Moving to Wholeness (Sabbath)
Moving to Wholeness • Sermon • Submitted
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What do I want them to know? Sabbath brings rest, joy and liberation
Why? it brings joy, rest, liberation
What do I want them to do? Sabbath
Why? It brings joy, rest, liberation
We are starting a new series called “Moving to Wholeness” We are doing a series to help people from God’s Word and testimony of how we can move to “wholeness” or another Word you can use is PEACE/SHALOM because the meaning of the Word SHALOM which is the HEBREW word for peace means at it’s root “to make whole”
That when you are WHOLE you have SHALOM
This is the opposite of what the word anxiety means, which means to be torn apart, and that is great word description of what it means to have anxiety....is that not how we have felt when we have felt?? TORN APART
yeah
This series is also address the pandemic that existed before the Covid pandemic
What is the pandemic that existed before the pandemic?
We are in a pandemic of anxiety and depression.
In 2019 how many people do you think percentage wise say they struggle with anxiety? 36% of Americans said they struggle with anxiety on some level…that’s high! and now in 2021 where do you think the number is at of Americans struggling with anxiety? 42% we jumped 6% during Covid.
Why did we jump?
Why is anxiety such a prevalent issue?
Covid itself brings with it anxiety…are we going to get Covid? are we going to die, is our family member going to die? For 2 years we have been fed a daily dose of FEAR OF DEATH
two other fears
2. There is another FEAR that is existed before Covid is it is the fear “if I don’t do ____ it won’t happen” I have to do ____ no matter what because if I don’t do ____” I have to do this thing even if means going past my limits I am going to get it done.
it is the fear that if I don’t do ___ God will not come through for me.
Push past my limits....this was me
yes we are to work, God says we are to work 6 days.
And also it is the false belief that we can actually clear our to do list....guess what happens when we clear our to do list??? We add more, we will never have a time in our life, before we meet Jesus, for a long period of time that our to do list will not exist or grow.
Am I right???
We are in this culture of more and more…keep going, be the energizer bunny, but what they don’t show in the commercial is that energizer bunny’s batters eventually go dead if they are not recharged…it cannot keep going and going.
on top of it those who do more TEND TO GET THE GOLD STARS IN OUR SOCIETY…get the awards at work, employee of the month, best student,
3. We have a fear that we are not enough so what we do is we do more and more things to prove we are good enough.
- Harold Abrahams, a Jewish Englishman Olypimian, said as he was about to step onto the track, “I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; 4 feet wide, with only 10 seconds to justify my whole existence.” Eric Liddell, Scottish Christian missionary, said, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast..when I run I feel His pleasure.”
Harold Abrahams said I have to run to prove I am worth something…
I have been here....I was here as youth pastor in my mid-twenties....
Fearing if I don’t do ____God will not come through for me
I didn’t understand the Gospel so I feared I was not enough
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT DID TO ME??? TORE ME TO PIECES....ANXIETY…HAD TO TAKE MEDICAL FOR IT
TENSION
So what do we do to combat this anxiety? What do we need to do to move to wholeness?
We to live in the upside down kingdom and do the practices of the upside down kingdom....we are going cover one of those today.
The first thing we are to do is to open up a gift that God gives us. A gift that honestly our Western world does not think is valuable, in fact much of the western word applauds you if you don’t open this gift....you get rewarded for not opening this gift from God.
What is that gift? It’s the gift of the Sabbath
What’s the Sabbath? Why is important?
Let’s read
“ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
What does the God says the Sabbath is?
First, it is a day of stopping
First thing it is Sabbot which means stopping
What are we to stop from?
- Stop having fun, don’t play cards or board games, watch TV, hang out with friends stop fishing, hiking, walking,
Some of you who group up years ago this is what Sabbath was a day was like for you…it was a day of rules and regulations such as mentioned.
This is not too different that from what the religious leaders imposed. They added all these rules and regulations to Sabbath. They had 39 of them, they are not Biblical, but they treated them as Biblical.
One of the more common ones they had was they could only travel a Sabbath’s day journey which is 2/3’s of a mile. If you went further, to them you were breaking the Sabbath.
Is this what the Sabbath is all about, when it means to cease? No! This is people being religious.
What does the scripture say?
We are to stop form all forms of LABOR for 24 hours not just work
This is crucial for us…we are to stop FROM LABOR
This means we are stop from LABOR, NOT JUST VOCATIONALLY, that’s our work around, we’ll stop for a couple hours for church and then get to work on our house projects or personal projects or our to do lists.
I DID THIS FOR YEARS
This means God’s heart is not for us to come worship Him on Sabbath for an 1-2 hours and then go home and do all the house chores....do all the house projects....do all things on the checklist that are not done....it is a 24 hour
IT IS A GIFT THAT GOD GIVES US
The SABBATH is about us stopping from LABOR, it’s a gift
it doesn’t say stop having fun, delighting, hanging out with friends, fishing (unless that’s your labor/work),
This is doesn’t mean we become legalistic again and if an emergency comes up like a boiler breaking on Sunday that we don’t do anything…those are exceptions....a big snow fall comes and we ignore it
When we make the Sabbath full of all these rules and regulations that are not scripture, we miss the heart of God, and impose heavy weights on people and shame about something that is not be shameful.
People stop observing the Sabbath because the Sabbath becomes a burden instead of a GIFT
IT IS MISSING THE HEART OF THE SABBATH AND WHO THE SABBATH WAS FOR.
Was Sabbath made for man or man for the Sabbath
What does that mean?
is the Sabbath to help man or is it be above man, full of religious observances.
Sabbath is to help us
And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
PLUS ON TOP OF THAT IT IS ACT OF GOD SHOWING HIS FAITHFULNESS TO US AND an act of trust on our part…God promises to take care of us.
What God says to us and to our forefathers. He is our PROVIDER everyday and especially on the Sabbath God provides.
God did this in the desert with providing manna for them
On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses,
he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’ ”
So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it.
Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field.
Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
WE DON’T NEED TO WORK ON THE SABBATH AND TO WORK ON THE SABBATH IS TO NOT OPEN THE GIFT THAT GOD GIVES US AND BREAKS THE 4TH COMMANDMENT
NOT ONLY THAT THE SABBATH IS AN ACT OF LIBERATION (THIS IS HOW IT HELPS US)
HOW IS IT AN ACT OF LIBERATION?
“ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
Why does Deut 5 mention them being slaves in the land of Egypt?? What does that have to do with anything?
because if you were a slave, guess what you never got? a day off
Think about that, think about your age, if you are 40 years old, and always a slave you would have been working everyday of you life for at least 30 years! These are long days!
Can you image that?
Can you image how worn down you would feel?
What the Lord is giving to us in SABBATH and saying to us is that the SABBATH IS US SAYING TO THE WORLD I AM NO LONGER A SLAVE TO YOU....I have a different master
you world will not rule over me
I am not going to be in the rat race of MORE
nor the live under the fear of If I don’t do ___ God won’t come through for me.
God is my provider, He brings the manna
This also mean that when we do not practice the Sabbath, we are saying WORLD YOU ARE MY MASTER.
God is saying to us Sabbath is an act of liberation.
2. Not only does Sabbath help us by us liberated from slavery, Sabbath is about RENEWING US
Renewing us
Physically
Emotionally
Spiritually
This a huge point of the SABBATH, but the PHARISEES but so many unbiblical legal laws on the SABBATH that RENEWAL WAS NOT HAPPENING
This is is Jesus’ main point in Mark 3 about the Sabbath
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand.
And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.
And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.”
And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.
And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
(you couldn’t heal on the Sabbath according to the Mishnah unless it was life or death situation)
The Gospel of Mark ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ (2:23–3:6)
sums up the principle: ‘If a man has a pain in his throat they may drop medicine into his mouth on the sabbath, since there is doubt whether life is in danger, and whenever there is doubt whether life is in danger this overrides the sabbath.’
Jesus is saying you are missing the POINT of the SABBATH, it is about healing, renewal…not about heavy weights.
The Sabbath is about RENEWAL AND HEALING
How many us have to come to worship on the Sabbath worried, heavy laden, sorrowful but you left RENEWED?
The Sabbath is about Renewal
HOW DOES IT RENEW US?
Spiritually/Mentally: we come in with stinking thinking and it weighs us down.....we are reminded about who God is and who we are
Emotionally: we come in one way and leave another way
Physacailly: we cease from working
The sabbath was made for man
Lastly the SABBATH the SABBATH DAY is HOLY DAY onto the LORD
And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
HOLY DAY UNTO THE LORD, We WORSHIP THE LORD FOR WHO IS, WHAT HE’S DONE,
We praise Him that no only does our God give us Sabbath rest now but we get to enter the ultimate SABBATH REST
So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,
for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
THIS ULTIMATE SABBATH REST IS HEAVEN
WHAT STUCK OUT TO YOU?