Principles for Life- Spend Time with God

September 21, 2003, 8:00, 9:30, 11:00 AM

Rev. Ronald Burcham

Typed from audio transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I've come to a conclusion. My conclusion is this: In my house, there are only two people that really like to sleep. Out of six of us, I've come to the conclusion there are really only two of us that like to sleep what I would consider at a normal time. You see, it's not that the two teenagers don't like to sleep. It's just that their concept of when you sleep and when you don't is slightly different than mine. I have an antiquated idea, kind of old fashioned I guess, and that says when it's nighttime, you sleep and when it is daytime, you are awake. Obviously, I've been transplanted from a foreign planet each time that I suggest that to them, that's just not in the realm of possibilities for them.

Now, on the other hand, the two youngest ones of our household, for them it's easy. They just don't want to sleep at all. They don't want to sleep in the afternoon. They don't want to sleep at night. There're just far too busy. Too many things to see. Too many things to do. They always have someone else they want to play with, some other book they want to read, another video they want to watch. Sleep? No, that's not an option at all. In fact, when you tell them it's time for a nap, the reaction usually is like this: "(Yawn) I don't need a nap. I'm not tired. We have to play, Dad. We have things to do."

Now, as parents, I suppose we have an option here. One option would be to say to them, "Well, I guess that's okay. That's your choice. If you don't want to sleep, if you want to stay up and play, I guess you can go ahead and do that." You might guess we don't go for that option in our household too often because, you see, we know a little bit more than they do. We know that if we let them stay up and let them play, it is not going to really work out that way, because they need their rest. They need their sleep. They need that afternoon nap. And if we let them stay up, they're not going to have fun. They're going to be grouchy. They're going to be cranky. They're going to fight with each other. And sooner or later, the tears are going to fly. And so we do just the awfulest thing in the world and that is we say, "No, this isn't an option. You will take a nap." We don't do that because, gee, we want to spoil all their fun, that somehow we want to do something that's just really out of the ordinary. We do that because we know that when they wake up from that nap, they're a new person. Something has happened. They've been recreated. They're the loving, smiling, happy children that we knew about four hours earlier. That nap just does wonders for them. They may not know that they need it but, as parents, we do. And it's our responsibility and it flows out of our love for them that we make them take a nap.

In the same way, our loving Father says to us, "Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy." God says to us that we need rest. He is our creator. He is the one that has designed us as human beings, and He did not create and design us to go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with never any rest, with never any breaks. God says six days out of the week you'll work, but one day out of the week you will not. One day out of the week, you need to rest. You need to kick back. You need to relax. You need to step away from the hectic pace of life. God is not trying to spoil all of our fun. God is not trying to keep us from that promotion that we're working on. God is not trying to ruin the soccer schedule. God is trying to provide for us and to protect us, because He knows that we need that time. We need time to reconnect with Him. We need time to recharge our bodies, and we need time to refocus on our life and to know what's really important for us. That's the rest that God has designed for us. That's why God didn't make it an optional activity. That's why God made it a commandment, something that He tells us, "This is something you must do." It's not a suggestion. It's not an option. He wasn't sitting around heaven saying, "Gee, nine's not quite enough and eleven's too many. I'll go for ten. Remember the Sabbath Day." No. God says this is important for you, for your physical life, for your emotional life, and your spiritual life. Remembering the Sabbath Day and keeping it holy.

We probably need to clear up a little bit what Sabbath means. Sabbath the word itself just simply means rest. And it's a special kind of rest that God talks about, and we'll get into that in a few minutes. But in the Old Testament, the Sabbath Day was Saturday on our calendar. It was the seventh day of the week. God Himself had modeled it. He had created Sunday through Friday; and then, on the seventh day of the week, God rested. Now it wasn't because God was tired, God was out of breath, and God needed break. No, it was because God was modeling for us how we should conduct our lives. Six days you work but, on the seventh day, you take a rest. Well, throughout the whole Old Testament then, that's when the Sabbath Day was. It was on the seventh day. It was on the Saturday. Things changed when we got into the New Testament. In fact, they changed with the resurrection of Jesus. You probably recall that Jesus was in the grave for three days, but He came out of the grave. He came back to life on the first day of the week. It was the first day of the week that Jesus then appeared to His disciple throughout those times. It was the first day of the week that the early church would come together, and they would worship together, pray together, and celebrate the sacrament together. Since the resurrection of Jesus, the day that we traditionally gather together, the day that we traditionally celebrate as the Sabbath to the Lord is the first day of the week. It is Sunday.

But if we wanted to get technical about it, in the New Testament God frees us from all the regulations of the old system in the Old Testament and all of the special days and festivals, but God does not free us from a day of rest. So, in one sense, it doesn't matter whether it's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It doesn't matter. What really does matter, though, the heart of it is that God says that out of seven days, you need one day of rest. You need a day when you can reconnect, when you can recharge, and when you can refocus. You see, the Sabbath is something that God has given to us. Jesus said it in our gospel lesson for today. He said the Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath. It isn't mattering which day of the week that you choose. It's the fact that this is God's gift to us. God is our creator. God is the one who designed us. He knows that we cannot keep going, keep pushing and pushing and pushing, doing more things, filling up our schedule so that every moment is down to the last second. We can't continuously run from activity to activity, appointment to appointment, class to class. No. God says you need a break from that, and My gift to you is the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath was made for us so that we could take care of ourself in our over-committed and ever busy society. If we don't, we will pay the consequences.

The fact of the matter is we are paying the consequences. We are paying the consequences of a people who are over-committed. We are paying the consequences of a society that is over-scheduled and too busy. The consequences are this in the latest survey, it said this, "The typical husband and wife work an average of 26 more hours per week either at their job or at home than they did in 1975." Twenty-six more hours a week, we're busy either after working for our employer or working at home. Twenty-six more hours a week, we've got appointments. Twenty-six more hours a week, we're rushing from event to event, soccer game to football game, to everything else on there. Twenty-six more hours a week than in 1975. Thirty-six percent of those who are engaged in full-time employment in the United States say that they suffer from job stress to the point where it affects their productivity and how effective they are. Thirty-four percent of the people who changed jobs in the last year did so because of job stress and burnout. Thirty-three percent of all people who are employed say that they are at or near burnout. We are over-committed. We are over-stressed, and we are over-scheduled. Why? Because we neglect the Sabbath. We are pushing so hard and never taking a break, and God says, "I didn't design you that way. I didn't create you that way. I created you so that one day out of the week you would step back, you would take a rest, you would reconnect, you would recharge, you would refocus." And if we don't, we'll pay the consequences.

I don't even want to guess at the billions of dollars that are spent each year medically because we don't remember the Sabbath, because we don't keep it holy. It's time for us to wake up to the reality, the reality of how God has made us, and the reality of how God desires for us to live, not as a forceful way, not as Him inflicting rules and regulations on us, but as God's gift to us. The Sabbath was created for you, God knowing what's best for you, God wanting to take care of you, God wanting to provide for you, so God creates the Sabbath.

And what He's created for us this morning then is a huge challenge. I think it's a huge challenge because I believe that all of us are over-committed. I believe that all of us have every moment of every day scheduled out to do something, and the challenge that's facing us and the challenge that God is giving to us today is to keep the Sabbath holy, to take that day of rest seriously and to do it. And the rest that God is talking about is a little bit deeper than a 20-minute nap once a week. It's a little bit deeper than just taking an afternoon off and not doing anything. The rest that God describes for us in scripture, the rest that He invites us to come into is a holistic rest. It involves not only our body, but it involves our mind, and it involves our spirit, our soul. God is talking about that we need it physically, spiritually, and emotionally. We need that kind of a rest. What God is saying is we need to reconnect with Him. We need to recharge and store up that energy, and we need to refocus on what's important to us.

The most important one, the building block that all the rest come for is reconnecting. Reconnecting with our God. In fact, Jesus, when He lived among us, He modeled for us what it is to take a day of rest. He took time each week to reconnect with His Father. The gospel according to Matthew says, "On the Sabbath Day, Jesus entered into the synagogue as was His custom." In other words, Jesus was in worship every single week. It didn't matter what town He was in, He was in worship. It didn't matter how late He stayed up on Friday night talking to someone who needed His ear, He was in worship. It didn't matter how much He had to do the next day. It didn't matter how far He had to travel, how many people He needed to heal, how many people He needed to preach to, every week, every Sabbath, Jesus was in worship because He knew that He needed to reconnect with His Father. Certainly, He connected with Him on a daily basis; but He needed to connect with Him in the corporate setting. Surrounded by fellow believers in the one true God, Jesus would reconnect with His Father every week, once out of every seven days, He was in worship. Jesus was modeling for us the pattern that we need to be in. We need to be in worship once every seven days. We need to reconnect with our God in heaven. Certainly, on a daily basis, we should connect with God through prayer, through the reading of His word, through study. But when God says you take a day of rest, a day to reconnect, He's talking about when we reconnect corporately as the body of Christ. It is a time for us to praise God. It is a time for us to pray to Him. It is a time for us to hear from His word. It's a time to benefit from the sacrament that He offers to us. That only happens here. It only happens in the context of worship. And God says if you're going to keep the Sabbath holy, if you're going to reconnect with Him, it has to happen here in worship. This is the building block of all the rest. This is the key to true rest because, my friends, you could sleep 18 hours last night but if you missed reconnecting with God, you still wouldn't know the rest that God has for us. Because even if your body is well rested, if your spirit, if your soul, if your emotions are a mess, then you're still exhausted. You still don't know what true rest is. God says to have true rest, you need to experience it on a deeper level, on a spiritual level. That's why in Exodus 33, God again is talking to Moses and He says, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." God gives us rest. When we come into His presence, when we're touched by His love, when we experience His forgiveness, we're reminded of the salvation that He has for us. We're reminded again of the eternal hope that we have. It is God who gives us true rest, rest on a deeper level, rest on a spiritual level. The bottom line what I'm saying is worship is not an option. It's a necessity. It's not something that we make a decision about. It's something that God says you need. It's something that God commands us to do. It's how God is taking care of us. God knows that we need the time to reconnect, and God knows that the devil is going to work overtime convincing you this is the one that you can let slide. The devil is going to tell you that you've been out too late last night. He's going to tell you that you have a To Do List as long as your arm. He's going to tell you about the soccer game that your kid just can't miss. He's going to tell you about everything and anything that's going to happen so that you don't reconnect with your God, so that you don't enjoy the true rest He has for you. That's why God says it's not an option. It's a necessity.

Throughout the years, I don't know how many people have come up to me after a worship service and say, "You know, I wasn't coming today." Maybe you've said it yourself, if not to me to somebody else. Now maybe they're just being kind and nice to me, but every conversation ends the same. They'll talk about how they were up all night with the kids or how they got a whole lot that they need to get done at the office or a bunch of projects to do at home, but they always end by saying, "I sure am glad I came, though. I'm glad I made it." You know why? Because they connected with God. Maybe it was through the message, maybe not. Maybe it was through a beautiful choir piece or through a solo or maybe it was because the sacrament was offered, but it is here in worship that they connected with God. No matter how tired they were, no matter how busy they were to take time out to connect with God. That's enjoying a Sabbath rest. And once we reconnect with God, then we can get recharged. Then we can take the time that we need so our bodies can recuperate so they can build that energy back up and be willing to go again for another six days. Again, Jesus modeled it for us. After Jesus had reconnected with His Father, it tells us in Matthew 4 that the disciples and He went out for a little boat trip. They're out in the middle of the lake. All of a sudden, this huge storm comes up. The wind, the rain, water splashing over the sides. The disciples think the ship is going to break in two. They're worried that they're all going to die. So where was Jesus in all of this? Was He in the back of the boat just rowing for all He's worth? Was He sort of baling out some of the water so they wouldn't sink? Nah. He was catching a nap. He was in the back just snoozing away, sleeping, having pleasant dreams. The disciples come back to Him and say, "What's with you? What's going on? We're going to die and you're back here sleeping?" Yes, He was sleeping because Jesus knew that He was 100 percent human being and He needed to recharge. He needed His sleep. He needed His time for His body to recuperate and He had reconnected with His Father. Because He had reconnected with His Father, He could sleep like a baby without a care in the world. Because He had reconnected with His Father, He knew that the ship wasn't going to sink. Because He reconnected with His Father, He trusted and He believed that His Father was going to take care of Him. That's why the first question He asked the disciples when He woke up was, "Where's your faith?" Haven't you reconnected? He says, "You of little faith." And then He calms down the wind and the sea.

When you have reconnected with your God, you can recharge. You don't have sleepless nights where you're enumerating about all of your past regrets because you've reconnected and know God has forgiven you. You don't stay up all night worrying about finances, worrying about your career, worrying about your health, worrying about any of a dozen other things because you've reconnected with God and you know that God promises to take care of all of your needs. When you reconnect, then you can recharge. You can take time out. You can get the sleep you needed, the rest and relaxation which is so necessary.

You know, last year they came out with a study that said now for Americans, the average number of hours they sleep is below the minimum requirement for a human being. We as Americans sleep so little because we've filled up the schedule so full that we don't even get the minimum requirements our bodies need. Reconnect with God and then recharge. Take that time to recharge. And when you recharge, you can refocus. Once you've connected with God, once your body has been recharged, now your mind can be clear and you can refocus. Jesus, once again, modeled it for us. In Mark 1, He says He got up early in the morning and He went off to a place by Himself. He went off to a place where He could refocus. Take a look at the priorities in His life. Take a look at the ministry and where He was going. He had a time now to make sure that everything was in line. For us to have the rest of the Sabbath, we need time to refocus. Once we've been recharged, once that we've been reconnected with God, we need to take time at least once a week to refocus on our life, to take a look at everything that is happening and decide do I have the right priorities. Are first things first in my life and, if not, then let's retool it and make it happen. We need those few moments no matter how much it is to refocus because when we do that, then truly we've experienced God's rest. For once we've come into His presence, once we've had enough sleep and relaxation and we've set our priorities straight, then you'll experience God's rest. You'll understand the gift that God has in store for you, the gift of the Sabbath that was made for you, not you for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was instituted for you. It's a day for us to rest, a day for us to reconnect with God, to recharge our bodies, and to refocus our priorities. Amen.

Copyright 2003 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church