"Work Hard...Rest Easy" A sermon about the importance of Sabbath.

I had the wonderful opportunity to preach today at Argyle UMC! This sermon was the last in a series entitled "First: What Happens When We Put God First in Our Lives."
Below is the outline of the sermon. (When it comes to the liberation story in Exodus I told the story in via paraphrase, which is not reflected in the outline.)
I hope you can find some Sabbath rest this week!

Work Hard…Rest Easy

• Open in prayer
• Today’s sermon is the last sermon in our series FIRST: What it means to put God first in your life.”
• Today we are going to talk about how God wants to orient us to putting him first in our weekly rhythms.
• The title of this morning’s sermon was already set out for me, and it is this: Work Hard…Rest Easy
• I’m not going to tell you all to work hard. Most of you have that figured out already. Most of us, I’ll dare to say, are in danger of working too hard.
• In the U.S., 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females work more than 40 hours per week.
• According to the International Labour Organization, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.” Well, maybe that last one doesn’t surprise you!
• Using data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950.
• The typical American middle-income family put in an average of 11 more hours a week in 2006 than it did in 1979.8
• We KNOW how to work hard: we’ve elevated hard work to be one of our highest virtues in our country.
• I remember growing up and learning all about the “Protestant work ethic:” in school. It is expected of us that we will work hard.
• I believe in hard work. Work is a good and wonderful thing, a Godly thing. God calls us to a life of imitation: we are to work, to create, just as God does. Creation and work can and should be a holy endeavor.
• However, one of the biggest impediments to our spiritual growth as American Christians, is that many of us do not have a healthy balance between work and rest.
• Many of us have elevated work to idol status in our lives. We’ve made having a packed schedule a badge of honor. I’ve even heard people brag about their ulcers!
• Our culture has a fetish with busyness and laziness is often regarded as the ultimate American sin. If you are not always busy, you must not be living right!
• If you don’t have your smart phone with you and on 24/7 then you aren’t working hard enough!
• This lack of balance between work and rest is a matter of life and death, both physical death and spiritual death.
• As I said earlier, I remember learning about the Protestant Work Ethic brought to the America’s by the Puritans. I recently read another well-known phrase from the Puritans that I didn’t learn in school: “Good Sabbaths make Good Christians.”
• While the Puritans went about life in a much more sever manner than most of us would be comfortable with today, they were on to something here! Work Hard…Rest Easy.
• Work and rest must go hand-in-hand. So today, we are reflecting on the God’s goodness and wisdom and God’s dreams for us: God has given us a command to rest and to be in community. Jesus has given us the pattern for life that he wants us to follow.
• We are to ‘set-apart’ one day in seven as a day of rest. We are to make time to go away and pray and then to get back into the action!
• This is hard for us to do! It doesn’t really matter how you occupy your time, the temptation to get out of balance is very easy.
• Let me just illustrate this with a story from a period of time in my life.
• As Will Rogers used to say: “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” This was the case for me.
• My education in keeping the Sabbath and what happens when you don’t came by my breaking the commandment frequently and repeatedly! I was one of the chief sinners and I learned some very hard lessons in my first appointment.
• It was my first church out of seminary, a big church with 2400 members and 10-12 ensembles rehearsing during the week and I was so gung-ho about the kingdom of God, and so in love with Jesus, that I got into the habit of working 60-90 hour weeks, of being at the church every day and always available on the phone.
• After about a year of that, I realized that I was becoming bitter, angry and resentful.
• I never took a Sabbath. As I look back at that time, I realized how much life I missed. My life was out of balance!
• I got caught up, unintentionally and subconsciously, in believing that the kingdom was only going to come if I helped bring it about. While there is an element of truth in that last statement, it is incredibly easy for us to elevate our work over the work that God has done and is doing.
• I had completely lost the realization that God had already brought the kingdom here through Jesus Christ.
• I lost sight of this because I had completely violated the first and fourth commandments! Thou shall not have any other god’s before me and thou shall observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.
• The violation of the first commandment came about because of the violation of the fourth commandment.
• Friends, I just got out of synch: my work consumed me and thus came to define me. This lack of balance caused me to miss out on much of the wisdom of God, the rest that only God can give as well as the good things that God wanted for me.
Anybody been there?
• Have you ever become so consumed by what you were doing that you missed what God was doing in your life and in the lives of those around you?
• God doesn’t want that for us. God doesn’t want us to work ourselves to death.
• God wants something better for each of us. God has dreams for us that are richer and more beautiful than death by work!
• God knows us well, knows our tendencies and our foibles, God knew we’d need help developing a healthy balance of work and rest.
• And so, God gives us several examples of how important it is to develop a healthy work-rest balance in the Bible. Let’s take a look at a few of these moments.

SCRIPTURAL BASIS FOR SABBATH—THE CREATION ACCOUNT

• In the very beginning of the Bible we find God creating! God was, and is, at work! In the beginning God created for six days and then what? On the seventh day, he rested!
• Did God need a break? No! God finished his project and ceased working on it. I think God was also trying to teach us something essential: we must rest on a regular basis. We must cease our labor.
• God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it: this Sabbath day is supposed to have a unique status amongst God’s people.
• From the very beginning, we find God setting out the life-giving rhythm for us of work and rest.

SCRIPTURAL BASIS FOR SABBATH—THE LIBERATION STORY
• Then, we move to the next book of the Bible and we find the story of the exodus from Egypt. I hope you will go home and read it this afternoon, it’s an incredible story that is foundational to who we are followers of Christ. We could spend a six-week sermon series on this story alone!
• Early in the first chapter of Exodus, we learn that the Israelites are living in Egypt when “A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come let us deal shrewdly with them.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor…The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.” (Exodus 1:8-15)
• Here we see something very different enter the story of God’s people. Here we see how the good and Godly act of creation can be used for evil.
• A few paragraphs later, we find Moses encountering God in the burning bush.
• God tells Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have hear their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
• God is telling the Israelites, and us, that God keeps his promises!
• Eventually in the story, God convinces Moses to do what God has called him to do and so Moses and Aaron head to Egypt to help liberate God’s people for the horrible workload that the Egyptians have placed upon them.
• Of course, this doesn’t sit well with Pharaoh, who increases the people’s work and makes impossible demands on them. Pharaoh tries to break the people and to “keep them in line” by forcing impossible work on them.
• He tries to keep them distracted from becoming the people God has called them to be.
• Even though Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, God’s will cannot be denied! God keeps his promises and liberates his people!
• The liberation of the Israelites from the slavery inflicted upon them by the Egyptians is one of the most foundational stories of our faith: their story is our story.
• Sisters and brothers, God wants all of God’s children to be free from bondage and oppression! Only when we are free from the bondage of a seven-day workweek can we truly become the people of God that God calls us to be.
• We are told all the time that we are what we can consume, that our value as human beings comes from what we can buy.
• We are told that we live in a time of scarcity! Fear is one of the devil’s greatest tools! But God tells us over and over again, “Do Not Be Afraid!”
• God’s economy is not one of scarcity but rather one of abundance. There IS enough for everyone if we but live out our trust in God!
• God made us to be in relationship with God and with one another, to love and to serve and to liberate God’s Creation.
• We can’t live the life that God has made us for when we are working seven days a week. There’s simply no time to connect, to reflect, to prioritize and to rest.

THE GIFT OF THE DECALOGUE

• After being liberated from the Egyptians, the Israelites have a 40-year adventure in the wilderness on their way to the land promised to them by God.
• One of their most important stops occurs at Mount Horeb also known as Mount Sinai, where God gives Moses The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.
• John Wesley called the Ten Commandments a “complete scheme of Christian practice.”
• The observance of Shabbat is so central to the lives of the Jewish people that is it is recounted twice in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scripture.
• In Exodus 20:8-11 we find “Remember the Sabbath day, and 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; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.” (NRSV)
• The primary focus of this account is remembrance of what God has done and the command to imitate God. To strive for holiness, to strive to be like God by reorienting our weekly schedule to God.
• Remember God and be like God. We are to remember that God worked for six days and that on the seventh day, God rested. The seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD, our God, and so it should be for us.
• Now the account in Deuteronomy 5 has a different and equally important set of nuances. “Observe the Sabbath day and 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; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 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.”
• While we find a lot of similar themes from Exodus the writer of this Scripture has now added the liberation of the Jews from Egypt, of God liberating God’s people from oppression and overwork so that they could bless the world as God intended.
• In addition to remembering and imitating God by striving to become more holy, now we are to also remember our liberation.
• As Christians we remember Jesus’ victory over sin and death on the Sabbath, our liberation from sin and death through the work of Jesus Christ.
• Did you know that the commandment to keep the Sabbath has the longest instruction of any of the Ten Commandments?
• God KNEW we were going to struggle with keeping this one, and further, God knew of our tendency to play Pharaoh to those who have less power than we do.
• Later in Deuteronomy we find whole chapters given over on how to keep the Sabbath.
• We need so much instruction in this because we are not good at it! At least, I’m not.

THE PATTERN OF JESUS

• Then we come to Jesus, the consummate Jew. Throughout the Gospels we find Jesus engaging in a similar pattern: work, ministry, service, and prayer and rest.
• It probably goes without saying but the Sabbath was very important to Jesus, as Jesus himself says he is the fulfillment of the law. Jesus never tells us to do away with the Sabbath; but rather refines for us what it means to observe the Sabbath.
• Jesus, the Son of God, needed times of prayer and rest to be rejuvenated for his work.
• Over and over again we find this pattern in the life of Jesus.
• If Jesus needed this time, how much more do we!
• In Mark 2:27-28 Jesus tells us that the Sabbath was made for us! Sabbath is a gift from God to us and, we are free to enter it and observe it as a matter of Christian liberty.



HOW DOES ONE ENJOY A SABBATH?

• Many of us have a pre-conceived notion, given to us by our Puritan ancestors, that the observance of the Sabbath is about being shut-up in one’s home and, if we are to be honest, being bored.
• Jesus gives us a very different picture: a God who loves us made the Sabbath for us!
• We are to rest in the fact that God is God and we are not. Sabbath, when observed, brings perspective to us: when we cease our work we find that the world continues on without us and that is a good thing!
• Our salvation, the good life that God has provided for us is not dependent upon our effort: it is a gift from God.
• So, how do we observe Sabbath?
• I’ll give you two hints. One is a statement, the other is a question.
• Pastor Mark Buchanan has put it simply: to properly observe Sabbath we must “cease work and embrace the things that give life.”
• “Cease work and embrace the things that give life.”
• Simply put, whatever it is that you do for work, if you are so blessed as to have it in this economy, try to cease it one day of the week and rest.
• For most of us, Sunday is the ideal day to observe and keep the Sabbath, but the day of the week one observes Sabbath is not essential to keeping it. I do my best to observe the Sabbath on Friday’s, for example.
• In addition to stopping the work we do six days of the week, we are to embrace the things that make for life. The first of these things, and the most important, is the worship of God. For Christians, we are to worship together every Sunday, at a minimum. Worship gives us life and allows us to focus our love, adoration, and attention on that which truly deserves it: the Triune God!
• We are also to be in community with other Christians, with our friends and with our families if we are so blessed to be near them. We are to be in community. We are not to be alone.
• A second hint: one of my favorite authors who write about Sabbath is a man named Dan Allender, who lives in Washington. He asks a great framing question for observing the Sabbath: “What would you do for twenty-four hours if the only criteria were to pursue your deepest joy.” (Repeat the question.)
• I hope you will pray about that this week and that you will come up with an answer.
• And, whatever that answer is, as long as it leads to God’s glory and doesn’t hurt others: do it! Talk a nap, take a walk, read books or see films that deal with resurrection! The Sabbath is about freedom!
• Get some rest and recreation time. Play some music, look at beautiful art. Enjoy the sensual things, like the weather yesterday, that God has given us.
• Feast! Be playful! Be grateful. Be with your friends and family!
• Get a beautiful journal and a nice pen and take an hour each Sabbath to write down and remember all of the things for which you are grateful.
• The point of all this is, make time for the things that bring life, rest and joy!
• Our ministry, friends, in the world, is too hard to do well, and joyfully, and faithfully, without an ability to rest in God and to trust God, so that we can be reclaimed and revitalized and renewed by God.
• It is through keeping the Sabbath that our lives are changed, because we live in God’s rhythm of time. The pattern of creation, liberation and resurrection becomes the pattern of our lives as well. Through Sabbath we gain an added sense of perspective about life. We learn what is important and what isn’t.
• Sabbath life is part of life in the kingdom of God: worship, community, rest, and play (in that order) are an important part of God’s creation and of God’s dreams for us. Sabbath is to be joyful and to allow us to restfully reorient our lives to God.
• As far as my Sabbath journey goes, I can tell you I now only occasionally work those 90-hour weeks. By continuing to learn to keep the Sabbath, my life becomes ever more oriented toward God.
• Sarah, my wife will tell you, I am a better person to be around and I mostly enjoy the yoke that God has placed on me. My prayer life has deepened considerably and, honestly, I have become physically healthier and more efficient.
• More importantly, I have learned that the weight of the world does not solely hang on my shoulders but primarily on God’s, and that is one of the most freeing epiphanies I have ever experienced.
• The Hebrew word for holy is best translated as being ‘set apart.’ I pray that you will be able to set apart a day, preferably Sunday, where you can strive for holiness by observing the Sabbath.
• I pray that you will say yes to God’s gracious gift of Sabbath in your life.
• I’d like to close today by praying a prayer I found this week from Shane Claiborne, a prayer to welcome the Sabbath. Let us pray:

Lord of Creation,
create in us a new rhythm of life
composed of hours that sustain rather than stress,
of days that deliver rather than destroy,
of time that tickles rather than tackles.


Lord of Liberation,
by the rhythm of your truth, set us free
from the bondage and baggage that break us,
from the Pharaohs and fellows who fail us,
from the plans and pursuits that prey upon us.


Lord of Resurrection,
may we be raised into the rhythm of your new life,
dead to deceitful calendars,
dead to fleeting friend requests,
dead to the empty peace of our accomplishments.

To our packed-full planners, we bid, “Peace!”
To our over-caffeinated consciences, we say, “Cease!”
To our suffocating selves, Lord, grant release.

Drowning in a sea of deadlines and death chimes,
we rest in you, our lifeline.

By your ever-restful grace,
allow us to enter your Sabbath rest
as your Sabbath rest enters into us.

In the name of our Creator,
our Liberator,
our Resurrection and Life,
let all of God’s children say:
Amen.

January, 30th, 2011

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May God's grace and peace be your's today!

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