Sabbath

As a child, my family didn’t specifically observe the Sabbath. Nonetheless, Sundays were clearly different than the rest of the week. The day was slower, quieter, calmer. The day was sacred, with a cadence and rhythm all its own.

Yet somewhere and somehow, things changed. Weekends became about chores and errands, laundry and grocery shopping, emails and work projects. Sunday became just another workday, exacerbated by an addiction to technology and social media. Sundays—and by extension, the entire week—seemed to lose their serenity and healing quality, and as a result, I lost a sense of connection to family, to self and to God.

...So, for the past several months, I have observed my own modern-day Sabbath....

The modern Sabbath is about delegating a time to focus on what I have instead of searching for something new, a time to disconnect from work and technology in order to reconnect with family and friends and self, a time to quiet the external noise so I can hear my own powerful internal voice.

...the modern-day Sabbath ...means that I do not email, text, surf the web, turn on the computer, work, shop (including grocery shopping), do chores or watch television...

Instead, my personal Sabbath day includes rest, music, church, exercise, time outdoors, prayer or meditation, personal writing, time alone, sitting still, reading and focused time with family.

Christine Organ has discovered something that is hard-wired into human existence—God designed us for rest. Or maybe more precisely, God designed rest, for us.

Designed for Rest

Have you noticed that we seem to be going back to Genesis 1, 2 and 3 a lot? Everything seems to lead back to Eden. For example:

The first words we hear from God are “let there be light,” and then for the rest of the Bible God is giving us light through His Word, the Bible.

The first place the problem of sin showed up on Earth was in Eden, and just outside of the gates of Eden was where the first lamb became a sacrifice pointing forward to Jesus, the Savior of the world.

The first place that God dwelt with men is in Eden and then for the rest of the Bible we find God pursuing sanctuary with His people.

And the first place we find rest in the Bible is in Eden. Towards the end of the Bible, even after so many millennia, the Bible assures us that “there remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”

So, let’s go back to Eden to figure out this rest thing. Turn to Genesis 1:27.

Genesis 1:27–31 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

When God created humans he created them with responsibility and work. They were to populate the earth and to “subdue” it, much like God had done when he created the garden of Eden as their home. They were to send out their children and make other garden homes around the world, cultivating and taming the plants and animals.

And that’s the end of the creation account. “And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

That’s it. All done. No more creating.

If God had left it there then the world would be stuck in an endless cycle of night and day, eating and working and sleeping and then doing it all over again.

Wait, isn’t that what Christine was kind of mentioning in her article? How did she say it?

Weekends became about chores and errands, laundry and grocery shopping, emails and work projects. Sunday became just another workday, exacerbated by an addiction to technology and social media. Sundays—and by extension, the entire week—seemed to lose their serenity and healing quality, and as a result, I lost a sense of connection to family, to self and to God.

Eating and working. Day after endless day.

Some people try to insert the pursuit of pleasure or happiness and think of that as resting, but to be honest, pursuing pleasure is its own exhausting work. In our society of self-gratification and escapism, pleasure is usually not wholesome and healing—more often its addictive and harmful.

It’s the endlessness of it all that drains our emotional, relational, and physical batteries. And the result of our endless cycle is a society that crawls forward on Caffeine and stays sane with Zoloft and Prozac. We are an overworked and overplayed society.

But we don’t have to be.

Rest

Just keep reading in Genesis 2 and you’ll find the solution that God designed into the fabric of our world.

The 6th day had ended and the Bible says:

Genesis 2:1–3 ESV

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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.

I’d like you to make a note of the progression of activities from the 6th to the 7th day, which you can find in more detail in Genesis 2:4-25.

At the beginning of the 6th day God created the land animals.

Then God fashioned Adam with his hands and breathed into him the breath of life.

Then He had Adam name the animals so Adam would recognize his need for a human partner.

Then Adam slept while God made Eve.

Then God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply — a pretty direct command to consummate the marriage.

And by that time the sun was going down and the Bible says that God ended his work and rested as the first Sabbath hours stretched their shadows over the new creation.

As a completed creation, Adam and Eve hadn’t yet done any work, but they entered into God’s rest. Though there is a Jewish tradition that says that Adam and Eve first knew each other intimately that evening after the sun went down. And Jewish culture still encourages married couples to practice marital intimacy on Friday nights.

Adam and Eve don’t really have anything to rest from. They didn’t create the light of the stars. They didn’t hang the canopy of the heavens. They didn’t set the boundaries for the oceans or create the fish in the sea. They didn’t design the many birds or the creatures roaming the earth. They didn’t do anything in the creation process.

They began their life with rest.

Write this idea down: you don’t rest because you deserve it, you rest because God provided it. Adam and Eve’s rest was a gift, not the result of a long week of their effort.

There is no doubt that God has designed rest into our DNA.

Scientific research has revealed that the human body has a built-in clock that we call the circadian rhythm. It’s a 24 hr rhythm of the endocrine system that regulates hormones, sleep cycles, and brain health. We’ve been able to demonstrate that getting a person to live in line with natural circadian rhythms actually improves their mood, their work productivity, and their mental acuity. We’ve found that bringing your body in line with your circadian rhythm can even prevent or reverse many diseases of the circulatory system, the endocrine system, and even the mind.

The daily rhythm is well documented, and recently we’ve even found that there is a natural weekly rhythm for the body. Scientists call this circaseptan bioperiodicity, or a seven-day cycle for your body, and they’ve determined that it is distinct from the environmental 7-day cycle. Meaning, even if you work a 10 or 14 day week, or you cycle through three, 12-hour shifts as a nurse, or even if your week is unpredictable with some weeks having 4 days of work and others having 8 or 10, your body would still have a 7 day cycle. There’s more work to be done on these studies to understand the impact of this cycle, but the initial results suggest that we were designed with a 7-day cycle in mind. And the Bible confirms it in the creation account, and in the Ten Commandments. Turn to Exodus 20:8-11 and lets read the fourth command:

Exodus 20:8–11 ESV

“Remember the Sabbath day, to 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. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Work for six days, then rest the seventh. Why? Because “the Lord your God” worked for six days and rested the 7th.

We are designed for work, but not work without end. God designed you for rest, too.

What kind of rest?

The first example of rest we find is the rest from the work of creating that God modeled in Genesis and then commanded in Exodus. The command specifically states: “On [the Sabbath] you shall not do any work.” It even goes on to clarify that this command is for every laborer and even for the animals. You aren’t allowed to take a vacation day but force those around you to work on your behalf. If you own a business, whether its a farm or a car lot or a construction company, you aren’t allowed to make your employees work on Sabbath.

Let’s keep the focus here; this isn’t about money. God isn’t saying you can make your workers work on Sabbath so long as you don’t pay them. God would rather you pay them for NOT working than have them work without pay. The issue of the sabbath isn’t financial, its social and physical and above all, spiritual. Let me say that again, the issue with the sabbath isn’t about exchanging money, it’s about whether or not you’re resting in God.

Think about the impact of the Sabbath command if it were fully practiced in the Israelite culture. If you owned a farm and you had employees who were harvesting your grain, there would be a significant financial motivation to bring in the harvest as quickly as possible. A harvest could be ruined by rain or fire or bugs if it wasn’t brought in Quickly. Still today most farmers work really long days 7-days a week for 8 to 10 weeks to bring in their harvest. Imagine what they had to do when they were harvesting by hand! And in the midst of that intense labor God says to take a Sabbath rest. And so, as a good Israelite you stop your work and go to synagogue on the Sabbath. But the harvest HAS to be brought it, so you make sure your workers are on task before leaving for Synagogue. Is that really resting on the Sabbath?

Look at Isaiah 58 for a minute:

God is bringing charges of transgression and sin against Israel, and what is their sin?

Isaiah 58:2 ESV

Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.

These are religious people. They go to synagogue every week—even during harvest season.

And they ask, “Why are we fasting and praying but you don’t hear?”

God responds:

Isaiah 58:5–6 ESV

Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

God was angry with these oppressive landowners who performed their ritual spiritual fasts all while their employees labored without a break.

Why is it so important to God for these laborers to rest?

Because the real rest of the Sabbath can’t be found in ceasing your work or stopping your entertainment. The real Sabbath rest is complete trust in God.

Think about that farmer. He’s stressed over the harvest. There’s less in the field than he hoped, and the clouds are looking like rain. It would be tempting to just say to himself, “this is a cow-in-the-ditch moment—I have to bring in the harvest or it will be lost. All hands to the fields!” But true Sabbath rest would say, “Lord my livelihood is on the line. I can either trust my own efforts, or I can rest in you and trust you to provide. I choose to trust you and rest. Everyone take a break and go be with your families.”

This type of rest is best illustrated in the experience of the Israelites. Turn to Exodus 31:12-13, our scripture reading for today:

Deliverance

Exodus 31:12–13 ESV

And the Lord said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.

What does it mean to “sanctify” someone or something? It means to set that one aside for a special use. The Sabbath is a day that is sanctified, or set apart from the rest of the week for a holy purpose. Israel was sanctified for a holy use too, and the Sabbath was the sign that the God of creation is the one who did that. But how did He do that?

For that story you have to go back to the story of the exodus where an evil Pharoah held Israel in slavery. They couldn’t escape on their own. Physical violence had only driven moses out of the land. The only solution was a miracle and that’s exactly what God did. God came in and said, “let my people go.” Pharoah didn’t and so God sent a plague and then said, “let my people go.” They didn’t and so God sent another plague. And another. And another until 10 plagues had decimated the Egyptian country. Hail had destroyed property and herds, locusts had eaten the harvests, disease ridden bugs had sickened the population, and ultimately the destroying angel ended the life of every first-born child in the land. Egypt didn’t trust God. More than that, they defied God and enslaved His people. To rescue Israel, God had to discipline Egypt. And to rescue Israel he had to defeat the Israelite’s trust in Egyptian culture and religion. Ten devestating plagues later the people were convinced that Moses’ God was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that no other God deserved their worship and obedience. At least, that’s what they were suppose to have figured out.

They left Egypt with wealth that was given to them by their former slave owners. It was a small payment for their years of service and hardship, but a huge deal because Israel didn’t have to fight for it—God plundered Egypt for them, causing the Egyptians to willingly hand over their wealth. They showed up at the Red Sea with an army at their heels and after a night of walking through the water on dry ground, the sea closed in on the Egyptian army—God defeated the Egyptian army for them. Later they needed water, which God provided. They ran out of food and God provided manna. Every last thing they needed, God provided.

And each time they rested on the Sabbath they were stopping to recognize that God was their deliverer and their provider.

How was Israel “set apart” by God? Just like God did in Eden for Adam and Eve, He provided rest as a gift for the Israelites. God gave them the ability to rest by delivering them from slavery and providing for their daily needs.

The second reading of the law in Deuteronomy 5 and 6 reiterates the fourth commandment but instead of saying “for in six days I created” the second reading points back to the Egyptian deliverance:

Deuteronomy 5:14–15 ESV

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.

Conclusion

God designed us for a seven-day pattern of work and rest.

He commanded the Israelites to rest because of His example in the creation week, and because He saved them from Egypt. Their obedience in resting would show the world that GOD is the one who set them apart (sanctified them) by saving them from Egypt.

But what about today?

All that law and obedience stuff was Old Testament, Old Covenant stuff. Now, we don’t have to worry about that because Jesus died to set us free from the law. Right?

Let me ask you this, would you like to be set free from rest?

What if I were to Tell you that there’s a pill you can take that will set you free from having to sleep at night. With just a once-a-day pill you could be productive 24 hours a day! Would you take it? Or would you recognize that God designed a rhythm into your life that requires a daily time of rest?

Jesus died to set you free, but not from resting in him. His death was the payment required for our rest. If he didn’t die, then we couldn’t rest. In other words, Jesus saved us from spiritual Egypt—our slavery to sin—and sanctified us for a holy purpose. Jesus’ salvation doesn’t suggest that the Sabbath rest is done away with. No, it underscores the need for truly resting in God’s work of salvation.

Which brings us back to our original article. Christine Organ saw the need for spiritual and physical rest. She even got much of the concept right. I like how she put it:

...the modern-day Sabbath ...means that I do not email, text, surf the web, turn on the computer, work, shop (including grocery shopping), do chores or watch television...

Instead, my personal Sabbath day includes rest, music, church, exercise, time outdoors, prayer or meditation, personal writing, time alone, sitting still, reading and focused time with family.

I think Christine is on the right track, but she’s missing something most Christians fail to see. God designed us for rest IN HIM. Christine is stopping to listen to her own internal voice, and meditating and writing and reading and spending time with family—all of those are good things and probably appropriate for Sabbath. But what she’s missing is why she needs a Sabbath.

She needs to bask in the reality that God created her.

She needs humble herself before Jesus who redeemed her.

She needs to clear the path for God’s Spirit to speak to her and lead her.

Sabbath rest is not merely a formal, ritualized day of religious activity.

Sabbath rest is not only a day where we put aside work.

Sabbath rest is a complete dependence on Jesus for everything. Jesus described it well when he taught us about work:

Matthew 11:28–30 ESV

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Sabbath rest is giving your work, your labor, to God. That means the job I work to pay the bills. It means all the effort I put into raising children or grandchildren. It means all the labor I expend for caring for my home and posessions. And it means all the spiritual work I invest in my life with God.

“Give all of that to me,” God says. “I will give you rest.”

Nothing we can do, no matter how effective or good, will ever make us worthy of rest. God gives it to us as a gift. And then he invites us to take up His yoke—His work—and he promises that it will be light and easy.

How would you like a lighter load? How about some rest?

Hebrews 4:9–10 ESV

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.

Notice that phrase, “entered God’s rest.”

God’s rest is a gift Which we have to enter into. We choose to rest in God or not.

The original cycle that God modeled was six days of work, and then the 7th day was the Sabbath. Look on any calendar and you’ll find that God’s Sabbath day is the day after Friday and the day before Sunday. If you want a biblical reference for that, just look at the story of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Every single gospel records it. Jesus died on the preparation day, rested in the grave on the Sabbath day, and was raised to life on the 1st day of the week. Today we know the days before and after the Sabbath that Jesus rested in the grave as Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, or as I like to call it, Resurrection Sunday. The biblical pattern is Friday, Sabbath, Sunday.

So, unfortunately, when Christine keeps her modern Sabbath on Sunday, she’s doing a good thing For her body and mind, but she’s not entering God’s rest. It’s still a man-made rest.

Here’s the big idea of the Sabbath:

God is the one who made us, and then gave us rest as a gift.

God is the one who redeemed us with His blood, and gave us rest as a gift.

So enter into His gift of rest with you whole body, mind, and soul. Trust in Him to provide. Give Him your burdens and anxieties. Stop trying to save yourself and rest in His gift of salvation and rest.

I pray your Sabbath day is filled with God’s peaceful rest, and that as this day ends and the shadows of the coming week fall over the ground that you will take up Christ’s yoke and that your labor this week will be easy and light as you work alongside Christ.

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Let’s stand for our closing hymn: Holy, Holy, Holy (73)

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