[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] I wonder if I was to pick on someone at random and say, tell us the Ten Commandments.
[00:00:26] You're all thinking them now, aren't you?
[00:00:30] Now I won't pick on anybody at random, but they sort of get categorized in different ways. So let's see if we can get through them. Three of them have something to do with God.
[00:00:43] No other God before me. Don't make idols. Don't take the name of the Lord in vain. That's three.
[00:00:50] Seven to go.
[00:00:53] Two of them are sort of legal and form the basis of lots of laws in most societies.
[00:01:01] Don't kill anyone. Don't steal. That gets us to five.
[00:01:07] Two of them you could argue are sort of moral.
[00:01:11] Don't lie and don't break your marriage commitment. Don't commit adultery. Okay.
[00:01:18] No real laws against that you might say. Although you know, we have contract law and family law. Okay, how far have I got?
[00:01:27] Okay, three more left.
[00:01:30] One is do not covet.
[00:01:34] Really strange word.
[00:01:36] And it probably means don't be jealous of other people's stuff, their possessions and their relationships.
[00:01:46] Leaves us two.
[00:01:48] One is honour your father and mother.
[00:01:52] Bit of a strange one to have in the ten Commandments. All the others moral, spiritual, legal. This one bit strange.
[00:02:01] Honour your father and mother actually has a promise and then it says, because things will go well with you in the land. So maybe because these commandments come from a pre welfare state sort of time, maybe it's something to do with social justice. Okay, so that's got us to nine.
[00:02:20] Then we come to the strangest one of all.
[00:02:23] Keep the Sabbath holy.
[00:02:27] There's a day once every seven days when we should do no work.
[00:02:34] A divinely mandated biblical backed day off.
[00:02:40] Don't you find that a little bit odd?
[00:02:45] Don't you find that a little bit odd?
[00:02:49] Let's actually read the commandment.
[00:02:53] Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
[00:02:57] Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
[00:03:06] On it you shall not do any work.
[00:03:09] Neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in the towns.
[00:03:20] For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them.
[00:03:27] But he rested on the seventh day.
[00:03:29] Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
[00:03:35] So let's just unpack what's being said in this commandment? One day in every seven, no work, no paid employment, no household projects, no study, no work, and not to expect anybody else to work for us. In other words, maybe don't go to the shops. Okay, now this seems an incredibly strange thing, and I said that some of the commandments were laws. This one was sort of a law in our society and in probably most societies had a Christian ethos. In 1912, a law was passed to stop work on a Sunday. Factories closed, offices closed, church shops closed.
[00:04:26] And it wasn't until about 1994 that the law changed. Now, depending on your age, you might remember that.
[00:04:35] So there was a time in this land and many, many others, you couldn't work on a Sunday.
[00:04:40] You couldn't work on a Sunday.
[00:04:43] But in 1994, government tried to deregulate that so we could all work more. In fact, it's happened since 1994. There's been various attempts by various governments to make Sunday an ordinary.
[00:04:57] But back in the 90s, communities got together, the church got together, unions got together, and there was something called keep Sunday special, which is why even today the shops can only open for a short time.
[00:05:14] But how did we get from Moses on the top of Mount Sinai with his 10 tablets telling the people of Israel, take Saturday off.
[00:05:25] To Christianized societies taking Sunday off? And is it even relevant anymore?
[00:05:34] The progression is like this. The first Christians came from a Jewish background. They understood Sabbath, okay, Jesus rose again on a Sunday. So the first Christians started to meet on a Sunday.
[00:05:49] They probably kept the Sabbath as well on a Saturday. But then it sort of baked into the history of the Church. And So by the 4th century, Emperor Constantine makes it, he was a Christian emperor. Bit of a strange thing to be, but there you go, he baked it in and made it law.
[00:06:07] So from the 4th century onwards, the idea of Sunday being special, Sunday being the Sabbath for Christians was there.
[00:06:17] Now, what we're doing in this series that we're going through at the moment is called 10 Forgotten Pathways. And we're going to talk today about the Sabbath being a forgotten pathway. Because the idea of fully taking Sunday off, no work, no household projects, no study, no side hustles, is a bit of a strange one. Now, even to Christians, we don't talk about it. We haven't talked about it for decades in my memory.
[00:06:47] And so we're going to go through this particular idea of Sabbath, okay? Now, a lot of the 10 things that we're going through on the forgotten Pathways, they're activities today. We're going to talk about an inactivity.
[00:07:02] And when I'm going through the principles here, I'd like you as much as possible to park the issues, park the impracticalities of this, because if we don't listen to those things, we'll get a chance to hear the reasons behind it and the principles behind it.
[00:07:22] Because we are so busy in our lives, aren't we? We are so, so busy in our lives.
[00:07:29] I once worked in a place where my team was incredibly, incredibly busy. We had deadlines to meet.
[00:07:36] And then my director asked me if my team could just do one more thing, just one little thing.
[00:07:42] So I got my team in a room and I said, we're just being asked to do this one thing.
[00:07:48] And one of my staff said she was normally very lovely. Are you having a laugh?
[00:07:55] And that's what this can feel like as I explain it today. Are you having a laugh?
[00:08:00] Sabbath, a day off when we've got so many things to do.
[00:08:05] So I'm just going to cover it in three sections.
[00:08:09] Why did we forget the Sabbath?
[00:08:12] Why should we remember it? And how do we keep it?
[00:08:17] First off, why did we forget it? Well, because it just feels a bit Old Testament. I mean, it literally is. I read that bit from the Old Testament, and in our sort of evangelical charismatic approach, we just think Old Testament not for us anymore. You know, in the Old Testament, it's all stuff about the mildew, how you deal with mildew, and if you kill someone accidentally, you have to run to a city of refuge. And that doesn't seem very relevant now. And so we think, well, this commandment belongs there as well.
[00:08:52] And it also seems incredibly legalistic. And again, there were in church circles, a very strong legalistic judgment on people who didn't keep the Sabbath in the way that the commandment says. And I want to say right at the outset here that there's no legalism in what I'm trying to communicate today. Okay? So if the Sabbath isn't a thing you do, this isn't about legalism. This isn't about keep a perfect Sabbath and God will love you more, or keep a perfect Sabbath and you'll be a better Christian than the person sitting next to you, okay? There's no legalism here. This is something we're going to need to work out together. So one reason we forgot it is we thought, well, it's just Old Testament and it's legalistic. Another reason is because we think it is unrealistic, right? This isn't 1912. It isn't 1950, it isn't even 1993, when the law changed. And most of us have to work. There's so much to do. The economy is tough to keep food on the table, the house and the mortgage and all that sort of stuff. We have to work. There's lots of expectations on us, in those of us who have careers and jobs to continuously study to get on the ladder. There's lots to do. If we have children, there's things we need to do to bring up those children properly. If we have relatives who are older and need care.
[00:10:14] So maybe it's just unrealistic and some of us need side hustles as well, otherwise we get bored.
[00:10:23] We forgot it as well, because some of us think it's for a different life stage. I would be able to take a day of rest like this when the kids are older or when the kids are younger, or when I don't have to look after that relative or whatever it might be. We just think it's a life stage thing. It'll work when I'm single, it'll work when I'm married, or whatever it might be.
[00:10:45] So there's lots of reasons that we've forgotten it, but we should remember it. And here's two reasons. First reason, it literally says, remember.
[00:10:58] It's the first reason, remember the Sabbath day.
[00:11:02] And the second reason is it is a little bit New Testament as well.
[00:11:12] This is something that happened, okay? Mark 2, 23, 24, 27, one Sabbath. Jesus was going through the grain fields. And as they made their way through, the disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is the Lord, even of the Sabbath.
[00:11:41] So Jesus mentions the Sabbath, and as you can see, there's legalism there. Okay, so the Pharisees were saying to Jesus, look, your disciples are technically farming because they're going through the fields and they're picking bits of corn. They shouldn't be doing that. And then they're crushing out and putting their mouths. They're doing food preparation. So there's a whole legalism thing here. Now, Jesus could have said, no, the Sabbath doesn't exist anymore. They can do what they like.
[00:12:08] We all need to work.
[00:12:10] But he didn't.
[00:12:11] He said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So we need to remember it because it does appear in the New Testament. And so What I want to do now is just give you the four principles of the Sabbath, okay, so that we can understand why this is a thing.
[00:12:32] And as we try and maybe work it into our routines, understand the principles to understand this. And these principles are more important than the day, if you see what I mean.
[00:12:43] So the first thing is stop.
[00:12:48] The first principle is stop.
[00:12:52] Now, for most of us in the cultures that we've been born into, being always on starts the moment you are born.
[00:13:03] We are weighed, measured, assessed and examined.
[00:13:09] Our childhood is a list of milestones to be tracked, graded and achieved.
[00:13:16] The adulthood that the adolescent craves is a disappointing intensification of everything that went before.
[00:13:24] Our jobs are appraised, our health is monitored, our character is tested. And now new expectations come. Social expectations, family expectations, spiritual expectations, and even personal ambition.
[00:13:38] All through life we are ranked, reviewed and reassessed until, God willing, we retire.
[00:13:45] And then the reckoning, did we save enough? Did we plan enough? Did we do good things so that we will be remembered? Well weighed, measured, assessed, examined, tracked, graded, achieving, appraising, being monitored, being tested, being ranked, being reviewed, being reassessed. Wouldn't it be nice if this just all stopped?
[00:14:15] Stop and you're saying it's fine, I go on holiday?
[00:14:21] Are holidays too far in the future?
[00:14:24] And it's well in the past?
[00:14:27] Those of you who've recently come back from holiday, doesn't it feel like a million years ago?
[00:14:37] Holidays are actually quite stressful on either side.
[00:14:41] And stopping gets us to ask the question, what are we trying to achieve?
[00:14:47] What are we trying to achieve?
[00:14:50] Neil Postman, a writer, he says our culture is killing itself through overwork, overconsumption and over activity. And when it comes to entertainment, we are amusing ourselves to death.
[00:15:03] The Sabbath idea is you stop once every seven days, not once a year on holiday or twice a year if you can get two holidays, or once a term, or once a quarter, or when you get some extra time, give pressure a day off, divinely ordained.
[00:15:22] The second reason to stop is because stopping is an act of defiance. It's an act of rebellion against the culture that says it's all about you.
[00:15:35] We have this mad idea that we're indispensable and I don't want to be too morbid, but there's at least two cemeteries in Dartford full of indispensable people.
[00:15:48] There was a songwriter called Carly Simon who had to dump her boyfriend because he was so self centered, he was so narcissistic, and she wrote a song about him, which is a bit strange given the situation.
[00:16:02] And the chorus was, you're so vain.
[00:16:05] I bet you think this song is about you.
[00:16:10] If we don't stop, that's the song that should be sung over us.
[00:16:14] Just always, always on.
[00:16:17] I don't know if you've ever been in that situation where you go into a meeting, maybe it's a work meeting or a medical thing, and you go with someone, you say, I'll do the talking. You ever been in that situation? Let me do the talking. I'll be in charge.
[00:16:30] And if we don't stop, our Christian life is like that. It's like Jesus got my life sorted. You can come with me, but I'll do the talking. Yeah. If you've got anything interesting to say, you jump in.
[00:16:41] Don't say anything weird. Don't show me up.
[00:16:44] And then, of course, when things go really bad, you look at him and say, why aren't you saying anything?
[00:16:52] When we stop, we realize it's not about us. Now, I don't want to give you the impression that work is evil. I do not believe work is evil. I believe work done well with integrity is worshipful to the Lord. But there are times we need to stop. And at least once every seven days, the next reason is to rest.
[00:17:14] Now, this picture here, this is what I was promised as a child when I was growing up in the 60s, that by now I would be flying around in a jet pack and robots would do all the work. Okay, now, if you're younger, 20, 25 is a year. But for me, 2025 is the name of a science fiction film.
[00:17:36] This never happened, did it? Technology came along and it didn't take away our work. It made us work even more.
[00:17:45] And we need to rest.
[00:17:48] You see, in our charismatic evangelical churches, we prize the mind.
[00:17:54] You know, we know we need to study our Bible, and that's the right thing to do. We study the Bible, we prize that, you know, and we think about deep questions.
[00:18:03] Did Adam have a belly button?
[00:18:08] We think about that and things like that. And then we do all our research, and then we find out maybe he did, maybe he didn't, or maybe there's different views and we think, ah, I'm growing in Christ.
[00:18:18] Or we value the emotions and we feel terrible and we pray and we come to a place of emotional healing. That's great.
[00:18:26] Or spiritual things, you know, they're somehow not biblical and not emotional. Something even deeper. We move through these things, but we forget the body.
[00:18:36] The body needs to rest.
[00:18:39] We need to develop kindness, generosity, patience, prayerfulness, Things that Ian was saying earlier, how can you do that when you're really, really tired?
[00:18:52] I won't ask for a show of hands, but who is more godly when they're stressed and exhausted?
[00:18:59] We need to understand the body needs to rest.
[00:19:03] We used to have a lovely pastor in his church many, many years ago. He would say some cheesy things, but they were really great. And one thing he would say is seven days without rest makes one weakness.
[00:19:19] So we need to stop, we need to rest.
[00:19:24] And the next one is we need to delight. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
[00:19:33] Let's read this from Genesis.
[00:19:37] By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing.
[00:19:40] So on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
[00:19:44] Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from the work of creating that he had done.
[00:19:53] So this idea of a Sabbath isn't a sort of 1912 Christian nation thing. It's not a fourth century empiry Constantine thing. It's not even Ten Commandments, Moses on Mount Sinai. I think it goes all the way back to creation.
[00:20:11] There's a rhythm built into creation. Six days of work and one day of rest. And it says God rested on the seventh day.
[00:20:19] Was he tired?
[00:20:22] Was he exhausted?
[00:20:25] Was he like a construction worker just nipping off site to have a quick cigarette?
[00:20:31] What was God doing if he wasn't having a lie down in front of the television?
[00:20:39] God was delighting in the work that he had made.
[00:20:43] God, it says, he said he saw what he had made and it was all good.
[00:20:48] So there's a concept here in the Sabbath that we rest, we stop and we delight in the Lord. We, if you like, count our blessings.
[00:20:57] We understand the great things that he has done for us. And I don't want to be insensitive. I know there's some of us here have got a great amount of blessings of things that God has done for us. We're at that stage of life and maybe others not so much. But there is something that we need to stop and see how we can delight in the great things that God has done for us once every seven days. And you can't do that if you're not stopping and not resting.
[00:21:26] It's a bit like, I know we're going to talk another time about fasting, but when you fast, you start to appreciate food more and you start to appreciate those things more. And it's a bit like fasting, but not for food, but other things. And it just brings Other things to us that we can thank God for. Another writer has said that on your Sabbath, you're not being restored, you're being restored.
[00:21:54] You're remembering who you are in Christ, who you are in God.
[00:21:58] And that is coming to the fore.
[00:22:01] That is coming to the fore.
[00:22:03] And lastly, it's about worship.
[00:22:07] It's about worship. So we take some time to worship. Now again, in charismatic evangelical circles. Worship. We have a very limited imagination for worship. We think it's 20 minutes of corporate singing on a Sunday morning.
[00:22:20] And it really is that. That's fantastic. There's so much more to that. There's so much more to that. And people sometimes, some Christians, if they can, they like to get into nature and worship in that way. There's so many different ways that we can worship. We've been talking about art and those things as well.
[00:22:40] The Bible says, remember the Sabbath, obey the Lord.
[00:22:45] Obedience itself is a form of worship. And worship is such a, a strange word. It's a religious word, but it's also an exaggeration word. So outside of religious settings, people might say, he worships that football team or she worships that celebrity. And it's just used as a sort of an exaggeration word. But there's some truth in that.
[00:23:13] When we stop, when we rest, when we delight and when we worship, we actually start to find out a little bit what are we really worshiping for. Because those days that we are trying to rest and we reach for our phone to start doing some email just to catch up.
[00:23:34] Famous writer who's an atheist, David Foster Wallace, he said everybody worships something.
[00:23:40] You know, you can worship your body and how attractive you are and not to be too impolite, that doesn't last.
[00:23:51] You can worship money, and we all know where that can end up.
[00:23:56] You can worship your intellect and your study and your degrees and your accreditations, but there will always be someone more clever in the room. Sooner or later you can worship power and influence, say that's what you want at work or even in the church.
[00:24:13] And then you'll always feel a little bit weak because there'll be someone else with more power and influence taking this time to really worship God, you know, putting that time aside. And it doesn't mean a 12 hour Bible study where we look up the Aramaic for belly button.
[00:24:32] Ian, I know it wasn't written in Aramaic in the Old Testament. That's fine.
[00:24:37] It's not all about that.
[00:24:39] It's about taking that time to rest, to stop and to find some time in worship in Whatever way that works. And one thing I want to say specifically on that, because as we work all of this through, maybe it's not a Sunday for us because of the way we work and our shifts and everything and other commitments, but if it is Sunday, then coming to church is actually a key part of, of Sabbath, if that's the day for you. And I know it's a strange thing to say because we're all here, but some Christians do not prioritize coming to church, okay? Some don't come to church. They see it as, we don't help ourselves here. We call it a service, which means we're doing people a service. So you come along and if the service is good, you give a tip or you do something nice. On TripAdvisor. Yeah. And there are websites, there are websites that let you do that. And if you're here to do a TripAdvisor type thing, God bless you. But you're missing the point.
[00:25:44] But it's a key part of the Sabbath that that's your day. You know, sometimes people say to me, do I have to go to church to be a Christian? And I said, that's the wrong question.
[00:25:53] The right question is, do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?
[00:26:02] Yeah, that's the right question. I mean, you all know the answer. Do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?
[00:26:08] And I say, that doesn't make any sense. I said, well, nor does your question.
[00:26:14] When somebody has made that decision to follow Christ, that they're going to put all of their internal stuff, self centeredness, greed, hatred, jealousy, whatever it might be, at his feet and say, I'm going to follow you now, Jesus, for the rest of my life. The Bible says, doesn't it? We become a new creation.
[00:26:34] Stuff happens. Our sins are forgiven. We get an eternity with him. We get access to power in times of need. We're seated in heavenly places in Christ and we're made members of the church.
[00:26:46] And the only question we have is, are we active members or are we passive members?
[00:26:54] So a key part of Sabbath is making church priority. Now, I know it can't always happen because there's family emergencies and people have to work Sundays because of different shifts, but it should be key.
[00:27:08] And I know sometimes we say, but church isn't very good. It's not perfect.
[00:27:14] Many, many years ago, I was thinking of leaving the church I was in. And I went to see a pastor and I outlined all of the things that were wrong with the church I was going to. And he says, ote, there's no perfect church.
[00:27:27] And if there was, it will be ruined the minute you joined it.
[00:27:35] Don't make pastors like that anymore.
[00:27:40] But we've got to get away from this idea that it's just me and Jesus and my Bible.
[00:27:47] You know, Saul, when God called him to become an apostle, he was a really, really bad man. Most of us know this story. He's a really bad man. So God supernaturally blinded him and then through that time he understood who Jesus was and then he supernaturally healed him.
[00:28:06] But along the way, he involved this ordinary human being, this ordinary Christian, Ananias, to go and see Saul and say he was supernaturally blinded, supernaturally healed. But Ananias, an ordinary Christian, was part of that.
[00:28:22] And Ananias baptized him and made him lunch.
[00:28:26] So however we think about our faith, God uses the church, God uses us together, to be together, so that we can grow more in him.
[00:28:39] So if you are an infrequent attender of church, I really put out the challenge to you that that should be something that you prioritise and that should be part of your Sabbath.
[00:28:52] So lastly, how can we keep Sabbath? So let's just go around this again, okay? It's a 24 hour period every seven days, once every seven days without any work inside or outside the house, without any study or expecting others to do work for us and with minimal distractions.
[00:29:12] So if our work is sitting behind a screen, if that's the sort of job we do, turn off the screen.
[00:29:17] If our work is using tools and all that sort of thing, don't use those tools. Should we go shopping? I mean, we're going to have to work all of this stuff out for ourselves and we do have to work it out altogether.
[00:29:31] When I was discussing this with my wife, she says, oh, it sounds like a day off for the men.
[00:29:41] We have to work it all out. Okay?
[00:29:45] So in a minute, I'm going to ask you to get into groups for a short time. Just going to put two questions up on the screen just to see just how we can start a discussion. There's no legalism here. Okay? Maybe you've already got this sorted out, maybe you haven't. There's no legalism. But I'll tell you something interesting. While I was preparing this, I had a flashback to when I was a student and I had a crisis of conscience about if I should study on Sunday.
[00:30:11] I'd completely forgotten about it. It really was a forgotten pathway, completely forgotten that little thing that happened in my life.
[00:30:19] Now, if you want to know the decision I made, and if you want to know how that affected my grades, you come and ask me. Okay? No, interesting. You come and ask me.
[00:30:29] So here's the questions I want you to discuss.
[00:30:32] Just two questions.
[00:30:34] Why have we forgotten the Sabbath principles? And how could we realistically make it work for us? If you just want to turn and discuss that, then I'll finish with a prayer.
