Sabbath And Solitude

Turn your Bible to Luke chapter 6. I hope I do a better job on this next part than I just did on that part. All right, Luke chapter 6, we’re going to continue our discussion in Luke today. We’ve gone through the first five chapters here and it took us about 10 weeks. And we’re going to camp out now in Luke chapter 6 for several weeks. I just want to tell you that Luke chapter 6 is rich. It is full. And I want you to read it with me. Read it over and over again. And every time you read, I want you to open it up and say to yourself, “I want to read this as if it were the first time I’ve ever read Luke 6. And for some of you, it will be the first time you’ve ever read Luke 6, and that’s great. But for those of us who’ve been Christ followers for a long time, I want us not to lose our fascination with the living, breathing, articulate Word of God. Let’s read it like it’s fresh, and new, and alive because it is.

And so in Luke chapter 6, we have lots of stories. The Sermon on the Mount is in Luke chapter 6. The Beatitudes, of course, were in that. I’m going to skip over the Beatitudes for a reason. I’m going to let Glenn Packiam talk about the Beatitudes, the four Beatitudes, there in Luke chapter 6 later in the series because he just wrote a book called “Lucky” that comes out in about a month. And it’s based on those four Beatitudes in Luke. And he has fascinating insight into that passage of Scriptures. So he’s going to get a chance to talk about that part of Luke chapter 6 later on, all right?

All right, Luke chapter 6, the title of today’s talk is Sabbath and Solitude. Sabbath and Solitude. Let me ask you a question before we dive in to Luke chapter 6 verse 1 there. How many of you—when was the last time you had a day off? I mean, let me describe this day, okay. This day is the day that you have nothing if anything planned, a day where you unplug your cell phone, a day where the house phone is unplugged, a day when you spend most of your time with those you love maybe by yourself, a day where there’s a lot of quiet, the noise is down, maybe a day you go out for a long walk and you don’t have any time that you have to be back at the house. You can just spend some time out, a day where you maybe take a nap, maybe two naps, a day where nothing is really planned, so just being alone and still and maybe with a few people that you love, family, friends, but most of it is unplugged, unwound *detoxed. How often do you have a day like that, once a century?

You know, I was walking in this morning. There was a young mom. And she was sitting right there, there was a young mom at nine o’clock and she walked in. She has four children under the age of 5. And I thought, when was the last time she had a Sabbath, because those days don’t exist for moms with small kids, right? Pam and I just came out of that stage where we had smaller kids at the house and it’s hard, very difficult to have a day like that where you can really unwind where you can just focus on yourself and focus on your own soul, your own mind, your own heart, and not be so consumed with frenetic chaotic activity.

And yet in Scripture, we often see Jesus modeling a lifestyle that included a lot of time alone and quiet. And we’re going to see some of those Scriptures in just a minute. And I know that probably everyone in this room struggles with balancing work and family and church things, all of us struggle with that. In fact, if I were to poll all of you in this room, most of you would say, “I’m having a hard time balancing work and family, and haven’t enough time left over for my marriage, and haven’t enough time left over after that for doing anything with the church or doing anything in the community. I’m just struggling, Brady. I don’t know how to find the balance.” And I just know this. It’s always going to be a struggle for us, because we live in such a busy culture where the demands of our schedule are constant.

I have people tell me all the time and I don’t really want to confess this because I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag. But people come up to me all the time and they say, “Hey, Pastor Brady, we know you’re really, really busy. We know you’re just overwhelmed with things, a pastor at church like New Life. You must just have so much responsibility. You just must be the busiest person in Colorado Springs.” And I’m not. So I just want to confess to you I’m not busy, because I’ve designed my life to say yes to the things that I can say yes to. But I don’t say yes to everything. If I did, I physically could not do it. I just couldn’t do it.