The Big Ten: Give Me a Break
Well I hope you are all enjoying
pajama/casual Sunday. I know I am. In case you haven’t caught the correlation,
today’s Commandment is remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. The Sabbath is
our day of rest, but we don’t always do a very good job resting at all during
the week, so today is a reminder that God hasn’t just suggested, he has
commanded that we remember to rest.
Before we get into this today, I have
a feeling that some of us here are only pretending to rest today. Like you’re
really hoping I don’t go over because you have lunch plans, places to go,
people to see, stuff to do, lawns to mow, or whatever. But just for a few
moments, I’m going to ask you to forget that, and just relax. I want to take a
few minutes for us to all get to that point where we are truly relaxed. Don’t
doze off on me. I’m just going to play a couple of songs and you can do what
you want, if you need to stand and stretch, do it, if you want to sing along,
sing along, or if you want to just close your eyes and take it in, that’s fine,
too. My only request is that we take this time kind of like a second prelude to
focus our hearts and minds on Christ this morning.
Play
“It is Well,” “I will rest in You” chorus, “Draw me Close,” “How Great Thou
Art” chorus
Pray
Alright, now I’m feeling good. I’m
ready to go. So we’re talking about the Sabbath today, remember the Sabbath and
keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day
is a Sabbath to the Lord your God, you shall not do any work, nobody. For in six
days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them,
but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and
consecrated it.
Man, maybe of all the commandments, we
do the worst with this one. We are terrible at resting. Do you find it odd that
this is a commandment? Not a suggestion, but one of the Ten Commandments? That
this rule is right up there with Do not Murder, Do not Steal, Do not lie, and
Rest on the Sabbath! It almost seems out of place.
Now let’s clarify the word Sabbath right now. It’s from
a Hebrew word meaning “cease” or “rest.” Today as Christians in
And it really does need to be set apart or else it
won’t happen, at least I know that’s the case for me. If I don’t schedule it in
and say, “This day is my day off,” then I’ll find things to put in that space
on my calendar. You have to intentionally schedule time off, time to rest. For
me, Sunday doesn’t work so well, maybe it does for you. But we need to
intentionally schedule time to rest, and not just rest, but rest in God. Spend time in prayer or meditation or with
family or in nature. For me, Sabbath and nature go hand in hand. God created
the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, but I don’t think Adam
and Eve had to sit around until day 8 to go out and enjoy God’s creation. That
day was a great day of exploration and discovery and rest and relaxation in
nature.
Really, I think that sort of enjoyment is a part of
what the Sabbath is all about. We work really hard, and God has wired the
world, including us, it’s in our very nature, that we have to take time to stop
and enjoy the fruits of our labor. If we don’t stop and rest, there are
physical consequences, aren’t there? Everything in the world goes on some sort
of rhythmical cycle that requires it to rest at one point or another. That’s
why we have autumn. That’s why we sleep. We need time to rest, and for us, our
time of rest, our Sabbath, is a chance to enjoy the fruits of our labor and the
creation that surrounds us.
Unfortunately, many of us never do this. We never stop
and smell the roses. We go, and go, and go. We fill our calendars with work and
overtime and meetings and activities and committees and events and stuff. How
many of you have ever had a conversation like this? Someone comes up to you and
says, “Hey, would you like to…” Whatever. Go out for dinner, go do something
together. And you say, “Oh, I can’t. I couldn’t possibly. I’m very busy. My
calendar is full, I just have too much going on right now. Do you know that I
am the president of our club? I have to organize our next meeting. Then I have
to get my project done for work. And I have to help with…” Whatever. You get
the idea?
It’s like we fill our calendar with responsibilities as
if our self worth is measured by how many people are counting on us to be at
certain places at certain times. It’s like we show off our day planners as a
badge of honor showing everyone how important we are. I carry one of these
(hold up PDA). A PDA. A Personal Data Assistant. Do you know what this says?
This says, “I am so important, in such high demand, so busy that there isn’t enough
paper and ink to keep track of my schedule…I have to have the latest
technologies just to keep straight all of the responsibilities that have been
laid upon my shoulders.”
And how many times do we greet people this way? They
say, “Hey, how are you?” And you says, “Oh, I’m so tired. I’ve just been
running around like crazy. I’ve been really busy.”
What is wrong with this country? It’s like we have
elevated working ourselves to the point of total exhaustion to an elite status.
Like a person’s worth is measured by the cups of coffee they have to drink just
to stay awake because they’ve been working themselves to death. I mean, isn’t
this insanity?
What if we stopped measuring success by how busy a
person is, and started measuring success by how well that person enjoys the
blessings God has given them when they rest from their labor? What if we
stopped calling working 7-days a week being a “go-getter,” and started calling
it what God calls it, “sin”?
I told you earlier that the Jewish culture sees Saturday
as the Sabbath, and actually for them, the Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday
night and ends at Sundown on Saturday night. And it doesn’t matter where you
live or if there is daylight savings time or whatever, when the sun sets on
Friday night, the Sabbath has begun. And work stops. When the Sabbath starts,
work stops. It doesn’t matter if you work isn’t totally completed yet, if you
just have a few more things to do, stuff that you’ve left unfinished, when the
sun goes down on Friday night, you stop. The Sabbath doesn’t wait for work to
be done, work waits for the Sabbath to be done.
I feel like that’s a revolutionary concept for us. I
can’t count how many times Holly has asked for my help or to just come in and
sit with her and Adelyn or take a walk or whatever, and I’ve said, “As soon as
I’m finished with this. I want to get this done.” And they wait. And time
passes. And the thing I’m working on takes longer than I thought it would. And
the time has passed. I’ve missed my chance to rest with them.
What if rest always took precedent over work, and not
the other way around? How much happier would we be? What if I cancelled
appointments to play with Adelyn, instead of telling her I can’t play because I
have a meeting? What if kids told coaches they can’t make it to practice
because they have church? What if you rearranged your schedule so you’d have
time to go for a walk or go fishing? What if you used your vacation days to
do…nothing?
You see we have this idea that the more we do, the
better life will be, we’ll get more done, and someday you’ll be able to sit and
enjoy it. Someday. But what ends up happening is we put about 10 things on our
plate, and we’re only able to focus a little bit of energy on each one, and we
get more tired, and the things never really get done, at least not well. And
instead of thinking, “Man, maybe I should cut back on what I’m doing so I have
some time to stop and just breathe,” we think, “Man, I need to work harder.
I’ve got to get ahead somehow.” And we just keep falling further behind.
And all the while God is calling to us saying, “I
commanded you to remember the Sabbath, but you have forgotten it. I have
commanded you to rest.”
Remember, all of these commandments in some way reveal
God’s love to us, and I think this one is actually pretty obvious: God reveals
his love to us by commanding us and even wiring our bodies to the point that it
is essential that we rest and enjoy the fruits of our labors and the creation
that he has provided for us. He wants us to work and to work hard, but only to
and extent. At some point, we are commanded to stop and rest and enjoy life. As
the writer of Ecclesiastes said, to eat, drink, and be merry.
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You would think
this would be our favorite commandment of all, the one we have no problem with,
but we do. So I’m going to leave you with my top ten list of ways to enjoy the
Sabbath, and you’re getting an assignment this week: I want you all to do at
least one of these things, or something else that helps you to rest and take a
Sabbath. So here is my top ten list of suggestions for enjoying a Sabbath.
10. Build
a camp fire and roast marshmallows.
9. Go
for a bike ride.
8.
Take your Bible to a park and read.
7.
Hike around the lake at the State Park.
6.
Leave the TV off for a day.
5.
Give all of your appliances the day off.
4.
Write letters…not email…to family members you haven’t seen in a while.
3.
Take your camera to the woods and take some pictures of nature.
2.
Pick up a musical instrument. Play outside if you can.
1.
Take a nap with the window open.
Those are some of my favorites, maybe
you have some others. If you have some good suggestions, email them to Lisa or
I this week, and we’ll send them out to everyone. Friends, I challenge you to
take a day this week to rest and just be still with God. He has commanded it,
because he loves us. Amen.
Pastor
Dan Metzger
Van
Buren United