Sabbath is (new) Normal Sermon

Pastoral Greeting

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are whatever is happening in THE world right now, or whatever is happening in YOUR world right now we hope that you can find rest in the Lord as we worship God together.

New Normal Series

Letting go, learning, confessing, compassion and witness, and I hope you have had the opportunity to join us as we have been introducing new habits each week as a part of our sermon series.

And if you are connecting in a small group I hope that those habits have been an encouragement to share with each other in community.

A quick reminder that if you missed any one of those weeks of worship they are still archived and if you weren’t able to worship with us on Saturday or Sunday no problem feel free to praise God whenever you can, and if our worship service helps you to praise we are delighted to join you.

the (new) normal

Even though these things might feel new they were always parts of what it means to be people after God’s own character

They were always parts of what we are about as a church

This week we will talk about Sabbath or rest

As I was looking at the preaching schedule I was delighted because I just got back from vacation I just took a bit of a rest and now I get to talk about rest

Simpson Dead Week

“we” section

Stressed to take a day off

so franticly working because everything seems so urgent

we might not feel like we really did enough work to deserve a day off

taking a day off is just not logistically possible

taking a day off is a privilege that not everyone has

The idea of Sabbath

Genesis

God rested, blessed (vehicle of generosity) made the Sabbath holy (declared it as a gift)

7 was a number of wholeness in the Hebrew Bible

Gift of Manna

prepare to not have to work

Strict Rules imposed by Mosaic law

distance you could walk

that you couldn’t do work, and it qualified what work was

trying to “do rest” the very best that they could

Exodus 20:8–11 NRSV

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

Mark 2:23–28 NRSV

One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

Recap of the scripture

It is the designated day of rest where everyone is supposed to follow all of these rules

the disciples pick grain from the edges of the field the part where they are allowed to pick from and that would have been completely normal any other day of the week

The pharisees question Jesus about this

Jesus makes a couple of clarifying statements about the original intent of Sabbath and how they have strayed quite far from it

The Sabbath is made for us

There is a need

within all of us for physical rest but also for spiritual rest

The world record for not sleeping is 266 hours or about 11 days according to medicalnewstoday.com

In it in our nature the way that God uniquely created us that we need rest we need sabbath

Not just physical

When we let our body rest it actually helps us to do more work

The muscles can only grow with rest

It actually helps

The Pharisee’s made it all about them

They had lost the intent of the Sabbath

The intent was to avoid even the possibility of infringing the Sabbath but all of rules recreated a sabbath that was burdensome and tiring

The rules were made by humans and not made by God therefore they glorified humans instead of glorifying God

The Sabbath that God created was meant to serve people not to be a check list item

Jesus is Lord of our rest

"The son of man is lord also of the Sabbath" was word for word in every translation that I read

The sabbath seems to be not just a blessing but also a way that we remember all of God’s good work

When we rest and we offer that time to God

and I think it changes the very way that we understand time

We recognize that that time of rest is a gift from God

and when we do that I think we are more clearly able to see that the times of work in our lives are also a gift from God

We are able to get a more clear picture a more complete picture of the gifts that God has given us when we rest in the Lord

we trust that God can hold everything

Jesus is Lord even of our rest

Much like God when we rest we look upon creation and we remember how good it is

we remember the people that we love and the communities and people groups that mean so much to us

Sabbath is Normal

Sabbath was meant for wholeness from the beginning

We were meant to be people that worked and rested

Rest is something that is blessed by God and given to us by God, so we celebrate that as the gift that it is

Consider the possibility of a world without rest, in that world....

People would constantly be trying to work

We would celebrate and raise up those that do the most work not those that do the most fruitful work

We would demonize ourselves for not working hard enough

We would prioritize doing over prioritizing centering ourselves for the work that we are set out for

Where our todo list becomes more important than our own bodies

This time has brought many of us to stop and rest

To hold back on obsessively working and to rest

Action Step

Sabbath isn’t the same for everyone, but it seems that it was intended as a means to thank God for rest.

If you are extroverted maybe that is restful

If being active is restful to you maybe you spend that time working out

If gardening is restful to you maybe you do that

If spending time with family is restful do that if isn’t don’t worry you don’t have to tell them but maybe you find sabbath in another way

So this week the challenge is to think critically about the ways and the times that you rest.

We mean resting intentionally

Is it something that you think through?

When is your sabbath? What practices do you allow, “forbid”, etc?

Physical things

technology

who you are around

what you choose to do

spiritual things as well

anxiety

worrying

anger

How can the sabbath bring joy to you through connection with God/others.

Benediction: Go out from here knowing that the presence of the Lord goes with you to bring you rest. Ex. 33:14