How has the fast-paced and restless world affected your personal well-being? How can Sabbath rest counteract exhaustion and anxiety? Explore the concept of Sabbath rest in a fast-paced world. Exhaustion and anxiety are caused by constant running and communication. While Sabbath observance is not necessary for salvation, Christians should engage in Sabbath rest as a gift from God. We need to worship and treasure God above all else and find true rest for our souls in Jesus.
Spiritual Growth
Worship
Good morning. If I haven't met you before, my name is Michael. I get a privilege of being one of the pastors here. If you've got a bible, go ahead and turn with me to second book of the Bible, Exodus, chapter 20. Exodus, chapter 20.
Hopefully your new year has got started off well. Isn't it amazing how quickly the pace ramps back up, though? I know the week in between Christmas and New Year's, I think I asked what day it was, but about 50 times. I don't know what's going on, right? But then you start back to work and it's like, oh, nothing.
Slowed down. We're right back at the pace, the crazy pace, the frenetic pace, the hectic and frantic pace of life. Isn't that the world that we live in, though? It's just a constant running, running the communication. The emails never cease, right?
Nothing seems to stop. If we stop, we feel like we're going to get behind. We feel like, oh, if I stop, my family's going to get behind. If I take a break, I'm not going to be able to keep up because everybody else is always moving. Moving.
Anybody ever been in that spot before?
And what does that lead to? It leads just to being tired, exhausted, worn out. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands if you're tired in the room. I think that's probably just about everybody in the room. I'm just tired.
Is that what should mark the christian life for all of us in this room? There's an audible groan like, oh, yes, I'm just worn out. Is there something better for the Christian?
What is it? The pace is so high in our world, but rest seems to be so low, like, I can't rest. I got to keep going. Anxiety just continues to shoot out the roof. The use of like, sleeping Aids has doubled since 2010.
I read a stat the other day that said one in five adult Americans have to use a sleeping aid during the week. Nearly 20% of adults in America have to figure out a way that's outside of what's normal to find rest. Is that the kind of pace and the kind of life that we long to live long term? I don't think anybody would say, yeah, that's the kind of life I want to live, right? None of us are going to say that, but rest for some people just seems like optional.
Well, I don't have time to rest. For others, rest has become this burden of like, I've got to get 8 hours of sleep. If I don't get 8 hours of sleep. Then I have an excuse to be angry during the day. No, you don't.
But we get this obsession with rest and sleep, or we just say, I don't need it at all. And it reminds me of when I was in college. You do a lot of dumb things in college, right? This wasn't the dumbest thing we did, but I lived in a dorm for four years, and our dorms were made out of, like, concrete walls. And it felt like at some .1 of the guys.
So we had two suites with a bathroom in the middle. At some point during the semester, I don't know how it happened, but one of us ended up with, like, a rubber bouncy ball. I don't know where that would happen, like how that happened, but it seemed like somebody would come back from class and they're just bouncing this random ball and somebody would have the great idea, you know what we should do? We should turn off all the lights and throw the ball as hard as we can into the corner, and let's just see what happens. Right?
Told you it wasn't very smart. So somebody would just sling the ball as hard as they could off the concrete corner, and it's just bouncing like crazy off the walls. And we're all laughing until somebody gets hit with it, right? You're like, oh, that hurt, right? You look down, and within, like, three minutes, you already have a bruise on your arm because you got hit with this thing.
And at some point, can we just stop? But there's the one guy that's like, no, we keep going, right? And they just keep throwing the ball. And at some point I'm like, I don't want to be in here anymore. This is frantic, and it's crazy.
If I could just find the door and get out of here, this would be a better way of life. How many of you have felt that way about life in general? The world is so restless, is so frantic. Like, how could I unlock rest in a restless world? That's what we're going to answer this morning.
How can we unlock rest in a restless world? The wonderful thing about our God church is that God has a plan for rest for his people. And it started all the way at the beginning. So this morning, if you're feeling like, man, I'm restless, and I feel like I have to keep up. Where can we go to unlock rest?
We're going to start in Exodus chapter 20. I will tell you, I got sick on Christmas Eve, and as you know, coughs don't go away. When they come to me and it's back again. All right. And I don't need any more cough drops.
I got offered many after the first service. I got a pocket full. I'm just thinking about the 11:00. My pockets are going to be like this cough drop. So Exodus, chapter 20, verses eight through ten.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the 7th day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. Now, many of you know Exodus 20 you might have heading there that says the ten Commandments.
Even if you didn't grow up in church, you're familiar with the Ten Commandments. You may not know all of them specifically, but what we just looked at is the fourth commandment. And these are commandments that God gave to his people, Israel. And he's trying to say, like, if you are my people, this is how you behave, this is how you act, this is how you live. And this fourth commandment is to remember the Sabbath.
Sabbath comes from the hebrew word Shabbat, which simply means cease or to stop work. Cease or to stop work. The Sabbath was a day of rest for the Israelites. They would eventually become known as like kind of sunset, Friday to sunset and dark on Saturday. And there were some clear instructions for the Israelites here.
First, it was to remember the Sabbath, observe it, commemorate it. The Sabbath was a sacred day. It was to be kept Holy. The Israelites were to remember this rest day. They were to labor hard for six days, but then after six days, they were to stop their work and they were to rest.
So personally, no work on the Sabbath. But sometimes you go, well, we'll just fudge a little bit that I won't work. I'll just make sure I delegate all my work to somebody else. But then God even makes that clear. You don't do that either.
You don't work personally and professionally. Don't delegate it to other people either. So it's really clear for the Israelites, every 7th day you need to rest. So why is it that keeping the Sabbath day seems to be the one out of the ten Commandments that we think is optional? Do we really need to follow it?
If you're wondering, no kid is dying. It's kids worship for first through fifth graders. You're like, what just happened? They're worshipping. You guys aren't as lively so you start to wonder, why do we follow all these other commandments from the Lord, but just kind of say, I don't know about that one.
I think there's a few reasons. In the New Testament, this is the only one of the ten commandments that's not recommanded in some way. Okay, well, there's something different about this commandment, then. And you also know, if you're familiar with the scripture, especially the New Testament, that Jesus and the jewish religious leaders had some pretty significant conflict related to the Sabbath. Because these jewish religious leaders, they just heaped rule upon rule upon rule on the Sabbath.
It wasn't just keep the Sabbath, but keep the Sabbath by doing this and this and this and this and this. And maybe you started the Bible reading plan this morning. We were in John, chapter five. And you even see this wrestle between the Pharisees and Jesus because he's healed, this guy on the Sabbath, this guy that had been lame for 38 years, and Jesus says, take up your mat and walk. So he picks up his mat and he walks, and the Pharisees look at him and they go, what are you doing?
You're working. You can't pick up your Mat and walk. It's just outlandish, right? Like, this guy hasn't walked for 38 years, and you're saying he can't do that? That's wild.
So there's some discrepancy in, like, the New Testament and the Old Testament. Like, oh, these don't seem to line up, but maybe there's some confusion about the Sabbath because of your upbringing, right? Some of you were told, like, you're a wicked sinner if you take a nap, or you don't take a nap on a Sunday, or if you cut your grass, you better feel terrible about yourself on a Sunday, right? Some of you are laughing. Others of you are like, yeah, I was told something like that.
And so your upbringing, like, oh, you can't watch football on a Sunday. No way you can do that. You're an awful person if you do that. And then I think another reason we struggle with the Sabbath is because we've kind of swung the pendulum the opposite way, where we've tried to reclaim the Sabbath. And as we've reclaimed the Sabbath, we've made everything a Sabbath.
And so you hear the excuse of like, well, it's Sunday. Like, I'm just going to Sabbath today and not come to church. We'll talk about that in a second, all right? But there's just this confusion because of upbringing, because of our culture because of the New Testament. Like, what does Sabbath rest really look like for the christian today?
So let's understand what it was for the Israelites so that we can understand what it is or what it isn't for us. So let's go back to Exodus 20, verse eleven, for in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the 7th day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So this Sabbath was blessed by God. To get the blessing of God is a really good thing.
If God blesses your crops, that means it's fruitful, right? If God blesses a family, they're fruitful. So this is a good thing to be blessed by God. And he said, I blessed the Sabbath. It's a fruitful thing.
It's a really good thing. And he said, he made it as holy as hallowed is sanctified is set apart. God has separated this day from the other days for a very specific purpose. But the idea is not just a separation of days, it's separating and elevating this day. You might understand it this way.
We just took down our Christmas tree yesterday. Some of you took it down Christmas night, all right? But we just finally got to it yesterday. We also have a one year old at our house. So when we put ornaments on our tree, the ornaments we really like don't go at the bottom of the tree, right?
They go at the top of the tree. Why? So the one year old doesn't grab the ornament and chunk it across the room. Not that that's ever happened before, but could happen, right? So you put all the ornaments that are really soft and made out of cloth and all those things at the bottom of the tree and the plastic ones, but the fancy ones you put at the top and you separate those things because they're special.
This is what, when it says God made it holy, the Sabbath holy, he's elevating this Sabbath day to be special. It's a fruitful day that's blessed and it's special. So why were they to remember this day? And he takes them back to creation. Genesis chapter two says this.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the hosts of them. And on the 7th day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the 7th day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the 7th day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So he says, israel, this is why you need to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, because you need to remember creation. You need to remember that I'm the creator and you're not.
God creates the world in six days. And then on the 7th, he rests because God needed a break. No, God doesn't grow weary. He doesn't even sleep. He didn't need a break.
But he was done with his work. It was completed and he was satisfied and he rested. He had worked really hard, and it was complete and he rested. Now, some of you have heard the old phrase like, well, the devil doesn't take a day off, right? And some of you have heard the response, the rebuttal to that.
It was, well, good thing the devil isn't the one we're supposed to follow, right? Because God took a day off. God takes a day off, he rest. And so this Sabbath rest is in place from the beginning. From the 7th day, it's in place.
It's not just something that came at the ten Commandments, but it's been there from the beginning, where the people of Israel were to remember God's work, they were to remember God's rest. They were to remember that the work was completed, that it was satisfied that there was paradise, but that paradise had been lost because of sin. So they were to look forward to every seven days, the paradise and the rest that was to come. But they were to remember, God is the life giver. God is the creator.
But it doesn't just stop with creation. In fact, in deuteronomy, chapter five says this, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. So when they kept the Sabbath day, here's another reminder. Don't just remember that God's creator, but I want you to remember back to the exodus when you were enslaved for centuries by the Egyptians, Israel, don't forget who was the one that brought you out.
It was God. Not only was God the one that created you, but God was the one that delivered you. He delivered you from slavery. This is your God. He did the work.
You're not the deliverer. He's the mighty one. He's the powerful one. So they were to keep the Sabbath, to remember God's work, to remember God's rescue, that he was the one that saved them. And then back to Exodus in chapter 31, and the Lord said to Moses, you were to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbath.
For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. So the Sabbath was a sign that pointed to a relationship, a covenant that God had made with his people. He said, I want you to keep that, to remember that I'm the one that sanctifies you or sets you apart. So when they Sabbath, when they took this rest every seven days, they were to remember that God was creator. They were to remember that God was the deliverer, and they were the one to remember that he was the one that sanctified them, that set them apart, that God had a special relationship with Israel that made them distinct from all the other peoples of the world.
It was a restful relationship and a trusting relationship. And ultimately, the Sabbath was a reminder for Israel to trust God's work and not their own. Yet we find ourselves going, I can't take a day off. And God's going, you can't afford not to take a day off. You've got to remember me, because Israel had no power to create, rescue, or set themselves apart.
But the Sabbath brought rest, the Sabbath brought refreshment. So if the Sabbath is this sign of this covenant between God and Israel, the christians have to follow it. Today, for Israel, it was a capital offense, punishable by death not to keep the Sabbath. Aren't you glad you came to church today? Right.
They took it seriously. So why do we view it as optional? Because in the New Testament, there's a major change that occurs. A new covenant is instituted, and that new covenant comes through Jesus. Jesus comes on the scene and doesn't cancel the old law, but he fulfills it, because this was a sign that was going to point to him, and now he's here.
So in the old covenant, the Sabbath day was the last day. You work really hard and you look forward to rest. Then Christ comes on the scene and he fulfills it. And the new Sabbath becomes the first day of the week, where you begin with rest before you're sent out to work. So why did the day change from the 7th day to the first day?
Because of the resurrection. Because Jesus died. He stayed in the tomb, which would have been on a Saturday. We don't celebrate dead things. Right?
So then there's something amazing that happens on the Sunday Jesus rises from the dead.
It's amazing. The original Sabbath, that 7th day, signified like the creation work, is complete. Now, the new Sabbath, the first day, the Lord's day, says, oh, the redemptive work is complete, not just the creative work. But now the redemptive work is complete through the death and resurrection of Christ. And now it's a day that we remember and we celebrate, and it's a day that has marked.
That Sunday has been marked throughout church history as the Lord's day. What do we mean by the Lord's day, the resurrection day? Lord's Day is only mentioned one time in the New Testament. That's in revelation, chapter one. This is where John is getting this revelation that he's going to share.
And it says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet. So John gets this revelation from God on the Lord's day. Now we have some hints at what this Lord's day was and why we think it's the first day of the week in two other parts in scripture, in acts, chapter 20, verse seven, this is what's happening with the early church on the first day of the week. Again Sunday, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. So on the first day of the week, there were believers gathered together, and they were breaking bread, taking communion, remembering Jesus, remembering the new creation in Christ, remembering the deliverance from the slavery of sin, remembering that he's the one that's sanctified.
And Paul even, he just keeps teaching, and he keeps teaching until midnight. And it's kind of a funny story that goes on that this guy ends up falling asleep, but he's sitting in a window when he falls asleep, and he falls on the ground, dies, and there's a lot going on there. But the believers were gathered on the first day of the week, breaking bread on the first day of the week. And then in one corinthians chapter 16, Paul says this now concerning the collection for the saints. So people being generous and giving gifts, as I directed the Churches of Galatia.
So you also are to do on the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. So Paul's saying, on the first day of the week, we're going to get together and we're going to give our gifts because the church in Jerusalem is struggling, and we're going to help the church in Jerusalem by giving our offerings. And that's going to happen on the first day of the week. So this Lord's day is referenced.
Now, there's breaking of bread, there's gathering, there's giving, that's happening on this first day of the week. So I would submit to you that the christian Sabbath is the Lord's day, resurrection day, Sunday.
So do christians have to follow it? Are you required to follow the Sabbath? Look, what Paul says in ColoSsians. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
So he's saying, let no one pass judgment. He goes on to say later, let no one disqualify you. Let no one pass judgment or disqualify you. And what is he talking about? The context there is, he's talking about forgiveness of sins and salvation.
He goes, don't let anybody disqualify you or pass judgment on you because you don't eat a certain way and drink a certain way and keep certain days and keep the Sabbath. He's going, we've made up these external rules like the jewish leaders did back in the day, and we're saying, like, oh, to observe that if you don't observe this rule, you're not in right relationship with God. And he goes, watch out, because what you're doing is you're looking at a shadow versus the substance. It would be like this. So if I'm standing here and you're, like, looking at me right now, which you all are, right, instead of looking at me, what if you all just looked at my shadow on the floor the rest of the time, and you just stared at my shadow?
And for the next 15 minutes or so, some of you are like, well, it's going to be 20. I know, but for that whole time, you just start staring at the shadow. Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't that ridiculous that we would just look at the shadow when, like, the real thing is right in front of you? Paul is trying to say, quit looking to the Sabbath to save you.
It's just a shadow, and it's just to point you to Jesus. Quit looking at something that's not the real thing. Look for the substance, because that's where salvation is going to occur. We're not going to look at it. But hebrews three and four says, there's an eternal rest coming.
There's an eternal rest coming, and you're going to only get it through faith, not by observing certain external rules or not your saving relationship with God does not depend on you keeping the Sabbath. So if the Sabbath doesn't save you, why is it important and what does it involve? Let's look at how Jesus approached this in Mark, chapter two. One Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. So they're just walking through.
He and his disciples, they're hungry. They start just grabbing the grain. And the Pharisees, these religious leaders were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him.
So he's saying, like, hey, do you not remember your king? At one point, David, he was walking with his men, and they were hungry, and they went into the temple and they ate the bread on the Sabbath. They weren't supposed to eat. Like, you don't even know your own group. They acted this way.
And then he goes on to say in verse 27, and 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. The son of man is lord even of the Sabbath. Jesus, being God, he created the Sabbath. He's in charge of the Sabbath, and he gets to determine what happens on the Sabbath.
The jewish leaders, they were not the lord. They didn't have the ability to create, but they made the Sabbath burdensome. And the Sabbath was never intended to be a burden, but to be a blessing of rest. The Sabbath was never intended to be a burden, but a blessing of rest. But we often think of, like, keeping the Sabbath, and we kind of turn the telescope around and we look out the wrong end of the telescope and we think like, oh, it's narrow.
What can I not do on the Sabbath? Or, what can I do on the Sabbath? But we go like, what am I not allowed to do on the Sabbath? And he's going, wait, you're missing the freedom of what you can do on the Sabbath. You're missing it.
Can you cut your grass on the Sabbath? Sure, you're free. Can you watch football on the Sabbath? Yes, of course, you're free. We're not going to say observing days and observing a Sabbath makes you right with God because what makes you right with God?
Your faith and the grace of God. The grace of God. And that's it.
You also have the freedom to not sleep in and show up at church and worship.
You also have the freedom not to go to the lake, but worship with other believers. There's a lot of freedom here because here's the key. What does he say? The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. You don't have to keep the Sabbath to be saved, but you got to remember, the Sabbath was made for your good.
The Sabbath was made for your good. Jesus never condemned the Sabbath, but what Jesus spent most of his time when it came to the Sabbath doing was digging out this glorious gift that the rest of the religious leaders had heaped all these rules upon over and over. And he's trying to dig out and help you see, like, oh, this is a gift. This is a gracious gift from God to you so that you can find rest, but we make it a burden. But this is an absolutely gracious gift from God.
A weekly reminder that he's the one that gives new birth. A weekly reminder that he's the one that delivers you from the slavery of sin. A weekly reminder that he's the one that sets you apart and sanctifies you. It would be similar to this. We don't have to pray to become new creations in Christ, like, this is the work of God.
But why would we pray? To commune with our creator, to talk with him, to be in relationship with him. We don't have to do it to be saved. We do it because we're saved. We don't have to read our bibles to deliver us from the slavery of sin.
We have the glorious gift of God's word that we can read and hear from him and learn about him. Why would we pass that off? You don't read it to be saved. You read it because God's delivered you and rescued you. You run after.
It's like, I want to read this. I can't get enough of it, of it. I want to feast on it. The Sabbath is a gracious gift for us as christians to enjoy in a restless world. Don't you need a regular reminder of the paradise that's to come in a broken world?
Don't you need to be reminded regularly? The eternal rest is coming.
So is ceasing work or stopping work the key to rest in our lives? Let's go back to Exodus, chapter 20. Look at verse ten again. But the 7th day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. A Sabbath to the Lord your God.
This is not an aimless kind of rest. This is an intentional, pointed rest that is not self centered. It's a type of rest that is God centered. In fact, God would say it through the prophet Isaiah. This way, if you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable if you honor it, not seeking your own ways or seeking your own pleasure.
So he's saying like, I want you to call the Sabbath a delight, but I don't want you to seek your own pleasure. That seems confusing, right? Or talking idly. Then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
I don't want you to seek your own pleasure in it. I want you to delight and enjoy the Sabbath. And the way to delight in it is not to delight in yourself, but to delight in the Lord. That's what Sabbath rest is all about. Your pleasure isn't about what the Sabbath is about.
We need to regularly set aside work for rest, and we need to regularly set apart rest for the Lord.
The reason we can't find rest in our souls is not because we have a rest problem. It's because we have a worship problem.
When we keep the Sabbath and remember the Sabbath, our attention is being joyfully concentrated on the Lord as creator and deliverer and sanctifier regularly. Can that be done on other days outside of Sunday? I hope so, yes, absolutely.
But guys, rest doesn't simply come from working. I mean stopping work. How many of you have ever taken a vacation and felt tired at the end of it? How many of you have ever taken days off and not felt refreshed because there's something more to rest than just not working?
How many of you have felt refreshed in your soul after a Netflix binge?
I just need to sit tonight and not do anything. I just need to watch something. And you feel more tired afterwards. How many of you have been refreshed in your soul by constantly just scrolling on your phone?
Guys, the Sabbath rest that God offers you is about God and not you.
You can't say, well, I'm just going to Sabbath today without worship. You've missed the point of the Sabbath because the Sabbath is about taking delight in God, our creator, our deliverer, our sustainer, and the most ideal time for you to do it. You can do it anytime. The most ideal time for you to do it is with other people doing the same thing every week. After six days of really hard work, take a weekly time to remember God's new creation, God's deliverance from the slavery of your own sin.
Take a weekly time to remember that God is the one who works to sanctify you. And how was all of that purchased? It was purchased on the cross through his death, burial, and then his resurrection. That's why we celebrate the resurrection. When you feel trapped in a restless world, how am I going to get out of this?
How am I going to find rest in a restless world? It's not simply the key isn't for you to just stop working. The key to rest is worship. The key to rest is worship.
It's treasuring God more than all the lesser things that you could treasure that you think is going to offer you rest tomorrow night. Many of you know there's a college national championships tomorrow night. They've worked really hard all before the season started. The season starts and they're going to play this game. And whoever wins receives a massive national championship trophy.
Now, how would it be if I walked up to Michigan's team or Washington's team today and I was like, hey, guys, I know that trophy is there tomorrow night, and you're going to work really hard for it, but I'm going to make you a different offer. I'm going to offer you. We're going to go to the local arcade. You're going to win a bunch of tickets, and then you can go into the arcade prize center and win amazing prizes. Which one you want?
That's ridiculous, right? That doesn't make any sense. Why would we go after those kind of prizes when there's something far better that you can go after? Why are we running after a nap and Netflix and so many lesser things when we can find rest in our God? He's so much better.
He is so much better. In fact, in Matthew, chapter eleven, Jesus said it this way, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Come to Jesus church. Find rest for your souls. His burden is light. His yoke is easy. Stop trying to work to create a right relationship with God.
Come to Jesus and rest. Stop trying to work to deliver yourself from slavery of sin. Come to Jesus and rest.
Stop trying to sanctify yourself. Come to Jesus and rest. You need, at minimum, a seven day reminder of God's power and your lack of power, of God's ability and your inability. At minimum, you need that because as a pastor, as one of your pastors, I can't stand up here and tell you that you have to keep the Sabbath on Sunday to be right with God. You don't.
But as one of your pastors, I would beg you to at minimum, have a weekly reminder. At minimum, in this new year, have a weekly reminder of God's God as creator, as deliverer, as the one who sustains you. A weekly reminder of Jesus and his work on the cross and his resurrection. You don't have to do that on Sunday, but it's most ideal to do it on the Lord's day with the Lord's people, the day of resurrection and new life with other people who've been given that same new life. Because worship can be done in a lot of ways.
Rest cannot be done without worship. Worship can be done in a lot of ways, but rest cannot be done without worship. If we become that kind of church that run to Jesus for our rest and not run to the things of this world, imagine the impact that we will make in this city and in this world that's different from the rest of the world, from a frantic, hectic world. There is something different about those of us who rest in Jesus. We want to be that kind of church because God said it this way.
Last thing, psalm 46 ten. Be still and know that I'm God. Be still. Rest in Jesus and know that he's God. But we often stop right there in that verse.
But what's the outcome if we do that? I, God, will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. When we stop and rest, come to Jesus for our rest. It is not just about us.
It's about the Lord being exalted in our world. When you go to work and you're restful and everybody else is frantic, you're going to look different and somebody's going to say, what's wrong with you? And you're going to say, it's Jesus. That's where I found rest for my soul. You can have it, too.
That's different than what this world has to offer. And that's the kind of church we want to be. Amen. Let's pray.
Father, we are so thankful. We are so thankful for the rest that you provide.
Help us remember to come to Jesus regularly. God, you are creator. You are the rescuer. You are the one that saves. You are the one that sets us apart.
You're powerful. You're mighty. We're not. Remind us of that often. Pray this in Jesus name.
Amen.