Sabbath Part 1

Lord, we worship you.

We thank you for this community, this family of faith.

Holy Spirit, we invite you in.

We ask you to come.

We ask you to speak.

We ask you to heal wounds.

To deliver us from sin and temptation.

We ask you to restore our tired souls this morning, God.

Take the burdens off our back this morning, God.

We cherish you.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, welcome to Skyline Church.

You Labor Day warriors, glad you're here.

My name's Adam.

I'm one of the pastors here.

And it truly is my honor and privilege to be with you guys here today to talk about the Word of God.

So maybe like, I want to say eight years ago, I saw this tweet back when they were called tweets.

I saw this tweet that kind of disturbed me.

It kind of drove me to think.

The tweet was from Elon Musk.

And the tweet, you know, the world's first trillionaire.

And before we show the tweet here, what he was trying to do is basically cast vision to work for his companies.

Hard to work for his companies, they're known for really hard-driving work culture.

And the tweet said this: it said, there are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.

Now, I think for most of us, we want our lives to count.

For most of us, we want our lives to matter.

We do want to impact the world in the place that God has put us, to carve out our sphere of influence, the assignment that God has given us to do, we want to impact the world.

But the obvious sort of follow-up question to a comment like this is okay, if I can't change the world on 40 hours a week, then how many, Elon?

How many hours a week do I need to work to change the world?

Well, somebody asked that obvious question, to which he says it varies person to person, but at least 80 sustained, peaking at over 100 at times, the pain level increases exponentially above 80.

Now, needless to say, if you're doing 80 to 100 hours a week on your career, on like a job that you earn money for, that's like 11 and a half hours to 14 hours a day, seven days a week.

So what that basically does is completely eliminates rest, let alone every other thing.

But it certainly would change the world into something.

Because that's the question that, of course, doesn't get talked about, doesn't get asked here.

I mean, I don't think anyone here would challenge the idea that Elon and his companies have changed the world.

The question is, how?

At what cost?

Into what?

Change the world into what?

What should the world look like in the first place?

Obviously, much more important questions need to be answered.

And nonetheless, this vision, this message, this idea of all work and no rest is a really common American one, actually.

I don't know if you noticed this in your life.

You know, and the Patriots, during like their 20-year dominance, when they won their 2017 Super Bowl in the parade, Bill Belichick, the coach of the Patriots, said he started a chant in the audience, and the chant was, no days off.

No days off.

So here's two people that probably at least a big portion of America admires, at least being captains of their industry, the most influential people in their places of work.

Here's two people saying that in order to get there, to get where they are, which again we're holding up what where they are as ideal, it takes all work and no rest.

80 sustained, sometimes over a hundred.

It takes no days off.

Even the church sometimes can be like this.

I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this, whether it's volunteers that the church asks volunteers to maybe serve every single weekend for hours at a time.

The work is important, after all.

Souls are at stake, after all.

Or maybe it's someone who works for the church vocationally, who this idea of being available 24-7, you never really turn off, because what if somebody needs me?

What if there's a crisis?

We have phones now.

There's no reason I shouldn't be able to respond to a crisis in any and every moment and take time off.

You can sleep when you're dead, after all.

Sometimes this message even permeates the church, and it leads us to ask this all-important question.

Is rest for the wise, or is it for the weak?

Is rest for the wise, or is it just for the weak?

Regardless of what you believe in God, where you're at with faith, talk about a consequential question.

Talk about the way, talk about a question, the way that you answer it will deeply impact friendships, family, your career, your well-being, your future 20 years from now, a life that adopts rest being for the weak versus a life that adopts rest being for the wise.

Talk about an important question to answer.

So what is it?

Well, as it turns out, this is actually a really important, unexpectedly important topic to God.

He talks about it all the time in the Bible.

And so, Pastor Justin and I, just in our process of discernment, you know, we do about three topical sermon series a year.

The rest is largely expositional, driven verse by verse through whole books of the Bible.

But every so often we just feel led by the Holy Spirit to address a specific topic.

And the specific topic that we're going to address today and a week from today, two-part series, is this idea of Sabbath, a word that just means rest, to cease.

Is rest for the wise, or is it for the weak?

And for us in our context, in particular, oftentimes in cities, which is our calling, our church's vision and context, oftentimes in cities, the pendulum swings even more towards the work-career side of things in order to change the world, 80 plus sustained hours a week.

And so we felt that this was really important to address as a church because it's fundamental, foundational to our flourishing as people.

So we're going to take a little tour of the Old Testament, and we're going to begin at the beginning.

Genesis 2.

Genesis chapter 2, the second chapter of the Bible, God talks about this right away.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

You know, God has just finished creating all things.

Everything is either good or very good.

There's no sin in the world yet.

God has had things his way, he's created it the way he wants.

And then he says this.

Genesis 2, 1 through 3.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done.

And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

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, a few things that we notice here in the second chapter of the Bible, on this topic of Sabbath, on this topic of rest.

The seventh day, the Bible says, is blessed, is holy, because a very specific reason.

Because God rested.

The Hebrew word here is Shabbat.

It's where we get the English word for Sabbath.

It means ceased, stopped working.

In fact, later in Exodus, we'll actually see the way the Exodus writer talks about this moment as God was refreshed.

Which is kind of interesting because if God's omnipotent, aka all-powerful, he doesn't need to rest.

So why does he?

Well, he rests, because he rests, and to make the seventh day holy.

Remember, right here at the beginning, this is really important for you to see.

Before sin has broken the world and things have gone wrong, there is a rhythm in creation.

There's a rhythm of work and rest.

And work and rest.

And God does it himself.

And the seventh day gets set apart before anything breaks.

So this is the first thing I want you to see.

The second thing that I want you to see is that this idea of six days and work and one day rest is written into the fabric of reality, according to Genesis 2.

There's this aspect to which to which rest and work, the complementarity of these two things, is in the fabric of reality.

And you might object, well, well, it's not like necessarily measurable.

Like seven, a seven-day week or six work and one rest, like that doesn't like divide into 365.25 earth spins as the earth orbits the sun in a year.

Like you can't, that doesn't divide nicely into that.

It's not necessarily something that you see in nature.

So according to Genesis, it's in reality, but how?

Like, where is can we observe that?

And the answer, I think, is there's actually been a lot of research into this idea of how much a person should work and how much a person should rest.

As you might imagine, in a capitalistically driven society like ours, if you've ever worked for a Fortune 50, Fortune 100 company, they are Jedi's at extracting every drop of blood from the stone.

And so it's actually been experimented a lot on, not necessarily for the blessing of all mankind, but just to see how much can we get out of you?

And so this has been studied a lot.

One of my favorite studies that I went through over this, uh, World War I, Britain, you know, existential national crisis.

We're making ammo.

In fact, it's basically all women making ammo because all the guys are over there shooting.

This this giant factory of women making ammo, and they start to press them.

How much can we get you to work and how much can we produce?

Because, you know, a lot's riding on it.

And and so they realize that as they push them 48 hours a week, everything kind of beyond 48 hours, how much they're able to produce, just drops off precipitously.

48 hours isn't necessarily a really significant number.

It's really physical labor, mind you, factory work.

And so they kind of notice that, and so, and then they do this other experiment where they go, okay, well, let's just say we make them work 50 something hours a week.

What if we spread those 50 hours over six days versus all seven days?

Because if you're maybe if you're me, the way that I would think about that is, well, if I work a shorter day, in theory, I could produce more, right?

I wouldn't get wiped at the end of the day.

But what they found in this study of pressing people to produce as much as humanly possible is if they spread the same number of hours over seven days, total production dropped 10%.

Interesting.

Interesting, this observable part of reality, the way that humanity has limits around its work.

And if you take rest away, there's consequences.

Another major one, there's lots of stuff as it relates to health.

I saw one study saying over 55 hours a week, you work over 55 hours a week, stroke and heart disease, there's a big correlation with increase in those things.

There's very little research saying the opposite, where you can just work ad infinitum.

You could just work into infinity and it has no consequence.

Basically, all the research shows the opposite.

And look, different jobs are are different.

They require different amounts of exertion and different people's capacities are different, but bottom line is the research is establishing really clearly what we see here in creation, that there is a rhythm to human life and human flourishing, work and then rest.

In fact, in the last century, there's been a couple really famous uh attempts to change the seven-day work week.

One of which was the French, well, I guess it's not the last century, but the French Revolution is one of the most famous ones.

They basically tried to switch to a 10-day work week.

Part of it was because the seven-day week is very much, as we just saw, associated with Christianity, and the French Revolution was very secular.

They're trying to break off their religious heritage, their religious chains, and basically they started a 10-day work week, and it got so much opposition.

Again, this is for a revolution that was trying to rewrite its DNA, its future.

And it got so much opposition that after nine years they switched back.

Didn't work.

11 years they switched back.

So what we see here in Genesis 2, that this complementary rhythm of work and rest, and that this idea of six days work and one day rest, according to the Bible, is sort of written into the fabric of reality.

Text number two, a little bit later, Exodus 16.

Some things happen in between Genesis 2 and Exodus 16.

One of the things that happens is God shows up to Abraham and he says, Abraham, I'm the God of the universe.

If you go to where I tell you to go, I'm going to give you more offspring than the stars in the sky, and all the families of the earth are going to be blessed through you.

He's talking about the coming Savior that will come through Abraham's line.

So Abraham does it, sure enough, his clan expands.

They get so numerous, they eventually go to Egypt to survive the famine.

They stay in Egypt, they multiply even more over the several hundred years.

They become enslaved by the Egyptians, they're so numerous because Pharaoh fears them.

And then God sends Moses to deliver them.

Ten plagues, maybe you've heard of it.

Supernatural power of God delivers hundreds of thousands of the Israelites out of Egypt and into the desert.

And they start to complain.

What the heck, where's the food?

What the heck, where's the water?

They start to complain.

They get into the desert, and then God starts to provide for them.

They have nothing.

The law hasn't been given to them yet.

There's no food, there's no water, and God starts to make it rain.

And it ain't raining water, it's raining bread.

It's a famous story called where they just rain what's called manna out of the sky.

So, look at what Moses says during this moment, where they're in the desert.

If they collect manna and they keep it overnight, it spoils and gets rotten.

God tells them not to do that.

But look at what God says with Moses.

Look at this scene here in Exodus 16, 22 through 27.

On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each.

And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, This is what the Lord has commanded.

Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.

Bake what you will bake, boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.

So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it.

Moses said, Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord.

Today you will find, you will not find it in the field.

Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.

On the seventh day, some of the people went out to gather, but they found none.

So this is the first moment where God introduces this idea of Sabbath to his people, to the Israelites.

This is the first moment where he introduces it.

He makes them gather twice as much on the sixth day, so they don't have to gather anything on the seventh day.

It doesn't even rain down on the seventh day.

They couldn't even if they wanted to.

And a few things that I want us to see here.

Thing number one that is very interesting is that God brings the Sabbath to them.

At the same time, he teaches them dependence.

God teaches them about the Sabbath the same moment he teaches them about dependence.

There's no food out there, he says, Don't worry, I'll provide.

You can rest a day because this is going to establish for you that it's ultimately me who provides for you.

Yeah, I've given you the ability to work, I've caused the ground to grow for you, but ultimately all your provision, all your sustenance comes from me.

He teaches them dependence the same moment that he teaches them about Sabbath.

This is a moment where they're reminded who God is, Creator, and who they are, creation.

He teaches it to them early.

He hasn't even given them the Ten Commandments yet.

And already he's teaching them about Sabbath.

That's thing number one.

Thing number two, human hearts resist it.

They don't like it.

In fact, God has to literally take them into the desert to get them to do this.

I'm going to take you to a place where you couldn't even grow stuff if you wanted to.

This is the moment where he teaches them how to rest.

They're utter dependence on him, and they resist it.

They don't like it.

He says, don't go out on the seventh day to gather.

They still do.

They still go out looking for it.

In many ways, this is contrary, this rest is contrary to the broken, sinful heart.

And isn't this also true for us?

What we see here with them in Exodus 16.

How true of us is this not also?

That so often God has to lead us into like a spiritual desert or lead us into a metaphorical desert before we're willing to accept his provision, before we're willing to lay down our work and accept the fact that he's God and we're not.

God has to take us to these moments so often because we just won't if he doesn't.

And it's the same with Israel and it's the same with us.

Human hearts resist it.

One, in Exodus 16, he teaches them Sabbath, the same time he teaches them dependence.

Two, human hearts resisted.

And this is, by the way, just as a side note, this is what it took for me.

You know, when I when I started working for the church, my boundaries were really terrible.

I took meetings any day of the week because it felt like the work was important.

About a year and a half in, I started to burn out.

I didn't know what that was, I didn't know what that feel felt like.

All the fun, all the joy left, it disappeared.

I started seeing in black and white.

I remember one day at 1 p.m.

looking at my laptop, and I just shut it because I was mad.

I hated everything.

And I didn't know why.

And I had to learn, it was because that's what the feeling of burned out is.

No limits, no boundaries, no understanding of your place in the universe.

And so I read about it, I studied it, and I started to add Sabbath in.

Joni and I started observing Sabbath for us on Fridays, and the color started to come back into my eyes.

But it took a while.

And man, I learned that lesson really, really hard.

Genesis 2, Exodus 16.

What happens next?

Exodus 20.

This is where the Ten Commandments shows up.

The Big Ten.

God's Big Ten.

Something he literally writes with his own hand on stone tablets.

So let's see what the tenth or in the Ten Commandments, what the fourth commandment says.

This is what he commands Israel.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day is or the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner, that's an immigrant, who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that's in them, and rested on the seventh day.

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

Okay, a couple things that we need to see here when God gives the Ten Commandments.

And the Sabbath is a big one in here.

It's the fourth one.

Thing number one, he wants the Sabbath to hit the whole society.

Not just you and your kids and your fam, but your servants, okay?

The immigrants who aren't necessarily Jews, he wants it to hit them.

The animals get a Sabbath?

He wants it to hit everything, top to bottom.

He wants them to rest as a community.

Now, of course, this is a theocracy.

God's literal nation where he falls down in a pillar of fire and smoke on a tent and tells everyone what to do, theocracy.

This is not what we have today here in the grand old US of A, and it makes it a lot harder to do this.

It makes it a lot harder to rest as a community because we have different jobs.

There's a lot of bosses and jobs out there that this isn't necessarily their value system, and so how could we ask them and to do this for ourselves?

And it just is a lot more complicated.

You know, one of the things that's interesting about this, one company that comes to mind, and maybe to all y'all's minds, when you think about this idea of trying to collectively give the company, a group of people, families, a day off, is of course Chick fil A.

Chick-fil-A, uh, the story is true at Cathy, the founder, I want to say it was back in the 50s, basically was working seven days a week for the restaurant, trying to get it going.

It was exhausting.

And he was like, I don't like this.

I want people to be able to go to church on Sunday, we're closed on Sunday.

Now, you ask any business consultant, McKinsey, some highly paid business expert, hey, we're a restaurant.

Should we be open six days a week or seven?

What do you think the business consultant's gonna tell you?

More time for sales equals more sales.

True Kathy said, nah.

And you know what's weird about this?

Only national fast food chain closed one day a week.

And if you were to rank the top selling fast food chains in the United States, sales per store in a year, you know who's number one?

Chick-fil-A.

And not by a little.

Now, the business consultant might look at this and be like, well, I mean, imagine what they could be at seven days a week.

You don't have to imagine.

There's two through five on there.

You don't have to imagine.

Interesting.

The fabric of reality seems to continue.

Chick-fil-A.

Weird.

So the first thing in the Ten Commandments, they're resting together.

The second thing that I want us to see is why.

The reason that God gives.

The reason he says is because he rested.

Because I rested on the seventh day, for in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that's in them, and rested on the seventh day.

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

They should rest on the seventh day because God rested on the seventh day.

We're to be like God.

Remember Genesis 2, God puts us into creation.

Well, if you go earlier, it says in Genesis 1 that God created humanity in his image to be like him in unique ways that the rest of creation isn't.

One of the ways, according to the Ten Commandments, seems to be that one of the reasons to rest like this is because he does.

And God tells Israel, you're going to be like me.

There's a Sabbath because you need to be like me.

And you're going to represent me to the nations.

So, this commandment here: everyone rests together as a community.

This is God's ideal.

The second thing, they rest that way because he did, and we are supposed to image him.

He makes the seventh day holy because he rested.

So in Genesis 2, we see how it's in the fabric of reality, the rhythm of work and rest.

Exodus 16, we see that Sabbath comes at the same time as dependence.

They're connected.

We also see that human hearts fight against it.

Exodus 20, this moment, community and resting because God did.

Here's the final text.

Also, Exodus.

Exodus 31, 12 through 14.

This is just God riffing more on Sabbath because he wants to.

He just wants to talk more about it.

We've already got the Ten Commandments.

We've already heard the manna story.

Exodus 31, 12 through 14, look at what God says.

And the Lord said to Moses, You are to speak to the people of Israel, and say, Above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths.

For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.

You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you.

Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death.

Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.

So, what do we see in this text?

Well, I mean, the thing that pops out to me the most is how seriously God takes it.

Above all, he says, anyone who violates the Sabbath, he says, shall be put to death.

If you read a couple verses more, he says it again.

As a reminder, anyone who violates the Sabbath shall be put to death.

Cut off from his people.

Imagine, like, if you had a boss, and the boss was like, okay, if you're gonna work here, you have to take off one day a week.

You're like, amazing.

And then he's like, and if you don't, you will die.

You're like, thank you.

You know?

God feels so strongly about this.

It's like in order, it seems to us inordinately important.

And by the way, if we were to line up the Ten Commandments, just like list them all next to each other, you know what gets the most airtime?

You know what gets the most words, the most time spent?

It ain't do not murder.

That's like four words.

It's the Sabbath.

Why?

Well, we get another hint here.

Why is this so important to God?

Get another hint here.

Verse 13, he says, it's a sign.

It's a sign between him and Israel.

What do signs do?

They point.

What if signs do they indicate?

And what does this sign point to?

What does this sign indicate?

Also, verse 13.

That I, the Lord, sanctify you.

This is one of the critical things that the Sabbath, one day off a week, indicates to God's people.

It's that God sanctifies them.

So you're saying, wait, so taking a day off of work for Israel is a sign that he makes them holy?

What does sanctified mean?

Like I sanctify you.

Well, sanctify means to make holy, to set apart, to purify.

So so for Israel, taking a day off a week means that God, it reminds me that God makes me holy, that God makes me set apart, that God makes me pure?

A day off a week is a sign, is a reminder to me that that's the case?

Exactly.

And what better thing?

What better thing to remind Israel that it's not based on their works that God has come to them, but on his.

What better thing than taking a day off?

Where you sit there and you remember that God said, I'm taking a day off in part as a sign to indicate that he makes me holy, not based on what I've done.

Ooh.

Ooh.

Sometimes we hear that the whole Bible is about Jesus.

Sometimes we hear that the whole Bible contains the message of the gospel.

And one of the most obvious ones is here with the Sabbath.

Where we literally have here in the Old Testament God describing part of the reason for the Sabbath is that it's a sign that I sanctify you, I make you holy.

It's not based on you, that's why you're not working.

That's what the Sabbath is.

What an incredible thing.

Because this is exactly what the gospel is.

In the gospel, it's the work of Jesus that purifies you.

This is a gift that comes to you freely by faith.

It's not something you could ever possibly earn.

Talk about a reflection of the heart of the Sabbath.

You then become a person who wants to be obedient from a place of security and thankfulness and rest, might I add.

You stand vindicated before God, worthy because of something that he did.

On judgment day, because of something that he did.

Remember, in the gospel, Jesus comes and lives the perfect life that God intended us to live, but we couldn't.

And then he dies on a cross as a substitute for us.

He dies on a cross so that we wouldn't have to die for our sins.

But because God's just and he's not going to ignore it, justice still has to happen, and God basically says, I'm going to pay for that instead of you.

And the Sabbath has the most beautiful through line to the gospel.

I sanctify you, God says.

You're going to remember that on the Sabbath.

And then how glorious when we see its fruition in Jesus, the death of his son, payment for us.

The free gift of salvation, of sanctification, of forgiveness, of being made holy comes ultimately through Jesus.

And the Sabbath points to it, and God's already working this idea into the DNA of his people thousands and thousands of years ago.

The Sabbath strengthens.

Taking a day off is meant to strengthen our identity as saved by God's work, not ours.

That's the point of ceasing, one of the points, not just rest, but to remember.

Now we're talking about rest that goes beyond physical.

Nonetheless, how incredible is it that God has made this thing called the Sabbath, weekly physical rest to remind us of his work.

And you can start to see why it's supremely important to him.

As a father who loves his kids and wants them to know that he loves them regardless of how well they perform.

For those who put their faith in Jesus, he loves them regardless of how well they perform.

Now you might be saying at this point, geez, okay.

If the Sabbath is really important to God, there's like 50 other texts that we could read that establish this exact same thing.

It's in the Ten Commandments.

It's right there next to do not murder.

So if I don't obey the Sabbath, is that sin?

We got some pretty specific Sabbath laws going on here for them.

It was a very specific day every single week.

They didn't, there was a death penalty.

So if I don't today observe the Sabbath, is that a sin?

Well, unsurprisingly, there's many Christians who believe that this is the case.

They're called Sabbatarians.

And in Protestant Christianity, about 10% of Protestantism are Sabbatarian in the sense of they think it's like a it's a really grave sin against God if you don't observe the exact same day, Sabbath, every single week they argue that now it's not Saturday like it was for the Jews, but Sunday for us because Jesus rose on that day.

And to be honest, you can understand why they think.

You can understand, well, I mean, makes sense.

It's not a stupid conclusion.

And yet, I think ultimately that that interpretation is incorrect.

I think actually God has given us freedom as it relates to the Sabbath, that we don't necessarily have to observe it on the exact single day, the way that the commandment espouses.

And I think most of Christian history actually would agree with me, and the reason is because of this.

Multiple New Testament passages say this.

Paul, this is probably the best clearest one, Colossians 2, 16 through 17.

Talking about this after Jesus is risen, Paul says this.

What's he saying?

He's saying that the Sabbath, this all-important thing that we read in the Old Testament, it was a shadow, a pointer of the substance that Jesus brings, the rest that Jesus brings.

And so what that means is Jesus fulfills the law of the Sabbath.

You know, in the same way Jesus fulfills the sacrificial system, you read through Leviticus, there's all these elaborate laws on how to sacrifice things before God and his temple.

Jesus fulfills all that.

That's why Christians don't do it today, was a pointer to him.

He's saying the Sabbath is a sin.

It's a pointer to him.

And therefore, don't let people judge you with your specific practice of the Sabbath.

It's not a mortal sin against God to not do it on Saturday or the other people argue Sunday every single week.

I think this is pretty clearly what Paul is arguing for.

We're free.

We're not under the law as it relates to Sabbath because Jesus has fulfilled it uniquely, but you want to know what you ain't free from?

Your limits.

You want to know what you ain't free from?

The fact that somehow God has written this rhythm of work and rest into the fabric of reality.

As we already saw, research confirmed.

We're not free from that.

And in fact, if you violate that long term, it will eat you alive.

Look, your life is like a garden.

A bunch of different important things and priorities.

People, friendships, skills, work, rest.

It's like this garden.

All these things are supposed to grow and flourish together in a human life.

But if you only water one of them, you only fertilize one of them, career, earning money via work, earning provision for yourself via work.

You only water one of them, that plant gets awkwardly gigantic.

Yes, Elon.

But all the others wither and die.

And quite clearly, this is not God's intent for your life.

Quite clearly, the way God talks about Sabbath, He wants all of these things to flourish.

Rest is incredibly important to him.

And so, yes, and in fact, with many ways, the way that Jesus brings us Sabbath is even better than it was in the Old Testament.

It's the gift of Sabbath plus freedom.

Because we haven't even mentioned the most important thing about this yet on whether or not we should apply this today, whether or not we should Sabbath today.

You know what the most important thing is?

What actually Jesus says about this.

You know what he says?

The Sabbath was made for mankind.

Not man for the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was made for man.

In other words, it's a gift.

So if you're sitting there right here and you're like, well, I mean, I'm free from the Sabbath, it's not a sin if I don't do the Sabbath anymore.

Jesus just said he has a gift for you.

It's called the Sabbath.

It's going to transform your life, it's going to draw you closer to God.

It's going to teach you to reject the lies of the world.

It's going to restore you.

It's going to cause all these other things to flourish.

And by the way, you might even produce more week to week in your work because you're coming at it.

Refreshed, there's a gift from God.

And here's the crazy test, ready?

You stand before God, and God's like, I've got an amazing gift for you.

And you're like, nah, I'm good.

Talk about an insanity test.

Like, and by the way, any person who regularly rejects Sabbath, I can also show you a same person who probably is enslaved to idolatry.

They're looking to something other than God for sustenance, for meaning, for purpose, for provision.

Anyone who completely rejects Sabbath is almost certainly looking to something else for those things.

Accepting the gift of the Sabbath is a sanity test for you.

It's kind of like when you go to someone's house, you go to the bathroom, and they got the toilet paper on.

Reverse waterfall?

And you're like, this is the most unnatural thing.

Reverse waterfall?

Let me just get some toilet paper.

No.

Waterfall.

That is the natural test.

It's an immediate sanity test of the person's hospitality.

So too is the Sabbath.

Immediate sanity test on do you want the good gifts of God?

Do you want to be close to Him?

Do you want to walk through life restored, rejuvenated, not enslaved to work and career?

We had a whole series on work.

We know that basically all work is dignifying before God and serves people and serves humanity.

You can go and listen to that series.

And it ain't the sole purpose of life.

So, okay, Adam.

Maybe you convinced me.

But how do I rest?

Because that's hard.

Because if you're like me, you've twiddled your thumbs on a Saturday, and you've done some stuff, the day ends, and you don't feel any different.

So I got five things for you to close.

How do we rest?

Thing number one.

Thing number one.

In Sabbath, we must stop working not only physically, but also intellectually.

I'm indebted to Marva Dawn and her book talking about this extensively.

Because even if you close the laptop, even if you take the uniform off, that doesn't mean you're not thinking about it.

And true, full, holistic rest means that you move on from the anxieties and convictions and stresses of it.

You must not only rest physically, but you must must rest intellectually, which means your focus must change.

Your focus must change to God, delighting in Him, enjoying His creation.

Your focus must change to God.

What it means is you gotta stop looking at news.

Let's just look at the top ten most gnarly things that happened today, putting that burden on your back.

What it means is you probably need to get off social media, subliminally convincing you why you should be dissatisfied.

Your focus must shift on the Sabbath.

It must shift towards God and delighting in Him and in the good things that He's given.

You must rest physically and intellectually.

Number two, strive for it to be the same day every week.

Remember, this is God's original design.

And honestly, I've seen a lot of success or failure of a person's ability to rest hinge on whether or not it's the same day every week.

This is how Joni and I eventually had to do it.

And look, I know, some of you out there are like, dude, you don't know.

I I have worked jobs where it's basically impossible to do this.

And so it doesn't, again, this is wisdom.

You don't, again, you're free.

The Lord Jesus made you free in the Sabbath, so you don't have to necessarily do it every single, the same day every single week.

But ideally, clearly, in God's design and creation, one day a week.

Which leads me to thing number three.

You have to prepare, hold boundaries, and communicate to Sabbath effectively.

You have to prepare.

What do we see for Israel?

Moses is like, yo, gather two days worth today.

So you don't have to do it tomorrow.

What does that mean?

Is that your work day, you're getting all this pressure from your boss to do a good job.

You want to do a good job to bless people and glorify him, work as unto one audience, God alone.

Well, you gotta have to prepare.

If you're not gonna work a whole day a week, you gotta prepare for that.

It doesn't, you don't just trip into a peaceful Sabbath, you build a way to it.

Number two, you gotta hold boundaries.

The world hates this.

I'll never forget one time I was talking with one of my sales peers back in the day, and he was like, I was taken the next day off, and he was like, must be nice.

And I was like, it is actually.

And ironically, I was number one in sales at the time, he was number two, and I was like, maybe you should take it as a hint.

Ironically, that didn't normally happen.

But basically, you have to hold boundaries.

People will fight you.

Your friends will fight you.

Maybe even sometimes, Lord willing, please, Jesus, no, your pastor will fight you, your boss will fight you.

You have to fight for this.

It's not just gonna roll over for you.

You live in a culture and a world that does not value this.

And so if you expect it to just red carpet your way into a glorious day off, it won't.

You will learn, though.

You will learn, and you will get better at it.

Prepare, hold boundaries, and you gotta communicate, you gotta talk about it to boss, to friends.

Because in most jobs, you can build a path to this successfully.

And honestly, if your job doesn't allow for it, well, we've talked about how central it is to human flourishing, how central it is to God's design, the way that it draws you closer to him, creates dependence on him, lets you feel his presence, hear his voice.

I mean, do you want that or not?

Is a job more important than that?

You're gonna live 70 years and you're gonna have eternity.

So, what that means is if you have a job that is willing to die on this hill, well, then in the medium long term, you should think about being at that job.

This is exactly what happened to me.

I was at that job for two years, and it was almost impossible to take a Sabbath, and I was like, I gotta, I gotta make a change.

And by God's grace I did.

Number four, fun is not the same thing as rest.

Very, very important.

Here's why this is so important, because Colorado, look, people go to different cities for different reasons.

New York, LA, San Francisco, career.

That's why they go to those cities so often.

Build their career, uh, influence, uh, you know, just climb the ladder.

There's different cities that have different cultures.

In Colorado, Denver, that's actually not the culture.

In fact, if you ask a hundred people who have come here recently why they came, very few will say career.

And I've done this probably 500 times in the last 12 years.

You know what the probably 85% of people say?

Why'd I come here?

Because I just want to be in Colorado.

I want the balance.

I want to be in nature.

I want the work-life balance.

But what they mean is not work-rest balance.

What they mean is work fun.

And this is very important because those are not the same things.

The recreation is held up as God here.

And hitting the slopes every single weekend, blasting yourself with a shot of adrenaline, traveling every single weekend, jet setting, look, these are fun things.

Fun is important to Sabbath, clearly.

Enjoying his creation.

I was in Rocky Mountain National Park yesterday, it was glorious.

But if the fun wipes you out weekend after weekend, I got news for you.

It's not the same thing as rest.

It's not just focus on fun, it's focus on God.

Yeah, the slopes can do that in moderation.

Yeah, the uh a trip, a flight can do that, a drive can do that in moderation.

And so ask God for wisdom on how to balance those things.

Fun is not the same thing as rest, even if it sometimes is.

And you just need wisdom to navigate through that.

If you come home from your weekends and you're wiped, why?

You have to ask why.

Final thing.

You have to seek the balance of solitude with God and community.

We see Jesus retreat regularly to be with God because remember the focus changes towards him, but we also see that the Sabbath day we're supposed to do it together.

And so the right balance of community and solitude is going to bring you rest.

Let's pray.

God.

Thank you for this gift.

God, the world presses us on this.

God, protect our Sabbath.

God, teach us to take so much delight in it that we wouldn't trade it for the world.

Teach us dependence.

Don't let us exalt ourselves into King of the universe.

Lord Jesus, we ask now together, by any means, that you would give us rest.

That you would destroy our idols, that you would help us to lay down our approval of man and the people we might frustrate by following this.

God, give us wisdom on what is restful, sitting with you, the things we should be doing on our day of rest, not getting ragdolled by the pleasures of our culture.

God, make us rested people who go through life seeing in color, refresh, restored, and at peace.

In Jesus' name, amen.