Remember To Keep The Day Of Rest Seperate From Your Work Week Series

Joe Bedy

Central Christian Church

St. Petersburg, Fl 33711

September 19, 2002

Exodus 20:8-11

Exo 20:8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Exo 20:9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

Exo 20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.

Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Do you remember when things were closed on Sunday? I remember working at Publix in the 60’s. We never worked on Sunday! I can remember how strange it seemed to me when the Skaggs Albertson grocery stores came to Pinellas County and opened on Sunday. Do you remember the advent of the convenience store 7/11 open 7 days a week from 7:00AM until 11:00 PM.

Today you have “all night everything”-prescriptions, groceries, gasoline even Wendy’s and Taco Bell advertise open late.

We as Americans have a need to fill every moment of every day. In my house they turn the TV on in the family room and the bedroom, even if they are working or playing on the computer. “Being Busy” is the way we live. We have an incessant need to keep our bodies and minds in perpetual motion. Solitude makes us uneasy so most of us prefer some type of activity or stimulation to inactivity.

Phil Faust who just graduated from KCC told me of the shock he experienced by the deadening silence of living alone after 4 years of dormitory life. He is trying to get used to the aloneness without interjecting TV or stereo.

At the last class he told us he was getting married-that will do it.

We have this need to fill every waking moment with some type of activity.

When we don’t have a TV, radio or even a book to read, a phone to call somebody on we become tense and restless and we look for some type of movement.

I see solitary joggers and cyclist with Walkmans strapped to their arms. What is wrong with the silence that we cannot tolerate it?

God’s suggestion to us! NO God’s command to us to rest means we are to stop all work and activity and be still, when we don’t we have broken command # 4 and we are out of balance.

Practically, every Friday on my day off unless I am studying for graduate school, I go to the woods. I climb 25’ up a tree and I sit.

I have been known to sit from before sunrise until after sunset.

If I do not go away alone in solitude, I promise you I will be out of balance, there is no let up to my relentless pace. However, when this happens it won’t be too long before Miss Cathi sees that I am out of balance and strongly suggest I go to the woods.

What God is saying to His people in this commandment is that when we fail to have open spaces, solitude, silence and rest from our busy pace of life our lives become unbalanced.

Sooner or later we will face a melt down.

I sit in that tree it is God, creation and me.

No phone, No pager, no TV, no Walkman.

Hunters crack me up, now many of them carry two-way radios so they can talk to their buddy while in the tree. The majority of them cannot stay in a stand for more than 2 hours. They just cannot do it they go stir crazy.

They cannot wait to get back to camp where they can keep themselves busy with a campfire and conversation about what they did not see.

God is telling us let go of your relentless pace. Stan has a fountain and a lake he goes to on vacation. He goes there alone and sits. It makes him balanced. Their have been times in the past year that we have ministered together that he has said to me, “you need to go to the place where you just sit” and I to him at times, “you will react differently after you have been to the lake.”

Quiet time and rest helps us stop the cycle of a fast paced 24/7 lifestyle we live, alone time calms us and allows us to put things into proper perspective.

We live lives that say it is business as usual seven days a week twenty-four hours a day.

God is saying, “there is so much more to life than the way we live it, but if you do not obey this command-you will never find the balance, that leads to a better way.”