Strive to Rest

What is Sabbath?

What is work and what is rest?

What are the Ten Commandments?

What does Jesus think or say about these things?

And what should be our response?

What is Sabbath?

Some of what Sabbath (Hebrew: shabbat = "to stop") means is to stop working from a heart posture of achievement and to rest in God. Resting in God looks like trusting that you can stop everything and God will still take care of you and love you. It requires realizing that his love for you is not defined by how much you produce and output.

The concept of Sabbath originates from the creation narrative when God worked for six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 2:2-3). God created a rhythm of work and rest from the beginning of time for all of creation by sanctifying the seventh day. As image-bearers of God, we should rest because He rested.

Unfortunately, God's people found themselves in unfortunate circumstances that forced them out of this rhythm. The Israelites became slaves in Egypt. They were helplessly creating bricks and building stuff under a merciless, oppressive and cold-hearted Pharoah.

"Make the work harder for the people so that they keep working..." (Exodus 5:9). Someone tell me, by the way, how that makes any sense.

"Lazy, that's what you are - lazy! Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks" (Ex. 5:17-18). This guy is so mean.

After years of suffering, the God of rest and mercy "heard their cries" (Ex. 3:7) and rescued the Israelites from the oppressive hand of the Egyptians through a powerful array of miracles including the splitting of the Red Sea!

Coming out of this slavery, this generation of Israelites had no notion of what rest was, so God had to introduce it to them. He even made it a law (Exodus 20:8-10). In Exodus 16, God says, "Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out."

Notice this: "...on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days". God provides the means for his people to rest. He creates space and margin for them to experience the beautiful gift of Sabbath.

Then, there's this verse that I find very funny because of the context: "So the people rested on the seventh day."

Ok, so remember how these people have never rested before. It makes me wonder what this rest looked like. I can imagine them all jittery and anxious to do something. They were tragically unfamiliar with what rest was like, but they attempted to rest in obedience to the command of the LORD who brought them out of Egypt.

Sabbath as Resistance

What was described in Exodus back then is not very far off from today's workaholic culture. Most of us don't know how to rest.

Personally, I'm not the busiest person in the generic sense of those terms, but I often get caught up doing 'good stuff' like reading or talking to friends or preparing for a Bible study or writing for a blog.

Sometimes as I lie in bed, I reflect on my day and wonder if I spent any of the time resting in or communing with God. And by resting in God, I mean a serious attempt to rest in His love and know that He loves me. Often I spend my day 'being productive' and 'getting work done' - I fall into the trap of returning to Egypt.

On the public transit to school and on the way home, I often have to catch myself and ask, "Am I reading this book because I want to get it done or because I want to relax and enjoy it?" Or "am I listening to this podcast because I want to 'catch up' with all the ones I've missed or am I really enjoying this?" If the answer is "I need to get this done", I force myself to close the book and put it away or remove my headphones and just pray or take a nap (probably the latter).

God's command for Sabbath is just as relevant today as it was back then for the freshly-freed Israelites. It just sounds a bit different:

"Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:28).

Right after this invitation from Jesus, we find ourselves in a debate between Jesus and the Pharisees over Sabbath. Jesus' disciples are snacking on some 1st century popcorn kernels, and the Pharisees cry out, "Jesus! Your disciples are breaking the law of the Sabbath!"

Jesus graciously responds with an argument for how "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matth. 12:12) because that is the heart of the command (and the rest of the laws, Matt. 22:37-40). If they're hungry, let them eat from the fields.

The Pharisees missed the heart of the command! It was supposed to be a means to love God and love people better. I love Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance in which he argues how keeping the Sabbath actually makes it easier to keep the other nine Commandments (I'll let you sit with that and look over the Ten Commandments to see how that's true). Sabbath is saying 'no' to anxiety, coercion and multitasking and saying 'yes' to God and 'yes' to loving others.

Bringing it Home to the Heart

"So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us, therefore, strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience" (Hebrews 4:9-11).

Lack of rest leads to sin - nothing good comes from a lifestyle of constant work.

We need to strive to enter the rest of God so that we can recalibrate and recenter our souls around God. It takes effort because doing work and getting stuff done is addicting. We have to fight against our own desire to do stuff and make the effort to stop. Otherwise, we get anxious and stressed, we feel forced to make no-so-well-thought-out decisions, we feel lost and confused, we start building an identity around our work. We need to rest in God.

Maybe you're starting to see the parallels between Sabbath and the gospel. The gospel invites us to trust and rest. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith...not by works" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Jesus has done it all! "It is finished" (John 19:30). We are invited to rest and trust in God's finished work on the cross through His Son, so that when we do the work we're called to do (Eph. 2:10), it becomes worship and it flows from a deep sense of love instead of a motivation to achieve and accomplish. Sabbath reminds us of who is God and that to stop doing what we're doing won't cause the universe to stop functioning. And it definitely won't cause God to love us any less. The Creator God, the God of rest, the God who brought you out of your Egypt will take care of you. You have good reasons to trust Him.

Practice #2

I found out about the modern practice of Sabbath around one year ago and I've been practicing it up until the end of last year when I stopped. Reading and thinking about Sabbath this month inspires me to get back to that life-giving place of resting, delighting, worshiping and trusting in God. Practicing Sabbath transformed my whole week.

Before I walk you through how I practiced it before, you should know that there is no "right way" to do Sabbath (however, the wrong way is if it feels like work). I'd say there are only two requirements: Pick one day as your Sabbath and stick to it. Preferably a 24-hr period, but whatever works for your schedule. Maybe you only have 2-4 hours of free time a week. The key is consistency. Next, make sure everything you do during your Sabbath comes from a heart posture of worship and resting in God. It's not a vacation for lack of a better term. It's a day of recalibration, worship, reflection, rest and communion with the Divine Father.

That being said, this is what my Sabbath looked like:

1. Wake up at 5:30.

2. Have my phone off (or at least social media uninstalled). I don't want social media, messages from friends, news, or anything else to have the first word in the morning (I like to do this every day, not just on Sabbaths).

3. Pray and thank God for my life, relationships, circumstances, struggles, etc. and read a short Psalm.

4. Take a warm shower!

5. Read lotsssss of Bible and meditate on it.

6. Eat good food if I can.

7. Spend time with close friends and enjoy their company.

8. Worship God through music.

9. Take a nap.

10. Read a killer book.

11. Pray and thank God for everything he's done during the day and sleep.

Feel free to pick and choose any of those things and build your day! Here are some other ideas I might try in the near future:

1. Go for a walk.

2. Meditate and journal your week, feelings, etc.

3. Work on your favourite hobby.

4. Create something: art, food, music, poetry/writing.

5. Catch up with an old friend.

Remember that taking a Sabbath isn't necessarily easy. If you find it hard to stop doing work, it's normal. Remember the Israelites after the exodus? The author of Hebrews tells us to strive to enter God's rest. Effort is needed to shabbat or even slow down if we want to find "rest for our souls".

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Next month's (March's) topic is a theology of altars.