Give Me A Break!

This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Wintersprings, Florida, where Dr. Pete Owlinson is our senior pastor. Today's sermon is part 16 and a series on the book of Exodus and deals with the fourth of the Ten Commandments. This message is taken from Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 through 11 and is called Give Me a Break, part 2. Now here's Pete with today's message. Well, if you have your Bibles, take them, turn to Exodus chapter 20. Exodus 20 as we are continuing our study in the, what are we studying? The Ten Commandments, which commandment are we on? The fourth commandment for the second time, because we didn't have enough time last week to finish our discussion on the fourth commandment, which is all about the Sabbath and about the day of rest. That's right, you know, this is, I enjoyed this study and I'm enjoying it more because it has so many practical teachings for our life. The Ten Commandments are very practical for people who have been saved by grace and they have so many good solutions. You know, there are some solutions that your friends will send you that have a ring of truth to them. They have the sound of logic, but they are absolutely damaging to your life. One of my friends sent me this this week, amazingly simple home remedies. I got to share a couple of them. You might want to try them, I don't know, here they are. Number one, if you're choking on an ice cube. How do you resolve that? Simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat. Presto the blockage will instantly remove itself. There's a ring of truth to that, it might work. Number two, avoid cutting yourself slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold while you chop. All right, that's good. For high blood pressure suffers. Simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer though. A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button. That works too. There's a ring of truth. This is what I kind of like. Dealing with difficult people. Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you push down the stairs. I'm sorry, that was bad. There's a little bit of logic to all that. You got to be a little bit depraved to appreciate that, but I see that you do. You know, we get it wrong when we try to do life by ourselves and God comes to us and says, your home remedies aren't working. Here's one helm remedy that doesn't work. Work all the time. There's a ring of truth to that. You see, if you and I work all the time, then we will become successful, right? Because the more you work, the more successful you become. And in the process of that, God says, in the fourth commandment, that's not right. That's bad. Rest, you got to learn to rest. And that's what the fourth commandment is all about. We get it messed up. There's work, there's play, and there's rest. And I don't know who said it first, but the quote is great. We worship in America. We worship our work. We work at our play, and we play at our worship. We worship our work. We work at our play, and we play at our worship. And that affects us as Christians in the church. It really does. And so this commandment that teaches us to rest was good for Israel, but it's good for us as well. Mark Harris said this after the second after I taught last week on the Sabbath, he said this, there's an inverse relationship between the timesaving devices that I've purchased and the amount of free time that I truly have. Some of you caught that. I'll say it again. There's an inverse relationship between the time saving devices I've purchased and the amount of time that I truly have. I'll translate that for people like me. You buy all the technology, and you have less time than you had before you bought the technology. So we say, I just wish I had more time. And the logic is, if I had more time, I would get more done and have less stress. No, no. You had more time, you'd have more work to fill it, and you would have the corresponding level of stress to go with it. And then the fourth commandment comes in and says, take a break. Take a break. I command you to take a break. I'll show you how this works. You and time saving devices. I have a laptop at home and log me in some of you have that same program, which means I get my computer here at home. So the other morning I woke up at 4.30 because I'm very spiritual. And I went to my email. I did my emails. I was doing emails at 4.30. If you got one from me, you knew I was up. I felt quite self-righteous about that day because I worked very hard from, let's see, but then I came to the office and I was still here because I had to do everything else I had to do that day. I started earlier, but I still had to do it all. So I was glad when Sunday came, and God said, rest. Let's look at the text. Here it is. Exodus 28 through 11. This is God's holy word. Remember, the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, six days, you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work. Neither you nor your son or daughter nor your manservant or your maidservant nor your animals nor the alien within your gates for in six days. The Lord made the heavens near. The sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Last week, I gave you only one point, and let me review that and then we'll give you two more. One is that the Sabbath was a day, a rest. It was a gift of rest that God gave to the Israelites who had been slaves. They had been slaves, and now God had sovereignly rescued them, delivered them from Egyptian bondage, was bringing them to their own land, their own for any said, all right, now you're not slaves anymore. I give you a day of rest, and that was an incredible thing for them. It was a gift. It was a day of rest from physical labor because slavery has ridiculous demands on the slaves. And sometimes you look at your job and you say they have ridiculous demands on me. What they want me to do, it's crazy. God said to the Israelites, it was slaves. I now command you to rest, and I bet it was difficult. Have you gone on a vacation and you're saying, you know, it's like day one, and you're still kind of antsy and not rested, and uptight. Day two, same thing. Day three, you say, I can't get used to this. Day four, this is good. Day five, I gotta go back to work in a couple of days. I just wish I had a little bit more rest. I've been, I gotta confess, I've been quite self-righteous and angry about the Europeans for taking four to six weeks off a year. I gotta have a massive economy if you do that. Privately, this is what I really believe. I might become a nice person if I had four to six weeks a year. I might even become more spiritual if I had six weeks vacation. What about one day? Well, it's a good start. And that's what God says to the Israelites. Rest. Work hard, rest hard, and because you and I can't slow down, he cars it in stone. Do it. I don't need you performing all the time. I'll hold the universe together for another day. Just take this one off. Let me handle things. And the Israelites rest. It's a gift of rest, a physical rest. Number two, this is new. It's a time for a relationship. The Sabbath for the Israelites was a time for a relationship and particularly it was a time for a relationship with God. We call that worship. And so the Israelites came into the presence of God and worshipped God particularly for the fact that he was the creator of heaven and earth. They took a day, that one day that God rested and modeled it for them. And they said, well, we're going to remember on the Sabbath day that God created the heavens and the earth. Okay, the Latin phrase you got earlier that the choir sang, what was it? Do you remember? Soli, deo, gloria, soli means what? Alone, deo means God, gloria, glory, glory to God alone. On the Sabbath day, the Israelites could sit on front of their tents or their houses and look at creation with new eyes and see that God had made it. Now, let me give you another Latin phrase, ex nihilo. You're going to press your friends, did you know that God created the world ex nihilo? Ex nihilo means out of nothing. So when God created the heavens and the earth, he created all that is. When he created the universe, when he spoke, was it the big bang? I don't know. God could have used that, makes sense. Bam, but who caused the energy, who created it all, and who formed it all. God did out of, and so on the Sabbath day, the Israelites sat around and he said, God created his out of nothing, look at the order, look at the beauty, look at the diversity, we do too. We need to. We need to remember that he created all of this because it's so easy for us to go through life, forgetting that God created one of the biggest problems I think that Americans face today is they don't even ask the questions where did this all come from. On the Sabbath day, this is a day where Christians say, where did this earth come from? How did it get here? And you ask those cosmic questions and you say he created it. It didn't just happen, nothing like this just happens. And so God created it out of nothing. What gives you an eye confidence as we go out into another day of work, another day of living, another day taking care of our kids, another day doing what has to be done, some of you are looking for jobs. What's going to give you confidence is not by just saying I am somebody. It's not by saying I got the degrees I got what it takes. It's by stopping and looking at God and saying he's got what it takes to get me through. I think one of the biggest problems that's I think you know what I think is destroying confidence in America. I think what's destroying the eroding confidence in America, not other people toward us but our confidence level in America is that we have a growing focus on humanity and a decreasing focus on God. We are becoming more anthropocentric and less theocentric and that is causing a weakness and a crisis of confidence. You see how many people are running for president? You get the Democratic and the Republican guys and it's like, gosh, it takes a village. I didn't know it took a village to run for the office for Christ. I can't count that high. It was never good in math and so that's my problem. There's so many you can't count all of these people and both parties are saying I'm your Messiah vote for me and we are saying who's my Messiah out there? It drives me crazy. We're anthropocentric versus theocentric. We're man-centered versus God-centered. Let's talk about global warming, shall we? You want my view, don't you? That's why you came here. I'm going to give to you. We need to care about the environment. I care about the environment. I'm a backpacker. I've grown very fond of seeing pure lakes and high mountains, breathing clean air, drinking clean water. I've become very fond of those things and the Bible says we have to take care of the world. Okay. Let's talk about global warming. Are we causing it? I don't know. But I am reading a book by a secular anthropologist who doesn't know Jesus, doesn't care about Jesus. It's fascinating. He talks about the Viking invasions. I like Vikings. Guys like Vikings. We like them. It talks about when the Vikings began to spread around. You know why the Vikings left Norway and Sweden, those areas up? You know why? Everything was melting. As a result they could grow more crops and they had more food. And then, because they had more food, they had more babies, and then they had less land. And they said, you know, we're going to find some more land. And the Vikings went out and found more land. Iceland, Greenland, England, France, global warming. I know. There's some ice caps that are melting up there. There are. Watch those Norwegians. Be careful about those Swedes. I want you to know. You know, as I read the Bible, it doesn't preclude that there are climate changes. But the Bible does say this. There's a rainbow in the sky to tell us that we're not going to, well God isn't going to destroy the world again by water. Peter says he's going to do it, but he's going to do it with what? Fire. And in any rate, God's in charge. Take care of the world. Absolutely we ought to. We ought to be stewards of this world. But I'm not going to sit around worrying about that. What I do need to do is go out on Sunday and turn off the news and stop listening to those guys for a while, and look up and say he made this and charge and he sustains this. And because God is in charge of this universe, he's big enough. He's good enough to take care of my puny to life. He wants to flood me out of camp. What's the burn me out of camp? Instead he sent a savior. He's in charge, guys. Who is big enough to give you? On Sunday, you and I need to go out there. We need to relax. We need to look at who the God of the universe is. We need to remember that he's got our life in his hands. And then we need to say because he is so good and because he's so big and because he sent a savior, my life's going to be okay. I could give myself to him 100%. That's what gives confidence. I got problems in my life. I got problems in my marriage. I got problems with my kids. God's in charge. We need to remember that on Sunday. I've written, reading Tony Dunge's book, Greg McClellan, loan me his book. Don't ever loan me a book. You won't get it back for a very long time. I finally got it done and Greg's going to get it back today. Tony Dunge, the head coach of the Indianapolis Coats, called Amazing Guy, loves Jesus with all of his heart on the Super Bowl last year. Talks about his spiritual pilgrimage. And he said this in the book. As he talked about his faith in Christ, he said, I had known from young age that I was going to heaven. I know I was going to heaven, but I'd never fully engaged God and let him direct my life moment by moment until I saw those guys on my team doing it. Remember the stealer fans, remember the steal curtain? He watched those guys. They were big. They were mean. They were tough. And they followed Jesus. And he watched their lives. And he said they followed Jesus. He said the concept of putting God first and everything hadn't even entered my life. It wasn't my primary focus. Finally understood. And I started to move from being a casual Christian to a fully committed follower of Jesus Christ. What got him there? He saw it, another man. He saw it on other people's lives. What gives us the ability to become fully committed followers of Jesus Christ by knowing that he's in charge every day in Sabbath. You got to sit back, you got to rest, relax, and remember that he's in charge, drawn near to God and he will draw near to you. The Sabbath is a day to develop your relationship with God. You're here. You're worshiping. And you're developing your relationship with God. It's also a time by the way to develop your relationship with other people. It's a relationship day. It's a time for a relationship where we go to church together. The Jews went to synagogue and temple together. We go to church together. The church worship service is based on the synagogue Jewish process of going and singing praises to God, of hearing Holy Torah read and having some guy call the president explain Holy Torah. We did virtually the same thing that the Jews did in the first century. But it's a time also for relationship as we gather together. There's some scripture and I'm not going to read them all. First Corinthians 14, 12, 10, you can throw, go through those, Kim real quickly. But Sunday is a time. We're not only do we build a relationship with God and worship him, but we use our spiritual gifts with one of them. Some of you are in community groups on Sunday afternoon. Are you breaking the Sabbath? No. It's a good thing to do. It's a time to get ready. It's a time to get relationship. Spend time with other Christians. Spend time with your family. It's a relationship time. Some families love to have everybody in their family over. That's a great time. Extended family. I suggest getting other people to bring the food. You clean the house and invite them over. It's a time with your kids. It's a time to spend time with your kids. You're running and gunning. You're going all week. It's time to slow down. Turn off the news. Now if you can get them to watch a football game with you, that's pretty cool too. But play with them. Now don't tell anybody I said this because in the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says that we're not to do any exercise on Sunday. I took an exception to that. I believe that we ought to and can exercise on Sunday. After all, the Israelites were told to rest because they worked so hard. I think we ought to be told to exercise because we sit so much. I love the definition of a football game. It's millions of people desperately in need of exercise watching 22 men on a field desperately in need of rest. If you work hard, get some rest on Sunday. If you don't get to exercise, get some exercise. That's what I say. It's a time to be together. It's time to be with a family. I don't think you can raise your small kids unless you're messing around, playing, wrestling, doing stuff. Because Deuteronomy 6 says, talk about the truth as you go in, as you sit down, as you stand up. It's perfect guys. We're called parent or kids by doing stuff with them. And in the process, tell them about Jesus. That's great. It's a great method. So I don't think we have to worry about using our time wisely, even to exercise with our kids. You want quality time? Yes, of course you do. You think it's a trick question. Let me ask it again. Do you want quality time with your kids? Yeah. Quality time always comes in the context of quantity time. I sit down and I schedule it. All right, guys, we got 20 minutes for quality time here. It never happens. It never happens. You know what I found? Quality time comes when you're with each other for a long period of time. And all of a sudden, everybody's getting along. Everybody, and all of a sudden, your kids are actually listening to you. You say something encouraging or profound and they go, whoa. Are you ever saying, hey, we're having a great time. Quality time always comes in the context of quantity time. Son is your day. Take it. Use it. All pro dad, did you know that 2% of NFL fans, rabbit to NFL football fans, only 2% ever go to a live football game. You can be a crazy fan and never go into a stadium. You cannot be crazy committed to your family and not spend time with them. Can't do it. Norm Miller gave me this picture of a back of a t-shirt. Jesus said, go fishing. He said, nothing about fixing the sink, mowing the lawn, walking the dog, painting the trim, washing the car, cleaning the garage, or weeding the garden. Amen. It's good. I love that. You know what Sunday is? Sunday is a great day to go fishing for fish or pagans. You know why we don't have a Sunday evening service, never had in 20 years, won't? Because we want you free to spend time with pagans, whom you never see because you're like me, you're leaving early, you're coming back late, and when you come into your driveway, you click your garage door opener and you go in and didn't life good. You don't even have to talk to your neighbors as they go to hell. Sunday is a great day to connect with your pagan friends. At least let them know that you're human and not a two-headed monster like they think a lot of us Christians are. Have them over. It's a great day. Sunday is a great day for growing spiritually. Mike Yakonelli in his book, Messy Spirituality, said this, what keeps many of us from growing spiritually is not sin but speed. We live life in the fast lane because we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increase speed limits. Spiritual growth is not running faster as in more meetings, more Bible studies, more prayer meetings. Spiritual growth happens when we slow down our activity. If we want to meet Jesus, we cannot do it on the run. If we want to stay on the road of faith, we have to hit the brakes, pull over to our rest area and stop. Christianity is not about inviting Jesus to speed through life with us. It's about noticing Jesus sitting at the rest stop while the church earnestly warns Christians to watch out for the devil, the devil sitting in the congregation encourage everyone to keep busy doing good things. Jesus came to forgive us all our sins, including the sin of busyness. The problem with growth in the modern church is not the slowness of growth but the rushing of growth. Jesus came to give us rest. Why I think he's right. The Sabbath is a gift of rest for physical labor. It's a time for a relationship with God and other people read that book. It's also a sign of liberation. I love this. The Sabbath for the Jews was a sign of liberation every Sabbath day. When they came out, got up and stretched and he said, honey, put the coffee on. He said, hey, you know what? I don't have to go to work today. Why do I not have to go to work today? Because I'm not a slave anymore. This is a day of liberation. In their Jewish togas or whatever they were, they danced around the day of liberation. I'm free. Sabbath was a sign of the covenant that the Israelites had been saved by grace. It was a day of liberation. Some of you notice I don't have my wedding ring on and you're wondering why Karen and I are not having problems. She lost her wedding ring while she was working around the property here. It's probably in the dumpster. Either there's a very, very well paid dumpster dumper guy or it's in landfill. So I took my ring and we were going to get her ring made kind of like mine. So I haven't had it on for days. I feel naked. I know I'm not. I feel naked because because this ring has always been a sign of the covenant that Karen and I have in our marriage relationship. And so I'm on a plane traveling and I feel like I don't have the sign of the covenant. And I just don't feel right. Sabbath is a sign of the covenant. Oh, but wait a minute. Sunday was co-opted by Christians. Is there a relationship between the Sabbath of the Jews and the Sunday of Christians? Absolutely because the Christians, the early church began to say, hey, this is our day of liberation. It is the day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the day when we say we have been liberated from our sins. We've been forgiven. It was an AD 321 when Constantine commanded a day of rest for the Roman Empire. Now, you didn't have to cease all your labor and do all yours. You wouldn't go to jail. But he said it's for everybody for pagans, for Christians, and then it won the world. And just put up those names. These are names that you must know that did a key was the early church manual on how to church worship ought to take place. Ignatius, Justin Martin, Dionysius, Tertullian, the Council of Leo to see it, doesn't that just speak to your heart? No, but the early church universally said we're worshiping on Sunday. While the Sabbath one thinker said was what looked ahead, the Sunday is what fulfills the true meaning of liberation. And so we're a part of that too. Romans 425 said that Jesus was delivered over because of our sins. It was raised because of our justification. In other words, the resurrection is a day when Jesus did pay for all of our sins when we see that the Father said, okay, you come alive from the dead because I've accepted your sacrifice. So Sunday was a day when the church said the resurrection is proof that I'm forgiven. Sunday when you come here is a day that you're forgiven. It's not a day to come here and go all over. Oh, God is not pleased with me. God hates me. God, I got to confess it in church. I got to make sure I get some grace from Pete. Some Sundays, that didn't go to happen. For me. It's not, it's a day where you come and you remember that there's nothing more to give to God. There's no more performance you have to give to God if you put your faith in Jesus Christ. He's happy with you. He's pleased with you. It's a day of liberation. Soly, what is that again? Soly, day of glory? You know, there are other solace aren't there. At the time of the Reformation and down through the history of the church, the church also said, hey, what about solar, what about solar fey day by faith alone? You see, we're here to glorify God, but because it's all about solar. It was all by grace. Liberation, you've been saved by grace through faith. Sunday's a day to remember that. So I got to tell you this too, Revelation 21. Revelation 21 tells us that the day of rest and liberation on Sunday also points ahead to the day of eternal rest. So this day is a day when you come here, you say, I got to hear that gospel again because that gospel means I'm forgiven forever. Because of Jesus and the good stuff is coming. Internally, there will be rest in heaven, sitting around, bored, no, new heaven, new earth. I'm going to be busier than I am now, but in all the stuff I want to do, some people need to rest. We all do. We need to look ahead. It's all about grace. I got this from a friend sent this to me. It's supposedly true. It's in the police log supposedly in Sarasota, Florida. I love it because an elderly Florida woman goes to the shopping, gets her shopping cart, comes out of the grocery store and comes over to her car and sees four guys trying to try to hijack it. They've already climbed inside the car. She drops her groceries. She picks up out of her bag, this huge handgun points it at. She says, I've got a gun, I know how to use it, the guy scatter. So she takes her keys out, she's kind of shaking, she picks up her groceries, gets in the ignition, turns it, won't turn on. And she gets out, looks around, four cars up, it's her car. Looks exactly like it. And so she takes her groceries, puts it in her car and drives down to the police station, tells the sergeant on, did he what was going on and he's laughing. He can't stop laughing. He points down to the other end of the counter where there were four pale men reporting a carjacking by a mad elderly woman. And no charges were filed. Moral of the story, what they said, the moral of the story is, if you're going to have a senior moment, make it memorable. I like that. I think that's one lady that needs some rest, frankly. I find that when I'm not rested, that's when I make my mistakes. That's when I do stupid things. That's when anxiety just spreads through my body, where I begin the process of burning out and God says, I don't want you to burn out, want you to rest up. Take it. See, when we go too fast, we make mistakes. Like this seminar I did in North Georgia this weekend. Guess who forgot to bring the CD disc of the whole presentation? Oh, I brought my laptop, but I didn't have the PowerPoint. God showed up, said, go fishing. Oh boy, did I want to. You go too fast. Take a rest. Here it is. Don't get neurotic about Sunday. Okay, Sabbath has been replaced by Sunday. I believe that, but don't get neurotic about it because don't forget that grace still exists. Some of you already did your emails this morning and you're feeling quite guilty. Good. We'll still accept your offering for this morning and don't get neurotic about this. Work hard during the week. Rest hard one week. Sunday is a good day to do that. It's the best day to do that. If you absolutely have to work on Sunday, you have to work on Sunday. Find a day of rest. Take it. Do it. Build your relationship with the Lord and with other people. Trust God for His day. Relax. And if you don't have any rest, receive Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord. That's what you need more than anything else. Don't get paranoid. Just relax. Take the gift. You take it to heart and pray for me and I will too. Father, thank you. For giving us a day of liberation, the time for relationship and a day of physical rest. Thank you for all that you've given to us because of Jesus. We have far more than we even know. Whisper to us today as we take a walk with you as we enjoy our family. Give us your truth. Give us your freedom and send us out for another week as we follow you. And we will be very careful to give you the honor and the glory as we pray. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord as we pray alone in His name. Willow Creek Church is associated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.willowcreekchurch.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.