Rest

The need for boldness and a requirement to be strong and courageous was necessary for the exiled people of Israel to live as God was calling them to. Not only would such a call be difficult, but it would also be extremely demanding of energy to live in this way. God’s call is not for the faint of heart.

It is through the life of His people that God’s name would be made great in the world. The sheer size and difficulty of this task is immense. The extensive nature of the Great Commission will require a lot of energy and diligence to see it through to completion. The thought of even evangelizing our community is a draining, time and energy consuming sort of thing. If even 10% of our community are followers of Jesus, that leaves 3,780 people to reach out to in Christ’s name - that’s nearly 30 people for each man, woman and child of Hillside Church!

The size and scale of such a command is not one that catches God off guard, however. “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.” (Exodus 20:8)

The Sabbath is a weekly reboot, the failsafe built right into God’s system of things. The Sabbath is a day “to the LORD our God”. It is a day to break from the normal, sometimes monotonous rhythms of the week to set apart for sacred purposes – this is what keeping something holy entails. The Sabbath is less about ceasing something – though work ought to cease – and more about starting something, for the Sabbath involves His people setting aside significant time to gather for worship in honour of God.

A second reason for the Sabbath is rest. God was reinforcing in His commandments a pattern He had already established in creation, whereby one would work for six days – exercising our God given creativity – and on the seventh day, rest. Culturally, Sunday is a business as usual day. Work dominates our culture and we reap some of the highest rates of anxiety disorders and fatigue related illnesses in the world. Would our homes and communities be happier, more relaxed places if we found time to break from our work?

“Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants … The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you…” (Leviticus 25: 8 – 12) Every fiftieth year was to be a year of rest for the land. Just as allowing a field to remain fallow encourages unproductiveness, so too does refusing to allow the land to rest. An overused field gets stripped of vital nutrients and can no longer support any life within it.

God also gave a specific outcome were His people to fail in following this directive: the Israelites would be scattered among the nations, living in the country of their enemies, while the land of Israel lay desolate, in rest. From time the people of Israel settled in the land of Israel to the time of the Babylonian exile, there ought to have been 70 years where the land ought to have been allowed to rest. For each year of rest missed, the people of Israel spent a year under oppression in a foreign land. The reality of this rest-exile experience for the Israelites shows us just how seriously God takes this concept of Sabbath rest.

In much the same way as the Israelites were called to bless the nations around them, our call as followers of Jesus is to be a blessing to the community around us in such a way that God’s name is both made known and honoured. Adherence to a Sabbath enables God’s people both in the past and today to accomplish this task effectively. When we gather for worship on Sundays, we ought to do so not out of duty or tradition, guilt or simple habit, but out of a genuine desire to see God’s name made great in our community. The time we set aside for God will give us a greater platform from which to witness to the community around us.

A weekly day of rest permits the follower of Jesus to allow refreshment to come, so that his or her life with continue to produce good fruit. Our best produce as followers of Jesus emerges out of a place of rest. The call we have before us as a church is bold and immense and to try to accomplish it without taking time to just rest in God’s presence will lead to fatigue, anxiety and ineffectiveness.

Scripture indicates that Christ often withdrew from His followers to solitary places to spend time in prayer and worship of God, to break from His hectic schedule of ministry to rest in God’s presence. If we desire effective ministry in the vein of Jeremiah 29:4-7 or Matthew 28:19-20 then we ought to model our ministry after Christ – diligent and bold ministry, peppered with significant times of rest in God’s presence.

A warning – we can tend to get a little legalistic with commands such as the one to mark a Sabbath. The Pharisees did just this and the focus fell on solely on the Sabbath and its associated prohibitions, rather than on the reason for the Sabbath – the worship of God and the life-giving rest that emerges from time spent with Him.

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28) The Sabbath is for the benefit of God’s people – it encourages them to worship God, extending His influence in the world all the while providing them opportunity for refreshment. And if Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath, then ought not time spent with Him far outweigh perfect adherence to the seemingly inane Sabbath laws of the Pharisees?

May you build community, pray for our town, even the places set against us, and bless those around you – and do so boldly and with great energy. As you do this, ensure that you are finding time to rest in God’s presence and worship in community – practice a Sabbath – so that our ministry will be both effective and pleasing of God. May you find that God is one who “makes [you] lie down in green pastures, leads [you] beside quiet waters, refreshes [your] soul”, even as He leads you “through the valley of the shadow of death”.