Worshiping by Sabbath Rest in a Culture of Busyness & Exhaustion

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Good morning.

My name is August Verne, and I am one of your deacons with a nice little orange name tag.

Today we have two scripture readings, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament.

Today's scripture reading is Psalm 92 and Hebrews 4, verses 9 and 10, as printed in your liturgy.

Hebrews 4:9

A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day.

It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High,

proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night to the music of the tin-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp.

For you make me glad by your deeds, Lord.

I sing for joy at what your hands have done.

How great are your works, Lord!

How profound your thoughts!

Since those people do not know, fools do not understand,

that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be destroyed forever.

But you, Lord, are forever exalted.

For surely your enemies, Lord, surely your enemies will perish.

All evildoers will be scattered.

You have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox.

Fine oils have been poured on me.

My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries.

My ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree.

They will grow like a cedar of Lebanon.

Planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit in old age.

They will stay fresh and green, proclaiming,

The Lord is upright.

He is my rock, and there is no wickedness in him.

The grass withers and the flowers fall.

But the word of our God stands forever.

The New Testament lesson.

A reading from the letter to the Hebrews.

There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Good morning, Christ Church.

I would like to begin today with a simple question.

And the simple question is this.

What is good?

What is good?

We all want something good, but ideas of what is good vary widely, do they not?

Many think that it would be good to gain wealth and possessions, what we often call goods, after all.

Some seek good in fitness and in health, and others in exotic travel.

For some, all the good that they want is bound up in the care and enjoyment of family.

Others concentrate on the good of education or the acquisition of some useful skill.

Some pursue the good in the arts.

Others find good in the excitement of watching sports, especially if you're a Dodgers fan right now, for example.

Some think it good to award themselves with a really good time by indulging, overindulging, binging on alcohol or something harmful like Netflix, for example.

There are so many different views of what is good.

So what do you think?

Here we are, this election, right, is eight days away, and the polls indicate that half of the nation thinks that this blue option is good.

And the other half of the nation thinks that this red option is good.

And how the opposition's vision of the good affects us is quite intense right now.

Some of us are anxious.

Some of us are depressed and cynical.

Some of us are exhausted.

And by the way, the church's mission is going to be the same the day after the election as it is right now, right?

Jesus is still going to be calling us to be the salt of the earth that resists decay, the light of the world that penetrates the darkness.

But coming back to Psalm 92, it is good to blank.

How will that sentence continue?

How will we fill in that blank?

Psalm 92 commends as really, really good something we haven't even mentioned yet.

It is good to what?

It is good to praise the Lord.

And praising the Lord is good all the time, but it's good especially on the Sabbath day.

Notice that superscript.

It says a psalm, a song for the Sabbath day.

This is the only reference to the Sabbath day in the whole Psalter.

And that Hebrew word Sabbath, it simply means stop, quit, take a break, rest.

To us, that word rest conveys inactivity.

It conveys vegging out in our sweatpants on the couch.

But the main way that the biblical Sabbath day renews our strength and our joy is through the highest of all goods,

which is worship and praising the Lord.

The command to keep the Sabbath, it's actually one of the most repeated of all of God's commands in the scriptures.

And yet it's also one of the most ignored in our culture.

And part of the reason I think that there's so much exhaustion and so much burnout right now in our culture

is that when we love and when we serve and when we praise anything more than God as if it were a greater good than God,

it becomes an idol that then saps our energy and our strength and our vitality.

Right?

Because idols are never satisfied.

The idol of career and status and success and relationships.

The idols of money and sex and power.

They promise more than they deliver.

They take more than they give.

And this Sabbath song of Psalm 92, it holds before us this conviction that it is good to praise the Lord and to praise the Lord alone.

It's good to worship the true God of perfect love.

This is the only good that actually holds the power to restore us and to reinvigorate us.

And so today we're continuing to talk about these holy habits of grace.

And I want to talk about this holy habit of the Sabbath.

And I want to ask these three questions.

Why did God give us the Sabbath?

How do we celebrate the Sabbath?

And what does God do in us through the Sabbath?

Why did God give us the Sabbath?

How do we celebrate the Sabbath?

And what does God do in us through the Sabbath?

First of all, why did God give us the Sabbath?

Verse 1 says, it is good to praise the Lord.

And then verse 4 says, you make me glad by your deeds, Lord.

So the Sabbath is about the goodness and the gladness of a life that is centered on the Lord, on who he is and what he has done.

Why did God give us the Sabbath day?

So that we could experience his goodness and his gladness.

And this takes us all the way back really to pages 1 and 2 of the Bible.

There in Genesis 1, it says that God said, let there be light.

And bang, there was light.

And then there's this poetic image of God as a worker laboring for six days to build his creation.

And then what does he do on that seventh day?

Genesis chapter 2 says this, thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

And by the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing.

So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work.

And then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

Because on it, he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

You see, the Sabbath day was created in the beginning.

Before sin came into the world.

It was created when Adam and Eve were without sin in the Garden of Eden.

And why did God rest on that seventh day of creation?

Well, it wasn't because God needed rest.

God is God.

God has eternal, unceasing life in himself.

God does not get tired.

He does not get exhausted.

He does not get overworked and burned out.

God did not take a Sabbath because he needed rest.

He took a Sabbath because we needed rest.

And this is why Jesus says three times in the Gospels that the Sabbath was made for people.

The Sabbath was made for people.

Again, that Hebrew word Shabbat, it means to stop.

But it also has this sense of delight.

If this 24-hour, one-day-and-seven Sabbath was created for Adam and Eve to experience not only rest,

but also delight and refreshment in the presence of God before sin came into the world,

how much more do we need the Sabbath?

Why did Jesus, the Son of God, build into his life this rhythm of an entire day to stop and delight in God once a week?

It's because God built the Sabbath into the grain of the universe.

And if you go against the grain of the universe, guess what's going to happen?

You're going to get splinters.

Jesus read Genesis 1 and 2.

And when he read Genesis 1 and 2, he saw that God blessed three spheres of his creation.

First of all, he saw that God blessed the animal kingdom and said,

Be fruitful and multiply.

And then God blessed the human family and said,

Be fruitful and multiply.

And then what did he bless next?

He blessed the Sabbath day and he meant it as something to be fruitful and to give us life.

God means the Sabbath to fill up his world with more and more of his life.

He not only blessed the Sabbath day, Genesis says, but he made the Sabbath day holy,

which means he set it apart.

He consecrated it as a time for us to linger with him and luxuriate in his holy presence

so that we are saturated with him and that we're saturated with his vision of life.

We're saturated with a sense of his holy will for our lives and for his world.

So why did Jesus himself practice the Sabbath?

Because he saw it as a gift of God that's both blessed and holy.

You with me?

More than that, the Sabbath is one of God's ten commandments.

You know, in Exodus 20, Israel, they've been liberated from their soul-crushing bondage in Egypt.

And therefore, God gives them this manifesto of how to live as free people.

And he gives it to them on tablets of stone, right, written with the very finger of God,

like kind of a big deal.

And the Sabbath command that comes in all these ten commands,

it's way longer than all the rest of the commands.

If you took all the ten commandments and you put them in a pie chart,

the Sabbath command would take up about 30% of that pie chart.

If this is God's priority list, the Sabbath ranks two commands before thou shalt not murder.

It's kind of important.

And here's what it says in Exodus 20.

Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy.

The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

And to the Lord your God means that it's a day of worship.

It's a day of whole life orientation toward God.

It's a day to experience what Psalm 92 calls the goodness and the gladness of God.

You know, 40 years later, 40 years after Mount Sinai, Exodus 20,

Moses reissues the ten commandments for the next generation

before they're about to enter into the promised land.

And it says this in Deuteronomy 5.

It says,

Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

And then it says this,

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt

and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand

and an outstretched arm.

So in Exodus, the Sabbath command is grounded in the creation story

and the rhythm that the Creator God built not only into the universe

but into our very bodies.

And then in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath command is grounded in the redemption story.

It's grounded in Israel's liberation from slavery

into a freedom that they now have to worship their gracious Redeemer God.

So here's a once-a-week celebration of all that is good in God,

our Creator and Redeemer.

Fast forward, after Jesus' resurrection from the dead on Sunday morning,

the early church moved their day of worship to the first day of the week

and they started to call it the Lord's Day.

And so if you read the New Testament, you read the book of Acts,

the letters of the New Testament,

every time the resurrected Jesus meets with His disciples

as they are publicly assembled,

guess what day it is?

It's Sunday.

It's the day of resurrection.

So from that first Sabbath day in the Garden of Eden

all the way to the empty tomb of Jesus on Easter Sunday,

all the way to that day when Jesus finally returns in His glory,

God has always intended His people to stop,

to rest,

to breathe,

to delight,

to celebrate,

to worship our Creator,

to praise our Redeemer,

and to allow this 24-hour period,

one day a week,

to fill us with His eternal and abundant life.

And this is why Psalm 92 says,

it is good to praise the Lord,

especially on the Sabbath day.

Do you share in this conviction?

And more than that,

does your calendar line up with this conviction?

Might this holy habit of grace be just what our exhausted bodies

and our burned-out souls really need here

as we come to the end of 2024?

Why did God give us the Sabbath?

But here's the next question.

How do we celebrate the Sabbath?

How do we celebrate the Sabbath?

That opening word, good, in verse 1,

is rich in meaning.

It means beautiful.

It means desirable.

It means pleasing and life-giving.

So this psalm opens,

and it doesn't say,

you are commanded to praise the Lord.

It does not say,

you should praise the Lord.

You ought to praise the Lord.

You must praise the Lord.

What does it say?

It is good to praise the Lord.

The public gatherings of God's people for worship,

one day in seven,

are a sheer delight to the psalmist.

It's not just a regularly ingrained habit

or a faithful duty.

No, he positively delights in it

and takes pleasure in it.

He longs for it.

He looks forward to it.

It is so, so, so good.

As we heard in Psalm 122 last week,

I rejoiced when they said to me,

let us go to the house of the Lord.

He brings with him to the Sabbath day

a certain attitude,

a certain cast of mind and spirit,

and it's one of delight,

and it's one of rejoicing.

It's one of celebration.

And what are the features of this Sabbath worship?

Well, look with me at verse one.

It says,

it is good to praise the Lord

and to make music to your name, O Most High,

proclaiming your love in the morning

and your faithfulness at night

to the music of the tin-stringed lyre

and the melody of the harp.

What this tells us is that Sabbath worship,

it's not an individual thing.

It's a collective, corporate,

gathered assembly of people,

and it's also not a passive thing.

It's not a passive audience

coming to watch a performance.

It's rather an active congregation

of engaged participants.

And what are they doing?

With the help of some instruments,

the people of God are making music.

They're keeping time.

They're singing melodies of praise.

And it's not just one in four people singing.

It's all the people proclaiming

to God and to each other

through psalms and hymns

and spiritual songs

who God is.

And who is God?

God is the Most High.

God is sovereign and supreme.

God is glorious and praiseworthy.

God's name is above every other name.

And so Sabbath worship is about praising God

as higher and greater and lovelier

than anything and anyone else.

And what is the focus then of our praise

and our proclamation on the Sabbath day?

Well, verse two says this.

It says,

We proclaim your love in the morning

and your faithfulness at night.

This is what we're meant to give our time

and attention to

from the beginning of the day

to the very end of the day

is to focus on God's character

and on His attributes.

And this isn't the general love

of the Creator God for His creatures.

That's not the love that's being talked about here.

This is the special and particular love

that the Redeemer God has

for His chosen people.

This is His covenant love.

This is His sworn loyalty

to be our God

to the point ultimately

of shedding His blood

and giving His life.

That's how much He loves us.

Listen to verse four.

It says,

For you make me glad by your deeds, Lord.

I sing for joy

at what your hands have done.

Now, a less tame translation says this.

I shout cries of joy

for the works of your hands.

And my mentor, Bruce Walkie,

comments on this verse.

He says,

It's like shouting for a sports hero

in a stadium.

Right?

Like Freddie Freeman's

walk-off Grand Slam the other night.

It's like shouting like that.

Any of you spontaneously rejoice

when you saw Steph Curry

in the Olympic finals this summer?

I mean, wasn't that unbelievable?

And the psalmist would say,

You know,

what if we had more joy

and more awe

at what the Lord's hands have done

than what Steph Curry's hands can do?

Or what any human hands can accomplish?

See, why do we rejoice

with shouts of joy on the Sabbath?

Or why do some churches

rejoice with shouts of joy

on the Sabbath?

Verse 4,

For you make me glad

by your deeds, Lord.

I sing for joy

at what your hands have done.

How great are your works, Lord.

How profound your thoughts.

The psalmist has in mind

the saving deeds

of the Lord in the Exodus,

the wonderful works of redemption

from bondage in Egypt

to freedom in the promised land.

And friends,

we have so much more

to rejoice over

because we've seen

the saving deeds

and the wonderful works

of the Lord

in His Son, Jesus Christ.

How He's taken us

out of our bondage

and He's given us

His freedom.

We've seen how the Father

sent His Son

from heaven to earth.

We've seen how Jesus

took on human nature

so He could represent us.

We saw how Jesus

embodied and demonstrated

the Father's covenant love

and His sworn loyalty

by volunteering His hands

for the nails of that cross.

We saw how Jesus

put Himself there

in our place

to be punished for our sins

and to die our death.

And we saw how He was raised

to life

so that He could give us

new life.

And when we see

the costly love

of Jesus on His cross,

we can't help but cry out,

You make me glad

by Your deeds, Lord.

I shout with cries of joy

at what Your nail-pierced hands

have done for me.

You with me?

So, I just want to give

a little bit of practical,

down-to-earth,

nitty-gritty pastoral application

and some guidance

to help you put

this holy practice,

this holy habit of grace

into practice

on a weekly

and not every other weekly

or monthly basis.

You ready for some guidance?

You're not ready.

I can tell.

I can tell.

Here's the first thing.

Prepare for the Sabbath

on Saturday morning

and afternoon.

Get your laundry washed,

your bills paid,

wrap up that work project,

finish your homework,

do the grocery shopping,

work through your to-do list.

Our Friday newsletter

that we send out every week

has a link at the very bottom.

It says,

Songs for this Sunday.

It takes you to a YouTube

or a Spotify playlist

and you can listen to that

while you work

so that you can know

the songs we're going to sing

here on Sunday morning.

Secondly,

begin your Sabbath

on Saturday at sundown

and mark the moment.

Light a candle.

Pray a psalm.

Ask the Holy Spirit

to come and fill you

and fill that time.

Enjoy dinner with your family

and your friends.

Go on a walk.

Have dessert.

Drink tea.

Stop.

Number three,

take a 24-hour break

from your technology.

Ooh.

Turn off your screens.

Power down your devices.

Put them in a box

and stow them in a closet.

Create an out-of-office message

that says,

I will respond to emails

on Sunday night

and just drink deeply

of an unplugged human life.

Amen?

Number four,

prepare for worship.

So,

after you've put yourself to bed

early on Saturday night

and given yourself

the opportunity

to get really good sleep

and woken up

and had that delicious

and big breakfast

to last you through

about 1 o'clock

or 1.30

on Sunday afternoon,

I want you just to pray

on Sunday morning,

whether that's at home

or here in our boiler room

because how many of us

go and work out

without warming up?

What happens

when we work out

without warming up?

Bad things happen.

Bad things.

Your Achilles starts to act up

and you've got to go

to physical therapy, right?

So,

why wouldn't we warm up

for worship?

Number five,

arrive early

and stay late

and here's the deal.

If you come 15 minutes earlier

than you normally do,

you will be here,

some of you will be here

to welcome the newcomers

who get here at 10.15

and some of you

will be here at 10.30

when we start.

Every week.

Our coffee hour afterwards,

our monthly lunches,

those are times

to build up the joints

and the ligaments

and the connective tissues

of the body of Christ.

Our classes are times

for us to have shared vision

and values,

shared life and language,

so pack a lunch

if you need to.

Number six,

pursue one another's good.

The Gospels tell us

that Jesus fed people

and he healed people

on the Sabbath day.

So,

invite someone to lunch

and allow God

to minister through you

to their loneliness

and to their burdens

that you have no idea

they're carrying

into this place.

Number seven,

this is really important,

take a nap.

Go on a walk.

Enjoy the fact

that salvation

has been finished

in Jesus Christ.

Enjoy the fact

that the Holy Spirit

has set you free.

Here's number eight.

Make a plan

for Sunday evening

because the Psalm says

we proclaim your love

in the morning

and your faithfulness

at night.

The whole day

belongs to God.

It's not Sabbath morning

and then the rest of the day

you just do whatever you like.

It's not the Lord's hour,

it's the Lord's day.

So,

I think all of us

would do well

to ask this question,

how can I live

on the Sabbath day

the way that I want

to live all the other

six days of the week

from morning to night?

And maybe for you

that's just sitting down

at the dinner table

and opening the Bible,

maybe reviewing

what you heard about

in the sermon

of the lesson that day.

Sing a hymn,

pray about the week ahead,

pray for all the people

you're going to have

conversations with,

pray that God

would give you guidance

that through you

God's blessing would flow

into the lives

of other people.

Psalm 92 says

that the Sabbath

is a whole day

for the goodness

of praising the Lord

and the gladness

of His saving deeds.

Some of you complain

that I'm not practical enough

and I'm trying to remedy

that in this series

by just getting

super down to earth

and I hope that's

helpful for you.

Why did God

give us the Sabbath?

How do we actually

celebrate the Sabbath?

But then the last thing

I want to look at

is what does God do

in us through the Sabbath?

What does God do

in us through the Sabbath?

And here's verse 6.

See what the Sabbath day

does is it enables us

to gain perspective.

The Sabbath day

enables us to rise above

the mess and the muddle

of our week.

It enables us to rise above

all those limited,

finite, fallible,

and temporary perspectives

of all the people

around us

in order to come

and gain God's perspective

on human life

and human history.

The psalmist says,

left to ourselves,

we are senseless

and foolish.

Left to ourselves,

we just don't know

and we don't have understanding.

Understanding about what?

Well, he says,

think about the seasons.

The climate in Israel

is basically like the climate

in Northern California.

And he says,

you know,

think about those winter rains.

Think about how the hills

spring up

and they flourish

with lush green grass.

And remember that God

allows that to happen.

He allows people to flourish

who actually are centering

their lives on themselves.

People who are centering

their whole life,

organizing all their time

around their desires

and their agendas.

God is so kind

and he's so patient

that he allows people

who neglect him

and who ignore him.

He allows people

who live apart from him.

He allows people

who think to themselves,

it is good to do

almost anything

but praise the Lord.

God allows them

to flourish

like the green grass.

But of course,

that's not the whole story,

is it?

Because the green grass

grows from

about November to May.

and then what starts

to happen?

And then the sun

starts to scorch the grass

and wither the grass.

It turns the grass golden

and brown

and lifeless.

And you see,

the Sabbath day

gives us God's perspective

of how to distinguish

between flourishing now

and ruin later.

How does the psalmist

describe this for us?

He says in verse 8,

but you, Lord,

are forever exalted

for surely your enemies, Lord,

surely your enemies

will perish.

All evildoers

will be scattered.

You see,

if the Lord

is the exalted one,

if he's the most high,

if he's sovereign

and supreme,

if he's utterly just

and righteous,

and if people

neglect him

and ignore him,

if people live apart

from him

as if they're their own makers

and their own judges

and their own lords.

That green grass

that God is allowing

to flourish now,

it's very soon

going to face the reality

that without a relationship

with the living God,

without his divine life,

without his eternal life

in you,

you just can't stay

green forever.

You're going to dry up.

You're going to wither.

You're going to become lifeless.

You're going to become

like chaff

that the wind blows away.

And you see,

it's only as we give ourselves

to the Sabbath worship

of God

that he enables us

to see

that temporary prosperity

is very often

just a prelude

to perishing,

but that it's

eternal flourishing

that ultimately matters

in the end.

And what is it

that brings about

eternal flourishing?

Well, in verse 8,

there's this very subtle shift

in the speaker.

And we kind of have

to ask ourselves,

like, who is speaking here?

And who it is,

this is actually

God's anointed king,

and he's speaking

to the Lord,

and the anointed king

is saying to the Lord,

he says,

Lord, you are forever exalted.

Lord, your enemies

are going to perish.

And then what does

the king declare?

He says in verse 10,

you have exalted my horn

like that of a wild ox.

Fine oils have been

poured on me.

My eyes have seen

the defeat of my adversaries.

My ears have heard

the rout of my wicked foes.

This is a king

who's talking enthusiastically

about the victory

that God has given him.

The ox is a symbol

of fierce strength.

The horn,

a symbol of power

and honor.

The oil,

a symbol of anointing.

All of these are signs

of a royal victory.

And of course,

Christians can't help

but hear in this

the voice of our king,

Jesus,

speaking to the Lord

about his victory

over sin and death,

about the defeat

of his great adversary,

the devil,

about the rout

of his wicked foes,

those dark powers

and principalities

that seek to steal

and kill

and destroy

human beings.

And this is a song

for us about the victory

of this anointed king

who paradoxically wins

by being defeated.

But more than that,

this song is not just

about the victory

of the anointed king,

it's about what his victory

means for us

and for our lives.

And here it is

in verse 12.

The righteous will flourish

like a palm tree.

They will grow

like a cedar of Lebanon.

Planted in the house

of the Lord,

they will flourish

in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit

in old age.

They will stay fresh

and green,

proclaiming,

the Lord is upright.

He is my rock

and there is no wickedness

in him.

You see,

the victory of King Jesus

means that instead

of our lives

being like green grass

that just flourishes today

and perishes tomorrow,

we, by God's grace,

can be these palms

and these cedars,

these evergreen trees

in the presence of God.

The picture here

is of a new garden of Eden.

The picture here

is of an orchard

of evergreen trees

who find their nourishment

in the abundant

and never-ending source

of God himself.

Those who find

their nourishment

in God

humbly draw their strength,

their spiritual energy

from him,

they're going to flourish

like that tall

and graceful palm tree,

it says.

They're going to flourish

like that mighty

and beautiful cedar tree,

it says.

Those who say to God,

you are my rock

and no other.

You are my reliable refuge.

You are my never-failing shelter

and my savior

will be like these rooted

and stable

and long-lasting

evergreen trees

whose leaves

never wither.

Those who look

to the resurrected Jesus

as their rock,

those who look to Jesus

and say,

you are upright

and there is no wickedness

in you,

they're going to be

full of sap

and they're going to be

laden with rich foliage,

not only in their old age,

but they're going to have

endless vitality

in Jesus' new creation.

Friends,

that is the eternal perspective

that God wants to put into us

on his Sabbath day

and that is the coming reality,

that is the coming hope

that we celebrate

on the Sabbath.

And so,

I want to just end

with these words

from the prophet Isaiah.

The prophet Isaiah

says this in Isaiah 58,

if you keep your feet

from breaking the Sabbath

and from doing

as you please

on my holy day,

if you call the Sabbath

a delight

and the Lord's holy day

honorable,

and if you honor it

by not going your own way

and not doing

as you please

or speaking idle words,

then you will find

your joy in the Lord.

Then I will cause you

to ride in triumph

on the heights of the land.

And then you will feast

on the inheritance

of your father Jacob,

for the mouth of the Lord

has spoken.

In the name of the Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.