Rhythms: God's Gift to Us

Introduction

[SERIES SLIDE]

I’m going to ask you all to do something a little bit strange. If you are willing, I would like you to take a moment and find your pulse. You can use your neck or your wrist, however it works for you.

Found it? Ok, now I’d like you to close your eyes, leave your hand there, and sit for a moment with it.

(Pause)

You can stop.

What did you feel?

The steady thump-thump of our hearts beat like a metronome. They count out the rhythm of our lives. They beat steadily, marking the passage of time and of life itself. When they stop, life as we know it on the earth ceases.

God has woven rhythms into the our very fabric: seasons of birth, seasons of renewal, seasons of waiting, and seasons for mourning.

As the author of Ecclesiastes wrote:

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 ESV

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Our heartbeats measure the passage of time. They are steady. They are reliable. They are one of many rhythms that define our lives.

These rhythms are a result of God’s marvelous gift of creation to us. We, like the birds of the air, the fish in the sea, and the animals on the ground, all move through to the rhythm He set forth so long ago.

Like a symphony God set forth in creation, each of its parts act like an single instrument playing in a great orchestra, harmonizing to the music of life.

But what if a single instrument breaks the rhythm? Or a number of them? Or all of them? You have chaos. The rhythm is broken, the harmonies discordant, the symphony unrecognizable.

Cornelius Plantinga Jr. wrote that biblical wisdom is

Themelios: Volume 37, No. 3, November 2012 3. Pace of Life

“the knowledge of God’s world and the knack of fitting oneself into it.”

It’s finding the way in which God has created us (what instrument he has made us to be) and discovering how we fit into His great symphony.

If we do not follow his rhythms, if we play off-key, we simply become noise and agents of chaos.

God’s gift to us are the rhythms of creation. They structure how creation is supposed to work. God’s call to us is to learn to follow those rhythms and add the great harmonies of creation.

This morning, we will seek to understand these rhythms better, particularly asking what they are and how we fit into them?

The Creation Narrative

As Poetry

To begin, I want to hone in on the first question I posed this morning: “What are the rhythms that God established in His created order?”

Looking at our text this morning, the first thing to notice about the creation narrative is that it is told in the style of poetry. Poetry and music share many of the same elements: structure, form, imagery, meter, and rhythm. But Genesis 1 is not poetry in the way you or I might recognize it. There are no quatrains, no iambic pentameter, no meter or rhythm that we would notice, and definitely no rhyming. Shakespeare or Maya Angelou, this is not.

The defining factor of Ancient Hebrew poetry is its sentence structure and repetition. The rhythm of a passage is usually marked by a beginning and ending phrase/concept. In Genesis 1, for example, at the beginning of each day of creation we read the words, “And God said.” At their end, the author proclaims, “And there was evening and there was morning, the (fill-in-the-blank) day.”

As we follow the symphony of creation through each day, we see that the climax arrives on the sixth day: the creation of humankind - image-bearers of God, created to be in communion with God, fellow stewards of that creation, and ambassadors of God’s will upon the earth.

But even though the symphony of creation culminates on that sixth day, the end goal (the telos) of creation is found on the seventh day - the day God rested. This day would later (in the book of Exodus [cf. Ex 31:17]) become the Sabbath.

Implications

I don’t want to skim over this too quickly. At the risk of repeating what you’ve already heard, God didn’t rest on the seventh day because he was tired. He didn’t rest because he was bored and wanted to go on with something else.

God rested in order to enjoy what He created.

Elaine and Melissa have done an amazing job over the past four weeks walking us through the Sabbath. In God’s understanding of Sabbath, the rhythms of our work, the rhythms of our life, point to this one end: enjoyment of God’s creation and enjoyment of the fruits of our labor - Worship, Rest, and Play.

It is this interplay between work and rest that defines creation. It is the periods of work that define our ability to rest and find enjoyment in them.

These rhythms of work and rest define the stanzas in our symphony. They provide necessary bookends to the start and stop of work. They give us the structure to accomplish the things that God has for us to do but also to enjoy them (and enjoy Him) as we look back on what we have done.

Rhythms

613 Commandments

For many of us, especially Christians in the Western World, when we look at the Ancient Israelites and try to understand their perspective on how to “fit into the world,” we often skim over the first parts of Genesis and head straight to Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy to the list of 613 Commandments given by God to Moses and His people. We read the lists, read the rest of the Old Testament and see how poorly Israel did at keeping them, and then look to the New Testament and are happy to find that most of those laws don’t apply to us any more.

if they still applied, if you’ve eaten ham or bacon in the last week, you’re in big trouble!

Though these laws do provide a code by which those Ancient Israelites might better understand what holiness looks like to God, we must not forget that the Law (handed down by Moses) was given in the context of the rhythms that God also proscribed for His people.

Creation Rhythms

In the Law given to Moses by God, ancient Israel acknowledged various rhythms in God’s creation:

The Israelite day begins at sundown, acknowledging that the days begin in darkness and uncertainty, but that God’s work continues through that darkness until light brings order and peace.

The weekly cycle, as we learned in the teaching on Sabbath, was tied to the day of rest after God completed His work.

In the Jewish calendar, the first of the month is tied to the cycle of the new moon.

The various Israelite feasts combined the celebration of significant events in its history with the agricultural calendar.

God explicitly tied the story of Israel with the rhythms and patterns of creation. The movement of the moon in relation to the earth and the earth in relation to the sun. Israel was to see their historical journey - their past and their future - within the rhythms of God’s creation.

With both the Law and the feasts, they were a nation formed to show the world how to “fit” into God’s world. To see themselves as part of the created world. But what does this mean for us, as Christians, today?

The Letter of the Law

My earlier assertion of the Christian perspective remains true. Christians are not bound to the Law as Israel had been.

We can eat bacon!

As Paul asserts in Romans:

[SLIDE - Romans 7:6]

Romans 7:6 ESV

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

So, what does this mean for us? What does serving in a “new way” mean?

Jesus said in Matthew’s gospel:

[SLIDE - MATTHEW 5:17-18]

Matthew 5:17–18 ESV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Then he continues:

[SLIDE - Matthew 5:21-22]

Matthew 5:21–22 ESV

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

This “new way” has freed us from the letter of the Law, but now, by the grace of His Holy Spirit, we must now abide by its spirit … which is far more difficult than what the letter of the Law proscribes. How can we possibly succeed in doing better than Israel, when they couldn’t even obey the 613 laws they were given? It doesn’t seem like our situation has gotten any better.

Our Challenge

St Paul gets to the heart of our challenge when he writes in Romans:

[SLIDE - Romans 7:15]

Romans 7:15 ESV

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

And later

[SLIDE - Romans 7:24-25]

Romans 7:24–25 ESV

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

When Paul says that we “serve the law of God with [our] minds,” I somehow doubt that he was encouraging us all to go to Seminary - that we could learn or reason our way to holiness.

Every week, pastors and preachers everywhere stand up at a pulpit just like this and declare to their flocks the glory and majesty of God. We proclaim how Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross paved the way for you and me to be saved from bondage to sin and death. We encourage our congregations to seek first the Kingdom of God every day of our lives.

And yet, how often does that message really “stick?” How often do we hear an amazing sermon on Sunday, wake up on Monday with new conviction and resolve, but then fail by Tuesday night? It’s like a weekly version of my New Year’s Eve resolution over and over again.

As James Smith, author of You Are What You Love, argues:

[We] are hungry for knowledge; [we] thirstily drink up biblical ideas; [we] long to be Christlike; yet all of that knowledge doesn't seem to translate into a way of life. It seems we can't think our way to holiness. [Smith, 2016, 5, emphasis added]

Then what are we to do?

Rhythms as Habit

If we can’t think our way into holiness, if we can’t think our way into relationship with God, what are we left with?

The rhythms of creation are the gift God has given us by which to strengthen ourselves for this quest towards holiness. They are the means by which we learn to rely upon God and to “fit” ourselves into the world He created.

Without these rhythms it is too easy to tune Him out. It is too easy to listen to the messages that our culture constantly bombards us with. Our minds and our knowledge cannot alone withstand the barrage of stimuli thrown at us every day.

In Smith’s book, he argues that “love is the condition for knowledge. It’s not that I know in order to love, but rather: I love in order to know.” [Smith, 3]

We are what we love. Love the things of the world and our culture, then that is what you are and will become. However, love God and His will, and you will grow in righteousness.

Conclusion

[SLIDE - SERIES SLIDE]

So, how do we cultivate this love? This is where God’s gift of rhythm comes in. The rhythms of creation all point towards the telos of worshiping God and His creation. We are called to align ourselves with God’s rhythms so that we might strengthen our love for Him, His will in our lives, and His will for creation. In this, God can work in us to bring us true joy and contentment in our work.

If we truly wish to love God, we must ask the Holy Spirit to develop in us the rhythms of spending time with Him. In cooperation with the Spirit’s work, we can join Him by examining our own rhythms and placing them under the microscope of God’s purposes for creation. It is the work of establishing new rhythms and habits to join God in His creative and redemptive work in us and in the world.

Now, be careful, this is a completely counter-cultural idea. The world screams at you to “Just Do It,” “Have It Your Way,” “Don’t Leave Home Without It,” “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” “Challenge Everything,” and “Be All You Can Be.” It calls you to change your rhythms to worship the idols of money, power, sex, or prosperity. And yet, none of these mottos will ever bring you true satisfaction - they are false promises that lead to disastrous ends. Leaning in toward God means leaning away from the hollow offerings of the world.

As Elaine and Melissa preached last month, Sabbath is the starting point of aligning ourselves to the rhythms of our Creator. Over the next three weeks of this sermon series, we will take a deeper dive into six more rhythms that will help us strengthen our relationship with God. These are the rhythms lived out by Jesus Christ, taught to His disciples, and are no different from the rhythms taught in the Law of Moses. They are a reflection of how God wants to commune with us and we with Him.

As we proceed through this series, I want to challenge you to seriously reflect and choose one practice you are willing to ask God to develop in your life. If you need help getting started, reach out to Elaine or I to guide you on your journey. Others would also help, but I’m not going to volunteer them publicly! As well, be on the lookout early next year, there will be additional opportunities to grow into God’s rhythms as we roll out a new discipleship program through our small groups.

As preachers of the Word of God, we pray every Sunday that the words we speak will reach your heart. But, the task of asking God to help you translate these ideas into a loving relationship with Him is up to you. All you have to do is ask. I hope and pray that you will see this as an opportunity to better align your rhythms with the Lord, our Creator, ask him to help you grow in love with Him, and discover further how your unique gifts and passions “fit” into the rhythms of His creation.

Footnotes

Smith, James K. A. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2016, 5.