Sabbath Rest

It is good to be here and thank you, Anthem, for that for that welcome.

I thought before I turn to the word this morning, I would just, in my role as superintendent, give you a little update on uh things around the district and the work of the district, just taking a moment to do that.

Um as we talk about it, and there's a little sign out in the back there that we talk about three things we want to focus on as a district.

We talk about healthy churches, we talk about partnerships, and we talk about multiplication.

So, on the topic of healthy churches, that really comes to all kinds of things.

And as a district, we are here to help our churches.

We're here to do whatever we can to serve our churches, serve our pastors.

And I want to uh say that is our primary uh mission and what we want to engage in.

That comes to all kinds of things.

Uh, helping think through training and strategy and outreach and conflict resolution and helping churches find pastors has been a big thing over the last several years.

Uh I can proudly tell you that for 48 hours after March 19th, we were down to one church in the district looking for a senior pastor.

And now it's three.

Um so that work goes on.

And I just encourage you to keep praying for us and keep praying for the raising up of shepherds.

Um, I know that's something that is on the heart of Jason and on the staff here and as a church here, uh, but the need for good pastors uh is is very great.

Um there are uh the there aren't the number in the pipeline as you look down the line generationally is much smaller than what the need is.

And so think about that need for raising up good pastors and shepherds for churches.

I encourage you to pray for us in that work that we do in that area.

Another way we do that is partnerships.

The thing we do is we want to build partnerships, and some of that is just informally between churches.

Pastors helping pastors, churches helping churches.

They call each other up.

Hey, what do you do about this?

How do you handle this?

And just connecting in that way, and that's a wonderful way to do it.

But we also do some more formal things.

Uh we have our conferences, and we just hosted one here, and I thank you for your uh generosity and your hospitality in doing that for us.

It was a wonderful time here uh in Grand Forks.

We have another one coming up in the fall.

We started this last year, having a second uh mini conference in the fall, and that fall conference is gonna be focused this year on the idea of leading in the mixture of a rural and urban context.

Um, one of the things we have to realize in churches, and we recognize in churches, is people come to places like this, and I bet this is true of your church, that as you look at this church, there are people who have come here and they've moved out of small towns, they've moved off of farms, and they bring their way of doing things with them when they come.

And then you have people here who've moved from very big places and they bring their way of doing things, and then you put them in church together and put them in classes together or on boards together.

And that can be a little confusing at times because we think this is the way you do it, and somebody else says, Well, no, that's not the way you do it.

And how do you work through those things?

Uh, Dr.

Mari Gese, who is the president of Oak Hills Christian College, is going to come and walk through some of those issues with us.

I remember as being a young pastor out in Mont, North Dakota, and I first heard uh Dr.

Geese speak about this, and I remember listening to him and it just going, like, oh, that makes so much sense.

Now I understand.

And I grew up in North Dakota.

So just think about the people who come from somewhere else to understand it.

I had a pastor who moved here from Chicago and moved out to one of our small rural churches.

And I remember talking with him and said, Brian, if you had told me that it was this different out here, I never would have believed you.

But it is.

So we want to help our pastors in that way.

So that's coming up this fall.

And then we have multiplication.

We want to see churches grow.

We want to see them reach out in their communities, and so we have things that will help them do that.

We have an evangelism cohort that we have offered and continue to offer for churches to think through how they can be more outreach focused as a church.

We have churches, we have um training to help churches think about, again, how they can be more intentional and outreach in their communities.

And we have uh focus on church planting.

We have two church plants uh underway.

One out in Castleton is getting, they're almost to their third anniversary.

They're just about no more a church plant, they're just about to the point where they're gonna be a full-fledged church in our district, and then one that is underway in Hazen uh as well.

So we just ask you to be praying for those kinds of things.

And that's my next point.

How can you stay connected to us?

How can you be a part of what the district is doing?

Well, the main thing I would ask you is for your prayers.

Uh pray for me, pray for our staff.

We have Steve Osfold, who works with our missions mobilizer, helping churches think about mission strategy.

We have Brandon Belay, who works as our student ministries director, and helps coordinate things for our district's student ministries and helps work and connect uh student ministry leaders together and offer training for them.

And then we have uh Mike Lundberg, who was our church multiplication director, who helps work in the area of church planting and church multiplication.

Uh just pray for them and to remind you to do that.

Out in the welcome table there, there's a little sign that has those things.

I talk about healthy churches, partnerships, multiplication, and in front of them are these little I asked my kids, I said, What do I give out at churches to remind them to pray for us?

And I said, Dad, stickers.

So that's what I do.

I listen to my kids.

So you get stickers.

Put it on your water bottle, put it on your phone, put it on your laptop, wherever you want to put a sticker, put a sticker on and remember to pray for us as a district.

Connect with us, come to one of our conferences, get to know the district, stay up with our newsletter.

There's an e-newsletter that comes out every month.

Uh, just talks about things that are happening in the Northern Plains district and across the EFCA.

Uh, you can stay connected that way.

Follow us on our website, our Facebook page.

Um, you can keep up to date on things there as well.

And then I just want to say thank you for the connection that you have through the giving of your church to the work of the district.

Uh, thank you for your support.

Uh, what we do is rely upon for the we rely on our support from our churches in our district, and we want to say thank you to you uh for that support.

And I want to say thank you also to individual donors if you were here this morning.

Uh we really appreciate you.

You help make up that gap that does exist between what we get from churches and what we need to carry on this work of serving our churches.

So I want to say thank you to you for those things.

So with that little update and those little comments about the district, now I want to turn to my topic this morning.

And as Anton said, I get to be kind of the pastor to the pastors, and so I'm gonna talk about something a little bit different uh this morning as Jason is on sabbatical.

I'm gonna talk about this idea of why pastors do sabbaticals.

Where does that idea come from?

Why would we do that?

Why is that important for pastors?

And I want to approach it, it's a little bit different than maybe how I would normally approach things.

You sit down in a text and you go through the text, and it's gonna lead you to some kind of action or behavior at the other end.

We're gonna turn that around a little bit this morning.

Here we have an action or behavior that's already in motion, and I want to give you the theological, biblical underpinning for why you do that.

I had a professor at uh Bible college who said, you know, you should never do anything unless you have a good biblical, theological reason for doing it.

He said, you know, don't brush your teeth unless you can give me a theological, biblical reason for doing it.

And there is one, right?

Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and we're supposed to care for the temple, and so brushing your teeth is part of caring for the temple.

So, kids, brush your teeth.

Okay?

There's a biblical reason to do that.

But what about sabbaticals?

Why this thing called a sabbatical?

What is the importance of that?

Why does that matter for pastors?

So let me walk through that with you.

And I want to start with the idea that we do it because it is the biblical pattern.

It is a biblical pattern that is well established for us.

And I want to look at several passages that kind of highlight this idea of Sabbath, the need for a Sabbath rest.

And it begins at the beginning.

We go all the way back to the book of Genesis.

It's simply Genesis 1.5, I want to just point this one out to start with.

It says God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and there was evening and there was morning the first day.

Now I point that out because, as it was pointed out to me a number of years ago, that biblically speaking, our day happens, uh biblically speaking, the day happens the reverse of how we normally think about it.

The biblical day does not start at sunrise.

The biblical day starts at sundown.

It starts in the evening.

And there was evening and there was morning the first day.

So it goes the other way around.

And so if you think about your day and the activities of your day, we would think, you know, the first thing we do in our day is we get up and we get ready for the day and we head off to work and we do our job, and then we come home and maybe we have a little bit of time with family and we eat and relax, and then we go and sleep at that night.

That would be how we normally think about the cycle of our day.

Rest would come at the end.

Biblically, rest comes at the beginning.

Rest comes at the beginning.

There is evening and there is morning.

We rest to start the day.

And the person who was speaking, I liked his way of putting it, the way he described it is that we rest at the beginning of the day as a way to honor God, as a way to glorify God.

Do you think about that?

That you, as you rest, you honor and glorify God.

We often think about we honor and glorify God by the things that we do, by the work that we do, by the service that we give.

You rest and honor, you honor and glorify God in your rest.

How do you do that?

Because when you rest, when you lay down and go to sleep at night, you are worshiping God by acknowledging that you believe and have faith enough to trust him that God can run the world without you for at least eight hours.

It's true.

You are not indispensable to God.

You go and rest and you will honor him and glorify him.

It's a fact of faith and trust and confidence in him.

We can rest in him.

So the day begins with rest.

So let's start with that rhythm.

Then, of course, there's probably the more famous part of this passage, the more famous part of this creation story.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

So not only does our day begin with rest, but one day in seven is to be given to rest.

And of course, you've heard this taught.

God did not rest because somehow he had expended so much energy in creation for the first six days that he needed to rest up and recuperate so he would be ready to have full energy to deal with the next thing, which is Adam and Eve's sin and messing everything up for all of us.

No, that's not at all.

He rests to set a model for us.

It's a little bit different context, but in the New Testament, we see Jesus instructing his disciples and instructing the people that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Not to be observed slavishly, not to be observed as some legalistic thing, but was to be given to us because he knew we needed it.

We were created by God with his knowledge and with his intent that we would take time to rest.

It was not his intention that we would just go, go, go, go, go, go harder, harder, harder, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster all the time.

He made us with the intention to rest.

And he set that model for us by resting himself.

One day in seven, given to rest.

But the pattern goes on from there.

There is more to this rest than that.

We read in Leviticus as he is establishing the law for the people as they go into the land of Israel.

For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruits.

But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord, and you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.

You do agricultural work for six years, and in the seventh you rest.

Now we understand that today in our modern agricultural practices to understand the value of letting land lie fallow.

It increases the productivity when you come back to it.

The land needs a rest.

They didn't have all of the fertilizer, everything we put on to keep boosting the productivity.

They need the land needed to rest, to restore its fertility so it could be more fruitful.

I think there was something of a pattern there that, by our rest, allows us to be more fruitful.

But it wanted the land to rest.

So there would be no sowing and no pruning for a year, no agricultural work done for a year.

Now, as a pastor in a farm community out in western North Dakota in Mott, I was preaching on this, and my you can understand the farmers in my church, they were concerned.

What do you mean?

How did they make it if they couldn't plant for a year and they weren't supposed to prune the vines?

What were they doing?

No agriculture for a year?

Well, if you go on and read the passage, you were allowed to hunt and fish.

And they were like, oh, we're so in for that one.

Six years of farming and then a whole year of hunting and fishing.

Yeah, let's do that.

We don't do that anymore, but that was the intention that the land would have a rest.

It needed to rest to be more fruitful.

And the pattern even continues beyond that.

Again in Leviticus 25, 11 and 12.

That the 50th year shall be a jubilee for you.

And in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather of the grapes from the undressed vines, for it is a jubilee, and it shall be holy to you, and you may not eat the produce of the field.

Every 50th year, a jubilee, or every seven of sevens, a jubilee year, a year when everything is reset and made new.

All of the slaves would be set free, the captives would be set free, the land would return back to its original owners.

You couldn't really sell land the way that God had intended it in Israel.

You could sell it to a person and they could have use of it until the next Jubilee year, in which case it would come back to your family.

All the debts would be canceled, all of the slaves set free.

You know how many times Israel celebrated their Jubilee year?

From my study and all that I haven't taught, and if someone knows different, I'd be happy to hear from you.

But every study that I have ever looked at says they celebrated it absolutely zero times.

They never did it.

They couldn't even make it in the first one.

They never celebrated it.

And lest you think that this pattern is something, well it's just nice, but isn't something maybe that is at the core of what God wants, hear this from Chronicles.

2 Chronicles 36, 20 and 21.

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, that is Nebuchadnezzar, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbath, and all the days that it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill seventy years.

Understand, God set the time of the exile that they had to serve in Babylon by the number of Sabbaths missed, the number of Sabbaths, the number of Jubilee years missed.

There were consequences for skipping Sabbath, and they were dire consequences for Israel.

They were taken into captivity, and the length of their captivity, the length of the punishment that God meted out to them, was on the basis of how many Sabbaths they skipped.

Lest you think this idea of rest and Sabbath is something that is insignificant before God.

It is not.

It is something he built into our the fabric of our creation.

It is something he has intended us to have.

It is something he wants us to do.

He wants us to rest.

There is a biblical pattern of Sabbath rest.

Now I want to tie that to a pastoral rhythm and why pastors take sabbatics.

How does that connect to this idea of a pastoral sabbatical?

I'm going to help make that bridge a little bit.

And I want to start with if it is detrimental for the entire nation to skip Sabbath such that God would set a time of exile based around the skipping of Sabbaths, if that is detrimental for the entire nation, would it not also be detrimental for God's shepherds, as leaders of God's people, not to have Sabbath time in their life?

Not to build Sabbath into their pattern.

Because we are to set the pattern, we are to be the teachers, we're the ones to establish that.

And if we are not having Sabbath, if we are not demonstrating that, if we are not teaching it, if we are not practicing it, then what hope is it that any of you would?

And if we are missing it, there's going to be detrimental consequences for us as pastors and shepherds and leaders of congregations, and there will be detrimental consequences to the people in our churches and to our churches themselves.

We must model this biblical pattern in our lives.

So the idea of a pastor taking a sabbatical is a way to model that and to reflect that and to honor and glorify God by doing that which He has called us to do, which is to rest.

To rest.

I watched last summer, we had an outreach, an evangelistic team in Valley City, and they had a guy there who has the world record for spinning basketballs.

He can spin more basketballs on, and he started, if you see a guy spin a basketball on his finger like this, right?

And then some people do it on two fingers, and then some people do it two fingers and put it on their chin, whatever.

He did it, and he had 40, I think 40 or 45 basketballs going at once on some part of his body.

Watching, he's getting them spinning, he's getting spinning.

And he is able to sustain that 40 to 45 basketball spinning for about five seconds before they all go flying off.

Something of that is true of us and especially true of pastors.

Pastors have to keep a lot of balls spinning simultaneously.

But there's only so many we can do, and we can only do it for so long, and then everything comes spinning off and crashes.

That's why we need rest.

Let me give you some information about pastors.

I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about pastors.

I'm a pastor to pastors.

Pastors aren't gonna get up and tell you these things because they don't want to, you know, that's not what they're here to do.

But I want to tell you a little bit about the life of a pastor, and I want to say this because I want to, I don't want to say, I'm not up here to make it sound like, oh, pastors, they have the worst or the hardest and the most difficult job of any.

No, there are lots of hard and difficult jobs that take a lot of energy and a lot of effort that are very stressful.

And all of that is true.

I just want you to understand a little bit of what it's like for the hard work and the stress in the life of a pastor so you understand, again, why this idea of Sabbath, why it is so necessary, and why, if it is neglected, it is so detrimental, it is so harmful to pastors.

This is research that's come out recently over the last uh just over the last couple of years, and it reflects things that have been said in the past.

75% of pastors report being extremely stressed or highly stressed in any of the time.

Three out of four.

Highly stressed.

It is a high stress role to take that responsibility, to share the responsibility for leading God's flock and to care for the flock, to care for the church.

It's a very stressful thing to do.

90% of pastors say they feel completely worn out or exhausted every week.

Forty percent report a serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.

I think that's low.

I think it's more probably more like once a week, in my experience.

Understand what this job does.

The pastor's job is to stand up here, hold up the scriptures, teach the word of God, and call you to be faithful to it.

And if you're not being faithful to it, you know what that's gonna do?

That's gonna pinch.

I had a man come to my church, um, he was invited, and he came with a friend, he was there for a number of weeks, and finally he came in and met with me, and I had a chance to talk to him, and he told me, he said, for the first couple of weeks, I really considered not coming back.

Because every time I sat out there, I just kept wondering, why is he preaching about me?

I wasn't.

I had no idea who he was, but it felt and it hurt and it pinched, and that might make someone mad at the pastor because they said something that pinched.

That's the good spiritual kind of things, but then pastors get into conflicts and get all kinds of other things that have nothing to do with spiritual challenges.

I remember one lady being so angry with me because the communion table got moved in the front.

Did I actually have anything to do with that?

Nope.

That was the worship team.

They rearranged it.

I had nothing to do with it.

But oh boy, did I hear about it.

And she was so mad at me.

I had a lady got so mad at me one time, or something that she perceived that I had said, that she got on Facebook and messaged my mom to have my mom call and tell me that I had said something wrong.

I'm not making it up.

One of my jobs is to look at pastors and tell them, no, you're not crazy, this stuff actually happens.

And they deal with that, and we deal with that all the time.

91% of pastors say they have experienced some form of burnout in ministry.

They're just ready to not keep going.

67% of pastors said that 2020 was the hardest year in ministry ever.

I'm worried about the other 33% that had a harder year.

I can't imagine a harder year.

That was the hardest year I ever remember having a ministry, and I was only a pastor for half of it.

I got to step out of the church and do this job for the other half of that year.

And thirty eight percent, more than one in three, have thought about leaving pastoral ministry altogether.

Just walking away.

And we're seeing that happen more.

Data from uh a recent pastor research indicated that the difference from 2015 to 2022 found that all aspects of a pastor's well-being, spiritual, mental, and emotional, every facet they measured declined between 2015 and 2022.

Overall quality of life, the ability to have true friends, and even the respect they say that pastors received from those in their community all dipped from 2015 to 2022.

They found that only 35% of pastors would be considered healthy in their relational, spiritual, physical, emotional, vocational, financial well-being.

Only 35%.

What happens?

How does that get there?

And where does rest come into it?

Well, I want to say the idea of rest comes into it like this.

And again, I'm not saying pastors have the hardest job.

We don't.

There are lots of hard jobs that are very stressful and that are very draining, and I acknowledge that.

I just want you to get a sense, though, of what pastors do face and how that works.

The way I kind of describe it sometimes is pastors kind of start off at about, you know, you might have your energy level, maybe you're in a 95, 98%, something like that, and you do your work and you're doing your regular work, and your energy gradually drains down.

You know, so we watch our batteries drain on all of our devices, right?

We our batteries drain down.

And then we have some time of relaxing and refreshment.

Maybe it's that break in a week or it's a vacation or something like that, and it recharges.

But it doesn't come all the way back up to 95%.

Maybe it only comes back up to 80 or 85.

And then that begins to drain from there.

And then it comes back up, but again, it doesn't come all the way back up to that 80 or 85.

It comes back up to maybe 70 or 65.

And then it begins to drain from there.

And then it doesn't, pretty soon it's not coming even all the way back up to 50%.

And the only way for that to fully be restored is the way that God intended, by following the pattern that He established in creation, is for an extended rest.

So that we might be restored to greater fruitfulness.

An extended, focused period of rest.

That's why we talk about the sabbatical.

The EFCA recommends for its pastors to be healthy, but they have a day off every week, that they have a weekly Sabbath.

And that isn't Sunday, folks.

This is not our Sabbath.

This is not my Sabbath.

This is a work day.

We are fully engaged on a day like this.

A day off every week, a personal retreat day every month, regular vacation time every year, and a professional sabbatical every five to seven years.

To allow that intentional stepping away for refreshment and renewal with God so we can be prepared for greater fruitfulness going forward.

That's why it's important that you're doing this for Pastor Jason.

That he has that time for that refreshment.

And I love what's in the bulletin about stepping away, that intentional time for renewal and refreshment that comes.

The only thing that I would have that I would say that is wrong about what is in the bulletin, I think it should be longer than a month.

I don't know how frequently, elders, you give it to him, but I'll put that out there.

I think it should be longer than a month.

We generally recommend at least two for it to be really, truly refreshing.

And again, okay, all of that's Old Testament.

Is there a New Testament point that you would look at this?

Yeah, there is.

Jesus himself did this.

We can look at Mark 6, and he says to them, he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest awhile.

For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

The disciples were at such a point where the ministry was going at such a level, so many people were coming to Jesus to hear from him, to hear his teaching, to be healed.

They were coming day and night.

So many people were coming, they didn't even have time to stop for a meal.

They were so busy and so full of ministry opportunities, so many people thronging to them.

And Jesus does not come to them and say, Oh, come on, you can do it.

Go a little harder, go a little longer, work a little more.

He says, No, stop and come away with me and rest.

He knew for them to continue what they were going to be called to do, rest was vital to that.

And so Jesus Himself calls them to rest.

Just as God modeled it for them in creation, Jesus is modeling it for his disciples.

The Son of God models it for those he was teaching.

The importance of rest.

So what goes into rest?

This would be the third thing.

We see it's a biblical pattern.

Why a sabbatical?

It's a biblical pattern.

Why a sabbatical?

Because pastors need it in order to continue in the work that we are called to because of the nature of the work.

And God built us to have it.

It's necessary if we're going to succeed in that work, otherwise, it is deeply detrimental to us.

So what is it then?

What do you do in a sabbatical?

Well, I want to say a sabbatical is not leisure or vacation or DIY time.

It is not time to catch up on the honeydew list.

It is time is stepping aside from routine and experiencing the renewal and refreshment from God.

Stepping aside to experience the renewal and refreshment that God has promised us.

That is what it is to be.

Hopefully it was planned, and hopefully that plan was gone over with the elders.

It should have been.

But I want to give you four things I think are critical for a healthy sabbatical.

I want you to think about what goes into that.

It comes from these four things, they're not unique to me.

They come from a book by Jim Anderson, who was a pastor in the North Central District for many years, worked with the district there, taught on this idea of rest for pastors and churches there.

And these are in his book, For God's Sake, Rest.

And he gives four things that ought to happen during Sabbath time.

Release, review, remember, look forward.

Release, review, remember, and look forward.

So what do you do in a Sabbath rest?

The first thing to do is release.

Remember, release.

Let's go back to the Old Testament.

Let's look at the commandment now.

We didn't look at that passage yet.

Deuteronomy 5, 12 through 15.

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 is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

And 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 was within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

So the first thing I want you to see in this command is how total it is.

It isn't just some people, it's everybody is to take this idea of Sabbath.

It extends to everyone, and we're gonna come back to that at the end of this.

It extends to everyone, it extends to the family, it extends to the servants, it extends to the animals.

They get Sabbath too.

Even the sojourners among them, and I would say it suggests that those sojourners among them may be people who were not adherents to Judaism.

These are not followers of God.

They too were supposed to observe Sabbath.

They were too, to be offered the chance to rest.

And you do all of this because 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.

What I find interesting there, where is the Sabbath grounded?

Where is this commandment grounded?

Interesting, in this version of the commandment, it is not grounded in the creation account.

It is not grounded in the fact that God rested, therefore you should rest.

Certainly it could be, but it is grounded in the release from Egypt.

It is grounded in their release and in their freedom.

I want to suggest that the idea here is that the first thing is Sabbath is to celebrate release.

Sabbath is about celebrating release from bondage.

Sabbath is a chance for us to celebrate release from bondage.

For the Israelites, it was released from physical bondage from slavery.

For us today, if there is a parallel for us, we have all been released from the bondage to sin through the work of Jesus Christ.

And Sabbath is an opportunity to celebrate that release.

To stop and rest from the preoccupation with everything else around us and focus on celebrating that we have been set free.

Sabbath is a celebration of release and freedom.

The second part of it is to review.

You know the passage probably from Psalm 139, probably familiar.

Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there is any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

James talks about looking in the mirror.

Not to just be hearers, but doers.

To take a look in the mirror and think about what we're doing.

I want to think about if if it is about release, it's about freedom, then as we celebrate the freedom that we've been given, it is also right to stop, take stock, and evaluate what are we doing with the freedom that's been given to us?

Are we using it to serve him and glorify him, or are we using it to continue to serve ourselves and to continue to engage in sin?

What are we doing with the freedom that's given to us?

It is about release, it is about review, it is about remembering.

Remembering, Psalm 145 points the direction for us here.

One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works.

I will meditate.

Release from bondage, review what we're doing with that freedom, and to meditate on all the wondrous things that God has done.

To look back at his word and look at all of the things that God has accomplished, all of the things that he does, how wonderful and mighty and magnificent he is.

And then I think keep reading off the pages of scripture and into our lives.

Look back at all of the wonderful and gracious and mighty things that God has done for you in your life and in following him.

I had a man in my church out in Mott, and he would often talk to me about how much he missed having his grandpa around.

Because as he was farming and doing his work and things would come up, things would happen, and he would kind of like, oh no, what are we gonna do?

What are we gonna do?

He said, You know what I miss?

I miss my grandpa's voice saying, Oh yes, this is just like it happened back in 37.

And we did this, and this happened, and everything was okay.

Or this is what happened back in 48, and this is what we did, and this is what happened, and everything will be okay.

He said, I miss my grandpa's voice telling me, this is what happened, and everything will be okay.

Because remember what God has done.

We celebrate all of his mighty works and all of his magnificent deeds and meditate on those things.

It assures us God is still in control, his hand is on everything.

We prayed today as we were gathered before service, we're praying and giving thanks that all things are in God's hand and nothing surprises him.

You know what?

It's all in his hand.

Nothing surprises him.

Everything is working out according to his plan, and it will be okay.

That's what Revelation tells us.

It'll be right in the end.

We review his wondrous, remember his wondrous works.

And then we look forward.

For all this talking about uh Sabbath in the past, there is also Sabbath in the future, and now as well.

Hebrews chapter 4, if you want to look there, Hebrews chapter 4, verses 4 through 10 also speak of Sabbath for us.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention Hebrews 4:4–10

There the author says this.

For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

And again in this passage he said, They shall not enter my rest.

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, and again he appoints a certain day today, saying through David, so long afterward, in the words already quoted, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from his.

To enter into God's rest is to rest from our works.

I think there is a clear indication here, a clear reference that this is about resting from the idea that we can ever work hard enough to pay the penalty for our sin.

To rest from our works.

If we have entered God's rest, we have rested from our works, from our striving to try to make it right.

We enter instead into God's rest and trust in what He has done as resting in the accomplished work of Jesus Christ for us.

The one who died in our place so that we might be forgiven, that if we would place our faith and our trust in him, we would have everlasting life, we would have forgiveness of sin, we would have reconciliation with him, we would have transformed and new lives, now lived for his honor and for his glory.

That is to enter his rest.

And the more that we do that, the more that we understand that, and the more that we, on the Sabbath rest idea, lean into that, it begins for us to realize that yes, we have that now, but not all of it.

There is a time of glory.

We prayed about that this morning too.

We read about it when the weapons of war are turned into tools of agriculture.

There is a day coming when the rest will be full and complete, and we will have the fullness of that which awaits.

And now we have a little bit of it, it's a taste of it, and it makes us hungrier and hungrier of what is to come.

It increases our anticipation of it.

And it drives us to the work that we have.

It fills us, rest gives us hope of the final and full rest that is to come for all of us.

When we are with him for all eternity, when we are with Christ for all eternity.

And that motivates us now.

That hope fills us with the energy and the strength and the passion that we need to serve him now because we understand that there are people who have not yet entered that rest.

And there are people, if we will preach to them, if we will proclaim the good news to them, they will hear, they will respond, and they too will enter rest.

Yes, there are some who do not because they are disobedient, but there are those who will.

And the hope that we have should motivate us, fill us with a passion and a desire to reach those who might yet enter that rest and to share the good news with them.

That they might enter that rest.

Those things are all what makes a good Sabbath at rest.

Time to release, to review, to remember, to look forward.

What happens if you do that?

First of all, God is honored and glorified.

God is honored and glorified because you have done that which he made you to do, that which he commanded us to do, which is to rest.

So God is always honored and glorified when we do that which he has commanded us, right?

You also end up with a grateful pastor who returns to his calling and will do so with renewed vigor, insight, appreciation, humility, and understanding.

I want to just take a minute and tell you a little bit of my own story about sabbatical.

I came, so you say you gave me my ministry history.

Actually, there was an extra three years in there that was outside the free church.

I was three years in as an associate pastor, then I was 12 years in Mott as the pastor there, so that's 15 years, then I was five years in Minnesota, so 20 years, and I had never had a sabbatical.

I had never taken a break, I had never heeded any of this.

And there came a point to a in the fall of the year, right?

The fall of the year is a time when things are ramping up at church, right?

You're looking forward with excitement to all of the things that are coming.

You're launching, Sunday school's coming back, and new groups are launching, and new things are starting, and new sermon series are getting going.

All of those things are happening, and you're really excited about this kind of excitement of the new year, kind of the new beginning of the church year.

And my response to looking at all of those things was, meh, I didn't care.

There was no excitement.

I was just flat.

And that's when I realized something is wrong.

Something is off.

And so I went and I began to talk with my elders about that and share with them what was going on.

And we began to plan and prepare.

They said, How long have you ever had a sabbatic?

Nope, 20 years, never had one.

You need one like now.

And so I began to plan for that.

And we did these things.

Had time to release.

Celebrate and release from bondage and just rest from work.

My experience was that if you've ever had the day when you've been having a project, maybe you had it this weekend or Memorial Day weekend, uh, where you've been working and working and working and working, and finally you come in at the end of the day and you sit down, and you didn't really realize how tired you were until you finally stopped.

That was my experience my first week on sabbatical.

Just that exhaustion kind of hit me in a wave.

So I released to celebrate my release from bondage.

And I took time to review.

I actually engaged a coach, a professional coach, to help me think through that.

How was I using the freedom that I had been given?

How was I being effective?

Where was I being ineffective?

How could I do it better?

I actually engaged someone to help walk through that with me, to take that time to review.

Took some time to remember as well.

I was at that point working on my doctorate.

Um, sometime I'll talk to you about that, but my doctorate was actually working on writing my dad's biography.

I said it's an interesting doctorate.

My dad was a military chaplain for 20 years and then civilian pastor for 25 years, and I wrote about the transition between the two and about his life and about his ministry.

So I went back and I visited all the churches where he had served as a civilian pastor and got to interview people there about what God had done through his ministry.

Great way to remember and hear about all of the things that God had done.

It was part of that.

By the way, they do tell you I wasn't really actually writing, I was just taking notes and gathering information and meeting.

I didn't wasn't actually working and writing the paper.

They do tell you it doesn't really count if you go to write a book on your sabbatical.

That's not really what you're supposed to do.

Jason, I hope you're listening.

Um take time to rest.

And then look forward.

And out of all of those things, and as I began to look at that and really be refreshed and renewed, I did.

I was so full of excitement to get back to the work.

Probably the last two weeks of that sabbatical, I was so pumped to get back to preaching and get back to my congregation and get back to that work and all the things that God had shown me about the things that I have been doing that were maybe unfruitful in my life and ways that we could be more fruitful, that I could be more fruitful, and the way that our church, maybe things have been done that were unfruitful, and new things that wanted to lead us into greatest, to greater fruitfulness as a church.

And I wanted to get back and share them, and I was so excited to come back and share this things I learned on my sabbatical message.

It's been two weeks working on it, and I was so excited to preach it, and I got back and I delivered that message, and I walked out the back of the church and was standing in the foyer, and a lady came up to me and looked at me and said, Pastor, did you start taking antidepressants on your sabbatical?

The answer is no.

But that's the change that my people saw in me.

They had seen the weariness and the fatigue.

And coming back from it, they saw what God had done.

The benefits of doing those things, of following a sabbatical and doing the kinds of things that God calls us to do.

The grateful pastor who returns to God's calling to do so with renewed vigor and insight and appreciation and humility and understanding, and also probably an even more appreciative pastor's wife.

Do you think if the church saw that, what do you think my family saw in me with that renewal and that refreshment?

And lastly, sabbaticals offer a chance for churches to trust in God and grow and using their own gifts and talents.

It's a reminder that the church isn't the pastor, it's all of you doing the work of the ministry.

So often in the world today, we hire pastors and we put it all on them to go do the stuff, and we just show up and get fed on Sundays.

No, the work of the church is the work of everybody.

And it's a good time to be reminded of that.

The last thing I would say is this it is very, very important for pastors to have sabbaticals, because that's the biblical rhythm.

It's what we were created for.

And to do the kind of demanding work that we are called to, and to do it without suffering a great detriment to us, we cannot, we must engage in what God has given us, which is to be called to seasons of rest, of intentional renewal, and to engage in those things.

But we do that as setting a pattern because sabbatical, Sabbath rest is not just for pastors.

Everything I have said applies to every one of you.

That command about a Sabbath rest, that's everyone in the household.

It's every one of you.

And I'm not talking about some legalistic thing, maybe from days gone by when about what you can and cannot do and how far you can walk or not walk.

I am talking about every person who is a follower of Jesus Christ, every person who is a believer in God and an adherent to his word should be taking regular time in their life to practice Sabbath rest.

God is honored by it.

That you would all take time to have Sabbath rest in your life, time to release and celebrate release from bondage.

Time to review what you are doing with that freedom, time to remember all the amazing things that God has done and done in your life.

And time to look forward, to be energized by the hope that we have and to re-engage in ministry in a more fruitful way.

That ought to happen all the time for all of us, every one of you.

So as Jason is off celebrating and doing his sabbatical and doing that refreshment, I want you to think about your own lives.

Where is Sabbath in your life?

How are you practicing rest in your life?

Where are you taking time to release, review, remember, and look forward?

Because we are all called the Sabbath to rest.

You pray with me.

Father, we thank you for creating us to rest.

Not to work ever harder, ever faster, but to rest in you.

To have those seasons of renewal and refreshment.

And I pray for everyone here that they would know those moments, that they would be blessed by you in them.

That they would be blessed in ways that would make them ever more fruitful for you.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

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