Finding Joy in the Sabbath.

If you were told right now you have a day off, go rest, go relax, turn to the person next to you and tell them what would you do if someone said you have an entire day to just relax, to rest. What would you do? I'm hearing a lot of similar answers like I would sleep. Anybody would be like you're just going to take a giant nap if you just have a day off. Where are my active people that are like, I'm going to go on like a 20-mile hike if I could.

Well, if we haven't met yet, my name is Abbie. I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm excited today to dive in, continue in one of our series that we've been walking through where we're going to talk about Sabbath today. We are talking about rest.

I don't know if anybody else has noticed this, but we kind of have this thing that we do where I don't know when we learn it, if it happens in elementary school or in high school, but when someone says, hey, like, how are you doing? We always say, I'm good. Busy, but good. Or tired but good. How many of you feel like you hear that all the time from people? Yeah, it's like I'm good, but just tired, really tired, really busy, but good. Still good. Still good. That has seemed to be the cycle of our lives, the cycle of my life. For so long, I just find myself saying that over and over again. Like I'm good. At the end of the day, I'm good. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I maybe feel like I could cry at any minute from exhaustion, but it's like I'm still good guys. We're still good.

What if I were to tell you today that there is a different way that we were created to live? That there is a different option, that there is an invitation for us to enter into a type of rhythm, a type of rest, where we could eventually break that cycle and honestly tell people, I'm rested. I'm full. Yes, maybe there's a lot of things going on in my life, but I feel rested. I feel good.

Today we're talking about Sabbath and rest, but not just Sabbath, but how do we find joy in the Sabbath? This is one of the rhythms that we want to continue to learn as a church. One of the things we introduced last year and we're talking about again this year is what we call the rule of life, which sounds really scary like a church with big fancy rules. But really the word rule comes from the Latin word, and it means trellis. If you think of when you plant seeds in the ground, some seeds they need a trellis to help them grow in the right direction.

And so we as a church, we have different spiritual disciplines and practices that we've been teaching on to say, what does it look like for us to come receive things from God, and then to have practices and rhythms in our life that help those things that we're planting to grow in the right direction so that we truly can become like Jesus and live the way that we were created to live.

How God defines Sabbath

So the first scripture we're going to be reading today is in Isaiah 58, verses 13 through 14:

Keep the Sabbath day holy. Don't pursue your own interests on that day, but enjoy the sabbath and speak of it with delight as the lord's holy day. Honor the sabbath in everything you do on that day and don't follow your own desires or talk idly. Then the lord will be your delight. I will give you great honor and satisfy you with inheritance promised to your ancestors Jacob. I the lord have spoken.

Isaiah 58:13-14

A couple years ago, I found myself in a place where we had just planted New Culture Church. I was still leading a campus ministry full-time, Chi Alpha, which we still do, and I found myself so tired and exhausted all the time. I was going and going and doing and doing and I remember sitting with a friend and it was one of those moments where she's like, how are you doing? I'm like, good, you know, busy, just but good, tired but good. And she finally looked at me and is like, are you ever going to say anything but that? And it was this wake up call for me of recognizing that the way I was living was not the way that the Lord was really wanting or desiring me to live. Yet I was doing all these things for God and totally forgetting to spend time with him and to be with him.

Growing up, I feel like my idea of Sabbath or my understanding of it, it was just kind of like this rule. It was this legalistic thing. It was one of the Ten Commandments. I knew that. I knew like, okay, we're supposed to Sabbath. That's a thing that you do. But I thought that it was just like an optional practice. I thought that it was this old commandment, and that honestly was pretty unrealistic.

I remember having that moment with my friend, and remember, I'm a pastor, okay, and I'm telling my friend, I'm like, yeah, I don't really know how you expect me to Sabbath. Like, what do you think that's really going to look like? You want to give me an extra day in the week? You want to give me a few hours? Like, that's just not realistic. That's what I thought of it. The friends in my life, if I'm being honest, who really practice Sabbath, I was like, you guys are just kind of lazy. Like, do you know what you could do with that day if you didn't rest? Like, come on. I thought it was a waste of time.

But the more that I've learned about Sabbath, the more that I've shaped my life and shifted my life to practice Sabbath, the more in love with not just Sabbath have I become, but more in love with Jesus and the life that he invites us to live with him.

This word Sabbath, a lot of people think that it means something like to rest, but it actually means Shabbat, which means to stop. And Sabbath, it isn't this new idea. It's a really old practice that we're going to talk about a lot in the Bible today.

We're going to talk about two things first: how does God define Sabbath in the Old Testament? And then when Jesus comes, how does Jesus define Sabbath?

We read in Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11:

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to hear the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. But he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

Exodus 20:8-11

There are so many things that you could literally teach on Sabbath for weeks and weeks. There's so much in this scripture alone that we start to learn about Sabbath. One was that Sabbath was for everyone. Male, female, servant, slaves, masters. Like this was one of the only times then that everybody would have been equal in that day of saying we're all going to rest. No matter what your status is, no matter what your gender is, like you are going to rest in this moment. That's powerful. That's profound. That's a gift to say, wow, like God created this day to just remind us again that we're all equal, all created in his image.

The next thing that we see is that God is saying this is holy. Like this is going to be a holy set apart day. He's pretty firm here. He's like, this is a command. You really should listen. You really should do this. And then we also see that God rested, that God himself rested and had a day where he practiced this and then invites us into it.

How Jesus redefines Sabbath

Some of the questions start to come up where it was like, okay, so we're all supposed to take this day and just stop from everything and rest and delight in the Lord. It's going to be holy. We're all going to do it. And then Jesus comes into the picture in the New Testament. Do you know a fun fact about Jesus and the Sabbath? Most of his miracles were done on the Sabbath. Like over and over again, which at that time it would have been like work to heal someone. And so a lot of people had issues with that.

One of the times we read about this in Mark chapter 2, starting in verse 23:

One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain field. And as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to them, Look, why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? He answered, Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate at the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions. Then he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

Mark 2:23-28

He's reminding them here that the Sabbath was a gift for us. There were two different types of laws that were happening. There was both the Mishnah and the Torah. Jesus would have been following the Torah, but then the Pharisees came along with this Mishnah laws, and they added all of these different laws to the Torah. And so Jesus was fully on board with following the Torah law, but he wasn't going to follow all those added things that the Pharisees had.

So even in this moment, like the disciples, by simply feeding themselves and doing what they did in this passage, they weren't breaking the Torah law, just the Mishnah one. Because Jesus is reminding them here that like Sabbath was made for you. So he's almost like, if you're hungry, of course, I'm going to feed you. Like, if you need healing, of course, I'm still going to heal you, right? Like, God can heal you on the Sabbath. He'll feed you and provide for you on the Sabbath.

But what was happening here is that the heart behind the Sabbath was so good, but then the Pharisees came along, and all these people came along, and they started adding to it, to where they completely took the joy out of the Sabbath. What was supposed to be something good for us to have space to delight and rest in the Lord and be reminded who we were created to be turned into this super legalistic thing. And it happened so quick.

So we see that Jesus in these scriptures and in other times in the New Testament, he's taking people back to remind them, no, this is a good thing. This was made to be a gift to you.

The crisis of busyness

Even today, one of the most downloaded TED Talks of all times is one on stillness. That's not just among Christians and people that follow Jesus, that's like everyone. One of the most downloaded TED Talks is on stillness. What does that tell us? That like there is a crisis going on where we feel hurried, where we feel busy, where we're constantly feeling so overwhelmed, like the clock just keeps ticking and we all would be desperate to be like, can we have a 25 hour day? Like, just give me another hour. And then I can make it happen. Right? We are addicted to hurry. We're addicted to want, we're addicted to busy.

So why is it then, if we recognize that we need stillness, if we're all Googling how to have peace, how to have rest, how to slow down, why is it then that we don't?

One of the things that I've learned, probably the hard way in my life, is that there was a time where I truly believed, okay, if I could just have that day off, where I could, I would take a nap, a really, really long nap. I would maybe walk outside, or if I could just have a vacation, like that's going to solve it all. And then I'll come back, and I'll be ready to go. Well, it was almost two years ago that after five years of pastoring and being in full-time ministry, I took what's called a sabbatical. I took six weeks, almost six weeks off to go and to rest and to just be with the Lord.

I remember there's so much that I could talk about that time, but one of the hardest moments was the week of silence and solitude that I spent with myself in the mountains in Tennessee where I realized I didn't know what to do if I saw a bear, and that was a whole other thing of Abbie in the mountains literally trying to get service to Google what happens if I see a bear. A lot happened in that week of silence and solitude. We obviously made it back okay. But it was in that moment where I was all alone and I slowed down long enough to face myself that I had to face the reality of who I was and whether I had intended to or not, who I had become. Someone that was broken. Someone that was too busy to ever actually think about the root of what was happening in my life, what was causing me pain.

And what I realized in that moment, and what I think many of us have maybe tried to do, is that no amount of bubble baths or self-help or anything else or binging Netflix is going to solve the problem or truly give my soul the rest that it was created for. That only Jesus can. Sometimes we think, well, okay, if I could just get that week off, then I'll come back rested. If I just get a day off, it'll be good, right? If I just have just a few moments to just go and to do my thing and to be alone or to have one more drink or whatever that is for you, we think that's going to bring our soul rest, but nothing will but Jesus.

Why we don't practice Sabbath

Why don't we practice Sabbath? Why don't we learn to live in the rhythm of Sabbath? Do you see what I've learned through the years as I've worked to practice this? And I'm telling you right now, like, I have not perfected the practice of Sabbath. This has been like a fight for my life to continue to fight to have Sabbath and to live from a place of Sabbath. But what I've learned through this is that for many of us, for all of us, the thing that we're looking for, it's not going to be found in self-care. It's only going to be found when we start to follow the way of Jesus, the invitation that he has given us to rest in him through this rhythm of Sabbath.

Here are just a few reasons why we don't practice Sabbath. Number one is that we live in a culture where we're addicted to want. We're addicted to more. We're told that, okay, if you just have more money, then you'll be happy. So well, how do you get more money? Well, you have to work harder, right? So you have to have this job and that thing and more money and more possessions. We're addicted to wanting more friends. We think, okay, well, maybe if I just had more friends in my life and maybe if I was just more social and around more people, like then I'm going to be rested. I'm going to be good. Like that's it. Or more time. And so we do all these different things where we're just addicted to more. We are addicted to more.

The next thing that I see is that we're afraid of slowing down. I shared with you the first time in years when I slowed down and I had to face the reality of self. I had to face the reality of my thoughts, of my regrets, of my longings, of my desires. We're afraid of slowing down because we're afraid when we slow down, sometimes we're afraid of what we're going to find. We're going to find our brokenness. We're going to find our pain.

One of the things that when I learned this has radically changed my life and relationship with Jesus is the statistic that marriages, the reality of marriages ending in divorce drastically increase after kids graduate from college because couples realize that the only thing that they had in common was their kids. And they completely lost touch with the relationship, with why they fell in love with each other, because the only thing they had in common was their kids. And for many of us, it's easy for us to get to that place with our relationship with Jesus. We think I'm going to go to church. I'm going to serve in church. I'm going to do all these things for God. And then all of a sudden, we recognize that we're so busy doing things for God that we forget to be with him. We forget to abide with him. We forget to rest in him. And we totally forget why we fell in love with Jesus in the first place.

The next thing is that we don't Sabbath because we're unaware of how we can accomplish it. And this might be the biggest one that I have seen time and time again and what stopped me for years, right? You might say, and even as I'm sharing this, there could be all sorts of feelings of saying, Abbie, you just don't understand, right? You don't know my demanding job. You don't know my work schedule. Like I have kids at home. I have a family to provide for. I'm already working three jobs to pay the bills. Like I don't know what else I can do. We don't think that we can accomplish it.

When I started practicing Sabbath, like I shared, I was in this spot where I'm like, I was nannying about 30 hours a week to help pay the bills while I had one full-time ministry and then planting a church and doing all these things. And I didn't have the hours. I didn't have the time. And it was a slow start for me. It was saying, okay, do I have three hours in the week? Three hours that I can practice Sabbath, practice delight in the Lord. I want you to think of that, of not to feel overwhelmed or feel like any sense of shame. If you're like, there's no way right now I could take a day off and actually rest. Like just begin to invite the Lord in and to show you how you could start to accomplish that and practice that, right? That word practice. We're not aiming for perfection right away. We're aiming to practice, to strengthen things, to get better.

Why Sabbath matters

Here are some of the reasons why I want you to consider what it would look like for you to practice Sabbath and why I believe it's so important for us if we're going to follow Jesus. And number one is that we were created for it. We were created for rest.

First, we were created in the image of God, and God rested, so therefore we should too. We read in the creation story in Genesis 2, 1 through 3:

So the creation of heavens and earth and everything in them was completed. So on the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation. So he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all the work of creation.

Genesis 2:1-3

If the God of the universe was able to rest, to pause, to stop from work for one day, then we should too. Sometimes I think that refusing to Sabbath can be like one of the biggest slaps in the face to God. Because part of Sabbath is growing our ability to trust him as we stop from everything. We're reminding ourselves that we're actually not in control. Like at the end of the day, it's not our work and our money that pays the bills. It's God and his provision, right? It's not us that puts the food on the table. It's God. He's the one that feeds us. And so when we Sabbath and we stop and we set everything else aside, we're trusting God and we're reminding our flesh and him and everyone around us that he's the one in control. He's the one on the throne.

We were created for Sabbath. We were created to find joy in it. And we see this in the garden when God created Adam and Eve. One of the things that he created us to be is he created us to be free. He created us to be free. I love this that more than any other commandment, this fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments, which is to Sabbath, honor the Sabbath, keep it holy. I love that it's this really invitation to be free.

I love one of the summarizations of this. When Moses is talking in the book of Deuteronomy and he says remember that you were slaves in Egypt. In other words, he's telling them remember that when you were slaves you couldn't have Sabbath. But now that you are free men and you're free women you can. But in light of this we have to continue to choose to say with our freedom now what are we going to do? Will we choose now to truly live free like we were set free to do? Because God, he doesn't force himself on us, but rather he invites us in. We always have a choice. And freedom, contrary to what we might believe about it, it's not just doing whatever we want to do. That's not freedom. And that's not why God sets us free from things. But freedom, if we're following Jesus, freedom is doing what we were created to do. And we were created to have moments where we stop from everything else and we surrender and we rest.

Another thing that we see in the garden when God created Adam and Eve is he created them to be free. He created them to then be functional. In the garden, do you know that they had things to take care of? It says in Genesis 2.15 that the Lord God placed them in the garden of Eden and it says to tend and to watch over it. To tend and to watch over it. Like we were created to have purpose. You have a unique purpose that God has given you to be functional. And then also to flourish. To flourish. We were created to flourish and to be reminded that we're not just supposed to be these zombies walking around so tired all the time. But that we were created to flourish. That God wants us to live that type of life.

And then the next thing that I want to talk about is that we were also created to be fallible. That we are eternal beings, but on this side of eternity our bodies they're going to fail us. And this is when we see so much burnout take place where our bodies just get so tired that we burn out. And so when we take time to intentionally rest, we're reminding our flesh once again I was created for eternity. This body is going to fail me. And so I need to rest and I need to refuel.

I don't know if anybody else does this, but I tend to push my limits when it comes to my gas tank being on empty. And a lot of people, if you know me, you're already laughing. But I would like to say, I've never actually ran out of gas. But I get really, really close. Like we're talking like I've been on zero for many miles and that BP right down the street as I'm heading in, I'm on my list to my neighborhood. It's always like I'm pulling in there. I'm like, one of these days, my car is going to literally run out of gas in the intersection and I'm going to be that person like pushing it.

But it is yet to happen because when I'm on empty, what do you do? You fill up. And we know that with our cars, right? Like we understand like if I do not refuel, if I do not fill up, like not only am I going to be empty, but like my car's going to die. Like something bad is going to happen. This is not good.

But yet when it comes to our lives, when it comes to following Jesus, we don't always live this way. We just keep going on empty and empty and empty and empty. And then for some reason we're like surprised when all of a sudden like we're sick or we feel burnt out or we're tired or we're overworked. And we're like, how did this happen? And God's like, hey, you didn't fill up. Like you didn't refuel. We have to continue to go back to God over and over again.

How we've strayed from God's design

So here's some of the things that I want to just recap of how we were created to live. And then the conclusion of how we often end up living, even though that's not how we were created to live. So God creates us wholly, right? We see that in Genesis. But then we have concluded that we're going to continue to live in sin. God says that he's created us free. Yes, so often we choose to be stuck. He creates us to be functional. And then we take that and we say, okay, we're going to be workaholics instead. He creates us to flourish. And then we take that and we've concluded that we're going to be burnt out and tired. God created us fallible, and we have concluded to refuse to accept that.

Practicing Sabbath

Here's what I want to talk about as we close. The Sabbath is one of the greatest gifts that we have. It is not an obligation. It shouldn't be this thing that we think of as this big, scary rule to follow, but rather an honor and a gift that we get to rest in God's presence and he created us to have time set apart to rest. God created the heavens and the earth. He says it was good. He created you and he created me. He created man in his own image and he said this is very good. And then he created the Sabbath for us to rest. So that too must be good.

But here's what I want you to catch: if we want to practice Sabbath and if you're sitting here and you're like, yeah I am tired all the time and I have wondered like, could there be more to life than the way that I've been living? Could there be something else, a different rhythm? I want to give you some practical tools.

But here's the biggest thing: Sabbath needs to be a proactive practice in our life, not reactive. Sabbath wasn't meant for us to be something that is like this big reward, like we work so hard and then we get to rest. But rather we were created to work from this place of rest in God's presence. So what does this look like for you to practice Sabbath?

The first step is to remove. Think of when in your schedule throughout your week. Maybe it is starting with a morning. Maybe it's starting with an evening and eventually working to getting towards the day. But see where can you remove work and take a break? Work on your house, work on ministry. For me, it's like I'm not writing my sermons or doing anything like that on Sabbath. Where can you remove hurry? Where can you just remove everything else from your life?

And then number two, rest. And rest holistically. More than just Netflix, although sometimes like, hey, that's taking your mind off things, but rest well. And rest knowing that it's a gift and not a reward, right? It's a gift for you to receive, not a reward that you can earn.

And then the next is to rejoice, to delight. I love going back to that passage we read in Isaiah 58:13 through 14. It says, call the Sabbath a delight. The Sabbath was meant for us to delight. So some of the things practically I do on Sabbath is I always eat and make really good food. Lately I've been making bread on the Sabbath. But just do something that helps you delight and rejoice. Because part of Sabbath too is giving us, yes, reminding us who we were created to be, but also giving us vision for eternity with Jesus in heaven, where we will be delighting for all of eternity.

And then the next one is to remain. Remain in the Father. Remain in the presence of God. On the Sabbath, remove other things. Go for a walk. Spend time in nature. Spend time with friends. Spend time in community. But spend time remaining in Jesus and spending time reading your Bible, praying, doing all that thing.

And then the final thing, which is the hardest part, is as you do this, it's releasing everything else. Releasing control, releasing the to-do list, all of that, for however long you're practicing Sabbath. You see, Sabbath is a reminder that someday, we will die, and we're going to spend eternal life with Jesus, eternal rest with Jesus.

I think this idea of release reminds me like as we rest, like sleeping can be one of the most vulnerable places that we're in in our lives. Like we fall asleep every single day and we trust that life's going to go on and we're going to wake up and everything's going to be okay. But yet it can be so scary for us to rest in the sense of like, I'm not going to check emails or I'm not going to respond to my friends and everything's going to be okay. But part of Sabbath is like that sleeping where you're like, I'm good. I trust that when I come back, everything's going to be good.

Here are just some really quick kind of just like pointers. So if you have kids and you're like, how do I do this with a family? Some things that can be helpful is like have special Sabbath games or Sabbath toys or Sabbath food. So you're like, hey, when we Sabbath, like you get to do this special thing that can help you as a parent, maybe get some rest.

If you're Sabbathing alone and you're single and maybe you're not married, it's really good. Sabbath with friends. Find people to rest with in community.

Invitation to rest

Final reminders. You're a human being. You weren't created to just work, work, work, and work all the time. You were created for rest. The Sabbath was made for you to enjoy. So my invitation for you is this week: start to think and maybe even go back, listen to this on the podcast, study Sabbath, and start to think, how can I practice this in my life?

You're never going to arrive at perfection. This is a process. So as you start to think of this, start small. Start where you are. Think about your stage of life. If you're single, if you're married, if you're a parent, start slow. Don't just take it all on at the same time.

And then the last thing that I want to challenge us as we think about Sabbath is to remember that we are a part of a community, right? Like we are a part of the body of Christ. And so when you think about Sabbath, to not only think about, I was created for this. How do I have this in my life? But think about the other people sitting next to you and think, man, they were created for this too. What would it look like if they lived from a place of rest and a place of Sabbath?

One of my favorite stories is a church I know. The pastor was talking about Sabbath and he shared that they had this woman in one of their small groups where she was a single mom working three jobs and she's like, I can't Sabbath. So her small group community came around and they said, okay, here's what we're going to do. They asked her how much she made on that weekend night when she was a waitress. And she told them. And they said, okay, then we're going to pitch in so you no longer have to work that Friday night because we believe that you were created for rest and created for Sabbath. And that's what I believe the body of Christ is supposed to look like. That we're not only looking for ourselves and saying, how do I find rest? But we're looking around and we're saying, how do we find rest collectively?

So the question then is, how can you create rhythms of rest in your life? Rhythms of reminding yourself who you were created to be. Matthew 11 says:

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

Matthew 11:28-30

God created you to rest with him. Not to work for rest, but from rest. And my friends, the world is going to try to hurry you along to busy your life away, but Jesus, he came to give you the rest you were created for. And I just want to remind you today of that rest that you were created for and that you can have it. You can have that rest.

If you're here today, if you would just close your eyes and if you're like, I need to receive the rest that only Jesus can bring. I want to invite you in these moments to invite Jesus to come and to give you that rest. And so just as a sign of surrender to him and what only he can do, I'm going to invite you and I'm right here with you to just stretch out your hands before you in a posture to receive and to just say, God, I surrender to your rest. Would you come and would you give me the rest that only you can.