Sunday 11 • 18 • 18

We're now going to turn our attention to God's Word and Paul is going to come and read our passage. Thanks, Paul.

Six days shall work be done. But on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It's a Sabbath of the Lord in all You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. — Leviticus 23:3, 19:30, 26:2

Word of the Lord. Would you join me in prayer together? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth, the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight. Lord, You are our rock and our fortress and our Redeemer. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

So probably the best book I read this summer when I was on my summer sabbatical that the church gave me was a book called The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan, and he tells this story about his wife's great grandmother who grew up in the Yukon Territory of Western Canada.

Now, this is not very familiar to me, but apparently the Yukon Territory, Western Canada, experienced the same kind of gold rush that California did, where prospectors from the East came searching, hoping to strike it rich on their fortune, panning for gold, mining for gold, and thinking like this is going to make things work. And so she lived in this area of the Yukon territory where her house, out in front of her house, there's a gigantic boulder. And as over the years, she began to realize like there's no getting rid of this boulder. It's just too big to remove from the front yard and began to sort of use this as the centerpiece of her garden and plant things around it and sort of make it kind of beautiful and try to just include it. Like, this is part of my yard.

Well, one day, she decides she's going to start actually trying to beautify this by polishing the rock to try to even bring out some of the beauty. So she's out in the front yard, and she begins to polish the rock. And as she does so, she starts seeing little tiny gold flakes. And the realization begins to dawn on her, gold? And so she scrubs harder. And as she's polishing, more gold flakes. And she's suddenly overcome with this sense of gold rush fever, and she's like, all these years, this boulder has been sitting in my yard, and now I discover there's gold in this rock. And she does so until she begins to get tired, and so she takes a break and wipes her brow. And as she does so, she looks at the back of her wedding ring and her heart sinks because her wedding ring had been worn down to almost a thread. As she was scrubbing away furiously at this rock, the gold dust she was seeing was from her own ring.

Now, I think that's a great parable for us. I think that is a fantastic parable for us because we are so prone, just like the grandmother, to erode precious, irreplaceable things in our lives in pursuit of extracting something that's not really there. We're so prone to squander treasures we have in pursuit of what is really dust. And I think there's nothing could be more no other area of our life could that be more true than with regard to our time, the time that God has given us.

We're winding down our study of the book of Leviticus, and we've walked through this since August. I'm surprised any of you are still here. But as we do so, we're now coming to kind of the last section. And as we've walked through Leviticus, we've noticed that it begins with God saying there's a sacred place. That's the tabernacle. There are sacred actions. Those are the sacrifices we walk through. There are sacred people. Those are the priests. And finally, we're looking at this last section where there is sacred time and so today and two more Sundays following, we're going to look at sacred time. Today is Sabbath. The next time, feast of Israel and then later, we're going to look at the Jubilee year.

And the reason we're doing this, I think of all the parts of Leviticus, maybe this is most radical for us, most difficult for us because we are a people and I speak very, not generally but personally to our church. We're a people who have a very difficult relationship with our calendars and our time.

The Sabbath

The Sabbath, this concept, the Sabbath, that word may be a new word for you. Sabbath is Hebrew for rest, as in stop. And it's part of it's one of the 10 Commandments. It's commandment number five where God says to His people, You are going to stop. You're going to rest. I command you to rest. 10 Commandments mandate one twenty four hour day, and Jewish community celebrated this as a twenty four hour period of not working. It was a Saturday, a Sabbath day given to the Lord. And this is a big idea in Leviticus. We just read a few verses, and those last two that are exactly the same, I could have had Paul, our reader, read multiple versions.

The word Sabbath is repeated 26 times in these three chapters, 23 through 25. It is a big, big idea. So why Sabbath? What do we have in view when we're talking about the Sabbath? Did you know that there are actually in Scripture two versions of the 10 Commandments? Two places where the 10 Commandments appear in your Bible, and they are the same all except for command number four with regard to the Sabbath. And I want to look at both of these really briefly.

In Leviticus chapter 20, we find the 10 Commandments, and this is what it says for commandment number four:

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days will you labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You will not do any work. All the people in your household, all the animals will do no work. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy. — Leviticus 20

The pattern for Sabbath, the reason for Sabbath given here goes all the way back to creation. You rest because God rested. You are to rest because God rested.

Now this is a lot of irony in that. Can you feel the irony? Because we're to imitate God who needs no rest, to remember that we who are created and not God need rest. We rest, in other words, we imitate God so that we stop trying to be God. We stop trying to push and go and work and strive. In doing so, we mirror divine behavior in showing that we have limitations and embracing the fact that we're human, that we don't have the capacity to do everything, know everything, be everywhere, and make everything happen. This command calls us to take hold of the fact that we're made from dust. We're like little clay pots. And if those are stretched or pushed, they can break. That's not true of God.

But the character of God we know is that God never needs sleep. He never slumbers. He never gets tired. He never gets hangry. He never gets burned out or worn out. He never gets overwhelmed with choices. He never gets overwhelmed with empathy. He never gets exhausted. He doesn't run ragged. He doesn't require a good night's sleep. God is complete without rest. And that is not true for the rest of creation.

All living things—goats and beetles and flies and lizards—all of them have an off switch. All of them need sleep. All of them need rest. But I think what's different for humans than goats and lizards and butterflies and beetles is that we, of all the other living creatures, we're the only one who thinks we don't. We're the only one who's tempted to push our limits, to say surely in busyness there's more fruitfulness, that I can defy the limits that God's given me as a human person, and I could push through this.

And so God, this is fascinating, God both knowing our need and knowing our folly, He takes the lead. He's like a parent who's got a toddler who lays down for a nap with the toddler, knowing that the toddler will fall asleep. The one who needs no rest does this, so that we will embrace it, so that we will rest. Sabbath, therefore, in Exodus is a return back to creation, back to Eden, imitating God and what God does.

Two Versions of the Sabbath Commandment

But the other version of the 10 Commandments differs in only one place. This is the only place in the 10 Commandments where there's a difference in wording, and it's in Deuteronomy chapter five:

Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. On it, you shall do no work. You, your son, daughter... You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. — Deuteronomy 5

Remember to whom Leviticus was written. These words were written to a people who had suffered for four hundred years in the land of Egypt as slaves. Think about this. The commandment comes to us to Sabbath with this justification: you were slaves. There was once a time when you were denied any choice between work and rest. That was someone else's business, and that person always chose work. The choice was made for you day in, day out. The point was reinforced with whips. You didn't have a decision about, I want to cut off early today. I need a nap. I need a break from this. Every day was work. Every day was work. Rest was for other people. Rest was for Pharaoh.

And you worked, so Pharaoh didn't have to. But the problem was Pharaoh had lots of gigantic ambitions, lots of building plans, lots of things for you to make. And so to make sure that you didn't take a break, Pharaoh put these taskmasters over you, who with whips reinforced this command: you will not stop. You must keep going.

Now what did God do? This is the story of the book of Exodus. God drowned them all. Right? Exodus reads like a little shop of horrors that God sends on Egypt, and he's super creative. There are plagues of gnats, and plagues of locusts, and the river turns to blood, and the firstborn in every household is killed. The angel passes over. But in the last act, what happens? God leads His people through the Red Sea, the Egyptian army coming after them, and He causes the walls of water that raised up to fall and collapse upon the Egyptian army and kill them all. He drowns them all.

And here's the question: People, you really want to go back to Egypt? Is there something you're nostalgic for back there? You missed the whips? You missed never being able to take a break?

See, here's the logic of the Sabbath command in Deuteronomy: Don't revive what God's removed. Don't gather and piece back together what God has smashed and scattered. God got rid of all that. Don't put yourself under a yoke that God has broken with His own hands and cast aside. Why would you ever want to be a slave again?

See, slaves have no choice. They have no choice in what they do. And the refusal to rest amounts to us saying, "Slavery is a great idea. I'm willing to go back into that." To refuse the Sabbath is, in effect, to spurn God's gift of freedom. It's to resume willingly what we once cried out for God to deliver us from.

Slaves by definition have no rest. God calls His people to live in the freedom He's given them. Observe the Sabbath. Rest.

The Two Traditions of the Sabbath

So some summary here. Exodus, the first one, looks back to creation. Deuteronomy looks back to deliverance. Exodus says, "Follow God, imitate God—God who needs no rest, who lays down for a nap, and calls you to do the same." Deuteronomy says, "No, observe the Sabbath because you're not a slave. God has set you free."

And then see, this is what we read in Leviticus 23, which we read today. Leviticus is like taking out a high wire. It's like this really matters. Twenty-six times in these chapters, it's like this is a gift. This is a gift.

The Gospel Principle Behind the Sabbath

See, here's the gospel principle behind the Sabbath command, and I want you to really hear this. The gospel principle: God is saying this to his people, "You are most holy. You are most holy when you rest. You're most holy when you stop."

See, we think modern people in the church think holiness is found in being active for God, in being busy, in doing lots of things that make God pleased with you, and that's what holiness is. But see, this is what we find here.

Sabbath speaks to the Gospel in this way. The gospel is always and only about a God who initiates with sinners, not about sinners who get God to like them. The gospel is always and only about a God who rescues, not people who are worthy of rescue. The Gospel is always and only about a God who does the redeeming. We are entirely passive in our salvation.

You see, this is what we see in the Sabbath principle. God is saying, "My people will be holy for one and only one reason, because I make them so. And you are called to do what? Rest in it. Simply enter into it and rest."

Applying Sabbath Today

Now, I know when you think about the word Sabbath and these commands that I've shown you and walk through these passages, the question is, "What do we do with this? What do people in Raleigh in 2018 do with this?" Because we're not Israelites in the year fifteen hundred BC who received these commands for the first time. How do we think about this?

We've talked in Leviticus as we walked through, "How do we make decisions about what are these things we apply today in the same way? And what are the things that we're like, 'No, that actually was for those people in that particular time and place?'" And here's what I want to point you to. I want to point you back to these guys. Remember these guys? My Russian nesting dolls. I've just loved playing with dolls during this series on Leviticus because these Russian nesting dolls, I've used these to introduce the idea of typology. Typology is symbolism that's repeated where God is making a point.

So let's take the second, the second to the littlest guy here or girl, right? So the second to the littlest doll—and this is the Sabbath commands that we've heard. But we've said, these don't just point us. It's not just a command floating in space out there. It actually points us back to the very beginning of the Bible, and actually all the way through to the end of the Bible, the very purpose for which we're created.

So the Sabbath command comes to us, and it points us back to Eden. The Sabbath command points us back to Eden, not just because God rests at the end of His creation, but because God dwelt with people who were naked and unashamed, and they walked with God, and they were fulfilled in that with Him. They were at peace with Him. They enjoyed Sabbath with God. This is what's echoed to us in the Sabbath command. Enjoy Eden again. Remember, this is how this God relates to you.

But then it looks forward. It looks forward to Jesus. Jesus came and called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath. And He made these incredible invitations like:

Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I'll give you Sabbath.

Now, why do we say that Jesus brings Sabbath? What is it about Jesus and His call to us that invites us to rest? It surely doesn't mean we stop doing everything. It means this: when we come to Jesus, He invites us to come based on nothing that we bring. Charles Spurgeon said, "The only thing that you bring to your salvation is the sin that makes it necessary." There's nothing we contribute. A person's relative goodness or badness doesn't even move the needle on the scale of divine merit. Only Jesus does. And He comes and gives us His perfect life and gives His death and resurrection so that sinners like me and sinners like you are invited to come in and experience full reconciliation with God.

Jesus says, "Come, enter my rest. Come and lay down your doing." There is nothing we can do to make God love us anymore or less because of the cross. Jesus is our Sabbath.

Because of that, the early church began to exercise the Lord's Day, the Sabbath Day, not on a Saturday, but on a Sunday. John in the book of Revelation calls it the Lord's Day. John recorded his visions, and so the early church began saying, "Sundays, the day that Jesus was raised from the dead, isn't that a great day for us to come together, enjoy, and remember the rest that Jesus gives us?"

The early church began celebrating this because they were in dress rehearsal. Every week they were in dress rehearsal for the final and complete Sabbath of God. When Jesus returns and makes all things new, and in one moment of incredible transformation, unites heaven and earth where there's no more tears and no more striving and no more sweat, and no more calluses, and no more calendar conflicts, and no more busyness, and no more multitasking? Can you wait?

To Sabbath is to begin entering into, begin practicing your life, entering into the gigantic arc of all of Scripture, which from the very beginning told us you're made for God and being with Him, and ultimately you're going to be with Him and enjoy Him forever, and your joy cups will overflow. Entering into Sabbath, the invitation of the Bible, the invitation of Leviticus is inviting us into the grand storyline and to experience now what Jesus offers us in an ultimate sense.

Do We Need This?

Do we need this? I mean, don't we live like enslaved people all the time who are trying to be God? And we're always pushing through our limits, and we're doing way too much. Here's two ways that I know that we as a congregation need this.

One is: what's the biggest complaint in Raleigh, North Carolina? Everybody's complaint and badge of honor at the same time. We're so busy, right? We're so busy. You're so busy. I'm so busy. That means I'm really important. I'm doing lots of things. I'm doing lots of important things. But what happens when we're so busy? Never present to the present. Always multitasking. Always in a hurry to be somewhere else with someone else doing something else.

Did you know that the Chinese pictograph for busyness is a combination of two other pictographs? One is for the heart, and the other is for killing. So what is busyness? It's killing the heart. It's killing the heart.

Our generation is the first in two thousand years of church history that's on the go twenty-four seven. There is not a moment where most of us, because of these things, are not unplugged, are not on, are not available. We can work all the time, and so we work everywhere. And we can just stay connected.

I wonder sometimes: Is it that we always want input because we're restless, or are we restless because we're always seeking input and getting input? I think the answer is yes. I think it's both. But this experiment, this grand, multinational, generational experiment we're going through right now in Sabbath-less living is creating some problems. It's taking a huge toll. It's called time debt, where we overcommit and multitask.

We stay so busy, we don't have time for people we love, things we love, and a God we love. And if you ask a physician what happens if you stay busy all the time without a break, you'll find out about the endocrine system. It's your body's way of dealing with stress. Your body's endocrine system never knows when the next stop day is going to be, so it begins to send out hormones to deal with this.

Your body has an adrenaline response to threats. If you've ever had a severe allergic reaction, your body responds with adrenaline to try to compensate and fight or flight that. What happens later on in that day is you feel like you've been run over by a truck. That adrenaline system is a boost of energy, and yet later on you feel run over.

Well, if you don't listen to that, and if you don't have built into your life some stops where you know when those are going to be, your body produces a different hormone. It's called cortisol. And cortisol, over time, is produced when your body is like, "I don't know when I'm ever going to get a break." And it's responsible for things like heart disease, acne, weight gain, sleeplessness, diabetes, anxiety, sleep disruption, digestive problems, memory and concentration impairment. The bottom line is it's like our busyness is making us sick. I have a good friend whose wife blew out her adrenal glands and she's never recovered. She is just done.

Busyness Kills the Heart

But I think there's another danger with killing the heart, and that is we stop caring about the things we care about. Mark Buchanan, in his book, writes this. He says, "One measure for whether or not you're resting enough—besides falling asleep in church or board meetings—is to ask yourself this: How much do I care about the things I care about?"

When we lose concern for people, both the lost and the found, for the bride of Christ, for friendship, for truth and beauty and goodness; when we cease to laugh when our children laugh and yell at them instead to be quiet; when we cease to weep when our spouses or friends weep and instead wish they didn't get so emotional; when we hear news among neighbors or those in our church and our first thought is, "I hope it isn't going to involve us"—when we stop caring about the things we care about, that's a signal. Too busy. We have let our hearts be consumed by things that feed the ego but starve the soul. Busyness kills the heart.

You know, the other way that I know that we as a church don't get this are a couple of comments that I got regularly from this congregation with regard to the sabbatical you guys gave me this summer. And I don't want to make anybody feel bad. I just want to hold up a little bit of a mirror, because it's very telling. Some of the comments people said to me: First was this—coming back from sabbatical, "How was your vacation?" And I was like, yeah, I had a little bit of vacation this summer for sure. But vacation and Sabbath are not the same thing. And that's a problem when we think they are.

Vacation is time for fun. It's time off. It's me time. Sabbath is time to be renewed. It's the Lord's time. It's time to be refreshed in the deepest places of your soul. So Lauren Winter, in her book Mud House Sabbath, says it this way. She says it better than me. She says, "Sabbath points us not merely to rest, but it's rest so that we can focus without distraction on worshiping and reverencing our Creator who rested. It's not rest for rest's sake. It is rest so we can be attentive without the busyness of weekly life."

The Sabbath concept ends up being described in many circles as "finally a day for me," about me, where I can focus on my needs—me time. And it misses the point. See, Sabbath really is about the Lord: enjoying God, enjoying His gifts, enjoying His people.

It's a holy convocation. It's a holy coming together with the Lord, giving yourself time to be with Him. — Leviticus 23:3

The second comment I got about my sabbatical was very telling. It went like this: "Man, I wish I could get a sabbatical." And I had a lot of empathy for people who said that to me. I know that what you gave us as a family this summer was a huge gift. But here's the thing—you do. And most of us never take it. You get a fifty-two-day sabbatical every year where God says this is for you, and you're not taking it. I think that we live like enslaved people who are wearing away the wedding band and we're trying to be God.

But listen to the invitation to Sabbath. This is again from Mark Buchanan: "In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is looked at like laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest, we miss the rest of God."

The rest He invites us to enter into more fully, so we might know Him more deeply.

Be still and know that I'm God.

Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still. Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It's both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart. It's a day we enter into, but just as much a way that we begin to see. Sabbath imparts the rest of God—actual, physical, mental, spiritual rest—but also the rest of God. The things of God's nature and presence we miss in our busyness.

Ten Ideas for Observing Sabbath

So here's my challenge for you today: take a baby step with regard to observing Sabbath in your life. I know some of you are Type A hardcore people, and you're like, "I'm going to do it now. I'm gonna do Sabbath now." And you're gonna fail this afternoon. And you're gonna be like, "That was a stupid sermon, and those are bad verses, and I don't think that applies to me." You're just gonna do all or nothing. So let's not be binary. I'm gonna give you like 10 ideas. Pick one. One thing that you're going to do is take a baby step towards Sabbath in your life. Don't worry, we're going to come back and talk about this for six weeks next summer. We're not done.

First, schedule it. Here's a simple truth: it's not going to happen unless you schedule it. Some of you have been saying, "I'm going to work out," and it's never on your calendar, and it's not a shock. I don't see you at the YMCA. You're not doing it because it's not on the schedule. You have to schedule it. And that means it's going to conflict with other things like soccer or shopping or your task list. You're going to have to do some real planning. Let me be clear about this: there are works of necessity. Some of you have to work on Sunday. I do. But Friday is my Sabbath, and I really am trying to protect that and make that a Sabbath. You may have to do that too.

Second, prepare joyfully. We live in a 24/7 culture. There's always more to be done. So you're going to have to be more intentional about the other six days if you're going to take one. That means you might have to do things like make sure you're only eating leftovers on Sunday. Prepare a meal so that it's just in the fridge on Saturday. Some people—and I think this is a great exercise—are like, "I'm not going to travel. I'm tired of traveling on Sundays. That's not restful for me. I'm going to travel on Saturday or Monday, and everybody's just going to have to get over it because I want this day to be a day." You're going to have to pull out a whip and tame this thing. You need to figure out a way to put this on do not disturb mode and hand it to your friend during the day. "Hey, do I need to know about anything going on right now?" "Nope." "Okay. Good. Thank you." Tame this thing. It's killing you.

Third, take time for sheer inactivity. I'm not saying go fill up a Sabbath day with lots of things to do that sound Christian-y. No. You need to actually have some part of that day that is nothing. In two chapters later, Leviticus 25, it talks about letting the land lie fallow. Probably nobody in here is a farmer, so let me tell you what that means. That means for a season, you don't let that field grow anything. You don't plant anything, you don't turn up the soil, you don't do anything with it. Likewise, in your week, you need some time that's just dead. There's nothing to do. It's okay.

Fourth, figure out what work is for you. Scholars have argued for centuries how to define rest. Here's an easy way: find out what work is for you and don't do it. But I heard someone say it this way, and I think this is really helpful. Those who work with their minds need to rest with their hands. Those who work with their hands generally find rest with their minds. I'm a thinky person. One of my favorite Sabbath activities is gardening. I love getting my hands dirty, and it's so different from the rest of my life. Find things that refuel you.

Number five, pray and play. Eugene Peterson, one of my theological heroes and the author of The Message, has only two rules for Sabbath: pray and play. You may be thinking, "Oh, this is all about now I'm going to spend a whole day fasting and praying. I can't do that." No. No, play. Enjoy God's people and God's gifts. They are a gift to you. Give thanks. Enjoy.

Kill Your Taskmasters

Number six, kill your taskmasters. Taskmasters in Egypt made the people work. They stood over them with whips. They did not let them take a break. And Moses famously got involved when he saw one of the foreman—the Egyptian foreman—beating a Hebrew slave, and he killed that person and buried him in the sand. He had to make a run for it.

So I don't want you to kill anybody. That's not what I'm saying. But there may be other kinds of taskmasters in your life that you need to kill. And I think they're not people, they're things. They're actually concepts.

Things like perfectionism. I've got to do things the right way. I've got to do things thoroughly. That is killing you.

Things like comparison. You look at your life around other people and you're like, I'm so far behind. Look, you're living—if you're a Christian, you're going to live for eternity. Nobody's going to be left behind. Right? There's no behind. You've got to kill the comparison. It's a thief of joy.

Things like self-contempt. That little voice in your head that says, You didn't deserve it this week. So how dare you think that you should rest now? There are all kinds of these little voices that tell us lies about ourselves and lies about God. You need to find a way to kill those.

Worship

Number seven, worship. The opposite of a slave is not just a free person who does whatever they want—it's a worshiper. Someone who says, You know what? I am rightly under the authority of the Lord of the universe, and my life is ruled by Him.

So go and worship with God's people on the Sabbath. I know you're like, I'm here. But look, I want to say this: we never take attendance in our church. Nobody in elders meetings doesn't have gold stars for the most scans in. This is not about us. This is not about people leading up front or satisfying some ego. This is about you. You need to worship. It's a gift to your soul and it rightly orders you as not God in the universe.

Practice Hospitality

Number eight, practice hospitality. I know you think this is crazy, but one of the things I say at the end of this service all the time is go spend time with somebody you don't know. Invite them over to your messy apartment. They don't care. Theirs is messy too, right? Open your life up to some other people.

The larger catechism, one of our confessional documents, talks about how Sabbath is a great day just to be with God's people and show kindness.

Rest With Your Kids

Number nine, if you have small kids, this is for you. I know that you may be sitting here during this whole sermon being like, Yeah, right. How am I going to get a break? And this is what I would challenge a couple. You may need to think about this in two categories.

We always think—parents with young kids always think of rest as being away from my children. I only get rest by being away from my children. And there's something to that. So you may need a friend who's like, Hey, I'm going to come over this afternoon and you can take a nap. Or a spouse who's like, We're going to trade off.

But there's a problem in our culture right now of people who love to complain about being a parent. Children are a gift. They are a gift from the Lord. They are not a burden to you. And God loves your children. And so one of the hard things you need to learn to do is how to rest with your kids and not just from them.

When our kids were younger, one of my favorite things to do as a family was go on hikes together or just go out. We had this one park where it was like wide open green space—because we have six boys, and they just needed to run. And it wasn't in our house, right? Like, that was restful with them because they could just explore. Find ways to rest with your kids if you have little kids.

Brainstorm Together

Finally, brainstorm ideas with others. Now, this is dangerous, because as soon as Christian communities start talking about, Hey, we're going to observe the Sabbath, a lot of people love to say, Well, this is the way I am, so this is the way you should be. This is what rest should look like for you.

And we're going to be really careful about that as a church, because we are very different people. And so we're going to give each other a lot of grace and not say, The way that I'm going to exercise Sabbath has to look the same for every person in this room. We're going to try different ways.

But I want to say this: obeying God in this area is not legalistic necessarily. And I just want to say this real quick. People love to throw the word legalism out there in ways that are not what that word means.

Legalism is when I take something and I say, "This is what makes me right with God, and I'm going to hold it over all the rest of you and measure you by that yardstick too." Obedience is not legalism. When obedience says, "I love Jesus, and I want to be with Him"—you feel the difference? So when we say, "I love Jesus, and I'm going to start giving Him parts of my life, surrendering those to Him," that's not legalism. That's just worship.

Opposition and Testing

Fair warning right now: if you're going to take a baby step in this area, it's going to be hard. You're going to get opposition immediately from other Christians, from your schedule, and from your enemy, the devil.

There are going to be other Christians who are going to say, "Why are you doing this?" You don't need an answer except this: "Because I want to be with Jesus. I want to honor Him in this way."

With your schedule, your conviction is going to be tested immediately. Next Sunday, if you're like, "Hey, I'm going to start observing Sabbath just a little bit," that's going to be tested almost immediately. And you have an enemy, the devil, who the last thing that he wants is for you to enjoy rest, to rehearse the gospel in your life. That's the last thing that he wants.

An Invitation to Rest

Let me give this conclusion this way. CTK, remember the wedding ring story? I think it's such a good parable for us. What are we so busy about? Why are we ignoring Jesus' glorious invitation for us? Are we just eroding away things that are irreplaceable in search of things that won't give life? Are we chasing after things that actually will just turn to dust in the way that we spend our time?

Listen to this invitation from Isaiah 30:

In returning and rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and in trust shall be your strength. — Isaiah 30:15

Can't you hear the voice of your Savior saying, "Come away. Come waste time with Me. Come be still. Come and rest."

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.