Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:12-15
Video Link: https://youtu.be/AwVMBilcHYA
Structure:
- Introduction
- The Sabbath is about stopping
- The Sabbath is about equality
- The Sabbath is about redemption
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
When a couple get married they normally exchange rings as part of the ceremony. The minister might say something like…
“Wedding rings serve as a symbol of the vows you have just made. They are the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible love which binds your lives together.”
Each partner to the marriage wears a ring both as an inward reminder to themselves of the covenant commitment they have made and as an outward sign to others that they are married.
Today we continue our series in Deuteronomy. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been looking at the ten commandments (or the ten words) of Yahweh to Israel. This week we focus on the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy.
The Sabbath is like wearing a wedding ring, it has a dual purpose. The Sabbath reminds Israel of their covenant commitment to Yahweh and shows other people they are committed to God for the long haul. From Deuteronomy 5, verses 12-15, we read…
12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labour and do all your work, 14 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 male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. 15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
There is much we could say about the Sabbath, too much for one sermon. So our message today focuses on just three things. The Sabbath is about stopping. The Sabbath is about equality and the Sabbath is about redemption.
Stopping:
The Hebrew word ‘Sabbath’ comes from a root word which literally means to cease or to stop. The Sabbath day, therefore, is about stopping work.
A stop sign, on the road, is not like a give way sign. By law, a stop sign requires you to bring your vehicle to a complete stand still, irrespective of whether any other traffic is coming or not. They normally put stop signs in places where they want you to take extra care.
Just as a compulsory stop sign is there to prevent accidents, so too the compulsory stop of the Sabbath day is there to keep you safe.
The pace of life for many people these days is so fast. We often go from one thing to the next without a chance to catch our breath, let alone reflect. Taking one day in seven to stop, allows us the time and space we need to regather our thoughts and make better decisions; decisions which will prevent a crash.
Most people can see the wisdom in taking a regular day off, and yet many of us find it quite hard to actually stop working completely. When we do take a day off work our hearts and minds are still on the job. It’s like we are on a treadmill.
Technology doesn’t help us to stop either. Technology exasperates the problem. We are tethered to our phones and laptops, literally the touch of a screen away from emails and work worry. So how do we stop?
Well, before we can down tools and walk off site, before we can resist the urge to check those emails one last time, we have to stop at a deeper internal level.
If we feel like the job isn’t finished, then it will be a lot harder to rest. In my job I don’t feel like I can really knock off for the week until the sermon is preached on a Sunday and sometimes not even then.
Of course, most jobs can’t be completed in a week. If you are a builder, then it might take you months to complete the house you are working on. Or, if you are a teacher you will likely be with the same class of kids for a whole year.
You have to break the job down into smaller pieces. That way you give your mind permission to rest when you have completed the stage you had planned to accomplish that week.
The risk with this approach is that something else will come along to derail your goal for the week, so if you can’t accomplish what you had planned you feel like you have to use the weekend chasing your tail to catch up.
Going a little deeper, each of us has a drive for meaning. We want our lives to have purpose. When we retire, we want to feel like we did something worthwhile with our life.
We can find meaning in a whole variety of ways. For example: through quality long term relationships with other people; by raising children; through the nurture of a deep spiritual life; by making truckloads of money or conversely by giving away time and money in service to the community.
One of the main places people try to find meaning is in their career, their work. They may put all their eggs in one basket pursuing a career in sport or business or politics or academia or whatever and strive to become the top in their field because they believe that will fulfil their need for meaning.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to be the best you can be, but one would have to question the wisdom in sacrificing everything (your family, your health, your sanity, your very soul) for work.
Common sense says, spread the risk. Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Find a healthy balance. If work is the only place you find meaning in life, or even the primary place, then you will find it hard to stop and rest. You may also become starved of meaning when you cannot work any longer and all your eggs are broken.
Ultimately, our life finds its meaning and purpose in God. We live to glorify God and enjoy him. Enjoying God can happen any day of the week, but if we don’t practice Sabbath, then it probably won’t happen at all.
We are talking about the deeper things that prevent us from stopping and resting. Closely related to the search for meaning is that unconscious feeling which keeps telling us we are not enough.
It’s that voice inside which goads us and sometimes scolds us into justifying our own existence. ‘I must be productive, I must achieve this goal, I must do more in order to be enough.’
That voice is lying to you. You are enough already. You were born being enough. While you were still in your mother’s womb, before you could do anything for yourself let alone for anyone else, God looked at you with love and acceptance and said, ‘You are my child’.
Faith is believing that you are enough and you don’t need to prove anything. Christian faith is resting secure in the knowledge that you are accepted by God, through Jesus. We are accepted, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done on our behalf.
When you know deep in your soul that you are justified by Christ, that Jesus has got you, then work becomes an expression of gratitude and Sabbath rest the warm embrace of your heavenly Father.
The Sabbath is about stopping. Not just stopping our day job, but stopping at a deeper inner level. Stopping the compulsion to justify ourselves.
Equality:
Sabbath is also about equality. In verse 14 we read…
14 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 male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.
In ancient Israel there were three tiers or strata to society. There was the natural born Israelite, with Jewish parents. Then there was the resident alien or foreigner. Immigrants basically who were not Jewish by birth but for whatever reason chose to live among the Jews. And then there were slaves, referred to in the NIV translation as male and female servants.
What we notice in verse 14 is that all three classes of people are to be treated equally on the Sabbath. Distinctions over race, gender, free and slave, rich and poor are suspended on the Sabbath. No one has to justify their existence through productivity.
Our underlying value as human beings is upheld and given a chance to breathe on the Sabbath. This egalitarian approach, where everyone gets a break from work, reminds the economically secure that the people who work for them are to be treated with dignity and respect.
Likewise, it reminds the economically vulnerable of their humanity, that they are not tools. That their lives matter and count for something more than their mere usefulness on the farm.
We also notice God’s grace in extending the Sabbath rest to animals – to the oxen and donkeys for example. This reminds us of our responsibility as stewards or caretakers of God’s creation.
The equality of the Sabbath points beyond this world to the next. The equality of the Sabbath reminds us that it is God’s plan to stop slavery, stop sexism, stop exploitation, stop racism, stop the oppression of one group by another.
In his book called, The Sabbath, Abraham Heschel recalls a rabbinic legend:
At the time when God was giving the Torah to Israel, He said to them: My Children! If you accept the Torah and observe my [commandments]. I will give you for all eternity a thing most precious that I have in my possession.
And what, asked Israel, is that precious thing…?
The world to come [God answered]
Show us in this world an example of the world to come.
The Sabbath is an example of the world to come.
You see, God intended the Sabbath as a taste of heaven on earth. The Sabbath is meant to give us a picture of what God’s kingdom is like. Sabbath equality nourishes our hope for the future.
The world we live in badly needs to observe a regular Sabbath. Many people today are short on hope and filled with anxiety. The justice and equality of the Sabbath interrupts our anxious thoughts and fosters hope of a better world to come.
Redemption:
For equality to be possible there must first be redemption. Redemption has to do with being saved from something bad; being delivered, set free or rescued. In Christian thought, redemption is closely related to atonement.
In 1999, a 23 year old man, Cornelius Anderson (nicknamed Mike), robbed a Burger King at gunpoint, stealing $2,000. He was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison. They released him on bail and told him to await orders on when to show for his prison sentence.
Due to an admin error the orders did not come, so Anderson did not go to prison. At this point, Mike Anderson had a choice: either continue down the path of crime or choose an honest life.
Mike decided to make good and choose an honest life. He used his freedom to become a master carpenter and start his own construction business. He became a football coach, volunteered at his local church, got married, had three children and became a well-liked member of his community.
Thirteen years later the state discovered their error. They thought Mike was already in prison and only noticed their mistake when Mike was due to be released. The authorities then acted to have him incarcerated.
Mike wasn’t in prison long though. 35,000 people signed a petition for his release and after less than a year the judge let Mike go, saying he was a changed man. Anderson walked out of the courthouse thanking God.
That is a true story of redemption. Mike Anderson used the gift of freedom to turn his life around.
Some people might complain that justice was not served, that Mike got away with it, but I don’t see it that way. Redemption is not in conflict with justice. Redemption is a higher form of justice. Redemption is a God given opportunity to start again and make things right.
To force Mike Anderson to serve 13 years in jail after he had made good, would be to treat God’s grace with contempt.
In verse 15 of Deuteronomy 5, we read of another true story of redemption, Israel’s redemption…
15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
This verse points quite clearly to the purpose of the Sabbath, which is to remember and celebrate God’s redemption.
During the exile, when the Israelites were living in Babylon, the Sabbath became a symbol of solidarity and an exercise in hope. God had led their ancestors out of Egypt with a mighty hand. This inspired the exiles to hope that he would lead them out of Babylon too, back to their homeland.
Over the centuries quite a few man made rules developed around the Sabbath commandment, detailing what people could and could not do on the Lord’s day. Sadly, the purpose or the spirit of the law got buried (or lost) along the way.
Jesus challenged these man made rules on a number of occasions by healing people on the Sabbath day. In doing this he was reminding us the Sabbath is about redemption.
In Mark 2, Jesus famously said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
When Jesus says, ‘the Sabbath was made for man’, he means it was made for humankind.
Conclusion:
I don’t want to tell you what you can and can’t do on your day off. But I do want to encourage to take one day off in seven. It tends to work better if you take the same day off as other people, whenever possible.
For the Jews the Sabbath is a Saturday, the last day of the week. For most Christians the Sabbath is traditionally a Sunday, the first day of the week. A Sunday Sabbath makes sense if you are a Christian because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday and Jesus’ resurrection is the basis for our hope of redemption.
In keeping with Jesus’ teaching, that the Sabbath was made for man, we do well to ask ourselves: What is it that my soul needs?
Perhaps you have had a particularly difficult week and you need to think about something other than the problem you have been trying to solve. Focusing on God in adoration and worship could help with that.
Perhaps you sit at a desk in front of a computer most of the week. What is something you enjoy doing that is completely different from that? Maybe gardening or fishing or mountain biking or walking on the beach is what your soul needs.
Perhaps your work involves staying home and looking after children most of the time. Maybe some adult conversation is what you need?
Perhaps your job is highly pressured with back to back meetings and long hours. Maybe just sitting still in a quiet room with a good book will refill your tank.
Or perhaps you live alone, filling the hours as best you can. Maybe coming to church to be with others or going out to lunch to chat with friends is the Sabbath for you.
Alongside this question, ‘what is it my soul needs?’, we also need to ask, what is it the people around me need? Because the Sabbath is for everyone.
If you are an extravert and you are married to an introvert, then what your partner needs on their day off is probably going to be different from what you need. How can you both get what you need?
The Sabbath is about stopping and resting, on the inside and the out.
The Sabbath is about equality, being fair to yourself and those around you.
And the Sabbath is about redemption, using your freedom to put things right.
Let us pray…
Father God, we thank you for the gift of Sabbath. Give us the grace we need to stop worrying, to stop striving and to stop trying to justify ourselves. Help us to see your redemption, both for ourselves and for others, and to walk in it. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- Why do we need to stop working on the Sabbath?
- How do we stop working, on the inside and the out?
- Where do you find meaning for your life? Are all your (meaning) eggs in the same basket? How might you diversify your meaning making?
- What does verse 14 of Deuteronomy 5 tell us about the Sabbath? What does the Sabbath show us about God’s kingdom? How does Sabbath equality foster hope?
- What is redemption? Can you think of an example of redemption from your own life (or from the Scriptures)?
- What is it your soul needs? What is it those around you need?
Tawa Baptist 