Understanding The Sabbath Day, God’s Sabbath Rest And Finding Quietness In Ultra Busy Lives

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Understanding the Sabbath Day, God’s Sabbath Rest & Finding Quietness in Ultra-Busy Lives

Isaiah 30:15; 48:18 & 58:13-14

PAUSE: FINDING REST IN A RESTLESS WORLD

Understanding the Sabbath Day, God’s Sabbath Rest & Finding Quietness in Ultra-Busy Lives (Isaiah 30:15; 48:18 & 58:13-14). Today we begin a study of the Sabbath Day that can impact the way we live for the rest of our lives.

TIME & MONEY: TWO BIG INDICATORS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE

There are two simple barometers of our spiritual lives: how we invest or spend our time and how we invest or spend our money. Counselors have long known that if you sit with someone and observe both their financial habits and time usage habits, you will have a good picture of what’s really going on in their lives.

Today, we are examining how our time investment reflects our beliefs about whether God owns us or not.

God, our Creator, has shown us that the best way to live our lives is the way that He, our Creator, designed us to operate. God has given us life measured by time in which to live. God wants us to reflect His ownership of our lives by our time usage. As God said through Moses in Psalm 90:12 (NKJV):
12 So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Investing our time wisely begins with understanding God’s ownership of it. This leads us to the start of time, the institution of the Sabbath Day, and all that God’s Word teaches about the rhythms of life laid down by our Creator at the dawn of human existence.

To understand the Sabbath Day, God’s Sabbath Rest, and Finding Quietness in Ultra-Busy Lives, we need to go back to the very foundation of our existence.

GOD CREATED TIME + SPACE + MATTER + LIFE

God alone is Eternal and Self-Existent, so everything else had a beginning.
All humans originated from one man, created by God on the sixth day of creation.

We know that because God said that in His Word. Please open with me to Genesis 1.
In that account, we find the first mention of time, days, a week of days, and the seventh day.

As we begin this study of the Sabbath Day, the subject of our study is a unit of time, a day of the week. It is the seventh day that starts all of this discussion. As we turn to where this entire topic starts, we will see the very first mention of days, and then the days of a week and the seventh day are all in Genesis 1-2.

The explanation of the Sabbath Day does not begin until Exodus and Moses. What is the first lesson we see in Genesis, before the giving of the Sabbath to Israel in Exodus?

THE EVENING & THE MORNING = ONE DAY

Transcript

This past week was fascinating for me. I’m working on this, you know the title if you saw it in your bulletin, Finding Quietness in Ultra Busy Lives. A week ago, Friday, not two days ago, but nine days ago, I was quietly preparing, and I got a message from someone I hadn’t talked to for eighteen years. And they said, do you remember sitting at my mother’s bedside when she was dying in 1997, and she handed you the funeral that she had written out she wanted officiated by you, and you took it and looked her in the eye and said yes? Do you remember that? And I said I do. He said she died just now. And so, the funeral is this week. Are you doing it? You promised eighteen years ago, and I thought be careful what you promise. I mean she was very ill in 1997 and marvelously served the Lord for eighteen more years. And all that to say that was nine days ago. And Monday morning of this week, I shot off to Oklahoma for that funeral. And it was the huge storm, if any of you remember. And they almost shut, they did shut down O’Hare. And they canceled all the flights. And people were sitting down the concourses like a bomb shelter as those strokes of lightning were hitting all around the airport and they canceled and tumbled. And so, it took me one hour less to get to Oklahoma than it would have taken to drive, but it was a blessing, and I got there just in time for the Tuesday morning celebration, and it was the first time I’ve ever seen a grave dug. It’s the whole process I’d never seen the whole process of the big backhoe coming and digging and tipping over the headstone.

It was just a very moving time and to think that the Lord is orchestrating our days. And so, all the way back all the cancel flights, and the mechanicals, and everything else, and still working on Quietness in Ultra Busy Lives, and got back in time for the wedding that was last night, and the rehearsal that was the night before, so it’s been very exciting. But someone asked me, before we start this, they said are you going to comment on this week in the news? And I said, I would love to comment on anything, but if you want to comment, it’s going to be how it fits with the Scripture.

So, if someone asks me, how does the Supreme Court ruling fit with the Scripture? I would say this, when Jesus Christ returns to the Earth, if you believe what the Bible says in Revelation 9, there are four distinct characteristics that permeate all of human society when Jesus returns. Do you remember them from when we covered that about a year and a half ago? See how timely it is? The first one, it says that the people would not repent of their drugs. The Greek word is pharmakeia. It says that they would not repent of their occult, worship of demons. Actually, says that. It says they would not repent of their murders. And finally, it says, and neither would they repent of their sexual immorality. Actually, the word is pornea, fornication. Come on. This world, when Jesus returns in glory as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, is a drug stupered, occult focused, murderous… Now, this has nothing to do with all the plagues and armies and Armageddon and all that stuff. This is just how the people are, their character and their habits. And they’re totally enslaved in sexual immorality. And what I saw this week is just one step closer to publicly the whole world being what God sees them to be at a yet future point. Drug induced, occultic, satanic, worshipping, murderous fornicators. And as John Piper said, Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, died for heterosexual sinners and homosexual sinners. Just like He died for male sinners and female sinners. You know what I mean, in young and old. And so, the essence is what Revelation 9 starts with. It says, neither would they repent.

What is our role? We will not change society. I hope sooner or later people will get that down. You can boycott Walmart and protest everything. We will not change society. We already know where it’s going. But we are to, in the name of Jesus Christ, and with His same love, call individuals to repentance.

What happens in this? By the time you get to chapter 14, which is a repetition of chapter 7, there are more people than can be numbered saved out of the darkest time in human history. When the, when it’s darkest, our light shines brightest. You remember last, I think it was last week, I was flashing around my phone flashlight. Probably wasn’t very bright to you. If we doused the lights, if it was pitch black in here, and I held up my little flashlight on my phone, it would be very bright. The darker it gets, the more our light can shine. And so, all the news said is that, that we are to be calling individuals to repentance. That’s, and shining the light. But never thinking that we are going to stop what God has already told us He sees permeating the world. So don’t invest your life trying to plug a dam that God says is going to burst. Spend your time tagging individuals and telling them about Christ and living a life of salt and light that we say that you need to repent of that, and it dishonors the Lord, but I dishonor the Lord in different ways, and we all need to repent. But that isn’t what I’m speaking on, but someone asked me that, so I said it.

Let’s get into a very different topic that, that prepares us for a lifestyle of reaching this world. And that is we need to understand the Sabbath day. What is it? Why is it? What is God’s Sabbath rest? Hebrews 3 and 4 says we believers have entered into this Sabbath rest. If we’ve entered into it, I want to understand it. So, what is the connection between the Sabbath day, the seventh day, Saturday, and God’s Sabbath rest? And what’s the byproduct of all that? How can we find quietness in our ultra busy lives?

Now, of course, the best example of everything in the Bible is Jesus Christ. Jesus had absolutely ultra busiest. It says He didn’t have time to eat, He didn’t have time to do anything. He fell asleep in a storm in a boat, sinking in a large 14×7 mile lake, and was sound asleep. He was weary and worn and constantly going and people were tugging on His clothes and digging through ceilings to get to Him. You remember, you’ve read it all. How did Jesus live in this Sabbath rest quietness? And that’s really what this is all about. So that’s what we’re going to study this morning.

Today we begin a study of the Sabbath day that should impact the way we live the rest of our lives. Really should. If you really think about it, if God has revealed something and we say we belong to Him, and love Him, and honor and serve Him, and that His Word is most important to us, whatever He says should alter our lives. As a counselor, time and money are two big indicators of our spiritual life. They’re two simple barometers of our spiritual life. The way that we invest or spend our time, and the way that we invest or spend our money is very indicative of who we are.

I was trained by a counselor. His name is Dr. Fred Barshaw at Grace Community Church, and he sat us pastors down and taught us how to counsel. Now, I’d already gone to seminary, but it was all books, and he sat there across the desk, and he said, when people come to be counseled, I always tell them to bring their checkbooks. Now let me explain that for all of you under forty. Checkbook is an antique plastic little holder that has paper in it that if you write on it, it’s like money. It’s really neat. You ought to get one. But Back in the old days, people did their finances with checkbooks. And usually one or the other, the husband or the wife, would meticulously write in this register, it was the upper half of the checkbook, the date and the number and what it was and how much it was. And if they were at all financial, they had this running ledger, debit, credit, so they knew their balance. And so, people didn’t think anything of being requested to bring their checkbook. And so, they would sit down in the counseling session in front of Fred, and he’d say, did you bring the checkbook? And usually the wife would lean over, reach into her purse and say, I have it. And he’d say can I look at it? They brought the checkbook because they thought he was going to charge them $5 or something and they needed counseling. But usually the people go, you want to look at my checkbook? He said, yeah. And he would take that, and in front of them, his first five minutes of the counseling would be to open that ledger like this, and just look down each line, and he’d go, oh. People got so nervous. Why? Because our finances show, our investment of our money shows, what we think about our money, whether it belongs to us or God. And our investment of time is the same. And this morning, we’re not going to talk about money, so you can all, we’re not going to talk about money, we’re going to talk about time. And this is what the Bible says. God the Creator has shown us the best way to live our lives in the way that God designed with time being flowing by us at sixty minutes an hour.

The best way to live is the way God designed. Showing His ownership. By the way, do you know what the Sabbath day was? It was God instituting for Israel this amazing grid, heptadic by the way, of sevens. The seventh week, the seventh month, the seventh day, the seventh year, the seven times seventh year, and the seven times seven plus one year, the year of Jubilee. All of this seven stuff was to show just one thing. God owned their time. And God put a structure in place to show them He was in charge of their days and weeks and months and years. Now, if you did what God said, that was really a good deal back then. That’s why people that tell me they’re observing the Sabbath, they aren’t. They really aren’t, because they don’t even know all the things, because they’re not doing them. You were supposed to work six years, and not work at all the seventh year, and the sixth year’s crops, or herds, were so magnificently blessed, that they flowed all the way through to cover the sixth year, the seventh year, and into the next year, until you began getting your next harvest.

Now, do any of the people that are all into the Sabbath day, do you see them doing nothing for an entire year? Do you see them really following the system? And then when you went through seven cycles of those, after you got through into the seventh cycle, you not only didn’t operate on that seventh year, but the next year too, the year of Jubilee. Plus, you forgave everyone all their debts they owed you.

Now, have we done that lately? No. This was a system God instituted for Israel to show His ownership of their time. And I don’t want to go too far into this until we do, because I want you to underline in your Bible, but this is what the one that wrote it down said, Moses.

And chapter 90 of the Psalms, his prayer after he wrote all this down. Do you know what he said? “So, teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” He said, all this days and months and Sabbaths and God’s ownership of my time makes me want to number my days so that I can have a heart of wisdom. Because God owns it, how should I live it?

Okay, so let’s dive in. Let’s go to Genesis 1. Open your Bibles right to the front after you go through the first few pages and index. Get to Genesis 1. And keeping track of investing our time wisely begins by God showing us that He owns our time. Which leads us back to the start of time, to the institution of the seventh day, and to all that God’s Word teaches about the rhythms of life. So, Genesis 1 is where God introduces us, basically, to His creation.

God created time, space, matter, and all life. And so, God, in chapter 1, starts telling us about His lordship over all those things. We’re just going to focus on the time part. Because God alone is eternal. God is self-existent. Everything else had a beginning. So, time and space and matter and life all had a beginning. Because only God is self-existent, self-sufficient, and always existing. All humans originated from one man. Not one couple, one man. Out of whom God created a woman. We all know that because we’ve read it. And this all happened on the sixth day of creation. And we know that because God says it in His Word.

In Genesis 1. And as we begin the study of the Sabbath day, the first element we need to focus on is the Sabbath day is first and foremost a unit of time. It is a day. It is actually the seventh day of seven days in a week. And as we turn to where all that originates, we find something very interesting. The explanation of what becomes the Sabbath day, which is the seventh day, doesn’t, the whole Sabbath concept that people are talking about nowadays doesn’t even start until Exodus. There’s no mention of the Sabbath in the whole book of Genesis. The whole 50 chapters. There’s no Sabbath day. Adam doesn’t observe a Sabbath day. Eve does not. Cain and Abel do not. Enoch doesn’t. Noah doesn’t. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nor Joseph. The notion that the Sabbath observance started at Creation isn’t really there, but it’s okay, but it’s not there, but it’s okay. People think it is. But let’s look at what is there, because what is there is this. And this is fascinating.

This is what is there, and this is what we don’t acknowledge usually. Certainly not in our culture. Often not in our lives. The way God reckons the units of time is that the evening when, until the advent of kerosene in the late 19th century, darkness ruled the world. There were oil lamps of various types and various torches. But until the late 19th century, the evening meant, unless you were a king, or you were going to hunch over a dark, smoky lamp, you ceased most activities except what could be done in front of the hearth, where the fire and light was. And so, when we cease, because it’s too dark to do anything, the day starts, because God is the one that starts the day. As we wane and go unconsciously into vulnerable sleep, God begins the day without us. And we step into the day He’s already started, in the morning. And what He wanted was for us to acknowledge that He is the one that starts every day. We step into something He’s already started, and we pause and say, what do You want me to do? This is Your day. You already started it. I’m coming in, a third of the way or more through. What’s Your will for me? You own my time. You own me in this day.

Now that I’ve said it, let’s see it. Genesis 1, you found it? Let’s all stand together with God’s Word open. You follow along, starting in verse 5. And I’m going to read, and you follow. And we’re looking for a repetition, and it’s six times in this chapter. Starting in verse 5. And “God called it the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So, the evening and the morning, We’re the first day.” Now look at verse 8. “And God called the firmament Heaven. So, the evening and the morning were the second day.” Now move on down in your Bibles to verse 13. “So, the evening and the morning were the third day.” Now verse 19 of chapter 1. “So, the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” Now down to verse 23. “So, the evening and the morning were the fifth day.” Look at verse 31. “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was good. So, the evening and the morning were the…” What? “Sixth day.” But what’s repeated six times? Evening and morning. That’s how God, the Creator of the universe, the initiator of time, and the one who made us, constitutes a day. That’s not how we, by far in this world, think of time.

Let’s bow before the Lord. Father, thank You for letting us read Your account of where everything came from, how it all began, and even more importantly, what Your intentions are. Because life is best lived Your way. So, teach us Your way, anchored in Your Word, and let us ponder how we can incrementally make choices to adjust our lives to Your plan, even if no one else is adjusted. We aren’t called to adjust everyone else. We’re called and answerable to whether or not we will calibrate our lives to Your Word. And then You have promised such blessings, if we would. So, we ask You to teach us, open our hearts, our minds, and most of all, by Your grace, energize our wills. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

You may be seated. As you’re seated, when we read the Scriptures, which we just did, God explains our worldview. Remember we talked about worldview. You know what our worldview is? Our worldview is that God says the day begins at sunset, not at sunrise. The day begins when God alone is at work and we’re asleep. That’s just how He says it.

Our day begins with God while we sleep. That’s just such an amazing thought. When we go helplessly, vulnerably to sleep, and only God is on duty, working, that’s when the day began. Then, after God starts the day, while we sleep, we awaken to the day He’s already fashioned, and we jump in to see what He planned and prepared for us. That’s the rhythm of life that keeps us in step with God’s grace. Acknowledging that He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

And He who surrounds Israel surrounds like the mountains surround Jerusalem, it says in the Psalms. What does that mean? If you know anything about Jerusalem, it’s at 3,000 feet, but it’s surrounded by Judean hills, the mountains. And if you’re in Jerusalem and it’s nighttime, the mountains are still surrounding Jerusalem. And if you’re in Jerusalem, and it’s fogged in, the mountains are still surrounding Jerusalem. And if you live in Jerusalem, and you’re blind, the mountains still surround Jerusalem. What God is saying is, I am the one that surrounds you at all times. I neither slumber nor sleep. And I’m better at starting, structuring, planning your days of your life than you are. And I want you to acknowledge that.

So, for Israel, in the book of Exodus, He made this heptadic grid of sevens. And He says, I want you every week to acknowledge Me, and I want you to acknowledge Me every month. There was some new moon or festival, and in the seventh month there was three weeks of stuff, and you just went through this whole cycle to show God owned our time. If I believe and accept that the day begins with God at work, and not me, then I can go through life stepping into each of God’s days, seeing them as not my own.

Think of the implications of having a Biblical worldview of our time. That our time is in God’s hands. That our time is a gift from God. And that even this idea of Him blessing one in seven days is also a gift. And something we should consider. God holds and directs my time and my days. My length of days, the successes I have in life, do not come from me. They come from God. That’s what this whole evening and morning speaks to. God wants me to enter each day He already started and then surrender the rest of that day to Him. So, life begins to be a stewardship of the days that God gives to me. He’s already, Psalm 139, written them in His book, every day that He has planned for us.

This belief in God as the Lord of my time allows me to have a peaceful rest. Let me just show you one of the examples. Go to the middle of your Bible, Psalm 3. If you just open it to the middle, you should bump into the Psalms and then find the third Psalm. Because this is a beautiful picture of this idea that God owns my time and therefore my day starts when He’s in control of everything and I don’t need to worry. So, Psalm 3, look at verses 5 and 6. It’s like Proverbs 3:5, and 6. Only Psalm 3:5 and 6 is really good for the anxious types. The worry warts and all that. Basically, what’s going on here is that David is able to have a peaceful rest at night. Now, the first verse of the Psalm, for most of you, it’s not numbered. It’s just above the first verse, and it’s just below where it says Psalm 3, but in some little writing at the head of the Psalm, it should say, a Psalm of David, when he fled from, what does it say? Absalom.

Now, do you remember Absalom? His son with the beautiful hair that was vain and proud, and he overthrew David, took the army, and now has turned the entire army, the undefeated army of David against David. And David, barefooted, walks out of Jerusalem, surrounded by his loyalists and they go into the wilderness, and David is sleeping outdoors with no tent on the ground. And that’s what verse 5 says. As he’s being hunted, imagine being in Syria and having ISIS coming after you, running out of town and going and sleeping on the ground. Yeah, we wouldn’t sleep. We’d be up all night, hand grenade in each hand, ready for something. Not David. Look at this, verse 5. “I lay down and slept. I awoke, for the LORD sustained me.” That means He was awake all night. And the day started for Him as David lay down. Look at verse 6. I will not be afraid of ten thousand of people who have set themselves against me all around.

See, this idea of time and God watching us while we’re helplessly, vulnerably, unable to do anything while He starts our day is such a liberating thing. Knowing that God owns my time schedule also prompts me to want to add His pattern of rest into my weekly plans. God offers us the gift of ceasing from our labors one day in seven to rest, renew, and most of all, pursue the delight of knowing Him. That’s what His Word says.

By the way, our hyperactive, overloaded times we live in is really paradoxical, and a pastor, in Seattle no less, (that’s where Amazon and Boeing and Microsoft and a lot of other things have big outfits up there) but a pastor in Seattle of a mega church twenty years ago in the 90’s when all this was just starting, and he’s a pastor of about 6,500 people on Sunday morning. His name was Bob Moorhead. This is what he read in his church. And this has become so famous, this little poem, that it’s been attributed to the Columbine martyrs, to the Dalai Lama. But actually, he actually read this in his church, if you go to their website, long before anybody else knew about it. But this is what he says. He says we need to reflect on the pace of our lives as we come to worship God. Because the paradox of our time in history is that our lives are all becoming shallower and shallower. That’s what this is about. That our time is out of control. Now remember, anything that’s under God’s control is not out of control.

So, anything in our lives that’s out of control, it means that we’re controlling it, not God. And so, if our finances are out of control, that means we’re messing them up because God doesn’t mess things up. And if our time is out of control, it means we’re messing it up because God doesn’t mess things up. Anything out of control isn’t under God’s control. And when our time gets out of control, we have shallower and shallower lives. This is what he wrote:

The paradox of our time in history is we have taller buildings, shorter tempers. We spend more but have less. We buy more; we enjoy it less. We have bigger houses, but we have smaller families. We have more conveniences; we have less time. We have more degrees, but less sense. More experts, less solutions. More medicines, but less wellness. We laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry all too quickly. We read too little of God’s Word. We watch television too much. We fast too rarely. We give too little. And we pray too seldom. We’ve multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living; we don’t have a life. We’ve added years to life, but not any life to our years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but we have troubled every time crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not our own inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but we’ve polluted our souls. We write more and learn less. We plan more, accomplish less. We learned and learn to rush, but never to wait. We have higher incomes and lower morals. We’ve become long on quantity, short on quality. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion. More leisure, less fun. More kinds of food, less nourishment. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce. Fancier houses, but broken homes. It’s a time when there’s much to show in the window and nothing in the stockroom.

That’s what he said twenty years ago. I think it’s only worse, but you know what it means? It’s time to look again at what God says He wants to do with our time. And basically, in the Bible, if you want to turn now from Psalms to Isaiah, with me, Isaiah, chapter 30. Because God, in the Old Testament, told the children of Israel, to whom He gave a sign.

Israel had a sign that they were to have for themselves as the peculiar people of God, and it’s called the Sabbath day. And it says in Exodus, it’s a sign. It says in Deuteronomy, it’s a sign. It says in Ezekiel, it’s a sign to Israel. It says in Nehemiah 9; it’s a sign to Israel. It’s interesting. The Sabbath day is the only one of the Ten Commandments not repeated in the New Testament for a good reason. It was given to Israel, not to the world. But we should look at the blessings that are attached. Because if there’s any part of the Sabbath that has been transferred and available to us, it sure is a neat thing. Starting in chapter 30.

God offered these amazing things to His people in the Old Testament. And among these amazing offers, Isaiah 30 presents to us the beginning of some ways of life that we don’t see very much of in our shallow and shallower culture. Here’s verse 15 of Isaiah 30. “For thus says the LORD God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved.” Now pause for a minute and look up.

Did you know in Hebrews 3 and 4, it says, “there remaineth therefore a rest for the people of God”. There is a Sabbath rest that’s attached to salvation. And so what we find, if you want to know the conclusion of all this is, that when we were saved, we actually entered into the beginning of the ultimate Sabbath, which is rest in our souls from striving to try and do enough to please God, or striving to, to keep enough rules so that we hope that, that God will find us righteous, or striving to run our own lives and accomplish everything. We just rest in the fact that we were bought at a price. So, there’s an element, Hebrews says, that every one of us in this room are experiencing of the Sabbath. And we’ll see that. That’s an entire study in itself. But look at the next part. After the equation of rest with salvation, “in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Now look at verse 15’s ending. But you would not. See, these people don’t want any part of it. They said, This Sabbath is awful. We don’t like this. It’s too regulatory. We can’t, it, we can’t do our crop. We just don’t like it and all these rules. And God says, but if you would return and rest, you would have quietness and confidence in your life, because when I run your life, you can quietly, confidently trust Me, and go through life.

Well, go to chapter 48. It gets even better. And then you ought to see what 58 says. But 48:18 is beautiful. “Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!” And front and center in that, the big one was this whole Sabbath lifestyle of God’s ownership of their time. This is what God promised. “Your peace would have been like a river.” This nonstop flow of peace. Jesus talks about that in John 7 :37-39. Out of you will flow rivers of life-giving water. This peace was supposed to so fill their lives that it was to overflow into others, like a river. And it doesn’t stop there. Look at verse 18. “And your righteousness are like the waves of the sea”, if you’ll heed My commandments. What’s that? You walk down the ocean and mess the sand up, drag your feet all you want, kick, dig holes, take a shovel like the kids do, you don’t just excavate. After one tide, it’s just as smooth, smoother than anything you could manufacture on your own. It’s washed; it’s all those grains are all beautifully lined up again. That’s the new beginning that God offers constantly with His righteousness. He says, if you would just heed Me, your righteousness would be like the waves of the sea. I will keep giving you a new beginning. I’ll wash over your life.

Now, go to chapter 58. And this is how we bumped into this. Right after fasting, 1 through 12, starts Sabbath day in 13. Both with immense blessings that we already looked at the fasting blessings. Now look at the Sabbath blessings. Wow! This really is pointed. Isaiah 58, God is talking to the Israelites through His great mouthpiece, Isaiah. And He says this, “If you turn away your foot, from…” My Sabbath, from “the Sabbath. From doing your pleasure on My holy day.” God calls the Sabbath, My holy day. And if you “call the Sabbath a delight,” Sabbath was this whole system, this whole grid, this whole framework, this whole structure. If you say, your structure is delightful, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor Him, the author of it, not doing your own ways. Don’t manipulate ways around God’s way. Not finding your own pleasure. Not speaking your own words and saying this is what it means, and I want you to do my way. Verse 14. “Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the Earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken”. God was offering a life of quiet confidence, of peace that just keeps flowing like a river, of righteousness with new beginnings washing across their whole life like endless sea waves, and a delight that makes our souls soar like we’re in the high places as we’re fed by God, whatever all that means. It sure sounds like God was offering something really nice if they would just heed Him.

So, the question is, what is all this? What? Just saying Sabbath, just mentioning that word produces such a variety of images in people’s minds. For some people, the Sabbath is just a word. They probably weren’t even churched growing up, and they just know it’s an English word. They heard, they don’t even know about it. It has no impact on their lives. There’s no emotional, physical, or spiritual attachment. It’s just an English word. Probably it’s religious, for others, the Sabbath may mean what the Bible taught. It means Saturday. It’s the seventh day of creation when God rested. And the day may or may not have any impact on their life. They just have read, and they know, Sabbath is Saturday. For others, the Sabbath day is mysterious. Because some of those Old Testament rules have somehow migrated to Sunday. And they’re always unsure, these people, as they go through life, what they should or shouldn’t do on Sunday.

In fact, I announced this last Sunday that I was going to speak on it. Boom. This person came right up to me and said, could you, when you’re talking about this, could you talk about what we can do that pleases the Lord and can’t do on Sunday because we’re really having tension in our family about that. And I said, oh, I could tell you right now, but wouldn’t it be better for you to just see it in the Bible? Just wait, because we’ll look through what God says, rather than me joining all the other talking people that tell everyone what to do. We need less of that. We need more of people actually coming in and seeing that God starts His day in the evening. And maybe we should, too. That means the best Sunday morning worship actually started last night. And whatever you were doing as the day was closing totally flowed into this morning. See, that’s how God thinks. And that’s how He wants us to think. So, we need this life impacting study, because we need to know what does God say about the Sabbath, not the church and not the various writers. Where did it come from? What is it for? Does He explain it? And how should it impact our lives? That’s what’s vital.

One more reason for this study is beyond the Scriptural clarity we need to have is that there are some amazing blessings that we saw in those three passages that are unbelievable promises of a quietness that we saw in Jesus’ life. Jesus had the most hectic life possible, but He wasn’t hectic. He had a quietness. It doesn’t mean He didn’t work long hours, and it doesn’t mean He didn’t work hard. But He was never exasperated and lost His peace. And there’s something about that we need to learn. To begin to understand the Sabbath, we first need to go back to the framework for how we think.

And if you remember a few weeks ago, we looked at this whole concept of worldview. Remember, I started this with worldview before we went into fasting. And each of us today has this operating system, because our worldview, our lens, is what prompts our choices. And each of us look at life through the framework of beliefs. And the Bible presents a framework for us, a window to look at life.

And basically, it’s God… understanding what God has said about time. God is the one that should dictate our understanding of time. That’s what a Biblical worldview is.

So, part of a Biblical worldview is, either we see time as belonging to me, it’s my time. I can do whatever I want. I can play games all the time. Really? Is it your time? I can work all the time. I can just be, just whatever. Is it my time? It’s my money. No. Just like our bodies and money belong to the Lord, so is our time a reflection of how much we believe that God owns all of us and structures. And actually, begins each of our days without us even involved. The Sabbath day was initially God’s signature of ownership on time. That’s why in the creation week He set aside the seventh day. He didn’t call it the Sabbath. But the word Sabbath is in there where it says that He ceased, He shabbat, He stopped.

Now you want to know something interesting about what is in the seventh day? What did God stop doing? God stopped creating. Did you know there are only three views of origins? There’s naturalistic evolution. There’s theistic evolution, which more and more Christian colleges are embracing to their own error. And then there’s Biblical creation. You know what Biblical creationism is? That God created everything from nothing in six days, and He stopped creating, and no creation has continued. That’s what it says. He ceased. He rested. He stopped creating. And He instituted all the laws that are governing the universe, and they’re doing just fine, and the death is coming for the entire universe, and He wrote in the genetic code, and that’s operating just fine, and there’s no creation.

The problem with the theistic, the Christian trying to stand on the dock and the moving boat of naturalistic evolutionary thought, the problem they have is that they’re contradicting what God said. He said, I stopped creating. And I didn’t start a plop of, primeval slime that has continually upgraded itself and created itself into higher complexity. I stopped everything when I finished all the universe. And my last act on the sixth day was making Adam, out of whom I formed Eve. But we’re not talking about creationism. What we’re talking about is God created everything. And He ceased. And God said that seventh day would have His special blessing. And that’s why we need to understand all of this, because our world view involves the clock.

Now, do any of you remember reading Gulliver’s Travels when you were little? Do you remember Gulliver getting to Lilliput and the Lilliputians? And every time Gulliver did anything, before he did anything, he consulted his pocket watch. Do you remember the story? After a while, the Lilliputians thought, because he didn’t do anything without consulting it, that the watch was his god. The clock was Gulliver’s god.

Do you ever feel like that? Is the clock our God? There’s probably no other part of our lives so thoroughly co-opted by the secular worldview as our notions of time. We say time is a gift from God, but most of the time we treat time like a club rather than a gift. It’s something we chase. It’s something once we catch it, it beats us up. It’s the notion of time that’s contrary to the Bible. Because the Bible says, if we properly understand time, that we need a richer language than the language of management. We need Biblical language that reflects God. He’s granting us life hour by hour and moment by moment. But the time around us in the global economy is head banging time. There are no more days. There’s simply productivity 24/7. Global economy that never slows down. It never rests. It has no rhythm. It is relentless.

And guess what? We’re, in our lives, mirroring. Not God’s rhythm of evening, stop and cease, let me start the day, and you begin with Me, and then, after you’ve done that and worked hard, stop everything, like I did, and just look back at what I’ve created. It’s an amazing thought, and it’s an amazing lifestyle.

Real quickly, before we go in six minutes, how do you apply this, a Biblical Genesis 1 evening and morning worldview of time? There’s at least four ways we can do it.

Number one. We should honor our bodies by keeping sensible schedules, at the very minimum, no matter what you believe. God says, stop everything after six days and rest on one of the seven. He doesn’t say which one, He just says one out of seven. He blessed one, but He didn’t ever, in fact, even the New Testament says you can honor any day you want. Why should we do that? Because we have enough time to work, and rest, and love our families, and our friends, and worship God, and exercise. If, whether therefore we eat or drink, First Corinthians 10:31, whatever we do glorifying God’s ownership. You and I are each given, starting this morning, of the 12 hours that start at midnight, all the way through the night into the rest of the day, we’re given 168 hours this week. From our time of reckoning, midnight to midnight. Those 168 hours that we have this week, nobody has more control over them than us. Are we saying, I’m going to glorify you by doing everything you called me to do? I’m going to work, I’m going to rest, I’m going to love my family, I’m going to love my friends, I’m going to worship you, and I’m going to exercise.

Secondly, Prayer and meditation on God’s Word must be fit into our schedules. Keeping God and His Word at the forefront of our minds helps us keep this Biblical worldview of time. What does it say in the Bible, Matthew 6:33? Seek first God’s rule. What is He the ruler of? Our time. When people say, I don’t have time for the Word, that means you don’t want time for the Word, because you have time, you just don’t invest it in the Word. It gets frittered in something else. And by the way, it’s better not to be a morning or an evening person. You could be both. We start our conscious day with the Lord. We end our conscious day turning over the new day to the Lord. We begin and end with Him. If He is the Lord of our time.

Thirdly, we need to say no. We live an over scheduled lifestyle. It’s a testimony that our notion of time has not been formed by a Biblical worldview. What does the Bible say? 1 Timothy 4:7. Discipline yourself for godliness. We need to say no. We have too many commitments and too many best friends and too many everything’s. And too much stuff. And we need to start saying no. There’s such a liberation to just stop.

And finally, we need to enjoy the freedom of the rest in our lives that the Sabbath speaks of. It’s a foretaste of our eternal rest with God. You know what Romans 14 says? It says everyone can observe differently. Some observe this day, some observe that day, some observe all days, and some observe no days. What you do, do to the Lord. And there’s something amazingly liberating about having a profoundly Biblical worldview. A Biblical perspective on time that revolutionizes the way we live, play, rest, worship, and work. So, the next time you take a look at your watch, think of Gulliver, and think of everybody thinking that’s your God. You say no, my time belongs to my God, and I want to live it for Him.

To conclude, let’s look at where we’re going. What’s the Sabbath? That’s what we’re going to start, Lord willing, today and finish in the days ahead. The New Testament Sabbath is God inviting us to set aside time with Him because we love Him.

Number one, the Sabbath is not a day for New Testament believers that we observe. It’s an attitude that flows from our worship. It’s not a day we police for everybody we know and say, oh! It’s an attitude, that love demands intimacy and love is fed by intimacy. And if I love God, I’m going to find intimacy in my day where I cease everything and I’m still before Him and His Word and I commune with Him. And I do that to start my day, and I do that to end my day.

Number two, our time investment should be a conscious move away from endless time invested in work for physical profit and growing choices of investing time for God. Better each day. So, Sabbath observance becomes a daily lifestyle.

And the New Testament teaches that all the Old Testament rules regarding the Sabbath day behavior were part of the ceremonial law. As was the Levitical priesthood and the system of sacrifices, all the elements of the ceremonial law, including Sabbath day behavior, did not move to Sunday. That was a choice of control that some people instituted. Rather, it passed away when Christ brought the new covenant. Sabbath observance is not stated anywhere in the New Testament. And in the epistles of Paul, he explicitly says, Old Testament ceremonies have passed away. Paul never stated the sin of not observing the Sabbath. Rather, he stated the opposite. He says, beware of Sabbath observance that leads you into bondage.

So, what should we do? Kind of what an old hymn writer said. We should take time to be holy. Because that’s why God sanctified a day. He said we should sanctify time in every day to be holy. Let’s all stand as you stand. This hymn says take time to be holy. Speak oft with Thy Lord. Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. Then looking to Jesus like Him thou shalt be. Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall see. It’s good to take time to see ourselves in the mirror of the Word and ask Christ to form Himself in us.

Let’s bow for a word of prayer. Father, I thank You for this doorway into a whole new realm for us to study. Your ownership of our time and the rhythm of rest and of refreshment, of renewal, of ceasing from a wearying, ultra busy lifestyle, and having Your peace like a river.

I pray that You would help all of us to start, even this moment, incremental choices to first of all unwind from the bondage of Sabbath observance, of moving Saturday’s Old Testament legalism to Sunday, and to have the freedom to say, I celebrate the Sabbath every day, throughout every day, because I seek intimacy with the God I love. We thank You. We ask for Your grace upon us as we seek to be conformed to the image of Christ. And we ask that in the precious name of Jesus Christ, and all of God’s people said, Amen. God bless you as you go.

NOTES

Today we begin a study of the Sabbath Day that can impact the way we live for the rest of our lives.

Time & Money: Two Big Indicators of Spiritual Life

There are two simple barometers of our spiritual lives: the way we invest or spend our time and the way we invest or spend our money. Counselors have long known that if you sit with someone and find both their financial habits and time usage habits, you have a great picture of what’s really going on in their lives.

Today we are looking at how the investment of our time reflects our beliefs about whether God owns us or not.

God our Creator has shown us that the best way to live our lives is the way that He our Creator, designed us to operate. God has given us life measured by time in which to live. God wants us to reflect His ownership of our lives by our time usage. As God said through Moses in Psalm 90:12 (NKJV):

¹²So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Keeping track of investing our time wisely begins by understanding God’s ownership of our time. Which leads us to the start of time, the institution of the Sabbath Day and all that God’s Word teaches about the rhythms of life that were laid down by our Creator at the dawn of human existence.

To understand the Sabbath Day, and to understand God’s Sabbath Rest, and Finding Quietness in Ultra-Busy Lives, we need to go back to the very foundation of our existence.

God Created Time + Space + Matter + Life

God alone is Eternal and Self-Existent; so everything else had a beginning.

All humans originated from one man, created by God, on the sixth day of creation.

We know that because God said that in His Word. Please open with me to Genesis 1.

In that account we find the first mention of time, days, a week of days, and the seventh day.

The explanation of the Sabbath Day does not begin until Exodus and Moses. What is the first lesson we see in Genesis, before the giving of the Sabbath to Israel in Exodus?

The Evening & The Morning = One Day

Please stand with me for the reading of God’s Word. Note with me in your own Bibles these reoccurring terms in Genesis 1:

Genesis 1:5 (NKJV) God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

Genesis 1:8 (NKJV) And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.

Genesis 1:13 (NKJV) So the evening and the morning were the third day.

Genesis 1:19 (NKJV) So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Genesis 1:23 (NKJV) So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Genesis 1:31 (NKJV) Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Pray

When we read the Scriptures at the start of our study, do you remember how God explains our worldview? God says that a day begins at sunset, not at sunrise. The day begins when God alone is at work and we are asleep.

Our Days Begin With God While We Sleep

When we go helplessly, and vulnerably to sleep, and only God is on duty and working: that is when the day begins. Then, after God has started the day while we slept, we awaken to the day He has already fashioned and jump in to see what He has planned and prepared for us. That rhythm is how we keep in step with God’s grace.

If I believe and accept that the day begins with God at work and not me, then I go through life stepping into each of God’s days and not my own. Think of the implications of a Biblical worldview of time:

God holds and directs my time and days.

My length of days, and success in life do not come from me, but from God.

God wants me to enter each day that He already started, with the rest of that day surrender to Him.

Life is a stewardship of the days given to me by God.

This belief in God as Lord of my time allows me to have a peaceful rest at night no matter how uncertain the world is around me, just like David confessed in Psalm 3:5-6 while hunted by his own son Absalom.

Knowing God owns my time schedule also prompts me to want to add His pattern of Sabbath rest into my weekly plans. God offers us the gift of ceasing from our labors one day in seven to rest, renew, and most of all pursue the delight of knowing Him.

A pastor in Seattle wrote about our hurried, shallow, and often empty lives over 20 years ago, and these thought are still so timely for us today.

Have we reflected on the pace of our lives as we came here to worship God? Perhaps^[1] we all need to slow down and reflect on:

The Paradox of Our Time

The paradox of our time in history is that our lives are all becoming shallower and shallower.

We have taller buildings but shorter tempers;

We spend more but have less;

We buy more but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families;

more conveniences but less time;

We have more degrees but less sense;