Sabbath is God’s Time - Extra (skip this one)

Intro

Kyle’s Version:

Made For This Sabbath Is God’s Time

The things we do, do things to us.

We are into week four of our series, Made For This. We are exploring a theme which comes up in the Bible of the Sabbath, which just means taking a day to stop all that we have been doing and to focus on God, on others, on enjoying life, and on us reflecting on our purpose and identity. As part of this series we are encouraging each of us to implement the disciple of having a Sabbath into our own lives. So, if you haven’t signed up yet or if you are just joining us, I want to encourage you to sign-up for the Sabbath Challenge. You can do this by scanning the QR code on the screen.

If you have been trying to put Sabbath into your life, or if you’ve been going through this series and you just aren’t convinced yet, you might be thinking, “Why do I need to do this? What good is it going to do?”

That is a fair question. What I want us to understand today is this: the things we do, do things to us. Let me give us some simple examples:

§ The things we eat impact our body. If you have ever started a diet where you eliminate certain elements like sugar, or if you’ve tried interment fasting, you experienced an impact on your body. The lack of sugar has almost an immediate impact on us and if you make it past the cravings, you likely started to feel a difference.

§ Sleep is another thing that if you do it, it does something to you. Our bodies and mind were made for rest. We need it to function well and be healthy. When you have a great night’s sleep, it does something to you.

§ Exercise also does something for us; when we do it, it makes us stronger or fit.

Here is the question for today. If we do a Sabbath, what does Sabbath do to us? What impact does having a Sabbath actually have on us?

Today we are going to see three things Sabbath does to us.

To begin, I want to invite you to open up a Bible to Psalm 90. Page 869 of the Bible in the pews.

As you are turning there, let me give some background. The section of Scripture we have been in have been largely in the first five books of the Bible. This is referred to as the Pentateuch, meaning “five books” and it contains the Law God gave His people. This law was given through the prophet Moses. Throughout the Law there is the thread of the Sabbath which is woven through much of these books and, as we have seen and will continue to see, elsewhere in Scripture. But did you know Moses also wrote one of the Psalms? Psalm 90 is a prayer attributed to Moses, the man of God. This psalm deals with the concept of time.

Sabbath gives us wisdom: Psalm 90:9-12

9 All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. 10 Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. 11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. 12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

A few years ago a few of our staff were moving offices and Brian, one of our pastors, moved to a new office. It is a sweet office and he was so excited about it so for a meeting we had he invited me to come to his office instead of mine. As I sat down he started telling me about all the cool things in his office, he has some impressive baseball cards and other meaningful memorabilia. I, however, was curious about a jar he had in his office filled with marbles. “What’s that?” I asked. [Show photo of jar]Each marble represents a week, he explained to me, and all of these marbles are the number of weeks left between his current age and the average life expectancy. Each Sunday, at the start of a new week, he removes a marble, reminding him that week is gone and the remaining marbles visually represent the remaining weeks he might have left. I remember thinking, “This is the most morbid thing I’ve ever seen.”

Actually, it may have been the wisest.

Psalm 90 tells us there is wisdom in numbering our days. Initially, the idea of numbering our days makes us feel uncomfortable, that is because it reminds us we aren’t in control of our time. We actually don’t know how many marbles in the jar we have left, but based on how long most people live, we have a general sense of our maximal time remaining. When we come to terms with this, when we pause and consider that it might be 100 or less and then we starting counting down the possible remaining time, we begin to value our time. We realize how precious it is and we realize how quickly time passes.

The laws of supply and demand tell us that when something is in shorter supply it becomes more valuable. Thus, each week that passes in our lives, the time we have remaining on this side of eternity becomes less and less and thus it becomes more and more valuable. But it is only valuable if we realize it is valuable.

This is what Sabbath is for us. It is an intentional pause in our lives, each week, to stop and consider our time, to consider how much time we might have remaining, and by evaluating how limited time we have left, it causes us to value our time. It makes us wiser in how we spend our time.

Think for a moment about what Brian’s habit does to him. Each Sunday he picks a marble out of the jar. He holds it in his hand and reflects on the last week of his life. Who did he impact? What sin does he need to confess? Where did he invest his time? In whom did he invest his time? Are others better because of how he spent his week? Do more people know about Jesus?

Then Brian takes that marble and puts in the trash, because that week is gone, and he knows he can’t ever get that week back. That habit will do something to you. It will teach you to number your days and that will give you a heart of wisdom.

Sabbath gives us wisdom because it a time to reflect on our lives.

There is a second thing the discipline of Sabbath does for us; it helps us enjoy our time.

Sabbath helps us enjoy time: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

Solomon was one of the wisest men to ever live and he writes a few books of the Bible that are wisdom literature. In one of those books, Ecclesiastes, he picks up on this idea of how we experience a tension in our relationship with and understanding of time.

[Kyle to read Ecclesiastes 3:1-9]

Then Solomon finishes off with these verses.

I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:10-11 (NIV) [Have this be the side 3rd, not full screen]

The burden we carry is an inherent tension within our hearts. God has made everything beautiful in its time, but everything only has a time. All of the things we experience are temporary things. Yet, God has set eternity in the human heart. We long for the eternal but we live in the temporal.

This causes for us a deep longing within our hearts. We long for something we can’t reach or achieve. This longing can cause us to have an unhealthy desire to try and hold on to time as much as possible. But we can’t hold on to time. The more we try, the less we actually enjoy our time. Let me give an example.

In 2004, professional golfer Phil Mikelson finally won the Master’s with an incredible birdie putt on the 18th hole to win by one stroke. When he won, he jumped for joy and all of the fans with him. Here is a photo from that 2004 event. [2004 Masters Photo].

Do you see the joyful expression of the fans? They were into this with Phil. This is one of the most iconic moments in all of sports. Do you see how all of the fans were fully present in this moment? They were focused, not distracted, and all in. Do you notice what is missing in this picture?

Several years later Phil won another tournament, this time he won the PGA and became the oldest golfer at the time to win the PGA. Here is a photo of that victory. [2021 PGA Photo]. Here again Phil is celebrating as are the fans. Do you see the difference? What is in everyone’s hand?

A phone.

It wasn’t in the 2004 photo because the iPhone didn’t come out for two more years. In this second photo, the excitement of the moment isn’t being shared in the same way with the fans. Phil is all in and very much taking it all in. But how many of these fans are trying to record this moment? Instead of experiencing this moment and soaking in it, they are trying to document it to prove they were there and to try and hold on to the moment. The other reason you don’t see that in the photo from the Masters is because they, still to this day, don’t allow phones on the course, even for spectators. There are YouTube videos of people describing how to cope going all day at the Masters without their phone.

Why do we need our phone near us all the time? We don’t want to miss anything! I wonder how many of us are missing moments because we are so concerned with trying to not lose them. Now, I am all for technology. I am not knocking taking photos or videos on our phones. I am actually thankful for it. The first time I watched my son score a touchdown in football was from an iPhone recording my father-in-law texted me while I was traveling out of the country. I was sitting at dinner in the Middle East watching him run the ball across the goal line on a Saturday morning here in the US.

But, I wish I would have been there. How often have I not enjoyed a moment because I was so concerned with trying to capture the moment? Or we got pulled into a text or email, or doom scrolling? Our phones aren’t bad, but our phones tell us something. They tell us we are in charge of our lives. We decide what we watch, what we read, or what we communicate and when. To that isn’t reality. In reality we don’t control time. We long for eternity, and if we are follower of Jesus we will be with God forever, but we aren’t there yet. There is a tension within our souls. When we are so busy and so distracted we can forget about the tension. But the tension actually is for our good. When we realize how temporary the seasons of our life are, the more we enjoy them, knowing they will quickly be gone.

This is what Sabbath does for us. Sabbath gives us a perspective on how elusive certain things in life are. When our kids were little and up at all hours of the night we’d hang out with other parents of kids the same age and we’d all talk about how much we all needed sleep. But older and wiser parents would tell us, “Cherish these moments, they will soon be gone and you’ll want them back.” They were right. Sabbath is a weekly pause which tells us to cherish the season of life we are in, even if it is unpleasant.

This leads to the third thing Sabbath does for us.

Sabbath teaches us that time belongs to God.

One of my high school coaches used to say, “To be five minutes early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late.” While much of our world runs on the precise nature of time and we have the development of technologies like watches and clocks to help us keep time, it has not always been this way. A few thousand years ago people told time based on reoccurring events within nature.

§ A day was once understood, not so much as 24 exact hours, but rather as from sunset to sunset or sunrise to sunrise. It was based on the movement of the sun.

§ A month is roughly the time from one new moon to the next new moon. So the month, in general, followed the lunar cycle.

§ A year is the time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun. So the year was based on the solar cycle.

Author Allen Friedman writing for a Jewish Journal makes this argument about the seven-day week and points out that the seven-day week is both artificial, meaning it doesn’t map directly from something we see with the movement of the sun or moon. And, he says, it is unnatural, meaning when you take the lunar or solar cycles you don’t naturally come to a seven day cycle. Which means, the seven-day cycle was created. And basically everyone around the world uses the 7-day week.

Why? Where did it come from? Some credit the Ancient Babylonians with the 7-day week, naming the days after the visible planets. But the Assyrians had a 6 day week, Egypt had a 10 day week, China a 15 day week, West Africa had a 4 day market cycle, and the Romans, who controlled much of the world after all of these other civilizations had an 8 day cycle for markets. So why did the 7 day week win out?

In the past few hundred years, some have tried to do away with the seven day week. The most notable was during the French Revolution. In 1792, to cut any and all ties to the church or Christianity the French changed the 7 day week to 10 day weeks. This created 36 weeks a year and then at the end of their year, which was our mid-September, they added 5 days of festivals (or six in a Leap Year). In the new 10 day work week people worked 9 days and had the 10th day off. With all the changes, the names of the days were changed and the months were renamed to describe the French seasons. If that calendar would have held, today would have been the 7th of Rainy (I am not making that up) in the year 233.

It was a mess. First of all, they couldn’t communicate with anyone outside of this system, as you could imagine the Brits mocked this calendar greatly, and the names of the months didn’t translate to French territories outside of France. Also many laborers suffered, having to wait 9 days for a day off instead of 6 created a hardship and complaints. In 1805, just 13 years after trying a new calendar, it was abandoned.

It seems we were made for a seven day cycle.

Not only were we made for this, there is a theological statement embedded within the seven day cycle. It is a statement that God made time and all time is His. When we take a Sabbath, it is a form of worship, telling God we realize all time is His. Instead of controlling time or owning time we pause, realize time is a gift God gives us and we don’t have any guarantee how much more we will have, so we use our time well and wisely, giving God thanks for our time.

So practically, what do we do to do Sabbath?

Let me start by saying, actually what we do on the Sabbath matters a whole lot less than what Sabbath does to us. By taking time in a dedicated way to focus on being and not doing, to focus on God and people we love instead of ourselves, it does something to us. I love what John Mark Comer writes in his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, “Watch out for the Sabbath. It will mess with you. First it will mess with one day of your week; then it will mess with your whole life.” That is the point. Taking one day to be unhurried leaks into the rest of our life. What can this look like?

1. Be unhurried. The idea of Sabbath is to stop working. If you work, stop working. If you are raising a family, this is a day to avoid chores and errands. If you are looking for work, stop your search for that day. If you are retired, have this be a day where you do something different. Don’t schedule meetings, appointments, or shop. Don’t have places you need to be, or if you have things like Church, leave early, don’t speed, don’t rush. If you are a student, don’t do homework or study or work a job. This is a day to linger. If you have a full schedule, even if it is fun stuff, it isn’t Sabbath. I’ll get controversial here, if you are running to tournament, practices, or dance competitions, that isn’t Sabbath. Those things aren’t bad, but they don’t promote being unhurried. Our souls need unhurried time.

2. Be present. Sabbath is for us. We want to be present with God and present with others. I recommend when you wake up on your Sabbath, open the Bible as soon as possible and enjoy what you are reading, pause and pray back to God what you are reading, like a conversation. Enjoy this unrushed time with Him. Then, be present with people. One family at Wooddale, who is very busy by the way, has started “Charcuterie Sabbath” where they have charcuterie trays, enjoy a family meal and have been reading the Sabbath Challenge material as a family. Here is a photo from them [Photo of meal]. This is a great example to follow! If you are retired, this could be something you host for others, if you enjoy cooking. If that makes you feel rushed, order in! But either way, be present with people.

3. Be analog. This one will be challenging. Consider fasting from media. For many of us the constant noise and information from media can make our souls feel hurried. So for your Sabbath, unplug. Turn off your phone, avoid social media, don’t read the news. I have an App which turns my phone into a dumb phone for certain times at night to help me focus on being present with my family. Starting at 9 PM each night and going until 5:30 the next morning almost all of my apps are locked. I had Stephanie set-up the password. I’ve added a Sabbath setting to this to now turn-off during my Friday Sabbath.

These habits, they are not about legalism. It is about allowing the Sabbath to remind us of who we are and what we were truly made for. Enjoying the life God has given us for the time He has given us.