[Re]centering the Sabbath
Nehemiah 10:31-39
Have you ever had to reboot your computer? I came into the Office two weeks ago and Tina’s computer had crashed. She tried to re-start it but it got stuck in that mode. We were reminded how dependent we’ve become on the computer and when it doesn’t work, we’re dead in the water. We had no choice but to stop, shut the computer down and then try to reboot. A lot of times we have to reboot because we’ve got so many windows open and applications running that the computer has slowed down and is not working at its normal speed or capacity. "To reboot means to turn off the computer and put things back the way they are supposed to be." This allows it to run more effectively and efficiently. The Israelites in our Scripture today knew the importance of what it meant to stop and reboot. They knew if they were going to put God first in their lives, they needed to re-commit themselves to living for him.
Last week, we discovered Chapter 10 is the most critical chapter in Nehemiah. There is no better way to put it; it is the chapter of commitment. The Israelites have gathered to recommit their lives to God and they do so through four vows. The first was submission to God’s word and following everything in it. In fact, the people were so serious about submitting to God and His Word that they called the curses of God to fall on them if they did not obey God’s laws. The second was to live a life of purity. This meant that they were not going to bring in or allow any unholy influences into the irlife together or in their homes.
Today, we see the third of those vows which was to keep the Sabbath. From the beginning of time God commanded a day be set aside for Him and so the Israelites committed to do just that. "When the neighboring peoples bring merchandise or grain to sell on the Sabbath, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on any holy day." That’s the original blue law! The Sabbath caused the Israelites to step back and have a moment of holy interruption - to stop and reboot. Thus, communion and relationship to God was being restored. After working and laboring so hard for six days straight, that they had to stop one day a week to reboot and re-center themselves on God.
God uses the Sabbath to restore that which has been broken down. Take strength training and weight lifting for example. I have a subscription to Muscle and Fitness. You can tell it’s doing me alot of good. A young man in college wrote in a number of years ago because he wasn’t seeing any gains in muscle, despite working out regularly. The young man described his typical day. He woke up and ran five miles. Then he would bike a couple of miles to class. After classes were over, he’d hit the gym for two hours. Inevitably, some fraternity brothers would be playing a game of football and he’d join them until dinnertime. After dinner, he went and played intramurals. After hearing all of this, the columnist reminded this young man that when you do cardio and lift weights, you literally build up your muscle by tearing it down. The way in which you get the maximum results from your workout is by allowing the muscle to relax and get some rest. “You need to stop doing so much and start resting more.” Sounds like us. We do so much and work so hard and then we realize we haven’t been all that productive in our lives. We need that one day to rebuild ourselves where we’ve been broken down. That’s the purpose of the Sabbath.
So the Sabbath is where you find rest. I love what Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." The dictionary defines rest as peace, freedom from trouble and anxiety, having tranquility. Can you use any of that in your life? There’s a tendency for us to want to go through life without taking a break. But as followers of Jesus, we have to be intentional about getting out of the fast lane and finding rest. We do so much stuff that we need to rest. Because of the fast pace of our culture, very seldom do we find time to be still and just be. The Sabbath isn’t about doing. It’s about being. It’s being free just to be with Jesus. There’s a great difference between sleep and rest. Sleep is totally dependent on you, but rest is rooted in a relationship with God. Some of you can sleep for 8 hours and wake up tired, anxious and harried. But rest is when you give all your cares, anxiety and worry to God and go to sleep with a deep sense of peace that surpasses all understanding. When you wake the next morning, you realize it’s well with your soul. Jesus doesn’t just want you to find more sleep, he also wants you to find rest in Him.
Research has proven that a lack of rest affects every area of your life: your mental, psychological, and even your emotional health. Many of us have difficulty finding rest right because rest is totally rooted in trust. Many of us suffer with control issues. We can’t be used by God because we always want to be in control of everything. To find the rest you need, you have to trust God to handle all of your personal problems and deal with all of the world’s crises. Isn’t that good news? God can fix the world’s problems. He can deal with your personal predicaments if you allow God to be God in your life. God wants to handle every area of your life, and when we allow him, we not only trust him but find rest in Him too.
After you’ve found rest, the Sabbath will also help you refocus. The Sabbath allows you to step back, reboot and refocus on the promises and the provision that God had provided for them. After the Israelites left Egypt, God provided. He said “Every day, I will give you everything you need. I will give manna and quail from heaven. I will give you water from the rocks. Trust in me for six days and gather what you need. But on the seventh day, the Sabbath, do nothing.” Once you trust in God, you have to fully believe that he will provide for you. I believe whenever we fail to reflect and refocus on God’s promises and provision, we focus on the things of the world: money, status and possessions. So the Sabbath helps to keep us from being distracted and discouraged and from always complaining and compromising. When we fail to refocus on all that God promised, we will never be able to fully live for him or accomplish all that God has in store for us. When the Israelites were in the wilderness. They lost their focus. They started focusing on themselves and ended up dying in the wilderness because they didn’t realize that God’s promises and God’s provisions will always be sufficient. As you go through this life, you always have to remain focused and realize that regardless of how hard it gets, he will provide for you.
Mike Bowie tells the story of when he and his family were placed in a precarious situation. They had a financial crisis and it felt like they were going to lose everything. And he thought, "Lord, how are you going to do this?" They were at the end of their money and didn’t know how they were going to stay afloat. But God said, "Michael, just trust me." He just couldn’t trust God and so he opened God’s promises (the Bible) and read, "If you ask anything in my name, it shall be given by my Father in heaven." And then he began to pray about this looming financial crisis. I started putting in my name in those promsises, "Michael, I will supply all of your needs according to your riches and glory in Christ Jesus." Then I heard another promise, "I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or begging for bread." He began connecting to God’s promises and got this sense of peace that surpassed all understanding. He didn’t have time to worry anymore because now he was trusting God’s promise. The situation didn’t change, but God’s word began to change his heart in the midst of the situation. And a crazy sense of peace fell on him, not knowing how God was going to do it and yet knowing it was now in God’s hands. Just as he finished praying and reading scripture, and the phone rang. I picked it up fearful that it was a bill collector. It turned out to be his insurance company. The person said, "Mike Bowie." I said, "Speaking." They said the name of the insurance company and he thought, "Oh, Lord, they are going to cancel my insurance." But he was trusting in God’s promise. "Mike, we’ve been looking for you and want to see if we have the correct address because we have a check for you for $721." He gave them his address, his mom’s address, he even gave them the church’s address! He writes, “It was amazing how right there in the midst of that perplexing moment, I was connecting to God’s promise and God gave me a provision. Even when you are down to nothing, God will always provide.” When you take time to refocus God’s promises and provision, He will provide. It may not come when you want it, but it’s always the right time.
Third, the Sabbath is for re-creation. In order to pursue your life’s purpose, you need to have some moments in your life of re-creation. Re-creation is a time when you begin to do some spiritual rebooting and get away from all the cares of the world. Re-creations are moments of holy nothingness. This is a time when you’re not trying to solve all the problems of next week. You’re not consumed with returning emails and voice mails. It’s just a moment of holy nothingness, being in the presence of God. What fills these moments? Prayer, conversations with God, reading the scripture, journaling or just sitting down with a good Christian book. Re-creation is also recreation. It’s a time of fun when we run or exercise, go fishing or hunting or go golfing. It’s a time when we go to a movie or have friends over. Recreation is a time when you recharge your mind, your body and your soul. Recreation is that moment when life’s speed slows down to your soul speed. Some of you are so busy; you can’t even remember what it’s like to do nothing. Recreation is so important because it’s in those moments when we intentionally find moments of balance. Recreation gives us rhythm because once again God becomes the center of your life guiding you and leading you.
So, at least one day a week, stop doing and just be. Reconnect to God so you can find out who you are in God. I believe God wants to do some powerful things in our lives, but it’s only when we reconnect to God that we can reconnect with the picture and the purpose that God has for our lives.
The fourth and final vow the Israelites make is to recommit themselves to the law of first fruits. It is really easy for people to believe in God and even profess God, but still keep the gods of secular culture in our lives. That’s the challenge in every generation. We really believe in God, but believing in God and being faithful to God are totally different. So we like to date around with the different gods in our lives. But there comes a time when you have to choose: are you going just to date casually or are you going to commit. The best comparison for commitment to God is marriage. Jesus used the analogy of marriage with commitment to God. When you come together before God to marry, you make this binding oath and commitment "until death us do part." You do the same when you commit to God by saying like the Israelites “may the curses of heaven come against us if we do anything to break this oath.”
There are several keys to understanding the commitment of the law of first fruits. First, what’s mine is no longer just mine – not my money, my time, or my priorities. When I was single, it was my money and I spent it to accomplish my goals. One of those goals was to spend my life savings on a house when I was 25 so I could have it paid off by age 45. But when I got married, it was no longer about my goals but about our goals. And so I don’t spend any more than $100 without first checking with Giovanna. When I was single, I would easily work 60 or 70 hours a week. It was nothing to stay in the office until 9 or 10 o’ clock at night. But when I got married, I soon realized that the times were different. When I walked in the door, Giovanna’s first question was, “Where were you?” Now I knew where I was and I knew what I was doing but suddenly that wasn’t good enough. There’s someone else in the picture. Now, if I am going to stay late, I call home and let Giovanna know what time I’ll be there.
The same is true when you commit to God. Then you’re no longer dating all the gods of our culture. There are and always will be gods in our culture that are appealing to me including the god of motorcycles or playing golf. But you are going to be married to one God? You have your alluring gods too but we’ve made a choice and there can be only one.
Second, when you get married, you assume responsibility. Verse 32 says, "We assume the responsibility for carrying out the commands to give a third of a shekel each year for the service of the house of our God." That’s what commitment is all about, assuming responsibility for something or someone other than yourself. Following God is not about what you believe, it about what your belief in God leads you to do. It has nothing to do with how you feel. It’s about what you’re committing to do "for better or worse". The challenge is to put God first in every area of your life, to make Him the center and have everything else revolve around it. That includes your time, talents and treasures. When I get married, everything in my life - my finances, my work, my relationships – had God at the center of it.
Third, commitment is about love. The whole theme of this chapter is summed up in its very last verse: "We will not neglect the house of our God." When you neglect something, it no longer has importance or value in your life. This is where Israel had been and as they gather and make these vows, they are saying, “God, no longer are you just a part of our life but we value you more than anything else in life, more than my wife, more than my kids, even more than myself.” But when you fail to spend your time and money on something, it falls into neglect. All you need to do to see the affect of neglect is drive through Lakeview or the 9th Ward and see the houses which have been gutted but have not had been repaired. As each day passes, they not only fall into a state of greater neglect but begin to deteriorate even more.
When you assume responsibility, commitment at its most fundamental level is economic. Anyone who is married knows that as soon as you get married, you realize that it is economic. Suddenly, your taxes are more, your utilities are more and I’ve heard even your clothing bills are more, right dear? When you make a commitment, you have to realign your money matters. Look at verse 35, "We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the Lord each year the first fruits of our crops and of every fruit tree." For a farmer, the first fruit is whatever their produce or herd is. Today, first fruits means three things. It means before anything else. When you say yes to Jesus Christ, when you get married to God, the first economic priority of your life becomes the service of God’s mission on earth. So that’s why the first check we write each month are to God, before my mortgage, my utility, or my payment into my retirement fund. First fruits also means your best. All through the Bible, when we make an offering to God, it has to be the best of their kind. So if you are a herder, it can’t be a blemished sheep. It has to be the best from the best of your sheep. If it is of your produce, it can’t be the day-old produce. It has to be the best of your produce.
Lastly, first fruits also means it is not the last. I trust the first fruit to God because the main harvest is yet to come. What is so critical about this law of first fruits is that when you tithe to God, it is a demonstration of trust, not just belief. It’s giving the first to God and trusting He will provide for all your needs with everything else. It is easy to believe in God; I can go out and look at the flowers and I can believe in God. But it is when I offer God my first fruits through the tithe, I demonstrate my trust in Him.
Mal 3:10 says, "’Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ’and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.’" A lot of Christians say, "Okay, God, why is it that I am not experiencing the abundance in my life that you promised?" You can’t reap what you are not sowing. You either believe God and his promises, and give the first tenth to Him or you decide your way is better, taking care of all your needs and desires first and giving God whatever is left over. It’s an even more challenging time with the economic crisis we’re facing. Food costs are rising, gasoline is hitting $4 a gallon, electricity rates are rising and just about everything is more expensive than it was a year ago. Our natural reaction is to hold back because of fear. But what this time really is about is an opportunity to exercise our faith. It is a chance to reprioritize our money matters and put God first in our lives and our finances. I challenge you to re-evaluate economically what it means for God to be the Alpha and Omega, the King, the center, the Lord of your life and not just a part in your life. Trust me in this, whatever God has given in your hand, trust it to God and see the abundance that God will bring forth not only for you, not only for your family, but for the world that God loves.
What about you? Are you tired of playing church and having God just be a part of your lives? Or are you ready to be the church and make God the center of your life and trust in him in every area of your life by:
Submitting your life to God’s Word? To not only read the Bible daily but to be in a weekly Sunday School class or small group Bible study and then living it out?
Committing to a life of purity and holiness, to remove any unholy influence from your life or your home?
Making the Sabbath a priority, to give a day to God to worship Him, to be with him in his word so that you can refocus and re-center your life on him and you can re-create and feel His rest?
Trusting God in his promises and give him the first fruits, the first 10% to him trusting him to provide for all your needs with the remaining 90%?
Have the congregation fill out the commitment cards and then bring them forward to lay on the altar as a sign of their vow and commitment.
