HOW TO GET A REALLY GOOD REST

The Sabbath answers the question: How do I find rest while working?

There are several layers to this question and the teaching about the Sabbath has something to say about each one. Those layers are:

· How much rest and relaxation do I need for my physical and mental health?

· How much of my time should my employment take up?

· How do I find the strength to carry out my life responsibilities?

· How do I avoid stress and anxiety in my daily life?

But the most important question of all is:

· How do I work for God?

The word Sabbath means ‘rest’. Sabbaths were given to Israel as a sign (Ex 31.12). A sign is not the thing itself; a sign points to the real thing. A sign saying Dargaville is not that town; it indicates that the town is found in a certain direction; it points out Dargaville. If the Sabbath is a sign, then the day itself is not the Sabbath (rest) but it points to the real Rest. The New Testament tells us that the real rest is none other than Jesus Christ! Colossians 2

¹⁶Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

You cannot find accommodation in Dargaville by stopping at the sign. You follow the sign to the place and there you find a motel. You do not find the rest God intends by focussing on the Sabbath day. You find that rest by following the sign to the person; Jesus Christ.

The Sabbath rule given to Israel in Exodus had enormous significance to them. They had just been released from a life of slavery in Egypt where they had no rest. Their lives were owned by the King of Work, Pharaoh. Now God was taking them under his rule. He would give them rest from their work and he would strengthen them for the work that they did for him. Every Sabbath was an opportunity for Israel to reflect on and rejoice in the deliverance God had worked for them to free them from slavery in Egypt. They enjoyed their new freedom under God.

Israel was taught that the Sabbath was a reference back to the time of creation when, after six days of creation, God rested on the seventh to enjoy the completeness and perfection of it all; it was good. Gen 1.31-2.3. Sabbath celebrations in Israel included the confession of and the enjoyment in the completeness and perfection of everything that God does; a kind of reminder that although we share in the good things God is doing, the power and completion of these things all comes from God. In fact, the Sabbath year, when nothing was cultivated in the land, reminded everyone that it was God who kept things growing even when they did nothing to make it happen.

Our first parents experienced briefly the joy of living in the completeness and perfection of the world God created. Their disobedience, through asserting their independence from God, ruined their experience of rest in working with God. From that point on work became hard and wore them to death (Gen 3):

¹⁷ To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

¹⁸ It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

¹⁹ By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

God’s plan of redeeming humankind from the ruin caused by sin is to restore our rest. Instead of living like slaves in Egypt, he brings us under his rule where we enjoy rest in our work and enjoy the completeness and perfection of everything that God does.

All of the ideas to do with Sabbath fit together in Jesus Christ. He answers all the promises that the Sabbath makes in the Old Testament. No one will find those promises by focusing on the day itself. We follow the signs now to the reality. Jesus offered himself plainly as the rest for weary humanity (Matthew 11) :

²⁵At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. ²⁶Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

²⁷"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

²⁸"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

The writer to Hebrews spoke about the sad situation when a whole generation of Israelites failed to go into the Promised Land. They heard God’s promises that it was a place of rest for them as a nation, but they did not mix what they heard with faith. When the challenge seemed too great they shrunk back and did not enter God’s rest. They died in the desert. That writer says that the rest still remains open to us and that we need to enter that rest TODAY; i.e. do not delay entering the rest while it is offered to you. The person who enters God’s rest is resting from their independence. That person is laying down his own efforts and surrendering his life to God (Hebrews 4):

⁹There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. ¹¹Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.

We enter God’s rest by bringing our weariness and burden to Jesus, for he will give us rest. His rest is a working relationship (²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.").

God did not call Israel out of Egypt to rest at a Mediterranean seaside resort. He called them to take a land and work it. He called them to build a nation. This foreshadowed what he had in mind for his Church. We are called to do God’s work in Christ’s strength. We rest by depending in faith on what Christ can do in and through us by his Holy Spirit. Real satisfaction and enjoyment is found when we share in the completion and perfection of his work.

"The rest that Christ offers is not a rest from work, but a rest in work--not the rest of inactivity, but of harmonious working of all the faculties and affections--of will, heart, imagination, conscience--because each has found in Christ the ideal (and only) sphere for its satisfaction and development" (J. Patrick in Hastings' Bible Dictionary and Vine's Expository Dictionary of the New Testament).

Therefore, for us the Sabbath is not Saturday, Sunday or any other particular day of the week. The Sabbath is Christ. We no longer need a sign because we have the reality (just as we no longer need the sign of the sacrifices in the Temple, because Jesus has offered himself as a once and for all sacrifice).

Jesus himself went out of his way to demonstrate that the Sabbath was not the ‘keeping’ of a certain day. He deliberately ‘broke’ the religious idea of the Sabbath to teach that it was not a rule designed to discipline God’s people. He said that God made the Sabbath for man, not the other way around. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). Jesus claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath. "...the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath" (Mat. 12:8). In answer to his religious critics: "Jesus answered them, 'My Father is working still, and I am working'" (John 5:17). Jesus proved that the Sabbath was all about resting in what God provided, including God’s work. The loss of rest comes about when we try to live independently of God. The Sabbath is about close fellowship (‘come to me’); being yoked together with Christ.

Psalm 127 summarises the experience of rest in God.

A song of ascents. Of Solomon.

¹ Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labour in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.

² In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.

³ Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.

⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.

⁵ Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.

We rest in the building power of Jesus Christ. We rest in his protection. Our efforts are wasted if we stress and struggle on our own. He ‘grants sleep to those he loves’. Our fruitfulness in life (sons, in the context of this psalm) is something that he grants to us as we depend on him.

Conclusion
In answer to the questions posed at the beginning:

· How much rest and relaxation do I need for my physical and mental health?

We need a break from our work to restore our mental and physical strength. God’s example in Gen 1&2 and the Sabbath law indicate that at least a day in seven is needed to rest and refresh us. Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed. Ex 23.12

· How much of my time should my employment take up?

The above verse makes it clear that our employers should not demand all our time. Our employment must not be our ‘life’.

· How do I find the strength to carry out my life responsibilities?

Our daily life and work is a part of our total Christian life experience. We need to rely on Christ for the capacity to cope with this just as much as our specifically Christian activities.

· How do I avoid stress and anxiety in my daily life?

Respond to Jesus’ invitation and cast your cares upon him for he cares about you (1 Peter 5.7).

· How do I work for God?

Get in alongside Christ and be joined to him in his work. His ‘yoke is easy (well-fitting) and his burden is light (manageable)’

Note: Nowhere in the New Testament is the idea of the Sabbath or the day itself (Saturday) equated with Sunday. Sunday, the first day of the week (called the Lord’s Day) simply celebrates the day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead. The early Christians adopted that day as the one on which they usually met. There is no transference of the Old Testament Sabbath ‘rules’ to Sunday. Every day is a Sabbath for Christians because we daily rest in Christ for strength.