Summary of “Balancing Work and Rest”

A sermon for December 7, 2008

David Barfield, Community Bible Church, Lawrence, KS

[Disclosure: Besides the scriptures and my own personal study, I borrowed from the insight in Steve & Mary Farrar’s Overcoming Overload. It is a good read if you want more on this topic.]

Introduction

This is a sermon to myself mostly. I have known my life has been out of balance for years. In taking the chief engineer position last year, I only complicated matters even more. So several weeks ago, I determined to get further in my study and to share what I had learned with you to do this morning.

I think this sermon not just for the overwhelmed. I think it is also for the distracted, for those that have overfilled their life with good things

We live in a unique day: “24/7; always on” describes the day. Never has there been “more”: more choices, more people, more books, more activities, endless entertainment, and the internet offering so much. It is very easy to be distracted; difficult not to be.

I believe God has a prescription for both the overwhelmed and the distracted: a particular rest I believe is advocated in Scripture.

Without this time to rest and reflect, it is easy to buy into the lies of our day:

1. 1. You can have it all. [ we cannot if even if you had it all, you would be miserable. Ecc 2:10ff is Solomon’s experience in having it all.  SO SLOW DOWN.]
   2. You can do it all. We allow our kids to be overcommitted, their lives full of expectations and activities with no time for play, read, time with family. We run them all around and try to keep up with all of our commitments. No time for the family.
   3. You deserve it all.   Which is driving us to get it all.

The remedy: slow down, stop and listen, pause to remember our God and to hear Him.

Work - a brief review of past teaching

• We were not made for rest but for work. Profitable work in the garden before the fall.
• What is “rest” without meaningful work? Boredom.
• Eph 2:10  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
• It is a great privilege to be about His work. This is true life, of eternal significance. A constant theme of scripture.
• We to be diligent about our work (2 Tim 2:2ff ..Endure hardship with us like a good soldier..if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. 6 The hardworking farmer …
• Col 3:22ff Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
• 2 Tim 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
• Live carefully, wisely, with skill.   Eph 5:15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

We were made not for rest but for work, profitable work. So find you piece and get at it.

Transition: Yet, part living carefully, as Eph 5:15 says, living skillfully, is to live a life of balance.

Are we made only for work?

Mary and Martha - Luke 10:38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”  41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Serving Christ is important. Martha was doing a good thing, but at that point, it was not the best. Martha was not living skillfully, not making the most of the opportunities. Dinner could have waited.

Rest

While we were made for work, the scripture does have a lot to say about rest.

I am going to focus on one aspect of rest, a weekly rest in keeping with God’s pattern established at creation and as He commanded the nation Israel. There are other rests:

• The nation Israel was to work their land 6 years and let it rest the 7th.
• There were feasts to pause and remember and celebrate.
• A year of Jubilee.

But the dominate topic of scripture here on this topic, is a weekly rest. While not the entire subject of rest, it is the heart and soul of it. A brief survey of some highlights:

In creation

Gen 2:2-3 “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

• This is before the Fall. Regular, weekly rest is part of our design, even in a perfect world. We are to work 6 days and rest 1 day.

First mention of “Sabbath” -Before the 10 commandments, during Israel’s journey from Egypt to their promised land, in Ex 16. Manna from heaven to come every day but one in 7.

Ex 16:21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers?? for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.

26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”

Sabbath = to cease, to desist

In the 10 commandments…

Ex 20: 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 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 manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

• Remember = keep = observe. God rested and asked us to. Do it.
• Do not do any work (nor even your servants, children, animals) - it takes some careful planning and preparations.
• Keep it holy; to the Lord = a day to worship, to remember…

A Sabbath’s purpose: refreshment

Ex 23:12 “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.

The Sabbath as a sign of the covenant between God and Israel

Ex 31:12 Then the Lord said to Moses, 13 “Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.?

17 It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.’ ”

Even to this day, if you go to Israel, you will find the Sabbath kept very special.

What did Jesus say about it? Jesus was the Sabbath reformer.

Long before his day, the Pharisees and others had written a great number of regulations about what it meant to keep the Sabbath. Jesus rejected their rules but not the Sabbath itself.

Jn 5:5-11 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. … 8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” 11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

Matt 12: 9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Mk 2:23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” …..27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Man was not made to benefit or serve the Sabbath day. The Sabbath was God’s idea to benefit us.

While, we no longer need to follow the ceremonial law and make sacrifices, I believe the pre-law design of God is a pattern of work and periodic rest.

The epistles say little about this idea or a regular rest. There is evidence that they moved the day of rest from Saturday to Sunday as there are regularly reference to meeting on the first day of the week.

But there are only two explicit references to the Sabbath. One in Hebrews and the other in Colossians.

Col 2:6-8 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.   …16“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

As we have been studying Acts in looking at the design of the church, we seek to distinguish between function and form.  The functions of the church have not changed, but the forms used to accomplish those functions can and should. The above passage says there are to be no Form police. No one is to be judging your eating or drinking or celebration of festival or Sabbath. That is between you and God.

• Sabbath = God’s space between the activity of life; a protection against 24/7
• Without a Sabbath, life loses its rhythm, refreshment, reverence.

Summary and possible applications

As a result of this study, it is my growing conviction that I need a regularly putting aside time from both work and other forms of busyness to be refreshed, to worship, to take time to read and reflect on God’s goodness and what He has for me in this life.

But as I noted earlier, the epistles are nearly silent on this point. So I this for your consideration, not a command.

William Biloxi (p 48) “the Sabbath is God’s special present to the working man. And one of its chief objects is to prolong his life. The savings bank of human existence is a weekly Sabbath.”

1) The Sabbath rest is for worship…reverence

• We need to look up. The Sabbath is about honoring God. (keep it holy)
• A tithing of our time. It takes faith.
• Gathering with others for worship is a natural part of our Sabbath - Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

2) The Sabbath rest should result in refreshment. Best found via stillness in a sanctuary of our choosing.

In their book, Overcoming Overload, Steve and Mary Farrar argue that, for our Sabbath rest to refresh and restore it should also include solitude that require a sanctuary, a safe, quiet place to reflect.

Again, there are no rules; but there are a number of scripture that encourage this.

The Farrar’s argue that periods of solitude are needed to preserve our vital moral and cognitive differences with the world; to avoid accommodation. John 17:15 - in the world but not of the world.  We cannot be different from the world if you never withdraw. Withdrawal allows us to be more objective.

Time alone frees us from the herd. Jesus sought to be alone regularly. Matt 15:22ff, Mark 1:35ff, Luke 2:42

• He left the people. He did not have email or cell phones or the internet to deal with. But he had the pressing demands nonetheless. Others will always have an agenda for us (there will always be unmet needs). To keep in balance, we must leave regularly.
• Withdraw to think clearly.
• Must say “no” to many things so we can say yes to time with the Father.

Silence = the cessation of noise [so we can hear the voice of God]

• Ps 62:1-5, Lam 3:24
• Silence to read, write, pray, talk to God, listen to God.

Stillness = cessation of activity

• Sometimes it takes days to be still, to unwind.
• Ps 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
• If we do not be still, He can make us (sickness, other).
• Ps 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, 3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah. 10 “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Closet Christians

• Matt 6:6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
• Many examples of men of God with closets.
• Find yours and use it regularly. Could be a room in the hours. Could be your car on your commute to work, etc.

What do we do with the regular time of rest?

• Traditionally, a day for us, as his church, to gather.
• Time with my family.
• Time in the Word, to got to my closet to pray.
• To read, to reflect, to write, to take a nap.
• To go for a long walk.
• Whatever refreshes and rests and worships is fair game.

Why do I need this?

1) refreshment, rejuvenation - it energizes. C.H. Spurgeon, “Look at the mower in the summer’s day. With so much to cut down before the sunset, he pauses in his labor. Is he a sluggard? He looks for a stone and begins to draw it up and down his sickle (scythe) , rink a tink, rink a tink, rink a tink. He’s sharpening his blade. Is that idle music? Is he wasting precious moment s? How much he might have mown while he was ringing out those notes on his blade. But he is sharpening his tool. And he will do far more, when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before his. Even thus a little pause prepares the mind for greater service in a good cause. Fisherman must mend their nets and we must, every now and the, repair our mental states and set our machinery in order for future service. It is wisdom to take occasional furloughs. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.”

2) to gain perspective - as I put away the hustle and bustle. As I look at God’s word, hearing it here, looking at it myself.

Conclusion

“Enough” - Does a Sabbath rest solve my problems of being overloaded? No, it complicates it now as I have a day less to get things done.

What is the answer? Learning what is enough. I seem to not be satisfied that I am doing enough. If God is content with six days of labor and a day of rest, why am I not satisfied? 6 days labor is enough…

• Matt 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
• Let’s not avoid His yoke for the distractions of the world. This will be to miss life.
• But let’s take a yoke of our own making - more difficult than it needs to be.

Gen 2:2-3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.