Charlemagne founded great schools of learning even though he could not read nor write. Eliza
Peters, an English woman, could also not read or write, but when she died she left her money to buy
books for a medical school so that others could advance their learning. You do not have to know
how to do something yourself to help others learn to do it. It is possible for a bachelor to teach you
how to be happily married. It is possible for a single nurse to teach you how to care for a baby, even
though she has never had a baby. It is possible for an architect, who has never pounded a nail, to
instruct you on how to build your house or church. It is even possible for a secular teacher to help a
child learn the 23rd Psalm or the Lord's Prayer.
The point of all this is, when it comes to balancing your life between work and rest I am no
great authority. I got an early start at being a workaholic. I worked 40 hours a week in secular
employment at the same time I was a full time pastor as well as a student in seminary. Any one of
the three could have kept me busy enough, but I was doing all three. I lived under pressure and was
on a treadmill that would not stop, and this became a life-style for me. It took me years to learn to
take a day off. I am no authority on the balanced life, but I can still help you see the wisdom of it,
and why it is the will of God for us. I am still learning, but some who get this wisdom early may be
able to avoid the long way around that I have taken, and get to the practice of the balanced life
sooner.
The essence of the balanced life is to learn not to put all your eggs in one basket. The Pharisees
were great examples of how not to live. Their whole life was so involved in keeping the law that
they became terrible specimens of humanity. They lost all human compassion for people because all
that mattered to them was the law. They were the ultimate in legalists, and Jesus had nothing but
conflict with them because He cared more about people and their needs. When His disciples were
hungry and took some grain to eat as they walked through the field, He was not concerned about the
petty issue of whether this was work or not. There was precedent in the Old Testament where David
ate the bread that only the priests were supposed to eat. The Pharisees had no defense against this
historical record. But they did not like it.
Jesus added insult to injury and healed a man on the Sabbath. He again had an unanswerable
argument when He said, "Is it lawful to do good or evil on the Sabbath-to save or destroy life?"
They had no clever comeback, for there was none. Jesus had outsmarted them and they were
furious. They began to plot how to get rid of Him. If you can't destroy a man's arguments, you
either have to accept his truth or destroy the man. They choose the latter and plotted His murder.
This illustrates just how serious it is to become addicted to any idea or concept that is not absolute.
The Sabbath was the addiction of the Pharisees. They could be called Sabbathaholics, and the New
Testament is clearly anti-Sabbathaholic.
The New Testament is radically different from the Old Testament when it comes to the Sabbath.
Paul stresses the liberty of the individual conscience. He writes to the Christians in Rome where
there was obvious conflict among those who felt obligated to keep the whole law, and those who felt
equally obligated not to be bound by it. He wrote in Rom. 14:5, "One man considers one day more
sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in
his own mind." The idea of one Christian trying to regulate another Christian's life, and telling them
they should not shop on Sunday, eat out, or go to a sporting event says Paul is an attempt to play
God.
In verse 4 he asks, "Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands orfalls."
Paul is shockingly liberal when it comes to the liberty of the individual as to how he observes
the Sabbath, or any other day. If a Christian is convinced that what he does pleases his Lord, then he
the right to do that without flack from fellow servants. Paul came to this conclusion because he
believed that the Old Testament laws concerning the Sabbath were repealed by the coming of Christ.
He made this clear when he wrote in Col. 2:16-17, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what
you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day.
These are a shadow of the things that were to come, the reality, however, is found in Christ."
Paul is saying that it is just as inappropriate for one Christian to judge another on how he keeps
the Sabbath as to judge him for drinking coffee rather than tea. In other words, legalism is a dead
horse for the Christian when it comes to the Sabbath laws. Those who believe that 7th day is still the
only valid day for worship write tons of literature to prove that Christians are still under the laws of
the Sabbath, but it will not hold up under Paul's clear rejection. But Paul's point would also make it
wrong for us to judge those who still keep the Sabbath laws, for that is part of the liberty the
Christian has. If a Christian wants to be just as Jewish as they can be, that is their privilege. They
just do not have a right to impose a conviction on Christians who would rather not be legalistic.
When I was in the Middle East Conference we had a 7th day Baptist Church as part of our
conference for years. There was no problem until they began to put fliers on the car windows of
other conference people worshipping at their church on Sunday. They were telling them that they
were wrong to be worshipping on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath, which they said was Saturday.
We had to ask this church to leave our fellowship, not because of what they believed and practiced,
but because they tried to impose it on others, for this is the very thing Paul says is to be rejected. If
Christians say this is how they like to observe a day that is fine, but they are to respect the right of
other Christians to be convinced that other ways are equally fine. To ever make up a list of the right
ways to spend the Sabbath, or any other day, and label this the Christian way is to reject the New
Testament revelation, and forsake the way of grace for the way of law.
Strong, the Baptist theologian, had a legalistic background. Sunday was a colossal bore to him.
He thought God must be very dull, for the Lord's Day was a day of boredom and lack of enjoyment.
Then as he grew up he discovered that Sunday was a day of resurrection and new life for the dead.
His Sunday's were like the morgue, and not life a celebration of life, and a day of festivity. His
tradition made it a day of no fun because they went back to the shadow in the Old Testament and
filled it with law and restrictions. He saw the folly of this, and saw that Christians are to look to
Christ and His resurrection, joy and victory rather than to the shadow of the past. Sunday should be
a day we love and treasure, and not one we dread.
It is one of the sin's of legalistic minds that has robbed millions of Christians of the joy of
Sunday celebration. It all began calling Sunday the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the 7th day of the
week and Sunday is the first. They have never been the same day, nor can they ever be. But
because Christians have linked them as one they have often robbed Sunday of its light by clouding it
with the heavy shadow of the Sabbath. This is not biblical, for it a rejection of God's greater gift.
Sunday is not the Sabbath but it is a day on which we are to fulfill the principle of the Sabbath.
Jesus often broke the Sabbath law, but He kept the principle of the Sabbath, which was the
balanced life of labor and leisure. If Jesus would have been an workaholic who never took a day off
to get away for rest from His labor, we would have to conclude that there was no permanent
principle in the Sabbath law. It would be pure legalism to be thrown out as irrelevant to the
Christian, but Jesus did practice the balance life and became our guide to keeping the permanent
principle. Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. This means
there is an essential value of this gift of God to man that never passes away. It is this essence that we
must seek to preserve no matter how much of the legalism that we discard.
It is not the law written on tablets that really matters, but the law that is written in the very
nature of man. This law says that labor must be balanced with leisure or man will suffer the loss of
life as God intended it to be. No man can be fully human without this balance. All work and no
play makes, not only John a dull boy, but every Tom, Dick and Harry, and Sue, May and Mary are
equally dull girls without this balance. The abundant life Jesus came to bring us is the balanced life
where we get out of life what is good for the whole man. We need rest, not because the law demands
it, but because our nature demands it. The Christian is to obey the principle of the Sabbath for the
same reason he eats and drinks. He needs it for his own well being, and not because it is a law.
God has made us so that we need diversion. We are not machines that can crank out the same
product day after day and year after year with no variety. I never heard of a printing press
complaining because all it ever does is print with black ink. It never gets red or green, and it never
gets to print anything but newspaper. A machine is designed to be able to do the same thing over
and over with endless repetition and no variation. That is what is hard on man, and that is why man
has invented the machine. Man is made for variety, and he needs to very his activity to be healthy
and happy.
The Sabbath principle is anti-slavery and anti-machine-like work. It demands that man be man
and get a break from the slavery of work and perpetual labor. It demands some diversion that
expands man's potential to be more than an animal or a machine. The diversion is to exalt man's
humanity, and to develop his mind and soul. If his work is doing what is mental and spiritual, then
the rest and diversion will likely be physical to balance out the whole man. The point is, every man
has more to his being than can be developed in work. They need time spent in areas that develop
what work cannot develop. The principle of the Sabbath is to aid man in becoming all that he can
be, and so that he will grow in all areas.
Health, happiness and holiness all depend upon man being a creature of great diversity and not
limited to one sphere of life. The unbalanced life is a perversion of what it means to be human.
That is why the workaholic is a sinner. They have developed only on sphere of their humanity and
have left the rest go to seed. How you get this diversity cannot be a matter of legalism, for people
have all different needs. It is folly to try and regulate them as if they were machines. The more
complex society becomes, the more foolish it is to try and define what rest and diversion is. What is
important is a life where body, mind and spirit get what they need to grow and develop.
The goal of the Sabbath principle is that people will become what God made them to be. God
is not merely brute force. He is power controlled by reason and wisdom. God is mind, and that
mind is guided by holiness and righteousness. There is balance in God so that He is the only
absolutely perfect person in the universe. Jesus reflected that perfection of the Father in His
humanity by the perfect balance of His life. The goal of the Sabbath principle is that we too by the
balance life might become more Christ-like.
The Pharisees were only pigmies of men because they kept the Sabbath and all of its laws, but
they did not develop compassion for people. They hated Jesus for healing people on the Sabbath
because they were so addicted to one narrow aspect of life. They neglected the greater aspects of
love and compassion for people. They turned the Sabbath into an idol, and they made what was
meant for a blessing to become a burden. Work is also a blessing that becomes a burden when it
robs us of balance. The essence of all the Sabbath law is this: God is anti-workaholic, and pro-rest
and relaxation. We want to look at these two things as we seek for balance.
I. THE WORKAHOLIC LIFESTYLE.
The worst part of this bad habit is that it makes you look like a saint rather than a sinner in our
culture. We deplore the drug addict, but we admire the work addict. He represents strength, success
and energetic persistence. All that we admire in America is found in the workaholic. Dr. Charles
White, Director of Gerontology at the University of Texas Health Center estimates that as many as
50% of all white collar workers in America are workaholics. This means that they do not know
how to enjoy leisure, but can only feel useful when they are working. They make their wives or
husbands feel like they are always in second place to their work. They get more satisfaction out of
work than they do with their family, and so if there is any conflict between work and family, work
wins out and this means long hours of labor, and only bits of time with the family.
Ted Engstrom in The Work Traps says that these people have a deep need to achieve that
makes their work their god. In other words, a workaholic is a form of idolatry. All other values are
subordinate to their god, and even weekends and vacations are endured rather than enjoyed, for they
long to be back with their first love. This, of course, leads to many wives saying that they need help.
The workaholic is very often a divorced person, for few mates can live long at second fiddle to a job.
They justify their divorce on the basis of abandonment just as God divorced Israel when she
abandoned Him for other gods.
The point is, this addiction to work like all addictions is destructive of the health of the
individual, of the home, and of all relationships. It is a very serious sin even though it is greatly
admired. Some sins are despicable, and we are repulsed by them, but other sins are appealing and
the sin of work addiction is one of them. The result is that the Christian is more attracted to this sin
than most other additions, for it is so respectable. They can play any role in the church they desire
even though they are workaholics. Ted Engstrom does point out that there is difference between a
workaholic than a person who just loves his job. The workaholic often hates his job but feels
compelled to work all the time anyway. The person who just loves to work can also let go of it and
enjoy leisure, but the workaholic cannot enjoy leisure, but only work. What he is doing is giving us
a way out if we really love what we do, for then we are like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford who
work all the time and are heroes for it.
I think this may be a dangerous loophole that will enable a workaholic to justify his addiction.
The fact is, Jesus worked hard and He loved what He did. He put in long hours, but He also had the
balanced life. He could enjoy leisure and solitude, and He called His disciples to come apart and
escape the work scene for a time of rest. It is no justification that you love your work if you put itbefore your relationships. Godly people who devote their lives to revival and other Christian service
often end up with children who rebel. It is just as much folly to worship and serve a good false god
as to worship a bad false god. Idolatry does not have a good and bad side, for it is always bad no
matter how noble the goal you serve. It is wiser and safer to recognize that even if much good has
come out of it, the workaholic is not living the balanced life.
Workaholics often become successful, but at the expense of the values that are greater than
success. Billy Wilder of Hollywood, when the studios were on strike back in 1981, told of how
terrible it was to be out of work. He said, "...this gives a man a terrible sense of impotence, because
a man is his achievements. To be able to work 25 hours a day, 8 days a week is a privilege." This
is a fanaticism that goes beyond the average workaholic, but the idea of your work being you is very
common.
Picasso the artist said, "Always, you put more of yourself into your work, until one day, you
never know exactly which day, it happens-you are your work.
The passions that motivate you may change, but it is your work in life that is the ultimate
seduction." When he called work the ultimate seduction he was saying that it can seduce us away
from God, family, and every other person and value in life, and become our idol, and when it does
this it robs us of the balanced life and makes us slaves to a narrow segment of life.
The problem with Martha was not that she loved to cook and work at being a great hostess.
Hospitality is one of the gifts, and we can thank God for those people who have to work hard at
making life enjoyable for others. Her problem was her lack of balance. She could not cease to be a
workaholic and take on the role of a leisurely hostess, and just sit down and enjoy her company.
The ideal hostess is not one who is ever working. That makes people feel nervous and unable to
relax. The ideal is one who can relax with her guests and enjoy the fruit of her labor.
Since I have never cooked or served a meal in my life I may not seem like much of an authority,
but the fact is, I have an abundance of experience of being where Jesus was in being cooked for and
served. My experience confirms this. There is much more appreciation for the hostess who has a
balance in her labor and leisure. If for some reason it was impossible for Martha to achieve this
balance on this occasion, she would have been wise to recognize the value of Mary in supplying the
balance by sitting with the guests. Here is a case where two are better than one, and together they
added balance to the experience. Martha's problem was that she could not see the value of this
balance, and she wanted Mary to join her on the workaholic side and let the leisure side be forgotten.
Her problem was that she did not see the value of the balance, and that is the blindness of all
addiction. It cannot see the value of anything but the addition.
Most changes in life are not to be made by throwing out of one thing and replacing it with
another. They are to be made by the keeping of what we have and adding to it that which gives it
balance. The problem with the workaholic is not that he or she loves to work. The problem is that
they don't love enough other things like leisure and rest to give them balance. The evil of this is that
it robs them of being a whole person, which is God's will for all of His children. An unknown poet
wrote,
If your nose is close to the grindstone rough,
And you hold it down there long enough,
In time you'll say there's no such thing
As brooks that babble and birds that sing.
These three will all your world compose,
Just you, the stone, and your worn out nose!
Without balance there are very few values in life that can remain good. Lack of balance turns
the good into an evil. Jesus brought balance to the Sabbath, and He brought balance into work by
stressing the importance of leisure.
II. THE LEISURE LIFESTYLE.
Jesus honored labor, but He was not a workaholic. He recognized the need to get away from it
all and get rest. Just when the crowds were so vast that they could not handle them, or even get a
chance to eat, Jesus said to them in Mark 6:31, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and
get some rest." Long before the word burnout was invented Jesus knew of the reality of it, and He
would not let it happen to His disciples. Even though He had to leave crowds of longing people He
called them apart. This was the prescription of the Great Physician. Any Christian who refused to
take vacations is not a noble saint, but a rebel against the Lord who made us and knows what we
need. It was not the law of the Sabbath, but the law of nature that Jesus was obeying, and He
expects us to obey it. Rest from the labor of serving people is vital to the balance life.
Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath principle. He did not have a mass of laws to live by, but just the
principle of balance. You work hard, but you also get away from it and do not idolize it, even if it is
the noblest work in the world. Jesus went about doing good, but He also stopped and got rest so He
could feel good Himself. That is balance living, and that is why the workaholic is out of God's will.
Learning to love leisure is an important aspect of the Christian life. From the Chinese point of view
culture is the product of leisure. Only those who use leisure wisely can be cultured. People who are
always busy are not wise people, even if they are rich and famous. The only wise people are those
who know how to loft gracefully. To be lazy is to loft foolishly, but to loft gracefully is to so use
time that it beautifies the total man.
Jesus said in Matt. 11:28-29, "Come to me all ye who are weary and burdened, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls." Jesus embodies the Sabbath principle, which says, don't be a slave or a
workaholic. Come apart from your labor and in leisure learn of Him, and develop His spirit of
gentleness and humbleness, and find rest for your souls. Jesus says that the body, mind and soul
needs rest. The whole man needs it because it is in rest that the whole man grows. This defines rest
for us. It is that activity, or lack of activity, that refreshes, restores and revitalizes that body, mind
and soul.
If we are following the Shepherd, He will make us to lie down in green pastures. If we are lost
and wandering sheep, we will probably be laboring all the time because we lack the security of being
in the Shepherd's fold. To be able to relax and enjoy leisure is a sign of faith in the Shepherd. May
God help us all develop balance in our labor and our leisure.
