Matthew 12:1-13
Video: 40,000,000 Minutes (Visual Reality)
Busy lives: How do you spend your time?
We are so busy that we sleep less. We work more. We come home drained so that we aren’t able to be physically and emotionally present with our families. We long for a vacation only to take it and we come back and need rest. We get technology to help with time – microwave/cell phone/email/watch TV with DVR and try to catch up with the shows we miss…. So busy that we miss the world around us. So busy that we are stressed. (cultural demographic study)… Some people are just busy keeping up with the latest trend – basing their identity on clothes they wear, the vehicles they drive, the music they listen to on their Ipod. Shopping is the number one leisure activity of Americans. In fact, consumerism can become really such a mindset that people even approach Christianity that way. Christianity is just one more brand to consume along with Gap, Apple, …And treating Christianity as just another thing to consume during the week, so a person can stop by church once a week, maybe even get a fish sticker to put on their bumper or on their window but the rest of the week it is life as usual – busy and stressed.
The church doesn’t exist to provide comfort, ease, and convenience to people who are busy, stressed, and who want to be religious consumers. God is not a product that exists to make you feel better. God exists to be in relationship with you and ultimately transform you so that it affects everyday of your week so you live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved.
But many times we are so busy, so stressed, so consumer driven that we fail to really connect to God, to hear how He longs to be in relationship with us, to change us, to use us. We fail to hear or see how God is working around us and how we can be a part of that work.
Matthew 12:1-2
In our busy, stressed, consumer driven world we have seven days to get things done. We even have names for those days: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…. But for the Hebrew, the days of the week have no specific name. They are known as “the first day,” “the second day,” “the third day.” That is until you get to the seventh day. The 7th day actually has a name. It is known as the Sabbath and is set apart from the rest of the week.
Exodus 20
The Jews had set it aside as day of rest, to be refreshed. It was actually mandated by God back in Exodus 20 as one of the 10 Commandments – Remember the Sabbath. Right up there with not having any other gods but God, honoring your father and mother, not stealing and do not murder. Just as important as the commandment “Do Not Kill” is this commandment to honor the Sabbath.
What is interesting is that it is this commandment that is right in between the first 3 commandments that deal with our relationship with God and the last 6 commandments that deal with our relationship with others. It is this transitional commandment that it as if God is saying you must get it right in order to get your relationship with God and others right.
Genesis 2
It is taken from God’s example in Genesis 2 where we find that God created for six days and then He rested on the seventh. It wasn’t that God was tired, but God rested in the sense of satisfaction. He saw that what he created was good and complete so He rested It wasn’t that God was tired and needed to rest like we do. It was that God took time to take in His creation.
Illustration: A couple of months ago I was so excited. You see I had purchased a fire pit for my bag yard. I got home opened the box and actually pulled out the instructions. (Have instructions on the screen.) But as you can see there are no words, now numbers, nothing. There were only really bad pictures. Some of the parts looked the same. Some of the parts were very small and no indication where they go. I spend the next few hours trying to figure out how to get this thing together. I was so frustrated. That is why we don’t use instructions. But when I finally got it together and placed the wood inside, it was great just to sit and enjoy the fire. It was great to enjoy what I had finally been able to put together. It wasn’t that God was tired and needed to rest like we do. It was that God took time to take in His creation.
There are a few things we need to understand about this idea of Sabbath. This concept of Sabbath was set up as…
A time to recognize and remember.
It was a time to recognize and remember who God is. It was a time set aside to rest, enjoy family, food, life.
We can work so hard in life. Many times it is as if we think everything depends on us (i.e. ministry). Some of us can’t even say “no” to people when they ask us to do something. We rely on our self rather than on God. We feel like we need to solve every problem.
Sabbath is about making time to realize that I did not make the world and it will continue to exist without my efforts. There are times when my job is to enjoy. Sabbath is about setting aside time when I’m fully available to myself and those I love. It is about making time to remember that when God made the world, He saw that it was good. It is about making time to recognize and remember that I am loved. But we have to be willing to stop and slow down.
Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis says that we have to make time to “sit still and stare out the window and let the engine idle. We have to listen to what our inner voice is saying.” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis page 116-118)
Illustration: I am in the phase of my life now when I have a three year old son who is all about trying to take in and understand his world. He asks questions like “Why are other people eating at McDonalds and not me?” Brendon will ask questions about everything, and sometimes I don’t even know how to respond (i.e. fridge, car, computer, worm, coloring).
Many times he recognizes things that I don’t even take the time to notice. That is what Sabbath is all about.
Sabbath is about slowing down, staring out the window, letting the engine of your life idle, so that you can take in your world – so that you can be physically and emotionally rested and renewed – so that you can be fully present with your spouse, your kids, your friends, with creation, with God – so that you can recognize and remember who you are, whose you are – that the Creator of the universe made you and loves you, and wants to communicate with you and use you.
It is interesting that Jesus made time to rest. He took time to recognize and remember. …Sometime it would seem that Jesus is a slacker. He only served in ministry for 3 years. He left a town with work still to be done. He would go off a lone. He never wrote a book. He would heal someone and tell them not to tell anyone. At times, the disciples would have to hunt him down only to find him off by himself. They would tell him the crowd is looking for him, and he would tell them that they were leaving to go to another town. In our day, Jesus would probably be fired.
Jesus understood the importance of rest – of taking time to recognize and remember – to be renewed and refreshed. Why can’t we?
Exodus 31:16-17 The Israelites were given instructions to keep the Sabbath and to pass that on from generation to generation. This was so important that they were told that this command was a covenant obligation. They were to pass it on to their children and their children were to pass in on.
These instructions involving the Sabbath were so important that they had a profound impact on the ancient Jewish way of life. In the OT, we read that firewood could not be collected (Numbers 15), fires could not be kindeled (Ex. 35), travel was restricted (Ex. 16:29) – to no more than a little over half mile (Josh. 3:4).
By the day of Jesus, the number of traditions and laws regulating the Sabbath covered almost every conceivable activity. To the command not to work on the Sabbath, they begin to make rules to define what was a form of work. They decided carrying anything equal to the weight of a fig was work. Milk enough for one swallow was considered too much. Water enough to moisten your eye was considered too much. Ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet. To carry anything more than those prescribed amounts meant that you broke the law.
Since it was not possible to anticipate or provide for every situation, religious leaders and teachers of the law would spend time arguing about such things as whether a tailor committed a sin if he had a needle stuck in his robe on the Sabbath, or whether moving a lamp from one place in a room to another was permissible, or if lifting a child on the Sabbath was work. Some religious leaders believed that even wearing an artificial leg or using a crutch on the Sabbath was work.
Even in modern Jewish life today, you will find that in Israeli hotels, a special Sabbath elevator is preprogrammed to stop at every floor at regular intervals on the Sabbath because pressing an elevator button is considered work. All Jewish bus lines in Jerusalem cease running on the Sabbath. The official Israeli airline does not fly on the Sabbath. Switching on an electric light is classified as fire-kindling type of work. Therefore, strict Jewish households will usually leave a light burning continuously throughout the Sabbath.
By the day of Jesus, worshipping God was all about following some spiritual formula involving rules and procedures. They missed the entire point of the Sabbath.
Even today there are those who try to make worshipping God some kind of spiritual formula.
Illustration: I remember growing up in KY and WV and feeling like that in order to be a Christian I need to read the Bible, pray, and go to church on Sunday. We didn’t cut grass on Sunday and a lot of businesses weren’t even open on Sunday.
I remember feeling this pressure to somehow manage my relationship with God. If you walk into a Christian bookstore, you can easily feel overwhelmed with all the different translations and kinds of Bibles (i.e. Worship Bible, Leadership Bible, Prayer Bible, Small Group Bible, Men’s and Women’s Bibles, Student Bibles, Pew Bibles, NLT, American Standard, The Message, KJV, NKJV, NIV, New NIV), and what they call devotional books which all can make you feel like if you would just read this Bible or use this devotional book (i.e. the 15 minute devotional Bible or the 1 minute devotional) then you will be able to manage your relationship with God.
There are times when I have felt guilty if I didn’t spend my 15 minutes with God or if I tried and fell asleep. Sabbath isn’t about clocking in your time. There are those who treat a relationship with God like a spiritual formula to follow feeling like there must be something more. There are others who may even go to church on a Sunday morning, and they are asking, “Where is God?” Yet they don’t make time to even sense where He is, to simply rest, relax, recognize and remember.
This Sabbath idea was not about certain day. That is a good thing since some have to work on Sunday in order to keep their job. It wasn’t even about an entire day, or doing things a certain way. Sabbath is about being renewed physically and emotionally so that you can be renewed spiritually. That may be another day during the week for you or a certain evening or morning. You will need to be intentional about how you create that in your life. That may mean walking, enjoying nature, journaling, or art. Someone just the other day said that for them it is actually cutting grass because that is there time alone to talk with God and to be renewed.
Sabbath is about slowing down – to stop and smell the roses. It is about making time to relax, to enjoy life, and creation. Taking time to seek God and to ask “What are you doing God and how can I be a part of it?”
Matthew 12
Here we are in Matthew where Jesus and his disciples are walking through a grain field on the Sabbath. The day of the week when the rules are to be followed, and the religious leaders would like nothing more than to find some wrongdoing that they could use to accuse Jesus. The disciples are hungry so they took some grains of wheat to eat. On any other day this would have been acceptable, but it is the Sabbath. They weren’t working to harvest grain for profit. They were just hungry.
But the religious leaders had established so many rules regarding the Sabbath, that they were saying “technically the disciples are working since they are picking the grain and rubbing it in their hand” before they ate it.
The leaders were so busy with the rules that they not only missed the point of the Sabbath, but they missed recognizing who Jesus was. Jesus even declares “Do you not realize who I am?” They missed the very one who was the Lord of the Sabbath.
Are you so busy that you are missing out on God and what He is doing? Are you busy going through the motions? Are you wondering where God is yet you never take the time to seek, listen, and respond?
Another important component of the Sabbath involves responding.
A time to respond. That may mean: 
Repenting:
When you take time to rest and to spend time with the Creator of the universe, you cannot remain the same. If God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present meets with you, there is going to be some minor disruption. In fact, I would go as far as to say that something isn’t quite right when people talk about meeting God or knowing God and yet remain unchanged by God.
There are times when that means repenting = saying God forgive me. I’m sorry. I need you. I want to change.” Because as you slow down and enter into God’s presence, you stare at the stuff, the junk in life, the baggage, the anger, the frustration, that you hold inside. You realize the areas in which you fall short, and you begin to seek forgiveness, to remove any barriers between you and God. You ask God to transform you, to change you so that you can be more like Jesus. But few people take the time to really do the difficult work of actually making time to really be connected with God and to be in tune with how God is working in their life. 
Receiving: It may mean receiving God’s love and accepting that love as a gift – receiving His grace, or just receiving and accepting the fact that we can’t do everything.
“Sabbath is about realizing that I am not a machine. There are times when I need to say ‘I can’t do everything.’ In fact there are times when I need to say ‘I didn’t do anything’ and not feel guilty about it. There are times when I can turn my phone off and not check my email.” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis – page 116-118).
God’s desire is not to conform us, but to transform us. God desires to set us free from the busyness and stress of this world so that we can hear His call, see the needs around us, and respond to those needs. Responding may also mean that we respond by… 
Reaching: By reaching out to the needs around us.
Matthew 12:9-13
We soon find that there is an occasion on the Sabbath that Jesus is making his way to the synagogue, the place of worship. He notices a man with a deformity. Because it was the Sabbath, rules had even been set up against healing on the Sabbath unless a person’s life was in danger. Healing was considered a form of medical work and work wasn’t allowed.
Jesus points out that their rules allow for a person to rescue sheep from a pit on the Sabbath, but not help people. Jesus points out that “doing good” is what the Sabbath is all about.
I know people today who place more value on animal life than human life. The religious leaders were so busy following the rules and going through the motions that they missed seeing the very needs around them even in their place of worship.
I sometimes wonder if we do the same thing when we come to our place of worship. We sit in our seat and miss interacting with those around. We fail to realize that here are needs right here in our midst.
The Sabbath was not so much a day with a bunch of rules to follow or a spiritual formula to connect with God as it was to really be present with God and the world around you so that you can be renewed, so that you can see how God is working in your life and in the lives of those around us, and so that you can see and respond to the needs of those around you.
For some, they think, “I make time for Sabbath and rest. I take time watch football or a race, to turn some music on in the background, to sit on the couch, to eat pizza and ice cream.” That is called drowning out the world around you. That isn’t taking a Sabbath. Sabbath is about slowing down so that you can think clearly and connect with God and those around you. You must be intentional about creating that time in your life. It isn’t a vacation that you look forward to take once a year, and then it’s over. It is a lifestyle that you must intentionally create.
Call to parents – If there ever was a time to teach children the importance of rest, enjoying life, to hear, see, and respond to God, it is today. It is time that we (myself included) teach our children what it means to rest and be present with God and others. In a day and time when we are so busy with work, homework, and participation in so many activities (sometimes everyday of the week) that we hardly have time to catch up with each other. We hardly have time to eat together, and we find it hard to really be present with our family. Sometimes we think the best think we can do for our children is to get them involved in things and take them everywhere, when maybe the best thing we can do is to teach our children to slow down.
We can’t rely on the church to teach that. It starts with us, by our example - by the way we live and spend our time. It starts with us and our example at being present with God, our spouse, our kids, our friends, our neighbors, our community.
The problem is the busier we become, the more stressed we are, and the more our lives become detached from God and from the pain of others. The more we don’t have time to hear or see how God wants to transform us. The more we don’t have time to serve. The more we don’t have time to care for our community or the needs of those we interact with on a daily basis.
God wants to steer us in the direction of His Kingdom, His purpose, His passions. When you choose to set aside time and space to rest and meet with your Creator, you are no longer suited for normal life. When you set aside time and space to rest and be with your Creator, you realize God is not something to be consumed so that you can get through the week, but rather God is someone who awakens your life and your senses so that you can respond to His call to love, to serve, to care for the needs of those around you.
It is time that we take a hard look at our own lives and make a decision to make the necessary changes that we may need to make in order to teach our children to make time and space to recognize who God is, to respond to His call, to care for the needs of those around us.
Song: Sweep Me Away
Prayer:
Responsive Reading:
Sabbath is making time in a busy world to rest and be renewed.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Sabbath is taking time in a stressful world to enjoy life and creation.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Sabbath is recognizing and remembering who I am and whose I am.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Sabbath is being fully present with God and others.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Sabbath is caring for the needs of those around me.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Sabbath is lifestyle that I must teach my family.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Sabbath is a lifestyle that I must intentionally create.
Sweep me away that I may find rest in you.
Resources: Velvet Elvis – Rob Bell
The Feasts of the Lord – Kevin Howard and Marvin Rosenthal
Contemplative Ministry Workshop 9/10/06– Mark Yaconelli