-8
hours. Routine helps a lot with
this. Establish a regular time for when you
go to bed and get up. Include a time to
wind down and relax before bed. I just
learned that having a tiny protein snack before bed (like a few almonds) helps
to keep your sugar levels steady throughout the night, providing you with a
better night’s sleep.
2.
Carve out a day when you can rest from material
pursuits. This demonstrates that you
trust God will bless your efforts over the last six days and provide for your
material needs.
3.
Spend your Sabbath day in worship and/or with
your worshiping community. The Sabbath
was called a “day of sacred assembly.”
It is a time to worship God in community with God’s people. As a pastor, worship is a time of work for me. So I take Wednesdays off. I rest from work, but I still take time to
worship God through prayer, Bible reading, and faith conversations.
4.
Do not spend your Sabbath “working.” This means different things to different
people. But I am pretty sure you know
what it means for you. Take a break from
your day-to-day work routine.
5.
Do things on your Sabbath that refresh, rejuvenate,
restore, refocus, and repair.
6.
Don't wait until you are "finished." We do not stop
when we complete our phone calls, finish our project, get through this stack of
messages, or get out this report. We
stop because it is time to stop. Sabbath
requires surrender. If we only stopped when
we were finished with all our work, we would never stop-because our work is never
completely done.
7.
Think of others and how they can Sabbath as
well. In the original command from
Exodus 20, God says for everyone to Sabbath – parents, kids, servants, animals,
foreigners, etc. It could be tempting to
think just of our own rest and relaxation without considering the needs of
others to rest and relax. So think about
the people in your life and how you can help them Sabbath too.
Two words of caution in closing.
First, don’t get too legalistic about this. During Jesus’ time the religious leaders had
hundreds of regulations about what you could do and could not do on the Sabbath. They made the Sabbath a burden and even
prohibited people from doing good and helping others on the Sabbath. Jesus was constantly bumping heads with them
over the Sabbath. He said, “The Sabbath
was made for man, not made for the Sabbath,” (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath was designed to set us free, not
make us a slave. So don’t get too
legalistic about this. Have fun with
it. Focus on the gift God is giving you
and make the most of it.
Second, don’t get too lax about this either. The Sabbath is vitally important to our
faith, our health, and our relationships with God and others. If we do not claim moments of Sabbath and
protect those boundaries, something else will claim that time from us. So make sure that you schedule and prioritize
your Sabbath. That’s the best way to
remember it and keep it holy!
Share your comments
and application ideas…
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