Sabbath - worship

Today is the final message in a series on sabbath. If you have been following along with us through the other messages of this series, I hope you are beginning to recognize a progression taking place. Today’s message completes that progression. We started by noting the pattern of creation in Genesis. That the six days of creation recorded in Genesis fit a pattern of separating and filling. The first three days of creation are marked by separating spaces. And then the final three days of creation are marked by filling those spaces. It is a pattern we saw carry over into the seventh day when God himself engages in sabbath. We have been working in this series to observe how sabbath begins by creating a separated space in the tine of our week. And then that separated space in our time is filled.

The first two sermons talked about sabbath as stopping and sabbath as resting. These are both practices that create separation from the other days of our week. Last time we  considered how sabbath is a day to be filled with delight; particularly, it is a participatory delight we are invited to engage and experience along with the delight of God himself. And today we get to the final message in which we consider what it means for sabbath to be a day that is filled with worship. See how Moses states that in this story from the book of Exodus. This is the point of the story where the people of Israel are beginning their journey through the wilderness from Egypt to Canaan, and they are starting to run out of food. God provides manna for the people to eat every day while they are in the wilderness—well, the manna appears almost every day. Here is what Moses has to say about that.

Exodus 16:21–30 (NIV)

Exodus 16:21–30 NIV

21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’ ” 24 So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 25 “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a sabbath to the Lord. You will not find any of it on the ground today. 26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.” 27 Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. 28 Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? 29 Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

Look in particular at verse 23.

Exodus 16:23 (NIV)

Exodus 16:23 NIV

23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’ ”

Hebrew preposition is a single letter: “to the Lord” could mean towards the Lord, for the Lord, into the Lord, about the Lord

A holy sabbath to the Lord. It is worth stopping on just this phrase. What does it mean that the sabbath is something that is holy to the Lord? Does it mean that the sabbath is holy because the Lord finds it holy? Is that what it means that sabbath is holy to the Lord? The Hebrew language does not work with prepositions the same way that our English language uses prepositions. There is no one Hebrew word that is the direct equivalent of our English preposition “to.” In fact, in Hebrew it is expressed with a single letter from the Hebrew alphabet that is attached as a prefix into the word it is modifying (in English we would call that the object of the preposition). This one letter in Hebrew that signals a preposition carries a variety of meanings. Our English Bibles have chosen to translate it as “to the Lord.” But elsewhere in scripture the same thing is translated as “to, towards, for, into, about.” Substitute any one of those English words into this verse. The sabbath is holy towards the Lord. The sabbath is holy for the Lord. The sabbath is holy into the Lord. The sabbath is holy about the Lord.

the holiness of sabbath is intended to center us upon God

You get the idea that Moses is saying in this passage. Our observation of sabbath is supposed to have a particular direction. The holiness of sabbath time is holiness that is pointed and moving to the Lord, towards the Lord, for the Lord, into the Lord, about the Lord. There is a sense of proximity in these sabbath directions. Sabbath is time that brings us into the presence of God. If you were here last week, this should come as no surprise at all. Last time we saw that sabbath delight is an invitation to join along with God in his sabbath delight. It makes perfect sense then that whatever we fill our sabbath time with should bring us in closer proximity to God.

proximity to God’s presence is not marked by creating a sacred space

Consider for a moment how the Old Testament people of Israel would have heard and understood this message. All the pagan religions in the world during that time believed that the gods occupied specific and particular places. The people of Israel held onto this notion too. They thought that the gods lived on a holy mountain, or in a holy oasis. They built temples and shrines in these places because they believed that the gods literally occupied just that space. The people of Israel experienced this when they arrived at mount Sinai, and for the very first time experienced the literal presence of the Lord as Moses by himself went up the mountain to be with God. The tabernacle changed this just a little bit from all the ways people had previously thought about this. Now for the first time—with the Tabernacle—God’s presence moved around, and the people packed up and moved along with it. That would have been seen as a radically new and different thing, that God’s holy presence would move. It sets the stage for God to reveal to his people that actually his presence is everywhere all the time. We see examples of this over and over in the Old Testament; think the story of Jonah, or think of the words of David in Psalm 139. In the New Testament we see it through the incarnation of Jesus, and ultimately in Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is given to the church. The holiness of God’s presence is not confined to a single holy location.

proximity to God’s presence is marked by a creating a sacred time

Yet at the same time, God wants to make sure that his holiness is recognized and noted—that people have a way to be regularly aware of God’s holiness. And so, instead of marking his holiness in terms of a particular location, God chooses to mark his holiness in terms of a particular time: sabbath. It is not the space that we mark as sacred, it is the time that we mark as sacred. It is time that we focus towards God. It is time set apart for worship.

stop (release) — rest (refresh) — delight (revive) — worship (reorient)

Back up for just a minute and see how the progression of messages in this series leads us to this conclusion. Sabbath begins with stopping; we need to get all the other things of life out of the way for a bit. From there sabbath moves to resting; we need to have a time in which we are refreshed. From there sabbath moves to delight; in experiencing refreshment we are led to join with God in experiencing the delight of his creation. From there sabbath moves to worship; in experiencing refreshment and delight we are led to respond in worship. I admit that this might be a bit of a scathing indictment. It presupposes that sabbath worship is the outflow of sabbath stopping, and sabbath resting, and sabbath delighting.

I cannot help but wonder if we have the order of this day mixed up. Instead of beginning our sabbath day with coming to church for worship, I wonder what it might be like to end our sabbath with worship. This all presupposes that every single one of us would use the entire day of Sunday before gathering in worship to engage those other sabbath practices of stopping and resting and delighting. I cannot help but wonder how our experience of worship together might be different if we gathered into this place after having spent an entire day set apart for resting and being refreshed, an entire day spent engaging in the delight of God’s creation. I will be the first to admit that I don’t feel sufficiently stopped or refreshed or delighted by 9:30am on Sunday morning. The stopping and refreshing and delighting is something I tend to get around to after our time of worship together is finished. None of that makes our morning worship service bad or wrong; and I don’t meant to suggest that none of us come here on Sunday mornings rested or refreshed or delighted. I just wonder how it might be different if we were all able to walk in more rested and more refreshed and more delighted.

what is worship?

All of this brings up a valuable question that should not be ignored. If sabbath is meant for worship, what is worship anyway? Perhaps I am already pushing some false ideas by suggesting that this thing we do for one hour on this one day of the week in this one room of this one building is the only thing that counts as worship. That’s just not true. Worship is not exclusively confined to what happens in a church building on a Sunday. Let’s spend a few minutes thinking together about that worship really is. And perhaps this will bring some clarity to why we do the things we do during this hour every Sunday morning.

It is Jamey Smith who suggests in his book You Are What You Love that all people worship. God created us to be people who worship. And Smith argues that all people do, in fact, worship. It is not a question of whether or not you are worshipping. Smith says the real question is this: what are you worshipping? And as the title of the book suggests, Smith’s point is that people tend to worship whatever it is they love the most.  And in many cases, Smith notes, people tend to worship created things instead of the creator. Two examples that Smith develops as illustrations of this are the shopping mall and the sports stadium. Both of these, says Smith, are examples of religious sanctuaries in our modern American culture. They are complete with their liturgies, their rituals, their hymns, and their sacrificial offerings. We don’t need to pick on just those two illustrations of sports and shopping. The examples flow over into career and workplace, academics, music and arts, technology, social media. All of these things have their sanctuaries, their liturgies, and so on. The point Smith makes is this, we are all pulled to worship something. And often we find ourselves in this world being pulled to worship things other than God.

not a question of if we worship, but a question of what we worship

The regular practice of sabbath as a time which we fill with worship has more than one purpose. It is more than time set aside to honor and glorify the God who is our creator and our redeemer. It is also a regular time each week to reorient the direction of our worship. Christian worship on the sabbath is a pattern which redirects our hearts and souls upon Christ as the center of our lives. Christian worship is a regular and repeated re-telling of our true place within God’s cosmic story. The various acts of worship we do during this one hour on a Sunday are the rehearsing of our greater placement inside of God’s greater narrative of our world. The practice of worship refocuses our hearts and lives back into the direction of God’s intended created purpose.

Take it back with me again to the creation story. When God created the first human beings he gave them a creation mandate in Genesis 1:28.

Genesis 1:28 (NIV)

Genesis 1:28 NIV

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.”

Cultivate the earth, develop it, take care of it. Later in Genesis 12 when God calls Abram he makes a promise to Abram, that God would bless Abram and that through that blessing all people will be blessed. God created us as part of the shalom flourishing and thriving and wellbeing of his creation. He has placed us in charge as caretakers of this creations. He gives his blessing so that we may share this blessing as an overflow into his creation. Jesus comes in the New Testament to redeem and restore us as his people so that we can re-engage that creation mandate once again. The regular habit and practice of worship as part of our sabbath time reorients and redirects and re-engages our hearts back into God’s larger cosmic story once again.

Jamey Smith, making reference to the work of scholar N.T. Wright, summarizes it this way in the book I previously mentioned:

“The end of worship is bound us with the end of being human. In other words, the point of worship is bound up with the point of creation. The goal of Christian worship is a renewal of the mandate in creation: to be (re)made in God’s image and then sent as his image bearers to and for the world.”

“The end of worship is bound us with the end of being human. In other words, the point of worship is bound up with the point of creation. The goal of Christian worship is a renewal of the mandate in creation: to be (re)made in God’s image and then sent as his image bearers to and for the world.”

worship embraces the liturgies, habits, and rituals which orient our lives into the narratives that give our lives identity, meaning, and purpose

Think about what this means. Worship as the capstone of our sabbath practice not only forms the pinnacle of what this separated sabbath space is all about, worship also prepares us to be launched once again into the week ahead. As disciples of Jesus who are ever being conformed more and more into the image of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, sabbath becomes for us an indispensable pattern in this journey of sanctification, this pathway of becoming more complete disciples of Christ.

Can you be a Christian without ever practicing sabbath? Is that possible? I suppose you could. But the question is, why would you want to? Look again at what Moses says in Exodus 16.

Exodus 16:29 (NIV)

Exodus 16:29 NIV

29 Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out.”

Sabbath is a gift to be received, not a rule to be followed. Jesus himself invites us when he says in Matthew 11,

Matthew 11:28 (NIV)

Matthew 11:28 NIV

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Let sabbath be what it is meant to be: a time stop, a time to rest, and time to delight, and a time to worship; a time to release, a time refresh, a time to revive, and a time to reorient.