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“What if your life depended on it?”
Isn’t that such an interesting question? Usually it’s asked of us by someone who is trying to get us to stretch our imagination on what’s possible — or maybe it’s someone trying to convince us to do something we know we have no business trying.
Like me, right now. If you asked me to run a marathon I would say I couldn’t. If you said, “What if your life depended on it?” I would still say I couldn’t because I’m not sure I’d make it to mile 26 anyway.
Usually we take a question like this one and dismiss it. Which is fine, given the circumstances most days.
But what if God Himself asked us that question?
Turns out, while God is in the business of asking us hard questions. When it comes to keeping the Sabbath. He doesn’t ask us if our life depends on it, He tells us our life depends on it.
Read this passage slowly.
Thus said the Lord to me (Jeremiah): “Go and stand in the People's Gate, by which the kings of Judah enter and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, and say: ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates. Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers. Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck, that they might not hear and receive instruction.
—Jeremiah 17:19-23 (ESV)
Take a second to re-read that if you need to. Focus in on the bolded words.
The Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. God of all things seen and unseen. ← That God.
He says, “Take care for the sake of your lives…”
Which means that whatever comes next has life and death consequences. We might expect Him to say, “Stay away from sex, drugs, and alcohol!” Or maybe, “Don’t make deals with crooked people.”
But nope. He says, “Keep the Sabbath day holy.”
Which means I was flirting with death in my early days as a BCM Campus Minister.
Early on at Conway BCM I had a hard time keeping a routine of Sabbath. By “hard time” I mean, “I never did.”
I recall a conversation I had with my pastor one Sunday.
Pastor: B, You look tired!
Me: Man, I am. I’ve worked 46 straight days!
Pastor: Dude, that will kill you. You need to stop that immediately.
It was a very short conversation between services.
To this day I haven’t seen him as serious as he was in that conversation. His tone and mood shifted so quickly that I was startled and didn’t know what to say.
When I took a step back and started to examine my life, this is what I saw:
I wasn’t treating my wife very well
I was drifting from true devotion to the Lord
I was easily agitated/frustrated
I wasn’t living free in Christ
I was a slave to my work
To me, working every day seemed like an innocent byproduct of having a job that demanded a lot from me. I rationalized my decision to work daily by saying, “I’m able to rest for moments throughout the week. I just Sabbath when I can.” Or, “I’m a minister, I don’t really get to Sabbath!”
All of those were and still are, lies.
What I needed and what we all need to understand is that our inability to Sabbath is a direct result of being a slave to sin and this world.
The command to Sabbath was first given to the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt, although it was embedded into the fabric of life with God originally (Genesis 2:1-3). God delivers the Israelites from Egyptian slavery under the leadership of Moses and three things happen very quickly:
They celebrate
They complained because they had no water or food
They exposed their inability to live free.
In Exodus 14, they cross the Red Sea.
In Exodus 15, Moses and the people of Israel sing a celebration song to the Lord.
Before Exodus 15 is over, the people start complaining there is no water. God provides the water.
In Exodus 16, when they realize they have no food, the people basically say, “It would have been better if we were slaves in Egypt! At least there we were well fed! Why did you bring us out here to die from hunger?!” (Exodus 16:3)
God provides Manna from heaven daily and an introduces the concept of Sabbath to them by saying,
“On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’”
—Exodus 16:22-23 (ESV)
And honestly, they struggled with this. Some of the people didn’t obey. But it’s not until Moses receives the 10 commandments that we see why the people struggled to keep the Sabbath.
Deuteronomy gives us the more full and complete explanation of the Sabbath command. It says:
“‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God 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, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
—Deuteronomy 5:12-15 (ESV)
The Israelites struggled to keep the Sabbath because being a slave was deeply engrained into their understanding of how to be a human. God’s command to keep the Sabbath day was to teach the Israelites how to be human’s under His rule & reign and how to rebel against being a slave in the land of Egypt.
In other words, the Israelites were free but in their understanding of how to live they were still very much slaves. By commanding them to Sabbath, God was teaching them how to be free.
Let’s be real…there’s not a single one of us that’s a slave in Egypt right now.
BUT.
We all know what it’s like to be a slave to sin.
We all know what it’s like to be a slave to our bank account.
We all know what it’s like to be a slave to the expectations of other people.
In response to all that God tells us with great compassion, “You’re free. Rest. You’re not a slave to sin anymore. I’ve taken care of that. Working harder and longer won’t give you want you need. I’ve given you what you need. You’re free.”
I was convinced that working 7 days a week would:
Help me reach more college students
Win over the students we had
Help me see more fruit within the ministry
Win over the respect of the pastors in our area
Justify my job
Justify my existence (What good is a slave that doesn’t work 24/7?)
If my pastor didn’t look me in the eye and tell me to stop living the way I was living I am convinced I would have destroyed my life. Maybe not that year or the next year, but most certainly 20 years down the line.
In our culture we love to tell people we’re busy. It’s like a badge of honor when people ask how we’re doing to say, “Busy, but good!”
Somehow we think that being busy is what we’re designed for. Somehow we think that working 7 days a week and never resting is what God requires of us.
But for the sake of our lives (my life) we (I) need to listen to God and Sabbath.
—Brandon
What a powerful and convicting read, yet a reminder that conviction is wrapped in His kindness
Wow! We abuse what’s actually good for us.