Stop

Last week began series on Sabbath called Redeeming Rest. That first week I focused the sabbath as essential to our identity - image bearers rather than slaves. However, if we are going to successfully learn to redeem rest we must establish a sabbath rhythm.

If you flip through any popular magazine you’ll see all kinds of advertisements: a couple drinking coffee while lying in bed, a man lounging on his couch playing guitar, a group of friends on the beach having a picnic. What are they selling? On the surface it may be a brand of coffee, or a new couch, or a kind of beer. But what they are really selling is sabbath. The message of the advertisement is that if you buy this product you can sabbath too. Marketing departments know that you ache for this kind of life and don’t have it, and so they are offering to sell it to you. The irony is that you can’t buy sabbath - and you don’t need to. Sabbath is the Hebrew word shabbat, which just means to “cease” or “stop”. In order to sabbath you don’t need to sell a kidney to buy a new couch, you just need to stop.

This ache to stop and reclaim life is not new, it goes all the way back to Jesus. One of his most famous invitations is from Matthew 11:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, NRSV)

Or listen to how this is translated in The Message Bible:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28–30, The Message)

The most common response when I ask people how they are doing is “busy” or “tired”. If we had battery indicators like on our phone or computer, most of us would have a warning showing that we are critically low. Low-grade exhaustion is the new normal. Much of this is physical-based. Prior to the modern industrial age most people slept 10-11 hours. Now the average in most western nations is 6. Numerous scientific confirm the devastating effects of not getting enough sleep on our whole person. We need to stop.

But it’s not just our body that is tired but, in Jesus’ language, our soul. Even when we go on vacation, we don’t really find rest. The modern age we live in means that there is a continual undercurrent of noise that never really goes away. It’s difficult to stop when the culture around you constantly moves at a hurried pace. Our always-connected culture means you are reachable at all hours with emails and phone calls that demand our attention. We are addicted to news programs and social media that ensure we keep coming back by producing in us fear or outrage. It all becomes just too much to deal with. This is not an easy yoke, and it’s no wonder most of us are so tired. We need to stop.

This chronic tiredness isn’t just an physical or emotional problem; it is a spiritual one. Why? Because we follow Jesus, who said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. For Jesus, love is what the spiritual journey is all about. And so love is the tape measure by which we measure our progress. The truth is that the more exhausted we are, the more difficult it is to love. We’re more likely to be easily irritated or to give way to angry outbursts. We simply aren’t our best when we’re tired. We need to stop.

I’m told that the Chinese join two characters to form the pictograph for hurry - heart and killing. Busyness kills the heart. Tiredness destroys the soul. God knows all this, and so he built a rhythm of rest into the fabric of creation. When we live in alignment with this ancient rhythm of stopping, we find peace and joy, but when we fight it, we fracture our souls.

Exodus 20:8-11

From this passage we see that God calls us to stop, or cease, so that we can focus on three essential things: remembrance, rhythms, and rituals.

Remember

The first thing the Sabbaths calls us to is to stop in order to “Remember”. The first meaning of remember is to “observe”. We are to keep the sabbath. I said that last week most Christians believe the 10 Commandments are still binding. The first three have to do with our relationship with God - No other God’s but him, don’t make idols, don’t use his name in vain. The last six have to do with our relationship with others - We shouldn’t steal, lie, cheat, kill or covet. But we regularly disregard the fourth commandment to keep sabbath.

God spends the most time explaining this commandment. If the 10 Commandments were a pie chart, the command to remember the sabbath would be 37% of it. How is it that we give the least time to it?

To remember is to observe the sabbath, but in observing the sabbath we remember:

That there is a Creator who is our loving Father. That we live in his world and breathe his air, and that his world is still good.

That we need to stop, not because we’ve finished with everything - we’re never finished with everything - but because God and our bodies say “enough”.

That we are not what we do, what we have, or what other people think of us. Our value is not measured by our productivity. We are who we are deeply loved by. We stop and remember our identity.

That life is a gift. We owe it to God to be grateful and joyful in his world.

Stopping to remember causes us to make a shift from _____ to ____.

Restlessness Restfulness

Hurry Margin

Burnout Sustainable pace

Noise Quiet

Chaos Clarity

Grasping Gratitude

Anxiety Peace

Control Trust

In Sabbath we stop to remember.

Rhythm

In Exodus 20 we also see that the Sabbath is a stop to reset our Rhythm. Unlike the version in Deuteronomy 5 where God connects the Sabbath to the Israelites escape from slavery, here he ties it to his own rhythm of work. For six days the Lord worked, but on the seventh he rested. Therefore we must do likewise.

One question that comes up frequently regarding the Sabbath is, Are we required to keep it? You can find books and teaching from many well-meaning, Jesus-loving people that come down on either side of the debate. I want to suggest that asking whether or not sabbath-keeping is essential is like asking whether or not you must obey the law of gravity. Gravity just is, and you can either work with it or against it. I think Sabbath is like gravity. You can live as if the Sabbath doesn’t exist, but your body will eventually let you know otherwise.

If you think about the natural rhythms of the world, most of them are tied to the movement of the earth or the moon. Our day is one rotation of the earth. Our year is one orbit around the sun. Our seasons are based on the rhythm of the earth tilting on its axis. In ancient times, seasons and months were marked by the regular cycles of moon. But not the seven-day cycle of the Sabbath. This is based solely on God’s rhythm of work and rest. We were created for rhythms. When we go against the grain of the sabbath-rhythm we get splinters.

In Mark 2:27 Jesus says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath;” The Jews of Jesus day needed to focus on the back half of that statement. They created all kinds of burdensome rules to keep from breaking the Sabbath. That’s not our problem. We don’t have too many rules, we have none. The Sabbath was made for us. We can ignore it, but our body keeps the score. In Sabbath we stop as part of our God-ordained rhythm.

Ritual

Finally, we see that the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it. To consecrate something is to set it apart. To make it special in some way. We consecrate the Sabbath through Ritual.

We hear “ritual” today and think “dead religion”. But rituals, when done rightly, are life-giving. There is a ritual that is followed with most weddings. We all know what is coming, but performing the ritual makes the moment special. At Arlington National Cemetery there is a ritual that is performed every hour - the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In a very choreographed ceremony, the sacred duty to guard the tomb is ceremonially passed from one guard to the next. While I’ve never seen it personally, I’m told by those who have that it is very moving. But what would it be without the ritual?

We need ritual - especially around keeping the Sabbath. In Jewish homes, the Sabbath begins on Friday evening with a ceremony called the kiddush. Usually, the woman of the home lights two Sabbath candles, offers a prayer, and then the family and friends that are gathered sit down to enjoy a long meal. For them, Sabbath hasn’t begun until this ritual is performed. We also need to stop in order to renew a Sabbath ritual.

Sabbath habit

When we live in alignment with this ancient rhythm of work and rest, as Jesus did, we find what Jesus called “rest for our souls.” But when we fight or chafe against or attempt to outsmart this innate, bodily cadence, we fracture our soul’s wholeness into a million pieces. Exhaustion, confusion, alienation from God and others, harm to the earth and the poor, and even spiritual death are all the toxic waste of a life without Sabbath.

Learning to practice the Sabbath is the habit from which all other good habits flow. Sabbath is a means to an end. We don’t practice Sabbath so that we can check off a box. The goal isn’t even to be rested or happy. The end goal of Sabbath-keeping is to participate in the life and love of the Trinity. To center our life around and more deeply in God. But doing this practice produces peace and joy as a byproduct. If you’d like some help is establishing a Sabbath habit I’ve created a simplified guide. You can access it with the link or QR code on the screen.

For the Jews, Sabbath came at the end of the week. It was what all the other days were leading to. For Christians, Sabbath shifted to the first day of the week. It is what we now live out of. The Jews looked forward to the coming Messiah to give them rest. We look back at Messiah-Jesus who has given us rest through his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus invites you into this life of peace, joy, and rest. If you’ve never said yes to his invitation I invite you to do that today. (next steps slide) If you have said yes, he still invites you into his life of peace, joy, and rest through sabbath.

Jesus said “Come to me... and you WILL find rest for your souls.” All you need to do is stop.