Hello and praise God for Chatswood Church’s first online video sermon! God is blessing the world with insight and knowledge around technology and as a result you can now watch Sue preach right in your own home.
This first sermon explores why we need a “Sabbath” or a day of rest each week. It considers our increasing need for a day of physical and emotional rest each week but proposes that the true purpose of the Sabbath is to remind us that we are created beings and that we have a living, loving God. When we are reminded that we have a living, loving God we no longer need to try and be all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere/we can rest in a God who is all these things and we can rest in Him not only on the Sabbath but anywhere, anytime!
The transcript for the video is below.
Need More Than a Kit Kat? Why God Created a Day to Rest – Part 1
You may have already seen the adverts. The movie Amazing Grace is to be released in Australia this Thursday but Dan and Cat and I are actually hoping that you’ll wait and see it with us on Saturday night, August 11. That’s what we’ll be doing for our next GETCONNECTED! Social.
Amazing Grace for those of you who don’t know is an epic drama based on the life of William Wilberforce, a committed Christian who was a member of the English Parliament in the early nineteenth century. As a politician Wilberforce was noted for vigorously convincing Parliament to pass a historic bill outlawing slavery in the British Empire. It was no mean feat. In fact it may have been one of the greatest and most courageous acts of statesmanship in the history of democracy (Gordon MacDonald, Ordering Your Private World).
It took Wilberforce almost twenty years to construct the coalition of lawmakers that eventually passed the antislavery measure. It required detailed documentation of the injustices and cruelties of slavery, persuading lawmakers who did not want to offend the interest of big business, standing strong against a host of political enemies who would have loved to seen Wilberforce fall.
Wilberforce’s strength and moral courage had to have been immense writes Gordon MacDonald, author of Ordering Your Private World, and we learn something of the source of that strength and courage from an incident that occurred in 1801, some years before the anti-slavery measure was passed. Lord Addington had led his party into power and the new Prime Minister had begun to form a new cabinet. The central issue of the day was peace. Napolean was terrorizing Europe and England didn’t know if they would have to go to war. Wilberforce was rumoured to be among the candidates for a cabinet post and because of the peace policy was anxious to gain the appointment.
Wilberforce’s personal journals tell us it didn’t take long for him to become preoccupied with the possibility of that appointment. For days it grabbed at his conscious mind forcing everything else aside. By his own admission his “risings of ambition” began crippling his soul. But there was a disciplined check and balance to Wilberforce’s life and in this particular context that discipline was critical. In his entry at the end of that week of furious fantasising and temptations to politic for position he wrote this,
“Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size.” MacDonald goes on to say this about Wilberforce,
“Wilberforce’s check and balance to a busy life was (the) Sabbath; he had come to understand genuine rest. Wilberforce had discovered that the person who establishes a block of time for Sabbath rest on a regular basis is most likely to keep all of life in proper perspective and remain free of burnout and breakdown . . .”
“There can be little order in the private world of the human being when there is no appreciation for the meaning and purpose of genuine rest,” MacDonald writes, “a cessation, as Wilberforce called it, in the routines of our times. From the beginning of all history, it has been an axiom at the basis of healthy living; unfortunately, it is a principle badly misunderstood by those whose lives are driven to achievement and acquisition . . .”
I found an interesting article while researching for this mornings’ sermon. It was written by Mary McKinney, a Clinical Psychologist and Academic Coach. Entitled, “It’s Memorial Day and I’m having a Memorable Day,” McKinney speaks about the burnout cycle of academics and to help prevent it she says this,
“Take at least one day off from any kind of academic work each week. Craft a Sabbath every seventh day – whether or not you’re religious. Use it as a “catch-up-with-the-rest-of-your-life-and-play” day if you’re not spiritually inclined . . . If you can’t tolerate a whole day off . . . then first aim for a morning or afternoon . . . When you realize how much more efficient you are the following Monday morning you may gain the courage to take off a full day.”
Let me read you something else. It’s from a magazine called YOGA + JOYFUL LIVING (October 2006); from an article entitled, “The Forgotten Pleasures of a Day of Rest.” The writer is Helen Zelon.
“The day of rest, called Shabbat by Jews or the Sabbath Day by Christians, maybe formally decreed in the Ten Commandments. But as Dorothy Bass, a United Church of Christ minister and professor at Indiana’s Valpraiso University, once observed, the Sabbath is the . . . unsung commandment that gets no respect . . .
“Early in American history, the Sabbath day became law,” Zelon says, “. . . for centuries, ‘blue laws’ prohibited the sale of sin-inducing if wildly popular contraband like liquor and cigarettes, and most retail shops were closed . . . Today, blue laws are largely history, and weekends mean errands, chores, sports, activities, classes, more errands, more chores . .
“Yet some people are bucking the marketplace convention of buying and doing every day of the week – and stealing back a day for themselves, for their family, for gratitude and reflection. And why not adopt the practice of a day of rest?”
I’m hearing a need for rest church – physical rest, emotional rest – Do I hear any amens? But is there something else we need? Is there something we need more than just physical rest, emotional rest?
I personally think Rick Warren is getting closer to the money. Rick Warren, author of Purpose Driven Life and pastor of Saddleback Church, a mega-church in the United States with over 20,000 attendees, is now challenging his congregation to the take the 4th Commandment seriously. In a ten part series on the values of strong families, Warren speaks about yes the need for physical rest, and yes the need for emotional stress, but furthermore he says this,
“The tragedy is that many people take the day off (meaning their day of rest). They use it to take care of their physical . . . and . . . emotional needs, they have recreation and relationship, and (yet) they ignore their most important need – your spirit is empty and it needs to be refilled with God’s presence and power and love and awareness that He’s with you all the time. America has turned Sunday into a Funday,” Warren says. “We’ve taken a holy day and turned it into a holiday . . . Most people don’t worship God on Sunday, they worship the sun on Sunday. They go down to the beach for their ceremonial baptisms. They anoint their body with oil. They lay prostrate before the sun god. That’s their worship. The problem is,” he says, “if all you ever do is work and play then work and play, then pretty soon you start thinking that all there is to life is work and play and there’s more to life than just work and play . . .”
I don’t know about you but I know I need more than work and play. I need more than a day of physical rest, more than a day free from emotional stress. What I need more than all these things is a consistent reminder that there is a living God; that there is a living, Loving God who has purposefully created me. I am a creature; I have a Creator – that puts my life into perspective. I do not need to be all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere because I have a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere. Being reminded that there is a living, loving God, being consistently reminded that there is a living, loving God, reminds me that I am free to experience physical, emotional and spiritual rest, anywhere, anytime.
The Sabbath church, is my consistent reminder. The Sabbath is a memorial of Creation – have you heard that before? I have heard that so many times and yet never before have I appreciated it like I have come to this week. I have to say I’ve been very challenged this week. I’ve been very challenged as I’ve attempted to construct a biblical rationale for the continued relevance of the Sabbath in response to some of your questions. Some of you have been asking me if the Sabbath is still relevant, if a seventh day Sabbath is still relevant, if the law is even relevant. And at the beginning of the week I thought I was going to have to get my head around first the continued relevance of the law before I could even start on the Sabbath.
But I prayed about it. I asked God to lead me, to direct me and I believe He led me to Genesis 2, and the more I have researched this week the more I have realized that Genesis 2 is indeed the very basis for a biblical rationale for the continued relevance of the Sabbath. You might like to turn to it with me. Genesis 2:1-3.
Genesis 1 as you are probably aware is the story about the first six days of Creation. It starts with, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (verse 1) and it ends with God seeing that everything He had made in the first six days as very good (verse 31). Genesis 2 now tells the story of the seventh day, Shabbat or Sabbath as it reads in the Hebrew. Let’s read it together,
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished all the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”
From a physical perspective there is no reason why God created the seventh day. There is no reason why God couldn’t have wrapped up creation at the end of six days and the earth assumed a six day weekly cycle instead of a seven. But God created the seventh day and He created it for a reason. At the end of the sixth day, when God saw that everything He had made was very good, He then created the seventh day and why? So He could rest on it. That was its purpose. And as we just read by resting on the seventh day God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it – made it holy, set it apart.
For this reason Exodus 20:8-11 tells us, God told His leader Moses to tell His people the Israelites that they too were to rest on the seventh day, to refrain from working. In six days, God said, His people were to labour and do all their work, but on the seventh day, which He said was a Sabbath to Him, they were to rest like He rested. This was to be an eternal sign He told Moses a little later (Exodus 31:17), an eternal sign that what? Does anyone know? That He had created the heavens and the earth in six days and had rested on the seventh day – that He is a living God!
Tell me church, what do you think God’s concern is here? What does creating a Sabbath for the purpose of remembering that God is a living God imply?
God knew His people would forget that He is a living, loving God. He knew they would forget that they didn’t need to be all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere if they didn’t have a weekly Sabbath to remind them. He knew they would forget that they didn’t need to try and please other gods, that they would be unnecessarily hurt and deceived by false gods if they didn’t have a weekly Sabbath to remind them. He created the Sabbath so they would remember He was everything they could ever want or ever need. He created the Sabbath to help them keep life in perspective.
We are told that during their bondage in Egypt, the children of Israel did forget the Sabbath and they consequently did forget about the living God (E G White, SW, January 8, 1907). It was for this reason that God had to remind them in Exodus 20 not to work on the seventh day, to put that day aside so they had the physical and emotional space to focus on Him, to reflect on the fact that they were created, that they had a loving Creator; to give them the time to respond in worship, with love – we love because He first loved us right? (1 John 4:19)
Let me ask you a question. If you didn’t set aside the Sabbath each week, if you didn’t reserve the physical and emotional space to focus on God, to reflect on the fact that you are created, that you have a loving Creator, what would that do to your relationship with Him? Where would you see your relationship with God in six months, a couple of years, a decade?
Alternatively, if you aren’t setting aside the Sabbath each week, or you aren’t being intentional about focusing on God on the Sabbath, reflecting on the fact that you are created, that you have a loving Creator, what might happen if you did? Might you fall in love with God? Might you not be able to help but worship Him? Might you be able to say with William Wilberforce, “Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size.”
I have no doubt that the Sabbath has continued relevance. I have no doubt about the importance of not working on it, of resting on it, which is not to suggest that this is the only time we should set aside to focus on God each week. Not for a minute. But I fully believe that if this was the only time you set aside, at least to start with, then you would soon want to set aside more time, you would soon want to present your bodies as a living sacrifice which Romans 12:1 tells us is our spiritual act of worship, you would want to worship God all day every day.
Can I remind you that we are not the only ones who need to hear this message. We are not the only ones who need to know or be reminded that there is a living, loving God who has purposefully created each person on planet earth, and might I suggest that your celebrating the Sabbath each week provides the perfect opportunity for you to testify of this truth.
I’m guessing some of you are like me. For many years, especially my teenage years as one might expect, I did not want to be different. I did not want to stand out. I wanted to be “normal”. Like everyone else. And so I did my best to conceal my Sabbath keeping. I did my best to conceal it on the bus, at my school, in my community. Unless I was directly asked I did not admit to it. I avoided all discussion about it. Didn’t defend it if it was slighted. On Sabbaths I would check to see if anyone I knew was in the street before I would get out of the car at my church and charge inside. I had no idea what the Sabbath meant back then. I had no idea what a living, loving God could do for me back then. And possibly the greater tragedy now is that I had no idea how deeply other people needed to know the living, loving God and my denying this opportunity to witness meant my denying others the opportunity to meet Him.
I believe the Sabbath remains a sign, not only for us but for the unbelieving world that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere, living, loving God who still acts, still speaks, still reigns supreme, and He is everything anyone could ever want or ever need.
We haven’t even started on the New Testament this morning. We haven’t even started on the relationship between the Sabbath and salvation, what Jesus Christ said about the Sabbath. But that will have to be a topic for another day. Right now I just want to leave you with a promise. It’s from Isaiah 58:13-14. You may already know what it says,
“If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
When we refrain from trampling the Sabbath, when we refrain from pursuing our own interests; if we call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honourable; if we honour it, not going our own ways, serving our own interests or pursuing our own affairs; then . . . did you get it? . . . then we shall take delight in the Lord and He will make us ride upon the heights of the earth!
