A Call To Rebellion

This is not what God meant when he said to honor the Sabbath. God meant to set aside a day of the week where, by an intentional act of your will, you simply don’t do the stuff you think needs to be done. And not only that, but that you are to acknowledge that this rest, this peace, is from God. If you find you don’t rest but instead drive yourself crazy obsessing over everything that you’re not doing, that proves why you need this downtime. God wants to deliver you from that madness.

Mark 2:27 (MSG)

27 Then Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made to serve us; we weren’t made to serve the Sabbath.

God made the Sabbath to SERVE you! When you serve somebody, what do you do? You meet their needs! God knows your needs not only for work and productivity and action, but also for downtime and rest and relaxation and quietness and peace and family. My friends, remember what I said at the beginning. Start observing the Sabbath and your life will change. In fact you’ll have to change your life to start observing it, but that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. If you were working with a new God-seeker and told him to stop having sex with married women and he said, “But that’s my lifestyle – I’m used to it – I don’t know how to live any other way,” would you say, “Oh, okay then – clearly my request was unreasonable.” Or would you say, “Buddy, you can make whatever choices you want to make. I’m just telling you that you cannot live this way and expect to know God.”

That’s what I’m telling you this morning. We cannot live in perpetual violation of what God has clearly told us and expect to know him the way he wants us to know him. So we set aside a day. It doesn’t matter what day it is. Some of you work Sunday, so make it Saturday. I happen to work Saturday, so Saturday isn’t a good day for me. Find a day and set it aside. Relax from your work. You know what steals your peace. Don’t do stuff that steals your peace. I love emailing but on my best Sabbaths I don’t do any emailing because even though I love it, it steals my peace. My mind races and I ruminate and my blood pressure gets worked up. Plus writing is my job. I usually should not write on my Sabbath. I’ve shared that I hate mowing my lawn – so I would not mow my lawn – that is work to me. If you’re the kind of person who absolutely LOVES doing that and is able to find peace in it and feel close to God, then DO IT. What matters is that you set aside a day where you allow nothing to come between you and God. You don’t spend gobs of time (or perhaps any) watching mindless TV that distracts you from God. You might devote extra time to prayer and thanksgiving. You might fast every week on that day. You might take a walk. Heck you might even enjoy a food on that day you never allow yourself to have any other day, and just thank God for his blessings.

There’s no formula for how to take a Sabbath. But there is a command from God that we take one. That’s where your freedom under God comes in! It will require radical revision of our lives, but I’m calling each of you to it right now. I’m calling myself and my wife and family to it. I’m calling our church to be a church where we are known as the people of God by the way we order our lives. Let’s practice this form of rebellion against the world and its value system that drains us, gives us more to do than we can ever get done, then makes us feel lousy for always being behind. That’s not the world God made for you or the way he wants you to live in it. Let’s rebel and turn our hearts toward him and allow him to set the pace for our lives. Let’s pray.