Before we can remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, we need to first understand what Sabbath means. The word Sabbath means to cease or to stop. Specifically it means to stop working and the whole idea of taking time off from work goes back to the story of creation. For six days, God worked. God created the light and the dark, the heavens and the earth. God created the stars and the sky, the sea and the land, the vegetation and the animals and then finally God created man and woman. For six days God worked, God created, and then on the seventh day God stopped working, God rested and God made that day special and holy and an important part of the created order. Think about it, God created a day just for rest. When we look at the story of creation we see that God created the world to have a certain rhythm. There is time for work and rest, labor and leisure, effort and ease. God created the world to have this kind of balance and since we are created as part of this world order, our lives need this same balance and rhythm. We need times of labor and leisure, effort and ease, work and rest and the only way we will achieve this balance is if we take the time to stop working –or remember and keep the Sabbath.
So the call of God to commit ourselves to a day of rest didn’t start with the 10 Commandments, but God reinforces the idea in the 10 Commandments for a very specific reason. Remember where Israel is at this moment, they have just left Egypt where for generations they had been slaves and slaves don’t get days off, slaves don’t get vacation time. So there was no Sabbath rest in slavery – the people worked all the time, every day – but now they are free and on their way to becoming the people God wants them to be and what God wants for them is health and strength so he gives back to them this day of rest, and what’s interesting is that God didn’t wait for the 10 Commandments to give this gift to his people, it came as soon as they left Egypt.
Turn to Exodus 16, the people of Israel have just left Egypt and escaped through the Red Sea. They are beginning to make their journey through the wilderness into the Promised Land, but things are difficult. They are hungry and thirsty and struggling to find food and water, so they cry out to God for help. First God provides them with water to drink, and then in Exodus 16 God provides them with food or manna which was bread from heaven. The manna would cover the ground every morning and the people would go out and gather up what they needed for each day, but then look at Exodus 16:4-5. There’s a reason God provides his people with twice as much manna on the 6th day, it was because God was not going to work on the 7th day, and God didn’t want his people working on that day either. After being slaves in Egypt for generations, God wanted his people to have time to rest and experience the balance and rhythm that were part of the world that God created.
Think about what this must have been like for the Israelites. All they had ever known and experienced was work, what a gift it would have been to have a day of rest. Here was a day when the people didn’t even have to go out and gather food – it was a true day of rest for everyone, servants and children and even the animals, no one had to work on the 7th day, so God gave this gift of the Sabbath to his people before he gives the 10 Commandments.
So the life God wants for us is a balanced life where there is work and rest and we need to not only remember this, we need to live it out, but the truth is that many of us don’t live this way, and we suffer because of it. When I first started out as a pastor I struggled with taking a day off – after all, how do you take a day off when you work for God? But what I forgot was that God was the one who was saying, take a day off – remember the Sabbath. For a couple of years I didn’t take a consistent day off and it wasn’t long before I was completely burned out. It took some strong words from friends of mine and the leaders in my congregation to help me see that I wasn’t following the plan God has given us and I was suffering because of it. If we don’t take time for rest we become stressed out and studies show that the stress which comes from overwork causes all kinds of physical and emotional problems. Heart disease, digestive disorders, joint pain, skin disease and high blood pressure can all be caused by not taking the time we need to rest. Depression and anxiety can also be caused by working too much and resting too little. In fact, many of the problems we experience or see around us have developed because we have allowed our lives and our schedules to get out of balance.
In his book on the 10 Commandments, Win Green says that God created the world so that we would
work at work, play at play and worship at worship.
When our lives reflect this balance – things are good, but too often what we see today is that people
worship work, work at play and play at worship.
Does your life look like this?
When we worship work we are dedicating everything we have and all that we are to our jobs or career. We worship work when we not only focus on work for 8+ hours a day, but then keep working at home in the evenings and even on weekends, holidays and vacations. Now let’s be clear, we do need to work and work hard. God gave us six days to work and only one to rest, so work, whether it is at a paying job or volunteering in the church and community, or working with and for our family, work is to be a pretty big part of our lives, but it can not be the center of it all. Work can not consume us. We cannot devote ourselves completely to what we do and forget about who God calls us to be.
We also can’t work at play. Have you ever taken a vacation where when you got home you were exhausted? Or taken a long weekend to spend time with the family and friends but worked in and around the house so much that you returned to work without feeling rested? If that sounds at all familiar, then you are working too hard at play. Play should be just that – play. It should be fun and restful. Play shouldn’t cause stress and anxiety. We shouldn’t need a vacation after our vacation. So let me give you some homework for the next two days. It is a holiday weekend, take some time to play. Don’t fill every moment of the weekend with yard work, house work or travel and activities that will drain you by the time you return to work, do something simple and fun that just brings you joy.
Life also get’s out of balance when we play at worship. We play at worship when we simply go through the motions of singing, praying and listening without allowing the spirit of God to speak to and shape our hearts and lives. Worship is the one place where God calls us to give ourselves fully and completely and when we do – what we find is that it doesn’t drain us like it does when we give ourselves completely to work. When we devote ourselves fully to God – God fills us to overflowing. When we give our lives fully to God – God fills us fully with life.
So as long as we worship work, work at play and play at worship, we will never experience the fullness God has for us because this is not the way God ordered life. In fact, as long as we reflect these out of balanced priorities, we will experience ongoing fatigue, stress, depression and even physical sickness. Life was meant to be lived a certain way and we need to get things back into a proper balance if we want to experience the fullness of life God has for us.
So how can we remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy? It can’t mean we simply do nothing, because that just isn’t possible, so what should we be doing to honor and remember this holy day? The first thing we need to make sure is that we actually do take time to stop working, or stop doing the work we do for 6 other days. We need that physical and mental break from our routine so part of honoring the Sabbath means that we resting from our normal work, but it means so much more and we can see that by looking at what Jesus did on the Sabbath, look at Luke 4:16. It was Jesus’ custom to attend worship on the Sabbath. Wherever Jesus was – he took the time to worship on the Sabbath, so worship needs to be an ongoing part of our lives. We need this time to reconnect with God and hear God’s word and feel the power of God’s spirit working in us just like Jesus.
Jesus also spent his Sabbath eating with family and friends, look at Luke 14:1. Eating together and sharing a meal with family and friends is an important part of living a balanced and healthy in life. There is something spiritual and life giving about eating together and it would be good for us to take this seriously. Is a family meal a daily or weekly part of your life? A time magazine article says that, “Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely children are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.” Maybe eating together can be a picnic today or tomorrow, but then can we keep that experience going and sit down to a family meal later in the week and then each week from here on out. Jesus shows us that there is something life giving when we eat together, so we need to take this seriously and make it part of our Sabbath.
While time in worship and with family and friends was the custom for Jesus on the Sabbath, let’s also be clear that Jesus broke the rules of his day and worked on the Sabbath as well, in fact let’s just keep reading in Luke 14:2-6.
Jesus got into all kinds of trouble because he did what many people considered to be work on the Sabbath, but Jesus was clear that the work he did was to bring life to people and a rich and full life was what the Sabbath was all about. Since the Sabbath was a gift given to bring people life, healing and helping and teaching those around him was an ongoing part of Jesus Sabbath day routine and it needs to be part of ours as well. While the Sabbath is a day we need to focus on taking care of ourselves, we can’t allow our self-care to become selfish. If we have the opportunity to help those around us – we need to reach out and do it.
So remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy means we stop working and allow our bodies and minds the time they need to rest. It means we take the time to worship and allow God to shape our hearts and souls which bring us life, and it means we spend time with others in ways that feed us physically and spiritually. All of these things can be part of a Sabbath rest, but there are so many more things that can help us experience the rest God wants for us.
If you work at a desk all day then to cease that kind of work might mean going out and doing something physical. Yard work can be part of a Sabbath rest if you love getting your hands dirty. For some people a Sabbath rest might include a hike or bike ride, for others it will be reading a book or doing the crossword puzzle. And the day you do things doesn’t really matter either. For some people the Sabbath might come on a Monday because we work on Sunday, or it might come on a Friday or Tuesday – the day doesn’t matter, what matters is that we take regular time to stop working and give our bodies, minds, souls and spirits time to rest and reconnect with God.
It’s amazing to think that God loves us so much that he gives us a commandment that really is just for ourselves, the key is for us to follow it. We need to rest because it is only through the Sabbath that we will experience all the fullness and joy there is life. God took a day to just rest and enjoyed the world he created and we need to do the same.
