Sabbath Purposes – Reflecting God’s Ownership Of My Time & Enjoying The Simplicity Of God’s Rest

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Sabbath Purposes: Reflecting God’s Ownership of My Time & Enjoying the Simplicity of God’s Rest

Sabbath Purposes:
Reflecting God’s Ownership of My Time & Enjoying the Simplicity of God’s Rest.

Today we are turning to Isaiah 58, where we see two ancient and powerful truths applied by God Himself. This passage is God applying Biblical fasting and a personal Sabbath rest.

HOW’S YOUR HUNGER FOR GOD TODAY?
Several weeks ago, we began to study hunger for God and saw this longing after Jesus with a heart of love and devotion is called Biblical Fasting.

Biblical Fasting, or the voluntary abstinence from good and right things such as food, is a spiritual discipline that has suffered in modern Christianity.

So, I repeat what we have learned:

In the Old Testament, biblical fasting was an urgent call to get serious about Knowing God.

In the New Testament, we see that Biblical Fasting was an ancient spiritual discipline that rescheduled my life with God at the center instead of dining, relaxing, amusing, accumulating, advancing, securing, and a multitude of other things that are not wrong—just deadly to intimacy with the Almighty.

In the Early Church of Acts and the Epistles, we see that this Hunger for God shaped their lives, ministry, worship, and outreach.

In the Early Church, Biblical fasting is a powerful way to yield every part of my life to God’s supremacy.

Conclusion: Biblical Fasting is an immediate way to declare your allegiance to God’s way and glory in every day of your life!

Transcript

As you’re opening in your Bibles to Isaiah 58 It was really a blessing last Sunday. I was actually just in our backyard at a hundred year old very, very prominent Bible conference center that’s right here near us. It used to be called Gull Lake Missionary Bible Conference. It was established a hundred years ago by the Gordon Foods family and a group of others. But the reason it’s significant to me is, each time I sit in my study and look at my walls of my study, some of the most famous and most precious commentators of all time, have over the last decades, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, spoken out there at Gull Lake Missionary Bible Conference. In fact, for many people, it was the first time they heard some of these people that they had only read their books. And so, it has this tremendous heritage. And then they double up the Bible speaking with a tandem mission. And Bonnie and I have been, actually I’ve been speaking there 22 years. And only two times has it ever been that the same Mission was overlapping, the rest have been just amazing new ministries that the Lord is raising up around the world.

So that’s where I was last Sunday back here, last Sunday night, and here today, morning and evening, and then next Sunday I’ll be speaking at Word of Life in the Adirondacks, north of Albany. And just pray with me, because I will be alluding to it during this morning but, it was a very interesting week at Gull Lake. I just preached Sunday morning sermons here, and then I threw in one of our biblical counseling pieces that I taught for two years in the Fellowship Center. It’s that little card I have it in my pocket. It’s the Ephesians 5 marriage.

Only what I did is, most people are used to just spectating. And I said, okay, for this service we’re going to do things a little different. I said, how many of you are married? And they raised their hand. In fact, let me, you guys can be like them. How many of you are married? Raise your hand. How many wish you were married? Raise your hand. Okay. Yeah, I was hoping I wanted to see that. Yeah! because I just met with them last week and they only have a few days till they get married. I know they wish they were married. But, so I had them raise their hands and I said, now this is what I’d like you to do. I’d like you to turn and face one another and it’s so interesting, most people only listen half the time anyway, and you could see the husband saying, did he tell us to do something? The wife says, is he? And I said, those of you that are married, turn and face whoever you’re married to. And so, they got it and they, they turn and faced each other. And all I did is go through the clear points of Ephesians 5:22-33 about the role of husbands and wives, only I had them in phrases say those truths aloud to one another.

We were through the first one. Now there were like a hundred and some couples and I could see tears running down women’s faces, and men don’t know what to do when women cry. They just… they, is it good crying, bad crying, is it my fault, is it? And so, it just, it really provoked a lot of talk and everything, and so… that isn’t even what I wanted to tell you. So, I spoke from 11 to 12. Then I went to lunch. I felt like a passenger airline that has a terrorist on it. You know how the jets come along and fly it in to make it land, they escort it back to the airport whenever that happens. I was walking out of the meeting and two families came. And it was like, they said, we’re walking with you. I said, I love to walk with people. They said, we’re walking with you to the meal. We’re sitting with you. I said, that’s great too. And they said, and we’re talking. I said… yes. And the man said, my wife wants me to keep doing this. I don’t even know what we did. But she was crying and I want to do it. So, we talked all through lunch. It was really special and wonderful.

So, we get out of lunch. There’s someone sitting in the lobby, and they jump up, it was a man. And he had his Bible, and a big yellow highlighter, and he said to me could you show me what to highlight? My wife wants me to do something with her, and I’m just a dentist, and I don’t know what … I only know teeth, and would you highlight something in my Bible to read to her? And that was fun, and I talked to him a little bit, and I saw him, he was busily because he was on vacation. He found some topic. I gave him some ideas and he was so busy highlighting his Bible. So, I left him.

And have you ever had someone sitting on a bench, they’re waiting for you? And it’s like a radar dish. They track with you like this and they’re getting ready to launch if you don’t come their way. And so I said, are you waiting for me? And the man said, yes. And he said and it was the same thing. It was like they came alive realizing that to be a spiritual leader, you didn’t have to go off to a weekend conference or anything else, all you have to do is want to minister from the scriptures to your wife. And so, I did that. I didn’t get back to my room, the dorms we stay in over there, until 4 p. m. It was four hours of this, and the last one was astounding.

Another one on a bench. And I said, are you waiting for me too? I was worn out by then. And he said, yes. He said, I have a corporation across multiple countries. He said, I have tens of thousands of employees. And he said, but I have never done what you talked about today. He says, I’ve been a Christian my whole life. My whole family are Christian. But he said, I’ve never led my family spiritually. I’ve been a great guy, but he said, I have never interacted with them from the Bible. I interact with my, jet around and work with all my company. But he said, I’ve never stopped and nurtured them. And before I die, I want to. And I said, I’d love to help you. So, I sat on the bench with him, and we talked about the scriptures. And he said I’m going back, where I came from. But he said, you know what? He said, if you have one hour a month, he said, I will travel from where he lives. He said, I will travel anywhere if you’ll just once a month show me what to do with my family.

And I thought, did you know for people to fit God, into their lives is something that only the Lord can stir their hearts to do. It was astounding to see all, what I did was what I did in Mexico, and since it was on my mind, I just said, hey, the 11 o’clock service, I’m going to do the Mexican family conference. And they all said, whatever that means, great. And what happened is the Holy Spirit got inside of them and stirred their hearts for the men to love their wife like Christ loves the Church, and for the women to respond to their husband like they respond to Christ. And it was astounding to see that and just pray that the Lord will be at work similarly when in New York next week.

But let’s look at where we are. Isaiah 58, open in your Bibles. We’re going to be in verses 6 through 14. We’re actually going to be reading those verses, but what I want you to see is we are in the midst of a passage, Isaiah 58, where we find God talking about something important. Now, when Albert Einstein used to talk at Princeton University he would just talk and mumble and scribble on the blackboards. And there was a whole team of people that as he got cryptically scribbling in the corner, when he turned to the class with the blackboard he would leave, they would spray it with special coating, and there are archives of the blackboards that Albert Einstein wrote on, because anything he said was so out of the world, extraordinarily profound, that they didn’t want to miss one little squiggle. Yet, the God who created Albert Einstein’s brain and laid in place all the laws that he was discovering of the physical universe, He talks and a lot of people go it’s boring, and I don’t understand it, and it might not be for me, so I’m going to skip to the parts I like.

And yet, this chapter sits here. Isaiah 58 is right after 53, probably the greatest chapter of the Old Testament. After 55, the great salvation offer, ho, everyone that thirsts let them come and drink, and before 61, the launching place of Christ’s ministry. And this chapter sits here, and there’s debate. About whether it even has any impact on us. And yet, the God of the universe said these words. And basically, we’re going to look at the second half of it. The first half is about fasting, but the second half is about the Sabbath. And what I’m going to show you is that the Bible reveals about eight elements that the Sabbath concept should have an impact on our lives.

And what I think is interesting about this is, I grew up in Lansing, but my ancestral home, where my ancestors are from, is an 1820 log cabin around St. John’s. And, this log cabin was on that farm that they farmed and everything else. And when I was a teenager, messing around, I bought it and I wanted to have it as a farm. I guess I was going to be a farmer. But when they widened the road, they started knocking it down, and so this log cabin was imperiled. And so, I remember dragging a log from this hand hewed log cabin in St. John’s. It was made of walnut. It was in good shape after, a hundred and what, a hundred and seventy years or so. I’m not sure when I got it, but it was really amazing, and I got that log, and it still had the ax marks, to fit the logs together. And I took it to sawmill and had ’em plank it into walnut planks. And I didn’t know what I’d do with them, but I saved them. And finally, when we had our eighth child, I thought, oh, I’m going to make a shelf. With eight little hooks on it and put the hooks into the walnut plank and make a shelf because we’re homeschooling We’re going to put their they can put their coat and their hat and their books and their stuff And it would just be eight little spots down our hallway And so I went to a workshop and actually I did nothing but wear a hat and goggles and watch. And they took my log and they built this beautiful eight hook shelf and everyone knew there’s their hook and they put it on it. We need hooks We need a spot to put stuff in our life. And so, I’m going to give you eight little hooks.

Number one Sabbath purposes What is the purpose of the Sabbath? And we will cover the rest in the future. The Sabbath is to reflect God’s ownership of my time. God owns my time. In fact, God has orchestrated what’s going to happen in my time through His providence. That’s one of the most powerful dimensions of God’s character, is His providence. It’s where He does not go outside of the laws of nature. He orchestrates them all to work together in causing the desired outcome of every event. Including what we call accidents, what we call disasters, what we call untimely this’s and that’s, are all part of His providential plan, because He owns my time. And when we begin, as a lifestyle, to reflect His ownership of my time, which is the purpose of the Sabbath, then we start enjoying life the way God designed it to be. It’s a life of simplicity and rest.

We can still be worn out. Jesus worked long hard days where He fell asleep in a storm. Jesus worked so much that He didn’t have time to eat. But Jesus was reflecting that God owned His time, and He enjoyed the simplicity of going through life, knowing He was following this track that God had designed just for Him. Now, we’re all going to follow that track, but we’re going to resist it and question it and fight it, or we’re going to have the simplicity of resting in the enjoyment that God owns our life’s breath and our time. So, we’ll see all of that in Isaiah.

And so, the question is, how is your hunger for God today? What we’ve already seen from verse 6 down through 13 is all about fasting. And we studied this since last March. In the Old Testament, biblical fasting was an urgent call to get serious about knowing God. Now, the Old Testament, they were under the law, they were under the letter of the law, they had to spend an entire day in mourning, national repentance, and fasting. What was that about? God was just giving them an appointment once a year to urgently get serious about knowing Him. Wanting them to want it the rest of the year, but for most of them, they just did it and it was over, it was a past memory. But in the New Testament, we find in the Gospels, Jesus invokes from the Sermon on the Mount on, and through His life, and even into talking about the Church, He invokes biblical fasting as this ancient, this Old Testament spiritual discipline that rescheduled our lives with God at the center. It’s almost the reset button of life. How to get back to God being central in my life, instead of everything else. Dining, and relaxing, and amusing, and accumulating, and advancing at work, and securing my future, and a multitude of other things that are not wrong.

There is nothing wrong with being the number one anything in the world, unless it’s deadly to your intimacy with God. And if securing the future, or advancing in your company, or relaxing, or dining, or amusing yourself impacts knowing God at the center of my life, then that needs to be fasted from until God gets back to where He deserves and belongs.

So, what do we see in the Early Church? In the book of Acts, we see the Early Church reflected in the fact that flows into the epistles that biblical fasting shaped their lives. Most prominently, Paul. You want to know how Paul stayed on track with all the adversity and all the struggle and everything he went through? He said, I fast more than all of you. He says, I have to reset to God at the center of my life, more than anybody else. And biblical fasting shaped their lives, it shaped their ministry, that’s how Paul said he did what he did on all his missionary journeys, their worship, and their outreach. In fact, we find the Early Church, the whole Church, you know how much time it takes to go to the store and get the food, and prepare the food, and cook the food, and serve the food, and eat the food, and clean up after the food, and then put it into the fridge, especially if you didn’t have a refrigerator back then, or a supermarket. Do you know how much time eating takes in life? So, the whole Church in Antioch temporarily set aside eating. So, they could consider two young men. And if the Lord wanted to launch those young men, they wanted to launch them. And they invested their fasting time waiting before the Lord to send out Paul and Barnabas to the mission field.

Did you know those people are in Heaven now? Paul and Barnabas and all the people in Antioch. And did you know they’re still accruing dividends from that wise investment? This week Bloomberg said the most producing stock over the last forty years or thirty. I don’t remember, forty. Wasn’t anything you thought of. Wasn’t Cisco or Google or Apple that dropped so much this week or anything else. It was some obscure railroad stock. Railroad? I didn’t even know we still had those; this is the information world. And it said that one dollar invested in that railroad was way more than a hundred dollars. It had grown ten thousand percent. A hundred fold. And I thought about, I wonder how much the dividend is on sending out Paul. Aren’t you glad you missed the meal to pray with the Church for that in eternity, those people.

And then in the Early Church, a hunger for God was a powerful way that they yielded every part of their life to God’s supremacy. After they got done with all that stuff, they were still saying, Lord, is there anything that’s out of conformity with Your supremacy in my life? Because I want everything in my life to conform to You being supreme. And the crucible where that forging of the life took place was in this fasting time.

And so, the conclusion is biblical fasting we saw for week after week is an immediate way we declare our allegiance to God’s way. I say I want to go Your way and I want You to be glorified in the way I go in every day of my life.

Now, let’s see where we launch into this. Are you there? Isaiah 58, and we’re going to read from verses 6 down through 14. What I’m going to do is I’m going to emphasize words, so you follow along with your Bibles. Let’s all stand together. You look in your Bible, Isaiah 58, starting verse 6, and notice the structure. It’s a whole bunch of ifs and then, and ifs and then, and it ends with God punctuating it with one of the most profound statements in the Bible. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. Wow. If you want a text that is grippingly, authoritatively powerful, this is amazing. But let’s start in verse 6.

Is this not the fast I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Verse 7, Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring into your house the poor who are cast out? When you see the naked, you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Verse 8, Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Verse 9, Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and He will say, Here I am. Verse 9 in the middle. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and the speaking of wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul. Verse 10 in the middle, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness. Your darkness shall be as the noon day. The Lord shall guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. And those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up foundations for many generations. You shall be called a repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets to dwell in.

Verse 13, changes gear now. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words. Verse 14, Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the Earth.

Now pause for a second and look up. This is unusual. This is in a non-technologically advanced era where they used to have high places. They would find places that were elevated and that was the place where you were closest physically to God. Now look what the Lord says in this. He says, if you’ll do all this, I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the Earth. You’re going to be traveling along as close as it’s possible to be, in this life, to me. Very interesting.

And we’ll feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father. Now look at this conclusion. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. Whew! Boy, that’s better than Einstein’s blackboard. God said, do you hear Me? Let’s bow before Him.

I pray we would hear you, O Lord. I pray that we would hear You by your Spirit within us. That You would begin stirring us, like I saw this week grown professionals, successful people, saying, I want to reorder my life to God’s way. My marriage. My family. My face to face discipleship. I want to reset my life with God at the center of everything and keep it that way. Teach us more of You today, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

You may be seated. As you’re seated, move down in your Bibles to verse 13 because that’s the next topic. This final section of Isaiah introduces us to the Sabbath and basically what we see there is a personal Sabbath. And now remember, Isaiah was written to covenant people that stood at the, their forefathers stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, and God made a covenant with them. And it was a Mosaic covenant, and they had to obey the letter of the law or get stoned. Period. Now, when Jesus comes, Jesus said and He starts in the Sermon on the Mount, and Paul enlarges upon it. He says that we are no longer under the letter of the law, but the Spirit of the law. At first, when the people heard that, they went, whoa, good.

And Jesus said, let me explain what I mean. The letter of the law is, if you commit adultery, then you will be killed. But the Spirit of the Law, but I say unto you, Jesus said, if a man looks in the direction of a woman with a desire to lust after her, doesn’t mean that he, fantasizes anything. He’s just on the lookout for one that he can fixate on. Jesus said he’s already, the Spirit of the Law says he’s already committed adultery and is worthy of death. And the people heard that and they said, this is impossible. Yeah, it is. The Spirit of the law is far more strict than the letter. The Spirit of the law is God’s desires of what He wants to empower within us. So, the letter of the law of the Sabbath was don’t do these few things on one day a week. The Spirit of the law is reflect God’s ownership of your time every day of the week, not just one. And enjoy the simplicity of God’s rest throughout life, not just on a Sabbath event.

The letter was simpler than the Spirit. The Spirit is transformational. And what we see is a personal Sabbath rhythm characterized Christ’s life, the disciples lives in the New Testament, the Early Church, and the notables of the Old Testament. Have you ever noticed that there is, the Old Testament’s like this, they’re killing and doing all these bad stuff and God’s burning up some and swallowing others and snaking a few, And then you have these people popping up, like Enoch and Noah and Job and David and Ezra and Daniel and whoever else is in there, Isaiah. And you go, oh, where’d they come from? What’s interesting is, the New Covenant is that God puts the same power of His Spirit that David had and Daniel had and Ezra had and Abraham had in all of us. We have the same power to live the same astounding life of faith as Abraham, as Daniel, as David, as Esther, as Ruth, as, you know what I mean. Just name anybody that pops up out of the humdrum mess of the Old Testament. And these people, not only fulfilled the letter, they saw the Spirit. And that’s why they said, with my whole heart. Not just my Saturdays, but with my whole heart. I want to serve You and love You. See, that’s what the Holy Spirit does.

It’s so much more than the strictures of the letter of the law. And it begins, our lives begin to reflect God’s ownership. And we begin having the simplicity of living a life that’s complete and wears us out, but we’re never in a hurry. It totally is exhausting. But as the exhausting, it’s like kids digging sand on the beach. They scoop that out, and it runs right back in. The closer to the water they are, they just can’t make any progress, because it just runs back in. His grace has no limit. His power has no boundaries. It just flows into our life. The more we exhaust ourselves in giving, the more He flows in.

What does that look like? This is the first of the eight little hooks. Remember I told you I built this shelf, and it was eight feet long down our hallway, at the back door of the house, and it had eight little hooks. And I have eight little hooks for you this morning. Here’s hook number one. What’s the purpose of the Sabbath? What did Jesus say about the Sabbath? He said the Sabbath was made for man to worship God. It was not a prison that God designed to put everybody in. It wasn’t a straitjacket so you wouldn’t do anything on a certain day. It wasn’t a death squad to hunt, go around and look for everybody and say, oh, you shouldn’t be doing that, it’s the Sabbath. It was a delightful offer of spiritual communion with God. Now they get the offer one day a week, we get it 24/7. It’s… the purpose is communing with God.

The second hook on the wall is, what are the promises? Do we need to rest and cease from our wearying schedules? Yes! That’s what the Old Testament picture teaches us New Testament saints, that God offers us rest in a very wearying, emotionally, and spiritually draining world we’re in, as well as physically.

Now what about the Sabbath laws? And boy, are there a lot of them. The whole Old Testament. Should we really meet on Sunday or the Sabbath day? Was that never abrogated? You know, is Saturday worship, that’s why we have Seventh day Baptists, that’s why we have Seventh day Adventists, who have returned to the Mosaic bondage. And the bigger question, what laws of God are still binding and what parts have passed away? Now, we covered that for many weeks. We’ll summarize that when we get to the third hook on the shelf.

And then the fourth one is the blessings. How do we apply personal Sabbath blessings to our lives? Just what we read in verses 13 and 14. How do we cultivate a rest? As the New American translates one of these passages we’re going to look at, a cessation from emotional weariness, from just this hurried, exhausting emotional life. How do we cultivate that? How do we make worship of the Lord special on our day of gathering? Because most people, I thought it was curious. I was sitting out, singing with you, and Phil said, let’s all stand, and I took a moment to watch. Several people didn’t stand, were finishing up what they were working on, on their little devices because it’s hard to break from the unbroken digital world we live in, even for God. We have to.., it lops over into this day when we gather on His day. So how do we get those blessings?

And what are the thieves that steal the personal sabbath rest from us? That’s the fifth hook down the shelf. A personal sabbath rest helps us to root out the contamination of media. Media drives us. It drives this frantic, don’t want to miss anything, want to have more friends than I should have, more contacts than I should have, more responsibilities than I should have. Media drives that frenzy. Which makes us very superficial.

Back to the man on the bench. He’s harnessed his industry. He’s succeeded into the billions and he’s a niner. Okay. Nine zeroes. Billionaire. But the people closest to him only know him superficially. Because he’s spread so thin that the person he’s chosen to spend all of his life with has never heard him say and has tears running down their face when for the first time in their marriage he says, I want to love you with the same sacrificial love that Christ loves His church. And she breaks into tears because she’s never heard that. He’s conquered the world. He has a superficial relationship with his family, his children, his wife. We need to repent of the pride.

Did you know there’s a pride of having this ultra-kinetic full life? I’ll tell you something, I’m a million miler in multiple airlines. There’s nothing glamorous about travel. It’s horrible to be pawed and poked and scanned and questioned and to eat stale peanuts at airline clubs. There’s nothing glamorous about it. Many people want to be busy. When the Lord says, why don’t you just deepen and fill full the life I gave you instead of longing to go, and to do, and to be something else.

Which leads us to, we’ll have a fun time on this, how do we ruthlessly eliminate? Hurry. Jesus was never in a hurry, yet He got more done than everybody with their digital devices, exponentially combined.

And how about some plans about the Sabbath? That’s our sixth stop. What are some simple, wonderful plans we can make to heighten our worship and communion with God? What are some real blessings? Some real blessings can come with some small changes in preparations. Do you remember the evening and the morning? What you did last night will greatly impact even how much you’re listening at this moment; even how much you tuned in with the music. If last night you didn’t disconnect from electronica, you’re still in it this morning. See, there’s little plans you can make.

I remember once, Bonnie and I were invited to have lunch with Ronald and Nancy Reagan in California. Now, they didn’t tell me that. The Secret Service just said, a couple that you know wants you to have lunch with them. What would you say? I said, I’m too busy. I was. I had a funeral and I was teaching seminary. The next week, the couple from church came up and said, we sent an invitation for you to come up to Ron and Nancy’s and you didn’t come. How come? There was space at the table. I said, I was too busy. Do you know what the blessings that can be ours when you come, not before Ronald Reagan, God. And you come wanting to experience Him. It’s unbelievable, and it takes plans.

Number seven. Did you know that there are pictures of the Sabbath day that most of us don’t really even think about? Did you know that over 600 of the verses of the 879 that are in the Gospel by John, did you know that over 600 of them surround God’s holidays? We know about pinching people that aren’t wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. And we know about flowers and candy for Valentine’s Day. And we know all about the five little kernels of corn with Thanksgiving. And we know all the, even Groundhog’s Day and everything else. Did you know that there are illustrations Jesus, His apostles, and all the Old Testament saints used to show the plan of God. And those plans left, that God left, are holidays, the Sabbath feast. Most people couldn’t name them, even for a game show. And every Old Testament holiday is a wonderful picture of the pathway to deepen our devotion to Jesus. And God pulls them back out and starts celebrating them when He returns in full control of Earth. Yet, we don’t think they’re important. And those pictures are astounding. And when we go through it the seven Sabbath feasts are not only an amazing picture of God’s plan for the universe, but each one of them are a different reflection of the character of Christ. And we’ll have fun with that seventh stop down the shelf.

And finally, Sabbath rest. What does God want more than anything else? What does He really want? Our minds. That will keep Him in perfect peace whose what? Mind. Is stayed on Thee. See, God wants, Colossians 3, set your, what? Minds on things above. What does God want to rest? If you can get your mind to rest, your body will because your body is run by your mind. If your body is running your mind, your appetites are driving your life, there’s no rest. It’s just endless, insatiable restlessness. But when we get reoriented with God at the center, we have rest. And what’s the key to our spiritual success? A mind that rests upon and is fixed upon the Lord God Almighty.

The question, are we hungering for God today? When I hunger for God, what are the symptoms of hungering for God? I find myself drawn to communicate with Him through the Word. And that comes first. That’s where God talks to me. I’m just irresistibly drawn. It’s kind of like, you get a little vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv [sound of a phone vibrating], and you wonder, oh, who tweeted me? Who’s texting me? Oh, I want to read it. You got your phone in your pocket or your purse? I know people, when the sound comes, they jump. They’re like Pavlov’s dogs. They just, I have this irresistible response to a previous stimuli. Do you find yourself drawn to communicate with God through the Word, where God talks to me in prayer, where I talk to God. That’s biblical praying.

Biblical praying is always connected to the Word. It’s, the Word is what defines who we’re talking to, defines how we talk to Him, defines what we say to Him, and defines how we know what He’s saying back. It’s all tied to the Word. It’s not…, prayer that’s unattached to the Word is likely to be hijacked. There’s a lot of stuff out there. A lot of…, it’s like having an unsecured Wi Fi, or leave your Bluetooth on all the time, and just have no passwords, and let anybody in, and just take over, and we call it hacking. You want to get hacked? In the spirit world, drift away from the Word of God. That is the only secure connection to the true and living God. That’s biblical praying.

What’s biblical fasting? When I hunger for God, I’m sometimes drawn, sometimes. Not, we’re not promoting Gandhi-ism. We’re not all trying to be emaciated and skin and bones and walking around with ashes on us. No. Sometimes, I’m drawn to abstain temporarily, now look at this, from the good and useful for the better and eternal. There’s so many good and useful things. There are now one trillion URLs on the internet. Google counted them. There are web bots. Google bots are crawling down all trillion of them. There is more of everything possible to experience and you buy an Oculus Rift and you’ll think you’re there. And it’s just endless. And I’m, I mean there’s a lot of bad and wicked, but if you just say the good and useful, there’s more good and useful, right now available at any moment than ever before. But, are you willing to temporarily give that up for the better and the eternal?

Another point that I covered at Gull Lake this week that just floored them. Most people don’t understand the doctrine of justification, and they certainly don’t understand rewards. Those aren’t hot topics in churches nowadays. It’s how to make money, and how to get out of debt, and how to feel good about yourself, and all that stuff. But, doctrines are waning. And I said, you know what? You’re going to stand before the Lord, and really the judgment seat of Christ is going to be, what did you do with your discretionary time? Did you do good and useful things? Because all the sins are removed, so God isn’t even going to ask us about that. He’s already, punish Jesus Christ for my sins and yours. But, is there anything wrong with knowing every sitcom, knowing every sports statistic, knowing every song, you can identify it in the first bar, and you know every songwriter and song singer, and you have all of them organized in your digital library with the right pictures and everything else that’s good and useful. Get rid of all the Gratuitous violence and sex and all the other stuff that’s out there, and the Lord will forgive and put all that on Christ. But the good and useful stuff, that will burn up at the judgment seat of Christ. All the discretionary time I spent pinning, posting, filtering, refurbishing, whatever, collecting, will burn up. And only what was better and eternal lasts forever.

And that’s what Biblical fasting is, we pause and say, Lord, am I spending way too much time restoring that old furniture or car or machinery or collecting one of every one of those things? And Biblical fasting is where we can see clearly between the good and useful and the better and eternal.

Then, this is how we tune up our spiritual lives. You buy a car or you buy anything, even a computer, and after a while it starts [not working as well]. The car doesn’t run as well, and the computer’s slower, and the digital device does funny things. They need to be tuned up. They need to be reset. And that resetting are these disciplines, the hungering for God. That’s what we’ve spent most of this year looking at. We start out the Lord’s Prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer. (Come on, turn white. There we go.) The Lord’s Prayer is seeking God by inviting Him to be at work in my life. Prayer is me inviting God in. He stands at the door and knocks. He says, I want to come in, I want to help you, I want to work in you today and we got to invite Him in. Prayer is us inviting Him in. And fasting is denying anything I need to respond, anything that’s in His way. If He keeps tripping on something in our life, I say, I don’t want that. I don’t want that tripping you up, Lord. I want that out of here. I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear you knocking. It was too loud over here. I want to get rid of that. See, fasting is when I take anything out that keeps God from being central. The loudest, the clearest, the strongest influence in my life. Fasting, hungering for God, is denying myself so I can respond to Him.

And then, this resting thing, that’s making time for God. I learn the personal Sabbath rhythm, so there’s room for God, not once a week, not every other week, not once a month, not when I go to camp or conference or retreat. Every day becomes a spiritual retreat. And every day I get to walk on the high places of the Earth with God. That’s a spiritual tune up.

That’s the purpose of the Sabbath. And what have we already seen the Sabbath is? The Sabbath was a reminder, we saw, of God who started the seven day week. God who rested the seventh day. And for us, this side of the cross, it’s not a law that I have to obey. Not a letter of a law of don’t do and do do and, and whatever. It’s the Spirit saying, ah. It’s not, Saturday, don’t go to garage sales on Saturdays or don’t buy coffee on Sunday. It’s making room for God every day in my life so that His rest permeates my life. The Sabbath is a blessing, not a burden. If you understand the Sabbath, it is the most, most liberating thing there is. I get the privilege of walking through life following God. It’s very liberating.

And I know nothing will get to me. It’s like a big windshield. Except for that, did you see the Delta flight that got in the hail and broke the windshield of the airplane at 30,000 feet? Ooh, man. God does not even get hurt by hailstones. God is in front of us, and He says nothing will come to you that I don’t allow. So as long as you walk behind Me, not only will you not miss anything good, nothing evil will befall you. If it comes, if it’s cancer or job loss, it’s not evil because I’m in front and I sent it your way. And it’s such a blessing to walk this way.

It reflects God’s ownership of my time. I want to redeem the time, Ephesians 4 says. I want to affirm my desire to redeem the time. The Sabbath renews my need to abide. Did you know when I walked out to my car, my edger was smiling at me this morning in the garage? It’s leaning in the corner and says; I can’t do anything without you. And I says, I know, and I’ve forgotten how to run you, the boys do it so much better. But my edger, without someone holding it, can’t do anything. And I renew every day that nothing happens in my life that lasts forever if God is not holding on to me and accomplishing it. Because I’m abiding in Him. And ultimately, the book of Hebrews says, the Sabbath reflects our salvation in Christ. That ultimately, we are going to rest in His presence in Heaven.

So, I’m going to conclude with this many years ago My last year of school, did you know I was in school from 1962, nonstop, constantly matriculated in courses from 1962 to 1999. There was never a year I was not in school for 37 years. Really slow learner. And in my 37th year of school, which was 1999, I was finishing tenure, doctoral program at Dallas, had just welcomed our eighth child into the world, just was speaking on several continents and doing all kinds of stuff like that. Someone handed me a book and they said, you know what? You’re burning your candle both ends in the middle. You need to read this. And it was interesting. It was a doctor who wrote prescriptions for healing the sickness of being in a hurry.

And here’s the cover of the book. Isn’t that cute? It has a parking meter expired, and the title is Simple Margin. And the premise of the book, you don’t even have to buy it, I’ll tell you what it says.

It says, this is, I’m not giving you the icon for square, this is a drawing. This is responsibilities I have in my life. Having a space around them, an emotional, chronological, spiritual buffer, margin. Most of us live life like this. They just, you can’t get a razor blade between the events. His premise is, margin. To restore emotional, physical, financial, and time reserves. We need emotional reserves. We need physical reserves. That means spend less than you make your whole life, and you’ll never be in debt. How do you like that? See? You don’t even need whatever his name is. You know, that guy. I just told you the secret. Spend less than you make. Never in debt. You need physical reserves, financial reserves, and time reserves. But this is where most of us are.

And Dr. Swenson, that’s his name, wrote for Navigator Press, the big Bible memory people. He began doing seminars for people whose ministry lives caused them to be so overloaded they were in burnout. They are purveyors of God’s grace, and they are in burnout. And they’re in emotional burnout, and physical burnout, and financial burnout, and certainly time burnout. And they have no reserves. No margin. And he wrote a series, actually, I’m only going to give you five. He wrote 175 prescriptions.

Here’s the first one. He says, we need to consciously slow the pace of life. And he tells a little story. He said, I saw, I recently saw a t shirt that says, it’s not the pace of life that worries me, it’s the sudden stop at the end. He thought, that’s not the problem. The stop at the end means I’m with my Lord forever. It’s the ferocious pace of life that’s killing us. And then he asked, is it possible to consciously slow our pace? Of course it is. The pace of our lives is our choice. Or we’ve abdicated it and allowed someone else to choose for us. We just have to say no more often. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary and right. And every year as the world spins faster and faster, we need to put the brakes on of our life and obey the speed limit of our soul. I like this. He concludes that prescription with saying, the green pastures and still waters yet await us but they’re not in the direction the treadmill is spinning us.

Okay, Rx number two. Make technology work for you, not against you and basically says this, time saving technologies don’t save times. They compress and consume time. They don’t save it. They push things closer together and use up more time. And he has a long, long section on that.

His third prescription is, I thought this was cute, throw away the alarm clock. Now this is a doctor speaking. And he says, if you wake up to an alarm every morning, it’s a good chance you’re out of God’s will. And he said, I know it’s shocking, but in light of the original equipment God provided us, an alarm clock was not part of the package. Instead, God caused our bodies, generally, to wake up when we’ve had enough sleep. Except when you’re certain ages of youth, that never wake up. Here’s one.

Number four is really interesting. He said, and he has whole chapters on this. By the way, he’s written nine books. That was his beginning bestseller book, and he’s written nine more. The one he just finished is called Contentment. And it’s a declaration that one of the greatest evangelistic tools is to learn how to be content in a salivating world that’s discontent and lusting for more. Repent of the pride of business, Rx4. The busier we appear, the greater a speck re-afforded us. While a person sitting on a lawn swing would be scorned, the speed of light jet jockey is venerated. The clock dictates the tempo of our lives. We all hurry. We involve others in our hurry. Paradoxically, we point to our lack of time with a certain pride as if that lack has something to do with the importance of us as a person. But there’s a trap here. Pride is its name. Before we can slow down and allow God to set things right in our lives, we have some confessing to do. It’s not busyness that we should honor in our midst, but love. Busyness and love are not the same. One is speed. The other is God.

Here’s his last one. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry. He’s talking about John Ortberg. He used to be the teaching pastor at Willow Creek, and now he’s out at Menlo Park in California. And when he was going to assume this position at a rapidly growing church, he asked a very wise mentor for advice, and had an appointment, and this wise old man in the ministry said, here’s my advice. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. So, Ortberg [wrote that down]. And he looked up, and he said, yep, what’s the next priority? And the man said, that’s it. Priority means one. You can’t have multiple priorities. Any company that has five priorities doesn’t understand what priority means. Priority means one.

So, what he says is, three aspects of this truth strike me. How simple it is. How difficult it is. How ruthless it is. Ruthless indicates the best word to use in this context because no other degree of intention is sufficient to accomplish the goal.

Let’s turn to Bible Psalm 46:10. I’m going to read this to you. I hope it’s the last thing on your mind of what you remember. This is what the Lord’s prescription, God prescribes. That was what Swenson prescribed as a doctor. This is what God prescribes. And by the way, writing in the early 1960s, A. W. Tozer diagnosed the lack of reverence in the Church with these words in the knowledge of the holy. He said, the words of Psalm 46:10, be still and know that I am God, mean next to nothing in our self-confident, bustling worshippers of the middle of the 20th century. That dates him. In those 50 years since Tozer wrote those words, the irreverence of the Church has only increased. What does it say?

Be still and know that I am God. By the way, that’s New King James, New International, and ESV. And the New American says, cease striving and know that I am God. And there’s a reference to the footnote in the NAS. And the footnote says, cease equals let go and relax from striving. Wow.

Let’s all stand. And as we stand, and I pray, what’s the purpose of the Sabbath? To reflect God’s ownership of my time. Does your schedule reflect God’s ownership of your time? Does my schedule reflect God’s ownership of my time? Are you enjoying the simplicity that God’s rest affords? Am I enjoying? See, that’s, this is very real. And the prescription for success in America is also, according to cardiologists, a prescription for a heart attack. Is it worth it? Be still, God says. That’s the way you know Me.

If after I pray you need to talk to someone, we’re going to have godly men and women here at the front. If you are one that makes a choice in your life and you want someone to hold you accountable, they are willing. They’ll pray with you, remember you, and check up on you. Or, while we’re standing here, you can make choices. Let’s bow before the Lord.

Father, I pray that someone here this morning would decide to return You to the center of their life. They want to reflect that You own their time. And they want to ruthlessly eliminate whatever is keeping them from what You designed and left us here to do. And I pray that the simplicity of Your rest would more and more characterize our lives that are surrendered to You. In the precious name of Jesus we pray. And all God’s people said, amen. God bless you as you go.

NOTES

This morning we are turning to Isaiah 58, where we see two ancient and powerful truths applied by God Himself. This passage is God applying Biblical fasting and a personal Sabbath rest.

How’s Your Hunger For God Today?

Several weeks ago we began to study about Hungering for God and saw this longing after Jesus with a heart of love and devotion is called Biblical Fasting.

Biblical Fasting, or the voluntary abstinence from good and right things such as food, is a spiritual discipline, which has fallen upon hard times in modern Christianity.

So I repeat what we have learned:

In the Old Testament we can see that Biblical Fasting was an urgent call to get serious about Knowing God.

In the New Testament we see Biblical Fasting was an ancient spiritual discipline to reschedule my life with God at the center instead of dining, relaxing, amusing, accumulating, advancing, securing, and a multitude of other things that are not wrong – just deadly to intimacy with the Almighty.

In the Early Church of Acts and the Epistles we see demonstrated that this Hunger for God shaped their lives, their ministry, their worship, and their outreach.

In the Early Church we see Biblical fasting is a powerful way to yield every part of my life to God’s supremacy.

Conclusion: Biblical Fasting is an immediate way to declare your allegiance to God’s way and glory in every day of your life!

 

Isaiah 58:6-14 (NKJV)

“Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?

⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’

“If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, ¹⁰ If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul,

Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. ¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. ¹² Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.

¹³ “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day

 

, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the Lord honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words,

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.”

Pray

 

Now move down in your Bibles to v. 13, to the next topic God illustrates.

This final section of Isaiah introduces us to the Sabbath.

A Personal Sabbath = Reflecting God’s Ownership of My Time & Enjoying the Simplicity of God’s Rest

We have been examining the Sabbath Day from Creation Week, then Mosaic Law, then from Christ’s words in the Gospels. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at the following elements of understanding Biblical truths about the Sabbath:

Sabbath Purposes

What did Jesus say about the Sabbath?

As Lord of Sabbath He said one thing: The Sabbath was made for man to worship God. It was not a prison, a straight jacket, or a death squad to hunt Sabbath breakers; no, it was a delightful offer of spiritual communion with God.

Sabbath Promises

Do we need to rest and to cease from our wearying schedules?

Yes, and that is what this Old Testament picture teaches us New Testament saints! God offers rest!

Sabbath Laws

Should we really meet on Sunday or on the Sabbath Day, which is Saturday? What laws of God are still binding and what parts have passed away?

Sabbath Blessings

How do we apply personal Sabbath blessings to our lives?

How do we cultivate a rest, a cessation from weariness in our lives?

How do we make worship of the Lord special on our Day of Gathering, the Lord’s Day?

Sabbath Thieves

What takes away the blessings and promises of the rest God offers? This section is an examination of what robs us of the blessings of a personal Sabbath rest. A Personal Sabbath Rest:

Helps us root out the contamination of the media;

Helps us root out the contamination of superficiality in our culture;

Helps us counter the claims we are required to worship on the Sabbath day;

Helps us repent of the pride of busyness;

Helps us “ruthlessly eliminate hurry”

Sabbath Plans

What are some simply wonderful plans we can make to heighten our worship, and communion with God?

Some real blessings can come with some small changes and some preparations.

Sabbath Pictures

What are the illustrations that Jesus, His apostles, and all the Old Testament saints used to show the plan of God?

Those plans God left are God’s Holidays, the Sabbath Feasts.

Each Old Testament holiday is a wonderful picture and pathway to deepening our devotion to Jesus.

Sabbath Rest

What does God want more than anything? Our minds.

What is the key to our spiritual success? A mind that rests upon and is fixed upon the Lord God Almighty!

Are We Hungering for God Today?

When I hunger for God it is displayed in three areas of my life.

When I hunger for God I find myself drawn to communicate with Him through the Word (where God talks to me), and Prayer (where I talk to God).

That is Biblical Praying.

When I hunger for God I am sometimes drawn to abstain temporarily from good and useful things for the better and eternal things.

That is Biblical Fasting.

How would you like to tune-up your spiritual life? God has left three basics that always spur spiritual growth. They are the elements that reflect our Hunger for God.

 

Tuning Up Our Spiritual Lives

Praying: that is Seeking God. Inviting God to be at work in my life.

Fasting: that is Hungering for God. Denying myself to respond to God.

Resting: that is Making Time for God. Learning a personal Sabbath rhythm so there is room for God each day in our lives.

Making time for God is what we long for the more we know Him and love Him. Just as the whole law is fulfilled by love, so we see in that 4^th command that the Sabbath reminds us that love demands intimacy.

If you love someone you seek that closeness that no one else can have. When we love God, He wants us to give Him a closeness in our lives that nothing else and no one else can ever have. He is most precious. He is most desires. We are always looking for ways to spend time with Him.

First, what did Jesus say about the Sabbath?

As Lord of Sabbath He said one thing: The Sabbath was made for man to worship God. It was not a prison, a straight jacket, a death squad to hunt Sabbath breakers; no, it was a delightful offer of spiritual communion with God. That is what we can call:

 

Sabbath Purposes

Considering a personal Sabbath rest heightens the paradox we see in Christ’s life.

Jesus labored to exhaustion, yet He never ceased to rest in God, God’s Word, and God’s plan.

Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for mankind.

It is a gift from God to rest our wearied, frantic, stretched-too-thin lives, but it is a choice, not a command.

Jesus lived the perfect life, accomplished more than any human ever did, and yet Jesus was never in a HURRY!

He was Purposed but never PUSHED.

He was focused but never FRANTIC.

He was Resolved but never RUSHED!

Did you notice this week the pace of your life? How does the increasingly overwhelming speed of life impact us as we come here to worship God?

The essence of a godly life and home is the spiritual condition of the occupants. Where are you today?

God’s Word can challenge all of us in this study by examining what we are really doing when we live such hurried lives. In the days ahead we will see some truths about resting in God that are reflected in the concept of a personal Sabbath rest intentionally chosen in our lives.

 

What is the Sabbath?

The New Testament Sabbath is God inviting us to set aside time with Him because we love Him. Looking to the days ahead as we dig into the Scriptures, let me just share my conclusions with you.

1. The Sabbath is a reminder of God’s great act of Creation. Sabbath observance was not stated anywhere in the creation account in Genesis 1-2. But, in Exodus, Ezekiel and Nehemiah the Sabbath Day is stated to be a sign to Israel, not to the Church.
2. The Sabbath is not a law that I must obey. The New Testament teaches that all the Old Testament rules regulating Sabbath Day behavior were part of the ceremonial law that God gave to Israel. The moral law is repeated in the New Testament and is binding upon all believers of all ages; but the ceremonial law is not repeated in the New Testament and is not binding upon New Testament believers. The system of sacrifices, the system of a Levitical priesthood, and all the elements of the ceremonial law system including Sabbath Day behavior, passed away when Christ came to bring the New Covenant.
3. The Sabbath is a blessing not a burden. So the Sabbath Day has blessings, but an unbiblical observance leads to bondage. That is what we will see in the days ahead. God wants us to understand the Sabbath rest He has given both in salvation and in our rhythms of life.
4. The Sabbath is a reflection of God’s ownership of my time. Thus it is not a day we observe, but an attitude that flows from a relationship. It has nothing to do with shopping, traveling, or activities; and everything to do with knowing God, longing for His Word, and delighting in His His Presence. 1 Cor. 6:19-20
5. The Sabbath is an affirmation of my desire to redeem the time. Our time investments as New Testament believers should show a conscious move away from endless time invested in work for physical profit, and growing choices for regular time invested in knowing God better each day. Ephesians 4
6. The Sabbath is a conscious renewal of my need to abide. Sabbath observance becomes a daily lifestyle of enjoying moments of resting in Christ. Any temporary daily cessation from work is primarily to open time for reflecting our desires for intimacy with our Savior and Creator. We don’t live to work every moment, we live to know Christ and work hard to fulfill our Biblical responsibilities in life.
7. The Sabbath is a reflection of my salvation in Christ. In the Epistles Paul explicitly says that the Old Testament ceremonies were shadows of Christ that are past, now that He has come (Gal. 4:10-11; Col. 2:16-17). When Paul wrote about sins to avoid, he never stated sins of not observing the Sabbath, rather he stated the opposite. Paul says beware of Sabbath observance that leads to bondage.

 

How do we transition into the slower traffic lane of life if we are speeding today? A gifted medical doctor wrote an amazing book 17 years ago that has become a best seller and spawned 8 other books. I have read this first book Margin, several times as well as some of the sequels.

This book is worth reading for any stage in life.

The essence of this book is prescriptions for dealing with hurried life.

Or more simply what Dr. Swenson calls:

 

Prescriptions[1] For Healing The Hurry Sickness

As the world around us accelerates, our energies wane.

But we are not defenseless victims.

The following suggestions will help replace frenzy with the blessings of a Sabbath rhythm which offers, in Christ, both peace and rest.

 

Rx 1: Consciously Slow the Pace of Life

I recently saw a T-shirt that read: “It’s not the pace of life that worries me. It’s the sudden stop at the end.”

After contemplation, I decided the exact opposite is true. “The sudden stop at the end” means a home going that, quite frankly, I look forward to. But the pace of life is deadly!

Is it possible to consciously slow our pace? Of course it is. We just have to say no more often. It is not easy, but it is necessary–and it is right.

Every year the world spins faster. So put on the brakes and obey the speed limit of your soul.

The green pastures and still waters yet await us—but not in the direction the treadmill is spinning.[2]

 

Rx 2: Make Technology Work for You and Not against You

Remember: Timesaving technologies don’t save time. Instead, they compress and consume time. Recognizing that technology is responsible for much of our time-urgency problem, it is appropriate to be skeptical.

Always make technology work for you and not against you. If you can’t control it, don’t trust it. “The high-tech world of clocks and schedules, computers and programs, was supposed to free us from a life of toil and deprivation,” explains technology critic Jeremy Rifkin in Time Wars, “yet with each passing day the human race becomes more…exploited and victimized.”[3]

 

Rx 3:Throw Away the Alarm Clock

Psychiatrist Paul Meier provocatively asserts, “If you wake up to an alarm every morning, there is a good chance that you are out of the will of God.” Radical thinking!

But he is simply trying to shock us into rethinking the will of God in light of the original equipment provided at creation. An alarm clock was not a part of the package. Instead, God caused our bodies generally to wake up when we have had enough sleep.

Now, however, that natural process never gets a chance to complete itself.

 

Rx 4: Repent of the Pride of Busyness

The busier we appear, the greater the respect afforded us. While the person sitting on a lawn swing is scorned, the speed-of-light jet jockey is venerated.

“The clock dictates the tempo of our lives,” explains Mayo Gilson, M.D. “We all hurry, involving others in our hurry. Paradoxically, we point at our lack of time with a certain pride, as if that lack has something to do with our importance as a person. [4]

There is a trap here, and pride is its name. Before we can slow down and allow God to set things right in our hearts, we have some confessing to do. It is not busyness that we should honor in our midst, but love.

Busyness and love are not the same. One is speed; the other is God.

 

Rx 5: Ruthlessly Eliminate Hurry

When John Ortberg moved from California to Illinois to assume a position at the rapidly growing Willow Creek Community Church, he first asked a wise mentor for advice. “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life,” said his friend. Ortberg wrote down the advice and then waited for the next suggestion. “There is nothing else,” explained the sage.[5]

Three aspects of this truth strike me: How simple it is, how difficult it is, and how ruthless it is. Ruthless is indeed the best word to use in this context, because no other degree of intention is sufficient to accomplish such a goal.

 

What God Prescribes in Psalm 46:10

Writing in the early 1960s, A.W. Tozer diagnosed a lack of reverence in the church. In the opening pages of The Knowledge of the Holy, he wrote, “The words, ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshipper in this middle period of the twentieth century.” In those fifty-plus years since Tozer wrote those words, the irreverence of the church has only worsened.

NKJV, NIV & ESV

Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Cease (Let go, relax) striving and know that I am God;

 

[1] Richard A. Swenson, M.D., The Overload Syndrome. Colorado Springs, Colorado: NAVPRESS, 1998, p 123-33.

[2] Psalm 23:2

[3] Jeremy Rifkin, Time Wars: The primary Conflict in Human History (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 223-224.

[4] Mayo D. Gilson, “Redeeming the Time,” News and Reports-CMS,March/April 1988, p. 81.

[5] John Ortbert, The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Discipines for Ordinary people (Grand rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), p.81.

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