Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Christine Organ wrote an article in Relevant Magazine about taking a Modern-Day 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.

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:

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:

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?

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.