Cameron: 00:05

Heavenly father, we pray for pastor Luke. Lord, that you would give him wisdom to share your word, speaking clearly through him, father. Father, we thank you for his ministry. We thank you for his gifts and his calling, father. Let him call us to faith, Lord, through your word this morning.

Cameron: 00:25

In Jesus' name, amen.

Luke: 00:29

I think it's so important that prayer and acknowledging God's work through prayer happen. It's not some sometimes prayer gets so relegated in our lives to being the thing that we do before we do a thing that we forget that prayer is the actual thing we ought to spend more time doing. And in line with that, I also just wanna take a moment, and I wanna thank everyone who prayed for me and my wife as we were sick in the past week or so, and you might hear my voice as I'm still recovering a little bit from I lost my voice at the end of the sickness, which was strange to me, but I'm still recovering from that. So even if as you hear my voice today, I just pray that I don't go into a coughing fit. But I was a little bit stubborn.

Luke: 01:25

I really wanted to preach on Sabbath. So so Sabbath, we I I honestly we we could talk about Sabbath a whole lot more, and we will as the year goes on. We're gonna find opportunities to continue the conversation on Sabbaths, but both pastor Cameron and I were talking this week, and we were just like, there is so much to talk about on this topic because it's become something that is so foreign to our culture and to the way we understand ourselves and the way we live our lives. Practicing Sabbath has almost become a rebellious act. Actually, has become a rebellious act Because everything in your life, in our lives, in our culture is screaming at us to consume, buy, go, don't stop, hustle, keep on going, never quit, never rest.

Luke: 02:28

If you stop, you die. That is the message that is just pervasive throughout what we kind of face. We wanna always be on, always be connected, always being looking forward to the next thing, and hardly ever present in a moment, hardly ever restful, and never Sabbathing. This is the main point that we've kind of tried to articulate here in this series, and so it's worth saying again, Sabbath is an invitation to break with the pattern of the world by creating time and space for God and His gifts in our life. It is a invitation to break with the pattern of the world.

Luke: 03:15

The pattern of the world doesn't know what it's like to Sabbath. It just simply doesn't. People are constantly talking about like, Oh, well, what is burnout? Why do we have a culture where everyone burns out in their jobs and burns out as a parent and burns out and burnout, burnout, burnout? And well, answer is simply we just don't sabbath.

Luke: 03:41

Like, we wanna know why we are anxious. We wanna know why we are worried. We wanna know why we feel disconnected from our values. It's because we're not living intentionally, because we're on this treadmill of saying, well, if I just keep chasing after the next thing that's in front of me, eventually, I'll be fine. Eventually, I'll feel satisfied.

Luke: 04:04

Eventually, this treadmill will stop. Right? But no, we have to break with the pattern of this world. We have to create time and space to both seek God and to enjoy his good gifts in our our life. And so today we're gonna cover two we're gonna try and answer two questions, which is a lot for a sermon, but we're gonna try.

Luke: 04:31

The first question is, what are Jesus' teachings on Sabbath? And then how do we practice Sabbath today? What has Jesus got to say about Sabbath? Because we need to talk about a really important passage that I think is and maybe even become an obstacle to some of you in understanding and practicing Sabbath. And then we need to just have some practical considerations of what is Sabbath?

Luke: 05:01

What does it even look like? Because as I'm saying that word, Sabbath, you might have some different ideas, different pictures coming into your mind of what it would look like to practice that, and that may be a helpful picture or it might not. It might actually be an unhelpful picture, and so I want to talk about that. So first, let's turn to Mark chapter two, verses 23. So Mark chapter two.

Luke: 05:38

Mark is so this passage that we're gonna talk about in Mark chapter two, it should feel familiar if you've read the gospels before because it shows up in all three of what are called the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And so this story, this happens in Matthew, it happens in Luke, happens in Mark, but Mark is the version of the story that's a little bit shorter, but also contains, I think, one of the clearest and most concise statements that Jesus has on the Sabbath. And so that's why we chose this, the Mark version. So Mark chapter two verse 23 says this, one Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and his disciples walked along, and they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?

Luke: 06:42

He answered, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need in the days of Abathar the high priest? He entered the house of God, and he ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for the priests to eat, and he also gave some to his companions. Then he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Another time, Jesus was in the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there, and Jesus and some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus.

Luke: 07:26

So they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hands, stand up in front of everyone. When Jesus asked them, which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill, but they remained silent. He looked around them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts and said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.

Luke: 08:02

Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. It's a pretty stark ending to that on the Sabbath there. It's we might be like, what in the world? Why would Jesus healing on the Sabbath be such a thing to be that would anger the Pharisees in such a way that they would want to go around and plot to kill him because he had healed a man on the Sabbath? I wanna create a little bit of context to answer that question.

Luke: 08:45

But before we even do that, I think it's really, really important that we understand verse 28. Verse 28 says this, so the son of man, which is a title of Jesus, it was a title that Jesus often used of himself, is Lord even of the Sabbath. What does it mean when Jesus says that he is the Lord of the Sabbaths? I think we need to understand that key verse before we can understand the rest of that whole passage. I think if we understand what Jesus is meaning when he says that, I think a lot of things are going to come into our place, because this passage might have been in your mind as Pastor Cameron and I have talked about Sabbath the last several weeks.

Luke: 09:33

Because this is the passage that commonly read, commonly understand is interpreted as meaning, well, this is the passage where Jesus says that the Sabbath doesn't matter anymore. This is the passage where Jesus says that like, well, if you follow me, you you shouldn't keep the Sabbath because the Sabbath is this legalistic thing full of human laws and things, and and the Pharisees kept the Sabbath, and so therefore, we shouldn't overly concern ourselves with keeping Sabbaths because that's what the Pharisees were doing. They were so concerned about keeping the Sabbaths that they ended up promoting evil over good. And so we, as being Christians, not being Jewish, as being followers of Jesus, we should just do that. Man was not made for the Sabbath.

Luke: 10:24

And so you might have been aware of this passage in the whole time listening to Cameron and I and saying, pastor Cameron, pastor Luke, why is it that you guys are advocating so harsh that we try and practice the Sabbath when Jesus seems to be saying, don't worry about it. Right? And that's how this passage kind of gets handled a lot of times is it's it's a place where Jesus seems to be washing away. He's just like, I don't care what you have rules you have about the Sabbath. Eat and do good and all of that, and that's all great, and that is kind of of what's happening in the passage, but it's not really the whole picture.

Luke: 11:07

So to understand what this means when we say the Son of Man is the Lord even of the Sabbath, we're gonna go back to Genesis for a moment. We're gonna turn to Genesis chapter two. Now Genesis being in the beginning and being perhaps one of the most well known passages, right? We've heard this creation story. We've seen children Bibles with this.

Luke: 11:35

And so we know that there's this kind of predictable pattern that's in the first chapter of the Bible. God in creating things at the at the beginning of each day, he says, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good. He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

Luke: 11:58

And there was evening, and then there was morning the first day. And that's kind of the pattern that happens in each of these subsequent verses in chapter one is God says, let there be, and he creates out of nothing, and he speaks it into existence. And then he declares it good at the end of the day, and then he and then it says there was morning, there was evening, and that was the first day. And that's the pattern all of the days until we get to verse or until we get to chapter two verse one. And then it says this, notice how the pattern breaks.

Luke: 12:41

It says, thus the heavens and the earth were completed in their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished his work, finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day, made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. It omits those patterns.

Luke: 13:08

It omits saying that there was morning, there was evening, and the seventh day. You kind of get the sense that there is this kind of poetic depiction of the seventh day being a day that has no beginning and no end. It's this eternal day of Sabbath, eternal day of rest that God inaugurates over all of creation when he's finished creating. He's done everything. He's created the whole entire cosmos.

Luke: 13:41

He's created the earth, and he created the garden. He created mankind, and he placed mankind in the garden, Adam and Eve. And he said, this is all so good. And it's so good that I'm gonna rest, and I'm gonna set apart a special day. Not because I need to rest, but because I want to invite all of creation into this rest, and it creates this eternal Sabbath.

Luke: 14:10

But then notice what happens next. We know that the story doesn't end there. We go forward into chapter three, starting in verse 16. We know that Adam and Eve choose evil. They're tempted by Satan and the serpent, and they choose to not trust God.

Luke: 14:30

They say, we want to be like God. We're not satisfied with being creatures. We wanna be God like, and they rebel against God. And then the curse comes, consequences for sin that enters into the world. But think about the consequences, the curse listed here, and think about it how it relates the Sabbath as we read this passage.

Luke: 14:53

This is God's pronouncement of the consequences of sin into the world. He says, To the woman, he said, I will make your pains in childbearing severe. With painful labor, you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. To Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree which I commanded you, you must not eat from.

Luke: 15:18

Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you will return. If we think about that, not just in the way that we've always heard it, but we focus on how that is just an undoing of Sabbath.

Luke: 15:54

It's an undoing of rest. Notice all those that that language of labor, that language of toil, the sweat of our brow. Sin kind of undid this eternal Sabbath rest that God had set the whole garden in. God had created this garden goodness in the world, and sin undid it. And so this creates a picture.

Luke: 16:23

This creates for us an understanding that when God comes and he gives Sabbath to his people, the Israelites who had been underneath slavery, this extreme picture of what the whole world is underneath of the slavery to sin, of working hard, not being able to Sabbath, not having any time to worship the Lord themselves. When God frees them, he gives them the commandment to keep the Sabbath. And he says for a couple of them in two different places. One reason he says is because you are no longer slaves, you are my people. And so as you remember that you're not slaves, you should keep the Sabbath, but then he also points to creation and he says, I made it holy, I rested, and you should rest as well.

Luke: 17:18

And so when God does this, God is giving Sabbath in the law, and it was a reminder, but it was also a gift that returned some of the goodness that was lost in the garden. When returned when he gives that commandment of Sabbath because you and I, when we hear that word commandment, we think of that as being not a good thing. We don't think of commandments, laws. We don't think of these things as being positive because of our language and the way we think of these. But the Bible often communicates and says, your commandments are good.

Luke: 18:02

Your commandments are holy. Your commandments bring life and light to my life. And so this commandment isn't meant to be a burden. It's meant to be a gift of goodness. God is saying, you need to rest on the seventh day.

Luke: 18:19

And in doing so, you're re participating in some of the goodness that was lost in the garden. And God went even farther than that, and we don't have the time this morning, but if you wanted to, you could turn to Leviticus chapter 25, and you would find that God not only set aside one day in seven for Sabbath, but he set aside one whole year in seven years for Sabbath. On that seventh year, every seventh year, they were meant to not plant. They weren't to plant any of their fields, and they were to let the land rest. And they were to just benefit from the fruit that and the labor that they have saved up from and from that the land just naturally gave to them.

Luke: 19:09

It was a picture of rest. It's kind of crazy now that we know that that's actually good farming practice. But God was was in his divine wisdom giving them a picture of his provision, giving them a whole year of rest. And then every seven psych it's like seven times seven. I'm not good at math, but that's 49.

Luke: 19:35

And so every forty nine years, multiple of seven, was what was called the year of jubilee. This year of jubilee was this massive year long celebration or Sabbath. Not only did they let the fields rest, but they also released anyone who had become a slave. Perhaps somebody had entered into slavery because of debt, where they had lost their they had had to sell off family land because they had come upon hard times at some point in the last fifty years. All of that was undone.

Luke: 20:14

Anyone who was made a slave out of debt was set free, the debt was forgiven. Any of that land that was family land that had been sold off because of financial hardship was returned at a fair and easy price to the family. Everything was kind of reset, redeemed, and given this wholeness and rest and goodness. And so God had this whole picture in the way that Israel was meant to live their lives of constantly returning to this goodness of the garden, this Sabbath, this rest, this year of jubilee. And so this gives us the understanding to see that what Jesus says in Luke chapter four has significant, significant implications.

Luke: 21:10

Luke chapter four is where Jesus it's one of the first things Jesus did in his ministry. One of his first public teachings, it was in his hometown and didn't go very well. But Luke chapter four, and this is a passage where I know we've read it a lot here at church, and so I'm assuming that it's it's a well somewhat well known one. And but here here where this connects to what we're talking about. Luke chapter four, we're gonna be in verse 16.

Luke: 21:53

We'll be in verse 16. He, meaning Jesus, went to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, or another translation or way of saying that is the year of jubilee.

Luke: 22:37

And he rolled up that scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and he sat down, and the eyes of everyone in the synagogue was fastened on him. And he began saying to them, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus read this passage and said, today it is fulfilled in your hearing. I have come to proclaim the year of jubilee. I have come to proclaim a greater Sabbath than you have seen before.

Luke: 23:09

So when Jesus in Mark is saying, the son of man, me, is the Lord of the Sabbaths, he's saying, I am bringing back some of God's goodness from the garden in a way that you've never seen before. I'm coming to undo the curse. When Jesus announces he is the Lord of the Sabbath, he is saying, I am bringing back more of God's goodness back into the world. He's come to undo the curse. He's come to be the Lord of the Sabbath, inaugurate some of this goodness from the garden in a way that hasn't been done before, and he's gonna do it on the cross by taking our sin, our brokenness, and all of that turmoil and hurt and pain that was brought about by sin and the curse and the undoing of that Sabbath rest.

Luke: 24:06

And he's gonna take it into the grave and put it to death there. And then he's gonna rise from the from the dead, and he is going to proclaim new and eternal life for all who follow after him. The gospel is connected to the goodness of the garden, is connected to the Sabbath. The practice of the Sabbath is always been a looking forward to God's returning and redemption of the world. And even the invitation that you and I are invited into, Sabbath isn't this, like, outdated Jewish thing that Jesus got rid of.

Luke: 24:46

It's a Christian thing. Because when we practice Sabbath, when we take a moment and we rest and we say, you know what? We don't have to keep going. We get to enjoy community. We get to enjoy one another.

Luke: 25:01

We get to delight in God's goods gifts. When we do that, we're anchoring ourselves in the promise of God's final and second coming when he'll restore this world and he'll create an eternal Sabbath where we all rest in him for eternity. Sabbath has a picture of the gospel in it. It's not just this thing that is disconnected. It's not some Jewish practice that we just get to ignore.

Luke: 25:34

It's an invitation to proclaim that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, and that means we can break from the pattern of this world and rest. So let's go back to that Mark passage. Mark chapter two. Now, I want to understand and unpack that key verse 27, when Jesus said, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. I think it's really important what the context is that Jesus was speaking into, because Jesus said these words to people at a specific time in history and place, and we need to make sure that we understand that context so that when we apply it to ourselves, we understand the differences so that we can make a good application.

Luke: 26:47

That's what makes good Bible study. So Jesus here speaking to the Pharisees, they had extreme views of what it was like to practice the Sabbaths. They had this general principle. The Pharisees were like, well, we have in our past, Jewish and Israelite past, we've not done a good job of keeping the law. So what we should do is we should put up a fence around the law.

Luke: 27:22

It's kind of like a ledge. You know? While we've we've not done very good of, you know, not not stepping over the line, we've kind of walked off the cliff a couple times, and so we know that we need to put a fence up. So we're gonna put a fence kinda all the way back here to keep us from going off the edge. And they've up with all these other rules that weren't necessarily God's intention, but they were like, we wanna make so certain that we don't break the Sabbath, that we don't dishonor God, that we're gonna come up with a whole bunch of ways to make sure that we don't even get close.

Luke: 28:06

And so when Jesus' disciples are walking through the grain fields and they're just kind of plucking some of the wheat and kind of grinding it up in their hands as like kind of a snack on the road, which was totally permissible in the law. They're like, woah. Look at them. They're harvesting on the Sabbath. And Jesus is like, come on, bro.

Luke: 28:30

Plucking up out of your hand, grinding it in your hand as you're walking is not exactly harvesting. Right? And then we go into that second Sabbath scenario that where he's in the synagogue. He is on the Sabbath, and they're all like there's a sick man. Well, he's not even sick.

Luke: 28:51

He just has a withered hand. Hand, we don't know how long. Maybe he injured it. Maybe he's had it since birth, but we can assume he's had it for a while. It's not been it's obviously been an impact to his life, probably inhibited the amount that he can work and provide for his family in a easy and normal way.

Luke: 29:12

But he's living, if not an emergency. And the Pharisees are looking, and they're like, is Jesus gonna heal him on the Sabbath? Because if he does that, we know that this is definitely bad. And the reason is is that there was genuinely a debate in the religious community at the time. They had this whole, like, philosophical argument of, like, when is it good to help someone?

Luke: 29:41

Like, if you you see your neighbor, they've fallen into a pit. If if they're not dying, like, they're down there in the pit, you could help them up. But, like, if they're gonna be okay until tomorrow, which is not the Sabbath well, I you'd laugh, but this is, like, historically the argument. Like, they, like, they they were just like, well, he's gonna be okay till tomorrow, so I think it's better to not help him out of the pit until tomorrow. I'll come back.

Luke: 30:13

Sorry. Right? Well, that's the argument. They had this whole thing, and there was this debate over, like, a sick person. You couldn't administer medicine or help a sick person unless they were dying.

Luke: 30:30

So it's the Sabbath. I'm I'm sorry you've got a fever, but I don't think you're gonna die, so I'm not gonna do anything about it. That was the whole, like, debate. And so when Jesus says, he looked around at them, and he says he asked them, which is lawful to do on Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill? And then they all didn't answer the question, Jesus gets angry at them because they've chosen to keep and honor these fence laws that they've come up with as a justification for not doing good, for not loving their neighbor.

Luke: 31:13

Jesus is like, you have made legalism. You have made the Sabbath a burden, such a burden that you can't even love a person next to you. You can't care for a person who's sick. You can't help a neighbor out of a pit because you're so afraid of breaking the Sabbath that you actually end up doing evil. So that's the context that Jesus is speaking into.

Luke: 31:46

He's saying, you guys have missed the point. You've turned the Sabbath not into a gift, but into a burden. Man was not created for the Sabbath. When Jesus said that, it was a call to lay down legalism and to follow after Jesus. So when Jesus said that, he said he said, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Luke: 32:16

When he said that, he was trying to get them to lay down that legalism, stop creating all of these rules, and stop judging one another. This is supposed to be a gift, not a burden. And that's the context Jesus was speaking into. Now the question we have to ask ourselves today is what's the context we're in? We are not in that same context.

Luke: 32:42

Right? We don't have people going around saying, Well, I'm just gonna leave you in that pit. That's not our culture. We're not in this place where we have a lot of people who are keeping the Sabbath to such an extreme that they've made it a burden. We don't have people who are keeping the Sabbath to such an extreme that they're committing evil acts by neglect or inaction.

Luke: 33:10

We live in a culture where practicing the Sabbath makes people look at you weird. The Sabbath is such a foreign and strange concept. It's a concept that even when talked about in most churches, people go, really? Sabbath? Like, it's like, the amount of resistance to this idea inside of the church, which is a biblical thing that Christians have practiced for centuries.

Luke: 33:49

The fact that our culture has affected us so much that we have internal, spiritual, and emotional resistance to the idea of Sabbath tells us that we are in a very, very different context than what Jesus was originally talking to. We're in a context where that first half of that phrase is what needs emphasized. We've been emphasizing the second half of Jesus' saying, which is to say, man was not made for the Sabbath. We've been we get that. I don't think that we are currently struggling with legalism when it comes to the Sabbath.

Luke: 34:31

Rather, we have neglected the first half. Sabbath was made for man. The Sabbath was created for man is an invitation for us to not neglect God's goodness and the promise of a future eternal Sabbath. We've neglected the first half of that. We've neglected God's good gift.

Luke: 34:57

We've gotten to a place where it is so common. The question that is asked, right, as we've been talking about this, and maybe this passage has been in your mind, and as we read this passage, you're like, okay, pastor Luke, pastor Cameron, I just need you to answer this question. Is Sabbath a thing that Christians must practice or observe? That's the question that's in some of our minds, some of our hearts. Is Sabbath a thing we must practice?

Luke: 35:29

That's the question, And it's the wrong question. It is. It's just the wrong question. Because the the why are we so bent on finding a justification for leaving a gift of God unopened? It is like we are at a birthday party.

Luke: 35:53

God showed up, and he's like, I got you this gift. It's really good. It's beneficial for you. It's helpful for you. I didn't have to give it to you, but I decided that this was a thing for you from the beginning of creation, and I've set it right here for you.

Luke: 36:11

And we're sitting there, and we're like, do I have to open it, though? That like, that's the question we're asking. That's the attitude we have when we're saying, but do do Christians really have to practice the Sabbath? Wasn't it kind of undone? Like, I know it was one of the 10 commandments, but, like, it's one of the 10 commandments we can ignore now.

Luke: 36:33

Right? Like, that's the argument we're having with a gift. Like, why would we say, gee, god, thanks for that gift, but just gonna put that over here and not touch it. I'm good. Like, that doesn't make sense in real life.

Luke: 36:56

It doesn't make sense in our spiritual life. Now hear me. Hear me crystal clear. I am not advocating we swing to the other side of the pendulum, and we make the Sabbath out to be legalistic. I don't want us going around saying, are you keeping the Sabbath?

Luke: 37:17

I don't wanna do that. That's not what Christ isn't he's not teaching that. He's not going around. He's we're not meant to and the way you practice Sabbath is gonna look different than the way your neighbor practices Sabbath, the way I practice Sabbath. I don't want to create a box.

Luke: 37:35

I don't want to create a burden. I want to invite us to open a gift that God has given us. One last passage to make this crystal clear. Colossians chapter two. Colossians chapter two verse 16 makes this very crystal clear.

Luke: 38:15

This is Paul. He's dealing with early in the church, a lot of people were having debates and arguments over, well, you're Christian, but you still need to practice all these Jewish practices. And Paul is is combating that. He's like, no. We're free in Christ.

Luke: 38:35

We are not slaves. We we are not bound by the law. And so he says this, therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to religious festivals, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that are to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ.

Luke: 39:00

Right? So Paul's saying, Don't let anyone judge you over how you practice Sabbath or even if you practice it. If we want to get nitty gritty and you're like, Pastor Luke, do I have to practice Sabbath to be a Christian? Again, it's the wrong question. But if you want to get to no.

Luke: 39:24

It's not that on Sabbath day, whenever it is that you practice that, if you work, you've committed some sort of awful sin. No. But here's the thing, is I was listening to another pastor talk about this, and he was saying, he's like, if you choose to not keep the Sabbath because all days are the Lord's and all of the days are special to him, you need to be doing that with intentionality. And he was just like, the general sense that I get is that people who choose to not practice the Sabbath aren't doing so out of a conviction. They're doing so out of a just keeping with the pattern of the world.

Luke: 40:07

If you're not going to practice Sabbaths because you're like, oh, it's like this legal law or something like that. One, please consider opening the gift that God has given you. But two, practice it with intentionality and out of conviction. How are you honoring all of the days as the Lord's? Because that's the thing.

Luke: 40:28

And so there was lots there's there's so much we could talk about when it comes to the debate of all of this. But I think the simple answer is this, is that Sabbath is an invitation. It's a gift, and we are so, so silly to just neglect it and to just say, I I think that is so unwise of us. So I feel like I've made that particular point clear. I think that's what Jesus' teachings are of the Sabbath.

Luke: 41:03

It's a gift. It's an invitation. It's meant to be a good thing, a blessing unto you. It's not meant to be a burden. It's not a legal law that we ought to be judging and pointing at one another.

Luke: 41:16

It's a good thing. Now the question then that we have remained to answer is how do we unwrap the present of Sabbath in a way that gives joy in life? We need to learn how to do this, because I as much as I've been talking about this and I'm saying this Bible word, Sabbath, I I don't know that we have a clear picture. I'm still learning a clear picture of what it looks like to practice Sabbath because what comes into my mind and where I gravitate towards naturally isn't isn't what good Sabbath looks like. So I wanna provide for us a paradigm of practicing Sabbath and go through some kind of general wisdom to try and help us build this into our life because we've lived a life that is so opposed and and foreign to Sabbath that we've just forgotten how to do it.

Luke: 42:18

So in our Wednesday night classes, we've been having our Wednesday night classes that have been meeting concurrently, and we've been talking about Sabbath. And in that, we've been doing the practicing the way course on Sabbath. And John Mark Comer's course there, he has these four categories that I think are helpful, stopping, resting, delighting, and worshiping. And that these four categories can help us think through how do we plan an intentional practice of Sabbath. Now these categories are also kind of broadly drawn from the theologian Marva Dawn.

Luke: 43:02

She has a book called Keeping the Sabbath Holy, and that's holy with a w h o l o l l y. And so that's by Marva Dawn. And it's an excellent book, but I think and so John Markcomer is kinda taking her idea, but changing the words a little bit. And these words, I think, are a little bit more clear for our context. So stopping, resting, delighting, and worshiping.

Luke: 43:33

Because the thing is is that when I talk about Sabbath, what is probably popping up into your mind is one of two things. One, you are picturing like resort vacation. Like, you're picturing like, oh, well, Sabbath is supposed to be me sitting by the pool sipping daiquiris or something. Like, just complete and utter doing of nothing. Like, or or or maybe more realistically, you know, you're not maybe not by a pool because you're you're you're in the back yard and your hammock with a beer and you're just relaxing.

Luke: 44:12

Or you're in the you're in the the tub with bubbles and candles. Like, we just have this, like, idea of not doing anything, of this, like, complete and other spa relaxation. Now that can have part that can be part of your Sabbath. I'm not saying it can't. But when we have just this kind of resort vacation I picture of Sabbath, we're still missing it.

Luke: 44:39

The other picture you might have is, well, Sabbath is the time where we kind of all sit in really hard and uncomfortable pews all day, listen to some people talk, and we sing some songs, and but we're not allowed to do anything that's not God explicitly. Like, we can't play board games unless it's like bible monopoly or something. Like, we get this picture, like, genuinely. Like, that's the picture I know some of you have of, like, Sabbath is this is this place where it's only church stuff, and it's and it's very rigid, and it's not a fun day. Both of those pictures are unhelpful.

Luke: 45:19

Right? And you might just say, well, pastor Luke, I have days off. I have my Saturday. I don't work on I don't go to work on Saturday. And I would say, that's not like like, Sabbath isn't going to happen by accident.

Luke: 45:36

It's not. If we just imagine that I've got I had pictures. I forgot to pick put the pictures in the slideshow. But let's just we, you know, we we're sitting down to dinner, and I pull out a cake for dessert. Just chocolate cake because it's my favorite.

Luke: 45:54

It's the best. And it's got all these things. It's real nice and great. It's multilayered. It's great fudge.

Luke: 46:05

It's just a cake. Right? It's cake for dessert. It's any it's any old normal night. What happens if I put candles on that cake and I light them?

Luke: 46:15

What is it now? A birthday cake. Why? Right? It hasn't changed substances.

Luke: 46:24

Still the same fudgy, chocolaty goodness that it was. But putting the candles on it, singing the song, it's the intentionality with it that suddenly transforms this from just a cake into a birthday cake. And the thing is is that when we come to our days off or the days in our week, we bring so little intentionality. And when we start to bring intentionality into those days, when we start to think in these categories of stopping, resting, worshiping, and delighting, that we begin to experience Sabbath. It's transformed from just a cake to a birthday cake.

Luke: 47:08

It's transformed from just a day into a Sabbath day, into the Lord's day. So that's what I hope to help us do is imagine creating some intentionality. So first on that list is stopping. One of the literal meanings of the word Sabbath is just to stop, to cease. And in a world where we are constantly on the go, we are constantly on, we need to switch off for our own health.

Luke: 47:47

Right? We I do not need to know everything all the time. Here's a like, here's a radical idea. Like like, most of most of us in this room, not everybody, but most of us in this room remember a time before cell phones. Right?

Luke: 48:06

We we did not used to always carry these little black boxes with rounded corners in our in our pockets all the time. And we used to go out for walks. We used to go for drives. We used to go places without the cell phone, and we were okay. But how many of us would feel anxiety stepping outside of your door and going for a walk without taking your cell phone?

Luke: 48:38

Right? Yeah. Right. Right? We used to be fine without them.

Luke: 48:44

But for some reason, their existence has been like, you know, we get those, like, I'll I'll not even have my phone in my pocket, and I'll get those phantom vibrations. Oh, someone's someone's texting me. I bet oh, my phone's not there. That makes me feel uncomfortably like Pavlov's dog. Like like we like, we're literally like this experiment that these I don't wanna get on that.

Luke: 49:15

Like, I've got my opinions on that, and you can tell what they are. But, like, is that good? Because, like like, do I need Instagram? Do I need, like, the news app to be telling me all the time the doom and gloom? Like, what would it look like to stop the noise?

Luke: 49:42

Stop the grind. Take a moment and say, you know what? I don't have to produce today. I don't have to be productive today. So many of us, myself included, define a good day as how productive I was.

Luke: 49:59

How many things did I accomplish? Did I waste my time? How many of us have tried to take a day off and then totally screwed it up? Because we're like, well, today's kind of my day off. But, like, I kinda, like, wanna do get like, I should probably get this done.

Luke: 50:19

And then, like, you don't really go do the thing that you said you should do. And so you're just, like, kinda sitting there and you're like, oh, I should go do that thing. And you're just scrolling or watching or doing whatever. And you feel guilty the whole time that you're not doing the thing you said you should be doing on your day off. And then you kinda like eventually go do the thing, and then like you kinda half get it done.

Luke: 50:42

And you get to the end of the day, and you're like, well, I didn't get anything done, but I feel miserable and totally unrested. Right? I'm I'm hopefully, that's not just me. Like, we need to stop. Some of us, we just go into this day off.

Luke: 51:04

Sabbath is not a day off. It's not a day where we just trade the type of work we do. Because some of us were just like, well, Sabbath is the day or my day off is the day I do all the work that's not at work. I do all my housework or I do all the we need those days. Right?

Luke: 51:24

But but we need Sabbath. We need a day where we actually take a break. Some of us need to create a list of delightful do nots. We need to make a list of things I'm not going to do on a Sabbath, and that should not be a drudgery. Here's the thing, is if you make that list and you're like, ugh, you're doing it wrong.

Luke: 51:52

You should be putting things on this list that you know are going to give you life if you don't do them. Right? I know that I will feel better at the end of the day if I don't spend any time on my phone. I just will. I'll be less anxious.

Luke: 52:13

I know that I will feel better at the end of the day if I don't binge a show. I know that I will feel better at the end of the day if I don't overindulge in food. I know that enjoying something in moderation is so much better for me. I'll feel better. I know that I will feel better if I don't do any thinking about work or daydreaming about work or making plans.

Luke: 52:47

If I genuinely just take time to be present, We need to stop from things. We also need to rest. This is the other meaning of Sabbath. Here's something that we really struggle with in our culture. We really, really struggle to embrace the fact that you and I have limits.

Luke: 53:14

We embrace limits so that we can live to the fullest the rest of the time. We are in a time and place where we're just like, I don't got limits. I don't need to stop. I'm gonna go till I drop. Like, that is just the way we live.

Luke: 53:31

Like, instant everything, access to like, just we don't know how to rest. And here's the thing. Like, science and all the things are proving that resting is good for you. I know it's kind of crazy. But, like, actually taking time off, that, like, you're only it like, there's this whole advocation.

Luke: 54:00

Like, people are, like, talking about, like, particularly when it comes to, like, white collar jobs and working like that, is that there's a certain point at which people just aren't productive anymore. Like, they're like, if you're working forty, fifty hours, you probably stopped being peak productive around thirty or twenty five. Like, we do not operate at our peak performance. We do better when we take pauses, when we take breaks. This is a like a common well, not common, but somewhat well known example.

Luke: 54:38

There were two different explorers who decided that they were gonna go and try and get to the South Pole. They wanted to be the first ones to the South Pole, and they went around the same time. Admanson and Scott. I'm trying to say those say the first name right, but Admanson was this Swedish guy, and Scott was this other guy. And and there's a whole bunch of reasons why Adminsen got to the pole first.

Luke: 55:07

Put Adminsen got to the pole first, and he got back, and he didn't lose anybody on his expedition. Nobody died. He had a smaller crew, and he did it in fifty six days. So he'd gotten from his base camp to the South Pole and gotten back, didn't lose any of his men, and they'd successfully did it in fifty six days. Scott attempted the same thing.

Luke: 55:32

It took him one hundred and forty eight days, and he lost five men including himself. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why their explorations didn't go they differed. But one of them that I find compelling is that Admanson was dedicated. He said I don't remember exactly. I think it was 20 miles a day.

Luke: 55:57

He said, every day, no matter how good the weather is, we're only going 20 miles. We're gonna go 20 miles today whether the weather is good, whether weather is bad, whether we feel tired, or we feel like we can do more. So on days that he felt he could do more, they still didn't go farther than 20 miles. On the days that it was difficult for them to keep going, they did, and they finished, and they pushed the 20 miles. Scott, on the other hand, was much more, like, to the to the wind.

Luke: 56:31

He was in this place of like, oh, today's a good day. We're gonna go as far as fast as we can. And then on days where the weather was bad, he didn't do anything. And it's something like the modern story of the tortoise and the hare. We know that we need limits.

Luke: 56:50

We know that we can't just be pushed to the extreme. We know that we need rhythm in our life, that consistency is better, that us going weeks and weeks and weeks and pushing ourselves because we're so we're like, oh, I can push through. I don't need a day off today. Don't need a Sabbath this week. Yeah.

Luke: 57:09

You might not need a Sabbath this week, but you're going to pay for not taking the Sabbath in two weeks because your body, your emotions, your heart, your soul is going to wear out, and it's going to come out in some ugly ways. When we don't sabbath, when we don't rest, we become irritable. We become mean. We become less Christ like. Just like me when I'm not when I'm hungry.

Luke: 57:36

Like like, we need to take care of ourselves. And when we don't, it it burdens us, and we neglect the good. Don't neglect the good. I don't know what I was trying to say there, but don't neglect rest. Thirdly, delight.

Luke: 57:59

Sabbath is meant to be a foretaste of God's goodness. Remember we were talking about this picture of Sabbath as a drudgery? This is where we get to create a list of delightful dues. Things that we do on the Sabbath that bring us joy, that make us say, God, thank you for chocolate cake. Seriously?

Luke: 58:26

Like like, what would it look like to have a special food or treat that we enjoyed only on the Sabbath? What would that be like? What would it be like to have a day where we're like, you know what? Today, I'm gonna do things that bring me life, things that make me happy. Not not the cheap things, not the things I go to when I'm avoiding things, but the things that genuinely fill me up.

Luke: 58:56

What if there was like a fiction book that, like, you got to read on Sabbath days? You got to sit in your favorite chair, and you got to read this book for an hour or so. What would it look like to say today's the day we get to take naps? Right? Can we get an amen for that?

Luke: 59:15

Right? What if what if we come up with some delightful things that we do on Sabbath that increase our joy, that make us feel so thankful for God and his good gifts in our life. Create a list of delightful dos, things that we do on the Sabbath that fill us up. This isn't where we engage with what is good and what is beautiful. Here's the thing, is you know, we know.

Luke: 59:48

We know the difference between a Big Mac and a steak. Yeah. We know what the difference is between a Big Mac and a steak. One of them is better. Sorry if if you disagree.

Luke: 01:00:05

But we so often we spend so much time over here with what is cheap, easy, fast, and and and convenient that we neglect doing things that are delightful, that are good, that are rich, that are good for our souls. So when you build out this list of delightful dos, maybe a Big Mac's on there, but not like a real one, but not like the metaphorical one for my oh, screwed it up. Anyways, we want you to do things that are good for your soul, that you're not gonna walk away going, Right? Like me scrolling, that's the example for me, is me on my phone, me zoned out, does not create delight in my life. It's easy.

Luke: 01:00:53

It's what I go to when I'm trying to decompress or hide or numb out from something, but it doesn't create delight. What creates delight in me is is intentionality. It's playing a board game with friends, is is having good conversation, is enjoying a good meal and and enjoying it slowly. It's going on a walk. It's being outside.

Luke: 01:01:16

It's reading a good book. Those are the stakes that I need to consume on my Sabbath. And then finally is worship. Set aside time to seek God. What would it look like to just set aside some time with your family, with your community, to do in Marva Dawn's book on keeping the Sabbath holy, she talks about doing God hunts.

Luke: 01:01:46

Like thinking through your week and hunting for where was God? Where did God show up in my life? Where did he provide? Where was I anxious and and it worked out? Where was God in my week?

Luke: 01:02:01

And sharing that with one another, just saying, where was God in your week? What would it look like if that was something we did every single week? How would that change the way we go about our week if we know that we're gonna have a meal with our family or our friends, and we're gonna sit down and we're gonna have this moment where we get to recount God's goodness to us throughout the week. Wouldn't that make us looking more intently for where God is as we go throughout our week? Wouldn't that change our whole perspective?

Luke: 01:02:36

Set aside time to seek God on Sabbath. Spend time looking for God, being thankful, growing gratitude for God. Or even when life is difficult, because life is hard. Our seasons are not always joyful. Setting aside time to mourn and lament with God on Sabbath is just as holy and good as rejoicing.

Luke: 01:03:03

Setting aside time to be like, you know what? Today, I don't have to put the mask on. Today, I don't have to pretend everything's good. Today, I get to just sit with the Lord, and I just get to be honest about how I've been feeling. I get to be honest with my community and my family about what's going on, and we get to cry together.

Luke: 01:03:23

We get to share sorrow together, and though that doesn't fix it, I know that I'm not alone, and that makes it way, way much better than pretending it's not there. I have a few things of general advice I wanna give when it comes to the Sabbath. First is time. You have to set aside the time, and you have to mark it. I think one of the things that, like, I have to implement in my own Sabbath is I need to find a way to make Sabbath start and stop.

Luke: 01:04:03

Maybe it's a prayer I pray at the beginning and the end. Maybe I light a special candle. Maybe it's like at a certain time. But if you don't, you're just gonna let your like, the world will just say, so your Sabbath can start tomorrow. Your Sabbath can it's just going to be eaten up.

Luke: 01:04:20

You have to have boundaries around it. One thing that I've been talking with people who have tried this I haven't gotten to try this yet, but I've been hearing some really interesting things about I'm interested to try, is the way we think about Sabbath, like in conceptualized days, is actually different than the way the ancient Jews did. We think of day as starting in the morning. That's when the day starts, sunrise. Ancient Jews actually considered the day to start at sundown.

Luke: 01:04:52

So it day didn't end at sunrise and sunset. It started at sunset and sunset. So a new day will start so, like, in in this kind of way of thinking, a new day will start tonight when the sun sets at the end of the day. And so what that meant is that a lot of traditional practice of Sabbath started in the evening with a shared meal. So if we were gonna practice Sabbath on a Saturday, Friday nights, you, your small group, your family, your extended family, whoever, group of friends from church, you invite over to dinner on a Friday evening, bring over some things, you you know, and you sit down, and you have a meal together, you say a prayer, and you would start the Sabbath together.

Luke: 01:05:42

And so the Sabbath would start that evening, and then the whole next day would just continue into the Sabbath. And so rather than where we kind of run into the evening, and then we collapse as we go into bed, and then we wake up the next day, and we're like, alright. Well, today is supposed to be a Sabbath. This perhaps gives us a moment, gives us time and space to end the day with intentionality and say, I'm gonna enjoy a good meal. My Sabbath is starting now so that by the time I hit the bed, I'm not collapsing.

Luke: 01:06:16

I'm laying down to rest in the Lord. And I wake up the next day, rest in the Lord. Part of my sleep and my rest was part of Sabbath. And then we can continue on in the day in an unhurried way. And I think that's a compelling picture for us to kind of break the rhythm of our world and of our pattern of going and going and going.

Luke: 01:06:43

So time. This is a big one, and I don't have as much time to spend on it, but I hope that you will get what I'm saying here. Sabbath is not meant to be a rest or a break necessarily from your family. Some of you have been up hearing this, and you're like, Luke, Cameron, this is great. Sabbath.

Luke: 01:07:08

And this is what I mean when I came to that picture of, like, Sabbath as resort vacation and saying that's not really what it is, is we have this idea of Sabbath and, well, I can't Sabbath because I've got children. And the point is is that you're not actually supposed to Sabbath from your kids. And I know, I know, you're all like, Luke, you don't have any kids. But I was a kid. I was a kid.

Luke: 01:07:36

I grew up in a family. I wanna just tell you a simple I wanna tell you a story from my family, from me growing up. This was not like this was my dad didn't really know what he was like, my dad wasn't a Christian for a long time. He's Christian now. Praise the Lord.

Luke: 01:07:53

But when I was young, we me and my dad fell into this pattern, into this rhythm. Every Friday night Fridays, the weekends, my mom worked evening shifts on the weekends. And so it was time for my dad. And my dad, every Friday night on our public on PBS, there was this, like, movie hour or two where they would show classic movies. Like, I'm talking like Humphrey Bogart, you know, here's looking at you kid.

Luke: 01:08:22

Like, you know, old black and white or musicals, singing in the rain, all those kind of music stuff. And I I don't know how we even fell into this pattern or into this rhythm, but my dad would put my all my other brothers. I was the oldest. There was five of us, put all my other brothers to bed early that night. And he would go and he would get onto stove, and he would pop popcorn and kettle corn.

Luke: 01:08:50

And then we would sit down with this big bowl same bowl every every every Friday night. Was this big black kind of semi clear bowl. And we would sit down on the love seat recliner. We'd pull the seats back, and we'd turn on the television, and we'd watch some classic movie with my dad. I get emotional thinking about that because that is some of the sweetest time I ever had with my dad growing up.

Luke: 01:09:19

It was a time where we sat down, we watched this classic movie. I'm like 10, 12. Like and it created in me a love for cinema. And it was like we would discuss the movie. We would talk about it afterwards.

Luke: 01:09:34

He would tell me some trivia about it, and it became so special. It became a place where we both rested. We enjoyed and tasted something that was good, and we were together. Later that as I kinda grew up, that we kinda fell out of that practice, and it eventually became a whole family thing. Every single Monday night was pizza and movie night in the Miller house.

Luke: 01:10:01

Every Monday night, my mom or one of us would, make, we would make the recipe for some dough, some pizza dough, and we put it in the bread machines, and we would make pizza dough. And we would make homemade pizza every Monday night, and then we would sit down and we would watch a movie that came from Netflix in the mail. Yeah. Netflix didn't used to be on demand. You used to have to wait to get it in the mail.

Luke: 01:10:27

I know. But and and we would sit down, and we would watch that movie together as a family as we argued over how how many pieces of pizza we were each allowed to have because there was five boys. And that was that was like every Monday. It was this rhythm. It was this ritual that we did as a family.

Luke: 01:10:47

We didn't call it Sabbath, but looking back at it, that's what it was. It was time together as a family with intentionality, with delight, with goodness. Don't Sabbath from your kids. Sabbath with your kids. Imagine what it would be like to do something together as a family that brings delight to everyone, to go for a walk.

Luke: 01:11:14

Maybe it's like my family and enjoying a special meal with each other. Maybe it's we do certain things or we all read books together, whatever that is for you that makes sense. I'm not here to tell you what your Sabbath has to look like. I'm just inviting you to dream a little bit. And then finally, will say well, two things I say, and we'll wrap it up is habit and ritual will grow the strength of Sabbath.

Luke: 01:11:43

Doing Sabbath once will be like a neat experiment. If you do Sabbath and it becomes regular, it becomes something you look forward to. You know that such and such day from such and such time is my Sabbath. That during that time I get to do these delightful things, I get to take a rest, I get to see friends, I get to see family, I get to delight in some things, you will notice your soul will begin to anticipate and desire that. Just like I was just talking about my family's rituals growing up and those things, and how that much joy that brings me to even just think about that, is that that's the remnants of ritual.

Luke: 01:12:31

It's the remnants of habits, of doing something over and over again, and how that forms us and impacts us. Imagine if we had a habit that was built around delight and seeking the Lord and being with one another. How does that impact our souls in our lives? And then finally, I wanna make this very, very, very clear because it's the point. Sabbath is a gift.

Luke: 01:13:00

It is meant to bring freedom and delight, not legalism and drudgery. If you start practicing the Sabbath and it feels legalistic, it is a drudgery, you're doing it wrong. It is meant to bring freedom and delight. It's not to bring judgment. I'm not here to tell you what your Sabbath looks like.

Luke: 01:13:21

I'm here to extend an invitation for you to open the gift of Sabbath. I'm here to invite you to say, what would it look like to be intentionality with my days and my weeks? And to say, you know what? This day is for the Lord. This day is for enjoying His good gifts.

Luke: 01:13:40

And when I pause from all of the chaos, when I take rest, when I am purposeful, it is a reflection of ultimately the gospel that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, that he is bringing some of that garden goodness back into the world, and that he's gonna bring more and more of it over time, that he will eventually come again and inaugurate an eternal Sabbath that we all get to delight in. When we practice Sabbath, we are practicing for eternity with Christ.

Cameron: 01:14:16

Conduit, as you go into your week, it is my prayer for you that you would know that

Luke: 01:14:22

the Lord goes with you, that he is inviting you to experience that garden goodness, that Sabbath, not just one day a week, but every day, we take a moment and we pause from the pattern of this world, and we seek his face. Kind of it, you are loved. Go in peace.