Make Room for Rest - Sabbath

Hey everyone, this is Charlie from Encounterchurch Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life and now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

A couple of months ago, all parents in our school received a letter from the principal

telling us that if we do email our teacher that we should expect to only receive a response during

work hours and that it might take them 48 hours to get back to us, this was to help the teachers

maintain a healthy life balance. Apparently teachers deserve a break too. But also it was

aligning with this new legislation that came in this year designed to regulate and set limits

on out of hours communication between employees and employees. It's called the right to disconnect,

you might have heard of it, and it gives opportunities, employees the right to put

reasonable boundaries around their personal time and to be refused to be contacted outside their

working hours. Work can call you, you just don't have to answer. This legislation seeks to provide

a better work-life balance for employees. Why? Because there are growing concerns about work

related mental health, stress, overwork and burnout. There is a growing fear about a great

Australian burnout. Thanks to COVID largely gone are the days where you drove to your job,

you punched in, you worked your hours, you punched out and you drove home. You used to have to go

to work to work. Now you can work from home or the cafe or Bali. Now if you're a nurse or you're

a chippy, you probably can't work from Bali, but in many industries these options are becoming

increasingly available. Plenty of people I meet living in this community are employed by a company

in Melbourne or in Sydney and they work remotely from Adelaide. The benefits of flexibility is

amazing, you don't have to live in Melbourne. Or go to a place and punch in for a certain amount of

time. You can pick your kids up from school, we can avoid lengthy commutes. But on the flip side,

you're also far more available to work and your employers than ever before. Availability creep has

become a thing where your personal time is increasingly encroached by work, sometimes in

unpaid overtime just to keep the boss happy. Employees are struggling because they're increasingly

on, they're on even when they're not at work or working. They're thinking about work, they're doing

work. Something in our society is seeing that this just isn't working. That too much work is

actually damaging for the human person. And that the benefits of flexible work actually has its limits.

So our work is busier, but then there are all these other kind of pressures in our lives.

Relationship and marriage pressures, kid pressures, school pressures, house pressures, money pressures,

sport pressures, family pressures, lawn pressures. It's hard work keeping your lawn looking good,

let alone anything else. I talked to parents at school and little Johnny has swimming,

basketball, tennis, surf, lifesaving and underwater basketball weaving every weekend.

And they look more tired after the weekend than before. We are busier than any culture has ever

been. But our rest is also worse. Where we might have once gone to bed when it got dark because

there was only so much you can do by candlelight, we can now get home, switch the telly on,

settle into the show we are currently binging. And suddenly it's 1am and you have to be up at 6.

Where we would once sit down to a lunch or a cup of tea and that was just all we did,

eat the lunch, drink the tea. We now do those things with other things with emails on Netflix or

doom scrolling socials. Look I'm a sucker for a podcast or an audiobook. I'm currently feasting

on the rest is history podcast because I'm a giant dork. But I'll listen while I'm doing the dishes,

hang up the washing, eating lunch, making coffee, mowing the lawns on my way to work.

And sometimes I realise that I've just had these little British voices in my head talking about

the historical Helen of Troy for like the last two hours and I haven't switched off.

Even though I've been doing things that would generally help me to switch off and rest and

relax and I'm actually mentally exhausted. When we do this, when we do things to rest,

but we don't actually stop either physically or mentally, we are pseudo resting. We are fake

resting. We think we're resting without much of the benefits. And we are more tired than we are

when we started resting. We are busier and our rest is worse. And the net product is that we are

tired. The number one response I get when I ask people how they're doing, if you get past good,

which just isn't an answer, the answer I get and the answer that I give

is tired or busy. Now it's good to be busy. Work is good. Pressure is a privilege.

Nobody gets to be you. No one else gets to be you. Doing the work you're doing,

loving the people you're loving. But your work needs to be in balance with your rest. We need

space and time to rest in the busyness of our lives to seek joy, to worship God,

in the be still and know that I am God kind of way. Otherwise we find ourselves too busy to rest,

too busy to seek joy, too busy to worship. I wonder if you've ever felt that at times.

I am just too busy to rest, too busy to seek joy, too busy to worship. I know that I do at times.

What an absolute travesty. Life with God was created to be lived and discovered to the full.

In a life of work without rest and joy and space to worship, it has a name. It has a name.

It's called slavery. It's called slavery. If only there was, you know, a pattern, a rhythm

built into the fabric of the universe, a practice as old as creation that could put our work and

our rest into balance. Free us from this slavery of business and give us space for rest, space for

joy and space for worship. We're starting a new series this week called Make Room.

And it's looking at four spiritual practices that can help us to make room for God and what God wants

to do in our lives. And today we're looking at the Sabbath as our first spiritual practice that

can help us to make room for God. If you're new or you consider, stay for the whole four series,

the whole four weeks, find out what the other three spiritual practices are.

In our teaching text today, Jesus is wandering through the grainfields and his disciples are

snacking. And this is a problem for the Pharisees, not because they are like anti-snacking. I mean,

how could you be? It's because the day on which the disciples were snacking was the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is something that God enshrines in creation. In Genesis 1 and 2, God works for six

days. And on the seventh, he rests. This is what says in Genesis 2. On the seventh day, God had

finished His work of creation. And God blessed the seventh day and declared holy because it

was the day he rested from all over his work. Let me read that again. Ok. On the seventh day,

God had finished His work of creation. And so he rested from all his work.

And God blessed the seventh day and declared Holy because it was the day he rested from all

his work of creation. The root word of the Sabbath means to cease or to pause. So the

Sabbath is the one day a week when you cease and pause your work. You stop. You stop. The

Lord made the Sabbath a law when he hands the Ten Commandments to Moses. It comes in

at number four. Exodus 20 says this, Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

You have six days each week for your ordinary work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath day

of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day, no one in your house, no one may

do any work that includes you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants,

your livestock and any foreigners living among you. Four in six days, the Lord made the heavens,

the earth, the sea and everything in them. But on the seventh day, he rested. And that

is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. God gives the Israelite

people a day when they are not to work. Even the servants and the animals get a day off.

Why? Because God made everything in six days. He worked hard and then he rested. And are

we better than God? Do we more efficient? Do we work harder? If God needs or chooses

to rest, how much more do you? You are a human and not a machine. But also God gives us the

Sabbath out of love for us so that we can rest and delight and worship him. It is a

grace to us. The Pharisees accused Jesus of dis... and his disciples of breaking the

law of Moses, not because they are anti-snacks, but because picking the heads off the grain,

you could very loosely argue, he's harvesting the grain. And harvesting the grain is working.

And working is a big no-no. This is our Jesus' response. He says, gosh, it missed the point.

The Sabbath was made to meet the demands and the needs of people, not for people to meet

the requirements of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is there because you need it. The Sabbath

doesn't need you. Seven-day Adventists who worship and Sabbath on Saturdays aside, we

have largely dropped the Sabbath practice in Orthodox Christianity in the West. Perhaps

because it's not something we have to do to be saved. We have rightly held to the core

of the Christian faith, which is that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works.

Ephesians 2 says this, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this

is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.

Which means we are reconciled to God by trusting in God's action, which is Jesus dying on the

cross for us, and not our own actions, whether we do good or bad things. It does not come

from ourselves. It comes from God, which means that whether we do good things or bad things,

it's irrelevant to our reconciliation with God. God has reconciled us to himself through

Jesus Christ. Our actions do not and actually cannot determine our acceptance by God. God

has already accepted us. It is a gift that we accept through faith. Which means that

whether we Sabbath or not, it makes no difference to whether we are saved, whether we are right

with God, or whether we are reconciled to him. Let me say that again. Whether we Sabbath

or not, it makes no difference to our salvation. You are saved by grace through faith in Jesus,

and this is God's gift to you. To gift given out of the kindness of God, not something

you can or have to work for. I don't know what it is about growing up in the church and hearing

about God at school or in popular culture, but both tends to embed in us this idea that

God is very concerned with you being a good person, and that is the only thing that matters

to him. Like God doesn't know that we suck sometimes. When he finally discovers that

he's shocked, he's mad, he's confused, and worst of all, he's disappointed. But we are

not always good people. Even if our actions on the outside are good, our motivations on

the inside leave a lot to be desired. That's what Jesus is getting out on the Sermon on

the Mount in Matthew 5. You might not have killed a guy, but your heart has surely been

angry with a guy. You might not have cheated on your spouse, but you've probably looked

at someone else with lustful desire. You might not be outwardly generous. You might be outwardly

generous with those who are needy, but are you sure you're not doing it so that you'll

look good? You might pray, you might fast, you might go to church every week of your

life, but are you sure you're not doing that so that other people will think you are a

good person? But Jesus didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people

alive. He came to make you alive to God again. That is the heart of the good news about Jesus.

Those Christians in the West will let the Sabbath go because whether we kept it or not

didn't make us right with God. That is actually exactly the opposite to how the Pharisees

saw it. The Pharisees, the ones who challenged the snacking of Jesus' disciples, that came

from this religious movement, that believed that all of God's promises would come about.

If all of God's people, the Israelites, followed the law perfectly for just one day, they thought

they could be reconciled to God by keeping amongst a host of other things the Sabbath,

which explains why they got so mad about a snack. For them, their behavior resulted in

their salvation. But for us, God's behavior in Jesus Christ has resulted in our salvation.

How often do we as Christians know intellectually that we are saved by grace through faith?

Well, we live like functional Pharisees trying to make our behavior a result in our salvation.

Finally, I go to church. If only I'm nice to people. If only I get my kids baptized.

If only I stopped doing this thing that I'm really ashamed of. If only I do this or I

stop doing that, then God would love me. Then I'll be accepted by God. But let me say it

again. God loves you already. Jesus gave up his life because he loves you. God is under

no allegiance about who you are and what you do. You might be able to convince other people

of a different version of you, but you can neither hide from nor pretend that you are

anything different to God. God sees you. God knows you. God loves you and God accepts you

anyway. That is why it's called good news. We can stop trying to earn God's love. Stop

worrying about whether people are snaking on a Saturday. Stop living like a functional

Pharisee and freely accept the love and grace God has given to us by faith so we can come

alive to the reality of God in our lives and be transformed by the Holy Spirit. So for

whatever reason, we dropped the Sabbath from regular Christian practice. It's called, it's

there to meet our needs and not to reconcile us to God. But we actually dropped it to our

great detriment. This is what AJ Swaboda says, which is an amazing last name. The Sabbath

has largely been forgotten by the church, which has uncritically mimicked the rhythms

of the industrial and success obsessed West. The result, our road weary, exhausted churches

have largely failed to integrate Sabbath into their lives as vital elements of Christian

discipleship. It is not as though we don't love God. We love God deeply. We just don't

know how to sit with God anymore. We have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted,

psychologically overworked and spiritually malnourished people in history. In the West,

we need freedom from a life that is too busy to rest, too busy to seek joy and too busy

to worship. And yet here we have a tradition, a rhythm, a practice, something embedded into

the foundation of the universe, something God made for us to help us experience life

and life to the full. There might not be a law for us, but it is wisdom. It's called

the Sabbath. The Sabbath is one day where you do not work and you focus instead on worship,

joy and rest. It's a day for worship because God gave it as a day of rest dedicated to

himself. It's a day for joy because when the Lord finished his work, he delighted in it

and he saw that it was very good. It's a day for rest because God himself rested. For the

Hebrew people, their day began at sundown. So Sabbath was sundown Friday night to sundown

Saturday night. But for us, in light of the good news of Jesus, in light of the Sabbath

being made for us and not asked for the Sabbath, means that practicing the Sabbath today looks

like carving out a day, abstaining from work, and instead doing things that bring you joy,

help you to rest and position you to worship. It's as simple as that. One day, you don't

take work calls, you don't check your emails. One day when you can avoid those chores guilt-free.

One day when you can step out of the business and busyness of life and rest, really rest, read,

walk, meditate, nap, feast, pray, catch up with your best friend for coffee, spend time alone,

and don't meet anyone for coffee. Journal deeply, bring out your best coloring and plates, go for

ice cream with the kids down at the beach. It's a day where you make room and you make space,

presence to be present to yourself, your body and to God. It's a day where you make room for rest.

And if you carve out that one day, you can do whatever the other six days require.

You can work hard six days because Sabbath is coming and you're about to rest even harder.

If you carve out that one day, all other six will look different. Walter Bruggeman said this,

people who keep the Sabbath live all seven days differently. I know that for many of us,

we think about a Sabbath day. We think about carving out a day and we're like, that sounds

amazing. And there is absolutely no way I could do that. I'm just too busy. I'm too important.

We need the money. The kids need to get to their underwater basket weaving class. There's just

absolutely no way. I'm too busy. And that might be true. But what I want to put to you today

is that you are actually too busy not to Sabbath. You are too busy not to Sabbath.

You are not a machine. Machines can go and go and go into the night and early in the morning and on

weekends. You are a human being lovingly made in God's own image made by God who worked six

and rested one. You are made to live in a body and a universe that is subject to a rhythm.

And if you go against that rhythm, you go against the grain of the universe. And if you go against

the grain of the universe, you get splinters. You are too busy not to Sabbath. John Mark Homer says

this in the ruthless elimination of Hari, which is a great book. You should absolutely read it.

And got his book Garden City is also amazing on the Sabbath. When you go against the grain of the

universe, you suffer the consequences in your soul. Burnout chronic anxiety, high blood pressure,

a lousy immune system, sick too often, brain fog, spiritual doubt or a sense of disconnect from God.

Emotionally or relationally, just a sense of disconnect from your own soul, isolation,

shallow relationships. You feel like you know all these people, but yet you feel alone.

Can't fight the Sabbath rhythm anymore. Then we can fight gravity or the second law of thermodynamics.

What many find is that if you don't practice Sabbath, then illness or cancer or an accident

will become your Sabbath. Sabbath is coming for you. Machines can keep going and going.

But even then they break down and they need parts replaced or repaired. But that is so much harder

for you. You cannot get a new brain. You cannot get a new body. You are your brain and your body.

You cannot work like in a machine. Expect to stay human. If you try, you will grind to a halt.

Your body will break down. There are far too many implications to explore. But if we're going to

finish church today, I'll have to just be happy with this. This one haunting quote about sleep

from Dr. Matthew Walker, his book, Why Do We Sleep? He says, regularly sleeping less than six hours a

night, weakens your immune system, substantially increases your risk to cancer. It's linked to

developing Alzheimer's, increases your risk of diabetes, increases your risk of cardiovascular

disease, stroke and congestive heart failure, contributes to all psychiatric, major psychiatric

conditions, including depression, anxiety and suicidality. And it's a proven recipe for weight

gain. This is what he says, add the above health consequences up and a proven link becomes easier

to accept. Relative to the recommended six to nine hours, the shorter your sleep, the shorter

your lifespan. The old maxim of sleep when I'm dead, it's therefore unfortunate.

Adopt this mindset and it's possible that you will be dead sooner and the quality of that

shorter life will be worse. The elastic band of sleep deprivation can stretch only so far

before it snaps. It can only stretch so far before it snaps. That is haunting.

Sleep is just one factor and the rest of your body requires to function healthily.

You are too busy not to Sabbath. But if you Sabbath, you're going with the rhythm and grain of the

universe. Did you know that an American study of seven day Adventists who still practice Sabbath

as a part of worship found that seven day Adventists are A, happier and B live 11 years longer than

the average person. And someone counted up how many Sabbath days there are in the average lifespan

in an amounts to 11 years. It's almost like when you give a day to God for rest and worship,

you get a day back. But if you Sabbath, you will have more energy, you'll be happier,

you'll be closer to God because you are intentionally giving yourself time and space to be

present to him. What's not to love? What's not to love? I found that because I Sabbath,

I can do whatever is required of me. Saturday to Thursday, I can do all the lunchboxes and the

school drop-offs and the play dates. I can do the dinners and the breakfast and the dishes

and I can do the washing and I can mow the lawns. I can work my two jobs. Life is insane six days

a week. But Sabbath is always coming. I Sabbath on a Friday, I try to say carbs and sugar for

Friday. So on a normal Friday, I'll get up before the kids for a bit of Bible prayer and exercise.

And then I'll get the kids up and I'll drop the kids off at school and then I might go get a coffee

and some carbs and some sugar by myself. Or maybe I'll go and get some coffee and carbs and sugar

with one of my best mates. I might go shoot some hoops or have a nap or work in the garden or go

for a run. Maybe Ash and I will go out for lunch or coffee. Then we'll get to read a book for joy

or worship. And I'll pick up the kids and we'll play together or we'll go somewhere and get an

ice cream. We finished the night with a movie together and I'm in bed early. My phone is

either off or all my work apps, Slack, etc. is deleted from my phone. I don't have messenger

or socials on any on my phone any other time of the week. So on the Sabbath, it's literally just a

phone for emergencies. The Sabbath for me is a day filled with worship because it is the day I'm

most present to God. It is the day he has my full attention. Fridays are the best. Fridays are also

imperfect and a work on progress. I'm too busy not to Sabbath. But because I Sabbath, I can meet the

demands of my life happier and with more grace because my Sabbath is always coming.

That's what I'd said this. Disciplines are not righteousness, but they are wisdom.

Disciplines or spiritual practices of which the Sabbath are one.

They're not righteousness. By that I mean in doing them, you do not make yourself right with God.

But they are wisdom and this applies to the Sabbath as it will apply to each of the four

practices we're going to talk about now make room series. You should get yourself a Sabbath.

Not because you have to have one to be a good person. Not because you need one for God to love

you. You are beloved before you did a thing. You should get a Sabbath because it's wisdom

on how to live a good life. Now I get it. Hiving out a whole day may look achievable to you.

But throw in shift work or kids and everything you've already committed to it might look near

impossible. So Sabbath what you have. Can you find five hours? Can you find half a day? What time

can you find? Are there some things you could let go of in order to prioritize rest, joy and

worship? Or you can be present to God where you can unshuckle yourself from the slavery of business.

All of the spiritual disciplines take time and practice. You never become good at something

overnight. But if you do over time, if you give yourself and give small investments over a long

period, getting into a routine or discipline often requires you to make something as small

and achievable as possible. In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about how he built

his gym routine. For a couple of months, he would just get dressed into his gym gear at 6am or

whatever time he wanted to go to the gym. And he would go to the gym in his full gym clothes. He

would lift one weight and then he would go home. Because how well or how much he did at the gym

wasn't the point. The point was that he did it. And the point was that making it so small and

achievable that he actually felt so stupid if he didn't do it each day. And after a month or two,

going to the gym or not wasn't really a thought. He just went to the gym every day and he could

start to concentrate more on what he did at the gym. GK Chesteron said this, if a thing is worth

doing, it's worth doing badly. So Sabbath what you have, start small, start bad. The point

is just to start somewhere. Start to say this time, this time here, this is different time.

This time is set apart. This time is for God. This is for my life. Sabbath what you have,

an experiment, practice and build your way up to something that can carry you for the other six days.

Try turning off your phone during that time. Try throwing a ridiculously lavish dinner for your

family. Save a favourite book to just savor during that time. Set that time apart as holy

and necessary for your flourishing. Jesus says this in Matthew 11,

Come to me, all you are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle of heart and you will find

rest for your souls. If you are weary, tired, busy carrying heavy burdens, if you are too busy to rest,

too busy to seek joy or too busy to worship, come to Jesus. He's calling you and he will give you rest.

How? He says this, take my yoke upon you. What does this mean? Well, a yoke is something that

holds a pair of animals together to work a field or to do other kind of work. There's a picture

up on the screen. If you're working a field and plowing with two animals, you need to keep them

in pace with each other. And this is what a yoke does. It holds them together. So they cannot pull

in other directions, in different directions, and they cannot go one faster than the other or one

slower than the other. A yoke holds the animals together. It holds them together. It keeps them

together so that when you're plowing a field or whatever you're doing, you can do it in an even

and efficient way. Are you tired, Jesus says? Come and be yoke to me. Come and let me hold you.

Come and walk at my pace. Come and head in my direction. You're going too fast. Maybe for some

of us, we're going too slow. We're heading in the wrong direction. Come, walk through life at my

side, Jesus is saying. You have to surrender to me. You have to let go of control. You have to let

go of your own pace and your own direction. You have to let go, but don't worry. Jesus says,

I am humble and gentle at heart. I'll teach you how to live and you will find rest for your soul.

The Sabbath is a way that we yoke ourselves to Jesus, to walk in his pace, to head in his direction.

We might think that we get more work done with that one day if we could give that day to work.

We might think that we have too much work to give up that day.

We might think we just can't carve out the time, but the truth is that we always find a way to

make space in our lives for that which is important to us. We are too busy not to Sabbath.

We need to live at Jesus' pace so that you have every opportunity to begin this Sabbath practice

for our favorite sermon segment at Encounter Henley, Henley Homework. I made you a worksheet.

That's right. I made you a worksheet. We're taking homework to the next level.

And this worksheet is simple. Can you carve out a day, dinner to dinner, where you can

intentionally stop for rest, joy and worship? Can you find that day? And if you can't carve out a

day, if you legitimately can't carve out a day, try to find at least a five-hour period in your week.

And if you can't find at least a five-hour period in your week, then Sabbath what you have,

find something and write it down on your piece of paper. And then in the columns, there are three

areas for the Sabbath. There is things that bring you joy, things that help you to rest,

and things that are acts of worship for you. And what I want you to do on this sheet is just pick

one thing that you can do or that you can stop doing that will help you in each of those three

areas. One thing that will bring you joy, one thing that will help you to rest, and one thing

that will be an act of worship for you. Write it down, block it out, protect it,

book it in your calendar, make it non-negotiable. You are too busy not to Sabbath.

You're going to take some time. Think, pray. You might have to rearrange your week. You might have

to give up some good things in your life and give them the boot so they can begin to live at Jesus'

place. We'll take some time to fill it in. And then the rest is up to you. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you have given us this great gift of a Sabbath,

something made for us out of love for us. So, Lord God, I pray that as we think,

reflect during this next song as we fill out our worksheet,

that you would just be so present to us, that you would help us see clearly, see with your eyes

what it is in our weeks and the space that we can create for you, what it is that we need to

give up or start or stop doing in order to seek joy, rest and worship. And we pray, Lord God,

that you would help us to live life and life to the full, to yoke ourselves to be led by you,

humbly in your way and to let go of our prayers to Jesus.

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message. If you felt challenged or need prayer,

we would love to hear from you on Instagram, at Encounter Henley. Or if you're interested in how

you can support this ministry, please go to our website, EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you.