Love, Sin, and Life: As told by Clint

Intro

Well my friends, tonight as we get ready for Labor Day, and then to move into our Fall Rhythms, I thought that we could talk about Sabbath. I was doing reading about Labor Day, because I had no idea what it was really, I learned that it was originally a workers Holiday.

Not only was it a day off to celebrate and honor everyone who was working, but it stemmed from a need for better working conditions for folks, specifically the poor and immigrants, who were subjected to terrible working environments.

Seems like a good Holiday to me, in fact, God commands us to rest from work, to honor the sabbath and keep it Holy. This cycle of rest and work it baked into God’s reality.

But have you ever really studied what it means to practice the sabbath, because it is so much more than just a day off. The purpose of Sabbath is for us to encounter God in a real way. It’s a chance for us to step outside of time and our currently reality and experience the Good and Beautiful God that Jesus new, and taste the future reality that is coming.

And while this is so good, for many people, myself included, sabbath is good in theory, but it’s difficult to practice.

For some of us, we just feel like we have too much to do. We work during the week, and then during the weekends there is so much to do. Getting caught up on laundry and cleaning, house projects…I’ve got two screen doors at my house that don’t have screens in them, haven’t for a couple of years, because the thought of finding time to replace the screens is just too much. I have the screens, but I haven’t put them in. I keep saying, ah, I’m too buys, I’ll do that tomorrow.

We live in a society that values production, that values doing. What’s the first question we are often asked, or ask someone when we first meet them?

What do you do? Where do you work?

Sabbath is a way for us to Rest, Re-evalute and re-invision our lives. It is good for us, but you know what, it’s not only a blessing to us, but it’s a blessing to folks around us.

Today, we are going to spend some time in 1 John 1. We are going to be look at some practical aspect of practicing sabbath, and how they are good for us, but how they are also good for everyone around us.

So lets start in 1 John 1:5, this is going to point us towards what it means to rest, but before we read it, I want to ask you a rhetorical question, so don’t answer.

Question #1: What is the message of Jesus

What is the message of Jesus? Think about it, if someone asked you to summarize what Jesus’s message was all about what would you say?

Maybe something like Jesus, the Son of God, died for our sins.

And while that’s true, and that’s good, and a huge part of it, that is more of a message ABOUT Jesus. What was the message, of Jesus, what did Jesus say.

In 1 John we read the elderly apostle John writings, and he would have been the youngest apostle to follow Jesus. After a lifetime of firsthand experience with Jesus, John wrote: 1 John 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

The message that John heard and that he was sharing is that God is light, in him there is no darkness.

So, what is the message of Jesus? God is totally good and his love for us is amazing.

You might be thinking, yeah Clint, I don’t need to practice Sabbath to know that.... and your right. But you need to practice sabbath to live this.

When we Sabbath, we are practicing trusting in the Goodness of God. We are choosing to do the opposite of what Adam and Eve did in the garden.

The first sin wasn’t so much about eating a tasty looking fruit as it was not trusting the goodness of God.

When the ate the fruit what they were doing was saying “God, I don’t trust that you have my best interest in mind, so I am going to do what it takes to look after me”

When we sabbath, we are actively choosing to trust. We are saying God, would you break that idol of self protection off of me. Would you help me to trust you fully and completely.

That’s the rest part. We are resting in God’s goodness. We are trusting in it, and we are choosing to live it out in actions, instead of head knowledge.

So my question to you is this.......

How are you taking time to smell the roses?

Part of sabbath rest is slowing down. How are you doing this. An easy way is to literally, go and smell roses, go for a walk, get outside, experience God in nature.

People have been doing this for thousands of years, creation screams of God’s glory. There is something powerful about slowing down in nature to encounter God.

For years I’ve tried to take some vacation time around November to go deer hunting. Part if it is because its a family tradition, part of it is because I love the taste of venison, but one of the biggest reasons is because I recognize how sitting outside in a tree alone for 12 hours is good for my soul. I see God’s creation, I experience his goodness, it forces me to slow down and just be.

So, what does this look like for you this week, especially as we enter into the Fall with all of it’s new rhythms, how can you take time to slow down and smell the roses

And more importantly......

How are you taking time to smell the Jesus?

Slowing down is great, and we can for sure encounter God in Nature in powerful ways, be we have to ask ourselves, are we slowing down with Jesus, or are we just slowing down.

Because we can do all the right motions and completely miss Jesus. We can be blown away by the glory and goodness of God, and not let the Holy Spirit change us.

I think about the story that we looked it a week or two ago about the rich young ruler. We see a young man who was blown away by the majesty of Jesus, but was unwilling to change in order to follow him.

Sabbath is a time to encounter God and let Jesus change is. We all have things in our life that Jesus wants to transform.

And I don’t mean that we just need to try harder. Jesus wants to bring his love, and his power into our lives, and that changes everything. It helps have the best possible life.

Look at 1 John 5:11-12

1 John 5:11–12 NIV

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Jesus came to give us eternal life, and this is not just a life that never ends, this is a full life, a rich life, the best life.

Sabbath then becomes a time where we ask...

How good is your life?

In Sabbath as we slow down and interact with God, whether thats through reading the bible, praying, or experience God in Nature, we take stock of where our life is.

What’s working, what’s not, and what is God inviting us into. That is one of the most encouraging parts about following Jesus, is that there is always more to learn, there is always room to grow, there is always more of God’s Love for us to experience.

So, where in your life are you sensing an invite from God? Where is he nudging you to grow, where do you look at your life and think, man, I don’t know if this is the best it could be, I don’t know if this is the life to the fullest that God promised.

Sabbath is a time to take stock of our lives, but that needs to point us towards something deeper. In Sabbath, we come face to face with the Good things in our life, and the not so good things in our life. And we are asked the question:

Who are you?

Who are you really, What are you living for. What is your core identity.

When I think about this I think about my buddy Dan. Dan is an outdoors guy, he is an adventurer, he has done just about every extreme sport you can think of.

For awhile Dan was in to slack lining. You know what that is? It’s like tight rope walking, only instead of the rope being tight, it sags, its got slack in it, and its a little wider.

When you start out slack lining you start just a couple inches off the ground, but Dan in his buddies, they would do it crazy hight up and over one of the rivers, so if they fell they would only have to fight against the river current to survive.

I’m talking to Dan about slack lining one day, and he says something like “Clint, the thing that bothers me is some of these guys that are really into slack lining, they make it there whole life. They try to develop philosophies around it and learn life lessons from it. Now I love it, but at the end of the day, its just a rope you walk down, it’s not who I am...”

I wonder how much of our identities are misplaced… We get caught up in what we do for work, in what we do for fun, in how good of a spouse or parent, or friend we are… and while all those things are good, at our core that’s not who we are.

1 John 3:1–3 (NIV)

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

First and foremost we are loved Children of God. Do you see yourself that way. In Sabbath, that’s what we rest in. We are loved Children of the most high King.

There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing that we can do to make God love us less.

This is who we are.

That’s the rest part of Sabbath. After we reorient ourselves to this truth, that we are loved children of God, then comes the reevaluation part. And easy way to do this is by asking the question.

Questions #2: Do we love God Back?

Do we love him back. Let’s get a little bit more specific, what does that mean? Is it showing up to church, is it praying or tithing, is it being thankful for what Jesus did for us on the cross? Yeah, that’s all part of it, but let’s not forget love is an action, not just a feeling. Look at 1 John 3:16-18

Hmmmm, laying down our lives for others. If we are to Love like Jesus, this is the standard. We all miss this mark Dailey. As we re-evalute things in our lives, it becomes apparent that

We are way more frail, broken, sinful than we want to admit. But, that’s not what’s most important.

It’s way more important that God is light. He loves us so much that Jesus gave himself to solve our sin problem.

Now, let me be clear: Our sin is important. Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins. Yet, because of our pride, we like to obsess on our sin, blow it out of proportion.

One big way we do this is by spending a ton of time and energy ignoring our sin. We’re working hard to cross things out of the Bible that we don’t like. The stuff about caring for the poor, immigrants, widows, orphans, the parts about lust, sex, marriage, the warnings about money, greed, idolatry, we’re busy explaining all that away, God didn’t really mean what he said.

And, another big way we do this is by spending a ton of time and energy managing our sin. We work really hard to keep it to a minimum, keep it “acceptable”. We only tell white lies. No adultery, we just watch porn. We don’t gossip, we just make comments on social media. We don’t hit people with our fists, we just hit them on twitter. See, we’re basically good people, we’re trying hard.

Friends, if we do either of these things, if we brush our sin under the rug, or try and manage it like a to do list, we are missing the point.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

God loves us enough that he took care of our sin problem. This is the way it had to be, because you and I couldn’t fix it ourselves. That can be a hard truth, we didn’t deserve it, earn it, and we can’t do anything to make ourselves worthy of it. It’s a gift.

Part of Sabbath is reevaluting if we are living like this is true.

Do we know it in just our heads, or are we living it out. This is where our obedience flows from. This is how we are able to lay down our lives for others in big ways or small ways. We rest, knowing that God loves us, we get rid of anything that could keep us from experince that love, and then from that place of knowing we are loved and forgiven, we lay down our lives for others.

Earlier this week I was reading about Desmond Doss, you guys know who he was?

Medic in world war 2, they made that movie about him, hacksaw ridge. I never watched it, but I read his story.

Dude was a Christian, a Seventh Day Adventist, and the adventists they really strongly believe that your faith should make a difference in your day to day life. Now WW2 broke out and Desmond wanted to serve his country, but his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus led him to adopt pacifism, so he said he could carry a gun or kill anyone. So he become a medic.

And people made fun of him and questioned him and his beliefs. But, when things got real, Desmond was there. He saved the lives of over 100 people during the war, 50-75 of them in one battle alone. He ran repeatedly into enemy fire to tend to the wounded, and was wounded himself multiple times. For his bravery he one the medal of honer, he is the only conscientious objector to do so

His love of God, his security in who he was, as a loved child of god, allowed him to in a very real way, lay down his life for his brothers and sisters.

Now, we are all called to this same thing. We follow a God who gave it all to save those who choose to follow him.

When we intentionally enter into Sabbath, we Rest in God’s love for us, we reevaluate how are lives reflect this love, but then we have an opportunity to re-invison our lives, to change our direction. In Sabbath we are able to re-vist the first question in our series on the questions Jesus asked.....

Questions #3 What do you want?

What’s the thing that God has put on your heart? And remember, this is the deeper stuff. If your first thought to the question what do you want, for example, is “To be debt free” that’s good, but whats under that?

Maybe it’s a deeper sense of security?

How does Jesus want to meet that?

Maybe your desire to be debt free comes from a spot where you want to live a more generous life

How does Jesus want to shower you with generosity right now?

This looks different for all of us. Maybe you are lonely and you want some companionship...

How does God want to satisfy that need in a way that no human could.

If we actually want it, we can have life to the fullest in Jesus

Do you believe that. That Jesus actually can give you life to the fullest?

So much of us maturing as followers of Jesus is just about actually believing the things we already know. We need to take a look, pay attention to our actual beliefs. Do we actually believe Jesus can give us life to the fullest?

One of the founders of the Vineyard Movement, a guy named John Wimber, he had all these little phrases that he used, but one of my favorite is one he used to describe Discipleship. You see here at the Vineyard, thats our Goal. Any body who is willing to hang around Vineyard we are willing to train them how to be a disciple of Jesus.

Now John used to say “The Way in is the Way On”

And what he meant by that was that the way you grow in your relationship with Jesus is the same way you started your relationship with Jesus.

We acknowledge that we can’t save ourselves, and we but our trust in God.

The Way in, what we call salvation, is the first time we do that. We say “Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, but I also know that you love me, would you take my life and let me live with you forever” We submit and surrender to him. THat’s the way In.

The Way on, how we keep growing in our relationship with Jesus, how we experince a transformed life, a life to the fullest, is by doing the same thing, every single day.

Jesus, here is my life, take it, give me something better.

Jesus, I give you control of my finances, Take them, do something better with them.

Jesus, I give you how I spend my time, what I watch on TV, how I talk to my coworkers, I give it to you, would you give me life to the fullest.

The Way in is the Way on.

Sabbath give us an opportunity to take stock of where we are. We rest in God’s love for us, we honestly evaluatue how we are loving God and loving people, who look at the things God has put on our hearts, and then with the power of the Holy Spirit, we move forward towards that perfect future God has for us. The Way in is the Way on.

How are you being invited to do these things, to rest in Gods truth, to re-evaluat- and then re-invision your life. What does that look like for you this week?

Ministry time.