Trusting for Tomorrow on the Sabbath (Feb 10, 2008)
Title: Trusting for Tomorrow on the Sabbath Text: Exodus: 16
Big Idea: Sabbath calls us to trust God to provide.
When I was in seminary, from time to time I would have breakfast with a pastor at a family restaurant just outside of Boston. Gordon was the pastor of a large church and he had also served as the president of an international ministry to university students. His story has publicly made known by him--so in sharing part of it I am not breaking a confidence.
Earlier in his ministry, Gordon had a brief extra-marital affair. When he was later asked how he as such an intelligent, disciplined and devoted man, could engage in such a damaging boundary violation, Gordon answered that he had become so busy with his ministry, and his traveling, he felt that he could not afford to honor God’s commandment to take a Sabbath each week. So instead of taking a Sabbath day once a week, Gordon said he was taking a Sabbath day once every ten days…once every 12 days…once every 15 days. Without fully knowing it, Gordon’s soul was leaking and he was become spiritually weak… And in that state of vulnerability, Gordon violated his code, God’s code for him...
Gordon ended up repenting, turning back to God, taking significant time away from public ministry, and experiencing a profound restoration of his soul.
Gordon now says, “I am of the opinion that busyness is a deeper threat to the soul than pornography ever was…” (2x)
Thomas Merton, the deeply perceptive writer on the spiritual life, has said that perhaps the most pervasive form of violence in the modern world is busyness… not drugs, not guns, but busyness…
Like Gordon, many of us feel that we are too busy to take time for Sabbath once a week. We feel that we won’t be able to accomplish all that we need to if obey God’s commandment to take Sabbath weekly. As I said last week, the Apostle Paul seems to suggest in Romans 14 that the commandment to rest one every seven days doesn’t mean necessarily require that day to be on a Sunday. If you work for example as a doctor or a or firefighter it may not be possible be take Sunday as a Sabbath. But the call to take a Sabbath is call to take one day, a 24 hour block in seven.
I was talking to ceo this week who said that he had been in the habit working 90 hour weeks and he had heard me talk about the Sabbath being a 24 hour block of time a few years ago and more importantly through the influence and inspiration (protestations and threats perhaps?!) of his wife began to take his Sabbath as 24 hour block of no work…
Whether we are ceo or a student or a mother of young children: the commandment to live the Sabbath is a call to live by faith. It is a call to trust God if we honor the Sabbath, if set aside 24 hour block as a day for God and the restoration of our soul, God will provide for our future…
If one day in seven seems arbitrary (as opposed to a day in 10 or 15), it is interesting to that scientific research that demonstrates that there is a biological need for rest one day in seven.
Juan-Cardos Lerman, at the University of Arizona, has done research that shows there is a biological a need for rest every seventh day. According to Lerman’s theory, failing to rest after six days of steady work will lead to insomnia, or sleepiness, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, irritability, organ stress, and other increasingly serious physical and mental symptoms. Not taking one day as a Sabbath in seven makes people more vulnerable to addictions.
A couple of years ago National Geographic published an article on why people live longest in Okinawa, Japan, , Italy and Loma Linda California than almost anyone on earth. The article noted the reason why people live longer in Loma Linda California (many live 10 years longer on average than other people in California) is because they are Seven Day Adventists and they honor 24 hour Sabbath principle… (& because they eat a healthydiet).
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Exodus 16 (1-5;17-30) POWERPOINT PERSON TO WAIT BEFORE BRING UP TEXT
As you’re turning, let me set up the context.
The people of Israel had been living as slaves in Egypt for some 400 years…
God raised up a man named Moses to deliver the Israelite people out of their land of slavery in Egypt to a land of Canaan, the promised a fertile land described as “flowing with milk and honey.”
As God leads his people out of Egypt into the desert en route to the promised land of Canaan and he gives them an opportunity--a test really---to see if they would trust Him, by taking a Sabbath day of rest.
(Powerpoint: heads up show map)
(Scripture text)
Manna and Quail
1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."
4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days."
(The people of Israel make the absurd accusation that God (through Moses) has brought them out of dessert to kill them! But how does God respond? He provides bread for them in dessert. Some people say the God of the Old Testament is the God of law. But the God of the New Testament in the God of grace. But in the Old Testament we also see God’s grace over and over again.)
17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Each one had gathered just as much as they needed.
19 Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers (4 liters) 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 sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.' "
24 So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 25 "Eat it today," Moses said, "because today is a sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. 26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any."
27 Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. 28 Then the LORD said to Moses, "How long will you [c] refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? 29 Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out." 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
31 The people of Israel called the bread manna. [d] It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.
God provided his people with this wafer in the wilderness called “manna” literally means “what is it?” It was not some tasteless wafer. It tasted like honey.
This food is a gracious gift that God miraculously provides for his people. All God asked was that his people were to gather just enough for each day and no more… God wanted his people to trust him day by day (God’s people were to gather just enough for each day except on the eve of the Sabbath when were free to gather two days worth so they wouldn’t have to work collecting manna on the Sabbath).
As we might anticipate, in vs. 20 some do not obey God’s simple instruction to gather only the food they need for day… Some people try to gather more manna than they need for a day. What happens (on every day the eve of the Sabbath)? The manna spoils... become full of maggots…
Moses tells the people because the seventh day is a Sabbath, day of rest, they are not to gather any manna on the Sabbath (but they are to have gathered two days worth on the day before the Sabbath so they can eat on the Sabbath, and that manna miraculously lasts two days), but some of God’s people refuse to obey this commandment and try to collect the manna on the Sabbath anyway. They find there’s none available. God rebukes them.
So, the provision of manna is a sign of God’s grace, a sign of God’s great faithfulness and generosity, providing for his people in the wilderness, but the manna also represents a test for God’s people to demonstrate they trust in God… Do they trust God’s Word? Do they trust God’s character? Do they trust God will provide?
Darrell Johnson pointed out in his series on the testing of Jesus that there are times when God tests us and gives us an opportunity to demonstrate whether we trust his Word…trust his character… whether trust that God will provide… While we are not called today to gather manna in the same way as the Israelites were, we still are called to honour the Sabbath and to trusting that God will really provide for us…
Sabbath gives us an opportunity to turn our work, productivity things we would be tempted to depend on, over to God. But it also places us in a vulnerable place where we are called to trust.
Marva Dawn, is a theologian and author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly (she has spoken here at Tenth Avenue Church). She describes how difficult it was for her to keep the Sabbath during her PhD program at Notre Dame. Her PhD required her to take French, German and Latin all at once.
She says “ the only way for me to keep the three languages straight was to devise an arduous study schedule beginning each morning at six.” “I was not a morning person” “I worked on Latin till Latin class at nine, after which I studied German till that class. Studying French and class took half the afternoon and then I would swim a while to stay in shape (and cool my brain!). Returning home, I continued working on French till dinner, and then studied German till I went to bed at eleven. Each night I dropped into bed uttered exhausted, but the intense pace was necessary since, after only six weeks of class, I had to be able to translate a thousand words in a two-hour test in each language.”
“What enabled me to keep following this absurd schedule every day was my anticipation, celebration, and remembrance of the Sabbath. Toward the end of the week, the knowledge that Sabbath would soon come gave me incredibly powerful comfort and courage to persist, even as, at the beginning of the week, memories of the Sabbath delight I had just experienced motivated me to begin again. And on Sundays ceasing to work at languages set me free for lots of fun.”
“Every Sunday I enjoyed worship and Bible study, ate different foods than I ate during the rest of the week and engaged in relaxing and creative activities. Sometimes I played the organ for worship, went to the beach or swimming pool, took long walks, or played in the parks in the afternoon with friends or by myself. Most of all, Sunday was a day for enjoying God’s presence.”
Even now thought things are not as intense, Marva says each week I do experience a lovely moment of release when at last I go to bed on Saturday nights. To tell you the truth: I sleep differently on Saturday nights because the Sabbath has begun.”
When I was in seminary I had not read Marva Dawn’s book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, but I felt convicted that I was to honor the Sabbath commandment by taking a 24-hour cycle away from study once a week. Because I sometimes had an exam Monday morning, I decided would take Sabbath from dinner time, or six o’clock, on Saturday night to six o’clock on Sunday night.
I wanted to ensure that I had a kind of academic record that would keep the doors open for a top tier PhD program if I wanted to pursue that. I engaged in this practice of Sabbath keeping and I ended up doing better in that academic degree than I had ever done before.
Dr. John Mackay, who teaches Old Testament studies at Reformed Seminary in Florida, says a number of his students were convicted obout keeping the Sabbath. They believed that day should be set apart for worship and rest, but their main concern was the idea of not being able to study on that day. According to Dr. John Mackay an odd thing happened. When they kept the Sabbath, their grades actually improved. They worked diligently the other six days of the week and they looked with eager anticipation to the Sabbath. The Sabbath became a joy for them.
Now I am not saying by these examples that, if you are an undergrad at UBC and you honour the Sabbath, that you will necessarily be admitted to your first choice Medical School or Law School or graduate school but if you honor God’s will to study and honor the Sabbath, God will provide all that you need, in his academic plan for you.
This principle of trusting God on the Sabbath, of course, extrapolates into other areas of life too, including our work life. If we need Sabbath as students, how much more we will need it in the work world.
In my first undergrad job I worked as part of a large corporation in Tokyo, the city of workaholics. As young person fresh out of undergrad, I wanted to compete and succeed and make a good impression on my boss. I would leave my apartment around 7:00 am and return home at the end of my work day after 11 pm. I love to work hard, but I also felt I was working so much that I was losing my soul… I felt convicted to not to work on weekends but instead to give my weekend to the serving God in the little church I was attending and to things not related to my “main job.” When you are young and ambitious and eager to please, it takes some faith in God to say I honor you by not working on the Sabbath… to say if to say, if I don’t fast track, as fast as I’d like so be it… (BTW, things went well… On one of my last days at work, my boss said to some I know, and said “He’s the best we employee have here in this department. I remember…my boss telling me as I was preparing to leave the company, “Look if things don’t work out in the (Christian) ministry for you, you always have a job here…”
I had dinner with my friend Ben Ting recently in the San Francisco Bay area. For several years Ben served as the chair of our board (he’s has given me permission to share this story). Ben started working for Microsoft before it went “public”.
Ben said it was so exciting, so heady to work at the company back when Microsoft was a relatively small company and beginning to rise…. He remembers how a friend at the company would work, work, work, work….crash and sleep on the floor at work… and wake order pizza and keep working….
My friend loved working for Microsoft, but he and wife were beginning family (they ending up having four children) and he and his wife agreed he would work just 40 hours per week… except during crunch times when he’d work more hours.
When he told his boss he was only planning to work 40 hours, his boss said, “Ok, but this will limit your career path.” Ben told me this week that there was a part him, that didn’t want absorbed in the company, but there was also a part of him that wanted to work more hours so he could be he more of an “insider” at Microsoft…
Ben was transferred to the team developing the internet explorer (they were competing with Netscape at the time), his manager told Ben, everyone on this team works at least 80 hours a week here. His boss said, “I expect you to work 80 hours every week. The good news is I don’t care when you put them in”
Ben didn’t say anything… and tried for two weeks to work at that pace, and then approached his boss and said, “I can’t put in 80 hour per week… I have a family… and life outside of here.” He was transferred the new technologies department.
Ben said throughout his time at Microsoft he and his wife were praying that God would make him more productive in the hours he was working and grant him favor. God was good.
He ended up advancing in the company and became a key leader of Windows 95, 98, and 2000 (team leader for developing the Far East Asia versions of these operating systems).
Ben, said during his yearly evaluations he was always ranked in the top 5% at performance at Microsoft… Unlike a lot of leagues, he did not burn out. He was able to retire at 39.
And if we honour God’s Sabbath around our work, I believe God will provide all that we need. Maybe not all that we want, but all that we need.
Gordon Smith, an associate member here and formerly on our staff here said once in one of his sermons said, “I know that it sounds rather stupid to say this, but I keep the Sabbath religiously.”
If we are asked to work seven days a week and we are followers of God. Perhaps we should challenge that request on “religious” or faith grounds.
Many Jews kept the Sabbath, and some kept the Sabbath even when it was a risk to their lives…. because they so wanted to honor God’s Word…
So, I wonder if we shouldn’t be willing to honor Sabbath even if it seem that we might be slowing our career path in some way… or put our career at risk in some other way.
I think that if a Christian person were being asked by their boss to lie, they’d object… saying I can’t say that, but I can frame it this way… or if a Christian woman was asked by her boss to sleep with an important potential client if that was necessary to close the deal… I think she say, “I can’t do that… I can’t make a stellar presentation, but I can’t do that…”
But if a Christian were asked, by their boss to work seven days a week, week in/week out, they NOT might think about it as an ethical issue or an issue of faith…
But the call to take a 24 hour Sabbath is a commandment from God… so I think if we are expected by our bosses to work 7 days weeks, we should make that a deal-breaker…
Perhaps would we could say I can work 6 days a week, 60 or 70 hours (depending our energy levels and other priorities), but I can’t do seven, I love my work, but there’s something more important to me my life than my work…
I was talking to friend this week, who right now is very busy in her work and she said when I work days on end without a day off… I get the sense that work may be becoming an idol for me… In Ezekiel 20 the prophet says, if we don’t honor the Sabbath, our hearts will be given over to idols…a god other than the real God… If don’t take Sabbath we will begin to put in our work, our studies, our productivity, achievement, rather than God…
The call to obey the Fourth Commandment, is a commandment… to make God our real God, the one we trust to provide all we need…
Prayer…
Is there a place if your life…. maybe in your academic world, or in your work world, or in your family life, where you are being called to trust God by keeping the Sabbath, day set apart?
And day to affirm that God and not your school, work or family is your real God…
The manna that God provided in the wilderness was a test that he a test, to see if his people would not try to collect manna on the Sabbath and rest on the Sabbath, but it was also a sign of God’s faithfulness, of God’s grace to his people.
God has given us an even greater sign than that manna he provided years ago for our spiritual ancestors in the desert. He has provided his Son Jesus Christ.
Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
Big Idea: Sabbath calls us to trust God to provide.
When I was in seminary, from time to time I would have breakfast with a pastor at a family restaurant just outside of Boston. Gordon was the pastor of a large church and he had also served as the president of an international ministry to university students. His story has publicly made known by him--so in sharing part of it I am not breaking a confidence.
Earlier in his ministry, Gordon had a brief extra-marital affair. When he was later asked how he as such an intelligent, disciplined and devoted man, could engage in such a damaging boundary violation, Gordon answered that he had become so busy with his ministry, and his traveling, he felt that he could not afford to honor God’s commandment to take a Sabbath each week. So instead of taking a Sabbath day once a week, Gordon said he was taking a Sabbath day once every ten days…once every 12 days…once every 15 days. Without fully knowing it, Gordon’s soul was leaking and he was become spiritually weak… And in that state of vulnerability, Gordon violated his code, God’s code for him...
Gordon ended up repenting, turning back to God, taking significant time away from public ministry, and experiencing a profound restoration of his soul.
Gordon now says, “I am of the opinion that busyness is a deeper threat to the soul than pornography ever was…” (2x)
Thomas Merton, the deeply perceptive writer on the spiritual life, has said that perhaps the most pervasive form of violence in the modern world is busyness… not drugs, not guns, but busyness…
Like Gordon, many of us feel that we are too busy to take time for Sabbath once a week. We feel that we won’t be able to accomplish all that we need to if obey God’s commandment to take Sabbath weekly. As I said last week, the Apostle Paul seems to suggest in Romans 14 that the commandment to rest one every seven days doesn’t mean necessarily require that day to be on a Sunday. If you work for example as a doctor or a or firefighter it may not be possible be take Sunday as a Sabbath. But the call to take a Sabbath is call to take one day, a 24 hour block in seven.
I was talking to ceo this week who said that he had been in the habit working 90 hour weeks and he had heard me talk about the Sabbath being a 24 hour block of time a few years ago and more importantly through the influence and inspiration (protestations and threats perhaps?!) of his wife began to take his Sabbath as 24 hour block of no work…
Whether we are ceo or a student or a mother of young children: the commandment to live the Sabbath is a call to live by faith. It is a call to trust God if we honor the Sabbath, if set aside 24 hour block as a day for God and the restoration of our soul, God will provide for our future…
If one day in seven seems arbitrary (as opposed to a day in 10 or 15), it is interesting to that scientific research that demonstrates that there is a biological need for rest one day in seven.
Juan-Cardos Lerman, at the University of Arizona, has done research that shows there is a biological a need for rest every seventh day. According to Lerman’s theory, failing to rest after six days of steady work will lead to insomnia, or sleepiness, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, irritability, organ stress, and other increasingly serious physical and mental symptoms. Not taking one day as a Sabbath in seven makes people more vulnerable to addictions.
A couple of years ago National Geographic published an article on why people live longest in Okinawa, Japan, , Italy and Loma Linda California than almost anyone on earth. The article noted the reason why people live longer in Loma Linda California (many live 10 years longer on average than other people in California) is because they are Seven Day Adventists and they honor 24 hour Sabbath principle… (& because they eat a healthydiet).
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Exodus 16 (1-5;17-30) POWERPOINT PERSON TO WAIT BEFORE BRING UP TEXT
As you’re turning, let me set up the context.
The people of Israel had been living as slaves in Egypt for some 400 years…
God raised up a man named Moses to deliver the Israelite people out of their land of slavery in Egypt to a land of Canaan, the promised a fertile land described as “flowing with milk and honey.”
As God leads his people out of Egypt into the desert en route to the promised land of Canaan and he gives them an opportunity--a test really---to see if they would trust Him, by taking a Sabbath day of rest.
(Powerpoint: heads up show map)
(Scripture text)
Manna and Quail
1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."
4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days."
(The people of Israel make the absurd accusation that God (through Moses) has brought them out of dessert to kill them! But how does God respond? He provides bread for them in dessert. Some people say the God of the Old Testament is the God of law. But the God of the New Testament in the God of grace. But in the Old Testament we also see God’s grace over and over again.)
17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Each one had gathered just as much as they needed.
19 Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers (4 liters) 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 sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.' "
24 So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 25 "Eat it today," Moses said, "because today is a sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. 26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any."
27 Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. 28 Then the LORD said to Moses, "How long will you [c] refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? 29 Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out." 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
31 The people of Israel called the bread manna. [d] It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.
God provided his people with this wafer in the wilderness called “manna” literally means “what is it?” It was not some tasteless wafer. It tasted like honey.
This food is a gracious gift that God miraculously provides for his people. All God asked was that his people were to gather just enough for each day and no more… God wanted his people to trust him day by day (God’s people were to gather just enough for each day except on the eve of the Sabbath when were free to gather two days worth so they wouldn’t have to work collecting manna on the Sabbath).
As we might anticipate, in vs. 20 some do not obey God’s simple instruction to gather only the food they need for day… Some people try to gather more manna than they need for a day. What happens (on every day the eve of the Sabbath)? The manna spoils... become full of maggots…
Moses tells the people because the seventh day is a Sabbath, day of rest, they are not to gather any manna on the Sabbath (but they are to have gathered two days worth on the day before the Sabbath so they can eat on the Sabbath, and that manna miraculously lasts two days), but some of God’s people refuse to obey this commandment and try to collect the manna on the Sabbath anyway. They find there’s none available. God rebukes them.
So, the provision of manna is a sign of God’s grace, a sign of God’s great faithfulness and generosity, providing for his people in the wilderness, but the manna also represents a test for God’s people to demonstrate they trust in God… Do they trust God’s Word? Do they trust God’s character? Do they trust God will provide?
Darrell Johnson pointed out in his series on the testing of Jesus that there are times when God tests us and gives us an opportunity to demonstrate whether we trust his Word…trust his character… whether trust that God will provide… While we are not called today to gather manna in the same way as the Israelites were, we still are called to honour the Sabbath and to trusting that God will really provide for us…
Sabbath gives us an opportunity to turn our work, productivity things we would be tempted to depend on, over to God. But it also places us in a vulnerable place where we are called to trust.
Marva Dawn, is a theologian and author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly (she has spoken here at Tenth Avenue Church). She describes how difficult it was for her to keep the Sabbath during her PhD program at Notre Dame. Her PhD required her to take French, German and Latin all at once.
She says “ the only way for me to keep the three languages straight was to devise an arduous study schedule beginning each morning at six.” “I was not a morning person” “I worked on Latin till Latin class at nine, after which I studied German till that class. Studying French and class took half the afternoon and then I would swim a while to stay in shape (and cool my brain!). Returning home, I continued working on French till dinner, and then studied German till I went to bed at eleven. Each night I dropped into bed uttered exhausted, but the intense pace was necessary since, after only six weeks of class, I had to be able to translate a thousand words in a two-hour test in each language.”
“What enabled me to keep following this absurd schedule every day was my anticipation, celebration, and remembrance of the Sabbath. Toward the end of the week, the knowledge that Sabbath would soon come gave me incredibly powerful comfort and courage to persist, even as, at the beginning of the week, memories of the Sabbath delight I had just experienced motivated me to begin again. And on Sundays ceasing to work at languages set me free for lots of fun.”
“Every Sunday I enjoyed worship and Bible study, ate different foods than I ate during the rest of the week and engaged in relaxing and creative activities. Sometimes I played the organ for worship, went to the beach or swimming pool, took long walks, or played in the parks in the afternoon with friends or by myself. Most of all, Sunday was a day for enjoying God’s presence.”
Even now thought things are not as intense, Marva says each week I do experience a lovely moment of release when at last I go to bed on Saturday nights. To tell you the truth: I sleep differently on Saturday nights because the Sabbath has begun.”
When I was in seminary I had not read Marva Dawn’s book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, but I felt convicted that I was to honor the Sabbath commandment by taking a 24-hour cycle away from study once a week. Because I sometimes had an exam Monday morning, I decided would take Sabbath from dinner time, or six o’clock, on Saturday night to six o’clock on Sunday night.
I wanted to ensure that I had a kind of academic record that would keep the doors open for a top tier PhD program if I wanted to pursue that. I engaged in this practice of Sabbath keeping and I ended up doing better in that academic degree than I had ever done before.
Dr. John Mackay, who teaches Old Testament studies at Reformed Seminary in Florida, says a number of his students were convicted obout keeping the Sabbath. They believed that day should be set apart for worship and rest, but their main concern was the idea of not being able to study on that day. According to Dr. John Mackay an odd thing happened. When they kept the Sabbath, their grades actually improved. They worked diligently the other six days of the week and they looked with eager anticipation to the Sabbath. The Sabbath became a joy for them.
Now I am not saying by these examples that, if you are an undergrad at UBC and you honour the Sabbath, that you will necessarily be admitted to your first choice Medical School or Law School or graduate school but if you honor God’s will to study and honor the Sabbath, God will provide all that you need, in his academic plan for you.
This principle of trusting God on the Sabbath, of course, extrapolates into other areas of life too, including our work life. If we need Sabbath as students, how much more we will need it in the work world.
In my first undergrad job I worked as part of a large corporation in Tokyo, the city of workaholics. As young person fresh out of undergrad, I wanted to compete and succeed and make a good impression on my boss. I would leave my apartment around 7:00 am and return home at the end of my work day after 11 pm. I love to work hard, but I also felt I was working so much that I was losing my soul… I felt convicted to not to work on weekends but instead to give my weekend to the serving God in the little church I was attending and to things not related to my “main job.” When you are young and ambitious and eager to please, it takes some faith in God to say I honor you by not working on the Sabbath… to say if to say, if I don’t fast track, as fast as I’d like so be it… (BTW, things went well… On one of my last days at work, my boss said to some I know, and said “He’s the best we employee have here in this department. I remember…my boss telling me as I was preparing to leave the company, “Look if things don’t work out in the (Christian) ministry for you, you always have a job here…”
I had dinner with my friend Ben Ting recently in the San Francisco Bay area. For several years Ben served as the chair of our board (he’s has given me permission to share this story). Ben started working for Microsoft before it went “public”.
Ben said it was so exciting, so heady to work at the company back when Microsoft was a relatively small company and beginning to rise…. He remembers how a friend at the company would work, work, work, work….crash and sleep on the floor at work… and wake order pizza and keep working….
My friend loved working for Microsoft, but he and wife were beginning family (they ending up having four children) and he and his wife agreed he would work just 40 hours per week… except during crunch times when he’d work more hours.
When he told his boss he was only planning to work 40 hours, his boss said, “Ok, but this will limit your career path.” Ben told me this week that there was a part him, that didn’t want absorbed in the company, but there was also a part of him that wanted to work more hours so he could be he more of an “insider” at Microsoft…
Ben was transferred to the team developing the internet explorer (they were competing with Netscape at the time), his manager told Ben, everyone on this team works at least 80 hours a week here. His boss said, “I expect you to work 80 hours every week. The good news is I don’t care when you put them in”
Ben didn’t say anything… and tried for two weeks to work at that pace, and then approached his boss and said, “I can’t put in 80 hour per week… I have a family… and life outside of here.” He was transferred the new technologies department.
Ben said throughout his time at Microsoft he and his wife were praying that God would make him more productive in the hours he was working and grant him favor. God was good.
He ended up advancing in the company and became a key leader of Windows 95, 98, and 2000 (team leader for developing the Far East Asia versions of these operating systems).
Ben, said during his yearly evaluations he was always ranked in the top 5% at performance at Microsoft… Unlike a lot of leagues, he did not burn out. He was able to retire at 39.
And if we honour God’s Sabbath around our work, I believe God will provide all that we need. Maybe not all that we want, but all that we need.
Gordon Smith, an associate member here and formerly on our staff here said once in one of his sermons said, “I know that it sounds rather stupid to say this, but I keep the Sabbath religiously.”
If we are asked to work seven days a week and we are followers of God. Perhaps we should challenge that request on “religious” or faith grounds.
Many Jews kept the Sabbath, and some kept the Sabbath even when it was a risk to their lives…. because they so wanted to honor God’s Word…
So, I wonder if we shouldn’t be willing to honor Sabbath even if it seem that we might be slowing our career path in some way… or put our career at risk in some other way.
I think that if a Christian person were being asked by their boss to lie, they’d object… saying I can’t say that, but I can frame it this way… or if a Christian woman was asked by her boss to sleep with an important potential client if that was necessary to close the deal… I think she say, “I can’t do that… I can’t make a stellar presentation, but I can’t do that…”
But if a Christian were asked, by their boss to work seven days a week, week in/week out, they NOT might think about it as an ethical issue or an issue of faith…
But the call to take a 24 hour Sabbath is a commandment from God… so I think if we are expected by our bosses to work 7 days weeks, we should make that a deal-breaker…
Perhaps would we could say I can work 6 days a week, 60 or 70 hours (depending our energy levels and other priorities), but I can’t do seven, I love my work, but there’s something more important to me my life than my work…
I was talking to friend this week, who right now is very busy in her work and she said when I work days on end without a day off… I get the sense that work may be becoming an idol for me… In Ezekiel 20 the prophet says, if we don’t honor the Sabbath, our hearts will be given over to idols…a god other than the real God… If don’t take Sabbath we will begin to put in our work, our studies, our productivity, achievement, rather than God…
The call to obey the Fourth Commandment, is a commandment… to make God our real God, the one we trust to provide all we need…
Prayer…
Is there a place if your life…. maybe in your academic world, or in your work world, or in your family life, where you are being called to trust God by keeping the Sabbath, day set apart?
And day to affirm that God and not your school, work or family is your real God…
The manna that God provided in the wilderness was a test that he a test, to see if his people would not try to collect manna on the Sabbath and rest on the Sabbath, but it was also a sign of God’s faithfulness, of God’s grace to his people.
God has given us an even greater sign than that manna he provided years ago for our spiritual ancestors in the desert. He has provided his Son Jesus Christ.
Jesus said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
posted by Shigematsu at 4:05 PM
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