SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Church.
SPEAKER_00: How are we all doing?
SPEAKER_00: I'm well.
SPEAKER_00: I've always I guess to be fair, if you ask that question, you're like, what am I supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: How am I supposed to reply?
SPEAKER_00: Am I supposed to give you my week?
SPEAKER_00: Um but thank you, Church.
SPEAKER_00: Lovely to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00: Um I hope you're enjoying your summer and you've not turned into a I don't know, a charred briquette over the last few weeks.
SPEAKER_00: I definitely feel like I have.
SPEAKER_00: When I was writing this sermon this week, the chair was not dry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be honest.
SPEAKER_00: Not that you need that picture in your mind, I'm sorry for that.
SPEAKER_00: Um so we are obviously in the middle of summer holidays, and whether you've got kids or not, it's kind of the you're kind of, or you're kind of at school or not, you know, this is a kind of time where people in general just slow down.
SPEAKER_00: There's something almost in the air where the pace goes down.
SPEAKER_00: We give ourselves permission to break or and go on holiday.
SPEAKER_00: As many of us on hands, have you been on holiday yet?
SPEAKER_00: So this isn't part of a series we're doing it.
SPEAKER_00: This is a kind of one-off morning, and I want to use it to talk about something we kind of I can I rarely give the opportunity to talk about.
SPEAKER_00: I think, like a lot of our spiritual language we talk about, we talk about like pressing in and going for stuff and doing great things for Jesus, but we rarely talk about just resting, I think, um, in general.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna be talking about that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So rest, and specifically where the Bible talks about rest at the original point where it begins, the start where rest is mentioned.
SPEAKER_00: The concept probably most of us have heard of at different points, whether through different means, but we're looking at the idea of Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: So um, and and I'll be honest to you, for a long time, when uh this idea, this concept of resting um of Sabbath, I wouldn't have said it out loud, but deep within me, I think for a long time, um, I used to believe resting was something close to sin.
SPEAKER_00: Something that I, you know, one I think probably couldn't consider as being godly, as righteous, as holy, but almost as a necessary evil.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably how I viewed rest.
SPEAKER_00: Um for years on my day off, the uh the day or I had in the week, or the couple of days of I had off a week, though I never kind of called I never called it that, but my but Laura called it a specific name.
SPEAKER_00: She called it the crash, is the way she called it.
SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes, and this is this is not the case of every week, but some weeks I'd work somewhere even up to 80 to 90 hours in one week.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I was up early, still going late, trying to essentially really trying to prove my worth to make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: And then one day a week, I would when I wasn't working, my body would just give out.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I would have headaches, I would, my body would ache, I'd have very little energy.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'd be just ill in general.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and this affected not just my body, but also my character as well.
SPEAKER_00: I just wasn't patient, I wasn't kind, I wasn't gentle, I wasn't loving.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so whatever discipline I managed to kind of hold together during the week, um being a leader, being kind, would just over the my rest would just disappear.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and Laura, who's before I had kids, she just got whatever was left over, really.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh so one day I think she she named something that I probably would never forget, and she wasn't just one time, because you know, I as as people in general, you need to sometimes you need to hear something more than once.
SPEAKER_00: Um, she said to me, again, something that still rings in my mind, she said, It feels like church gets the best of you and I get the worst of you.
SPEAKER_00: Which I just heard a gasp.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and she was right, she was right, and that sentence, said more than once, undid something in me.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm sad to say that again she was right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh but for me, after hearing the first time, I was justified, I justified my actions.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I told myself I was sacrificing, I was laying my life down, taking up my cross.
SPEAKER_00: But she revealed to me something else, and um, what I was actually doing was laying down my wife to serve the church instead of laying down my wife, laying down my life for my wife as Christ laid his life down for the church, is what the scripture actually says.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I thought I was doing Christ's work, I was actually what I was trying to do was Christ's job.
SPEAKER_00: So, and this wasn't a one-off season, it was a pattern of things.
SPEAKER_00: I would kind of get better for a little bit, then kind of fall back into it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and basically because I believed the lie that I was unlimited, that I could live without limits, and that when I failed to, and that when I failed to live up to this expectation that I put on myself, this lie that I believed, I would feel the crushing weight of shame, of not feeling enough.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, I attempted to live up to a vision that I could never achieve, and I was never made for as well.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe some of you feel the same way.
SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe it's your job, how you parent, the kind of you know, the guilt that turns up the moment you sit down and do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I guess for most of us in this room, we kind of have an understanding of what I might be describing.
SPEAKER_00: For me, though, underneath those times, um, if I'm honest, was the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And this word that I just have learned to kind of grab onto in those times is I was hurried.
SPEAKER_00: So not just busy, but hurried.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what that constant internal push to keep going, to keep producing, and then no margin to make it sustainable in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And so over the years I discovered that this isn't a new problem, this isn't a new phenomenon being busy or um being hurried.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's not even a kind of a smartphone problem, but it definitely is exacerbated by it for sure.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a real human problem.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a definition from a researcher called Maya Friedman, who wrote this before even smartphones existed.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I came across and it helped just name something that I think we generally, as people in the modern West, we experience.
SPEAKER_00: And he calls it this.
SPEAKER_00: He calls it hurry sickness.
SPEAKER_00: Hurry sickness.
SPEAKER_00: And he defines it as this this is a continual struggle to accomplish more and more things in less and less time.
SPEAKER_00: More and more in less and less.
SPEAKER_00: Or as a psychologist by the name of Philip Zimbardo, he diagnosed it as well later on, writing about it.
SPEAKER_00: He says it's a behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness, a malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, even in this, I mean, you know, summer is a great time for break where we can stop.
SPEAKER_00: But I was wondering, but just before that, how many of you felt that way, that sickness that you get from hurry?
SPEAKER_00: Are you sick with hurry?
SPEAKER_00: Have this kind of like, have you crashed into summer?
SPEAKER_00: Because I generally this is an issue for us.
SPEAKER_00: And a theologian and a philosopher by the name of Dallas Willard said that hurry is the great enemy to the to the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Hurry is the great enemy to the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: You could put something else there, put something else in hurry.
SPEAKER_00: But he calls it the theologian, this incredibly wise man of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you read his writings, you'll know he says, Hurry is the great enemy to the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: And also, this is in secularism as well.
SPEAKER_00: A psychologist by the name of Carl Jung, if you've heard of him, incredibly famous psychologist, he said it like this He said, Hurry is not of the devil, hurry is the devil.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, don't read into his theology on that, but the the devil is be is a tempter, it's a deceiver, the one who promises a greater life, better outcomes, more goodness, but delivers the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: Hurry is that, it is a deceptive, it deceives us.
SPEAKER_00: And for us, we've got to think we're not above being deceived, friends.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we must be humble enough to assume that if we are deceived, we might not know that we are.
SPEAKER_00: But obviously, most importantly, it's important to look at this from a biblical standpoint as well.
SPEAKER_00: What does the Bible say about this?
SPEAKER_00: Because a hurry, I would say, in the scripture is not how God would intend of our lives to be lived.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to kind of go back to what were we made for in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: And Genesis, obviously, is the great place where we where we look at where God had created us.
SPEAKER_00: And Genesis 1 opens up with God, and God is at work, he's creating the heavens and earth, shaping the sea and the land, filling with the sky and water and ground with living things.
SPEAKER_00: He's a master craftsman building his masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: But by the end of the chapter, his labor is finished.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 31 says this, it says, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, he says, it was very good.
SPEAKER_00: So God surveys his work, his masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: And the very good that he says there, very good over his creation, is the meaning of it's full now fully functioning.
SPEAKER_00: It's at 100%, it's foundationally ready for what the purpose it had been made for.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's day six that happens, and then chapter two picks up from where chapter one leaves off, and it says, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse two says, 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.
SPEAKER_00: And I think often we could kind of brush past that, maybe even a little bit, but like we it's kind of just an amazing fact that when we kind of see here in the scriptures and and because it's almost strange to imagine what that actually looked like, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the questions abound for me in God's rest.
SPEAKER_00: Can can God, the infinite mind of God, can they just switch off?
SPEAKER_00: Did Adam and Eve, because who were created by this point, did they when they prayed, did they just pray and an answer machine just appear?
SPEAKER_00: You know, boop.
SPEAKER_00: You know, what happens when you pray and God's resting?
SPEAKER_00: You know, did the angels whisper on that day?
unknown: Holy, holy, holy.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do they do?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what did it look like?
SPEAKER_00: It's just profoundly incredible to think about what God, what it's like creation, the universe when God rests.
SPEAKER_00: But it is there in black and white.
SPEAKER_00: God rested on the seventh day.
SPEAKER_00: And the word there rested is the Hebrew word Shavat, which is where we get the word Sabbath from.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean recovering from exhaustion.
SPEAKER_00: That's important to recognize.
SPEAKER_00: God isn't recovering in that moment, but it means to stop, to cease, is what it means.
SPEAKER_00: Which raises kind of the obvious question that we already know is again, God doesn't really get tired.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah says it, he says, you know, he does not grow weary or faint.
SPEAKER_00: The psalm says when he watches over, he he neither slumbers nor sleeps.
SPEAKER_00: So if God has no need of rest, then why does he rest?
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a few reasons.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll start with kind of the main one.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's loads of reasons you could look at, but the main one is this it says in Exodus 20, it gives us um the the cut the commands of God, the ten commandments it gives us.
SPEAKER_00: And in the fourth command, and it's the only one that comes with the what and the why, it says this it says, For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a command that God rests so that we are to as well.
SPEAKER_00: So he rested not because he needs to, but so that his people would have a pattern to follow.
SPEAKER_00: And what I find fascinating is he, you know, what it just it still seems bizarre, right?
SPEAKER_00: God could have simply told us to rest, and we would have been bound to do that, to obey him as God.
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: He he also kind of gives us an example to follow, which I still find strange that he modeled it at first, because God doesn't do this for everything.
SPEAKER_00: So we question again.
SPEAKER_00: I love questions.
SPEAKER_00: So why why did God do something that he didn't need to do?
SPEAKER_00: Or did he?
SPEAKER_00: A couple of reasons.
SPEAKER_00: So the first reason I think God rests is polemical.
SPEAKER_00: If you know that word, it means to argue against.
SPEAKER_00: Um, meaning that this creation account that we have in Genesis was written in a world full of other creation stories at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And the story of Genesis in many ways is kind of in dialogue with them, or you could probably say in argument with them, um, with those other ancient texts.
SPEAKER_00: And in almost every one of them, the gods that create humans, um they create the humans as laborers to carry out the work the gods didn't want to keep doing.
SPEAKER_00: So the gods could rest.
SPEAKER_00: And Genesis, what that does, it turns it upside down.
SPEAKER_00: Here, God rests isn't for his own advantage, it's an invitation handed to his people, made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: God rests in Genesis, so humans have permission to do so.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: And the other reason, I think, is because again, we are made in his image.
SPEAKER_00: We're made in God's image, but that gives us infinite value that we're made in the creator's likeness.
SPEAKER_00: And his rest tells us something about our own design.
SPEAKER_00: That rest isn't this kind of optional extra bolted onto human life, it's built into what we actually are.
SPEAKER_00: That God could have made us unlimited like him, but he didn't.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't make this, so God, what God does is he brings rest into his own story that we are then bound to rest as well, to ultimately reflect God as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's the beauty of it.
SPEAKER_00: God rests, so it becomes part of our almost innateness to reflect God as humans, part of our responsibility as his image-bearers.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God does, and that's why God rests.
SPEAKER_00: When it appears he doesn't really need to or doesn't have to, he does it to give us permission to do so, which I think is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we just going back to the text, so it back into chapter two, it says this in verse three, it pushes it a little bit further as well.
SPEAKER_00: That God blessed the seventh day, it says, and made it holy, because on it God rested from all of his work that he had done in creation, and it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: Again, God blesses a day, God blesses a day, which is unusual.
SPEAKER_00: To ancient hearers of this, when they heard it probably for the first time many eons ago, they would have said, What?
SPEAKER_00: You can't bless a day, you can't do that, because blessing in the ancient world was kind of almost really kind of set aside for living things.
SPEAKER_00: God is blessed, people are blessed, animals are blessed, the la a land is blessed.
SPEAKER_00: But because blessing, what it is, it's it's this idea of carries fruitfulness with it, growth, multiplication.
SPEAKER_00: So a day can't just multiply, you can't just live in a day and it goes, Whoa, there's just many days.
SPEAKER_00: Like I think many of us would love more hours added to a day, but that's not how it works.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does God what does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: To be blessed like that, to multiply.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll hold on to that question, we're gonna come back to that.
SPEAKER_00: So, and then also God, what he does is he makes the day holy, he hallows it.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean kind of morally pure, as we kind of see holy, um, as we kind of might picture it, but what he does is it sets it apart, it m he marks out, protects it kept for a particular purpose.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that the idea of holy, you know, that in the ancient in the Old Testament, there was they had the holy temple and the tabernacle, this tent that was almost amongst all these other tents, that was this distinct tent.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was this separated tent from all the others.
SPEAKER_00: And within that distinct tent, they would also have distinct items, holy items, plates and utensils and cups.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody used would you've just used those for ordinary means.
SPEAKER_00: No one would have been eating from their breakfast from the holy plate or drinking their coffee.
SPEAKER_00: No, they had a coffee.
SPEAKER_00: From the well, they might have done, I don't know, but from the holy cup.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't have done.
SPEAKER_00: These were distinct, separated sacred items, only used for ritual purposes, for like sacrificial bread and wine and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you might have what could be described as holy items to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You might have things like wedding china is one that only comes out once a year.
SPEAKER_00: It's sacred in exactly the same sense.
SPEAKER_00: It's separated, protected, significant for a particular purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what God is almost marking, it is actually marking this day out for.
SPEAKER_00: It's this protected, significant, special day in honoring God's purpose, and it's preserved in that way.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I was reading, when I'm just again, like in the in the past, just studying and understanding this idea of rest.
SPEAKER_00: I remember studying this for a long time and thinking, why does God make such a big deal about rest?
SPEAKER_00: Like he makes a real big deal about this, about the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, God actually, in many cases, when you read the Old Testament, you're like, wow, God is super serious about this.
SPEAKER_00: He almost goes after his people when they profane, use the word profane it, when they diminish the significance of this sacred day.
SPEAKER_00: We see in Jeremiah 17, 27, God speaks to his own people in an incredible serious tone.
SPEAKER_00: He says, If you do not listen to me to keep the Sabbath day holy, he says, Then I will kindle a fire at Jerusalem's gate, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and not, and it shall not be quenched.
SPEAKER_00: Extremely serious.
SPEAKER_00: Or we see in the story of Nehemiah that this is after the exile, the people of God come back from exile, and and Nehemiah runs out to these noblemen of the day who are kind of working on the Sabbath, and he says to them, What is this evil thing that you are doing profaning the Sabbath day?
SPEAKER_00: Did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city?
SPEAKER_00: Now you are bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: Or the biggest one in Numbers, you know, there's a story that a guy just collects sticks on the Sabbath to kindle a fire, and he's doing this to with what this what scholars believe to intentionally break the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: So what God does is he commands Moses and Aaron to stone him in front of all the people to make an example of him.
SPEAKER_00: So God isn't light-hearted about this, is he?
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's it's incredibly serious, and it's important to question why.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to go back to why God first instituted Sabbath in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: Where did he begin this idea?
SPEAKER_00: And obviously we see that in the garden, but then when God ultimately speaks to his people, where does he first do that?
SPEAKER_00: And it's in the story of Exodus that what happens is that God just brings his people out of Egypt through the Red Sea, and for generations they had been slaves, worked to exhaustion, building wealth and status, that for a nation that only saw them as means to an end, dehumanizing them to the realm of tools rather than people.
SPEAKER_00: Every day of their existence they had been told the same lie, that that your worth is what you produce and nothing more.
SPEAKER_00: And so fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: God only gives a few commands before the Ten Commandments are given.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe there are kind of two that God gives, and before these kind of ten foundational commands, and the first one is listen to the voice of the Lord your God and obey it, which sounds pretty standard, right?
SPEAKER_00: But the second one he gives is the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is before the Ten Commandments are given.
SPEAKER_00: So God gives these kind of two distinct commands to the people of Israel, and before he gives them any of the other, before he gives them the law, before he gives them the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: And later in Deuteronomy, he tells them exactly why.
SPEAKER_00: He says that remember you were slaves in Egypt, speaking to his people.
SPEAKER_00: And he said that the Lord your God brought you out there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Do this because you were slaves, and I rescued you.
SPEAKER_00: So Sabbath was this gift given to God's people to rewrite what slavery had written into them.
SPEAKER_00: And God said it in Exodus 3, he said he heard their cry when they were in Israel, when sorry, in Egypt, when they're he said his heart was broken by their suffering, that he had seen their oppression.
SPEAKER_00: And slavery, when we consider what the experience was like for those in Israel and people that have been enslaved throughout history, it isn't just a role you play or a just a bad job, it's an identity that you will get labelled with and live every day affirming it day after day.
SPEAKER_00: And so in Egypt, all their worth was measured by what they produced, and it's and that's kind of where their value ended for them.
SPEAKER_00: But under God delivering them, they were free to live as God had made them to be.
SPEAKER_00: People made in his image, valuable by their design, not by their output.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was what it was, what it was like, it was easier to take the people out of Egypt, though, in the in the in the desert, but harder to take Egypt out of the people.
SPEAKER_00: And that was what Sabbath was for.
SPEAKER_00: It was this liberation for the recovery of their humanity to rewrite the deep code that was inside their psyche that says your value doesn't come from your production.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think about it when I think about our world today as well.
SPEAKER_00: I think our world often feels like, and our education culture and our work cultures can often feel a lot more like Egypt than they can do Eden.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it teaches us quietly and constantly that our value comes from whatever we contribute.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not on LinkedIn, but I've scrolled on it a few times in my life, and it's a depressing place to be, I'm gonna be honest.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you'll see it, you know, people just announcing their exhaustion like a trophy, their busyness like a badge of honor, like they're just almost living their lives as a sense of like, I'm so full, my life is so busy, I'm so needed, I'm so valuable, I'm so wanted.
SPEAKER_00: And then researchers have actually studied this, and that this kind of humble brag about being busy has become a become a way of telling people again that you matter, that you are worthy, that you are worth something.
SPEAKER_00: And in 2017 they did a study, and it was in this kind of journal of consumer research, and they found that a hundred years ago, that what signaled success wasn't work, but it was leisure.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you were wealthy, you didn't need to work, but now it's the opposite that you tell someone you're rushed off your feet, and what they don't hear is stress, they hear status, they hear you're needed, that you're wanted, that they hear you're valuable.
SPEAKER_00: You know, one writer in the study put it really well.
SPEAKER_00: He says, We define ourselves on the capacity to keep working all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And you may see this in yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in your interactions, you have even just whether you talk with other people or what you hear, you know, in in people present their lives like, oh, I'm so full, I'm so busy, I'm so productive.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's a badge of honor.
SPEAKER_00: I've been working flat out, I have so much to do, I'm so busy, and it's a status symbol.
SPEAKER_00: Weirdly, you only think about it, overwhelm, busyness, burden.
SPEAKER_00: It says to this says to the person, I am productive, I am valuable, I am worth something.
SPEAKER_00: And we've got to question ourselves deep down: what are we doing in those moments?
SPEAKER_00: Are we being vulnerable, sharing our hearts, wanting a season that is stretching to become more manageable?
SPEAKER_00: Stress isn't bad by any means, but it can be when it's overwhelming us.
SPEAKER_00: Are we wanting to share our hearts in those moments?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we trying to present a picture of value or status to those around us?
SPEAKER_00: And I've got to be honest as well, like I used to say to people a lot the time, I used to say, I'm busy, I'm so busy.
SPEAKER_00: And then I had kids.
SPEAKER_00: And then you know what busy is.
SPEAKER_00: It is hard.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, and and having a full life isn't bad.
SPEAKER_00: You know, God, when God, when thinking on the other side, you know, He talks about it in this, he talks about the Proverbs specifically, he talks about being slothful, and he has some hard words to those who are.
SPEAKER_00: But giving yourself to kind of work, industry, creativity, there is goodness in the God-created work that He's given us.
SPEAKER_00: And so God isn't against a full life, but He is against a limitless one, because He hasn't made us that way.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, last year, I feel like it's been very much that for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not again not saying this for status, it's been it has been stretching in a sense that I have not found valuable.
SPEAKER_00: But since learning the truth of this and since seeing God in scripture and seeing how he values rest, I no longer delight in the status of how busy I appear.
SPEAKER_00: I actually feel rather uncomfortable with it.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing the cost of a busy life often puts a strain where the life God would actually really intend our lives to be spent.
SPEAKER_00: So in the push for productivity, what often suffers is our relationships, is our character, is our growth, is our soul, is our true responsibilities and callings God has given us to prayer, to love our neighbor, to make disciples to abide, to grow in wisdom and the knowing of God.
SPEAKER_00: Those are our primary responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: And if we push for productivity, often it's those things that get squeezed to the side.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we see this in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We see this, Jesus makes a great picture for us in the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10.
SPEAKER_00: We see Martha who invites Jesus into her home, you know, and the and why does anyone invite anyone?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you invite them to just to be with them, to know them, to spend time, enjoy their company.
SPEAKER_00: Yet when Jesus arrives, it simply says that out of Martha, it says that she was distracted with much serving.
SPEAKER_00: Distracted with much serving.
SPEAKER_00: So she was like in the kitchen, you know, putting the pressure, it would appear, on herself to provide a meal for 15 people.
SPEAKER_00: And again, if you've ever done catering, that's no small work.
SPEAKER_00: That's nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not, it's not so easy.
SPEAKER_00: So there was a pressure of hospitality on her, and she was doing all this work alone.
SPEAKER_00: And so, and that frustrates her because what happens is her sister, Mary, is in the room with her.
SPEAKER_00: Ancient kitchens and homes didn't have a separate kitchen, she would have been in the room with her.
SPEAKER_00: So while she was struggling by herself, her sister is inside, just sitting with her guest.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in her frustration, she she calls on Jesus, her guest, saying, Jesus, do you not care?
SPEAKER_00: Mary has left me to serve alone.
SPEAKER_00: You could tell her to help me.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: He sees her heart and he knows that actually that a failure has happened here, and it's not in Mary.
SPEAKER_00: The failure is that Martha has failed to understand the nature of her guest, while Mary had not.
SPEAKER_00: He is not interested in the status and reputation of how good her hospitality is, and he will not judge her on the quality of her reception.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, what is the case is what he says is it says, Martha, he says to her, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: It says Mary has chosen the good portion, which she will not be taken away from her.
SPEAKER_00: Martha is this rushing and picture of distraction while Mary is present and attentive.
SPEAKER_00: So one thing is necessary, he says.
SPEAKER_00: And what is that, what is that thing?
SPEAKER_00: I would say is ultimately what the example Mary is showing us.
SPEAKER_00: It's our responsiveness to the voice of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And in our busyness, what happens is we squeeze that out from hearing Jesus' voice and being able to be responsive to it in our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we need to be hearing, is what busyness does, is what hurry does, is it causes us to be people of ill attentiveness, of distraction.
SPEAKER_00: And actually, what we need to be is people like Mary, who are able, yes, in moments, obviously, be hospitable, isn't that is the is the message of the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we see that so many times, but actually, what what what is what is needed in that moment is we need to be Mary at all times, even in our hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we see is God cares so deeply about rest because hurry is like that again.
SPEAKER_00: It's the devil, it deceives, it enslaves, and it erodes our ability to receive and live into the the good life God has for us.
SPEAKER_00: So God's answer, again, I would argue it today is the same as it was right back then, even in Exodus and in right back at creation.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Sabbath that we live as six days of work and one day of rest, and it's vitally human and part of what it means to be an image-bearer of God.
SPEAKER_00: Um and I know theologically we'll kind of like have some questions around that.
SPEAKER_00: So, like, what does that mean for us?
SPEAKER_00: Are we now never to able to do work on Saturday or Sunday?
SPEAKER_00: Or um, what does that look like if I you know I kind of think about your life?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, I was on a walk and I picked up a stick.
SPEAKER_00: Does that mean God's gonna like just you know smite me at any moment?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Um, under the old covenant, the Sabbath was part of the Mosaic law that governed a nation, and we are no longer in that nation, we're no longer under a nation, it's not the same system.
SPEAKER_00: So what happens is it talks about, Paul talks about, he says actually, that the law was only ever a shadow that is pointing forward to something fuller to come, and that was Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So when Christ comes, dies, rises, and ascends, he doesn't just add to a law, he fulfills it, he becomes what the necessary for the law itself, which means the Mosaic law of the Old Testament is no it no longer governs us.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean there's nothing to govern us now.
SPEAKER_00: Under the new covenant, we have the law that is not written in stone but is written by the Spirit on our hearts, is what it talks about.
SPEAKER_00: But also, Paul says that we are now under the law of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We're no longer under the Mosaic law, we're under a law of Christ, which he says he reveals in the places when in Jesus' teaching and who Jesus was and what the spirit taught the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: So the questions we kind of need to be asking at that moment so in this new covenant picture, what does Jesus do with the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: And so, and I think you look through the gospels and you find him often we even heard it.
SPEAKER_00: I think I heard it this morning, I can't remember where someone mentioned this the Sabbath, I can't remember who it was, but um we hear about Jesus often being criticized for how he, by the Pharisees, lives into the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And we see in what Jesus wants to, I think Jesus' ultimate statement about the Sabbath in Mark 2 27, he says that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And that's I think the whole key to this.
SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath was never meant to be this burden that crushes us, it's a gift given to us by God.
SPEAKER_00: And if it becomes this kind of weighty thing that we're supposed to carry, I think it misses the whole entire point anyway.
SPEAKER_00: So, under the new covenant, would it be sin to not keep the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: I well, I wouldn't say so, personally, by what the way I read the scriptures and what I believe scholars would say, but would it be wise to keep the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, it would be.
SPEAKER_00: Because ask yourself, did God rest seven days?
SPEAKER_00: Or did God rest on the seventh day, not seven days?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Did he build that rhythm in specifically to bless and benefit his people?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Did he do the things that did he do that so that in our bones, when we live this out, and we live out a Sabbath, when we live out in that rhythm, that in we would know that we are never meant to be human doings but human beings?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's the that's why God has given us this gift of the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: So if this is how we are made, then going without rest isn't breaking a rule per se, rather it goes against the very grain of what we were designed for.
SPEAKER_00: So the question isn't about a specific day, it matters little about what day you cease on, it matters much more what that ceasing, what that rest actually looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Because for a lot of us, if we're honest, what we call rest isn't moving us towards what I think God would have originally for us as what rest was meant for.
SPEAKER_00: And what it was meant for, it was meant to restore us, to reconnect us to our own creaturiness, to remind us that we are loved and valued by God, not because of what we can produce, but because of who we already are in Him.
SPEAKER_00: So look honestly, I think when we consider our days off, when we consider the lives that we lead, what does rest look like for you?
SPEAKER_00: What are the patterns when you fall into when you cease?
SPEAKER_00: Because I think it says a lot about our lives when the patterns we fall into.
SPEAKER_00: Do they cause you to be a more flourishing person or simply are they are they designed to kind of switch you off to so they can switch you back on to be more productive?
SPEAKER_00: You know, things like we switch off.
SPEAKER_00: I think there's some things that we do that aren't that we might consider restful but aren't really.
SPEAKER_00: Things like doom scrolling or binging on streaming platforms, gaming on our phone, PC, tablet, whatever it is, until your headaches, vegging in front of the TV all day.
SPEAKER_00: None of these are the way I believe God would want us to rest ultimately.
SPEAKER_00: That's I would say probably in more of the crash example of resting than it is in the actual idea God would have for us.
SPEAKER_00: That is real, that is, doesn't just detach us from the real world, that connects us to the real world as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so we must consider what Sabbath is actually for and look at the pattern throughout scripture that where God wants what God has ultimately designed Sabbath for.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a few things, so three things particularly.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing Sabbath is for is for delight.
SPEAKER_00: So that when God rested on the first Sabbath, it wasn't just from exhaustion, he he rested to savor, to almost survey everything that he made and that he enjoyed the work of his hands.
SPEAKER_00: That was a pattern that he's handed to us as well.
SPEAKER_00: So for us, you know, me and me and Laura and our family, we've been practicing Sabbaths for a few years now.
SPEAKER_00: And so in our house, what we do on that day is we mark it out and we have special things that we do.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that we do is a kind of a an activity of delighting.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds more sounds more ritual than it actually is, but like what we do is we as a family, we haven't done it as much because of the heat, but we what we often do is have pancakes and we have a smorgasbord of spreads.
SPEAKER_00: And what we do is we we read liturgy and we like have a moment where we just hear from each other's stories of what what has God given us this week.
SPEAKER_00: What is what are we grateful for this week?
SPEAKER_00: So we can together almost enter into the delight of each other's lives, so we can delight together, we can delight on sweet food, but also delight in what God has done and been good to us in the week.
SPEAKER_00: And so, weekly as part of that day, me and Laura will also have like our date night we'll put into there, and I will try and cook something a bit more nice, so that we can delight in again good food, which is mainly me because I just delight in good food anyway.
SPEAKER_00: So we take an activity of delights.
SPEAKER_00: What do you delight about?
SPEAKER_00: What has God given you?
SPEAKER_00: What grabs your soul, what fills your heart with his goodness?
SPEAKER_00: Then put that in your day.
SPEAKER_00: What do you delight in?
SPEAKER_00: Fill the day with delight.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing I think Sabbath is for is ultimately, I think it's most important thing really, is trust.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we go back to Exodus 16 in Israel in the desert, and God tells them, um, he says, gather twice as much when they're kind of this manner is poured out.
SPEAKER_00: He says, gather twice as much on the sixth day, because on the seventh day there will be nothing to collect.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is kind of the thing.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna use as an opportunity to do to trust God.
SPEAKER_00: Don't pick up anything on the seventh day.
SPEAKER_00: Just trust what you have will be what you need.
SPEAKER_00: And the if the Israelites throughout their history, they really struggled to practice Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: They really struggled to trust.
SPEAKER_00: Because in an agrarian society, in sorry, in an agrarian society, um, if you didn't work the fields, the animals, the crops, you didn't eat.
SPEAKER_00: So, and that's why they struggled with trusting God, that he would bless them if they practice and continued on the Sabbath as well.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the main reason, again, this is the main reason I think Sabbath exists for us at all, that since the garden, I think there's been a pull on every one of our hearts to almost to play God.
SPEAKER_00: We see that in the garden with Adam and Eve, that they, as they eat of the fruit and take of it, they will be like God.
SPEAKER_00: To be, and and when we are not resting, I think what we do is we take the opportunity to almost to believe that we're the ones in control, that somewhere underneath everything, that we are the one that holds all the things together.
SPEAKER_00: So at the moment we actually stop, we cease.
SPEAKER_00: What we do is we feel it, we feel out of control, we feel like we're letting people down, we feel like we're under something of something in us is almost under threat.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the point.
SPEAKER_00: That if stopping genuines you that deeply, it's a signal showing you where are you building your worth.
SPEAKER_00: So, Sabbath, what it is essentially is becomes this act of resistance.
SPEAKER_00: It resists the lie that we are God, that we're the ones holding it all together.
SPEAKER_00: If we stopped, our world would fall apart.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, that weight was never ours to carry.
SPEAKER_00: We are limited people with limited capacity.
SPEAKER_00: So practically what that might mean for you is it might mean on your on a day that you cease switching your phone off, disconnecting from the world that is almost always feels on, that always wants your attention, your eyes, your engagement.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I know how deeply I need this.
SPEAKER_00: It may mean, you know, not checking your emails, your messages for a day.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's ceasing so that you can start trusting again, and trusting your life back into the hands of the one who always was, we were meant to rest in.
SPEAKER_00: And the third thing Sabbath is for is communion.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean don't mean communion in a sense of like the bread and wine communion.
SPEAKER_00: I mean communion is connection with God and with other people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Matthew 11, 28 says, Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important to notice when what what he doesn't say there is, he doesn't say, Come to this practice.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Come to me.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that it's important.
SPEAKER_00: Where do we point our Sabbath at?
SPEAKER_00: Where do we direct it?
SPEAKER_00: That rest is ultimately not found in a practice, it's found in a person.
SPEAKER_00: So communion with God is essential if we are ever going to enter into a Sabbath well.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll also argue with communion with other people as well.
SPEAKER_00: You know, think about how you kind of spend your your relationships that you kind of enjoy most of the week.
SPEAKER_00: You know, most of you, I'd imagine, are at work or at school, and most of the things of your relationships are day-to-day are kind of side-by-side relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you work on a project together, you're learning together, you're working at the same goal together as a team.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: That's genuinely a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: But side by side isn't the same as face-to-face.
SPEAKER_00: And we need both.
SPEAKER_00: We need unhurried, undistracted time with people that love us and that we can love as well.
SPEAKER_00: And normal sometimes just not doing anything together, just being together.
SPEAKER_00: For our family, what we do is we go for a walk every Saturday as much as we can, with no agenda, nothing to achieve, no kind of well, with some degree of direction, otherwise we'd never been anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: But and we have to, every week, we have to drag Judah out on this walk.
SPEAKER_00: And he protests every single way, oh, not the walk again.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, the plan is within it, is we would just again, it was like, why do we do this?
SPEAKER_00: He even questioned us yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: It was like, we do this because we just want to be together with no agenda.
SPEAKER_00: And we almost every time we go and we just have a great conversation about something, and we not like we planned that in.
SPEAKER_00: It was like, okay, how do we plan in the great conversation that we're going to have?
SPEAKER_00: And which is my kind of drive.
SPEAKER_00: How do we optimize this?
SPEAKER_00: Is my kind of problem.
SPEAKER_00: You can sense that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but like um, you know, like we just be together, and just whatever conversation comes out, it just is a beautiful moment.
SPEAKER_00: So we just don't engineer it, but we just allow it to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And we need that face-to-face time, not only with our with each other, but also with God too.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because again, we do we we serve, we ultimately do a lot of things, we do side-by-side relationship with God, but not face-to-face, and we need both.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, how I practice that on on my Sabbath day is I just when all the other family are off, just kind of like enjoying their own individual times of rest, whether Reuben's napping, Judah's watching a bit of TV, and Laura's somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I just I just I take a moment to stop and sit and just put on an album or some music in my by myself with this, not the kind of like anthemic worship songs, but just songs of like poetry that I you have to stop and slow down and listen to.
SPEAKER_00: And in those moments, I I've I I just I I see the face of God.
SPEAKER_00: I feel it within myself.
SPEAKER_00: Just I know I'm close to God because I've just slowed down enough to know that He is present, to know that He is near.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to encourage you to do the same, to know that actually that is the blessing that I think God has reserved for the day we rest and the day we cease and the day we stop.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it doesn't have to be a Saturday, it doesn't have to be a Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Throughout church history, it's been both.
SPEAKER_00: So, like it can be an it could be a weekday for you.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00: But what it matters more is again, are you doing all these things?
SPEAKER_00: Are you delighting?
SPEAKER_00: Are you taking opportunity to trust God to cease that you are not in control of the universe and to also be in communion with him?
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the the the the blessing that we receive that God has reserved for the ceasing, the harvest is again just God is waiting for us in those moments.
SPEAKER_00: To when we are unhurried, when we slow down enough to just be present with him.
SPEAKER_00: That is what God has for us in those days.
SPEAKER_00: And the vision I want to leave with you is that really is that blessing that in in this world that is always on, always wanting more from us, always telling that you are not doing enough, that the Sabbath is the is the rest that we need.
SPEAKER_00: That the it's the fact living out in your lives that you can't do anymore to earn God's love, to make yourself more valuable to him because you are already his.
SPEAKER_00: That you are safe within his plan as his people, under the care of your shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: And again, friends, this is this is the this is a practice of wisdom straight from the scriptures, part of the design we were made for.
SPEAKER_00: But it isn't it's not something, it's something that we have to start a journey with.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something you can just kind of wake up and think, oh, you it rest is something you have to learn.
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I've been learning for for a very long time now.
SPEAKER_00: So for friends, um what I want to leave us with is this is this practice of giving into Sabbath, of resting, leaves you in it less frantic, less anxious, more present, more loving.
SPEAKER_00: And I think on your days off, but also on every other day too.
SPEAKER_00: So my heart is that again, that this would again, as we walk away from this place, we would learn to rest in the arms of God, to be still and know that He is God, to rest in the care of our shepherd, to find your worth apart from your output, to be loved and be known by God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.