SPEAKER_01: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Today is Sunday, the thirtieth of August, twenty and fifteen, and God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: He was all week long.
SPEAKER_01: He will be in the week to come, and he is today.
SPEAKER_01: God is good, God is gracious, God is patient, he puts up with us, he saves us.
SPEAKER_01: And it's all about him.
SPEAKER_01: And God, unlike us, knows exactly what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: And God, unlike us, does exactly as he pleases.
SPEAKER_01: And God, unlike us, all that he pleases is always and only good.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that good news?
SPEAKER_01: Part of what God pleases is expressed in the tender commandments that He has given us.
SPEAKER_01: Commandments that are not meant to bind us, but commandments that are meant to free us.
SPEAKER_01: Specifically, we're going to be looking at the fourth commandment this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And I would ask you to turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus chapter 20, the fourth commandment, verses 8 through 11.
SPEAKER_01: We will also briefly, in the course of our reflection on this, look at Deuteronomy chapter 5, a place where the Ten Commandments are repeated.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you realize that, but the Ten Commandments are given twice in almost exactly the same words, except for this fourth commandment.
SPEAKER_01: Given 40 years after this, after the generation that was taken out of Egypt by God's gracious and powerful and mighty hand, and the Red Sea parted, and they went across, and they came to Mount Sinai, and God gave the words that we're going to be reading this morning.
SPEAKER_01: But that generation rebelled.
SPEAKER_01: It died off as a result of rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: It complained and groused and groaned and sounded an awful lot like us.
SPEAKER_01: And God graciously, after that generation was gone, God gave the ceremonial and moral law, especially in the Ten Commandments, yet again.
SPEAKER_01: What we want to look at specifically is the fourth commandment.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to be reading from Exodus chapter 20, verses 8 through 11.
SPEAKER_01: It's on page 61.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a Bible with you that's your own, grab one from the front of the pew.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis Exodus, the second book of the Bible, chapter 20, verses 8 and following, which simply says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: What in the world does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: We want to try to unpack that this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
SPEAKER_01: But on the seventh day, the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_01: On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
SPEAKER_01: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
SPEAKER_01: This is the fourth word, the fourth of the commandments, the fourth message that God gave.
SPEAKER_01: And we're in the middle of a series.
SPEAKER_01: If you're just returning from the lake or wherever you've been, you found us in the middle of this series.
SPEAKER_01: We looked several weeks ago at the first commandment, which basically says, make God a priority in your life.
SPEAKER_01: It's a question of priorities.
SPEAKER_01: God must have the first place in our lives, and everything else in our lives must be somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: It's a matter of priorities.
SPEAKER_01: The second one, the second commandment, has to do with worship, both what we worship or who we worship and how we worship it.
SPEAKER_01: And the point is really simple.
SPEAKER_01: We are not to worship just God just as we want Him to be.
SPEAKER_01: We are to worship God just as He is.
SPEAKER_01: And there's something so deep within us that we want to make God either in our own image or at least somebody that we like and we can manage and control, and God will not be controlled by us.
SPEAKER_01: And we are to worship and serve the God who is, not the God we want.
SPEAKER_01: It's a question of worship.
SPEAKER_01: And then we saw last week the third commandment, the third commandment which had to do with taking the name of the Lord in vain, which has a whole lot more to say to us than don't curse.
SPEAKER_01: Taking something in vain means emptying it of value.
SPEAKER_01: And even as believers, even as we go through the 168 hours a week in our lives, if we were to take away all of the God talk and all of the Christian activities and all of the time that you spend coming to church or reading your Bible or having devotions or whatever it is, if you took all of that out of your life, would your life really be fundamentally different from anybody else in the world?
SPEAKER_01: It's quite possible that we can fill our life with God things and Christian talk, and yet it doesn't really make a day, uh a difference in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: That is taking the name of the Lord our God in vain, as much as cursing is.
SPEAKER_01: This morning we're seeing the fourth of the tender commandments.
SPEAKER_01: And if you take nothing else away from our time together this morning, what I hope you will understand, the point of it, the point that I'm trying to emphasize, there's much more than in this section than this, in this simple these simple verses.
SPEAKER_01: But the point being, God says to you and to me, he says, Stop.
SPEAKER_00: Stop!
SPEAKER_01: Just stop all your ceaseless frenzied activities and recreate, not just recreate, but recreate from within.
SPEAKER_01: Physically, emotionally, spiritually, and refocus on me, says God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Jewish Sabbath was all about.
SPEAKER_01: Stop.
SPEAKER_01: Recreate and refocus.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's try to uh to understand this a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: As we begin with the the fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know whether how many of you would have taken up the challenge that I had given to, you know what's coming.
SPEAKER_01: Next week is the fifth commandment.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, one, two, three, four, five, it's not hard.
SPEAKER_01: In the week before the service, uh, that's Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: Give a focus on the passage that we're going to be talking about.
SPEAKER_01: It helps a great deal.
SPEAKER_01: And if you did that this week, and if it would even be possible for us to approach a text like this without all of our preconceived ideas, saying we know what it means, but just listen to it and say, what am I observing about this?
SPEAKER_01: Probably most of us would say there's something different about this commandment, different from the other nine.
SPEAKER_01: And if you haven't noticed that, then you may have just been on autopilot.
SPEAKER_01: There is something that just feels different about this verse.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, six days you shall labor, the seventh day of Sabbath, your Lord shan't work, shall not your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, livestock, sojourners in your gates.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: If you were making, if you had the privilege, which you do not and I do not, to come up with our own list of the top ten, would you put Sabbath keeping anywhere on that list?
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't put it four, I wouldn't have put it 44, I wouldn't have put it 404, I probably wouldn't put it 4,000 and 4.
SPEAKER_01: What's going on here?
SPEAKER_01: Shall not murder, I get that.
SPEAKER_01: Adultery, I get that.
SPEAKER_01: We have problems with all of that.
SPEAKER_01: Murdering in our heart, adulteress in our hearts, uh, putting God first, I get all of that.
SPEAKER_01: But what in the world is all of this about Sabbath keeping?
SPEAKER_01: It just has a bit of a different feel to it.
SPEAKER_01: Um actually, this particular commandment has been treated differently really from the time it was given.
SPEAKER_01: Very quickly, this commandment became a whole system of rules and regulations and oppressive kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_01: Whereas the others, we understand there's a moral principle here, but here we see law.
SPEAKER_01: Here we see, here we don't do this and don't have fun, and it's Saturday, and you know.
SPEAKER_01: Um maybe I'm exaggerating, but actually, if you look in the history of things, I'm not.
SPEAKER_01: This quickly in the history of Israel became something that was really quite oppressive very early on.
SPEAKER_01: It's easier for me to just read a section William Barclay is uh is talking, and he was saying the Jewish approach to the Sabbath didn't go well.
SPEAKER_01: The principles behind it became regulations, and law, a principle of what God is saying, became legalism with the Sabbath in a way that wasn't quite true with the others.
SPEAKER_01: So he describes how this was understood by uh by the Jews in the course of the centuries.
SPEAKER_01: Nowhere was this more evident than in the Sabbath law.
SPEAKER_01: For example, the law forbade work.
SPEAKER_01: But what is work?
SPEAKER_01: So they laid down 39 different classifications, major classifications of work called the fathers of work.
SPEAKER_01: Bad enough to have one father, much less 39.
SPEAKER_01: Each classification was capable of infinite subdivision.
SPEAKER_01: One class of work which was forbidden was the carrying of a burden, a weight.
SPEAKER_01: But what is a burden?
SPEAKER_01: So it came to be argued whether or not a man could lift his child on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, he may, but not if the child has a stone in his hand, for the stone is a burden even though the child is not.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you may think the child is a burden, but that's that's a different issue.
SPEAKER_01: Then there comes the inevitable question, what is a stone?
SPEAKER_01: And it goes on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: The Sabbath changed.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of being something designed to protect the wealth and wherefell of human beings, it became a day of prohibition, the list of things which might not be done stretching out into an almost endless series of rules and regulations.
SPEAKER_01: This, what all I'm really saying is that from the beginning, this particular commandment was treated differently and responded to differently.
SPEAKER_01: The letter of the law, the regulations, the prohibitions, and then how refreshing it was to hear from Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: When to hear from Jesus, he said, folks, folks, um, the Sabbath was made for man.
SPEAKER_01: Man wasn't made for the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus gave this refreshing, gracious correction of the misunderstanding of what this is all about.
SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting that this is the only one of the ten that is not repeated as a command in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Don't know if you've ever noticed that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, after the day of Pentecost, it's not even once referred to.
SPEAKER_01: Once the church was born on the day of Pentecost, this was not, you don't you don't find anything about the Sabbath in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_01: You know that Jews were gathering, but no treatment of it, no command about it in the book of Acts, no command about the Sabbath in the epistles, no reference to the Sabbath in this sense in uh in Revelation, and even in the Gospels, although we see that people observed it when Jesus spoke about it, he had to correct the misuse of it.
SPEAKER_01: And yet all of the other of the Ten Commandments are specifically set forth as commandments in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder what that means.
SPEAKER_01: If we don't think about things like this, then we're probably not thinking when we're reading.
SPEAKER_01: So they made it a Christian Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: There is no such thing as a Christian Sabbath in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: Uh that would be kind of the last thing that I want to say.
SPEAKER_01: The church misused it just as much as Israel did, although we find early in the book of Acts that believers gathered on the first day of the week.
SPEAKER_01: Not the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week.
SPEAKER_01: Saturday.
SPEAKER_01: Believers gathered on the first day of the week.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord's Day, it was a day of celebration, it was a day of reflection of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: It was a time where believers gathered together for what we do, sitting under the teaching of God's Word, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer.
SPEAKER_01: It was not a burdensome thing.
SPEAKER_01: It was a time to stop.
SPEAKER_01: Refresh our souls, recreate, refocus our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And yet it quickly became every bit as abusive and oppressive as in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Emperor Constantine, 3, 321 A.D., purportedly was converted.
SPEAKER_01: And what happened quickly after that is he instituted Sunday as a Christian Sabbath, particularly in the cities of Rome where no labor, no transactions, no work could be done.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't last very long because it didn't work.
SPEAKER_01: But right away we were moved in the direction of that.
SPEAKER_01: In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas built a whole theory of the Christian Sabbath that continued on through the Reformation, continued on in England, the Sunday Observance Act that continued to the blue laws in our country.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are old enough to remember that things weren't always open on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: The only difference now is the mall opens a little bit later and closes a little bit earlier, but you you didn't used to be able to do hardly anything on Sunday, and those are the so-called blue laws.
SPEAKER_01: The same kind of uh same kind of abuse, actually.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it wasn't long before the church was drawing up as detailed a list of rules and regulations uh for the Lord's Day as was done for the Jewish Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: So all I'm trying to say is this is a little bit more of a perplexing uh commandment than the others in some way.
SPEAKER_01: So let's try to bring this to light, what the meaning is.
SPEAKER_01: So what I'd like to try to do is just walk through the text and try to expose it, to bring it to light.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Bible exposition is.
SPEAKER_01: We don't add our words to it, we draw out of it to the best of ability what we can.
SPEAKER_01: Let's see what this is actually saying, and then we have to ask ourselves, what do we do with it?
SPEAKER_01: Observation, interpretation, application.
SPEAKER_01: This church had that 40 years ago, right?
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: So let's ask ourselves, what does this mean?
SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to ask you to turn to Exodus chapter 20, uh, verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: And what we find there, the the words begins with uh remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: Remember and keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: The Sabbath was not instituted here in Exodus 20.
SPEAKER_01: They were to look back and remember something that they already knew something about.
SPEAKER_01: The Deuteronomy parallel passage says, observe it.
SPEAKER_01: Observe something you already know something about.
SPEAKER_01: Um and what we find is actually very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Shortly before they were on Mount Sinai, but after the Jews had come out of Egypt and come across the Red Sea, they were doing what they did best.
SPEAKER_01: They were grumbling, they were complaining about God, they were asking themselves, why is God doing this to me?
SPEAKER_01: Do we ever find ourselves when life doesn't go the way we want it to, to say, God, why are you doing this to me?
SPEAKER_01: It's a terrible question.
SPEAKER_01: God is not doing something to us except seeking through the cross and the cross of Christ and the death of Christ to bless us.
SPEAKER_01: And he uses the bad things in our lives for good.
SPEAKER_01: He's not doing something to us, but it was it's deep in our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: And so for the Jews, when they were grumbling and complaining and they didn't like the food they had and there wasn't enough, then God so patiently and so graciously gave them the quail and the manna in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: And miraculously, each day the manna would would be there.
SPEAKER_01: And so they could go and gather it and they would have enough food for the day.
SPEAKER_01: But if they tried to keep it any longer than one day, it rotted.
SPEAKER_01: It was putrid.
SPEAKER_01: So every day, every day, God was providing for that day what they need.
SPEAKER_01: All kinds of incredibly pertinent principles for us.
SPEAKER_01: One day at a time, God gives us what we need.
SPEAKER_01: Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, but not the seventh day.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what it was?
SPEAKER_01: On the seventh day there was no manna, there was no quail.
SPEAKER_01: But on the sixth day, God gave a double portion, so they went out and they gathered that because there would be no more on the seventh day.
SPEAKER_01: Because the seventh day was a Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: It was a day of stopping, it was a day of ceasing and desisting.
SPEAKER_01: So they knew about that, and that's what he is referring to.
SPEAKER_01: The principle of one day being different from the rest, one day of seven was nothing new.
SPEAKER_01: They were reminded about it, and they were to keep it holy.
SPEAKER_01: And we have such a problem with the word holy, it makes us think of stained glass and organs, and I have no problem with stained glass and organs.
SPEAKER_01: Makes us think with someone with a deep, godly stained glass voice.
SPEAKER_01: Um we get all we get all messed up with that.
SPEAKER_01: All holy means is set apart.
SPEAKER_01: Different.
SPEAKER_01: One day of the week is to be set apart for God and is to be different from God.
SPEAKER_01: They were to treat the seventh day differently.
SPEAKER_01: There is to be a different special day graciously provided by the Lord for his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: That was what the Sabbath was all about.
SPEAKER_01: It was not oppressive, it was a gracious provision of rest and refocusing on God.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's uh continue here.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at Exodus 20, verses 9 and 10.
SPEAKER_01: Uh six days you shall labor and do your work.
SPEAKER_01: On the seventh day, the seventh is a Sabbath to the Lord, you shall not do any work, not you or anybody around you.
SPEAKER_01: This this matter of uh the Sabbath obviously has to do with work and a ceasing and a stopping and a desisting of work.
SPEAKER_01: The word sabbath is it means sabbath, and all it is is a Hebrew word, sabbat.
SPEAKER_01: And it meant stop, stop, time out.
SPEAKER_01: Think of a coach with a whistle.
unknown: Stop!
SPEAKER_01: Take a time out, and I don't mean the way you say to your kids, take a time out.
SPEAKER_01: But take time out, stop your frenzied activities.
SPEAKER_01: Um we will probably only understand correctly uh what this was all about when we understand the biblical teaching about work, not as a burden, not as a curse, but as a blessing, as a stewardship, as an assignment.
SPEAKER_01: It's part of our calling as human beings.
SPEAKER_01: And that goes back to uh to Genesis, no, I didn't put those verses there, to Genesis chapter 2, uh, verse 15, for example.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and we need to understand this because the Sabbath is a ceasing of what we're about to see.
SPEAKER_01: Here of the assignment of man before sin, work is not the curse.
SPEAKER_01: It's the thorns and the thistles and the sweat of our brow and the pain of childbirth and all of that, the labor.
SPEAKER_01: That's the curse.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not the assignment to be productive and to act and to be a good steward.
SPEAKER_01: We see that it goes to the very core of who we are.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 2.15, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden to work and keep the garden.
SPEAKER_01: God gave Adam and Eve a little piece of paradise here on earth.
SPEAKER_01: And it has to do with what we shall experience.
SPEAKER_01: And in heaven, when the new heaven and the new earth, we will have productive, meaningful activities that are challenging and that are godlike.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, they were to, for example, tend and superintend and develop the garden, this whole matter of developing the world around us.
SPEAKER_01: They were to give names to the different animals.
SPEAKER_01: And we saw last week, names are not just labels.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't just look at something and say, well, that's a hippopotamus and that's a toad or whatever it was.
SPEAKER_01: This whole thing, and it's just, there's hints of it here, but it's clearly there.
SPEAKER_01: When Adam was to name the animals, that was the very beginning of intellectual activities.
SPEAKER_01: Understanding the nature, because names and nature went together in the biblical mindset.
SPEAKER_01: So it's really in seed form, it's all intellectual activities, all creative work, all efforts to unlock the hidden secrets of God in the creation.
SPEAKER_01: That was part of man's assignment.
SPEAKER_01: That was good.
SPEAKER_01: That goes to the heart of who we are as creatures, created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, sin really screwed things up, no question about that.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not work that is the curse.
SPEAKER_01: Work was given as a gift, a stewardship, and a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: And it reflects what God did.
SPEAKER_01: For in six days, God created.
SPEAKER_01: So our work, and I know this is hard to believe on Monday morning, but our work was intended to reflect something of our being.
SPEAKER_01: We're made for that, that creative, productive activity, and that reflects something in the being of God.
SPEAKER_01: Our doing is a reflection of the fact that God did many things.
SPEAKER_01: Work is not a curse, it is a calling.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that's real easy to say.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not real easy because we live in a broken world and we have broken hearts, and it doesn't always function that way.
SPEAKER_01: But we've got to understand that the six days of working was a blessing, not a cursing.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here is the point.
SPEAKER_01: There is much more to us than work.
SPEAKER_01: There's much more to a human being than what he does.
SPEAKER_01: We are called to stop at least one day out of seven and not be identified by what we do.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go on and look at verse 11 of chapter 20.
SPEAKER_01: Much more we can say in Genesis about a biblical understanding of the calling and privilege of work.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a reason why we are to do this that's contained in verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Stop, cease, desist.
SPEAKER_01: For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea and is all that in them.
SPEAKER_01: And in the seventh day, God stopped.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't cease to exist.
SPEAKER_01: He stopped.
SPEAKER_01: He took a timeout.
SPEAKER_01: God did nothing for, except hold the universe together, but he did nothing of his creative work for a whole one day out of seven.
SPEAKER_01: God took a Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: God stopped.
SPEAKER_01: Who do we think we are?
SPEAKER_01: If God, now God was not tired.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't stop and take a break because his muscles were sore.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't tired for having thrown the universe into place.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't exhausted from having finally woven together those amino acids in that beautiful, amazing dual helix of the DNA molecule.
SPEAKER_01: He wasn't tired of that.
SPEAKER_01: But God is more than just making things.
SPEAKER_01: And we are to be more than just what we do.
SPEAKER_01: God is not defined by being the creator.
SPEAKER_01: He is the creator.
SPEAKER_01: That's a part of who he is.
SPEAKER_01: But there's much more to God than just doing.
SPEAKER_01: God took a break.
SPEAKER_01: And so is my clicker.
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
SPEAKER_01: There is much more to God than what he does.
SPEAKER_01: He is not defined by doing.
SPEAKER_01: And we must not be defined by doing.
SPEAKER_01: God is not a divine doer.
SPEAKER_01: He is a divine beer, a being.
SPEAKER_01: There is more to God than work alone.
SPEAKER_01: There is more to us than work alone.
SPEAKER_01: And just as when we work and are productive, and then we are reflecting something in the image of God, when we stop, time out, do nothing, recreate, refocus, we are being godly.
SPEAKER_01: We are being godlike in a meaningful way.
SPEAKER_01: It's corresponding the being of God.
SPEAKER_01: Jane and I were out walking a week or so ago, and we we ran into Bill and Bev Schoen.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they're there here today.
SPEAKER_01: We stood and talked.
SPEAKER_01: We had seen each other but hadn't really talked.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what I immediately asked Bill?
SPEAKER_01: So, Bill, what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that our instinctive reaction?
SPEAKER_01: Now, maybe, maybe I can't really say, Bill, what do you be?
SPEAKER_01: You can't begin that way.
SPEAKER_01: But what I care about Bill is not just that he's this wonderful, winsome guy, or that he apparently is or was an extraordinary architect.
SPEAKER_01: Those are great things, but there is more to Bill than just what he does.
SPEAKER_01: And somehow or another we've got to get to the point of knowing people for who they are, not just for what they do.
SPEAKER_01: I spent a wonderful evening, uh, Jane and I were with uh Debbie and Paul Todd Hunter.
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't just find out something about what one another does.
SPEAKER_01: There was a meaningful sense of who one another is.
SPEAKER_01: Because life is more than doing, and we must not be defined by doing.
SPEAKER_01: When we stop, refocus, recreate, we reflect part of the image of God, of what he intends us to be.
SPEAKER_01: This is something that is very, very important.
SPEAKER_01: So the reason given in the Exodus passage, in effect, is that you are more than doing.
SPEAKER_01: God is more than a doer.
SPEAKER_01: And when we stop, we reflect at something deeply, deeply within us.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's another clue to what the inner true meaning of the Sabbath is.
SPEAKER_01: The second time this is given in Exodus in Deuteronomy chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Um, we're not going to take the time to really turn there and look at it, but basically, he when the reason for Sabbath keeping in Deuteronomy 5, verse 15, I believe it is, if you want to make note of that.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01: You do want to make note of it.
SPEAKER_01: I put it on the screen, of course.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the reason given, uh the reason given is, he says, remember the Sabbath, for I brought you out of slavery.
SPEAKER_01: You were not meant to be slaves.
SPEAKER_01: I redeemed you from the slavery in which you were in.
SPEAKER_01: Not just to be productive, because I'm productive, but you are more than just a machine.
SPEAKER_01: One of the horrible things about slavery, and there's many of them, and what do most of us know about slavery?
SPEAKER_01: But it's so demeaning, it reduces a person to just a machine, just a thing, only valued for its productivity, and when it can no longer do that, it's tossed aside.
SPEAKER_01: And if we get our identity in what we can produce, then what happens when we get into the stage of life that I'm rapidly moving towards when we're no longer able to be productive in the same way?
SPEAKER_01: Men, women, those of you who share the same hair color that I do, that's an issue for us.
SPEAKER_01: Our whole life found meaning if we're if we're normal, and in an unhealthy way, it found meaning probably in our work.
SPEAKER_01: And when we no longer can work, are we just tossed aside, frankly?
SPEAKER_01: For a lot of senior citizens, it feels that way.
SPEAKER_01: Just kind of, our useful days are over.
SPEAKER_01: And this this commandment reaches down and says, you weren't just created to do, you're created to be, like I am, but you're not created just for a utilitarian purpose.
SPEAKER_01: I saved you out of that.
SPEAKER_01: God has not designed us to be slaves or robots.
SPEAKER_01: Uh God has not designed us to run 24 out of 24, 7 out of 7, 365 out of 365.
SPEAKER_01: And the problem is in our circles, call it the Protestant work ethic, I might call it the Protestant curse.
SPEAKER_01: We find our identity in being busy.
SPEAKER_01: And just think as we talk with each other, how much of our talk is spent talking about how busy we are, as though that's a badge of courage somehow, to be busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just so busy.
SPEAKER_00: And we take pride in that.
SPEAKER_00: We moan about it, but that's part of our identity.
SPEAKER_00: And that and God is saying, folks, stop, stop.
SPEAKER_00: There's more to you than being busy.
SPEAKER_00: God took a break.
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think you are?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, there's a lot more that I could say, but what I'd like to do is try to suggest a few things as I reflect upon this.
SPEAKER_01: Uh a few things of what I'd like to suggest in terms of application and reflection, the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Because all we can think about is you can't go as early to Kohl's as you want to, or you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Um but they always have a deal and a sale at Kohl's.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get me started on Kohl's.
SPEAKER_01: That, by the way, is a discussion we have at home a great deal.
SPEAKER_01: But all right.
SPEAKER_01: But what do we do then with this deeper sense of what the Sabbath is?
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh several questions and observations, just briefly.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if we really have a big biblical understanding of work and recreation.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about recreation.
SPEAKER_01: There's a difference between recreation and recreation.
SPEAKER_01: In terms of work, uh there's two extremes.
SPEAKER_01: There's the TGIF view of work.
SPEAKER_01: Thank God it's Friday.
SPEAKER_01: We get up Monday morning and we're, yeah, we got us all ahead, and then you pull yourself through the week.
SPEAKER_01: And I do some of that.
SPEAKER_01: Only my Monday is Tuesday morning.
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, you you go and then you get to Friday, and you may not go down to TGIFs, but there is a sense of, ah, I'm so glad that's behind me.
SPEAKER_01: And now I can just veg, now I can relax, now I can just have a little bit of fun.
SPEAKER_01: We may not really view it quite that way, but we do tend to see work as something we need to get behind us.
SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is we then view the rest of the time as I have a need for recreation.
SPEAKER_01: I need to just veg.
SPEAKER_01: I need to just, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: The other danger besides the TGIF approach to work is the ever-runny bunny.
SPEAKER_01: You know, just keeps going and going and going and going and going and going.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, maybe that is no longer an advertisement, but some of you remember the ever-ready bunny sold billions of batteries.
SPEAKER_01: You just never stopped.
SPEAKER_01: You got ever ready, little blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_01: Those two understandings of work are absolutely sub-Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Work is not the curse, thorns and thistles are.
SPEAKER_01: The TGIF mindset is sub-Christian, but the workaholic mindset, my friend, is sub-Christian as well.
SPEAKER_01: God took a break.
SPEAKER_01: God was unproductive.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's for some of you, if I say God was unproductive, you get nervous.
SPEAKER_01: If I say God did nothing for 24 hours, you begin to say, well, no, but Walt, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01: I hear you.
SPEAKER_01: Try to think about it.
SPEAKER_01: What was the Sabbath all about?
SPEAKER_01: Is it possible that doing nothing for one day out of seven, or at least doing other things, is godly?
SPEAKER_01: And if so, what are those other things?
SPEAKER_01: God designed and sanctified one day of seven, and he says, stop, take a time out.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's really tied to our understanding of work and recreation.
SPEAKER_01: I'll come back to recreation in a minute.
SPEAKER_01: You need a break today, and I know Ronald McDonald will be really happy with me for uh having said that.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you deserve a break today.
SPEAKER_01: You know, like McDonald's, you deserve all the cholesterol and the calories and so forth.
SPEAKER_01: You deserve that.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a right to take a break.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't think that sense of you have a right to this is a biblical understanding at all.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you look in the media, you look at the uh political world, there's so much talking about rights.
SPEAKER_01: It's a right, this is a right, and that is a right, and that is a right.
SPEAKER_01: We have no rights other than what God chooses to give us by grace.
SPEAKER_01: We don't deserve the things that our nation and our hearts run after and say that's a right.
SPEAKER_01: That's a wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And it comes from a faulty understanding that God is sovereign and good.
SPEAKER_01: He does what he pleases and only what he pleases and is always and ever good, and all we can count on is the good things of God, and nothing that we have is anything other than something God in his grace gives to us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of hearing about rights, but we do have needs, and there's a big difference.
SPEAKER_01: But I only ultimately need what God gives me.
SPEAKER_01: And so even our needs we have to understand in a different sense.
SPEAKER_01: But God is saying we need a day that is different.
SPEAKER_01: A day to stop, and a day to recreate.
SPEAKER_01: Question is, what recreates you?
SPEAKER_01: Now, it probably is more than just physical rest.
SPEAKER_01: Most of us no longer work by throwing bags of concrete or digging ditches, although some do, and it's a good and a godly thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: But we need more than just physical rest.
SPEAKER_01: We need emotional rest, we need relational rest, we need a recreation.
SPEAKER_01: And our society is addicted to entertainment that is not necessarily recreation.
SPEAKER_01: Now, sometimes it's right to just just throw a DVD in the player or let Netflix stream and just kind of veg out.
SPEAKER_01: But that is not the definition of what our break ought to be.
SPEAKER_01: Um the question is we need to be restored.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be recharged, we need to be refocused.
SPEAKER_01: What is it that recreates you?
SPEAKER_01: What is recreational?
SPEAKER_01: Uh Lowell, maybe that's uh getting on your bike and going for a long trip.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Amen, huh?
SPEAKER_01: Uh for me, uh, it's walking in the mountains in the woods.
SPEAKER_01: God has such a sense of humor to have brought us here.
SPEAKER_01: We lived for a number of years in the Black Forest of Germany, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and outside our backyard, there was a path I could get on.
SPEAKER_01: And every week, well, probably 52 Mondays out of, or 50 Mondays out of 52, I would go on that path, and for five or six hours I would just take a hike.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't because Jane said, go take a hike.
SPEAKER_01: It was because that just so much of what I do involves people that sometimes I need to get away from people.
SPEAKER_01: So much of what I do involves thinking, and I needed to just stare at a tree.
SPEAKER_01: Just stare at a tree and come to peace.
SPEAKER_01: What brings you to peace and really refreshes?
SPEAKER_01: Uh your soul needs refreshing uh as well.
SPEAKER_01: Uh let me go back.
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, what about Sunday?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01: Sunday is not the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: It really isn't the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: Uh there is no such thing as a Christian Sabbath.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't have time to go into it, but that is a lie out of church history.
SPEAKER_01: But what can we do on the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_01: Well, what recreates you?
SPEAKER_01: There should be place for going to church and restoring and getting refocused on who God is.
SPEAKER_01: The fact that you're here is a wonderful first step.
SPEAKER_01: That's a great thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: But what else?
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it just means you should spend all day in church, but I think we should have an intentional time of what is restoring us.
SPEAKER_01: But what should we and shouldn't we do on the Sabbath?
SPEAKER_01: Uh remember, the Sabbath was made, the Christian Sabbath, if you want to put that.
SPEAKER_01: What about this special day, this principle?
SPEAKER_01: Uh what about um what about mowing the lawn?
SPEAKER_01: Some Christians would be really feeling guilty if they mowed the lawn on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's, I don't think that's necessary, folks, unless you run a lawn service.
SPEAKER_01: You see the point?
SPEAKER_01: Now, mowing the lawn is never fun and recreational for me, but I understand there are some people for whom that is.
SPEAKER_01: Well, why not do that on a Sunday?
SPEAKER_01: As long as it doesn't keep you, in fact, as long as it helps you focus on God.
SPEAKER_01: What about watching football?
SPEAKER_01: Well, if the Packers win, then it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01: You all are Packers fans, right?
SPEAKER_01: Or do I have a problem with this church?
SPEAKER_00: No, why not?
SPEAKER_01: Those things aren't wrong, but we just have to be careful that we're not addicted to just diversion.
SPEAKER_01: There's something that restores our soul.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, our soul needs refocusing and refreshing.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 62, verses 1 and 5.
SPEAKER_01: My soul finds rest in God alone.
SPEAKER_01: Does your soul find rest in God?
SPEAKER_01: That's the way we were meant to be.
SPEAKER_01: And if you struggle with that, then keep reading in Psalm 62, because in verse 5, the psalmist talks to himself and he says, Soul, find rest in God alone.
SPEAKER_01: So he begins out saying, My soul finds rest in God alone.
SPEAKER_01: And he talks to himself, he says, Soul, find your rest in God alone.
SPEAKER_01: The fourth tender commandment.
SPEAKER_01: God wants us to refrain from work one day out of seven, to focus on worship, to engage in activities that contribute to physical, emotional, and spiritual renewal.
SPEAKER_01: Does that sound like a burden to you?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: This is the way in which we are to walk.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, I ask you to graciously help us understand your word.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I ask that somehow or another we can sort out what this means for each of us.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to truly recognize that we are not meant to go 24 out of 24, 365 out of 365.
SPEAKER_01: That you have there's so much more to you than that.
SPEAKER_01: May we reflect the image of God as we recreate, refocus, and find rest in you alone.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray you'd help us as individuals and as a congregation.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.