Sabbath Rest: Life Watch or Death Watch?

Welcome to the Illuminate Church podcast.

We hope today's message is encouraging to you.

Welcome to Illuminate Church. My name is Tim.

We help people find abundant life in Jesus.

If you went to life Step 1 during the 9:00 AM service,

welcome to the 11:00. We're glad you're here.

If you're watching online wherever you are, I don't know

which camera to look all of them.

We're so glad you're joining us. If you live locally, get here.

It's better in person in Jesus name Amen.

So case in point that we help people find abundant life in

Jesus is this series for I have seen I am witness to countless

of people applying the teaching of today and it absolutely

empowering their life in an abundant way.

If you will take hold of it. I am myself, our family.

A testimony of its effectiveness.

The Bible says wisdom is proved right by all its children.

Meaning if you do it, you will see the evidence.

The proof is not in the pudding. The proof is in the eating of

the pudding. You got to do it to see it.

Amen. We're talking about unrest.

Everyone say unrest in America. We need to unlearn the way that

we've learned to rest because, news flash, our rest ain't

working. Yes, Sir, the way that we as

Americans rest, and even if you're from another country,

you're here in America today, the way that we rest in America

is not working because we're anxious, we're depressed, we're

stressed out, we're burnt out. Even though we think that we

rest, we need to unlearn the way that we rest and learn God's

way. It's what we introduced last

week by introducing or maybe reintroducing the Sabbath.

Everyone say Sabbath. Last week we said that Sabbath

is the last thing that God created, but the first thing

that he made holy. Last week we said that the

Sabbath is not about recuperation, it's about

appreciation, Completely different things.

Last week we said that the Sabbath kills aloneness and the

Sabbath will make you still rested.

I used the word Sabbath so much last week, I don't think I ever

defined what a Sabbath actually is.

So for a working definition and for unity here in the mezzanine

everywhere around the world, here's what a Sabbath means.

A Sabbath is 124 hour period you set aside each week to rest from

your catch this normal work, your job, work, work that takes

life out of you and you focus on the person of God, the goodness

of God in your life, the goodness of who he is and the

goodness of what he's done for you.

It's a day set aside to the Lord.

He'd called it holy. Holy means set apart to him.

So I don't want you to think of monasticism, being a monk,

getting in your house. I mean, you can meditate, but

you don't got to do the my Father can be your father at

Domino's. You know what I'm talking about.

Not that to Sabbath means to invest in your family.

The Sabbath means to invest in yourself.

When's the last time you did a little self-care?

God cares about you. I think you'd be all right if

you did a little self-care. It could be going to the beach

on your Sabbath. It could be taking a nap that's

regenerative. It could be working in your

garden. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

He said you can't do worry. He's like, no, it's normal work,

not work that gives life. Jesus said that the Sabbath

wasn't made for man Excuse me? Jesus said the Sabbath was made

for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Meaning the Sabbath is supposed to be that which gives man life.

We don't add anything to the Sabbath.

It gives to us when we practice it.

So on the Sabbath you do things that give you life, not take

them away. Some of you, gardening takes

away life, and in fact, you take away life when you garden.

And for some of you, it gives life.

For some of you, playing golf gives life.

And for most of us, myself included, sometimes you want to

take a life while you're it's a stupid game, right?

I play it. Maybe you want to crank up the

worship. Whatever brings you life.

That is the purpose of this 24 hours dedicated to the Lord that

is born out of a gift of love God gives to us, and we return

that love to Him by honoring Him and keeping the Sabbath holy to

commune with God, to celebrate and appreciate life.

Last week we started in Exodus 20.

You don't need to turn there. If you want to start flipping,

you could go to Deuteronomy chapter 30, which is the 5th

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

book in the Bible. If you need a Bible, raise your

hand, Deuteronomy chapter 30 about.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

But while you're going there, I just want to read the fourth

commandment again, found in Exodus chapter 20 of the 10

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

commandments. Yeah, just raise your hand.

We'll bring you a Bible. Even up in the mezzanine.

We have Bibles in the mezzanine, Exodus chapter 20, God's command

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

to rest, found in the 10 commandments, the 4th

commandment. Remember the Sabbath day by

keeping it holy. Set apart six days.

You shall labor and do all your work, your normal work.

But the 7th day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God, on which

you must not do any work, neither you nor your son or

daughter, your manservant, your maidservant, livestock, chickens

and cows. No working, nor the foreigner

within your gates. For in six days the Lord made

the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

But on the 7th day He rested. Therefore, the Lord bless the

Sabbath day and set it apart as holy One of the 10 commandments.

We talked about this a lot last week.

If you missed it, please go back and watch.

But the purpose of me reciting it again today is to tell you

that this is a command, not a suggestion.

You know the difference, right? Well, you might want to try

this, or you absolutely have to do this.

A big difference. It's not a suggestion, it is a

command. We talked about it a little bit

last. I want to reinforce it.

But when God speaks, it's for our benefit.

His words, his commands are for our benefit.

Our family had the opportunity to go to Costa Rica a few years

ago. And there we went, rappelling

and zip lining through the rainforest to Costa Rica.

And you go and you, they put you in this little Hut and they put

the harness on you. And there's like a pole there.

And the guys like hanging off the pole like this is what we're

going to do. And you're just getting there

and you're kind of fidgeting with your harness.

It feels weird. Your kids are like fidgeting

around. You're, you're looking at

everything. There's lots of things to look

at. He's talking and they're like,

all right, let's start. And you go walking down the path

and you get to the end of the path and you stand on the edge

of a Cliff that is 110 stories, 100 feet, 10 store, 100 feet

down. I'm reliving into my spirit.

It looks terrifying when you're at the top ten stories straight

down. There's a giant waterfall here.

You, you repel right next to it. You get all wet from the

waterfall, right? The first person to go is Eli.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I don't remember how old

you were. You lay back then like 10, he

says. Well, he was.

They deemed him too small to repel.

So they literally like you're first hooked him up to the rope

and they went like this. Shoop just held him over the

edge and he's sitting there like a little cannonball.

And then he just, he just went down.

He didn't touch the wall. They just dropped him.

And so all he sees his little body go bye, bye.

And then you get up to the edge and you feel like this little

baby feels right now and your legs are shaking like this.

And you're looking over the edge and they're like, lean back,

hold the rope, right? And it's at this moment that you

realize I should have paid more attention to the instructions

because these were not suggestions.

These were commands. Follow them and you will have a

nice bouncy time down the wall, a little bit wet.

You get to the end. Christine and I were like, we're

laughing and crying. I'm not sure if I'm happy to be

done or happy that it happened, right?

That's how you feel. Or if you don't follow the

instructions, you kind of just like body scrape the entire way

down, heads banging, right? Or worse.

They're not suggestions. They're commands meant to give

us life. The Sabbath is a command meant

to give us life. Amen.

Deuteronomy 30. I told you to turn there.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Joshua is taking over the

leadership of God's people from Moses.

Moses sinned while the people were heading from Egypt to the

Promised land. And therefore God said, hey,

Moses, you're going to go up on a mountain and see the promised

land, but you're not actually going to go in.

Joshua is going to take them in. And in Deuteronomy, especially

here near the end, God is reminding Joshua and all the

people, this is what I'm giving you, the commands of God, so

that as you enter the promised land, you will live and honor

me. And therefore all the other

nations will see you are blessed and they will stream to me and

they themselves will be blessed and nation after nation will

follow Israel into the glory of God.

That's the idea. Humanity, we messed it up a

little bit, a lot bit. But Deuteronomy 30, listen to

how the Lord characterizes this. This is God speaking to his

people. Now verse 11, sorry.

Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 11.

Deuteronomy 30:11

Now what I, the Lord God and commanding you, the people today

is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.

It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask who will ascend

into heaven to get and proclaim it to us, so that we may obey

it. Nor is it beyond the sea, so

that you have to ask who will cross the sea to get it and

proclaim it to us so that we may obey it.

No, the word of God is very near you.

It's in your mouth, it's in your heart, so you may obey it.

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, or death and

destruction, verse 16. For I command you today to love

the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, and to keep

His commands, decrees, and laws. Then you will live and increase,

and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you were

entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and

you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to

other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you

will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the

land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess this day.

I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you.

Here he goes again. He's making the offer I have set

before you. Life and death, blessings and

curses. Underline these words in your

Bible. Now choose life so that you and

your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God.

Listen to His voice and hold fast to Him, for the Lord is

your life, and He will give you many years.

And the land He swore to give to your father's Abraham, Isaac and

Jacob. God is saying to His people,

this concept is easy to understand.

You do not need to be a Pope, a priest, a seminary graduate,

APHDA pastor. Did all those begin with Pi?

Hope so, because pastors just love that.

I mean, that's awesome. You don't have to be any of that

to understand what God is laying out here.

And here's what he's laying out. You have a choice.

Here's a choice, obey or not, and here's what's at stake.

Life and death. You choose which path, which

route you want to go. Here's another way to think of

it. Today.

I don't know how many of you still wear watches, but if I

were to tell you to look at your watch, most of us would look at

an empty wrist because our watch now lives in our pocket.

But go ahead, it's 1148. Look at your watch.

What do you see? Don't answer aloud.

Just what do you see? Do you see numbers and digits in

the hands of the clock moving? Do you see the the time?

I think the better question of what I'm trying to drill down

here is like, what do you perceive when you look at

something that keeps time? A clock, a watch, a calendar

even? Do you feel like this is the day

the Lord has made our rejoice in it?

What do you feel like? Oh my gosh, time is slipping

away quickly. I got to get to the next thing

the To Do List is screaming at Lee I this day is going to be

over before I know it. I want to introduce to you 2

watches. The first watch is the life

watch and the second is the death watch.

And just as the Lord has told us in Deuteronomy 30, you get to

decide which one you wear. But I will tell you, you're

already wearing one sitting here today, but you still get to

decide today which one you'll wear.

You can make a different choice if you'd like.

The death watch is called chronos.

Everyone say chronos. Chronos, this is a Greek word,

it's in the Bible. I'll read it to you in a second,

but it's where we get the word chronological or chronology.

It's dates on a calendar. It's a period of time.

It's hours, minutes, days, seconds, all those things.

John chapter 5, verse six, one man there had been an invalid

John 5 · chapter mention

for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there

and realized that he had spent a long Chronos period of time

measured time in this condition, he asked him, do you want to get

well? 38 years of Chronos Cronos's

time passing by, a span of time. I said it's just a second ago.

It's time measured, time marching on, time running out.

It's the feeling that parents get when they look at their kids

and say you're growing up too fast and they want to just keep

their kid as an 8 year old forever.

Don't ever grow up. Please don't grow up.

It's the feeling of, I don't know if you ever had this

feeling. I get it a lot lately.

You look in the mirror and you say I feel a lot younger than

the guy staring back at me. Can I get a witness from all my

friends of around my age? I don't look that old, do I?

Because my beard really white, is it?

No, it's not liars. Eventually it's Kronos that

catches up to us and gives us this dread of the day that we

will cease to live. Kronos, this threat, always that

time is running out. This season's running out.

I got to hurry on to the next thing.

It's going too fast. Kronos.

Kronos can be terrifying. It's certainly not restful.

It's stressful. That's the death watch.

The life watch is another Greek word found in the Bible.

It's Kairos. Everyone say Kairos.

Kairos is a moment or a series of moment.

It's an experience or a series of experience.

If you look in Mark chapter 1, it says the Kairos has come, the

Mark 1 · chapter mention

Kingdom of God has come near repent and believe the good

news. He's not saying it's eight O 4

that time has arrived 8 O 4:00 PM He's saying this moment that

we have been waiting for has finally arrived.

The intersection of what God was doing in the history of the

earth has collided in this Kairos, this moment.

Mark chapter 13. But about that day or hour, no

Mark 13 · chapter mention

one knows, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only

the Father. Be on guard, be alert.

You do not know when that Kairos will come.

That moment Kairos literally translated biblically, means

time as opportunity. When you look at your watch, do

you think of that? Like, look at all the

opportunity? It's valuing what's happening

right here and right now. It's appreciating each scene and

season of life, the good ones and the hard ones, the young

ones and the old ones, the strong ones and the feeble ones.

The, excuse me, the Kronos person would say, Oh my

goodness, I only have X amount of days, years left to live, 45

years. Would the Kairos person say

then, wow, I still have 45 years left to live?

No, because the Kairos person would say, I'm just living for

what's happening right now. Now be careful here because you

can think about poor planning and poor stewardship and I'm

just living for the moment. That's not what I mean.

God is a planner. You should be a planner.

God is a steward. You should be a steward.

You should think about what's ahead, but you shouldn't fret

about what's ahead because I am receiving this moment as the

divine appointed opportunity that God has given me and I'm

going to live it right here, right now and that tomorrow

worry about itself, right? But it only comes from a rested

person, not a chrono stressed death watch person, a life watch

person. Mark Buchanan wrote a book

called The Rest of God and he teaches this concept in there

The life watch, the death watch, Kronos and Kairos.

And he says Kronos is time we waste and Kairos is time we

cease. Which watch do you have on

today? Whereas Kronos dreads that time

is moving along, stresses us out, makes us seize up in

seasons, Kairos is appreciating each moment as a divine gift

from God. Sovereignly, God is growing us

and moving us from one season to the next, and we should

appreciate each season as He moves us through life.

I have two dear friends and they've been married almost 40

years. And in their discussions that

you, you, I don't know if you all have this discussions, you

that have been married long, but you look in the mirror and like,

wow, we ain't what we used to be.

Things are wobbling that didn't used to wobble.

You know, things that didn't used to hurt, hurt.

And what are these caverns on my face wrinkles.

Look, we're getting old. And then they continue the

conversation and this is what came out of it.

One of the most beautiful things I've ever heard personally, they

said to each other. But when we got married, wasn't

that the goal? Let it sink in for a minute.

When we were just young pups holding hands in front of God,

in front of our our friends, and we said till death do us part.

Wasn't that the goal that we would grow up, that we would

age, that we would get Gray hair or no hair or whatever, Right.

And this is to some it's sad, but to me it's beautiful.

And I often say it to people who are I'm about to marry.

I'm like, listen, the goal is that one day one of you ushers

the other into the arms of the father.

You will die married to one another.

It's not somber. If you're living Kairos.

Time is opportunity. It's horrifying and sad if

you're in Kronos. We're running out of time.

This is all we got. We listen.

He's sovereign. We're trusting him.

We're resting him. The goal is to grow old and one

of us will die married to the other.

That's the goal. That's Kairos.

And you can apply this to many areas of your life.

Neo in the movie The Matrix, which is also Luke Skywalker in

Star Wars and Harry Potter and Harry Potter.

It's the same story, just different scenes.

Fight me. OK?

It's the same story, is it not? Saviour.

You're the saviour. It's Neo.

No, it's Luke Skywalker. No, it's Harry Potter.

OK. And they all have a OK actually,

does Neo have Neo does? Anyway, who gets.

I digress as often I do. Neo hears.

His mentor Morpheus say all I'm offering you is the truth.

What's the truth? Well, The Matrix, if you're not

familiar with the movie, is about two realities.

One's actually not a reality. It's a fake reality that's

propped up by AI and computers and people behind the scene

making a fake reality so that all the people live peacefully

without knowing the real truth, that there's a massive war

brewing between good and evil behind the scenes and so they

live in this ignorance. Ignorance is bliss.

Just go to work, make the money, come home, there's family,

whatever, but there's this real war waging that is unseen.

The reality is this unseen world that Neo now has an opportunity

to live in this truth or go back to being ignorance.

If you remember the movie, he offers him 2 pills, a blue pill

and a red pill. The blue pill is stay in

ignorance. It's the death watch.

Stay right here in this false reality.

For Americans, I can speak, it means basically live the rat

race. That's our reality.

You're born, you go to school, then a few things might happen,

college, career, marriage, children, all of these

opportunities. Then basically taxes and death.

That's the schedule. Live according to the schedule

and then rinse and repeat for generations.

That's Kronos. It's a false reality.

It's the blue pill. It's the death watch.

Kairos is the red pill where revelation comes and we see time

as opportunity, meaning that every moment is a redeemed gift

from God. It can be if you take the red

pill, put on the life watch, and every moment, every season is a

divine interaction of what God has intended.

If we put on the life watch, the question is how do we put it on?

I wonder the same thing. I'll tell you this before I move

on. Just another example.

When Owen, our oldest son, who will turn 23 on May 14th, so in

what, 10 days? Yeah, exactly.

I'll tell them. I remember he he went to high

school 720 days, four, 180 days of school year.

I really only remember the first day.

All the rest of them are a blur. Right.

But the first day he gets up, he's so tiny back then had to

hit his growth spurt yet, and he's going into this school of

2500 demons. I'm kidding, but as a parent,

you're like clenching. I make him breakfast.

It's early in the morning. It's dark outside.

They go. They send high schoolers to

school way too early in Osceola County.

Amen. And he's sitting at the table

eating, and I'm behind him. He's at the table.

He doesn't know that I'm behind. And I'm just considering the

moment. And I'm living in Kronos in this

moment. I had the death watch on.

I'm thinking it's happened too quickly that we're here.

Before we know it, he'll be out the door.

I'll be dropping them off in a dorm at some place under be

unknown to us at this point. And he's about to enter into the

school with all of these people, with all of the pressure of the

academics. He's doing IB, he's a student

athlete, and those are the easy things compared to the social

pressure to perform and be somebody.

And I'm standing behind him thinking, let's just go back to

elementary school. Let's not let these things

happen. I'm dreading them. 13 days from

today, Owen will graduate from college.

Yeah, Hallelujah. He's mad at this incredible

woman. He's got this incredible career

that's laid out in front of him, and everything is going great.

And the life watch is on my wrist now.

And instead of thinking, wow, he's going to get married,

potentially. I don't know and move out of the

house and be on his own and all this kind of things.

Now there's this idea of just embracing everything that God is

doing in his life as ordained from his hand and saying God,

you are good. I'm glad for the season.

I'm I'm not ruining the fact that he's going to move out

again and and have his own family and all all these

thoughts have been released from being death to now.

God, these are gifts from you. I'm appreciating each season of

life, even though it's still hard.

The hardest thing ever is to drop your kid off at college.

That's just what I believe. Maybe you have a different thing

and you're going to tell me later, because you always do so

anyway. But how do we pick the watch,

the life watch on the regular? Here's what I'll tell you.

Sabbath is the break that fixes you.

Sabbath is the break that fixes you.

The first time my younger brother broke his arm, it wasn't

my fault, it was my older brother's fault.

We were in El Paso, TX at my grandparents house.

They lived in El Paso for 30 years.

My dad was born and raised there.

My mom went to college there and he was launching us off of his

feet. He was on his back and launching

us off his feet. It's fun game.

We were doing it for a little bit and then one time he

launched Fred super high. Fred comes down like this.

And then when he rolled off his body, we saw an S Yeah, I went

running. Couldn't handle it like that.

Looks nasty. He's screaming.

I ran. It's Matt's fault.

The second time my younger brother broke his arm.

Oh, wow. It was my fault.

The same arm. Same arm.

It was not even much more than a year later, we had moved from

Texas to Germany and our house had a clothesline in the back

with these two TS, metal TS. Can you see them and the

clotheslines between them? Well, the the TN down here far

from the house had a little tree that you could climb and grab on

to the clothesline and swing if you're a big boy like me.

Not my younger brother, who was probably 5 or 6 at the time.

So he climbs the tree and he's hanging on to that.

He's swinging. And I don't remember if he said

help or I just thought I got to help him.

But I went up and like grabbed his legs.

So I'm in the tree holding his legs and his arms are holding

the bar like this, right? It's not a good position to be.

And he's like, let me go. I go, let you go.

You get a fall. Well, he fell anyway because he

couldn't hold on anymore. And then he went down into the

tree roots and I looked down and there was the S again.

He didn't laugh. So what did I do?

I ran. I ran into the house.

I walked in like Dad. Fred broke his arm.

It might have been my fault. Same arm.

So later, Fred and I had a bro moment, like, man, I'm sorry,

sorry. Just trying to help.

He's like, it's all right. I wasn't mad at you.

The reason I was screaming is because I knew when I went in,

they were going to have to set my arm again and pull on it

until they had it right. And then they cast it because

what's broken needs to be reset. The Sabbath is the break that

fixes you. Like, I'm not questioning or

putting up debate that in general, the American population

is broken. We don't know how to rest.

We live stressed. As I said last week, we're tired

all day and then we don't sleep at night, frenetic from one

thing to the next, never enough hours in the day.

You name it all chronos things, death, watch things, but the

Sabbath is the break that can fix us.

Let me give you some science and I'm going to tell you this.

Science always proves what God has already revealed.

Eventually they get there like oh, and they don't make connect

the dots, but I do like see God's been saying that this

whole time. Let me give you some examples.

In 2018, Americans took 17.4 vacation days on average, up all

the way up from 17.2 in 2017. They consider this a large

increase in unused vacation days, because 300 million * .2

is a lot, I guess. However, this is a significant

drop from the 20.3 average vacation days used between 1978

and 2000. We've gone from 20.3 to 17.4 in

a span of 18 years. In general, Americans don't use

29% of their vacation days. In 2018, 768 million vacation

days went unused. What am I trying to tell you?

Americans don't know how to take a break because the rat race

says you can't take a break. You got to keep performing.

Can't take time off. In the early 1900s, an article

was written and the writer of the article coined the phrase or

the term workaholic workaholism. Somebody addicted to their work,

They work without stopping. They're just working and working

and working. And here's the sad thing.

He used a certain profession to base this whole conversation in.

It wasn't doctors, firefighters, teachers, lawyers, stockbrokers.

It was pastors, ministers. The first time the word

workaholism was ever used was in reference to those in ministry.

Think about this. If the ministers who should know

the rest of God don't rest correctly, how will the people

they lead know how to rest? So I'm trying to learn.

I'm trying to teach so that we will be a household to rest.

Here's the science. And I don't.

I can't remember exactly how they did this test to know

exactly what they said, but in essence, a four day vacation

will last you 4 weeks. It'll keep your cortisol clean,

your body regenerated. Whatever.

They've done, the studies, they did, all these statistics and

polls and whatever, and they came up with this idea that four

days of vacation will last you 4 weeks.

This is the science, right? The research which means in a

year you will need 13 four day vacations to last you through

the year. 13-4 day vacations if you work here to illuminate

church. I do by declare, no, no I'm not

13-4 day vacations. 4 * 13 is 52.

Essentially, the research is showing us that we need every

year 52 vacation days in order to be rested.

And we're using 17, which means that we're 35 days to the

negative and how much our body, our minds and our spirit needs

to rest. And we wonder why we're stressed

out, burnt out, depressed and anxious.

And you probably picked it up by now, this number that scientists

found out that we need 52 days of rest.

Tell me, how many Sabbaths are there each year?

52. Wow, 52 days of rest God is

asking us to have, which is exactly what science says keeps

you rested. Sabbath rests and resets the

soul every week. Sabbath helps what's broken be

put back in place. Can you imagine going on

vacation already rested? How much different that would

be? You know, when you go on

vacation, it takes like two or three days to get into it.

You're like detoxifying and letting things go.

And then you're on the third day and you're like, I have to go

back tomorrow and you, there's no resting.

Yeah, people. Exactly.

Silas just said you need a vacation from your vacation.

We shouldn't feel like that when you finish your Sabbath.

Our family Sabbaths from 5:00 PM Friday to 5:00 PM Saturday.

When you finish your Sabbath, you get to the end and be like,

that's OK, I'll be right back here next week.

And really, that 24 hour Sabbath is the training wheels of faith.

Meaning as we practice the Sabbath, we'll begin to learn to

live from Sabbath. All the other six days from the

Tetelestai. It is finished, the finished

work of Jesus. We practice the Sabbath and then

we live from the Sabbath the rest of the week.

Let me tell you how much God loves you.

He has commanded you to rest. He loves you so much that he

says, I want you to set aside a day each week to remember to

live that every moment is a gift from Him.

You can respond like a toddler. Toddlers will run themselves

around, resist sleeping until they just crash out.

They're running around 1 moment, make a ton of noise, they're

crying out, then all of a sudden they're just gone.

Can I get a witness? We do that as as people, We run

around, we run ourselves ragged until we collapse.

Or you can respond to the Sabbath like an adult.

This is what adults do. They wake up, they hit the alarm

clock, they look at the clock and like, how long until I'm

back in this bed? Can I just go right back to

sleep? Which means that most adults

rest by escapism. I don't want to face what I got

to face. So let me just lay here in the

bed. Toddler, run around till you

collapse. Adult, escape, escape, escape.

Or how about we respond to the Sabbath like an infant?

A baby most of the time, but not all the time.

I know there's exceptions. You can find a baby resting

sweetly, taking a nap in the arms of a loved 1.

So here's an image for Sabbath for you, your heavenly Father.

Like this. Come here, climb on in.

And he doesn't sing Rock a Bye Baby because that song is

terrifying. Let me close with this.

Our family met the Walker family in 2007, Denny and Beverly

Walker. There's going to be a picture up

here with their daughter, Andrea.

I can promise you, this is a whale picture.

Denny looks way better than that.

Now. Beverly's always been as vibrant

and beautiful as she is there. That is their daughter, Andrea.

They have another daughter, Hannah, who'll be in the next

picture that got a little older. Hannah in the back.

When she grew up is when we met her.

She used to babysit Owen and Audrey back in the day.

OK, when we met Denny he was a an elder at the Crossing Church.

That was in 2007. But on February 11th 1999 Andrea

was in a car. She wasn't driving and another

car came this way at a high rate of speed, struck the vehicle and

she died instantly. Parents worst nightmare.

Denny, when I met him, was an elder at the crossing, as I

said, and he was one of those elders that when he spoke,

everyone else kind of got quiet. He didn't say much and he kind

of had a high voice. So when he talked, it wasn't

loud and everyone just kind of quieted.

He always had this deep wisdom to share and he counseled people

and he led people and I saw them all over the church.

And so I sat with him. Denny, I'm like, dude, your

daughter died and here you are serving the Lord in such an

incredible way. I would have been angry, been

cursing God, I'm done with this all.

I'm out and here you are like, it's just as amazing.

And I'm like encouraging him, like I want to be like you when

I grow up. And he said, Tim, you're only

seeing the end of the journey. Said for two years, every day I

contemplated suicide, hated God. He said, the only reason I'm

alive is because I didn't have the courage to kill myself.

The grief's so heavy, the brokenness that he felt.

Denny's house. I've been there.

He's got this chair. And it's like where he reads the

Scriptures and it's this amazing looking chair.

And you're like, yeah, that's a that's the kind of chair where

you read the Bible in like it's just one of those chairs.

And he says, one day I was in this chair and I read this verse

two years after the accident. See if this sounds familiar.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against

you that I have set before you, Denny, life and death, blessings

and curses. And then he said, this is the

loudest the voice of God has ever been to me.

It was like it boomed from heaven.

It hasn't been that loud since or before.

It was never like this. These 3 words now choose life.

Denny is sitting in his chair recognizing that God had made

him an offer and it was now up to him to choose what he would

do, continue in this Kronos of death or to embrace what his

life was now and live in this Kairos of life and choose life.

Then he said for me, life was facing God, death was putting my

back towards God. God hadn't turned.

Denny had turned, and understandably so, right?

And that day as he sat in his chair, he said I had to

willfully choose to take the backside of me and turn it away

from God and turn myself to God. And he found life again.

Praise God. I'm wondering which way you're

facing today. And I'll say this to you.

This is how it connects to our series.

Every time you Sabbath, you make a wilful decision that day to

turn towards God. So no matter where you've been

on Monday through Saturday or whatever, your Sabbath falls.

You get this opportunity each week to reset and face the Lord

and say here I am and he's like here I am.

Good to see you have some things I want to share with you, some

deposits I want to make in your life.

And hopefully as you practice this one day a week, you begin

to practice it every day of the week, turning towards him.

I want to close by just reversing the words a little

bit. The Bible says now choose life.

And I just want to tell you today, choose life now.

I want to say now, I don't mean later now, I mean now.

Now God put an offer on the table.

That's why he brought you here today to illuminate church or

wherever you're watching from to say, will you make your decision

now? And yes, there's hard things

that happen, devastating things that happen, but you may be

sitting with your back facing God and he's just saying, will

you? Will you turn to me today, now,

and at least once a week on the Sabbath, turn and face me and

you'll find that I am facing you.

Choose life now. Thanks for joining us today.

We hope God is speaking to your heart through this message.

If you'd like to connect with us, you can text connect to

407-588-0115 or visit Illuminate dot church.

Have a great week.