JUL 8 2018 | Rest: Finding Spiritual Rest S1E3 | The Sabbath Year

Sea Change Church · Rest: Finding Spiritual Rest · "The Sabbath Year" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · July 8, 2018
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

The scripture today is Leviticus 25, verses 1 through 7, words of truth and life. The Lord said to Moses at Mount Sinai, speak to the Israelites and say to them, when you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year, the land is to have a year of Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord.

Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. Whatever the land yields during the Sabbath year will be food for you, for yourself, your male and female servants, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten.

The word of the Lord. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it. Next two weeks, we're going to be finishing the rest series and talking about Sabbath. And taking a couple weeks, this week and next week, and then moving into a new series, The Politics of Jesus, after that. And trust me, it isn't what you think it is, but it is. So we'll be getting into that, which will be interesting. If you can go to my blog if you want and read some of the early thoughts on that.

But it will be interesting looking at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and different things like that. Before we begin with talking about Sabbath, there's just two things. The first is you might have seen that we've gotten rid of the hedge over here to the right, which is exciting. And that means that those new slider doors that we paid for, they're actually in. And we're waiting. We're going to have those installed. And that is going to be super cool.

That entire wall is going to open up. It's going to make it an amazing space on a day like this. So it'll be super cool. So just wanted you to know where we are on that. And that should, I've learned not to give time frames with construction. So nonetheless, soon. The next is, hey, this alpha that we've got going on. We want to have you come and be a part of it. Would you mark your calendars and show up this Tuesday?

Check it out. Invite friends. There is a window of heaven open. I've invited three people. They've all said yes. It has not been difficult. Actually, all three of them have been invited themselves. They've told me, I'm just looking for a place where I can, you know, just hang out. Be prepared. Put your cards in your wallet or your purse. We're going to have great food, live music. And then there's financial peace. That's another thing.

I'm going to be going to the financial peace. So if you want to do that with Dave Ramsey, that'll be in here in the sanctuary. So with that, we're going to look at the Sabbath here. Let me pray. Lord Jesus, we just bless you. Bless the word of God as we come in for a landing of this week. Lord, and we start a new week, a new adventure into you and into your love. In Jesus' name, amen. Resting is probably one of the greatest acts of faith that you can enter into.

Of all the commandments, and it is a commandment, rest is probably, or keeping a Sabbath, which means to take away, to break away from, keeping a Sabbath is one of the most difficult. It is in the top three of the commandments. So if you were going to put like the best baseball players in the world or the best whatever in the world, if you were going to put the, you know, top ten commandments, I think they're in an order for a reason.

Now, I can't say why that is, but the third, number one is, you know, have no other gods before you. You move down to three, and three is, you know, honor the Sabbath. Keep it holy. Keep the Sabbath holy. It's before don't commit adultery. I'm not telling you not to do that either, or to do that either, but it is number three. It's above do not murder. Isn't that interesting? I have a feeling God puts things in order for a reason, and I don't really know why, or nor am I going to tell you why, but I think it's a big deal that in all the commands, that keeping a day of rest that is dedicated unto the Lord is a big deal.

And I would say it makes you vulnerable. God has instituted rest into every part of creation. You hopefully sleep one third of your day, eight hours a day. That's the recommended required amount, although it's difficult. I'm reading a book now called Why We Sleep. The guy needed an editor. It's a little long, okay? But it is changing my whole understanding of why we sleep and how the brain works. I think the guy's last name is Walker, but it's called Why We Sleep.

It's a brand new book out by a guy from Berkeley. And it is revolutionizing my whole understanding of how to live and how to live differently. Now, we have learned that rest is not sleep. You will not have sleep unless you have rest. If your body cannot rest, if you cannot rest your mind, you will not have sleep. When you wake up in the morning, the brainwaves that through sleep are coming to synchronicity into large brainwaves, according to the book, will start scattering together and becoming like a storm on the ocean.

And if you know how waves are created or you're a surfer or you're a supper or whatever you do, you will know that when there is chaos at sea, when that storm passes, the further away that the energy gets from the storm, the more it becomes a rhythmic wave. And the waves, the further you get away, the more inorganized they become. It shows you that we need to get away from the chaos of our lives. In our mind, in the day, your brainwaves will actually start scattering when they do brain, when they put brain, I'm not a scientist.

They put stuff on their head, little mechanisms, you know, little electrodes. There you go. It's not my field. But nonetheless, he said that the brainwaves go all these different directions. And when we sleep, when you fall asleep is when they come back into synchronicity. And by the end of your NREM sleep or your REM sleep, your rapid eye movement sleep, that, you know, in your deepest sleep, they are the most syncretic together, moving in the same direction, and everything is organized.

There's a story in the book about a piano player who came to him, and he said, you know, I practice something, and I can never get it right. I can't get it right. But then I go to sleep, and I wake up in the morning, and I can just play it. And the sleep therapist, the sleep scientist thought about that, and he realized how important sleep is to organize what you do. So it's an amazing book that I'm reading. But the point is, is if your brain is in chaos because your world is in chaos, because you can't have peace without chaos, or you feel like chaos gives you some sense of purpose, because when the dust is in the air and the alarm bells are ringing, it's really easy to feel like you have a purpose.

It's really easy. But if that is happening, and you are not far enough away, you are not going to get sleep. And so sleep is a byproduct of rest. God has put rest into everything. As a matter of fact, he's made it so you have to sleep, or you should sleep, a third of your day. It also is probably one of the most vulnerable, dangerous things you do. Like, think about it. Like, when you go to sleep, you're asleep. How vulnerable are you, you know?

You had a fight with your wife? She didn't like you? You know what I mean? Whatever it is, like, yeah, you know, she's coming after me. Or whatever. It's one of the most vulnerable things that you can do. And God has put us in a place where he has said you can rest. You know, you close your eyes every single night for eight hours? You close your eyes for eight hours every single night, and you have no clue what's happening around you.

That's not a great system, right? It's a bad system. Unless you want your creation to know that they are not always in charge, and they need someone who watches over them. And God talks about watching over us. And so God has given us this incredible act of faith, this incredible act of offering ourselves to become vulnerable when we rest. And so the question is, when do you rest? And I would say just going to sleep is not resting.

Do you have the ability to rest in a rhythm of life? And how are the rhythms of your life going? And do you ever have a time enough to get away from the storm where you can process so the next morning when you wake up, you can just play? Eugene Peterson says this, if you don't take a Sabbath, that means a day where it's holy unto the Lord. If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much. You're being too much in charge.

You've got to quit just one day a week and just watch what God is doing. And when you're not doing anything, I want to say, for me, I've had to frame, and I said this a couple weeks ago in the opening, I've had to frame rest as work. Rest is really hard for me. I mean, to sit and to just rest and to do nothing. I would say, I'm not talking about watching Netflix. When was the last time you went and sat and did nothing?

You know, our culture sees that as very uninspiring, let's say. Even our vacations now have become these, you know, these massive energy-filled vacations. Eugene Peterson, you know, another quote from him, I've been quoting the heck out of him because he's one of my favorite people in regard to rest, and you can get this from his book, The Pastor, if you want to read it, his autobiography. He says that a vacation is a bastard Sabbath.

He says it's not even close to the same thing. Just getting away to get distracted, but rest is entering into the holiness of God. One of the most subtle attacks of the enemy is to destroy Sabbath in your life. Subtle. Now think about it again. When God made ten commandments, the third commandment was honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. Now look, we're in the time of Christ now. There are no, we have been freed from the law.

So you don't have to tithe anymore, and you can still have an amazing relationship with God. And if you do give, you can now give freely. Before you had to give because it was a requirement because we were not under the grace of the blood of Christ. So you don't have to give, and you can be in a great spot. And you don't have to take a Sabbath. But when we don't live in alignment with God's commands, things break. God has created us, and he has given us the word of God in order to be a how-to manual for the best and most functional life.

And so when things don't rest, they break. I'm going to give you a few ideas about stress. And I think there's some footnotes there in your notes. Things that don't rest break. And let's talk about stress. What is stress? Stress is being stretched beyond your limits. Stress is overextending yourself without proper time of recovery. Maybe that sounds like you. Stress is believing that you can do more than your human frame can take.

When we do not enter into the rest of God, we break. And our body breaks. And our mind breaks. And you look at how fast we're living. And, you know, later on in the notes, there's a little phrase I wrote. It says, We're meant to live at camel pace, not at light speed. Have you thought about that? Do you know that we are an agrarian people meant to live in a slow fashion? And we are being required these days to live at light speed.

Do you get that? Have you ever texted somebody and they, like, well, especially if you text like a 15-year-old like my daughter, she can text back so quick. Have you ever seen their little thumbs work? It's like little mice on a wheel. You know, How quick it comes in. One person in our family, I won't say who, I went to our Verizon and looked at our thing. Two days. 1,110 text. Now, I've been told that a lot of that is group and I'm not looking at all those groups.

So, okay. So, because I have this little feature where I can say, limit text to 100. No! No! World's ending, Dad! No! I just, so we've been having this conversation about brain chemistry and about sleep and rest and, you know, all these different ideas. We're not meant to live like this. Why are people's minds breaking? Do you know people's minds are breaking right now? If you're a clinical psychologist, you are going to be very wealthy over the next 30 years.

The amount of nervous breakdown, they used to just call it the nervous breakdown. A few people would have it in the 70s here and then. You'd hear about it like far reaches of America sometimes. But now it's like everybody, kids, 10-year-olds, go look, just Google. social anxiety with children. Got 10-year-olds watching, you know, what is that movie? Dead, Deadpan or whatever. Dead, I don't know. Dead, whatever. They're gnarly movies.

The movies my daughter gets invited to. These things are just, you know, inculcating us. We need to step away and get aside or we'll break. I'm going to look at God's commands here. And so first, in the first thing you're going to see in the notes is this. God's command of a Sabbath was not a suggestion. The Lord said to Moses, Mount Sinai, the third commandment, and perhaps no other command of God is broken or forgotten as much as Sabbath keeping.

It's not valued. We're meant to live at camel speed, not at light speed. And in number two, you're going to see that there's a blueprint of Sabbath, meaning to take time each week, to take time every seven years, every 50 years. God is living in a rhythm. And so the question is, is what is the rhythm of your life? And does it give you adequate time for the seas to calm once again, to hear from God? It says in verse two, the land, now this is so interesting.

Look at verse two in the scripture here. Not that you must take a Sabbath, which we are to honor the Sabbath, but he said the land itself must observe a Sabbath unto the Lord, that God has built creation to need a rest. I got to tell you, we are breaking creation. Creation is meant to have a rest, but we live in a system, in an economic system of growth where there is no rest for the planet. And the planet, it is being broke.

There is no rest, but God says it must have rest or it will break. And so it says not that, but the very land, the soil itself, God has made it that if it does, if you don't give it a rest, it'll break. And if you don't have a rest, it'll break. When do you rest? Do you have rhythms in your day, each day where you rest, you take time away, take time, turn the phone off, get away. Do you have times each week? Do you have that built into your calendar?

When I started entering into this idea of living according to the laws of God and getting a Sabbath and rest in my life, I would plan my rest before I would plan my work. I would find out because the work has an incredible ability to crowd out the rest. And so I would plan in, when am I going to sleep? When am I going to take time off? When am I going to work out? When am I going to do these things? And once I did that, then I would allow the work to come in to be productive.

One of the things you're going to see in the scripture, if you just turn your page back to the scripture, and I don't know if this is in the notes later on, but I do want to say it. When God says, in verse 5 there, during the Sabbath, he says, do not reap what grows itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. So basically God said, I don't, you know, don't work your crops anymore, which is very scary for an agrarian culture, right?

And resting is very vulnerable. You're not in charge, and you're going to have trust to God to provide while you're not working. And it says, in verse 6, whatever the land yields during the Sabbath years will be food for you. And I'm like, what are you talking about, God? You just said that I'm not supposed to harvest. What do you mean whatever the land produces? The more I looked into it, what I realized is he says, I want you not to work the crops that you own, and in faith rest.

And I am going to let another form of sustenance spring up around you and that the land will begin to produce in such a way that it will provide, it actually ends up providing for two more years. It says it will provide for that year and the Sabbath year that is coming. That the land itself, and so something that, the crops that you are not working, you will begin to have, what do they call that? Residual income? You know, that kind of income where it's passive income, you don't have to work.

It'll grow up. I want to say if you're not resting in your business, you're not making as much money as you could because God wants to bless you and give you more, it says, more abundantly than you would have had on your own. That's an interesting point and it is a law of the Sabbath that God shows with people. If you have faith, you know, if you think, you know, if you're in a business where you're just grinding, I was talking to somebody yesterday and they said, ah, you know, I'm doing this corporate thing and I get up at six and I work till seven at night.

I'm like, man, that's a bummer. You should get a new job, dude. He's like, that's just the corporate way. You know, that's just the corporate way. I said, well, who told you that? Well, that's just the way we do things. I said, who said? It's just how it is. Why? Well, it's just what we do, but why? Well, it's expected of us. I said, why? God's system says this, that if you're willing to trust him and take off your, I'm in charge hat, close down your business.

I think Chick-fil-A does that, right? Don't they close on Sunday? Close down your business, not go to work because we're so terrified that if we're not in charge, nothing's going to happen, right? Close it down. I'm not saying you have to take a day off or whatever, but whatever it is that you show rest in your work, that God will begin to produce abundantly around you with a passive income to give you a break and you will have more than if you would have kept on your construction hat and kept digging away.

That is a classic principle of Sabbath rest, that God will give you more than you can produce on your own. So my question is, are you on the treadmill and do you feel like you can't get off? Are you on the treadmill and do you feel like you can't get off? Or you're a real estate agent and you always have to do something on a Sunday because that's the day. Surprisingly, I was speaking to somebody, I'm going to have them come up next week and give a testimony.

I was talking to them, I'll give you a little primer, and she said, I started a new business and I think what I understood is that the day where most of the sales happened and everything was like on a Monday and she said, I'm going to take that day off and she found out that when she did that faithfully it was super difficult and I know I'm butchering the story, I'll let her tell it next week, but on Tuesday, so many orders would come in, it would be more than she would ever have on Tuesday or Monday or something like that.

She kept saying, the more I honor this one day a week where I don't work, every Tuesday or whatever day it is, more comes. I said, you're going to speak, I'm going to have, she's here today, I can see her right now. She's going to speak next week and tell the story because I butchered it, but nonetheless, you get the point. Looking on now, back to your notes, we see that God has created even the soil we walk on to need a rest.

Other examples in nature, you can see it all around you because in Romans, it says that in the creation, you can see the invisible qualities and the divine nature of God and so everything that God has created has a stamp of his DNA on it that tells you about God. You can just go look at a flower. This is something that Francis Abassisi knew. You can just go look at a flower and look at it and if you ask God to show you something about it, he will.

You will see it. You see rest in the deciduous trees in winter, in night. Why does nature also have this need for rest? That's a great question. Why does nature rest? And do you rest? What's interesting is the amount of time, like, it's really poor planning if you're from America. The amount of time God gives for rest, like, winter's too long, right? Like, winter should be like six weeks, especially if you live back east, you know?

Like, six weeks. Oh, that was nice. Like, it's three months. Like, a quarter of the year goes dead. Like, everything, not here in California, but I mean, everything dies and there's like this fallow time. Three months, 25% of the year. I mean, seriously, if you were starting a new business, you know, like God, when he started the earth, would you take three months and make everything stop? No. I heard when the GE, the GE factory that closed down recently back east, when they were just cranking, they had triple shifts 24-7.

They were pumping all that chemical into the river and just, you know, just can't stop. Can't stop. What would it look like if you stopped? Imagine how much God would bless you. Imagine, imagine how much you've lost by working so much. That's opposite, right? That's contrarian. But that's the scripture. Because it's not about your production. It's about co-laboring with God. And if you want you results, you can get you results.

You results are super easy. So easy. Resting with God is very difficult. When do you rest? We see it in all of creation. I'm going to keep part three there for you to take home where it says Sabbath keeping is a holy act unto the Lord. And section three right there, I actually decided this morning that I want you to go and to enter into that and research that on your own and the holiness and research that. So that'll be a little something you can do this week.

But moving on to part four. Sabbath keeping brings blessing and prosperity. One of the things that I have to you have to come to terms with is God is not hindered by your lack of production. And we're not talking about laziness here. Obviously the Bible talks about I'm not trying to talk to lazy people. The majority of I don't I actually don't know that many lazy people. Most people I know are trying really hard in many areas.

And so I feel like our culture is working to get ahead. But where are you going? And why are you going? And what are the values that are pushing you? But I would say that God is not hindered by your lack of production. We tend to think that if we don't have our construction cap on that you know things aren't going to get done. I got to get her done. I don't know about you but whenever I sit down the rest my to-do list shows up into my mind.

And I have two ways. I can either sit there for five minutes and get so frustrated that I go back to work. I'm just going to clean the garage. It's time to clean the garage. You know let's just organize. Or I can say let's just go waste time and like watch you know seven episodes of Poldark. You know or something like that. Anybody else watch Poldark? No one else watches that? The only person in the room that watches that?

Yeah. Okay. Okay. But it's so hard to sit and to rest. And I've had to frame rest as work. To sit out and say this is my work. It is so hard. Rest is probably one of the most difficult commandments to keep. One of the most difficult commandments to keep. And I think that's why it is so high up there. We talked about the amount of time God allows for the earth to rest with winter. How much time does he give you to sleep?

A third of your day is sleeping. Now let me just ask. Are your values in line with God's values? By just taking a basic look at his creation, the way he does things, the way Jesus lived his life. Or have we been told by I don't know who that there is that chaos, disorder, speed, crowds, and noise are a sign that you're on the right track. I said a couple weeks ago, Peterson said this, that the church loves crowds, noise, and chaos.

Crowds, noise, and chaos. I've gone to campuses and they're dead. There's nothing happening there. I don't think that's rest. I think that's just dormant. And I've gone to other church campuses and been part of things that are so crazy. I was talking to my friend the other day at a church. We went surfing together. He said we have 3,600 events on our campus every year. 3,600. God's not hindered by your lack of production.

Follow my decrees. Look at Leviticus 25, 18 through 22. Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws. For you will live then safely in the land. Circle that word safely. Do you feel like you're living safely? Do you feel safe? Do you feel secure? You get up in the morning and there's a great sense of stability. God says if you follow my laws, you follow my decrees, be careful to obey my laws. And this is post Jesus too.

You don't have to do it anymore because Jesus has set us free from the law but Jesus didn't come to destroy the law. He just came to allow you to do it because of your own volition now as a gift unto God. He freed you from having to do it so you could do it. That make sense? He freed you from having to do it so you could choose to do it and live in freedom and have the blessings of the law because the law is not bondage, the law is freedom.

Because, you know, heaven forbid that we think that the law leads to death. The law actually, when we live in it, will lead to life but we cannot fulfill the laws. But Jesus came, died on the cross to fulfill the law to take care of our sins and now release you to live under the law, decide to choose it and reap the benefits and the blessings without ever having to worry about accidentally making a mistake and breaking the law because we cannot keep the law.

You're free. Enter into his rest because it says when you enter into his rest you also enter into, does anybody know what the next word is? Into his what? Holiness. When you enter into rest you are entering into the very holiness of God. If you want to get holy, rest. Rest and say, God, I want to rest in you and the enemy wants to come with his whip. You know what he wants to say to you? Like he said to the Egyptians, said to the Jews, more bricks but less straw to make them.

More bricks but less straw. More bricks. How many bricks are you making? And are more bricks going to make you happy? More followers on Twitter? I was talking to my daughter and she wants to do a YouTube channel. But she said to me, Dad, you know, I want to think about my motive before I do it. And I also want to think about how it's going to affect my life. Because I'm not sure the cost is worth what I feel like I'm supposed to do.

Because she feels like God's speaking to her about it. I thought, I wish more adults would think like that. More bricks. Ask yourself, more bricks, less straw. Maybe it's time to get away from the brick factory. Maybe it's time to change your job. Maybe it's time to change your entire life. God's not inhibited or hindered by your lack of production. Verse 19, the land will yield its fruit. You're living safely in the land now.

That's big. Safely. You feel safe. You feel secure. You go to bed at night and you feel, yes. Then the land will yield its fruit. It's yielding fruit to you. And you will eat your what? Your fill. And live there in safety. And you may ask, what will we eat in the seventh year if we don't plant or harvest our crops? I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. Bang.

Like I said, you can't outproduce God. I'm not talking about tithing. You know, you always hear that message. Tithe more, God will give you more. This is talking about resting. It's not even, he's not even asking you to give anything. You know, you always hear, I always say we talk more about this, you never hear this message. You always hear, you know, volunteer more, do more, give more, and God will bless you more.

But rarely will you see what the scripture says. Go rest, do nothing, and God is going to give you more. That is a tenet of scripture. You know why? Because he wants to spend time with you. He wants you to understand what it feels like to have peace, to live safely in the land. And if you don't feel a sense of security and safety, it might be time to start resting and entering into his holiness and watch the life spring up around you.

Coming in for a close now. Verse 21, I want to read it again because it's so good. It's because I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes. So watch this. If I don't plant, okay, then and I'm not doing any work that year that I don't plant, the land has to produce for me.

So in that year, God is producing three times the amount, it says. The next year is the Sabbath year, okay, and you're taking a rest and you're not going to harvest it again. So your fields go fallow. So you're not going to eat anything that year either from your own crops. So that's year two. But you also didn't plant for year three because you're in the Sabbath year, right? So you've got a whole nother year where nothing is going to produce.

That you can't, you know, to the year after the Sabbath year is when you plant your crops again. So there's like a three year break there that God has to show up for. That's massive. That is massive. But what God is putting into creation and trying to tell you is, if you just give me a chance, if you give me enough margin to bless you, I will. No, because I want to show you that I love you. It is his way. He built it on creation so you can't be in charge.

And he wants to bless you richly and lavishly. And so as we continue on in this, I want to ask you, are you living safely in your land? When you get in bed at night, when you wake up in the morning, when you drive around, do you feel like you're living safely in the land? Scripture says, back to the promises, that if you obey my decrees, if you follow my ways, that I will bless you, that I will abundantly fill you and you will live safely in the land.

And we want to move towards that as a congregation. This is where this church wants to go. We're doing a lot of stuff. We have an alpha program. We're not lazy. There's a lot going on here. There's actually a little bit more going on than we actually have the man-person power to do at the moment. But God's blessing. But at the same time, we want to recreate something in you and a people of rest, people of the Sabbath, that come to this place and you walk out charged and filled with the love and knowledge and rest of God.

Amen? Amen.