European Pastors Conference Pt 1

Introduction

Me:

Work, School, Family, Events, Responsibilities, Passion, Calling, Conviction, Opportunities… they are always calling.

As we go through the annual cycle of the life of the church, depending on our responsibilities in the church, there are some seasons more busy than others.

We finished going through our advent season and Easter is less than two months away.

If you are ministering in a small church context you are doing the preaching, teaching, outreach, counseling, building relationships in the community, discipling, helping, serving, creating opportunities for people to experience the love and goodness of Christ.

Some of you are blazing trails of ministry and doing things that haven’t ever been done in your context or haven’t been done for some time.

EXAMPLES OF THAT SORT OF MINISTRY IN EUROPE (names and places)

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I want to hear about what you are doing to love your communities well. If God has given you a vision and you’d be willing to share it, I would love to hear it.

We:

We are partnering with God in His good work. He has given us a calling and a mandate. Work is not a part of the fall, but we see that in Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.””

So the work that we are to do is good and God-given. That shouldn’t be a revelation to us. But there is an effort of our own work that sin has affected.

It is the fact that we place ourselves, by default, in the place of God. We see that in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve decided that they knew better than God and they wanted to decide what was good, right, true, and beautiful.

Our work today often we take the role of God upon us. That it is up to us to bring awakening, it’s up to us to bring transformation, to make this person or that person come to faith, if only I had this program, more money, more people, etc.

I think this weight is felt at every stage of ministry, but maybe more potent in my experience when much of the ministry is upon your shoulders.

God

God is the creator God.

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

In the six days of creation he makes everything that we can see and that makes up our cosmos. Land, sea, sun, moon, stars, fish, birds, trees, bushes, man and woman, all of it!

As I’ve mentioned before, God then gives Adam and Eve the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, to tend and cultivate the garden, and to rule over the fish of the sea, birds of the sky, and all the creatures that move along the ground.

It’s beautiful, awe inspiring.

Then in chapter two we have another purposeful creation account. We are brought into more specifics of the conversation and relationship with God, Adam, and Eve.

Moses goes at great length to describe what is taking place.

God took and placed man in the garden

Gives Adam specific instructions on what to eat and not to eat (speaks to God’s goodness)

We’re made aware that God is knows Adam’s need before he is aware of it. But God allows Adam through his work to discover his need.

God gives him, as a blessable covenant partner, work in naming each living creature. The livestock, birds, and all the wild animals.

Then he creates Eve, to be an ezer (עֶזֶר) for him.

He then gives them the mandate to be united to each other and to start populating the Earth, procreating, working, cultivating, and tending to God’s good creation.

Right in the middle of all of this is the Seventh Day.

In this Seventh Day, the Bible tells us that God rested from all of His from all of his work.

Genesis 2:2–3 “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

Couple observations:

The seventh day never ends.

God rested from creation and began to rule over all that he had ordered

He blesses the seventh day and separates it from all the rest.

We’re then led by Moses in the law to keep the Sabbath day

Exodus 20:8–11 ““Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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. 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.”

Deuteronomy 5:12–15 ““Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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 ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”

God unlike us never rests, does’t sleep, doesn’t slumber, does not grow weary, but is ruling over the creation. As blessable covenant partners he welcomes us into this glorious work. We rest on the seventh day by acknowledging that he is still God. He is still the one keeping order. He is the one that is doing the work.

Psalm 121:4–5 “indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you— the Lord is your shade at your right hand;”

Isaiah 40:28 “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.”

“Sanctifying the Sabbath is part of our imitation of God, but it also becomes a way to find God’s presence. It is not in space but in time, he writes, that we find God’s likeness. In the Bible, no thing or place is holy by itself; not even the Promised Land is called holy. While the holiness of the land and of festivals depends on the actions of the Jewish people, who have to sanctify them, the holiness of the Sabbath, he writes, preceded the holiness of Israel. Even if people fail to observe the Sabbath, it remains holy.” - Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath

You

There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.” -Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath

We

“Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” -Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath