Good morning everybody. Happy Sunday. Welcome to The Edge Church online. My name is Steven Van Denend; I’m one of the pastors here. So glad to have you joining with us today — wherever you’re tuning in from — as we continue on in our sermon series that we’re calling The Blueprint: Spiritual Disciplines For a God-Filled Life.
If you’ve been following along with us, then you remember that spiritual disciplines are simply these essential practices founded and modeled for us in Scripture by the people of God that promote spiritual growth in us and among us as followers and believers in Jesus Christ. These are things and practices that we actually do. These are things that we put into practice regularly in order to help us grow in godliness, in a life that is filled with God’s presence and his power and in relationship with him.
That’s really, for us, what we’re after as a church — being disciples of Jesus who follow him and live lives that glorify him, reflecting what he is like and who he is. And so, this morning, I just want to continue us on our journey by talking about and inviting you into a discipline and a practice that is probably uncommon for most of us but is something that, I know for me personally, I’m hoping to grow in this year, and I’m hoping that it is something for you to grow in as well. And that is this discipline called Sabbath. So we’re going to just open up God’s Word together. My prayer is that God would speak to you, that you would hear what he has to say to you — how God wants to just convict your heart and encourage your heart and build you up in faith. I’d encourage you to take notes; if you can, jot some things down so you can hold onto what God’s speaking to you today. As always, at the end of every message, I will leave you with some questions just for you to reflect upon during the week or for you to talk about with the people in your home or your house church gathering. Also, lastly, just a reminder that at the end of each service, we have an online virtual community group for you to be a part of. So if you’re joining us today and you just would love to talk with some folks about the message at the end of our service today, we invite you to do that. There will be a link in the comment section that you can follow to partake in that.
I just want to pray for us, and then we’ll jump into the Word today.
Father, thank you for this day. God, thank you for this time that you’ve given to us. Holy Spirit, we just welcome you, invite you, God, to minister in every heart and every life. God, I just pray that your Word would pierce every heart, God, that we would hear what you have to say to us, Lord, that we’d have ears to your voice, hearts open to receive from you and God that you would transform and change us according to your Word and so I just commit this time into your hands, God. May you be glorified in it, God, and may you just produce good fruit in us. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
If I were to ask you this morning how you’re doing — like, “How is life really going for you?” My guess is that most of you would say something like “good” or “pretty good” because that’s just what we say, right? I mean, that’s sort of our automatic response. But if you were to really answer that question honestly, what would you say? How is it that you’re really doing?
Do you know that one of the most common responses to this question of “How are you doing?” is this answer — busy.
Sociologists say that it’s true, that this refrain of being busy is true regardless of class, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of gender or stage of life. We tend to say that and believe that our life is busy. And it is. Busyness is kind of one of the virtues of our culture. We uphold it as this thing to be applauded, even often as we suffer underneath its tyranny.
Did you know that Americans work more hours per person than any other country in the world? We do that partly because workaholism is actually celebrated in our country and our culture. Studies show that nearly half of all American workers don’t even use all of their vacation time in a given year; that accounted for roughly 800 million vacation days not used last year. Nearly 35 percent of Americans haven’t been on a vacation in over two years.
You would think that somehow this pandemic would have changed all of that for us — not a chance. Research actually suggests that, during COVID, people worked more hours than normal and that some 70 percent of people who transitioned to working from home started also to work on weekends, either because of just workload or because of some fear and stress about the possibility of losing a job or being laid off. But people feel more burned out and stressed and overwhelmed and undone than ever before. We have these smartphones that were supposed to make life easier and simpler for us, but instead, we just carry our jobs and everyone else everywhere that we go, all the time. We’re always connected. We’re always on, right? Emails, calls, texts, social media — it never ends for us.
One recent study said that 75 percent of all Americans sleep next to their phone and 90 percent of people check their phone immediately upon waking up. Our lives tend to be filled with all kinds of things — from work to school, to entertainment, to recreation, to commerce, right? — everything, all these things keeping us occupied and busy and hurried and overloaded from the moment that we wake up until the moment that we go to sleep. Not only because being busy tends to give us this false sense of significance, but because there is an insatiable desire within us for more — this desire to have more, to do more, to experience more, to be more.
Thomas Aquinas, back in the 13th century, asked the question: What would it take to satisfy human desire? And the answer that he came up with was this — everything.
It would take everything.
And the result then of having this infinite desire as finite beings with limits is restlessness; it is frustration and tiredness, it is to be worn out and overwhelmed and angry and disillusioned and disappointed. In his book The Good and Beautiful God, author Jim Smith writes that “The number one enemy of Christian spiritual formation is exhaustion.”
Let me ask you a question: Would you say that your life today is better-defined or described as busy and restless or as peaceful and restful?
Here’s the good news: God has a counter-cultural rhythm of work and rest for your life that sees the value of work without idolizing it and allows you to experience rest in your soul, and it’s called Sabbath. Sabbath is an ancient practice long before Lifetime Magazine or Lifestyle Magazine ever existed, long before Jesus ever walked this earth as a man, long before Israel was even a nation, all the way back to the very beginning to creation itself. We find this in —if we go to the book of Genesis — the first chapter, the first verse, it says to us:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And then the rest of the chapter goes on to explain how God did that, right? Like, over the course of six days, God speaks, and God works, and God brings all of life into existence, and then at verse 31, at the end of the chapter, it says:
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
You thought that you had a productive week, right? Keep going then into chapter two, starting in verse one — it says:
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 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. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation (ESV).
That this word “rest” here in the Hebrew is this word Shabbat — and it also means Sabbath — and it means “to stop.” God rested. I want you just to like sit in that for a second.
God rested.
And you’d say, “Well, but you don’t really know my personality type, and I’m more of an extrovert, I’m more of a doer.” Right?
God rested.
And you’d say, “Well, you don’t really understand my work situation, my family life, my stage of life, my school work.”
God rested.
Are you getting this? Okay, after six days of hard work, God himself said, “Okay, that’s enough. It’s time to stop and rest.” And the idea here isn’t so much that God was tired and burned out, okay? God wasn’t like, “Man, this universe-creating stuff is just soul-crushing.” You know? This is more like if you’ve ever had like a long day of work outside — just taking care of your lawn and bushes and all those kinds of things — and at the end of that day, you go and take a shower, and you grab a drink, and you just walk outside in your yard, and you just delight in this work that has been done, and you rest. That’s the idea of Sabbath — to stop, and to rest, and to delight. To delight in God, to delight in life and in his world, to put away striving and productivity and say, “That’s enough. It’s time to rest.”
I love how Tim Keller puts it. He says it like this; he says:
The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help and the freedom that you have in the gospel — the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation (Wisdom and Sabbath Rest, 2016).
Doesn’t that just sound so good and refreshing? I want to just point out a few things from our text here in Genesis 2 to help us better understand Sabbath, okay?
Number one: Notice here the work/rest rhythm. It says that God works for six days, and then he rests, and, in doing so, God builds a rhythm into the fabric of his creation of working and resting. Remember that the Bible teaches that we were created in the image and in the likeness of God. So like God then, we are also meant to work and to rest. God designed us to work hard for his glory, and God also designed us to rest for his glory.
Now, maybe you’re thinking like, how is it possible that I can glorify God in resting? Well, in resting what we’re acknowledging is that God, you’ve got this. God, you’ve got me. God, the world doesn’t revolve around me and my work. It doesn’t need me in order to keep moving and for you to accomplish your purposes. So rest is not only an active obedience to God; rest is an act of humility to war against and move us away from our pride and self-reliance and towards a greater sense of God-dependence and God-awareness.
See, constant busyness doesn’t just mean that you have a disordered schedule but that you have a disordered heart.
Sabbath is a regular reminder that there is a God and I am not him. It’s a reminder that my identity is not founded in what I do but in who God says that I am — that you and I are a son or a daughter of God, loved by our Father, and that he is at work for our good. So, we work in the Lord, but we also rest in him too. That’s the rhythm that God created for us. When we don’t rest, we do it to our own hurt and our own peril; burnout, chronic anxiety, high blood pressure, a poor immune system, regular sickness, mental fatigue, spiritual, emotional, relational disconnect, isolation, shallow relationships, are all byproducts of a life absent of rest. Ultimately, if you don’t Sabbath, then crisis will become your Sabbath. Sabbath will come for you one way or another, either in delight or by discipline. I actually wonder if the God who works all things together for good hasn’t provided an opportunity for us in this COVID season to actually stop for a change and to begin to put into practice this rhythm of Sabbath.
Secondly here, notice that God blesses the seventh day. In the creation story, there are only three things that God blesses. The first two are animals and mankind, where God says to be blessed, to be fruitful and to multiply. The third thing that God blesses is this Sabbath day. In other words, there is blessing for us in Sabbath, leading us into a deeper and abiding rest in God, intimacy with him, greater fruitfulness in us and greater productivity ultimately from us as we walk with God in this God-given rhythm of work and rest.
Work is tiring, isn’t it? I mean, I love my job, right? But at the end of the week, I’m not the same person who started the week. Even if it was a good week, I’m still tired. And in rest there is this refilling of your mental and emotional and physical and spiritual reservoirs. It restores and replenishes. Rest is life-giving. Why? Because God blessed the Sabbath.
Third: Notice that God made the Sabbath holy. What’s really interesting here is that the first time we encounter this word holy is right here when God talks about the Sabbath. That word holy means to be set apart or other, okay? So the Sabbath isn’t meant to be like any other day. It is meant to be distinct and unique. It is this other space that you are meant to engage in, where you just stop from your work and from your busy and you delight in the Lord and in this amazing gift that he has given you that is your life.
In Exodus 20, we find The Ten Commandments given to the people of God to follow, and for the first time here, God actually commands his people to partake of the Sabbath rest and rhythm. In the first commandment, God says that you shall have no other gods before me. And then secondly, God says you shall not make any idols for yourselves. Thirdly, God says you shall not misuse or profane the name of the Lord your God. And then commandment number four, Exodus 20, starting in verse eight. God says:
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Remember now that God already made the Sabbath holy; our job now is to keep it holy, is to keep it set apart, to not just make it any other day. Then he says:
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.
Now here’s the motivation; here’s why. Verse 11:
11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (ESV).
Why do we Sabbath? Because God did, and we follow him.
Fourth: Notice here three more things. Notice that the Sabbath is not the same thing as a day off. A day off is what undisciplined, un-Sabbath people do to catch up on all the stuff that is on their to-do list. And that’s not a bad thing, okay? That’s good to do those things; that’s just not Sabbath. Sabbath is also not like binge-watching Netflix and just vegging out, okay? Anybody ever do that? Do you ever just like watch an entire season of something, just binge-watched a show and you’re up to like two o’clock in the morning? Have you ever done that and got to the end of that show and, you know, the final show and it finishes up — it’s the middle of the night — and you just think, man, my soul is so refreshed and alive right now. I’m just so at peace with God and my family, and I just have so much clarity right now around my identity and my purpose and my calling, and I’m just walking in this deep and abiding joy. Nobody. Right?
Instead you’re like, that was really good, and I am really tired. And I’m certainly not bashing watching Netflix or like having shows that are good or whatever. I’m just saying that that isn’t Sabbath. It might be relaxing, but it isn’t restorative. Sabbath, God says here, to us is to the Lord, meaning that it is a time that is set apart in God to partake of him. A great question for yourself to ask when considering Sabbath is: Is this restful, and is this worshipful? And when I say worship, I don’t necessarily mean that you’re singing songs or reading Scripture, though that could be part of it. This is more about are you filling up your soul in God’s presence and his goodness, in all the many ways that that can happen?
Fifth thing: Notice here that the Sabbath is both a command and a gift. Okay? The Sabbath is the fourth of the Ten commandments. It’s actually the longest of all of the commandments, and you’ll notice here that the fourth commandment, Sabbath, is the bridge between the first three commandments, which are all about loving God, and in the last five commandments, which are all about loving others, loving our neighbor. In other words, Sabbath practice helps to empower us emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually to more-fully love God and love people.
Now, some people argue that there’s no command in the New Testament for us to continue to practice the Sabbath, and that’s true. And yet, at the same time, all the other nine commandments are still in place for us, and Jesus actually has quite a bit to say about the Sabbath. Actually, in Mark 2:27-28, Jesus says this; he says:
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath ” (NIV).
Do you see that? The Sabbath is made for you, not to you. It is a gift of God to use for our good. It is an opportunity for us — an invitation of God for us to walk more closely with him, filled and rested and empowered in his presence.
Last thing, number six: Notice that we are to remember the Sabbath. God wants us to remember because we have this tendency to forget. We have a tendency to drift toward busyness, to drift toward self-reliance, to forget God’s goodness and his grace and our need of him, and so we need to remember. And in Sabbath, we remember that life is hard, but it is good, that life comes to us — not as a right — but as a gift of God that we might enjoy him and this life he has given. We owe it to our creator to enjoy it as an act of worship. How do you best show someone gratitude for their generosity? You thank them, right? And then you enjoy that. You enjoy them, and you enjoy this gift to the full that you’ve been given.
As I get ready to close, I want to just talk practically for a minute about some ways that you can step into the privilege and gift of Sabbath, okay? And remember — this isn’t a have-to; this is a get-to. This is an opportunity to stop and experience the Lord in his rest and to delight in him, in this life he’s given. But I just want to quickly give you five ways for you to engage in this.
Here’s the first one: unplanned time. Unplanned time. So this is just where you take time to just let God lead you, however. Okay? Whatever God’s putting on your heart — whatever is refreshing to your soul. Sabbath is not meant to be another day of striving, okay? Let go of your lists. Let go of all your plans that you make, and just be for a while and see how God directs you. Maybe that means you’ll take a nap. Maybe that means you’ll just enjoy some of your favorite food, but take some unplanned time. That’s one.
Here’s the second way: Take some contemplative time. This means just taking some time to be with the Lord in worship, in prayer, in solitude, with journaling, in Scripture and reflection, in whatever ways that you connect to God in a worshipful way where you can just rest in Jesus and his finished work for you. Maybe that’s, you know, just an opportunity for you just to sit and commune with your Father in heaven and be reminded that he loves you, that he hears you, that he’s with you, and you just allow him to minister his peace to you and over you to refresh your soul.
Here’s the third way: Set aside avocational time. What that simply means is to do something that isn’t your job that you enjoy doing. To give yourself to something that you’re passionate about — a hobby, right? Something that’s life-giving for you. Maybe that’s building with your hands, maybe that’s crafting, maybe that’s sports, maybe that’s cooking or music — whatever that is engaged in this life-giving activity.
Fourth: Take some aesthetic time. Aesthetic time. This just means taking some time to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation. Go outside. Take a walk. Okay? Go on a road trip, right? Listen to music, read poetry, look at art, right? The purpose is just to take in the beauty of what God has made and to say, like he did, “This is good.” Enjoy it. Beauty refreshes the soul.
Fifth and last: Take some time for relational time. This is a time just to be with family and friends — those people who are close to you, those people that you love, who just breathe life into your soul, okay? This isn’t about like trying to restore some relationships and hanging out with people you haven’t seen in a long time. This is like gathering with those folks who just really lift up your soul, who just really encourage you in the Lord and just enjoying time together, enjoying time with food or games, laughter. Right? Whatever that might be — just delighting in the gift that is the people God has placed in our life for our good.
I want to just encourage you to try this. Okay? You can do this. Don’t get all legalistic about it and start like plotting and planning. I just want to say pick a time in this upcoming week and try this. Stop. Just stop and rest and delight in the Lord and see how God ministers to you in a refreshing way that restores your soul.
So I’m going to wrap up. I just want to leave you with a few questions this morning for you to reflect on and talk about in your groups — actually, two questions and a challenge.
What is your biggest takeaway? What is the one thing this morning that you’ve heard that just, I don’t know, pricks your heart most, that most resonated in your heart, and why? What was it about that?
In all honesty, does restlessness and busy or peace and restfulness most accurately describe your life currently? And with that, what do you think are the contributing factors to why that is?
I just want to give you this challenge: Set aside some time this week to engage in this practice of Sabbath, of resting in God and, as I already said, that can look like a lot of different things. So, don’t get all crazy about it, saying, “I got to do all these things.” Just start somewhere. Maybe that’s not even a whole day. Maybe that’s like part of the day. Maybe you pick half of a day to practice Sabbath and see what that might look like for you and to see how God might minister to your soul. I’m actually going to have a Sabbath Guide that’s available for you if you just need to be reminded of this in some ways to practice that. That’ll be up on our website at edgeaurora.com/resources, and you can check that out.
So I just want to pray for us and then just encourage you. We’ll close with a song here at the end or to have some time in your house church talking about these questions.
Let’s pray:
Father, thanks for this morning. God, thanks for this time. Thanks for your Word. Thanks for your goodness. God, thank you for the blessing that is Sabbath and rest. Father, I pray that you would teach each and every one of us, God, what it means to rest in you. What it looks like, God, to be in a place, in a space, God, where we allow you just to minister refreshment to our soul. God, that you would, Lord, that you would minister in every single heart and life as we do that. God, teach us how to put this into practice in a way, God, that glorifies you, God, and that leads us into a greater fullness of you. Lord, thanks for being good. Thanks for setting the example for us to follow in. God, give us the courage and the grace, Lord, just to follow after you. In Jesus' name. Amen.
God bless you guys. Have a great rest of your week, and we’ll look forward to seeing you again next week.