Remember the Sabbath

What does farmland, shoes, bowling pins and people all have in common?… Answer: They all need periodic times of rest.

That’s why farmers will occasionally let their fields lie fallow for a year. After a year of rest the land will yield a much more bountiful crop.

I have here a quote from the David Roberts Shoes website: “One tip to remember is that all shoes need time to rest after being worn, so never wear a pair of shoes day after day as you will shorten its life quite considerably. Try to rotate your shoe selection giving the worn shoes time to rest.” Supposedly, if you wear the same pair of shoes each and every day, they will last, on average, six months. But if you buy two pairs of shoes, and alternate them between days, you will be able to get two years worth of wear out of them.

And I kid you not, even bowling pins need to rest. So most bowling alleys will have at least two full sets of bowling pins. And about every other week they’ll swap the set that’s being used and the set that’s sitting on the shelves. If they don’t let the wooden pins rest they lose their vitality and won’t bounce around as much when they’re hit. But if you give them some time off on a shelf for while, they’ll come back more lively than ever. And I hear they will also last through more use if they get periodic times of rest.

We are the same way. If you do a little research, you can find lots of articles and studies about how cognitive function and productivity declines when people are not getting time off to rest and rejuvenate, and how you will likely get as much done in a month working 40-50 hours a week, as you would working 70-80 hour weeks. You probably know the common consequences of not getting the rest you need: burnout, stress, trashed immune system, brain fog, frayed relationships. What kind of person are you when you’re tired? My worst moments as a human being, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, have been at times when I was tired and feeling overwhelmed and hurried. Lacking the rest you need, you’re more irritable, more prone to sin, less pleasant to be around.

We need time off away from work for all those reasons, for productivity, for mental, emotional and physical health, for our marriages and kids who need us. But also because our relationship with God develops and is maintained much the same way as a relationship with anyone. You have to spend quality time with each other. You have to hang out regularly, talk and give Him your attention and listen.

So there’s clearly great wisdom behind the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments. That’s our subject for the lesson this morning. From Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 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, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

The Meaning of the Sabbath Commandment

The word “Sabbath” is simply an Englishy way of saying the Hebrew word “ shabbat.” It’s a word that means to stop, to cease, to be done, or to rest. To sabbath means to stop, to rest.

God was commanding the Israelites to imitate the weekly schedule He modeled in the first week of creation. He worked six days, but the seventh day He made holy, which means He set it apart from the other six days. He treated it special. He made it a blessed day of rest and just enjoying and savoring what He had done. And He was commanding the Israelites to follow His example in their own weekly schedules. Work six days, then rest the seventh.

The Israelites were first introduced to the idea of a Sabbath day just a little before the giving of the Ten Commandments. After they were freed from slavery in Egypt and they were following Moses and the Lord in the wilderness on their way to the land God promised He would give to Israel, and as God began providing them with manna, He gave them their first instructions in regard to a Sabbath. Six days a week, when they woke up in the morning, manna, this bread from heaven stuff would be lying on the ground all around their camp, and they would go out and gather enough for themselves and their family to eat that day. Except on the sixth day, on Friday, they were to gather twice as much as usual, so that they wouldn’t have to go gather manna on the seventh day. The seventh day they were not to go out, but have it as a day of rest.

And God miraculously worked with them to give them this day of rest and to train them to keep it. On any other day of the week before Friday, if they tried to save some manna for the next day, overnight it would get nasty. It says it would breed worms and stink. However, the extra manna they gathered on Friday to save to eat on the sabbath would be perfectly fine the next day. Also, on Saturday there was no manna outside their camp. So God was miraculously working with them to give them this day of rest. They weren’t at all disadvantaged or less well off by taking this day off. They actually benefited from it, still having all the food they needed and getting a day to refresh and give more of their attention to the Lord and to their families and other relationships. Moses even told the people this day is a gift. Exodus 16:29, “The LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day He gives you bread for two days.” It’s a gift. This day off is something you get to do, because the LORD your God is not like Pharaoh whom you used to serve who would never ever let you have a day of rest. The LORD your God is kind and He works for you so you can enjoy this day off. The command to keep the Sabbath was a command for them to receive and benefit from a gift God was giving them.

Now, over time many Jews lost sight of God’s kind intentions behind the Sabbath. Near Jesus’ time, the rabbis had come up with around 1500 rules on what you can and cannot do on the Sabbath. And the Jewish leaders imposed these rules on the people, and dealt strictly with anyone who violated their rules. So they had turned the Sabbath into a rather stressful and burdensome day for people. One time when they were criticizing Jesus for the things He would do on the Sabbath, the Lord reminded them, Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” So when you make the Sabbath a burden on people, you’ve missed God’s intentions with it.

Another of God’s purposes with the Sabbath was to protect lower class people and even animals from being overworked. Often where you find the Sabbath command repeated in the OT, it is emphasized that not only are people in higher societal positions not to work that day, but neither is your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or any sojourner in your gates, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock. In the repetition of the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy 5, after saying your male and female servants are to rest as well as you, this statement is added, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” They were to remember that they themselves would be slaves had it not been for God’s grace to them, so they are no better than their slaves. And just as God doesn’t treat them like Pharaoh did, they were not to treat their servants like Pharaoh did. They are to give them a day of rest as well.

Another purpose for the Sabbath that’s often overlooked…

It was not to be just a day for rest, but also a day you dedicate to the Lord.

Exodus 20:10, “the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” Not just a rest day, but a rest day to the Lord, a day you give to Him. There’s a “not-doing” part of the commandment and that is not working. But then there’s a doing part of it. You use the day for Him.

Other Scriptures give some direction on how to use the day. In Leviticus 23:3 the Sabbath day is also called a day of holy convocation, or a day of sacred assembly. It’s a day to gather for worship and learning of God and remembering and celebrating His good works and such. This is why later in Jewish history, synagogues developed. Synagogues were places in cities and villages where Jews gathered on Sabbath days for prayer, Scripture reading and teaching and worship.

And let’s look at Isaiah 58:13-14 where God made a great promise to those who would use the day as He intended. “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; 14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” God was saying to them through Isaiah, “The Sabbath is not your day. It is My day. If you will stop seeking your own personal pleasure and interests and talking about sports and cars and hunting and your jobs and so forth on My day, and really give this time to Me, then you will find Me delightful and I will exalt you and bless you. So this day was a wonderful opportunity for them to draw near to the Lord and He would draw near to them.

In a separate lesson we’ll focus on the question – Do we have to devote our Saturdays or Sundays or some particular day of the week as a Sabbath day? Does Christ command all of His people to observe a particular day of the week as a Sabbath? I believe I can show you in the Scriptures that the answer to that is no. In Christ we have more freedom in regard to when we do what we should do, than the Jews did under the Law.

But in this lesson I’d like to speak to two, perhaps more helpful, questions. The first one is…

Can we “sabbath”?

The Sabbath was a gift to Israel. Could we also receive and enjoy the benefits of such a time? Would God approve and maybe even support us like He did for the Israelites to take a day a week to rest and seek Him? Or support us to give the equivalent of a day’s worth of time each week? Say we broke it up to be 2-3 hrs a day, to just seek Him, by ourselves or with other believers? Or do we have too many more pressing matters in our lives and we wouldn’t be okay if we did that?

Well, He’s the same God, isn’t He? He is still just as capable of working in our lives to provide the things we need to free up time for us, isn’t He? He’s still not like Pharaoh, right? Or like Ebinezer Scrooge, just wanting to get as much work out of his employee as he could. That’s not the character of God. He’s a good Father. He’s our friend. He’s pictured also as a husband and we’re His bride. What He’s really after is our hearts and relationship, for us to love Him back and learn from Him how to love others, and that takes spending time with Him.

Let me show you some verses that convince me God is still in the business of supporting His children so they have time to rest and just be with Him.

Psalm 127:2, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.” It is vain to work long exhausting days and in anxiety about having enough for the future. Now, the last phrase there can be translated one of two ways. It can either be “He gives to His beloved sleep,” or it could be “He gives to His beloved even in His sleep,” or “while he’s sleeping.” That second rendering is powerful and true and I think the intended idea.

If you notice the little superscription above verse 1 that tells you about this psalm; it attributes this psalm to Solomon. In verse 2 Solomon is likely alluding to an experience in his life. Did you know Solomon had another name? According to II Samuel 12:25, Solomon was also called Jedidiah. And Jedidiah in Hebrew means “Beloved of the LORD”.  Now, you remember the occasion when Solomon, the beloved of the LORD, was the new king of Israel, and he sought and worshipped the Lord radically. Then the LORD appeared to him in a dream at night and said, “Ask what you wish Me to give you. You get one wish, Solomon. What do you want?” And of all the things Solomon could have asked for, he asked for a wise and understanding heart so that he could judge and lead God’s people well. God was so pleased that that was his request, God said, “Solomon, I’m not only going to give you a wise and understanding heart like no other, I’m also going to give you all that stuff that you didn’t ask for, long life and riches and honor and protection from your enemies, as long as you walk in my ways and keep my commandments.” So what happened there? God gave to Jedidiah, to His beloved, in his sleep. God’s beloved did not have to toil and struggle to attain those things. Solomon may have been recalling that when he wrote this verse, “It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.” So what we need to be is the Lord’s beloved. We need to surrender to Him and we need to trust Him. If we are His beloved, He will be working for us, so we don’t have to be on the job 70 hours a week.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:19ff, Jesus told us to prioritize storing up treasures in heaven over treasures on earth, and that you cannot serve God and money. You cannot have two masters. You have to choose who your master is. Then He talked about how you don’t need to worry about having enough for the future, what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear for clothing. But you seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, you take the time to get to know God deeply and His will for you and become well established with Him, and all the physical things you need will be added to you. So Jesus says if we’re prioritizing our relationship with God, He’s going to work in our lives and see to it that we have all we need. We do not have to work all the time to make sure we have enough.

Then one of my favorite passages, Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus says, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” You can see the heart of Jesus there and what He wants for us. He’s does not want us stressed, anxious, fearful, or feeling overwhelmed. And He offers rest for our souls. The way we receive that rest is not working more or working harder to get more done or finally getting caught up.” Rather what we do is,  we stop from our work, we Sabbath in other words, and we come to Jesus and we let Him teach us and we take His yoke, we let Him show us how to think and be and go about our life. And He promises that He will give us the rest we’re longing for.

So the last question is…

Why don’t we set aside at least a day’s worth of time weekly to rest and draw near to the Lord?

Is it a lack of faith that God will work in our lives to take care of us if we seek Him first? Is it a lack of faith that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him or that He’ll give us the rest we’re longing for? Is it greed? Is it envy of what others have?

Could it be, we’re lacking the wisdom of the humble fisherman who was sitting back, relaxing beside his boat, looking out over the sea. A rich industrialist came by and said, “Why aren’t you out there fishing?” The fisherman said, “Because I’ve caught enough fish for today.” “Why don’t you catch more fish than you need?” the rich man asked. The fisherman said, “What would I do with them?” “Well,” the rich man said, “You could earn more money, and buy a better boat so you could go out further and fish deeper and catch more fish and make more money. Then you could purchase nylon nets, catch even more fish, and make more money. Soon you could have a whole fleet of boats and be rich like me.” The fisherman asked, “Then what would I do?” And the rich man said, “Well, then you could sit back and enjoy life.” The fisherman, as he looked calmly out at sea, said, “What do you think I’m doing now?”

Why do we tend to think we need to have more to be able to enjoy where we are and what we have and the presence of the Lord?

Let me read to you again the promise from Isaiah 58, though it is not necessarily about how we use our Saturdays. In Christ we are not under obligation to observe some specified day. But it does have application to honoring God with our time, giving a proportionate amount of time to seek Him. Isaiah 58:13-14, “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; 14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

All through Scripture God promises that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). And if we do not use up God’s time, the time He wants to spend with us, on our own earthly interests (TV, sports, business, etc.), but actually honor God with our time, seeking Him earnestly, then we will find Him delightful. “Seek and you will find,” and you will find He is the most delightful person. He is the real joy giver. He’s our peace and our satisfaction. And He will exalt us and bless us. That promise is still for us.

-James Williams

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