Real Rest

Real Rest

Hey, welcome. Hello. Hello. Hello. My name is Mike. I’m on the four elders here at our church. Thank you for coming. Uh, it’s a joy to be a few. It’s a fun to watch babies getting dedicated kids are a blast. It’s honor to spend some time for this morning and look at God’s word. My uh, I have the honor of speaking through the fourth commandment this morning with you in exodus 20. We’re spending 10 weeks looking at the 10 Commandments. The first Four Commandments. Look at our response, our duty as followers of christ And then starting next week through the rest of the 10 commandments series. The next six weeks we’ll look at our response our duty as followers of Christ in relation to our fellow man. And so we’re looking at the 4th commandment this week. And so I titled this sermon real rest Real rest. I think that’s an important concept for us as people to think about. I don’t know about you, but in America we should relish and cherish our workaholic nous. It’s like a celebration. Like I’m so busy, How busy are you? I don’t know, but I’m busier than you And we just kind of boasting our activity in our movement and our and what we’re accomplishing or perceived accomplishing rest is a fleeting concept in our american culture, other countries, other nations. Got this down, dial down lockdown. We don’t do this well, can I get an amen in our church. Amen we don’t rest well. And so the idea is real rest. And so if you want to rest apart from christ apart from scripture, apart what the bible says where real rest comes from, you’ll get that results. But if you want to rest the way God lays out rest in the bible as we look out here in the fourth commandment, I think you’ll see a better way, a better way to really genuinely rest. And so as we embark into this fourth commandment on real rest, I have a thesis statement for you, I’d like to address as we go throughout this time together. The thesis statement is real rest comes when jesus is our sabbath rest. Real rest comes when jesus is our sabbath rest. So the concept of a sabbath is every seven days. God set aside a day for us to retreat, recharge, refresh ourselves in the Lord. We rest from our work, we cease working and we worship God, we work hard and we rest hard and we worship God. And so before we jump into this topic, let’s bow our heads and let’s pray and ask God’s blessing on this time. God, I thank you that you’re the Lord of sunday and you’re the Lord of every day, ask that you be Lord of all of our lives as we attempt to turn our thoughts from the activities of what we went through this last week. From this morning. It could have been a very eventful morning and a very eventful week for us God and rest is a fleeting thought, a fleeting concept of something. We rarely ever experienced God and I, we come here tired. We come here broken. We come here week. Lord, We come here needing rest. If we know it or not. Lord, I ask that you just help us to settle our hearts down, settle our spirits down. Help us to turn our mind from what we were doing to what we’re doing right now. We’re attempting to be under the word of God and learn um from the bible about what you say in scripture. Lord, I pray you convict our hearts, encourage our hearts, instruct our hearts. Lord teach us so that we might obey something today. Lord, you’re an equal opportunist of conviction, Lord, for all of us. Lord help us to be encouraged, strengthened, convicted challenge Lord, I pray that we would be doers of what we hear today. Not just hearers. That was not to walk away deceiving ourselves, but help us to walk away as doers of the word of God. We commit this time to you in jesus name Amen. Okay, So if you turn with me to the fourth commandment is found in exodus 20 picking up in verse eight. You can read in the house bibles or fall along on the screen in front of you. Exodus 20 verse eight. The fourth commandment. It’s picks up here. It says this. Remember the sabbath day to keep it Holy six days. You shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord, Your God and on it, you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it Holy Exodus 28 through 11. The 4th commandment. So before we jump into what sabbath thing is and what it’s not and all those different variations of questions, concerns, comments I’d like to address uh, an observation. You might have an objection in your mind like mike sabbath. That’s the word. I don’t use much in my life and I sometimes hear it at church. I’m not jewish. I don’t know what a sabbath is and I don’t sabbath. That might be what you’re thinking. You might be thinking like mike. I don’t see the fourth commandment in the new testament. That kind of was a thing that expired when the new commandment and jesus and all that came. That’s not carried over into the new commandment. The new testament. I found a very helpful 10 commandment passages that mirror the original commandments in the new testament and this is more info than you want. But if you look through it, all of the 10 commandments of God’s moral law are reflected in the new testament. And then we look at the fourth one is rumored the sabbath Day and keep it holy. And if you look at colossians 2 16, it’s basically giving you an out of sabbath thing. The jewish way. Does that make sense? As we think about the sabbath? Sure, like mike. Where are you getting at Mike? Where are you going at this? All those other references, you know, you don’t murder in the old testament. You don’t murder the new testament. You know, don’t commit adultery in the old testament. Don’t commit adultery in the new testament, all that correlation happens. But when it comes to the fourth commandment, the sabbath, it seems that were released from this. This sabbath rule sabbath, jewish religious customs in the new testament like mike, you gotta sell me on why I care why I should engage and pay attention. And so just beyond the fact that our culture is frantically overworked. Workaholic people that don’t end well. I really do think that if we think about biblically about how to rest rest in the Lord retreat, recharge in the Lord. I think we won’t only stay in the christian life well over the years, but we will finish well, all of you will finish your life. All of you will finish life either on a on a whimper or on a win. You will end your life. Try or not. You will all die and you will finish the goals that we finish well, our walk with God and just stay in the race and finish their race race. Well, we have to understand this key concept of what real rest is and what it’s not. We need to learn how to finish well. So let’s work through this passage. Slowly, verse eight, it says, remember the sabbath Day to keep it holy, Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. So remember context, context adds color. The nation of Israel. A million people are standing around the foot of Mount Sinai on the top of the mountain, up at the pinnacle of the mountain, there’s this dark storm, clouds of lightning and thunder. And God is speaking of an audible voice to his people explaining and defining the terms of the relationship. And he said there’s no other gods but me don’t make an idol, don’t misuse my name, remember the sabbath and he talks about what that is and what it’s not. So think in the near East ancient religions, there was this concept of a sabbath didn’t exist all the other faiths in the world at this time, did not have an idea of a day off a restful day. You’re like, we’re number one. Yeah, I get it. That is the number one religion on the planet, but it’s not because of we get the people a day off. Number one religion on the planet had Monotheism was a new thought and this whole sabbath thing and worshiping God weekly was a new thought. A second big concept to be understanding is this concept of rest and sabbath thing is independent from anything you see in nature, Those trees don’t have a 7th day off, A lion and tiger and a bear don’t get a sabbath. Their prey isn’t running for their lives saying, hey, it’s sunday, leave me alone, we’re not supposed to arrest and I’m running for my life. Nature doesn’t have 1/7 day off. Do you understand this concept is outside of the realm of nature? It’s a supernatural concept that God has given his people of God is to slow down recharge, rethink and focus on him. You see this work rest rhythm in our american culture here in Lincoln Nebraska, we go hard in the paint for five days a week and then we go hard in the paint on the weekend, whistle, the whistle echo to echo the whistle, that’s who we are as a society. But you also see this rhythm of working and worshiping in the bible. So what is the sabbath? Where did it origin originate from? Return to the very first book of the bible in genesis God created everything in the beginning. God remember created everything. He also created the sabbath. This concept of rest and God didn’t stop retreat recharge and rest because he was tired, frustrated, stressed out, anxious needed to take a day, you get what I’m saying, God did this as a way to model for his creation, the creator model for his creation. What it looked like to retreat, recharge and refresh themselves in the relationship with each other. God created the sabbath and he created everything and he made a break to show us what it would look like. He was modeling for his creation, what we should do. The jewish faith sabbath on saturday, the christian faith sabbath on sunday and the calendar of the ancient calendar. The seventh day was the last day of the week. The sunday was the first day of the week because of the resurrection morning, easter morning we christians worship and gather and follow and worship God on sunday the first day of the week. Sad thing is all about resting. It’s all about ceasing from your work and turning your focus to God Sabbath also points us to a final resting day, which I won’t spend a lot of time on in Hebrews four. If you like to read a sabbath passage, Hebrews 49 and 10 talks about our ultimate sabbath rest is found in christ in heaven someday. So we can rest, we can rest well we can rest hard, but if I spend all afternoon scrolling social media after a couple hours, I feel like my mind is rotting. If I spend the whole weekend watching 12 hours of netflix after hours nine, entertaining like you know, you think we’ve had enough or are we still here? Should we watch another show the way we rest here on earth on this side of heaven is limited and there’s realms of how well we can really recharge, recoup and rest in the Lord. We will have a perfect rest sunday in heaven of those followers of christ. But you see this pattern throughout the bible go time and slow time, work, rest in season and offseason we are created beings that are created to rest. We require rest the longest I’ve gone without sleep is missing. One night I was pretty foggy the next day and I went to work, we had like an all night college prayer meeting for some reason and then we got through the prayer meeting and then I went to work that day. I was like loopy, I was not myself. Maybe you’ve fine tuned that skill. But all these parents up here, they’re a little shell shocked if they have little kids and they’re a little tired and they might have had interrupted sleep. We physically need to sleep at night. Some of us need six hours, some of us need eight hours but your brain, your body needs to lay down a third of your life in rest daily. Your created beings who need to have that rhythm of work and rest. You need to have a night time to have a daytime, you need to have a time to recharge and re rest. We as a society work five days a week and have two days off. You see this rhythm. Uh scientists, scientists, sociologists have done research on, should it be a four day workweek? Should it be a six day work week? Should be a seven day work week. What about a 12 day workweek? What about 20 days on one day off? What’s the best routine that keeps employees productive That keeps people from making mistakes. That keeps people fresh. There’s no workman’s comp thing. Society is doing well and not getting strained too much. You know what the sweet spot is? six days on one day off. God created this. And it’s outside the realm of nature. We are designed. We need extended periods of time off to rest, reflect and recharge in the Lord. And you also see this pattern throughout the old testament. In the jewish faith. I was intimately involved in the rhythms of the life of the followers of his nation, the nation of Israel. So you have a, you have a daily sabbath, you have a daily rest. You have a weekly sabbath every seven days. And then there’s these Jewish festivals that happen throughout the calendar year. There’s 6-8 Jewish festivals you would engage with throughout the calendar year as a good jew. And then if you roll with your jewish faith every seven years, there’s a thing called the year of sabbath. The year of Sabbath every seven years and then every 50 years, there’s this year of Jubilee. We’re all indentured servants. All indentured slaves be released, debts would be dropped like farms, land to be left hollow for a period of time. There’s these rhythms that you see throughout the bible of giving the people the land, the society, the economy breaks and rhythms of rest because we rest under the curse of the fall of man. We don’t rest perfectly like we were, we will rest someday in heaven. So again, I ask you what is the sabbath? What is the sabbath? The sabbath is about worshipful rest. That’s our purpose of our sabbath and I proposed to real rest comes when jesus is our sabbath rest. So look at that passage verse eight. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. So we looked at what is a sabbath? Remember the sabbath day, which you kind of got an idea of keep it holy. Remember the sabbath day, Keep it holy. Okay, so what is holy? We’ve been at this church for a period of time. We’ve done series on this. We call it the set apart series. We are called as the people of God to be set apart for a different purpose than what our culture is. We’re supposed to be following, pursuing God alone. But what does it mean to have a set apart, sunday? A set apart restful time. What does that look like? One scholar speaking about this fourth commandment talked about this concept of being a set apart Holy Day, he said, is it it it is expressively said that the ordinary work of life should be intimidated by the whole gathered community of God’s people. We need to get away and set apart this day different than all other days. Why keep it holy? If you look at the whole fourth commandment, verse eight and verse 11, the two book ends of the commandment talk about this holy concept at the beginning, he gets into it and at the end he concludes it holy at the both ends of this fourth commandment, it starts and stops with a call or reminder to holiness. Remember your bible isn’t like a your friends instagram post. It’s not like comments on a blog. Your bible is not a hallmark gift card note thing. Hallmark card. Your bible is an ancient book written to an ancient audience that he’s addressing reel life, things that impact their life. But the problems and the challenges that they’re facing. We also face because this is under God’s moral law, we need a sabbath and rest in the Lord in the old testament and into the new testament dan said last week in his sermon, he said the law and the Gospel are complementary. The law and the gospel are complementary as we study the law. The 10 commandments, we have a deepening understanding of the law, The justice of God. We also need to have a deepening understanding of the grace of God and those two depths of an appreciation needs to grow. If we just go deep in the Law, we stay shallow in the Gospel, you’ll become a legalistic, fundamentalist, authoritative christian. If you go deep deep deep in the Gospel and you don’t appreciate the law, you might become more of a liberal lenient squishy christian. We need a depth in both of loving and appreciating the law of God and the depth of appreciation for the gospel. We need a deepening understanding of both hands, not either or the moral law is a reflection of the God who himself is holy set apart and he said, be holy, keep your sabbath holy. He said that in verse eight, let me go back to keep it holy. Talking about the sabbath, keeping your sabbath Holy God is holy, His nature is holy, His day set apart for worship is to be holy. And we, as people are supposed to be set apart and be wholly on that day, supposed to focusing our times at being holy. So keep your sabbath day holy, what does that look like? Well, holiness means set apart. Do you find it ironic that the highest traffic on adult websites is on sunday. Do you find that ironic that in christian nation, the highest traffic on adult websites is on sunday, all days of the week. People can go to adult websites, sunday is the most traffic on the day of the year of the week. Keep it holy set apart next time. Next point holiness means regular worship What Mike Holiness means regular worship. So we usually have about 300 some people on Sunday mornings, like there are 300 people in here. Like he lying. Well listen, there’s a service at nine. We have the people in the parking lot before you came. That’s our first service. We have two services are usually 300 people. On a sunday morning on easter we jumped to 434 people, which is God jesus building. His church is amazing, But we didn’t have 134 visitors. We had all of our quarter timers and half timers all came at the same time because there’s, there’s candy getting handed out. I’m kidding. Um, one pastor was talking about this dynamic of helping your church find a rhythm of worshiping regularly. He said, if you come one time a month, once you start coming two times a month, if you come two times a month once you make a habit of coming three times a month, Three times a month to have them coming four times a month. If you come four times a month, give someone a high five and be patient with the rest of us. I don’t know why I want to dance around. We’re supposed to set apart this day is holy consecrate under the Lord serving the Lord worshiping the Lord. So I took the first couple commandments and I went on a little rant here. We’re supposed to worship and serve him only. That’s the first commandment. Not on your own terms. Americans, that’s the second commandment. Not based on your own preferences that technology gives you. That’s the second commandment, but on his terms before the watching world. That’s the 2nd and 3rd commandment. Make regular church worship a part of the rhythms of your life. That’s the 4th commandment. So does holiness mean regular worship? I think the answer is yes. The New Testament says this in hebrews 10 25 says do not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing but encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching the day of God’s return, keep coming, encouraging each other. Make this a priority in your life. So why do many of us regularly skip worship? Why do many of us regularly skip worship? Do they not worship God Every sunday they worship God somewhere else. Why do many of us regularly skip worship? The answer is we do worship, we do worship, but if you were here two weeks ago, we worship other things. We worship the bottle. We worship partying the night before and we have trouble getting here on sunday morning week as a society can worship slothful nous vegging out watching netflix, scrolling on your phone and social media. We can worship the sedentary lifestyle, which is our american halftime pastime. We love the sedentary lifestyle. As a society. We might worship our freedom, leveraging technology and having a self day a day away doing what we want and the freedom god has given us. We worship, we worship freedom. We might worship youth sports, oops, sorry, meant to cut that. But but mike my son’s athletic well I didn’t, you know, I wouldn’t tell my your daughter, she’s, you know, your other son, he’s cute. He doesn’t have to obey one woman man stuff. I mean moral law worshiping God making a priority. That should be an all encompassing pursuit of all of your life. Even if your youth sports is a part of your child’s life, we should worship. We sometimes worship adult sports, man, This pastor must not want people in this church. I know we we do our local huskers, our sports teams. We worship adult sports or nature like nature. We’re Nebraska well, boating, camping, hunting, fishing. If we’re in the coast or by the mountains, that’s easy. But we have our own version, our own vices. We worship nature as a society. We are found worshiping. We’re called to keep the sabbath holy means set apart for the Lord. We’re supposed to keep the sabbath holy. That means regular worship and I propose to you real rest comes when jesus is our sabbath rest. Look at me the verse 9, 6 days, you shall labor and do all your work, six days, you shall labor and do all your work. So f Y. I work is not a sin. Work is not a sin. So if you think of the creation theology, God hired Adam and made him in charge of the garden of Eden paradise, it was perfect, it was paradise and he put him to work tending the garden and then before he found Eve and created Eve out of Adam’s rib, he said to Adam, hey name every single animal in all the creation. And maybe Adam was creative or not, maybe this is an easy job or not, but Adam named every single animal in all creation. He had a job in the garden and name all the animal. That’s a lot of work naming kids was hard in my life, you know the name of the church feel darn impossible naming all livestock, every animal on this planet, that’s a big job. Adam had a lot of work and he worked and it was meaningful satisfying work before the original sin later on that happens. But think when we die and we are following christ and we’re we’re christians and we’re in heaven, we will be giving meaningful, satisfying joy filled, energizing work, labor in heaven, work is good for you that sedentary lifestyle I mentioned, it is really not healthy for american society to be that sedentary. We are designed with muscles and ligaments and bones. We don’t do well when we’re floating around in space and our brains and stuff don’t do well, we don’t do well. We’re floating around our sofa all weekend and all week. We need to be active, physically active. That’s what God made us to walk around, explore his nature and have Dominion over his nature. We have bodies were supposed to give them rest but were designed to be do work. If you work hard during the week, you should have no problem recharging, recouping and resting on the weekends. If you work hard during the day, you should have no problem resting at night. My wife told me she’s like, mike, we have a problem. And I’m like you’re right. We have three growing opportunities. Three sons that have a different set of energy than the little sweet daughter of ours. And she’s like, yeah, you gotta do something. So like when I get off work at night, I’m working out three boys. We’re riding these bikes everywhere, getting flat tires and keeping bike shops in town in business. We are we are running we are, there’s there’s this neighbor man who has five lawns in our street. And I’ve asked him about employing my sons for dirt cheap. And so they’re mowing five different lawns for our neighbor guy with his adult supervision held I mean they’re active and when dad gets home it’s time to sweat and work those boys out because they have a lot of energy. But if they don’t work out little boys, you know there will be boys and so hard work. We’re supposed I I challenge you. Christians work hard for God’s glory during the week. You’re worshiping God all week. And then on Sundays, recharge and refresh yourself in the Lord and sabbath thing with your savior. Worship God on sunday and worship God on monday and worship God on Tuesday and why not on Wednesday you got a street going and worship God on thursday. Worship on friday as you go to work as your lawyer, as your salesman, as your doctor, as your teacher, as your pharmacist, as your coder, as your computer engineer. You’re worshiping God in your labor as a mother, as a teacher as a coach, you’re worshiping God in your labor all week and the eyes of the watching world is watching you continue to worship and work work and worship entertained all week for the glory of God. And then when it’s time retreat, recharge and refreshing the Lord. I know our society doesn’t get this as a culture, our rhythms of work and rest our work rest rhythms work and worship. That’s all messed up like that song we just sang. You never stopped working. No, you never stop, you never stop working. Remember that song we just sang. I mean I hate that song. I mean don’t tell I love it, it’s great. But it’s like, it’s like bugs me because I’m I’m I’m I’m like some of you, I’ve worked our society, I struggle with stop working and that sin. You get what I’m saying. Look at this quote from Gunnar Gundersen Gundersen, Gunnar Gundersen, he says when work is an idol rest will feel like a sin. When work is an idle rest will feel like a sin. We idolize the wrong things. We don’t idolize God. We don’t idolize our walk of jesus, We idolize their career, We idolize our hobbies, we idolize devices, We idolize things that are not our savior. That’s the second commandment that was two weeks ago. We are prone to excess as a culture to extremes of one extreme or the other. We work too much or we rest too much. We don’t find that happy balance that, that rhythm that we need to have. We are prone to access as a culture. Some of you need to stop sitting and get a job and work six days a week, five days a week. Work hard, Get a job. You need a job, ask a pastor, we know people in town that will hire you. You can get a job and Lincoln you need to get a job. Some of you need to get a job. Did you hear me? You need a good job. There’s some of you you need to stop sitting and take a day off and make that day about worshiping God and focusing on verse 10 which you’re getting to in a second. The purpose of your work is worship. The purpose of sabbath is worshiped. The purpose of your life is worship christian lisa statement. Real rest comes when jesus is our sabbath rest. Let’s look at verse 10, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord, your God on it. You shall not work so real quick genesis Garden of Eden had rest. God rested exodus. The next book, in your bible, chapter 20 the same theme of rest. You find in the next book of the bible in exodus about God mandating the fourth commandment Rest. You fast forward to the gospels, jesus and the gospel said, come to me, you who are weary and heavy burden laden and I will give you this side of the room, didn’t hear it. So let’s try again. Come to me who are weary and heavy burdens and I will give you There we go. Church. That’s the gospels. And you go to the revelations, the very last book of your bible, it talks about God created a new heaven and a new earth and he will rest and we will rest from our fallen labor here. So like here and now our work is cursed because of sin that happened after the garden. That’s part of the following condition we have because of the sin that is in our society and us as people. And so when we fix something, it breaks when I get a bike fixed, it breaks a few weeks hours months later, our work is like a treadmill right now. Parts of work and the sin nature of our planet is a broken treadmill. But in heaven someday there will be no, you know, treadmill cycle of our work, it’ll be perfect labor. So who should sabbath? Who should sabbath? Look at verse 10, push and sabbath. You or your sons or your daughters, your male servants, your female servants, or your livestock, or the sojourners who are within your gates. So who should sabbath wives aren’t listed? That bible is misogynistic patriarchal book. Some of you are like, yeah, where was the woman’s name? Listen, it’s building on each other. It’s like it’s not a tweet, it’s building on each other. Genesis says the two become one. They leave their families, they create a new flesh, they leave their wives leave their families, husbands leave their family to create a new flesh. So, and the author and the original language, it says side by side, husband and wife are one. So when it’s like you worship, it’s like you family unit husband, wife, you worship and you have your kids rest your, you and your spouse, your significant other, you rest your daughter’s rest, your servants, rest your sojourners, rest all those people rest. Does that make sense? It’s an ancient book. An ancient book, everyone needs to rest, notice God, the employers should give their employees the opportunity to rest, recharge and worship the Lord. Even sojourners should recognize the difference between the Lord’s day and other days. So who should sabbath church? Everyone, everyone. So here’s a stat that I don’t like, I didn’t make it, but we need to know it stats aren’t sexist, I don’t think barna is this large research firm. They do huge research on a lot of different topics, but they did research on family retention Of kids that grew up in the church that stayed in the church after they turned 18. This family retention stats on barna, what keeps little johnny or little jorge or little Hector long term in the church. This matters to us, this matters to the stage, the spanish us to the church, what keeps them engaged in the church? And they found that like if if grandma and grandpa take johnny to church, There’s a 20% likelihood Johnny will stay in the church after he turns 18, 80% like that, he will not go to the church after he turns 18. What if mom, what if mom drags johnny to church every day of his life? There’s a 20% chance Johnny will stay in church and 80% likely chance that Johnny will not stay in church. But if dad takes johnny to church regularly. There’s an 80% likelihood that Johnny will attend church after turns 18 on his own. Many women. The bible talks about this authority that God’s given fathers to lead out by example and some of the deepest wounds that happened in your life might be from your father what he did or didn’t do what he said or didn’t say. And you as a father, you’re modeling what the priorities of life. And if you spend your life pursuing alcohol, sports, your leisure, your hobbies, fishing, hunting everything and God is an afterthought to something you don’t think about. There’s consequences for that. You’re modeling that God doesn’t matter week after week. And then when your kid grows up and goes on their own, they’re just being like you, they’re modeling what you’ve shown them. Men and women. Let’s go with this together. There are fathers in this church, that can be the father. Your kid never had some of you have some of you have a God saved you out of some rough situations. Some of you, uh spouses have died. I mean, there’s sad, there’s sad part of being on this side of eternity with sad sin nature and these actions have consequences of sin, have consequences. And sin hurts people. But there could be father figures for your kids in this room if you don’t have them, that’s what we just did a minute ago of Shane with our parent commissioning and it could be a beautiful thing. But minimum in this is a heavy thing that parental charge. We just took. This is a heavy thing. The amount of work and responsibility put on men to lead the way for their whole family is significant. Look at verse 11 for in six days, the Lord has made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. The sabbath is a foreshadow of things that are to come. So let’s land the plane here. Let’s conclude what, what’s a practical for this passage? What’s a practical for sabbath thing? What is it? We covered that kind of, you got an idea to be dangerous, Make something practical mike walk away. My son asked me a question um a couple weeks ago about something and I answered him, he’s like, I don’t understand, he’s like, dad explained to me like I’m a child, I’m like you are a child. So then I took the thing I said and I made it very concise. And so I’m going to speak to you like a child. So what’s the practical of sabbath? So what do I do? What do I do? Mike, what do I do? Okay, so the sabbath to really sabbath? Well, I would challenge you to go deep with the Lord on monday Tuesday, Wednesday, thursday friday saturday, you’re working, you’re running around, you’re doing a lot of good stuff for the glory of God. Yes. And you’re you’re consuming the bible and prayer on Sundays, if that’s your sabbath day, it’s not my saturday, that’s your sabbath day. On Sundays go deep with the Lord. Do something special on your sabbath day. If that’s a walk, if you pray, if you pray a little bit longer than normal, if you put some worship music on and sing along, if you if you skip a meal and fast, if you read an extra portion, if you do some audio bible and go for a walk, go deep with the Lord. Some structured focused studying on a certain topic. Like you want to go deeper in your parenting. You want to work on your marriage to work on your finances are gonna work on advice and you want to work on some you know learning a language, you can go be a missionary and oversee whatever you know. Go deeper with your walk with the Lord one time a week, make it set apart special as opposed to the everyday mundane walk with the Lord, make it a special time to go deep with the Lord. Go deeper. The Lord second thing. Go deep with your main relationships, your primary relationships. You got one of these, it’s the person who has the other one of these. That’s what you’re supposed to go deep with your spouse, your significant other, your husband’s, this is your wife. Um take her on a walk, let her ask you questions, ask her a bunch of questions, take notes and work on stuff together. Be engaged, not a passive husband, not a disengagement and being engaged husband is your wife? She signed up for marriage? She signed up for you for the long run. You kinda had, you presented a version of yourself during dating and engagement, that’s kind of an expectation that continues on for the rest of the day. So go deep with your main relationships, husbands, wives, parents, kids, hey man, but if you’re a single man or woman or a college guy or single, not married yet, you have primary relationships in your life. You have a crew of girls, a crew of guys that you’re rolling with go deeper than sabbath of them, rest with them, enjoy the relationship God has given you have a deepening relationship with the people of God and a deepening relationship with God, that’s the two thing. What about the whole physical thing of like sleep and rest and not working? I propose to you this, if you’re a blue collar person, do white collar stuff, if you’re a white collar person monday through friday, do blue collar stuff, you’re like, what? Like if you’re working all week, driving a truck, that’s cerebral, you’re scanning the road, paying attention, you know, do blue collar stuff. No, the lawn, go for a run, ride a bike, you know, flip it around the other way. If you’re a blue collar guy, build like a masonry was in the first service, he’s gonna need a little R and R. He needs to rest his body because his body is like a professional athlete, you know, working all week of his body, he needs to do it. Maybe a mental refreshment, Does that make sense? So there’s liberty on the last part of go deep with sleep is how I’ve summarized that physical rest maybe. But whatever your opposite of your normal rhythm is, love, the Lord love the people God put in your life, I propose that to you as a tool, a practical for how to sabbath as a church conclusion, you need a sabbath, I need a sabbath, we all need a there we go and we’re entering a restful season of life as a church. So don’t let the summer break break. You don’t get distracted on your time off, invest in a real rest comes from jesus as the Lord of our sabbath. I think this is a timely word for our church. Very timely word about this topic of unique seasons for us. Um, it’s a, it’s an announcement, I think it’s an exciting good announcement. Um, we uh, we’ve been pursuing what it means to be a healthy church for several years now. Learning about that, exploring that and then learning principles and practical of what healthy churches have and what it means to be a healthy member, what it means to be a healthy pastor when healthy exposures of the word of God healthy prayer meetings, healthy discipleship, healthy, healthy, healthy is our hope not health and wealthy. I’m saying a biblically sound healthy church and so there’s this rhythm of rest that we try that we’re attempting to do as a church for our, our pastor staff. Does that make sense? Specifically dan coke and me, I’m mike, dan and mike and so Shane been and I looked into this I think was a year or so ago about a sabbatical every seven years, having a sabbatical for our full time staff to care for them proactively not reactively to care for people that are full time caring for us proactively not reactively. So if you haven’t noticed dan is not here, dan coke is not here. I’ve been a full time pastor for nine years, dan has been full time in the ministry trenches for 18.5 years a lot. And so we’re gonna proactively care for dan coke and Lori and the family and give them a season of rest because dan couldn’t walk into this room and not be your pastor, you love him, he loves you, you can’t just turn it off, you get what I’m saying as a pastor and the people around, you don’t turn it off and so dan will not be with us over the summer because we want to proactively care for dan, what are we not doing well, some churches do sabbaticals very differently, it’s kind of like you’re on the path to burn out or having a midlife crisis, you’re about to have a blow up or it’s like a disciplinary thing because you’re messing up your biting shape and being a jerk about a bunch of stuff. So we’re putting you on break, you need to find a new job. You know, that’s a, that’s the way that churches have done it. And I don’t, that’s not, I don’t see it on the bible and that’s not what is happening with dan, dan is doing great. His walk with the Lord is good, his marriage is good. His pastor. It’s good. We’re just, we don’t think it’s good. We wanted to be great the next, the next seven years we’re gonna give dana break. He’s on a sabbatical effective immediately like this is his first day, automatically. So an action item for all of y’all is to pull out your phones, we’re at church, pull out your phones. Okay, I’m gonna joke. I’m not gonna have to do that. Find dan’s number, find Laurie’s number and delete it. That’s what you can do. No, no, no, no, no, but don’t bug him. Don’t call him, don’t do nothing, don’t text him, don’t tweet him. Don’t meme him. That might be hard for some of us, but don’t um, you can, I mean, I’m kidding, he loves you. You can do that for me when I’m on sabbatical. You can delete my number. It’ll be great. So I’m just kidding. But dan is leading out for us as a church at modeling healthy rhythms of go time and slow time in a time of deepening walk with his marriage and his family because as a pastor, there’s pain of being a pastor, it’s are pain in your pain. There’s a burden of being a pastor. It’s not just my burden, it’s, it’s your burdens when you share them. If you don’t call a pastor because everything’s going great in your life, at least they don’t call me the comedy when things are going really poor or they’re concerned or they’re fearful and you see that that humanity is burden that we aren’t designed to carry as people, jesus, the ultimate high priest, I’ll carry that burden perfectly forever. But we’re under shepherds, under jesus that are attempting to do this to the best of our abilities and we, we love the coke family. Want to care for dan and Lauren want to proactively before we need it, do it because we want to be a healthy church that’s healthy for our pastors. Some churches have a history, don’t tell anyone the subjects have a history of eating up and spitting out pastors and staff because they’re not healthy and they ask too much of their people and they break their people. I don’t, we’re not that church, I’m very grateful who God has given us, but we want to lean into this. So if you wanna be a blessing to them, we’re gonna give them a gift as a church and if you want to be a blessing to them as a remember as a dear pastor, they care for you. You care about them. You can write a letter and mail it to the church and we’ll get it today. That’s his address. It’s a church building, that’s where you are right now. Okay. Um we wanna thank you as we keep leaning into these rhythms of work and rest, we want to care for our staff. Well, healthy churches have healthy employees. We want to care for our people. Well, amen that’s it. Let’s pray God, thank you for this morning. Thank you for sabbath thing and how you created an amazing thing. I need a sabbath. We all need a sabbath florida. We would all lean into this work rest rhythm and figure it out Lord in a way that is honoring to you and cares for our primary relationships. Lord And we have a deepening walk with you because of our times in the sabbath, God preaches blessed and Lori and their family as their disconnecting and connecting with each other and with you. Great. Just really encourage them, refresh them. Lord purchase really. Lead us towards the church. We just love you. We want to just obey everything you say you stand. We pray. Amen.