Giving Time

Big Idea

The sabbath is a gift that's been filled up with good things for all humankind.

Introduction

A couple of years ago Matt Shipman found the daily news to be particularly depressing. As a son, a husband and the father of two young girls, he kept seeing articles on abuse and domestic violence—a trend that he wanted to make sure didn’t impact the women he loves. Matt recalled, “I realized that if I thought ‘doing unto others’ was an important lesson to teach my kids, I needed to act on it.”

Matt couldn’t make an impact by giving philanthropically—he made a modest salary and his wife stayed home with the kids. As Matt thought about his options he remembered what the tennis great Arthur Ashe once said, ‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ So he did. Matt found a local shelter called Interact that specialized in assisting women who had been victimized by rape and domestic violence, and he asked them for a list of things that the women in their shelter needed. Then Matt contacted colleagues and friends and shared the list of needs with them. He drove around town, picking up the small donations that his network were giving, and then brought it all to the shelter. The first month it amounted to about $350 in essentials these women needed. The next month he did it again and nearly $400 worth of necessities were distributed. Each month Matt continues to bring in donations to help this shelter minister to these women in need.

Matt says, "I hope from watching me my girls will learn how rewarding it is to give back. That is, once they're old enough to think about anything besides dinosaurs."

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James 1:27 tells us that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

Jesus told a parable about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. It’s an illustration of God’s work of judgment where the people are represented as sheep and goats, some are placed on the King’s right side and some of placed on the left. Those who are on the right are called “righteous” people and they get the inheritance of God’s kingdom, while the others go into the fire. The reason God gives for distinguishing between these two groups is that the righteous do many kindnesses to God while the others were too busy being religious to care about God’s needs. When the righteous asked the king when they had helped him, God said, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” (verse 40).

Question: If God’s standard for judgment is based on how we treat the poor, the widow, the orphan, the sick, the downtrodden and the imprisoned, then why aren’t those things in the Ten Commandments?

Today we’re going to see that in fact these expectations are at the very center of God’s commandments.

We’ve been exploring the Ten Commandments from a unique perspective for the past few weeks. Instead of carefully examining all the things the law prohibits, we’re looking at some of the things the law of love protects and enables.

Today’s sermon is entitled, Giving Time and is based on Exodus 20:8-11—the Sabbath Commandment.

The Seventh-day Sabbath

Let’s turn there and read it.

Exodus 20:8–11 NKJV

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

This command is really two commands in one. The first command is to remember, and the second is to do no work.

What is it that we are to remember? The Sabbath, the seventh-day, a day that was uniquely set apart (made holy) by God at the end of the six days of creation.

Why are we called to remember this day? For the purpose of KEEPING it holy. It already was made holy by God. Today He invites us to continue to keep it that way.

Holy

All of the Old Testament uses of the word, holy, come from the same Hebrew root word, so there is little ambiguity about what holy means. Something that is holy commands respect. It is set apart from common use. It is deserving of special treatment. For example, the tabernacle had golden spoons and cups and plates—holy articles for the priests to use in the context of worshiping God. When they were used by the Babylonians for a drinking party and in honor of their graven images, God brought swift judgment on the city of Babylon. Those were HIS cups and dinnerware. He would not allow them to use it to defy Him and worship false gods.

So, the first command to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, suggests a call to keep this a special day—a TIME set apart from the rest of the week. Not a physical place of holiness like the tabernacle or temple or a church sanctuary. God intended us to set apart TIME as holy.

The reason we are to keep it holy is because God made it holy at the end of His work of creation. God points out that he both made it holy and he BLESSED the Sabbath day.

Blessed

The word, blessed, is used to mean different things depending on the context. If someone is “blessing” God, they are praising God. The blessing is not a proactive gift to God, but a response to God’s marvelous gifts to us. When used in relation to a fellow human the word, blessed, refers to a state of being. Jesus said, “blessed are the meek… blessed are the peacemakers...” The word applied in this context suggests happiness or joy. The implication being that because of God’s wonderful gifts, this person can be content and joyful—they have been blessed. Being blessed, especially by God, is about being filled up.

Consider Malachi 3:10 where God encourages His people to test His promises by bringing a tenth of all their economic increase to God. This tithe was to be brought to the temple and given to those ministering on behalf of God. God says it this way, “put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing there will not be room enough to receive it.”

When God talks about blessing us he’s talking about filling us up.

Do you feel lacking? Discontent? Without resources? Limited? Underprivileged?

God’s promise to us is that this day—the special Sabbath day that God set apart for from the very beginning of creation—this day filled up with God’s gifts to us.

The Sabbath was made for man

One Sabbath day the disciples were walking through a field of grain with Jesus. Some of them grabbed a handful of the grain and rubbed it between their hands to free the kernels from their shell. Some zealous pharisees saw what they did and accused them of laboring on the Sabbath—something the fourth commandment expressly forbids. This is Jesus’ response:

Mark 2:27 ESV

And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

He goes on to say that HE is the Lord of the Sabbath. In other words, Jesus is the creator who filled up the Sabbath with blessings for us—he is the one who set it apart as a special day for our benefit.

Our tendency is to focus on the “do no work” section of the Sabbath commandment. And I understand why we tend that direction. There’s a story in Numbers 15 starting in verse 32 where a man was caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath day. The people who discovered his fault brought him before Moses and Arron and they asked God what should be done. God said to moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.”

WOW! That’s intense. How many of you have picked up a stick on the Seventh-day of the week? Does stoning to death seem like a just reward for a simple action like picking up a stick?

I’d like to clarify this story in Numbers before we go any further. This is not a man who innocently picked up a stick and tossed it for his dog. The story of this man was told immediately following a section about how the people were to handle unintentional sins. A sin is breaking the law. Numbers makes sure you understand this because Numbers 15:22-23 says, “if you sin unintentionally, and do not observe all these commandments that the Lord has spoken to Moses, all that the Lord has commanded you by Moses, from the day that the Lord gave commandants, and onward through all your generations...” There is no doubt that this includes the Sabbath commandment. The solution to unintentional sins wasn’t to stone everyone who broke the law, it was to bring a sin offering.

But there was a category of sin that was different, the kind of sin an offering wouldn’t satisfy because it would not be repented of. This kind of sin was the intentional sin that Numbers 15:30 describes this way, “but the person who does anything with a high hand.. reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people.” This is a defiant, “I’ll do this my way”, stick-it-to-God kind of sin. Today we might call this kind of sin as open rebellion. This is the kind of sin that Lucifer perpetrated in heaven, and for his rebellion he was cast out of heaven and ultimately he will be destroyed in the lake of fire that Revelation 20 describes. Like lucifer, the perpetrator of this style of sin refuses to repent—refuses to allow a sacrifice to take his place, and so no sacrifice can help him, “his iniquity shall be on him.”

The very next story in Numbers 15 is meant to illustrate this high-handed sin—it’s the story about the guy who breaks the Sabbath commandment. Yes, it’s about a guy gathering firewood to make a meal, but the substance of his sin was not so much the point as the rebellious nature of his heart. Maybe he went out to gather food on Sabbath and some firewood to cook it on—something God had expressly forbidden because he promised that he would provide enough manna on Friday and that it was to be prepared and kept for Sabbath. This is a guy who was saying “I will not obey God. I don’t trust God to provide for me. I refuse to let Him be my Lord.” And so, this high-handed sin was to be punished by cutting him off from among the people. He chose to bear his iniquity on himself rather than repenting and offering a sacrifice.

But the people of Israel didn’t consider the heart nature of this sin. Instead, in fear, they continually added layers of laws to the “do no labor” command until the Sabbath was a horrible burden on the people. You couldn’t walk more than a mile, unless you had put a bundle of food at the one mile mark the day before, then you could stop to eat for a bit and then walk another mile. But you better have put the food out the day before because carrying a bundle of food on the Sabbath was considered work.

When Jesus said, “the sabbath was made for man” he was pointing to the blessing that he intended it to be—to the fact that he had filled up this day with good gifts for us. But we are so often like the pharisees, padding the fourth command with our own rules and regulations to prevent our families from committing a sin on Sabath. It’s a slavish obedience that God never intended, and I’m sure it breaks his heart when he sees us working so hard on the sabbath to prove to him that we didn’t work on the sabbath.

Isaiah 58

The first part of the fourth command was to remember. Remember that God had made the Sabbath, set it apart from the rest of the week as a special day filled with good gifts for mankind. The Sabbath was made for MAN.

The second part of the fourth command was to do no work. The New Living Translation says “You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work.” (Ex 20:9-10) Do you see the distinction it makes by saying “ordinary work.” In responding to the Pharisees Jesus pointed out that the priests work on Sabbath and are blameless. He also said, when confronted about healing someone on the Sabbath, “it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Clearly God is not intending that we sit idle on Sabbath. There is a work that is lawful for us to do.

Let’s turn to Isaiah 58 and as we do, we’ll transition from looking at the what the law tells us not to do and explore what the law empower us to do.

This whole chapter is filled with gems. It starts out in the strongest language you can image:

Isaiah 58:1 ESV

“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.

What are their transgressions?

They act pious by going to the temple every day and studying the scriptures. They act like “righteous” people who would never turn from God’s laws. They fast regularly, pray religiously, and tithe with dedication. But God says its all “pretending they want to be near me.”

Then, they ask why they haven’t been blessed—filled up—by God. God says, “I will tell you why! …It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves.”

He points out that while they are doing these religious things they are: oppressing the people who work for them, and

fighting and quarreling. They’re praying like they are broken reeds with their head bend perpetually to the ground, and yet their behavior perpetuates abusive behavior, selfishness, greed, and violence.

So God tells them the kind of religion he wants to see—not the religious fast, not the overly reverential prayer, not the repeated sacrifices. No, God doesn’t want a facade of religion. God wants a deep heart transformation.

The Ten Commandments are the transcript of God’s character. They are the commandments of Love. Love God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Or as Paul puts in Galatians 5:14, “for the whole law can be summed up in this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself.” Or as Jesus put it in his parable of the sheep and the goats, “when you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me.” And as James put it when he said, “pure and genuine religion… means caring for orphans and widows in their distress...”

God wants to write his law—his love—in our hearts, so that we will be a church thats buzzing around doing the kinds of things He would do.

Here’s how God describes this true religion in Isaiah 58:

Isaiah 58:6–7 NLT

“No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

Isaiah 58:10–11 NLT

Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.

And then God throws in the fourth commandment. We like to quote Isaiah 58:13 to prove that obeying the Sabbath command will bring a blessing from God. And in fact, we use it to oppress people—telling them that if they do anything pleasurable on the Sabbath day that they are trampling on God’s law. But that’s not the conclusion we should be drawing from this verse.