Flourish: Living In The Rhythm of God

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Let's pray together.

God, when we sing songs like that, we should have a basket of peanuts on the bar in front of us.

Just as a reminder that we've wasted some things.

We've had some opportunities where we knew better and we did it anyway.

And that because we knew better and did it anyway, the Bible calls that sin, and it affects the way we think about ourselves.

So our friend Chris could write a song that says, Lord help me, Jesus, I know what I am.

Most of us know what we are, but we don't have a real clear view of who you are.

And who you are changes what we are because you're the God that says, I restore that which the locusts have eaten.

I saw what you did.

I'm not mad at you.

I'm not looking to whip you or ground you or punish you.

I'm looking to redeem you.

You're the God that shows up at the auction, holds your paddle up, and says, I'll take that one.

That one that's burned out, beat up, and bedraggled.

That one that is just lived in bondage to their addiction.

I'll buy him.

I want that one.

That's what the Bible means when it says that you restore that which the locusts have eaten.

You're a God of restoration and truth and freedom.

So bring all that to bear on us this morning from your word, we pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You have a seed.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and to open it up to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, there's one on your row.

I'm on page 61.

Uh I want to talk to you this morning about living in the rhythm of God.

Living in the rhythm of God.

As you'll see this morning from the Bible, that God kind of set up a rhythm that we were supposed to kind of live in.

Most of us don't live in that.

Matter of fact, I'll paint you a picture of what we live in.

When I was in the second grade, we had uh went to a public school.

There was no private school in my small town growing up, by the way.

I know you're wondering.

Uh, but in second grade, they had recess, my favorite thing.

And we had we called it a merry-go-round.

I don't know what you call it, but it was like a metal circle, had little pipes, like a little rainbow, and you'd get on that and hold on, and people would spin it around and get it going.

And so, because we were guys in the even in the second grade, we we would try to turn it into a wheel of death and torture people.

And one day they threw a kid named Shane on there because he was a weak live and it was like Lord of the Flies.

We turned on him, threw him up on the on the wheel of death, and about six of us got around it and started just spinning it faster and faster.

And Shane was like, he was standing up, and then he fell down and he's trying to crawl off.

And the whole time he kept saying this, somebody make it stop.

Somebody make it stop, somebody please stop this thing.

Somebody please stop this thing.

And finally, Mrs.

Peoples, the PE monitor, came over, and I'm not making this up, slapped every one of us on the head and kicked us and threw us on the ground and grabbed the thing and stopped it and got him off and said, Child, you go and walk up.

And I remember looking back at him.

We were all laughing, and I looked until I looked back and saw that he was so disoriented.

He was trying to walk, and the whole time he was like, Why didn't somebody stop that thing?

And for the first time that I can remember, I felt shame.

I felt this, we shouldn't have done that.

That wasn't right.

Felt dirty on the inside, and a bath or a shower wouldn't wash it off.

Why do I tell you that?

Because most of you get to the end of your week on Friday, and you're kind of like, and all week long, the kind of lament of your soul is somebody stop this thing.

I just want to get off.

Well, the Bible comes along and God says, Hey, I want to speak to you about this thing that allows you to kind of slow things down and think differently about them.

Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

I start reading in verse 1.

As we talk today and think today about living in the rhythm of God, the Bible says this, and God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image of any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or there's in earth beneath, or there's in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to the of those who excuse me, by showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold them guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Verse 8, 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 and sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

What does it mean to live in this rhythm of God?

Uh there's two verbs that I want to pull out, two words I want to talk about.

I just have two points, and I want to kind of unpack and give you some practical how-to's on the second one.

The first word that I want to pull out is a verb, it's the very first word, it's the word remember.

Remember in verse 8.

He says, Remember the Sabbath day.

Now, when God says remember, by the way, uh when God says remember, it's not kind of, it's like a test, it's like a teacher saying, Hey, do you remember this?

God does something, and then he kind of comes back later and points to it and says, Hey, remember this?

Because it's it's the most practical way that God can demonstrate.

I'm practical, I'm compassionate, I'm gracious, I get it.

I'm not come to overwhelm you and make a point that I'm good and you're bad.

So he does something really cool for these people, and then he comes back later and points to it and says, Hey, remember that?

Why does he say remember?

So they have a frame of reference for what God is calling them to in that moment.

So God says, Remember the Sabbath day.

Now you could look back four chapters to chapter 16, where they were out in the wilderness and they said, Hey, we don't have any food, and God rained down quail, and he called it, made his stuff called manna, kind of like frost, but it was kind of like a, it tasted like sweet honey wafers.

It was like a little thin, like a thin cookie just showed up on the ground.

They called it manna because the word manna literally means what is it?

And so these people are like, we're hungry, and God says, I got that, okay?

Don't sweat.

That's don't make life out of that.

That's why Jesus in Matthew 6 says, Is life not more than is life not about more than food and the body about more than clothes?

Really?

Because God knows we have an infinite capacity to shrink this down to really small things.

And so back in Exodus 16, people are like, hey, there's no food.

And God says, I got that.

But on every day you go out, you get enough just for that day.

If you get too much, it's gonna spoil, okay?

Get enough for that day.

But on the sixth day, you get enough for the seventh day because on the seventh day, this day of Sabbath, I want you to rest.

I don't want you to do anything but eat and just enjoy, rest, and just be reminded.

Just remember.

I'm the God that does this.

But when God says remember in Exodus 20, he's not just saying look back to chapter 16.

The Sabbath looks further back at creation and redemption, where God says two very important things.

Number one, in creation, God says, I rested.

I rested, by the way.

Six days I created, on the seventh day, I rested.

When you and I refuse to rest, what we are saying is, hey, you know what?

I appreciate everything, God, but I think I gotta, you don't know it's like it's 2016, and the price of oil is down and the economy's bad, and my politician may not make it into the White House.

And so I gotta take matters into my own hands.

And when you do that, what you're doing is you're taking what God intended as music and you're making it math.

You take what God says is music, there's this rhythm.

You live in sync with the rhythm of creation.

Because when he says remember, it goes all the way back to Genesis.

Six days God created the seventh day that he rested.

The Sabbath looks back at creation, number one, and also looks back at redemption, where God says two important things.

The first one was I rested.

Second was I redeemed.

I redeemed.

What do you mean?

The Bible lists the Ten Commandments, not just in the book of Exodus, but also in the book of Deuteronomy.

And this is the way he says it in Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy chapter 5, starting verse 12.

Deuteronomy 5 · chapter mention

Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.

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 or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that you that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

Translation, if you own the company, you can't make all your people, you can't look at God and go, hey, I observe a Sabbath, but I got my people out there earning money for me.

That's not a Sabbath.

That's an injustice.

Look at the next sentence.

God says, You shall remember that you are slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore, the Lord, therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

See, when he says, I redeemed, God says, Hey, the Sabbath is about reminding yourself of this one simple thing.

You're not slaves anymore.

You're not slaves anymore.

Back in Egypt, you had to work seven days a week.

You were slaves, but hey, I redeemed you.

I, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, I brought you out from there.

You you that's not no longer who you are anymore.

So I want you to take every seventh day, I want you just to take a deep breath and look at your wife and kids and say, we're not slaves anymore.

So when God says in this first word of the fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath, he's not saying just look back to your last experience.

He's saying, look back to the fact that I redeemed you out of slavery and look further back to the very beginning of creation.

And I set this rhythm by which I created you to do life.

Because if you don't live by that rhythm, there's a couple of things.

Number one, you begin to forget things.

Matter of fact, let me give you a question to think about.

What are you in danger of forgetting?

If you don't start slowing down, if you don't start kind of, hey, you know what?

I need to understand what it means to Sabbath, to take a day and just kind of do nothing to the glory of God.

And by the way, let me say this.

When we say do nothing, I also in the second grade, we tormented the weak kids in our class, but also we had to carry a fold-up mat.

It folded, it had four little sections, a little plastic-coated foam mat.

And there was a point in the day where the teacher said, It's rest time.

Did anybody have this besides me?

You put a and and poor kids like me, we didn't have a mat, we had a towel.

And we put a towel on the ground.

And I don't know what educators are thinking.

They wanted second graders to lay still for 20 minutes.

I had to lay on my back, fold my hands on my chest, and do nothing.

I mean, I was good about 30 seconds, I'd be rolling over and thumping paper footballs to Terry Adams and talking back and forth.

And one day Miss Forrester said, Neil, why can't I, why can you not lay still?

And I said, as a second grader, this isn't natural for me.

I just don't, this is the goofiest thing I ever do.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because some of you think that when it comes to the Sabbath, God's saying, I want you to get your mat out, it's rest time, fold your hands on your chest.

That's not the Bible's picture of Sabbath.

Matter of fact, the disciple, Jesus and his disciples are walking one day through a grain field, and his disciples are plucking off heads of the grain and eating it.

And the Pharisees came up and said, Oh, you guys are working on the Sabbath.

Jesus, get your disciples.

And Jesus is like, You guys got a toothpick, I got grain all in my teeth.

And they were like, Whoa, you shouldn't be doing and Jesus is picking the grain out of his teeth, and he says, Hey, Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

And they were like beside themselves.

They were so religious, they came up, the Pharisees, they came up with so many rules to make themselves feel more spiritual for absolutely ensuring that they did nothing.

I'm not making this up.

If a wall fell on somebody, the law said they could just take enough bricks off to see how badly injured he was, and then leave him there until the Sabbath was over.

Jesus would heal people on the Sabbath.

Read the New Testament.

Four, five, six times Jesus healed somebody and they said, Is it lawful to do this on the Sabbath?

And Jesus was like, I want to slap the taste out of your mouth.

Get out of here.

Are you kidding me?

It's unlawful not to heal this woman.

But they had it down to where they looked so spiritual that Jesus' freedom threatened them.

The Sabbath is not about bondage, it's about freedom.

It's not the school teacher and her marm saying, Okay, it's now rest time.

Get your mats out, kneel, unroll your towel, because we all know you're white trash.

No.

That's not what he says.

When he says, remember.

So the first question I want you to think about is what are you in danger of forgetting?

The second question I want to ask you is, what can you become a slave to?

If you don't watch yourself, what can you become a slave to?

Because, see, it looks back to creation and redemption.

It looks back to, hey, I redeemed you.

You're no longer slaves.

Take a day every seven days and kind of look at your wife and kids and say, we're not slaves to debt anymore.

Can you imagine just not being enslaved to anything?

Just being free.

Just kind of look around smiling, kind of going, hey, mom and dad are gonna do nothing today.

Dad may go play some golf, I may go work out, I may go run, I may go for a walk with your mom, I may read, I may take a nap, whatever I'm doing.

But one thing I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna work.

By the way, paperwork is work.

I know how some of you think, oh, I'm not working, I'm just catching up on some work emails.

That's work.

What you're saying to God is, hey, if I stop working, this whole thing's gonna come off the rails.

It's because you think you're God.

Now you would never say that, but just stop working for a day.

Just say, you know what?

I I I I'm I'm good.

Uh some of y'all think that I go around and try to get in awkward conversations.

I don't.

But I just kind of look around, try to notice stuff.

Like uh back in like October, November, my in-laws were in town, and I said, hey, they said, Well, I said, Y'all want to go?

We have a furniture store out here that you won't believe.

It's called gallery furniture.

And they're like, You seen one furniture store, you've seen them all.

I'm like, Does your furniture store have monkeys?

And all of a sudden they were hooked.

And my mother-in-law's like, Great Atlanta Gosh and what?

And I said, they got an aquarium, they got monkeys, they got free water.

I just jam them in my pockets and walk out with free water.

And so we go out there, we're walking around, and you walk in, there's a hey, they'll come up to you.

Then if you hang a left and get the process started, see this wall of signs.

There's a sign there.

I noticed it when I walked by, but everybody got lost.

My mother-in-law, she wanders off and just drifts, you know, like can't find her, no one.

And I'm like, let's leave now.

And so I come back to the front looking for her, and I'm standing there looking at the sign, and it says this in big bold letters work is salvation.

And I'm just standing there staring at that, just thinking, that explains so much.

And a guy comes over and goes, excuse me, sir, can I help you?

And I say, Yeah, explain this to me.

Is this why a mattress back always has a raspy voice and looks exhausted?

Do you guys really believe this?

Work is salvation?

Well, sir, I mean it's motivating.

Well, we believe in working hard here, gallery furniture, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

If work is salvation, then you don't need Jesus to be saved, right?

Well, we're not saying that, yeah, you are.

Salvation's a big word.

And the guy's like, Well, sir, would you be interested in some furniture?

Not from a man who finds his salvation in his work.

I'd rather go across the highway to exclusive furniture where low prices live.

They don't like that, by the way.

That is not funny in gallery furniture.

And the guy said, Well, excuse me, sir, it's just a sign.

I went, No, it's not, it's a statement.

Now we laugh at that, but some of us, if we were honest, we believe the same thing.

Matter of fact, I would go as far to tell you if you don't practice the Sabbath, you do believe the same thing.

Hey, I got this is this is the way I ensure my freedom.

I'm gonna work hard and pile up money to ensure that at the end I got enough to not depend on anybody else.

Ask yourself this question: when's the last time you tangibly remember trusting and depending on God?

Because a Sabbath of just not doing nothing, it's a very tangible experience of, okay.

He says, hey, two words.

Number one, remember.

Number two, keep.

Verse 8, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

To keep it holy.

So we're not making it something it's ever been.

It's holy, it's set apart.

To keep it holy means we're called to preserve what God has ordained and established and set apart as a part of the rhythm of our lives.

Have you ever noticed that Christians have ceased to be interesting?

Yes, I just said that.

Some of you looked up like, what?

Name, name, think about today before you go to bed.

You and your wife come up with five of the most interesting people that you know, and ask yourself, how many of them are Christians?

Some of the most intriguing people I know are not believers.

Here's my concern.

The Bible says that that salt, the salt has lost its saltiness.

Here's my concern that we've kind of lost the alien aspects of our lives to the culture.

Uh we we fit in, there's nothing strange about us.

We have the same moral, same view of money, time, humanity.

But in the midst of that, see, here's the beauty of a Sabbath.

A Sabbath keeping kind of announces to the world, hey, I'm living to a different rhythm.

And by the way, it's the rhythm that you were created to live to as well.

Sabbath kind of disconnected and unplugging from the 24-7 neurotic, energy drink, addicted, pill popping culture that we have of overachievers.

A Sabbath says, you know what?

My worth is not in what I own or in the strength of flesh and bone.

It is the loudest statement that Christians can make.

And here's a tragedy.

Very few of us are making it.

So if there's just two words in the sermon, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

Remember and keep.

What do we do with that?

Let me give you three practical ways you keep the Sabbath will be done this morning.

Number one, you work hard all week.

Uh, where'd you get that?

Right out of the Bible.

Look at verse 9.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

But on the seventh, but the seventh day is a Sabbath.

See, one of the ways you keep the Sabbath is by working hard.

It doesn't mean you work a six-day week, whatever your work week is, four days, five days.

Uh, work, but by the way, work is not a consequence of sin.

God told Adam, He put Adam in the garden, because I hear preachers sometimes say, Well, we wouldn't have to work if it wasn't for Adam and Eve.

That's not true.

God put Adam in the garden to take care of it and to work it before he ever made the woman and they ever sinned.

So work is not a curse.

Work is a responsibility.

If you're here in this room and you're an able-bodied man and you don't work and support your family, the Bible says you're worse than an unbeliever.

So don't cop out and say, well, work is just, you know, uh, one of the ways you keep a Sabbath, one of the days you get to a day in the week and you just kind of say, I'm gonna chillax and do nothing, is you work hard all week.

The Bible talks about how we ought to work.

Uh, in Colossians chapter 3, starting in verse 22, hear these words bond servants, obeying everything, those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

Fearing the Lord.

Whatever you do, work heartily.

Circle that word heartily in your mind.

Whatever you do, work heartily.

Have you noticed that people that work at the Sonic, they're not really working heartily?

Is it just me?

They come out like they got like a slushie for my kid, and I give them a$5 bill.

It's$217.

Do you want your change?

Yes.

I want all my change.

Yes.

I want you to work.

Just because you got a shirt, a black shirt that says Sonic on it, I'm not obligated to you.

This is backwards.

You're obligated to me.

My favorite one's a kid recently.

He's walked out with a tray on his cell phone.

I just thought, I'm glad my kids are here.

I wouldn't do anything inappropriate.

I would I would just go crazy and get locked in jail, but I digress.

Whatever you do, work hardly as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ.

For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done.

And there's no partiality.

Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

See, Paul's going on and he's like, hey, whatever you do, work hardly as for the Lord, not for men, knowing that you from the Lord you receive your inheritance.

You're serving the Lord Christ.

And then he kind of goes off in this tangent for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done.

Translation, hey, because back then, I know this didn't happen now.

But back then, people would look around and go, man, this company doesn't care about me.

This company made me work 30 minutes over the other day.

This company makes millions of dollars every year.

They're not gonna miss this computer.

No one's gonna notice if I slip out 30 minutes early.

That's called stealing.

See what they would do back then, because I know no one does this today in America.

What they would do back then is they would excuse their sin by saying, hey, they're doing wrong, so I'm gonna do wrong to pay them back for doing wrong.

I work for a multinational corporation.

They're not gonna miss anything.

God comes along and says, hey, the wrongdoer will be paid back for what he's done.

There's no partiality.

Don't you worry about that.

Don't you use don't you let somebody else's sin excuse you for engaging in sinful behavior in the workplace?

Let me tell you something, beloved.

Don't you ever take as much as a pencil from your job.

It's not yours.

I don't care if your ball, your boss is a jerk, the CEO has had multiple affairs or whatever.

That's nothing that doesn't excuse what you do in the work.

The Bible says whatever you do, work heartily.

I told you to circle that word heartily.

It's not an adjective in the Greek, by the way.

It's a preposition.

It's a prep Greek preposition ek, e-k.

Work heartily, ek.

And why?

It denotes origin, the point from which an action proceeds.

When the Bible says, hey, how do you keep the Sabbath?

You work hard all week.

So you get to that day and you're kind of like, oh, I look so forward to not working.

My concern is in America, when we think about look forward to not working, we think about retirement, not Sabbath.

And some of you are gonna get to your retirement, you're not gonna be able to enjoy it.

Have you ever heard this?

My husband retired, he's been home a month and he's driving me crazy.

Because we don't know how to not do anything.

Why?

Because we haven't practiced the Sabbath all along.

Way we keep the Sabbath as we notice the direction of the Sabbath.

Notice that the text says in verse 6, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

The direction of the Sabbath, there's a Godward trajectory to this day.

It's not about how you feel about work, money, or time, but an expression of intimate trust towards God.

This day and what I do on this day, it should have a Godward trajectory to it.

It's not practical.

If I had to say it in a phrase, I'd say it like this: the Sabbath is not practical, it's theological.

What do you mean?

Preachers always are afraid to say what the Bible says, and we say, hey, you could maximize your time management.

And you could, here's three ways to get more accomplished in the day.

That's not what the Bible is.

This is not a self-help manual, and I am not your life coach.

That's not the way God set it up.

If you go to a church and most of them out there carry shook in the woodlands on TV every day, his wife, beautiful people.

We like to think of us as your life coaches.

If I was Elvis, I'd have shot the TV.

Because I can't afford another one, so I didn't.

But I looked at my kids at Paul's and said, That's not a preacher.

You're not a life coach.

You're not.

Now you're going, some of you go, I can't believe you said his name.

Hey, that's how most of those people on there need their name announced.

I'm your life coach.

I'm here to help you maximize your potential and revigorate your marriage.

Hey, teach people the gospel.

Help them become more godly people, and the rest of this will sort itself out.

Let's stop getting down to the lowest common denominator.

How would I make you think I'm necessary for your life?

Because, see, here's a great thing about preaching the gospel.

I could kill over dead tomorrow, and you wouldn't miss me.

You just have to get somebody to preach the gospel.

But if I'm your life coach and you're buying my protein shakes in the lobby, in my Christian daytimer and planner, and my 40 days of purpose books.

Now you gotta like, which TV preacher are we talking about now?

Just pick one.

It's not what it's about, it's not practical, it's theological.

Sabbath is not about rescuing us from time, it's teaching us to redeem time by resting, ceasing from labor, and confessing to God.

I am creative, but I'm not creator.

I'm created.

That's the way God made all of us, but I'm not creator.

So when I observe a Sabbath, I'm reorienting myself around to and towards God and the things of God.

Third way you keep the Sabbath is remember that God blessed the Sabbath day.

You still with me?

God blessed the Sabbath day.

God feels, I'm gonna tell you this, and some of you are gonna have to walk away and go, I've got to think about that.

Please do.

God blessed the Sabbath day on a way he didn't bless any of the other six days of your life.

Now, the Sabbath day doesn't have to be on Sunday.

For Christians, it's it it's Sunday because that's the day Christ rose from the grave.

And so it went from being Saturday to being what they call the Lord's Day in historic Christianity, which is Sunday.

It didn't have to be Sunday.

I got I got friends of mine who work on some of their cops, they work in factories or whatever.

Factories don't shut down uh on Sundays, and you can't control that.

Oh, I'm a Christian, but you ought to have a day, the Bible that says, hey, every seventh day, you ought to have a day of every week where you just kind of say, you know what?

This is a day that is holy unto God.

Why?

Because God blessed this day.

God feels about this day in my life the way he doesn't feel about other days.

Now listen carefully.

I'm gonna show you this in the Bible.

This is Isaiah 58, verse 13 and 14.

Isaiah 58:13

God says, Have you ever went and bought a car and the guy says, If I can, will you?

If I can, will you?

If I can get you a payment that fits in your what's your budget?

About$30 a month.

Don't ask me.

They always say, What's your, what's, what, what's, you know, if I'm trying to buy a car for our kids first go to college.

Hey, Mr.

McClendon, what's your budget?

I gave about$50 a month, supposed one income.

No, seriously.

You asked?

Just let me see good quality use cars.

Well, I just, you know, I wanna know what number we're looking at, a really small one.

And then they're like, ah, all right, mmm.

This is what God says.

This is Isaiah 58, 13.

If you turn back from, if you turn back your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day, Facebook, and you call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable.

In other words, hey, look at me, beloved.

Let me get at you here a little bit.

God says, if you stop using the Sabbath to finish all the things you didn't get done these other six days, if you stop using this day, that's my day for yourself, you turn back your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable.

If you honor it, not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord.

And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.

I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

God says, if you do this, I'll do this.

Ask yourself before you go to bed tonight, what does it mean to ride on the heights of the earth?

You should read things like that in the Bible and just kind of go, Diana, get in here.

We're gonna talk about this.

Honey, what's wrong?

What does it mean to ride on the heights of the earth?

Don't you want your kids to ask you that, a question like that, at least once before you die?

Hey, Dad, I was reading in Isaiah 58, and God says if we'll kind of get synced up with the way he thinks about the Sabbath and stop just using it as a catch all day to finish all our errands, then we're gonna ride on the heights of the earth.

Can you imagine being on a first date?

And a guy says to you, or a girl says to you, men, tell me about yourself.

And you said, Man, I want to ride on the heights of the earth.

Just pull over, I'll walk.

See, we here's my point, and I'm almost done.

We don't have a frame of reference for even thinking about that.

Y'all are looking at me like, that's kooky.

That's so awkward, that's creepy.

No, God says, if you'll turn back your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure, from taking my day and consume it upon your lust, I'll tell you what I'll do.

And then you'll take delight in the Lord, and I will make you.

There are things, beloved, that have to be received that you can't accomplish.

I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.

I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the Lord is spoken.

What does that mean?

Let me just say this and we'll be done.

The Sabbath day is the first thing, by the way, that God blessed.

But there's something available to us on the Sabbath that is not available the other six days of the week.

God created us for a rhythm that works, uh that works and rest.

Works and rest.

God created us for this rhythm that you work and you rest.

You work and you rest.

And on the day of rest, we're putting ourselves in the context of blessing.

Because this is what God says.

He blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

He blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

He blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

Here's what God's saying.

You can't make this day what I can make this day.

You can't go.

Some of you got three jobs.

Like I have friends that are firemen.

I don't know a fireman that doesn't have two or three jobs.

I'm not hating on firemen.

I love firemen.

If you're a fireman, I don't come and beat me up, okay?

But I ask all of them, hey, when when do you when do you just do nothing?

Oh man.

What do you mean?

And the look on their face is like, I'm a man.

Yeah, but you're a Christian too.

Does not compute, does not compute.

I'm a man, I used to have a neighbor that's a fireman.

He never had anybody come service his house.

He had a fireman build his fence, a fireman fix his air conditioner.

And I'm not I'm not hating on firemen.

I'm just like, hey, men, we're called to lead our families to understand what a Sabbath is.

Because God says, hey, there's something available on this day that's not available the other six days of the week.

I bless the Sabbath.

Here's the last question.

Maybe you could talk about it in your community group.

What does God mean when he says he blessed the Sabbath and made it holy?

He doesn't say that about any other day in the week.

And in that, here's what I think.

God is inviting us to something on this day.

Father, I think what we're saying today is that we want to just stop the merry-go-round and get off.

We're tired of living in this disoriented days at a pace that is unsustainable and a life that is not enjoyable.

We are a shower people, and maybe we need to take a bath.

Sit down and sink in and just soak.

Let this get into all the pores of our skin.

Doesn't mean we're lazy, it means we're trusting.

You said if we'll do this, I'll make you ride on the heights of the earth.

I pray you'd infect all these people with that the rest of this week.

Be like a mental gnat, just kind of biting at their brain on Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning and Friday drive home.

What does it mean that God make me just ride on the heights of the earth?

It means, at least to some degree, God can make this better than you can.

And that makes us curious about you.

And so, Lord, we're grateful.

Thank you that you talk to us that way and you provoke us to think about you that way.

You don't shame us and guilt us.

You just say, You get a whiff of this.

Doesn't this make you hungry?

So we're hungry, and we're coming to feast on you.

Many of us are gonna gather in community groups tonight, and we're gonna look at each other and go, Man, I gotta think about this.

I need you to ask me about this.

Because we're hungry.

Make us hungry and satisfy us.

That's part of the rhythm.

And we're grateful for that.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

Stand to your feet.

Let's get out of here.

Hold your hands out.

When you were born, your mom and dad gave you a name.

And it is not Charles Atlas.

So shut down.

Get it off your shoulders.

And learn to Sabbath.

Because in that day, there's a way of relating to God and being with God that will mess you up in the best of ways.

And God invites you to that in the fourth commandment.

To get out of here and get to practice in that.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you, you're dismissed.