I'm gonna tell you a story this morning about some frustration I remember as a child and I think that most of us might have had a similar Frustration level but I remember when I was a kid growing up my grandparents my parents moved to work to Alexandria where I grew up And I was like six hours away from both sets of grandparents And anybody else I grew up like far away from grandparents and like what's awesome is hopefully sometimes you find other grandparents Well, my own J and NAN for J and NAN for awesome. Mr. J. Always got me really cool gifts And I remember we went there to their house They kind of live down the country outside Alexandria and I remember it's around Christmas and their Christmas present to me was I'm 37 born 1980 so some of you might remember this was like the hot Christmas present one year But it was a full laser tag set you remember that one I'm about awesome.
That was like I drove my parents crazy with laser tag Let me tell you and some of you might have been in these shoes You might have been the offender and you might have been the affinity in this situation But we went to J and NAN so I'm just on day to the Christmas season if you give an eight-year-old a presence requires batteries What needs to come in the present? I love J and NAN for there's only one thing they've ever known in my life It did not cause it to be fulfilled and happy and absolutely enjoy mr. J One time built a swing for me in this huge old oak tree It had to have a 65 foot rope and the arc that you could get on I mean they're fantastic There's not batteries with laser tag and this is before remote controls or every you've done it You can't find a double-a the triple-a's and you start like dissecting every single thing in the house like to scavenge the batteries We every battery could we still not have a battery for laser tag and I was just and so I didn't understand was this is a Sunday and the gas station was closed The the family dollar was closed. It was like a 20 mile drive to find something open with batteries Now mr.
J. We got in the truck and we went and found some batteries that day But I remember I came trying to explain to me why stores were not open on Sunday Okay, if you've ever lived and if you've ever lived around a place that does not have a Chick-fil-A What is the one day you'll find a Chick-fil-A? Sunday right it's the first time you're like 180 miles of a Chick-fil-A. It happens to be a Sunday like we've this We've had this Sunday and I'm a kid just could not understand this my grandfather We're like he like his house I keep to sit in the chair and read a book on Sunday like the prohibitions of anything I remember he told me I couldn't go like shoot like the 22 at the buying a sausage can like all like Sunday You can't stay rest like we have this like inherent like this latent thing about Sunday about Sabbath and we started a series last week It's called living at the edge Asking questions about what does it mean to have a fulfilled life versus a full life?
And it's too often times we pursue full life to find out that they leave us empty And if a filled life is very different, but we do not need to be stretched thin and this week we're talking about about Sabbath We're talking about rest. We're talking about this concept But I found some statistics this week about work that I want to share with you and I I Did my research because every one of these seems absolutely unbelievable to me And I found out how true they are that explains the anxiety we have attached to our time and the idea of arrest But this is from the international labor organization. This is wild here. So Americans on average Work 137 hours more than the Japanese.
This is just from 2015 that we work 260 hours more a year than the British That we work 499 more hours a year than the French that's equivalent of three months of work Now also you come down the next ABC news I could not find an updated version of this because it terrifies me what it would be when updated but the difference from 1970 to 1990 a 20 year period that we work a month more a year than we did in 1970 That's that's 27 years old. I would be terrified to know what that's like now And we say we feel overworked and we feel busy the statistics are there to prove it This is interesting you remember just a few months ago in the news cycle was the USS McCain crash that that accident and in the Pacific That the studies have already shown that the sailors on the USS McCain But also just across the Navy and the heart and top Pacific Fleet. We're working 30 hours more than was recommended a week Friends we have a time problem We have a serious time problem one thing we did to prepare for the series is we did a lot of surveying and work And we fixed it to where it could only come up if you lived in watch top air So we surveyed a lot of folks, you know foundry we run about 150 175 on a Sunday morning We got back 67 responses The the years I spent in college the other small amount of time actually paid attention and that was getting a degree in social research That's a pretty good sample size and we found some just astounding statistics and these are coming from you This is not coming from anywhere else. This is coming from you over 50% of people when we asked the question I consistently need more over 50% of you said I need more time for family and I need more time for recreation That's this over half said that the next thing's very interesting said over.
I'm worried the most about 56.3 of you the largest Section out there said about having more time with those I love like that's the data of this room right here friends We have a time problem like we have a bad time problem It's affecting all of us and the lesson the thing that I want us to think about this morning though It's how we attempt to fix our time problems And what this morning wants to think about this that crashing is not the same as resting Crashing's not the same as resting getting to the end of your rope and firing up netflix on your iPad Actually does not do us any good. I'm the first person to claim that I do that You know running till we're at our wits end and then trying to cram three days of vacation We might have worked for eight weeks straight and we come home more stressed than we were when we left is not resting Us working on average 499 more hours a year than other countries in the developed world teach us that we are not resting and resting is a biblical Idea and concepts just when we're talking about Sabbath we're gonna talk about the whole idea the concept we're gonna talk about the reason I couldn't find batteries in the country when I was eight years old We're gonna talk about what does the Bible teach us about resting because the thing is Sabbath and idea of rest are synonymous It's the exact same word is the exact same concept and we see this is one of the oldest things It's one of the core principles of the Old Testament. It's one of the core principles of Judaism the idea of Sabbath is what got Jesus Consistently in trouble with other people like this is a crucial piece of faith of following God So we're gonna kind of try this out across all scripture But we find it in the beginning in Genesis 2 1 3 This is what it says so the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything and then was completed on the seventh day God had finished his work of creation So he rested from all of his work and God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation We see that this idea of rest that this means cessation that this means stopping now when we crash we attempt to stop right We attempt to talk to block ourselves all from every single thing that might stress us out We're seeing the crashing though is not the same thing as resting cuz Sations and we see gee the God doing here is this is an intense intentional pattern of stop He stopped because of what he had done before That this resting that he put himself into is signifying the creation of a new reality He was transitioning from the way the world was in one place the way the world would be on from here on out And then he gave the mandate to his people to practice rest. You know Exodus chapter 20 verses 8th row 11 This is what familiar with some of the 10 commandments.
It's where we're familiar with this, but this is what God and how he explained this out that his people would take place place in this practice of Sabbath So remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy You have six days each week for your ordinary work But the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated the Lord your God on that day No one your household may do any work this includes you your sons and daughters your male and female servants your livestock And any foreigners living among you for in six days the Lord made the heavens the earth to see everything in them on the seventh day He rested that is why the Lord bless the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy So we see to start to explain and work out inside Exodus You might remember that the way that the Israelites received provision receive food during the Exodus was they found man I they woke up and it was outside it was on the ground But on the day before the Sabbath they were struck together two days worth of man Because it would not be there on the next day and if they gather too much of it It would rot and it was a specific pattern that we see that Sabbath also it has nothing to do with us not going and doing something That has nothing to do with us staying away from a physical labor But this is about us and our pattern of consumption By saying you know there's one day a week that I do not want you to be obsessed with consuming and being prepared to consume There's one day where I want you just to simply stop and breathe and realize everything has been provided for you To stop and be able to say everything's good enough To stop and be able to say I feel safe right now To stop and be able to say I don't feel the need to produce. I don't feel the need to worry I don't feel the need to allow myself to obsess about something That Jesus has under control This idea of Sabbath and rest is much bigger than that we actually see it carry over This is the place where I personally just become fascinated with Sabbath as we go into the book of Joshua Right after they have come into the promised land and they're in this pattern of taking the land that God has promised to them This is a very interesting concept What you think about this with Joshua 11 23 so Joshua took control of the entire land just as the Lord had instructed Moses He gave to the people of Israel as their special possession dividing the land among the tribes so the land finally had rest from war In the Hebrew it says the land had Sabbath and it stops right there. Think about the physical place and Having rest and what you see actually is God and we're not gonna go through all these instances in the Old Testament Where you see there's this whole idea of the year of Jubilee that after a set amount of time That they would not farm and they would not practice they would not grow crops out year to give the land rest That during the year of Jubilee also property reverted back to its original owners So if something had happened and your family was caught really really tight and you had to sell a piece of property That belonged to you for a long long time that is an act of restorative justice on that year of Jubilee that land was then given back to you In fact when you sold land during the Jubilee you only were able to sell it for the price of the amount of crops You could harvest from that point until the next year of Jubilee so you're in essence You could figure out what I'm selling this land for 17 years That's how the price was set because it was designed to go back this idea of rest that inside of God's people there are multiple patterns and rhythms of stopping of season of refocusing of Simply not feeling worried about taking care of things in many ways Sabbath it talks about a transition into stability Of us marking our time of rest as a season of stability think about that Like the times where ever we're actually able to get a good rest in is when we realize that things are stable enough for me to Not have to worry right now It's like the difference between going vacation when you've done your hustle work and you're able to leave with the clean desk Instead of leaving with multiple things piled up and knowing that when you get home is gonna be even worse than it was When you got back that Sabbath this idea of resting is a season of stability That's what in fact when God rests in the seventh day It's he had formed this earth form his creation out of the chaos and was now raining over it Land had rest from war the land had transitioned into a season of stability with God's people there So when we transition into rest when we make these statements we find the Old Testament It's almost as though God is saying or the land is saying or the people are saying alright from here on out now We can be fulfilled the stage is set for peaceful action and activity. I'll be honest with you.
I've not felt that much lately The things are set for peace and stability always worried about the next thing actually always were about the next 15 things of which I will probably forget half of them when we rest We find stability when we crash we're simply just avoiding something that actually terrifies us Resting isn't the same as scratching the last passage I wanted to think about as one that is just full of assumptions that we can make about rest It's in the New Testament. It's in the book of Hebrews chapter 4 verse 11 It's something that's remarkably different than what we have read in the past before Hebrew is also the hardest book for me to find in the Bible nine times out of ten I will I will I will bet lunch on that So what's gonna read about you? See I didn't rest well enough to actually market my Bible this week full disclosure I always say I'm honest with you all right. Okay.
This is what it says God's promise of entering his rest still stands So we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it for this good news that God has prepared this rest has been announced To us just as it was to them But it did them no good because they didn't share the faith of those who listen to God for only we who believe can enter his rest As for the others God said in my anger I took an oath they will never enter my place of rest Even though this rest has been ready since he made the world We know it is ready because of the place in scriptures where it mentions the seventh day on the seventh day God rested from all his work But in the other passage God said they will never enter my place of rest So God's rest is there for people to enter but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God So God said another time for entering his rest and that time is today God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted today when you hear his voice don't harden your hearts Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving in this rest God would not have spoken about another day of rest is still to come So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God For all who have entered in God's rest have rested from their labors just as God did after creating the world So let us do our best to enter that rest But if we disobeyed God as the people of Israel did we will fail First of all How many times was the word rest in there? But think about this This is what what the writer of Hebrews is telling us is that this is actually all about rest And many of our minds that it hopefully didn't take too long for you realize like you know this writer is talking about heaven This writer is talking about eternity. He's talking about God's plan for us He speaks about rest rest rest rest think about this This is what has boggled my mind all week long as I've been praying and reflecting through this We understand that sin has entered this world and broken us affects us all the new cycle this week has been all about broken This has been all about evil that we live in a broken world But in spite of how broken this is God's final action of creation was to rest The thing that he made sure was extremely important to his people was to communicate rest to them Rest might be the best way for us to experience God right now in our life and it's still offered us It's given to us as something that's possible It's giving to us as a way that we can interact with him as part of our natural life It's not close to me keeps us healthy think keeps us whole if we realize how important it is to us Why on earth are we not resting when it might be one of the biggest ways for us to experience? Jesus resting has not the same It's crashing see resting makes us really start thinking about how we view time the way that we see time in our life The way that we see time controlling us in our life rest is about revitalization When was the last time you felt revived?
You were truly whole and ready and excited see crashing is not being revived if anything crashing is this temporary retreat from a battle that you were terrified of It's you saying these are all the things in life that are stressing me out So I'm just gonna put on blinders for a moment. So I can't see them. That's what crashing is Crashing is the lie of playing ketchup But for those of you who have to live in a life cycle sometimes where you're playing tons of ketchup is ketchup ever actually reviving to you It's playing ketchup ever actually fulfilling now. It's not Resting is the space for us to be us and any larger anxiety we have about time It should make us think about the way that we handle What matters to us what we are the most passionate about the things that might worry us the most how can we live a life where we Know to where we manifest into where we live into the restful presence of God And if they were not resting we might be prohibiting the work of revitalization and our own heart and soul that God wants to give us the most Crashing is not the same as resting.
So thinking about it Jesus and the Pharisees They love to come at him over this idea of resting and mark Jesus ultimately has to tell the Pharisees. He says you know You were not created for something like this. The Sabbath is not created for you You're created for the Sabbath this tension that we we get turned around and we get frustrated about this idea of rest Is right who here actually maybe feels bad when they're resting? Who stresses out about actually stopping for a moment?
You know we don't want to tell people you know I should take a couple days off right now. I were terrified to tell somebody that sometimes Everybody's been scared to let folks know that you're actually not doing something we need to reframe ourselves We're thinking that that we don't understand true life if we cannot practice stopping Is that plain simple our time issue is a spiritual issue and that we need to deeply learn about rest So a couple of things. This is where I was this week in my own personal reflection on this because I got told y'all That this this few weeks. I did not I did not anticipate a couple of months ago How much this series will be prophetic into my own life?
So this is my own thoughts that I want to offer to you is I contemplated this idea of rest myself Because this was the first week I told so much most people in seven weeks where I was home the entire week This is the first week where I had the possibility of not being stretched to the end of my margin This is what I thought about this week. The first thing is this. What do I what do I need to stop doing? It was the last time he asked yourself the question.
What do I need to stop doing in life? It's about us wrestling the temptation of a full life There's a guy named Bob golf some of you might have heard of him before I like him a lot Bob golf says he stops doing something every day Can you imagine stop doing stopping doing something every day? He's very successful Here's the problem with you stop doing something every day sooner or later. You have to stop doing things are really important And he said he does this practice just to teach him that nothing has the ability to control him except for Jesus I remember earlier this year I stopped doing something that I liked a lot and I was blown away with how much better it made my life I stopped a project that had been fruitful.
It had been very good for me It had been a practice that was that was life-giving But it got to the point time where it was taking up way too much time during my week at a crucial point in time during my week I stopped doing it and I'm glad I did now it was tough. Meredith for about six or eight months kept telling me Why don't you quit doing this? Why don't you quit doing this? And it was a good thing Often times we think about stopping doing only the things that are in theory bad for us But how can your world be possibly affected positively by stopping something?
From a negative perspective. What are the practices of crashing that you need to stop? I'll tell you when I'm working on right now my decision last night. I've got to fix this I've never slept well in my entire life I just don't sleep good and I read something about a year ago from someone who said if you have problems sleeping You need to find something absolutely mindless to do before you go to bed And he recommended this extremely boring show on the BBC about a guy starting a hobby farm And like there's no like story arching on this television shows that we're tension point about halfway through and there's a resolution of it No, this is literally this shows like 20 years old It's just some British guy and this tiny little like houses like 500 years old always got to collapse on top himself It's about him growing cucumbers and feeding a sheep and like making a reward pie And I was like, okay, you know what that actually makes a little sense So I'm gonna start doing that so I for the first time ever and I always heard the whole like you don't do screens before you go to bed And I got fought adamantly to not have a TV in the bedroom the whole nine yards about nine months ago I started watching an episode of the show on YouTube on my iPad literally in bed right before I go to sleep And you know what it did it did it did calm my mind at first the guy was right It's absolutely mindless.
It's a perfect thing But then it got me to watch YouTube and bed for an hour every night It made me spend way too much money on tools because I like working videos It made me get hungry because I start watching a pizza video if you watch a lot of videos on YouTube just search pizza trust me It's not a good thing to do. I just And now I can't sleep unless I watch YouTube for like 45 minutes y'all that's crashing That's not resting that time can be better so next Sunday I want you to ask me chat how many nights did you watch YouTube before you went to bed because that's a practice of crashing I made a decision this morning. I'm just got to knock this out What can you say no to for the sake of saying yes to something else? The second question what do what do I need to start doing?
What do we need to start doing? What would signify something new in your life? Remember Sabbath is about marking seasons that this is a life of rhythm that God has given us What do you need to start new in your life? Tell you something accidentally that started a few weeks ago in my life that I love now Meredith's car was in the shop a few weeks back and I saw that Byron from roller roaster had this really crazy Like Vietnamese noodle bowl thing for breakfast lunch that day and so I said hey listen you don't have your car I'm sure times cafeteria.
Let's go get lunch this week So Meredith now in the last few weeks have started getting lunch together every Tuesday Like that's blocked out for me now So you know what that's time I used to use for something else that's time to in theory I could be using for moving the ball forward a little bit more But I'm rising that's more valuable in my life to have and it's always quick I pick her up it's always funny because my the mirrors my truck always hit the call box It's entry link and I have to get out and hit the button if you want to watch me try to get in this intro It's funny But I value that something I knew started my life. It makes my life better. What kid you do? Who what's actually restful in your life and you can put in I changed the alternator in my truck yesterday took 10 minutes?
That was restful because I finished something if a lot of us we have jobs that we actually never get to finish things in life I got to finish something for 15 minutes changing alternator was extremely restful What can you add into your life into your your relationship with your family to relationship with your friends the relationship with work? What can you add in to be truly restful to mark a new season to mark a new time the last thing is this? What is absolutely worth my time? There's tons of variations of this quote.
I couldn't really trace it back to who's the first person to say this But what do you have the time? What do you not have the time to not do? Think about what is something that's so important to you that you absolutely do not have the time to not do that As Christians I will always say this over and over and over for every single thing that my life has diverted and moved and shaped and shifted and become Interesting and awkward I'm thankful that I grew up in a family and a church that just impressed upon me the importance of just daily spending time with God And it sounds wrote and it sounds old-fashioned and it sounds somewhat eye-rolling But what I found out is that I do not have the time to not do that and some of your single chad your preacher Of course you have to do that. Hey y'all I could say what ministry is like sometimes not doing that because I've done that before And I can wing this without doing that But I can't wing this without doing that there's a difference I can tell other people can tell honestly too Like for me, that's just I don't have the time to not do that now because of my job.
It takes me a little bit more time to do that Sometimes I don't have the time To not be at home a few nights a week. I'm if you were tired of being gone every single night a week I don't have the time to not finish something every week now. I learned Lessons weren't swapping out a cheap alternative ball of Amazon. What do you do?
Not what do you have the time to not do? What's absolutely worth your time 56.3% of you said that you're consistently worried about having time with those you love What do you absolutely not have the time to not do to pour into those relationships? Crashing is not the same as resting. Y'all we were created for a fulfilled life And in scripture we see that fulfilled life is explained out as as as rhythms of rest and rhythms of work Not because we were supposed to be producing and consuming because we are made to function in a mirror image of God That we were people who were created for stability.
We were people who were created for satisfaction We were people who were created for completion We were people who were created To be the image of the God who made this world Friends we are created to rest As a Hebrews passage showed us rest is what our eventual eternal outcome will be And I really hope I do not think that heaven is going to look like power watching how about your mother on Netflix That's crashing Attorney will be some this fulfilling that's completing That's peaceful and we're giving the ability to practice that right now Let's pray Jesus. Thank you for rest even when it's frustrating even with something that I just don't feel like I have the time for Thank you for for being patient with us Thank you for calling witness Thank you. Thank you God for making us tired Because sometimes that helps us to revise where we have have misstepped and misspoke and misacted Jesus help us to see and understand that our time is sacred And that what you desire for us is not a full life But a fulfilled life when you spoke those words. I said my yoke is easy and my burden is light Jesus, thank you for believing in a world that's bigger than what we can come up with in our own Or help us to rest this week to rest in our relationship with you to rest in our relationships With those we love and care about the most and for also for us to be image bearers of rest to those That we spend time with during the week while we're in work or in school or doing anything else Thank you so much for rest.
I just need to be free. Amen