06 Why Does God Care If I Take a Break? (Jeremiah 17:19-27)

Krisan Marotta: I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we'll be looking at Jeremiah chapter 17, verses 19 through 27. This is the sixth talk in our series on the book of Jeremiah. You can follow along with the lecture notes, which you can find at wednesdayintheword.com slash Jeremiah 6. Thanks so much for listening. So did everybody have a nice relaxing weekend? Crossed everything off your to-do list, got caught up on all your projects, and spent time with your family and friends, right? Because you had two days off. Does anybody even remember what it feels like to be rested and relaxed? And if you do, do you feel guilty about it? So I suspect most of you found this lesson on the Sabbath challenging. But we don't know what to do about it. We don't know how to change. Being addicted to activity quickly becomes overwhelming, and we don't know how to slow down. And I suspect many of you are convinced that Sabbath still means something today, but we have no idea what it is. So you take the Bible seriously, you want to follow and obey God, but in this particular case, I find most people have no idea how to begin. What do we do or what do we not do? Maybe we're doing something, but we're not, what we're doing looks different than what someone else is doing, and we look around and we go, I don't know. Well, we're not alone in seeking to understand the Sabbath. There's an app for that. I discovered a Jewish group. They formed a nonprofit organization they call Reboot. And this is from their website. As long as there have been work weeks, there have been sighs of relief on Friday evening. Think of Friday night as a time to press pause and the Friday app for the iPhone as a very shiny pause button. Each Friday just before sunset, get a reminder from the Friday app that it's time to slow down. Read short stories and questions to light a few sparks and stoke some conversations and sunset your phone into blissful twilight to help you unplug. So there you go. There's an app for that. So is that what Sabbath's about? Is it about unplugging? Why would God command it and how do we do it? And how do we justify resting when there's so much work to be done? Well, that's the question we're gonna talk about today. Does it really matter if I take a break? And we're gonna look at Jeremiah 17, 19 through 27. And I'm gonna warn you right up front, I am not gonna answer all your questions. But at the end of the day, you're still gonna go, but wait, what about this and that? And I I granted, I'm not gonna answer them all. I do have a series of four talks on the Sabbath on my website where I explore the whys and hows of Sabbath in more detail and look at a lot more passages. And I'll put a link to that in the lecture notes if you want to explore them. But I have to warn you, those four talks won't answer all your questions either. Because I don't have all the answers. I've been studying Sabbath a lot for the last few years, and my understanding has grown a lot, but it's still evolving. So hopefully we're gonna lay the groundwork and I give you a foundation to kind of move forward. But I sorry I won't answer all your questions. Alright, so just to review, as always, remember where we are, uh, where the book of Jeremiah comes in history. Jeremiah's a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah. This is after the divided kingdom and Israel has already been taken into exile. Assyria is the dominant world power at the time, and as they descend into civil war, Babylon and Egypt try to rush in and take the power vacuum, and that leaves Judah caught in the middle of it. And in the midst of all that political chaos, Jeremiah gets his call, and his job is to warn Judah that if they don't repent, Babylon is coming. It's going to conquer Jerusalem, and God will use Babylon to judge them for their disobedience, and they too will be taken into exile. But eventually God will restore them. So the passage we're looking at today is Jeremiah 17, verses 19 through 27, and I've broken it into three sections. The first section is verses 19 and 20, which is the introduction. So 19 and 20, the introduction. 21 through 23 is a proclamation of the law. So he lays, here's what the law says, 21 through 23. And then 24 through 27 are the promises of blessings for obedience and punishment for disobedience. So we get the introduction, a proclamation of the law, and then here's the consequences of obedience or disobedience. So let's start with the introduction. Thus the Lord said to me, Go stand in the public gate through which the kings of Judah come in and go out, as well as in all the gates of Jerusalem, and say to them, Listen to the word of the Lord, kings of Judah and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who come in through the gates. So he the Lord tells Jeremiah, Go stand in the public gate to deliver this message. And we immediately should ask, oh, which gate? What is the gate through which the kings of Judah come and go? Because often the geographical setting or the location is important. So the short answer is we don't know which gate this is, although most people think it's the Benjamin gate. It is only identified as the gate through which the kings of Judah come and go, but in Jeremiah 38, 7, it says the king was sitting in the Benjamin gate, which was a gate to the north that led out to the territory of Benjamin. So we think, well, if that's the gate where the king was sitting, this must be the gate where the kings come and go. Okay, so while geography and location are frequently important. In this case, I don't think it is. I don't think it matters much which gate, because he goes on to say, as well as in all the gates of Jerusalem. So Jeremiah was to go from gate to gate to repeat this message. So I don't think the particular one he starts with is that significant, except maybe the kings were to hear it first and then move on to all the people. The point seems to be everybody needs to hear this. This is to be delivered to the public at large, because he specifies all the inhabitants, all of Judah, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and everybody who's coming and going through the gates. So Jeremiah goes, he stands in the gates, people are walking around doing their business, and he stands there and he says, Listen, this is what the Lord has to say to you. So let's re look at his um where he proclaims the law. This is 21 through 23. 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 stiffen their neck that they might not hear and receive instruction. So he interrupts his day, their day with this call, and the first thing he says is, Take care for the sake of your lives, or as you value your life. In other words, if you want to continue living, stop and hear this. Well, that ought to grab your attention. I mean, here you've got a priest of Yahweh, he's from the line of Aaron, he's a known prophet, he comes out and he stands in the gates and he says, Thus says the Lord, and then he says, This is a matter of life and death. Well, I don't know about you, but with that kind of buildup, I'm expecting him to say the Messiah is coming, you know, or the cross or something. I am not expecting him to go from there to the Sabbath. So that's a why is that so important? Well, it does suggest that he didn't, that God sent Jeremiah to the city gates not just because it was a good place to find people, because what do you do at the city gates? You conduct your business. Business and trade happened at the gates. If you lived in the city, you'd have to, you might go outside the city through the gate to trade with villagers and farmers who lived outside the city. If you lived outside, you might bring your wares into the city market. So in your either case, you're coming and going through the gates. And as you're going, you're carrying something. You're carrying your wares, you're carrying your produce, you're carrying what you just bought or what you have to sell. So you're working. So he goes to the place where they're working and then makes this announcement. And he reminds them one of the basic commands given by God to the Jewish people, and that's one day out of every seven, you stop working. You don't carry a load, you don't do any type of work, you set that day apart and make it holy. And in Hebrew, the word for Sabbath comes from the word to stop. It's very similar to the word for the number seven, which signifies complete completeness. And the basic meaning of the word is just stop, stop and set apart. Make it special. Don't do on one day what you do on all the other days. So for one day a week, you stop the working activity that you do that sustains your life. Now we're going to talk more about that in a minute. But first, let's look at the consequences. Because it does, it gets worse. So now he says, here's the law. Remember you're supposed to stop, and now he gives the consequences for obedience and disobedience. 24 through 27. But it will come about, if you listen attentively to me, declares the Lord, to bring no load in through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but to keep the Sabbath day holy by doing no work on it. Then there will come in through the gates of the city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever. They will come in from the cities of Judah and from the environs of Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin, from the lowland, from the hill country, and from the Negev, bringing burnt offerings, sacrifices, grain offerings, and incense, and bringing sacrifices at thanksgiving to the house of the Lord. But if you do not listen to me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying a load, and coming in through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it will devour the palaces of Jerusalem and not be quenched. So basically what he says here is keeping the Sabbath, if you start keeping the Sabbath again, you will continue to experience the covenant blessings. Ignore the Sabbath, and you're going to be exiled. So three concepts in these verses stand for the blessings of the covenant, the throne of David, the temple, and the city of Jerusalem. So covenant blessing is pictured as Judah living under a Davidic king, sovereignly in her own country, worshiping the Lord in his temple in Jerusalem. And not only will the inhabitants of Jerusalem experience this blessing, people would come from all over the land and the territory around. So you've got Benjamin to the north, the foothills to the west, the Negev to the south. So they're going to come from everywhere. So it's not just the inhabitants of Jerusalem who will be blessed, the whole nation will be blessed. So the throne of David, the temple, and the city of Jerusalem are the basic symbols of national and religious life for them. They would enjoy these covenant blessings, the throne, so Judah under a Davidic king in Jerusalem, worshiping at the temple there, they enjoy those covenant blessings by being loyal to the covenant. The consequences of disobedience then is pictured as this unquenchable fire that will consume the temple, the throne, and the city. So breaking the covenant as evidenced by breaking the Sabbath is going to lead to the loss of those blessings. Now we know that they did go into exile, and we learn a little bit more about this from 2 Chronicles, because in addition to one day out of every seven being a Sabbath, God said that one year out of every seven years, the land was supposed to enjoy a Sabbath and not be farmed. Now, to our knowledge, Israel never did that. As far as we know, there's no record that they ever kept that year. So in the exile, the Lord said, Well, you didn't give the land of rest, so you're going into exile for seventy years to make up for the seventy Sabbath years that you missed while you were living in the land. And that's essentially what he says in 2 Chronicles, this is chapter 36, verses 19 to 21. So he's speaking of the Babylonians when they came and leveled Jerusalem, and he says, And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia. And then verse 21, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbath. All the days that it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill seventy years. So God tells his people to rest as a way to keep the covenant and to remember him. They don't rest, so he essentially gives the land its rest. He says, Rest to remember me, and they don't, so they go into exile where they, in a sense, have to rest. Okay, so the gist of this passage is pretty straightforward. Jeremiah starts by saying, if you honor the Sabbath, if you're loyal to the covenant, if you keep the Sabbath holy, then life will be pretty good. You'll be my people in my land worshiping at my temple. And then Jeremiah shocks us by saying, if you forget the Sabbath, and the consequences are going to be drastic. So if you don't stop carrying loads through the gates, on the one day a week you're not supposed to, I'm going to take the gates away altogether. And if you disobey him by walking through the gates working, he's going to burn them up with an unquenchable fire. Now that ought to seem surprising, because this is the worst national disaster up to that point. And now Jeremiah's telling us it's because of the Sabbath. So the reason why Jerusalem, the holy city of God's people, is destroyed by why they're taken into exile from the land that was promised them, why they're put back into slavery in a foreign land is because they didn't take a break. I mean, really? Doesn't that seem harsh? It's like, hmm. After all, look look at history. God's people did a lot of stuff wrong in the 400 years leading up to this. I mean, have you ever read the book of Judges? Or the Book of Kings, even. They engaged in some pretty bad deviant behavior, sexual behavior. They oppressed the poor. They had some really low, lows under kings. And of course, the end of the book of Judges, there's a civil war which nearly wipes out the tribe of Benjamin. So we have all this history, and now God says, because you didn't keep the Sabbath, they're going into exile. And my first thought is, really? Now, it is true that other places in Scripture link the exile to the just general sinfulness and rebelliousness of the people, but this passage is linking it to their failure to keep the Sabbath. So that's what we want to answer. Why would that be so important? Why would God specifically link the Sabbath to the exile, and what does it matter if we take a break? So that's what we're going to spend most of our time on. You might want to, if you have a Bible, take it out because we're going to look at a lot of more passages to try to unravel this. So, in an agrarian culture where taking care of the land and living off the land is what everyone does, resting for one day out of seven makes no business sense. Because if you're a farmer, there's always work to be done. You know, the cows still need to be milked, the chickens still need to be fed, and yet God's people were instructed to take off one day a week. Every other culture around them did everything they could to work every minute of every day to control their environment. So they worked hard to make the land fruitful. They carved statues and idols and prayed to them, asking for rain and asking for heart a good harvest, and they sacrificed valuable things to make their gods happy, and they never took a day off. But Israel was supposed to be different. Israel was supposed to look different than her neighbors. God's people were to learn that faith fruitfulness as farmers or success in business comes from the Lord. It depends on his blessings, not their self-effort. And their relationship with God is not this kind of tit for tat, you worship me and I'll give you a blessing, you do this and I'll do that. But it is different. So they don't strive in order to get blessings from the Lord. By contrast, they rest because God has already blessed them. That's a huge difference. So they're not striving to get blessings, they are resting because God has already blessed them. Alright, so let's look at Exodus 20. This is the first time the Sabbath is commanded, and what I want to pull out of these passages is each time he commands the Sabbath, he gives a why. And that's what we want to look at. So in Exodus 20, this is the first listing of the Ten Commandments. Sabbath is the fourth of the ten, and we're going to look at Exodus 20, 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep 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. You are your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So the first sentence, verse 8, gives us the basic pattern of the command: remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Then he explains what it means to remember the Sabbath and how it's holy. He says, You don't work on that day. And remembering is not a cognitive activity. It's not, oh yeah, it's the Sabbath today. It's remembering in this context means doing something or not doing something. So it involves activity. And the activity is simple: six days you work, the seventh you don't. And then the last verse, verse 11, gives us the reason why we are supposed to do this, and it's because God rested after he created the heavens and the earth. So our remembering the Sabbath is patterned after God's behavior. We rest because God rested, and that's supposed to teach us something about God. So why did God rest? Because his work was finished. He rested because he was done. He didn't rest because he was tired. He didn't rest because, you know, he needed a little mini vacation after that creation stuff. It just wore him out. He rested because he was done. And why do we rest? Then we rest to remember that God's work is done. His work in creation, including creating us, is done. So we rest to remember that God created us and his work is done. Now we talked about this when we looked at chapter one. Remember when we talked about calling and we talked about how we think that we need to find ourselves and we need to create ourselves, and that we talked about how we think we need to find ourselves and determine the shape of our lives, but in reality, God has created us. Sabbath is a reminder of that truth. It isn't about creating myself. It's not about getting where I want to be and making myself the best person ever, or like a power nap so I can recharge for the rest of the week. It's to remind me God created me, He has a plan, He's in control, and He's going to bring it about. So the first reason behind Sabbath in the Bible is that God's work in creating us is finished. And we rest to rightfully acknowledge that fact, the role that he plays. So we remember who God is and who we are. And that all our success does not come from getting everything crossed off our to-do list. Ultimately, success comes from his hand. Okay, we are going to fly through these because I want to take you to a lot of passages. So you've probably got more questions, but bear with me. Turn to Exodus 31. This is the next listing of the Ten Commandments. This is Moses speaking. He gave, after the 10 first listing in Exodus 20, he gives all these more specific instructions about how these commandments apply to daily life. And then in Exodus 31, he gives us a little more detail about the Sabbath. So this is 31, 12 through 17. And the Lord said to Moses, You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, Above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who portray profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel, that in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. So the first listing we got that we remember the Sabbath to remember that God created us. Now we get this additional reason Sabbath is a sign of the covenant between God. God and his people. Now, covenant is is like a contract. It describes the fundamental way in which the relationship between the Jews and God was defined. They were bound to him by this covenant. God gave them particular signs of the covenant to remind them circumcision is perhaps the most famous. But here God says Sabbath is also a sign of the covenant. So in Exodus 31, we learn that God requires the Sabbath as a way of remembering that He chose His people. So we rest because God chose us. And Sabbath reminds us of that basic identity. So for the Jews of Jeremiah's Day, the idea behind the Sabbath is that if you're a member of God's chosen people, one of the ways you display that is through rest, through Sabbath. Sabbath was an observable way to demonstrate your identity. And not honoring the Sabbath was a way, was disobeying God, was like rejecting that identity and renouncing it. Because no other nation did this. The Jews looked very different. So by working on the Sabbath, you're declaring, I don't care about that covenant thing. I don't really care if I'm one of God's people, and I don't want to look like God's people. It's a rejection of the covenant. Now, think about us. For most of us, what defines us as our identity? It's busyness. We live in a culture where busyness is admired. And busyness is like the gold standard by which we're all held. So we've if we're busy, we feel important. If someone asks me how I'm doing, and I say, Oh, you know, I'm really relaxed, had a great week this week, they look at you like, what's wrong with you? Like you don't know the rules. If you're rest and relacted, you're not you're not playing the game right. But if you say, Oh, it's such a busy week, I've got all these meetings and big projects and lots of stuff going on and evening activities every week, now I fit in. Now I'm part of the culture. I feel better. So Sabbath is a way to say busyness is not what defines me. My work is not what defines me. Who I am is not the work that I do, who I am is a child of God. Busyness doesn't make me important, my activity does not define who I am, my level activity does not define my worth as a human being. Increased productivity doesn't make me better than someone else. Sabbath is a way to say, first and foremost, I'm a child of God. He defines who I am, not my work, not my busy schedule. So Sabbath reminds us that we are his chosen people, and it's he who gives us significance and importance. So we rest to remember God created us, we rest to remember God chose us, and we're going to look at one more passage in Deuteronomy 5, where he gives another reason. Well, it's real, these are all related reasons. So, Deuteronomy 5, this is after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Jews are about to go into the promised land. Moses is giving a series of sermons to the people to kind of prepare them for this new season of life in the promised land, and he repeats the Ten Commandments, and it's mostly identical to Exodus. But in when he comes to the Sabbath, he gives something additional. So this is Deuteronomy 5, 12 through 15. 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 the 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. So the first time he links the Sabbath to creation, where God rested because his work was dead, here, 40 years later, he links the Sabbath to the Jews being redeemed from slavery in Egypt. So the first looks back to creation, the second looks back to the Exodus. And so why are we to rest? Because God brought us out of slavery. He redeemed his people. And that's the final reason we rest. We rest to remember that God redeemed us. So that moment of redemption, that the Exodus was the defining moment for the nation of Israel. When God saved his people from Egypt, they became a nation. And that's the offense they look back on to define their national identity. So if the religion of Judaism was born when God called Abraham out of Ur, the nation of Israel was born when God redeemed them out of slavery in Egypt. And Sabbath is reminding them that he created them as a nation, he rescued them and redeemed them. So think about our own national identity. In our country, we celebrate July 4th as a way of remembering the defining moment of when we became a nation. So in 1776, on the 4th of July, a group of men signed the Declaration of Independence, saying that they were no longer going to be subjects of the King of England, and we were establishing a new nation, and we celebrate Independence Day. Well, you could say the Jews were not all that different. They were subjects of a foreign king who had conquered them and they desired their independence and they became a new nation. But where we declared our independence, they were rescued by God. So we created our nation, in a sense, God created their nation. So we would call what we would call Independence Day, they could call Dependence Day, because it was about remembering God was the one who redeemed them. It was their dependence on God. So Sabbath is about remembering that we are dependent on God. And that's something I think a lot of us find hard to do. We want to turn the Sabbath into something we use to for our own empowerment, you know, and make us more efficient or more productive or to take a nap so that we can be more productive on Monday, so we rest to work harder, or rest to empower me. And that's all from a perspective of self-sufficiency. I kind of want to make it on my own and be prepared and be ready and do all that I can do. Well, resting is an acknowledgement, I can't do it alone. If I'm going to get anywhere in this world, it's because God is going to bless me. So self-sufficiency is this thing we're addicted to, but that's an empty promise. And Sabbath is a practical way to remember that. So we stop working to remember our dependence on God. Okay, so this is the why of the Sabbath. When we look back and see when God commands it, he tells us why. He says it's a reminder for you. It's a reminder that God created you, God chose you, and God redeemed you. And all of that is about remembering your dependence on God. So for Jeremiah's contemporaries, breaking the Sabbath is breaking that covenant. It's a question of rebellion. It's a sign that they aren't dependent on God. They don't remember him. They've forgotten his ways, they've forgotten that he's the one who gives them success. And so it's a s as a sign of the covenant, when they break it, they're rebelling against the covenant. It's acknowledg refusing to acknowledge who God is and who they are. So that's why the exile is an appropriate punishment, because for the people of Jeremiah's day, they've abandoned their God, and part of the evidence of that rebellion is they no longer keep the Sabbath. Okay, so now the question, I'm sure you're all like on the edge of your seats. So what about today? Does God still require a Sabbath rest for us modern post-New Testament Christians in the same way He required the people of the Old Testament? Okay, again, I'm not going to answer all your questions. Sorry. I'm going to try to get you pointed in the right direction. And I will say my personal belief at this time, and I reserve the right to change that as I learn more, but my and my belief, I'm not speaking for the church, I'm not speaking for the denomination, so this is just me, you know, my worthless opinion, is that God does not require us to observe a 24-hour period where we stop working. So my understanding at this point is I don't think we need to come up with rules about what defines work and then make sure we apply those rules for an entire 24-hour period every week. Instead, I think Sabbath is an attitude. It ought to be the basic attitude of our hearts and minds. We ought to live every day as if God created us, God chose us, and God redeemed us. And ultimately, when it comes to Sabbath, I think the state of our heart is more important than the activity of our hands. However, and this is a big however, I do think that God requires us to live our lives in dependence on dependence on Him, and we ought to follow a lifestyle that builds that dependence in. So that requires us and encourages us to remember who God is. And Sabbath is a great way to do that. We can get so busy and so caught up with our activities that it's very, very easy to forget. God created us, God redeemed us, God chose us, his work is done, is complete, he's going to bring it about, and we do not have to be anxious and frantic. Now, many people I love and respect take a different view and say Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, and since the other nine are still in effect, Sabbath is in an effect too. And there is some merit in that argument. I debated a long time about going into Hebrews 4, and I've just decided there's not enough time, but my understanding based on Hebrews 4 is that Sabbath is a shadow of a coming reality. That the Sabbath was meant to teach us something about God, and it was shadowing a reality that will, and that reality is eternally true and does not change. And that is this principle of rest we've been talking about, that we rest to remember who God is and who we are, that He He saved us, He chose us, He redeemed us. Now I do have a talk on Hebrews 4 on the website, and I'll link to that if you want to go there and learn more. But I think what Sabbath has changed because God revealed more of his plan and purposes with the coming of Jesus. And part of what Jesus did in fulfilling the law was to more fully reveal the whys and the reasons behind the law. And I think that's essentially what Hebrews is arguing, that we still need Sabbath rest, but it's gonna look different. So I'm gonna give trying to walk to walk the fence and not fall off on either side here. We dare not live our lives as if we're autonomous, as if we no longer are dependent on God and His grace. And we get so wrapped up that that maybe we just fly through by, you know, in church once a week and never think about who he is or who we are or what he's done for us. But no, I don't think it has to look for us the way it looked for the Jews. So just to summarize where we are so far, we define Sabbath as the idea that you need to live your life in such a way that you recognize and remember and encourage your dependence on God. So essentially cease striving and know that He is God. The simple command is not working. I would define working as whatever you do that sustains your life. So your work is that primary activity you do that that sustains your life, and we rest to remember that ultimately God is the one who sustains our life. We are free to stop those activities because God is the one who sustains us, and we are encouraged then to do something that fosters our relationship with God. So as time changes, as culture changes, and what as what work changes, how we express Sabbath is going to be different. Those things may change. In fact, we could go through the Bible and look how remembering the Sabbath changed for, say, the people of Moses' day to the people of Nehemiah's day. So work may change, what constitutes work may change, but the one thing that does not change is remembering God. So I think Sabbath is primarily an issue of the heart. And while the specifics of how you define it and express it are going to look different for different people and different cultures and different times, that heart issue remains. So think about what's your work, what is the primary role you have or the responsibility God's given you that sustains your life? Because every each of us takes part in sustaining our life whether we're whether we are paid for it or not. And the call to the Sabbath is not abdicate your responsibility, but remembering that we are stewards under the sovereignty of God, that ultimately we are sustained because He is sustaining us, and that all the work of our hands comes from Him. So we're tempted to think, oh, you know, I got a good education, I got a good job, I earned this, I work hard, I did this, all my blessings are coming from all these things I did, and yet God says, man does not eat by bread alone, that all that bread you have, all those blessings you have, I gave you those opportunities, I gave you those activities, I fashioned your life and wrote your story. This is coming from me. So the temptation is to start taking matters into our own hands. But what we need to remember is that by the grace and blessing of God, we are sustained. He is the one responsible. So stopping work for a time is a great reminder of that. It's it's stopping and saying, I don't have to pretend that I have it all or I can do it all, I don't have to live up to my cultures, values, and busyness and productivity. I can stop pretending I'm self-sufficient and I can handle everything on my own. So Sabbath starts when you stop. It's not all that hard. You know that you're working too hard and forgetting that you depend on God. And when that happens, stop. Stop and unplug. When you get through that, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna make it, and if I don't get this done by dinner time, the world is going to fall apart. You know, you've all been there, right? I I do that about once a week. When you get in that mindset of, if I don't do this, life will end as we know it, you know, or at least my kids will fall apart, or whatever, stop. Stop, cease striving, take a break. The world is not on your shoulders. So the way we live our lives, how much we we work, whether we're able to rest, all those things reflect do I really believe that God chose me, God redeemed me, God sustains me, he's the one who's gonna get all this done. So the the kind of negative side is stop working, stop doing what you do that sustains your life. But the positive side is what do you do when you stop? So, do we just sit around and do nothing? And God tells us to honor the Sabbath we stop but we seek Him. Psalm 46, 10 says, Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations and I will be exalted in the earth. That word be still carries the idea of stopping. It's a stillness in that you're stopping activity that you're currently engaged in. The NSB translates it, cease striving. Cease striving and know that I am God. So it's emphatic. It's like stop all that crazy activity and just be. So Sabbath is more than leisure, it's more than sitting around doing nothing, it's seeking God. It's doing whatever you can do that encourages your relationship with God, that fosters your dependence on Him. So while we're stopped, the flip side is we're to seek the Lord. Now, for that's going to look different for different people. Your relationship with God is gonna grow differently than the way mine is. For some of you, Bible study might be the thing that encourages you to seek the Lord. For me, that's what it is. For others, it might be song, for others, it might be prayer, or it might be, you know, hiking and praying while you're outside in nature or something. So, what fosters your relationship with God, that should be in your week. You should make time to stop your life-sustaining work and enjoy seeking the Lord, both alone and in community. I think we do this individually and as a corporate body. And it doesn't have to be huge. You know, coming to Bible study is a kind of Sabbath because you're taking a break from your normal activities and you're here trying to learn more about God. Going to community group could be like that, attending church on Sunday, having a daily quiet time. It doesn't have to be super spiritual. It's whatever encourages you to know God better. And you can enjoy it. Did you hear that? You have permission to rest and enjoy it. You don't have to feel guilty about it when you stop and your work and you seek God. So however you make time in your lives, ask yourself, where is my heart in all this? Am I driven or am I called? Am I driven because I'm overcommitted and I'm in way too many good activities and worthy activities, and I have to stop and build time into my schedule to focus on God? Or maybe you're undercommitted, you need to get out of the hammock and into the Bible. But the real question is, where's my heart? Am I doing this because I trust God and I'm seeking him? Am I doing this because I'm frantic and I think I have to? Um, you know, we're that's the heart attitude. One of Martin Luther's closest friends was a man named Philip Melanchthon, and there's a story that one day Melanchthon said to Luther, this day you and I will discuss the governance of the universe. And Luther replied, This day you and I will go fishing and leave the governance of the universe to God. I've always liked that. So, what does it look like for you to leave the governance of the universe to God? And I know you're all smiling, but we do that. We all, especially as women, we think we have to do it all. So think about what does it look like for you to leave the governance of the universe to God? What do you do that helps you relate to God and know him better? Do that. That's your Sabbath rest. But you're resting to remember God, you're resting to relate to him. So the people of Jeremiah's day, they had stopped resting because they stopped caring about who God is and what he'd done for them. They had rejected the covenant. And neglecting the Sabbath was symptomatic of a rejection of the covenant as a whole. And that is a life or death matter. So our question was what does it matter if I take a break? Well, it matters why you can't take a break. That's, I think, really the most short answer of that. It matters where your heart is. And if you can't take a break because you're too stressed to trust that God sustains you, then that's a problem. It matters who you're trusting for the success and failure of your life. It matters where you're seeking your identity, where you're seeking life and blessing, and how you treat the Sabbath may be a symptom of a deeper problem. So it may mean that you've forgotten who created you, chose you, and redeemed you. And that's when you want to stop and remember and do whatever it is that encourages you to remember. All right, let's pray. Father, this is a hard lesson, and we just confess that we're busy people, we're we're anxious and productive people. It's hard for us to stop and rest and trust you. And I just pray that you would give us the wisdom to know how to apply this in our lives, how it should look going forward, and to encourage each other rather than judge each other in this. And just pray that you would, as you have promised to do, write the law in our hearts to make us people who are wise and mature, who love you more, who trust you more, and who can begin to live the way you would have us live. And we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.