Rest

Kevin Beck

Redeeming Rest • Sermon • Submitted 7 months ago • Presented 7 months ago

Deuteronomy 5:12–15

Sabbath and Rest

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Big Idea: Sabbath is an act of resistance against the forces of restlessness where we find rest for our souls.

Notes

Transcript

We are in the middle of a series called Redeeming Rest. We’ve been looking at how we can restore the ancient biblical practice of Sabbath in a way that leads to what Jesus calls “rest for our souls”.

I read a true story recently about a woman’s grandmother. Grandma lived in British Columbia, a place impacted by the Gold Rush of the 19th century. Even in her middle years of the late 20th century, men with lingering gold fever still went into the mountains where she lived to try and dredge whatever they could from river silt.

One day grandma was in her backyard polishing a large stone that sat in her garden. It was much too large to move. It was round and smooth, embedded with glittery chunks of mineral. She polished it with sandpaper, her logic being that if she couldn’t move it, she might as well beautify it.

But as she sanded, she noticed a thin sifting of gold gathering on the stone. Her heart began to race. She sanded faster and faster, leaning her whole body into it, and more gold appeared. She began sanding the rock as if it were a blood stain, every fiber of her being bent to the task. Gold accumulated rapidly.

In one fell swoop she caught gold fever. With perfect clarity she understood why men squandered everything they had - homes and farms and families - to spend their lives grubbing through stream beds. For now she had it too: gold fever. She was going to be rich.

In her fevered restlessness she stopped to rest for a moment, and that’s when she noticed something wrong with her wedding ring. The top looked like it always did. But the underside, the part that nestled in the crease where her finger joined her palm, wasn’t. The band had become as thin as a filament.

She had nearly sanded her wedding ring off. All that gold was merely the filings of her ring. In her restlessness to become rich, her prized heirloom was reduced to dust. It was truly fool’s gold.

We might chuckle at a story like that, except for the fact that we all participate in a similar restlessness. In the book of Ecclesiastes the author writes, Ecclesiastes 1:8 “All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.” He recognizes this very human condition that no matter how much we see, no matter how much we hear, it never fills us up. There is a restlessness to grab more, do more, be more.

Grandma’s story makes me sad because I’ve seen much of her story repeated in my own life. I’ve squandered true treasure in pursuit of dust. I see times that I didn’t stop to play with my kids because I was too busy. Times I didn’t linger with Julie because I was eager to get on with the next project. Moments when I could have been more available to a friend, but I was in a hurry, except I can’t remember for what. Restless, sanding away my wedding band.

Most of us live life in a hurry, always rushing to get from where we are to where we think we need to be. Always checking our watch. Leaning on the gas peddle, angry that the driver in front of us doesn’t share our sense of urgency. Fuming as we wait in checkout lines and construction zones. We’re restless, sanding down our wedding rings.

What we need is a way to fight the restlessness embedding in our culture and in our own soul so that we can find real rest. For this, God has given the Sabbath. The idea I hope you will capture this morning is that Sabbath is an act of resistance against the internal and external forces of restlessness where we find rest for our souls. It’s a cure for sanding down our wedding rings.

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

We looked at this passage the first week of the series where I focused on Sabbath as a way of reclaiming our God-given identity. I want to delve a little deeper this morning and show Sabbath as an act of resistance. Let me give some backstory.

The Ten Commandments restated in Deuteronomy were given to the children of those people who were rescued from slavery in Egypt. Their parents and numerous great-grandparents had spent 400 years slaving away at making bricks to build storehouse cities for Egypt - places where the powerful and privileged could store more stuff.

In Exodus 5 we learn that pharoah is a cruel oppressor who demanded more for less.

Exodus 5:7–8 “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously”

Exodus 5:9 “Let heavier work be laid on them”

Exodus 5:11 “Go and get straw yourselves, wherever you can find it; but your work will not be lessened in the least.”

Exodus 5:13 “The taskmasters were urgent, saying, “Complete your work, the same daily assignment as when you were given straw.”

Exodus 5:14 “And the supervisors of the Israelites, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and were asked, “Why did you not finish the required quantity of bricks yesterday and today, as you did before?”

Egypt had an economic system built on the back of slaves while the elites and powerful rested. Slaves didn’t get any rest. Their value was only in what they produced.

So here, as the Israelites are about to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, the Sabbath command is re-stated, but now with a different emphasis. In Exodus 20, Sabbath was based on the Lord’s rest, now it’s based on the Lord’s rescue. The emphasis shifts from creation to liberation, from rhythm to resistance. The point being driven home to this generation of Israelites is, You’re not in Egypt anymore. You are part of a new kingdom with a new king. There is no more daily quota to fulfill. No more taskmasters. As you move into the land I’m giving you, be sure to remember that you are not to become a slave to productivity, nor are you to enslave others in it. Everyone equally gets to rest from their restless pursuits.

As we look at this, we realize that we have never been under the yoke of slavery like Israel had. We’ve not be literally enslaved by anyone. Yet, we have all been slaves. Pharoah and Egypt serve as archetypes in scripture. They are symbolic of all empires and societies down through the ages that make production the highest ideal, a goal that we sacrifice everything - our families, our health, our friends - to achieve. We live in a modern day Egypt with this embedded culture of restlessness. We are all drawn to the temptation to sand down our wedding rings for things that have no lasting value. Let me drawn out three things very quickly where Sabbath helps us resist the unholy, destructive restlessness of our age.

Work

First, Sabbath helps us resist the restlessness caused by too much work. We are literally working ourselves to death. The Japanese have a word for this: karoshi - death by overwork.

I know there is a stereotype that young people don’t work, but the facts say otherwise. Americans work on average:

137 more hours per year than the Japanese

260 more hours than the British

499 more hours than the French

The great Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel, says that Sabbath means we not only rest from work, but we rest from even thinking about work. How often does our mind race thinking either about the week just passed or the week ahead, when we should be resting? Sabbath helps us get off the restless hamster wheel of productivity so that we may enter restfulness.

Stuff

Second, Sabbath helps us resist the restlessness cause by too many things. We have more than ever before. Americans today spend 2-3 times more on goods and services than our grandparents did. Our homes, on average, are 3 times larger and full of twice as many things as theirs. It’s estimated that the average - not wealthy - home in America has 300,000 items in it. Ours does, and it all has to be dusted!

While we don’t build supply cities like in Egypt, we have built 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage buildings. We have so much stuff that we have to rent space to store it because it no longer fits in our homes. Contrast this to the millions of people worldwide, and even in our own country, who can barely put food on their table. In our age of acquisition, Sabbath guards our heart from the restlessness of desiring too many things.

Joy

Finally, Sabbath helps us resist the restlessness caused by too little joy. For all the things that we have acquired and possessed, they have not made us happy. Sociologists tell us that the happiness levels in the West hit their peak in the 1950s and have been in steady decline ever since. Curiously, this is about the same time that many states began abolishing blue laws that protected the Sabbath so that Sunday became just another day.

The joylessness of our own culture hit me hard when I returned from my first trip to Kenya. While in Kenya I witnessed, literally, thousands of people on every road and street walking in the hopes of finding enough work to buy food for that day. Yet, everywhere I went, people were happy. Smiles were plentiful. When I returned home, I went shopping with Julie at Walmart. As we walked down the toothpaste aisle it struck me that we have more options available than people in Kenya would ever see or be able to afford, yet no one around me was smiling at all. The restlessness of our life and culture ensures that we never have time to stop and acknowledge all our blessings. We are constantly being reminded through advertising of all we don’t have. Stopping to Sabbath helps us restore our joy.

Rest as resistance

Egypt tells you that you have to work these hours to get ahead, that you have to to reach a certain standard of living, that you have to participate in its slave-driving culture. It tells you that this is “just how it is”. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Sabbath rest is an act of resistance. It is an act of defiance against pharoah and his empire. It is a way of saying with your whole body, “enough”. Enough work. Work is a good thing, but it’s not THE thing. Enough stuff. Stuff isn’t bad, but most of us have more than enough. Sabbath rest is a way to break our addiction to the gods of accumulation and accomplishment.

Sabbath rest is an act of resistance against external forces. Our culture isn’t all evil, yet it runs at a sabbathless, rhythmless, dry your soul out kind of pace. So, it will require intentionality to live differently. You will have to say ‘no’ to the culture forces like phones, social media, shopping, bringing work home, chores, and errand running. Sabbath helps you resist the powers and principalities that would deny you rest.

Sabbath rest is an act of resistance against internal forces. If you read the story of Israel in the OT you will see that God got Israel out of Egypt, then spent the rest of the time trying to get Egypt out of Israel. Egypt isn’t only all around us, it is in us. To truly rest we must resist the internal restlessness of our fallen heart - greed, envy, jealousy, discontentment, coveting. Sabbath protects you from falling prey to your own fallenness.

The good news is that, in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, God has established his king - and he is nothing like pharoah. He is a Sabbath-keeping, Sabbath-commanding Savior who does not enslave but liberates. Jesus says of himself that he is Lord of the Sabbath. This doesn’t merely mean that he is in some way the boss of the Sabbath, but that the whole purpose of the Sabbath is found in him. The Bible describes his death and resurrection as a kind of new exodus that delivers us from the slave-master pharoah of sin and death. He is the one who gives us rest from the restlessness of our souls. In Jesus we can stop sanding down our wedding rings.

The author of the book of Hebrews writes, Hebrews 4:9 “So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God;” Jesus is offering rest for your soul. (next steps slide)

If you’d like some help is establishing a Sabbath habit I’ve created a simplified guide. You can access it with the link or QR code on the screen.

I am absolutely convinced that the call to Sabbath is for our time. We desperately need rest. Rest from anxiety. Rest from fear. Rest from a culture that says your value is in your productiveness. In this age of skyrocketing mental illness and social outrage, perhaps the most healing and holistic thing we can do is to simply rest.

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