Relate Community Church
Relate Community Church
Remember The Sabbath
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Welcome Back And Settle In
SPEAKER_00All right, everybody. Good morning and welcome to church. Are y'all glad to be here? You're not as glad as I am to be here. Nothing makes you feel like uh you're at home than whenever you're gone. And then uh last week we uh I had the pleasure and the honor of being at uh Union Houston with some friends, with our friends, and um spent time with them worshiping and celebrating the goodness of God. But today I'm glad to be back, and I have a lot of words. Um I've we've had a lot of our team speaking and uh special speakers and and then panel speakers, and we we've had a showcase of incredible talent and people just coming and sharing God's word. Uh, and today, after several weeks, I'm glad to be back. And I've got a lot stored up and stocked up, ready to just pour out because I feel like the Lord's been speaking to me, but also uh it's good to it's good to be in a place where I can uh I can share share some things with you. So go ahead and get your notes out if you if you have your notes, or maybe you're on uh a tablet or or your phone, however you do that. Pull out your notes. We're a note-taking church. This is uh us taking the word with us. Sometimes it's take it takes a little effort, it takes a little work to put it in your heart. The Bible tells us that uh David said, Your word have I hid in my heart. And uh I think notes are a part of that. I think notes are uh a way that we we can absorb it and we can take it with us, and it becomes sticky, and we're able to remember it well. And um I want to look at the camera and just say welcome to everybody who's watching online. It is our immense pleasure for you to join us today and to uh connect with us. And I want to dive into week number seven of Summer in the Forge. It I when we first came up with that name, I thought that is a weird name, but I've really I've loved it. I've loved the idea of us just being shaped and molded and sharpened into uh not just a weapon, but also a tool that God can use, a vessel that God can use in this world to do his work
Summer In The Forge Series
SPEAKER_00and to advance his agenda. So today we're looking at the Ten Commandments and uh actually the series for 10 weeks, we've looked at the Ten Commandments. This is week number seven. So we've gone through so many. We've gone through the first four really talk about our relationship with God, and then the the second half looks at how we relate to other people, and these aren't just rules that uh hold us in or put us into a prison or say, don't do this, you have to do this. These are rules that protect us. Sure, they're they're building guidelines, they're building walls that they they they're not to keep us in, they're really to protect us from damaging, from doing damage to our relationship with God, from doing damage with our relationship with each other. That's why I don't want to steal from you, not because it's don't do that. I don't want to lie because that damages relationship, it breaks trust, it puts us into a place that's unhealthy and toxic and uh damaging to each other. So today we're looking at I think the most broken commandment. Or actually, I say maybe not the most broken, it's the most ignored. It's the this this commandment is one that we just pretty much pretend doesn't exist. And I'll show you what I mean by that in just a second. So, week number seven, we're gonna look at remember the Sabbath. Let's just jump right into Exodus chapter 20, verse 8, where we see this commandment laid out very simply. Remember the Sabbath day to keep by keeping it. Everybody say remember. Everybody say keep. Right there, two things. You have to remember it and you have to keep it, keeping it holy. We're
Remember And Keep The Sabbath
SPEAKER_00gonna talk about the holiness of this day in just a minute. But six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. Neither you nor your sons, your daughters, nor male, nor female servants, nor your animals, nor any foreigners residing in your towns. In other words, of all that you influence, we're taking a break. You're not gonna do any work. Like whatever you're doing for six days, the seventh day is different. It's not just a continuation. Watch this. It says, For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that's in them, but he rested on the seventh day. In other words, this is not just for you. This is a uh a template, this is a standard and a rhythm that's set by God. He did it, you do it, I do it, we do it. This is who we are. And then the very last line says, Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So can I just take a pause right there, just stop. He didn't ask us to take a Sabbath, he commanded it. And this is the part where going to church doesn't make it a Sabbath. So, oh, I can't, I remember the Sabbath because I went to church. I I made sure I showed up, I made sure I got my attendance records. This is not that. I'm gonna show you why this is not that. In the Jewish culture and historically, the Jewish Sabbath was um sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday. From overnight, 24-hour period. And so we typically don't use the word Sabbath. You don't you don't hear that word a lot. You hit we hear oh Sunday. And we've almost replaced Sabbath for Sunday. That's not the Sabbath.
Sabbath Is Not Just Sunday
SPEAKER_00In the Jewish uh language, in the Hebrew language, it's Shabbat. Everybody say Shabbat. Also a weird word. It sounds so far outside of what we usually use. Here's what Shabbat means. It means to rest, to stop, to cease. It's to have a break. It's not a continuation or just a further uh, it's where everything stops and everything changes for a little bit. I as I was preparing this message, I would I remembered uh Angela and I, and we have a picture here where we went to the Grand Canyon. How many of you raise your hand? You've been to the Grand Canyon. Okay, there is a 23-mile uh scenic view around the eastern uh ridge rim of the Grand Canyon, and I remember from the moment that we got in line at the Grand Canyon,
The Rest Stop Rhythm
SPEAKER_00there's so many people there, I was like a little bit stressed out. There's like people trying to, they got a bunch of lanes coming down into one. So here's stress, here's here's all of this effort just to get where we're trying to get, right? Where this is supposed to be uh an amazing, life-changing view experience, and yet from the moment we pulled into the like onto the property, which is miles and miles away from where actually seeing the Grand Canyon, there's uh traffic and stress, and how do we get through this? And so finally we get to the Grand Canyon, and we have to walk to get to the Grand Canyon, but we find that okay, if we get on this 23-mile scenic view, we'll be able to just drive casually. No, that's not that's not true. Is you're not gonna just you don't just have a uh a calm, peaceful drive. No, we have uh sheer cliffs, and you're like trying not to run into the other people who are coming from the other way, and you're trying to, I'm trying to look at the Grand Canyon and this the the brief glimpses that we get, trying to to have a view and trying to experience an angel saying, Oh, look at that. I'm like, I can't look, I have to keep my eyes on the road. And we had very limited time to do it. So what they have on this 23-mile scenic route is they have stops. So we pull every mile or so we'd pull over, and then there would be this great view, and you could stop and just take a breath and take in the view, and then we'd get back in the car and then drive another little bit of, and then it then the stress is back on. To me, this is almost like the rhythm of our weekdays where we're we're driving, just trying to get there, we're going somewhere, we're supposed to be doing we're on an agenda, we're trying to make it work, and then we stop, pull over, get out of the car, and everything changes for just a few minutes. It's a different rhythm. It's it's it's not we're just looking out while we can in the break between the trees. No, this is a specified, designated area, space. It's a stop. It's a rest stop. So I want you to think about your week in terms of a rest stop. The Bible says that God worked for six days and then he took a what? Sabbath, a Shabbat. He took a see he ceased working, he took a rest. And a lot of us think, oh, I I took a rest. I slowed down. No, no, no. There's a designated, specified way to take the break. It's cordoned off, it's specific. And some of us, we just kind of like slowed down in the middle of the road, and then we got the view. Oh, I did it. I took my Sabbath. No, no, no, you didn't. You didn't. Elbow your neighbor and say, You didn't. You didn't do it. I know because I'm in the same boat. This is not something where I'm telling you I do this perfectly. I'm telling you, we have to do this better. We've messed this up. We've forgotten, we we have we have not remembered the Sabbath. In fact, to be an American, I think, is almost there is no Sabbath. So, what is the Sabbath and how do we protect it? How do we practice it? How do we remember it? How do we keep it? Or if we haven't kept it and remembered it, how do we get it back? What does it mean? So, here I'm gonna give you four things today. We're gonna I'm gonna give them to you pretty quickly. Number one is you just have to realize that the Sabbath is a stop. It is a stop. It's not a slow down and see what you can see and try to do all that you can. It's an actual stop. And when I say stop, I don't just mean physically, I mean emotionally, I mean physically, I mean relationally. Everything just needs to slow down and
Sabbath Means A Full Stop
SPEAKER_00get down to the very basics. Your soul needs to stop, to slow down. So I will say this for us, busyness is a virtue. That's almost like the replacement commandment. Get busy, be busy, let's hustle. I feel like that that is what as Americans, as people who live in 2026, be busy and get busy and uh hustle. That has replaced remember the
Busyness As A False Virtue
SPEAKER_00Sabbath. Because we got a lot to do. We have uh if I could walk around the room and ask every, we could have conversations. What do we ask each other? Hey, how's it been going? What is our very first response to how's it? How you been? Oh, busy. I'm busy. But we also we also wear that busy as a badge. Oh, yeah, I'm busy. Nobody says, hey, how you been? Oh man, I've just been bored lately. I've just been like, I've been sitting around doing nothing. I've just been resting, man. Just like that would be we'd be embarrassed to say that because we think it's less than. We think, oh, if you're a lazy person, that's that you're degenerate. What's wrong with you? If someone asked, hey, what did you do on Sunday after church? I just laid around. I just laid up in bed, I just, you know, I just sat there for like six hours and did nothing. Oh, you mean you checked email and you checked all your messages, you caught up on your Netflix? No, no. I didn't do anything, I just sat there. In fact, most of us just try to keep the appearance of being busy so somebody else in the house doesn't look at us and say, why don't you do something with your life? That wasn't about you. I'm just saying. And when we do try to slow down, work comes to us, and our phone just now it just blows up. Where are you at? I can't get a hold of you. I'm resting right now. No, you're not. You're not. I need you to do some things. What so in fact, some people think that COVID has changed that because we don't we don't work like we used to. I think that working in the office has changed a little bit, but we're still working. We're at homework and from the time we wake up. From the time I wake up, I pick up my phone and start answering questions. What does that look like? Work? Looks like driving here, driving in Houston. Driving is a big deal because everything is 30 minutes away and we're trying to accomplish things on the drive, listen to podcasts, I gotta consume some content while I'm driving, food, making food, making meals, taking care of the kids. If you are a parent in the United States in 2026, you are busier than ever. Because you gotta get the kids are busy. That means you're extra busy. And if you have 10 kids, you're the busiest of all. We're doing hygiene, self-care, emotional self-care, commuting and working and messaging, cleaning, laundry. I just made a list of all the things that are running through my head. The lawn, fixing things. If I finish everything, there's still a list of things that have to be fixed, that have to be caught up and maintained in cooking and dishes and groceries, school runs, kids run, home run, homework, practice, appointments, social media, games, streaming, scrolling, shopping, helping other family members who need to move or who need help at their house once my house is taken care of. Going to church, all the church things. Serving. We have a list of things that literally never ends. I think that's why he that God did not say, hey, when you finish all your work, then take a break. He set a rhythm. You work for so long, work's not done, maybe. Still got some more work to do next week, but you gotta take a break. You have to stop. You have to stop. Dallas Willard said, busyness is the greatest enemy of spiritual life. If you're so busy, so consumed, so uh your hands full of things, how can we how can be how can we be open and surrendered and ready for God and the things that He has for us? So I don't think uh probably many of you in the room, I know this, are like me. Um this day and age, it's hard to remember what it feels like to be bored. When I was younger, I won't say how long ago, but you know, there was a time when you could just be bored. Oh man, I don't know. I'm just I am bored. How about driving on a road trip or even a 30-minute trip? I'm just looking out the window. That rarely happens these days. We're not we're not at rest when we're at rest. So I want to challenge you a little bit today. Whenever we say the word cease and stop and rest, I need you to measure the condition of your rest. Are you at rest? Are your emotions at rest? And we wonder why we have more anxiety and more stress and more worry and why we're so bound up and biting our fingernails over everything, because we our even when my body stops, my emotions don't stop. My soul never stops because I'm in motion. So, what are we gonna stop? I'm gonna give you three quick things. What does it actually look like to have a stop? First, we're gonna stop working and start resting. That one seems obvious, but I think the problem where we push back is Pastor Han, you don't understand. If I stop working, everything falls apart. If I quit, if I don't work, if I don't hustle, then everything falls apart. Can I first just push back on that a little bit too? Because I want to tell you that you're not that important, that the whole world falls apart.
Stop Working And Start Resting
SPEAKER_00Well, God has things for me to do too, yes, but he also said rest. And if you don't trust God enough to keep your life going when you're obedient to him, then you don't trust God at all. If you think your kids are so desperately, desperate to take you, if I don't get them to practice, if I don't get this done, if I don't get that done, my whole world just will implode. If God, if it was, if it was important enough for not for for God to not just tell you to do it, but He also did it. You can do it, I can do it, we can do it. Whisper next to you to somebody, we can do this. Some of y'all didn't sound very confident. You were like, uh we can do this. I don't truett Kathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, said that closing on Sunday, uh, they close on Sunday because that's when everybody wants to go to Chick-fil-A. No, that's not what he said. He said he closed on Sunday because everyone needs a rest, then all of his staff needs a rest, a day to rest, and to worship if they choose to. Which is actually pretty incredible for someone who is building a business. Right? Here's the second thing we're gonna stop. We're gonna stop worrying and start receiving. This is the emotional element of your rest and of your stop that you have to put some things down and to let go, to surrender some things to God on your rest day. Well, I can't rest because what are all the things that you just need to trust God with? I'm gonna let you have it, God. You said take a rest.
Stop Worrying And Start Receiving
SPEAKER_00So if you want me to rest, then you must be able to take care of me. Here's what I think happens. We hang on to the worry, we hang on to the stress, we we don't receive rest from God, and what we do is we're we're constantly in this spin of things. I hear people describing uh Angela says this all the time, talking about keeping all the plates spinning. There's plates spinning, good. They're gonna keep spinning. But what we do in the midst of all of the stress of this is we we escape into other things because we can't rest, because we don't have uh uh a relief valve for rest and restoration. What happens is we escape into other things. We reach for things that we think can give me some respite. We get we reach for things that we think will uh help me to alleviate the pressure of all the things I'm not releasing. Alcohol, binging, uh, entertainment, things that make me feel better, those things are not actually increasing my capacity. They come at a cost. Blowing off steam in lots of different ways. God gave us uh a specified prescription for how do I live at rest. The Sabbath takes you out of escape mode where you're looking for things to escape. Here we go. Here's the third thing. Stop, we're gonna stop wanting and start releasing. And we've already been through what it looks like, what modern commercialism looks like. We've talked about that in uh in some of our other commandments, but I need you to our appetite for stuff and things. Well, I gotta have this, I gotta have a better house, I gotta have a better car, I have a better phone, I gotta upgrade all my my
Stop Wanting And Start Releasing
SPEAKER_00wardrobe, I gotta take same for my kids, same for my husband, wife. All we have to end, we have to keep climbing the ladder, and because of that, I have to work more. I have to work more so I can get better things, so I can have more stuff. So everything that's advertised to me, so I just saw this on TV, I need to buy this. I just saw this on social media. Someone showed me I have to have it. I'm gonna have to work some more this week. And so we're constantly building and doubling down on it. And I think what happens is when our b even if our body stops, our soul and our emotions and all of the desires that we have, they never stop. What would it look like for you to take a Sabbath where everything stops? And your your soul is not a slave to your body because it doesn't stop. You can't have Jesus said that he will give us rest for our soul. And yet we pray for it, we reach for it, but we don't take the rest he gave us. This is not just, hey, you can work all you want 24-7. You can push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push, and you'll just somehow have rest. God gave you a prescription and said, take a break. Every seven days, a whole day. It's a whole day. So it's a break. Watch this. Those are the three ways that we're going to take a break. Genesis chapter one. I want you know, I want us to look at um how God took a break in Genesis chapter two, actually. It says, Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast arrays. So God created the whole all the heavens and the earth, everything that was created, he saw it. It said, by the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from everybody say all
God Rests And Celebrates
SPEAKER_00his work. Not just most of his work or the work that he gets paid for. You got a lot of work that you're not getting paid for. That's where we usually draw the line. Well, I'm getting paid work, and then I got all the hat chores, and that doesn't count. It counts. On the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day, seventh day. He blessed it, watch this, and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. So Shabbat can also be translated into celebrate. But it is uh like after, imagine God's working, He's He just created all the heavens, the universe, light, land, animals, he created all of life, and now here's man, and he it's like he stepped back, took a deep breath, and it's just he said it was good. It's like he's enjoying the creation. When do you sit back in your life? Well, I can't I can't enjoy my life. I still got too many things to do. There's still too much to be done. I'm not ready to rest. You wait a second. Part of the rhythm of your life and my life has to be the rest. Otherwise, what are we living for? Where, how can we part of it is the celebration. It's a day to celebrate. It's a day to not just work, but to enjoy, to take a deep breath, eat good food. For me, that that usually looks like Angela and I hanging out, trying not to, we're not scheduling anything. We're we're enjoying the day, maybe reading a book. If you can't get a hold of me because I don't know where Pastor Sean is, he's supposed to be on the phone, he's supposed to be on email. We have to have rest for our souls. Watch this. Here's the second thing. So, number one, we're gonna stop. The Sabbath is a stop. Number two, the Sabbath is a blessing. The Bible says that God worked six days, then on the seventh day he rested. It says then he blessed the Sabbath. We also see that blessing in our lives. There, if you if you read through Genesis, God blesses actually three things. Three things God blesses. He blesses
Sabbath Blessing Multiplies Your Week
SPEAKER_00man. He says, be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth. He also blesses the animals to be fruitful and to multiply all over the earth. And he also blesses the third thing that God blesses is he blesses a day. That sounds weird, right? He blesses a little time period, the seventh day. What does that blessing look like? It's the same as the be fruitful and multiply. This day has a blessing on it that gives it the capacity or the ability to make more life. This day is blessed, not like all the other days. I work, work, work, work, I'm building, I'm working, I'm adding, I'm putting bricks on top of other bricks to build my life. And yet the seventh day is the one day that actually has the power, the supernatural blessing on it to increase life for the rest of the days. To make something that's not there, if we'll obey it, but often we don't obey it. We just rage against the chaos and the busyness of life, and we're just pushing and fighting and working and working and working ourselves to the bone. If you're so worried about productivity and effort, can I tell you that this blessing is the answer to that? That you become more productive when you're obedient and you enact. It's almost like the tithe. The tithe doesn't make sense on paper because you're you're giving God 10%. But that 10% has the blessing on it that blesses the other 90%, it makes it go further than 10%. This day has the power, if I'll rest, has the power to multiply the other days. It says God blessed it. So if you want your mind restored and refilled and rested, this is like this is like if there is a lumberjack who just keeps cutting and never sharpens his axe. How much more productive and proficient and efficient would he be if he stopped and sharpened his blade and took a break and then went back at it? Much more than just continuing to hack at trees with a dull axe that never cuts anything. Same thing for a chainsaw. You have to sharpen a chainsaw. You don't just keep adding fuel to it and keep going, we'll never stop. Oh, yeah, you will stop because it'll stop cutting after a while. It'll eventually break down. But I gotta work. The third thing. You know what I hope happens during this message? I hope something clicks in your mind and you think, okay, this is I need to pay attention to this. There's something here. There's something about this. This is not just a message. This is this is something that God gives us that we have left somewhere. We lost it. Here's number three. The Sabbath is a stop, the Sabbath is a blessing. Number three, the Sabbath is holy. Holy actually means set apart. This is the uh if you if you think about the uh principle of first mentions, the first time in the Bible that God, that it, that rest is mentioned is right here. And the blessing and holiness is attached to this day, to this rest, to this stop. In ancient times, if you think about,
Holy Means Set Apart Time
SPEAKER_00well, where was where were the holy sites? Where where are the holy things? Well, they might have been in a temple, they might have been up on top of a mountain, a mountaintop. That's where the holy, but God said the very first thing He made holy was a time. It was a day, a period of time where you stop. Not a place that you go to, and we like to think of, oh, God's house is holy. Yes, his house is holy. The temple of the Holy Spirit. There's there are things that we call holy, but when it comes to a day, well, you know, if I ask you what you're doing after church today, which I'm not going to because I don't want to make you feel too bad, I just want you to know what you're doing. So you can know how bad how bad it is. Most of us have a mile-long list of all the things, but I just, you know, I haven't things that have to get done. It's holy. It's set aside. And when we don't keep the Sabbath holy, then we actually reap the harvest and consequences of uh emotional health and burnout. Immune system compromises, and we get tired and sick and sick and tired. We lose creativity. The quality of life goes down by so much. And it's this is one of those things that's really difficult to measure because it's hard to feel it happening when it's going the wrong way. It can devastate our soul and our connection to God. Let me read you uh a passage. We're gonna jump to Exodus chapter 16. So this is actually before the Ten Commandments. We see the Sabbath, like the tithe, like marriage, the Sabbath is one of those things that pre-exists the law of um the Ten Commandments. It it's it's a principle, it's a spiritual principle. People ask, well, the tithe and and the Sabbath are they're Old Testament things. Wait a second, they're not, because actually Jesus um Jesus talks
Manna Teaches Planning For Rest
SPEAKER_00about both. Jesus talks about um marriage, Jesus talks about there are things that it's bigger than just Ten Commandments. Although the Ten Commandments solidified them and said, No, you have to do this. Remember that, remember the Sabbath. Not just the Sabbath is a thing that's blessed and holy and important. Don't forget it, don't leave it. Okay, so Exodus chapter 16, verse 9 says, Then Moses tells Aaron, say to the entire Israelite community, Come before the Lord, he's heard you grumbling. While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing on the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them at twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. And then you will know that I am the Lord your God. That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew on around the camp, and when the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. This is uh when the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, What is it? That's the translation for the word manna that we use that God provided manna to feed the Israelites. They said, What is this? For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, It is the it is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded. Everyone's to gather as much as they need, take an omer for each person. That's a designated amount. For each person you have in your tent. And if we jump to verse 21, it says, Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, melted it away. On the sixth day they gathered twice as much. So they're working extra hard on day six to make sure that they can take a rest. I hope you're seeing something here. You don't have to go pick up manna off the ground, but you have to work and you have to strategize and think about what is the cost going to be for me to take this break. What is this rest gonna practically look like for the Israelites? It was, hey, you're God's gonna provide for you, God's gonna give you everything you need, but you're gonna have to plan for it. And some of you are thinking, well, if I get to a place where I can take a rest, then I'll take my Sabbath. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You plan for it, you plan it, you set it. This is my calendar, this is my time, this is Friday night, I'm gonna start my Sabbath. Saturday night, I'm gonna start my Sabbath. It doesn't have so it might not be a specific day that you're I have people tell me all the time, well, I just can't do church on Sundays. Listen, if you're if you decide that the day that you're gonna rest and you're gonna take your Sabbath is Saturday, take it Saturday. But if you don't stop and rest and you just keep barreling through life, pouring, pouring, pouring, pouring, and your soul never gets a rest, you can come complain to me. So I'm not gonna say don't come complain to me. You can, but I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you you need a break. Oh, I just can't take a break. Well, you've set up, you've established a scenario in your life that you're not you you you can't get healthy because you know what it takes to get healthy. You know what it takes to get rest, but you refuse to do it. And you might be doing everything else right, but if you want the spiritual health in your family, in your marriage, think about what we're teaching our kids. That work and me trusting my own ability to provide for myself and my family is so much more important than trusting God. You may inadvertently be showing your kids and the people around you and family members, well, you're not saying, well, I only trust myself, but what you're showing them is I don't really trust God. I don't trust God with my money, I don't trust God with my time, I don't trust God with my own soul and my own rest, with his ability to take care of me. The Israelites had to they had to trust God for food. They had to trust God to literally go out and pick it up off the ground every day. And you would think, well, if God would do that for me, then I would then I would have everything I need. Do you know how much, you know how long it took for the Israelites to start complaining because they wanted different food? That's our appetite. God, you already provided for me, but I actually need a little bit more. If you could just get me some onions and some leeks and some other some flavor in my life, then I could go and I could just I'd rather go back to Egypt at this point. I'd rather go back and be a slave because at least I'll have some diversity in my life. How about trusting God that what he gives you is enough, and when you get to day six, you've worked enough. Okay, that's it. We've done it. Kids, wife, no, we're taking a break. We're not fixing up the house and moving around all the furniture on our Sabbath. I always say that because Angela loves to move around furniture. And I love to help her. It is holy. It's not just a day of rest, but it's a day of worship. So here's practically when you're thinking about building your Sabbath and sit and resting and planning for it and strategizing for it. How do we do that? You gotta ask yourself a question. I want to do some things on my Sabbath. Is it rest? Is it worship? Am I celebrating God and what he's doing in my life? If it's not, if it's not in that category, don't do it. Save it for the other six days. You gotta filter your Sabbath. Filter your Sabbath so it was holy. And so I don't, I'm not saying this is an easy transition to just install a Sabbath day in your in your schedule if you're not used to doing that. I'm telling you, it's so important that you need to think about it and plan for it and make it a priority. It's one of the most, it's one of the ten most important things that God has for your life. It's not an easy thing. So here's number four, and then we'll close. And it's that Sabbath is a healthy rhythm. The Sabbath is a healthy rhythm. I'm gonna get the band to join me back on stage and we're gonna close with this. That the Sabbath, God works for six days, He establishes this rhythm and He shows us, hey, this is what what this is what's healthy. If you want to work uh 21 days in a row and then take a break, if you want to work six months and then you can afford to take a break, or you feel like you can't afford to take a break,
Rhythm Beats Balance Every Time
SPEAKER_00God's saying you can and need to, you have to. Well, my job won't let me. Listen, I'm not saying it's easy, but if you're gonna commit to the commandments and what God says your life should be built around. Otherwise, what you'll do is you'll take a rest as a response to crisis. Well, I've just listened I I've seen pastors who uh they're bored, the the church board and the church staff will will designate pastor, you need it, you need a sabbatical. This is too, you've been through, this is too much. Wait a second, sabbatical is good, but don't let your sabbatical, don't let your sabbath, don't let your rest be a response. I am overworked and burned out. Then you're doing something that's not just giving rest to your soul, you're trying to fix a problem. Imagine what our lives would look like if we had this healthy spiritual rhythm where we're following God's example and we're doing six days and resting for one day every week. Here's what'll happen. I promise you that the Sabbath becomes the best day of your week. I can't wait to get to that Sabbath. I can't wait to turn everything off, turn my phone off, turn my messages off, and sit and read a book, or sit in the sunshine, or eat the best meal of the day. Get the family together and just hang out. And we talk and we share. This is not a response to crisis. This is a normal rhythm. That's why people tell me, Well, I just need to find a balance. No, I hate that. You don't need to find a balance, you need to set a rhythm. You need to decide what is the healthy rhythm that's going to get you the outcome and get you the response and get you the type of fruit that you're looking for. God says it's very simple. Six days in one. You're still just have to find a balance. Just do what the Bible says. This is not only a command, but it's a gift. I think the thing we have to break in our own minds as Americans is that we think a rest is a reward. Like, hey, I've worked so hard, I deserve this break. I worked so hard, I worked my butt off, now I get to rest. Wait a second. This is not just a reward, this is a grace that God gives us and says that you need to take a break. Every it's not based on how much you produced, it's based on the a time frame. Work for six days, put your life into it, put your effort into it, and then take the gift of a Sabbath. I think this makes me a better pastor, makes me a better husband, makes me a better dad, a better, a better child of God. Puts me more in connection with God. Last thing I'll tell you is this that Jesus talks about this command. When you break down all the things that Jesus talks about, this command, he talks about this one twice as much as all the other commands. And yet it's the one thing that we never talk about. Sabbath? I don't know about that.
Commitment To Obedience And Trust
SPEAKER_00I want us to close with a commitment, not to me or to church, but a commitment between you and God. I will set this, I will, I will have a break. Cease working, I'll rest. I'll let God give rest to my soul. And not only do I get that rest, but I also get the blessing that's attached to it. I get to step into a realm of holiness that we often ignore, and my life starts to benefit because I'm getting this healthy rhythm. I'm doing things like I've never done them before. So I want you to think about it as you're making this commitment to God. How can what would this look like for you? So I want us to pray and I want us to make make a dedication to the Lord that I want to keep your commands, God. I want to live in holiness. I want to set an example for my kids that will change my um my lineage, change my legacy. That what I'm leaving for my kids is not just what I'm leaving for the next generation is not just that, oh, we went to church and we're people of God. No, we do what God says, and we live in the blessing that He provides for us. And then they follow that example, and then their kids follow that example. We're building on something, not just recovering from our own stupidity. Let's pray. Father, we are so thankful that you cared enough about us and our relationship with you, our relationship with others, that you you help us to live and learn and uh set a healthy rhythm to walk in blessing, to walk in holiness. And God, today we commit ourselves to following your commands, we commit ourselves to taking a rest, celebrating the goodness of creation, the goodness of the work that you've put in our hands, the fruit of our labors. So, God, moving us. Help us to strategically be strategic, help us to be intentional about the way that we live for you. We trust you enough to be obedient, God. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Before we go, I want to just I want to invite you to do one thing. If you have never surrendered your whole life, it's it's one thing to think about surrendering a day of rest and making that big commitment, but if you've never given your life to Jesus, that's the most important thing you can do. Because then He gives us the
Prayer To Follow Jesus
SPEAKER_00eternal life and the gift of grace that He offers. So would you just bow your head one more time? And I want to I want to invite you, if you've never said that prayer, would you just say these words out loud and let's take a step of faith and choose to give our lives to Him? Would you say this out loud? Dear Heavenly Father, today I choose to follow you. I surrender not just one day, but my whole life. I surrender everything to you. So take my heart, take my future. From this day forward, I choose to follow you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's put our hands together. Amen. Let's stand up on our feet. Thank you guys for coming today and worshiping with us. The prayer team's gonna come to the front. If you'd like to pray with someone before you go, make your way forward. Otherwise, we love you. God bless you. Have an awesome week, and we'll see you next week.