Happy Father’s Day! Today, we celebrate all the dads in this Epic community. Fatherhood is such a high calling. Whether you are a father to your own children or you serve as a spiritual father to others, I want to say a huge Thank You. I also want to take a moment to honor all of the boys and men in this room by asking you to stand.

I like to be moving. I like activity. I want to be on the go. I even learn my sermons while taking a 6 to 7 mile walk on Friday mornings. I don’t watch many movies. No, not as a moral choice. It’s just that I struggle to sit still for very long.

I also enjoy making things happen. A good performance and lots of productivity make me feel like I’m winning. Accomplishing something plus the dopamine that accompanies it help me feel like I’m living up to the life I’m meant for.

And maybe even more than I like moving or making things happen, I just feel SO responsible. Responsible for my wife and children. Responsible for our staff team. Responsible for our entire congregation. I feel the responsibility of providing. I feel the responsibility of making wise decisions. I feel responsible to take care of everything and everyone. If I don’t take care of all the people and all the details, who will? :)

When you put these three things about me together – always moving, thinking productivity is what defines a good day, and constantly carrying this weight of responsibility – it makes it nearly impossible for me to engage in the habit of Jesus we’re talking about today. As we continue our series, More Than a Routine, we’re looking at the practice of Sabbath. I’m calling this message, “Missing What Was Made For Us”. As hard as this practice is for me and I’m guessing many of you, it is worth fighting for if we intend to live in right relationship to God and each other. Sabbath is a signpost that points to something beyond a day a week.

Mark 2:23-28 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Jesus cares about the Sabbath, but he cares about you even more. This is actually why He gives you the Sabbath every seven days.

The Pharisees saw the Sabbath as a “have to”. Jesus was declaring that the entire point of Sabbath is that it is a “get to”. The Pharisees thought their job and everyone else’s job was to hold up God’s standards. Jesus lets them know, however, that humans were not made to hold up the Sabbath. Instead, he communicated this to them:

Jesus gives us the Sabbath to hold us up.

Jesus references a time when David and his men ate the bread that was reserved only for the priests. He was making the point that them eating while they were famished was more important than the law itself. The point of Sabbath is not for us to overthink how to make sure we do it perfectly. It’s to receive it as the gift it was always intended to be.

It is for you. It is a sheer gift. It is intended to be a weekly rhythm to sustain you and the life you are created for. Sabbath was given to us for our freedom, not our restriction. God designed the world in such a way that the practice of Sabbath would be a huge benefit to our lives – to our physical bodies, to our souls, to our minds, and to our relationships.

“The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended, is the best day of our lives.” -Dan Allender, Sabbath

If God created the Sabbath for our rest and refreshment, why don’t we do everything we can to practice it weekly?

Because we either don’t think we can stop or we just don’t want to stop. There’s just too much to do. Everyone is counting on us. You don’t understand everything that is on my plate. Many of us value productivity over our own spiritual formation. And way too many of us derive our sense of identity from what we accomplish, rather than what we receive as a gift.

You might be aware that keeping or observing the Sabbath is one of the ten commandments. I want you to see two places in Scripture it shows up because the “why” of Sabbath is different in each of them.

Exodus 20:8-11 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 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 son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 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.”.

Practice Sabbath to imitate God’s 6:1 rhythm. In other words, follow in God’s pattern – where after six days of creation, he rested on the 7th day. I don’t know what your initial reaction is to this, but can I tell you what my immediate reaction is? God, that’s amazing that you made everything in 6 days and then took a day of rest. But I am not you. Somehow you were able to finish all of your work in six days. If I work every day of the year and do this for a decade, I still won’t finish all of the work I have to do. The word Sabbath means “to cease or desist”. Let’s look at the other time Sabbath shows up in the 10 commandments.

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. 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 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. 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.

While the Exodus account is about imitation, the Deuteronomy account is about liberation. Do you remember why the Israelites spent 400 years in Egypt? They were slaves under Pharaoh and his system where they were treated as less than human. Sabbath is a declaration of our freedom. Sabbath reminds us that God is at work and holding us up, rather than being led to believe that everything depends on us.

In every situation, we want to ask the question, “What is God’s part and what is our part?” Sabbath helps us to remember who does the heavy lifting in our lives. In Deuteronomy 5:15 Moses tells them “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.

How can God command us to observe the Sabbath when He knows our work is never finished?

“The lie the taskmasters want you to swallow is that you cannot rest until your work’s all done, and done better than you’re currently doing it. But the truth is, the work’s never done, and never done quite right. It’s always more than you can finish and less than you had hoped for. So what? Get this straight: The rest of God – the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover that part of God we’re missing – is not a reward for finishing. It’s not a bonus for work well done. It’s sheer gift. It’s a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations. It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.” -Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God

God says that we should keep the Sabbath holy. I love the following explanation from one commentator:

When God declares something holy, he claims it for himself, taking it out of ordinary circulation and declaring it special.

If you asked me, “Ben, why is it hard for you to stop working or at least to stop thinking about work?” I might tell you, “I really care about the work. The mission matters so much to me. I am passionate about what God has called me to do.” Perhaps all of these reasons are true. But what could be most true is that I can’t stop because my anxiety won’t let me. If I let off, even for a day, things probably won’t happen that need to happen. Just me?

What if practicing the Sabbath is a sign that we’re becoming anxiety-free and what if it helps us to become anxiety-free?

So how do we begin practicing the Sabbath? Plan the 24 hours you’ll practice the Sabbath. Sometimes we don’t do these spiritual practices because we think if we can’t do it perfect, then it’s not worth doing at all. Be gracious to yourself and know God’s grace is sufficient. Even if you only get a set of Sabbath hours as opposed to a full Sabbath day, you’ll be grateful you went for it.

“Biblical Sabbath is a twenty-four hour block of time in which we stop work, enjoy rest, practice delight, and contemplate God.” -Pete Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader

What brings you joy and delight? Being outdoors. A movie. A great meal. A nap. A phone call with a friend or family member who gives you life. Plan these things during your Sabbath time. Turn your attention to God. Gratitude – name the big and small things you are grateful to God for.

One of the beautiful things about the practice of Sabbath is that it portrays how our entire relationship with God works. So many of us have, in vain, tried to work our way to God. But that never works. God is the one who took initiative to come to us. We rest in the finished work of what Jesus accomplished on our behalf. Before I invite you to rest one day a week as a gift from God, I want to first invite you into this eternal rest from God. He has made a way for you to receive the gift of life.

Hebrews 4:9-10 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.

I know there are so many situations that seem to make the practice of Sabbath impossible. How much work you have right now. The fact that you’re taking care of small children or perhaps aging parents. You’re starting something new and it demands 100 hours a week with no days off. Let’s fight for this time and then see what’s possible. God made this for us and I have missed it for so long. And I don’t want to miss it any longer. And I don’t want you to miss it ever again…it’s that amazing!

If you long to practice the Sabbath, tell God that.

And then name the thing that tends to get in the way for you when it comes to practicing the Sabbath. Busyness. Too much to do. You have people to take care of. The season you’re in at work. And then, if you can, see if there’s a deeper reason you can’t do it and name that to God and ask for his help. If God is inviting us into something that should be the best time of our week, let’s at least give it a try and see if He’s right.