Discovering The Spirit Of Sabbath Rest

Hello my friends,

Mark Gladman also known as Brother Frederick James here and today we're going to have a bit of a conversation about Sabbath.

Now Sabbath is a little bit controversial in terms of a topic and there's a lot of reasons for this but let me share two right from the get-go that end up coming together being kind of circular.

So on one hand the idea of Sabbath is antithetical to anything that our modern world seems to be shooting for.

We live in a world where the direction is forward and up and bigger and better and so on and what we find then is that the concept of Sabbath pushes against these ideas and because it pushes against those ideas it tends to not be treated in a very positive light.

Let me give you an example.

In your country if you listen to a lot of announcements of your government they'll often talk about the economy as being very important and for the economy to be beneficial to a country they will tell you that economy has to grow and for the economy to grow the economy needs to have people in it who are both producing and selling on the one hand and on the other hand people who are buying and consuming those things that are being produced and sold.

So in order to buy those things though that are being produced and sold the buyers and the consumers need to work more to make money to spend on those things that are being produced and sold.

Alright,

You got that so far?

Okay,

Now for all that to happen we need us to keep going.

The idea of stopping,

Of ceasing,

Of being still,

Of having a time of rest,

All of these ideas which are all related to Sabbath rub against this growth that our world wants us to participate in in order to grow our economies.

So when you start talking about stopping for Sabbath rest or the importance of Sabbath and the importance of being still and stopping and not producing and so on you're really beginning to push against a fundamental part of the system that pretty much rules the world or at least the Western world.

So you can see why on the one hand Sabbath may not be a very popular idea and that's just one of them.

Now on the other hand what we have is a world that's participating in this system of producing and selling on the one hand and buying and consuming on the other hand and because this world is participating actively in this they're finding themselves needing to go faster and faster and faster just to keep up.

People are running fast all the time just to keep up in this world that doesn't seem to be slowing down and it's very likely that if you're listening to this audio this describes you at least some of the time and I would bet that you're getting really really tired and if you're getting really really tired then the chances are that you would really like to embrace this idea of Sabbath right because you know deep down that if you don't stop you're just going to keep being tired you're going to possibly get exhausted and you know this because you've already seen it happen to people around you and so while on one level we're part of a society that doesn't want us or doesn't think that it doesn't want us to it doesn't think it can stop on another level the message of Sabbath resonates deep down in our very being because we know that stop is what we have to do at some point to bring health and balance back into our lives and so in sharing this I understand the idea of Sabbath of ceasing of resting of being still will be difficult for us to embrace simply out of the fact that we live in this world that's making us go faster and people and possibly even a deep inner voice within yourself is pushing against the idea when we bring it up and even when we finally accept the need to stop at the same time we're wondering well can we should we will it hurt me in some way like in my finances or my prospects or my business or my family and so on and so on now if you're listening to this I assume that you're at least open to the idea of rest peace stillness ceasing stopping all of the words that we're using to sum up this idea of Sabbath so what I want to do in this audio is to briefly touch on a few ideas that we find in scripture to help us understand both a fuller meaning and purpose to Sabbath when we think of Sabbath I think most of us just think of a day off and I think this is why we find it so difficult to enter into the spirit of what true Sabbath rest is so we're going to start in Exodus and then we're going to move to Genesis and then we're going to briefly consider five words in the Hebrew Scriptures that are often a Saudi associated with Sabbath and then we're going to go back to Exodus to finish and what I hope is that you begin to get a sense of what good Sabbath rest looks like now right up front I'm going to say what I won't be doing is telling you how to do Sabbath and here's why my take is that once you get the essence of what it means to observe a Sabbath assisted by a deeper understanding of these words and these ideas you begin to bring about the spirit of these words the spirit of this Sabbath type of rest in your life in ways that suit you and your situation best I mean I could easily tell you how I go about taking my time to stop to cease to rest be still to find peace and so on but but that's me that's my personality my style my likes my location my family situation the things I enjoy and find peace and rest doing you I would guess already have things that will work for you or you have access to doing them things that suit who you are and where you live in the situation that you have in life and I mean a very simple example of this I have no kids at home you may have three so what you need to do and when you need to do it to observe this Sabbath rest in your life in your scenario will look very very different to mine right off the mark so what I'm doing here is giving you some concepts some ideas some things to think about and chew on and there's going to be a lot in this you're going to want to probably come back and take chunks of it and take time to meditate and reflect on it so take some time to listen to the essence in these concepts and ideas the spirit of them the heart of not only what it would take to do these things but also and maybe more importantly what place they might have and the place that they might take you to and what it would look like if you were to put these concepts and the spirit of Sabbath that comes from these things into your life and once you have a grasp on this essence this spirit of what Sabbath is and what God wants for Sabbath to do for you and in you and in those around you I think then the how for you will become clearer as you contemplate that so without further ado God be with us let's get started okay so in discussing Sabbath I'm going to start in Exodus and I'm starting here because it's in Exodus that we read about God giving the Ten Commandments and included Sabbath keeping as the fourth commandment in Exodus 20 we read these words and I quote from Exodus 20 verses 9 and 11 remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them but rested the seventh day therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it now notice that in giving the commandment for Sabbath God justifies its inclusion with a reference to the creation account in Genesis so let's just go back there for a moment now it may be worth giving Genesis chapter 1 and then the beginning of Genesis chapter 2 a read through later if you haven't for a while as you do there's a few things to note that you may not have noticed before first of all the phrase at the end of each day of creation is and it was evening and it was morning not as we commonly say morning and evening now there's no reference to God resting in those passages as the account moves through the days of creation but in the course of our working day and our working week we do most people start the day by waking up in the morning unless you're a shift worker you just might be a bit different for you but most of us wake up in the morning and then we go to work in the morning and then we end the day by coming home in the evening and then we rest but here we see evening spoken of first followed by the morning the refrain is it was evening and that it was morning if we followed this course think about this each new day begins with rest and then work begins out of that rest as opposed to rest coming at the end of our time of work it's interesting thought isn't it so if you think about this you begin to see how important rest is maybe just maybe rest should come first and we think of ourselves as working out of our rest not working so that we can rest now also repeated at the end of each day is the words and it was good now the Hebrew word used for good all the way through Genesis 1 is toob t o w b is the English spelling of it it literally means beautiful each day God looked at what God had made and saw its beauty took took delight in the work before moving into that time of rest and there's something important here about how we enter our time of rest reflecting and looking for the good in the day that has passed and if you read the poem carefully you'll also notice God finishes twice I read from Genesis 1 31 through to the first verse of chapter 2 it says God saw everything that God had made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude right so it says there the heavens and the earth were finished but then in Genesis 2 verse 2 it says and on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done what finished twice how well the full of the fullness of that verse 2 says on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done there's a midrash from an ancient rabbi called rabbi Rashi that when God concluded work on the sixth day creation was not yet complete that what remained to be made was rests the word that's used there is manuha and we'll talk about that word in a little bit so in essence the creation poem teaches us that it's not the sixth day of creation the day that humans were created that's the climax of God's week but it's actually the creation of Sabbath that's the climax and when you think about these things it changes everything we begin with rest and then enter the morning to commence work and then the climax isn't the work being completed the climax is seeing that it is good and entering into that rest right right I mean there's isn't there so much in this so far I know when I was putting this together my head was spinning whoo okay so this is why I'm saying you may have to come back and listen to some of these bits again and maybe take some notes and chew on it but yeah that's the backdrop we're going to start with so there's our backdrop and with that is the backdrop now I just want to have a quick look at five words that are used in conjunction with Sabbath that we find in the Hebrew Scriptures okay so the first word they're going to be talking about is Shabbat and that means cease by the way if I'm mispronouncing these words my apologies to all of my Jewish friends out there I'm doing my very best with the tools that I had to make sure I got the pronunciations right so the first word Shabbat cease now let's face it we're not good at ceasing as we've seen there's always something to do modern technology means we have the means to do anything from just about anywhere we're so preoccupied with being occupied which means that when we don't we often tend to feel guilty now in terms of the doing generally there's nothing wrong with that per se but we get into all kinds of trouble if we never stop statistics show that more and more people are working at their jobs outside of work hours now and while working from home has been a wonderful thing for some people it's really blurred the lines the number of people who check and respond to work emails while they're on holiday is increasing all the time we have the tendency to move from one thing to the next thing quickly and often we do something while we're moving transitioning from one thing to the next thing and when something comes to a completion we immediately start looking for the next thing to do sometimes we start looking for the next thing to do before we're even done doing the first thing and sometimes we even start the next thing that we're going to do before we finish the first thing and then we end up multitasking which we think is more efficient but researchers time and time again have told us and shown us that it's really not but this is exactly what God did not do think about that creation poem again notice that God does one thing at a time and God completed that one thing before God starts the next one we see this in the refrain and it was evening and it was morning a period of time and age if you will of time that was dedicated to that one particular aspect of creation and then also notice that straight out of creating the universe and everything in it God does something amazing when this task is finished on the seventh day seven being the number of completion in Judaism God Shabbat that is God ceases God stops now let that sink in for a moment this God ceases from work God does here all right not because God was tired no no no and not because God was sick of working on this creation project thing why then because what God had made was enough listen carefully to that word I'm going to say it again enough my friend hear me what you have done to this point is enough this God knows that it is right to celebrate what has been achieved this God knows that daily creating is not necessary or needed it's okay to stop and rest and enjoy what has been done notice at the end of the sixth day God says it is very good every other day it was good and then on the sixth day it is very good and on the seventh day God says what we've done to this point it's enough we're going to stop and we're going to enjoy what we have created we're in a world expecting seven day a week creation in order to make seven day a week consumption possible we can feel guilty ceasing we can feel anxious wondering whether we're going to go broke or miss out on something we can feel pressure to produce more that what we have done is simply not enough but God commanded Israel to do this why because it's necessary it's part of an ordained cycle so my friend be guilt-free you will not miss out and you most certainly are enough what you have done is good now cease stop Shabbat okay second word the second word is Selah S e l a h now selah in our media saturated informationally driven world soundbites key right and information reigns supreme with so much information to consume very little time is given to allowing the information consumed to actually be absorbed in a way that does us any good now those in the know the scholars who've been studying this stuff for eons or many many years aren't exactly sure what selah really means but for the most part it's thought to be a term for the reader or singer or player of the Psalms in which they appear it appears a little bit outside the Psalms too but you've probably seen this at the end of some of the parts of the Psalms it'll be often in italics just as selah now in this regard it's thought to be some kind of rest or pause in the singing or the music some think that the idea is that the singing stops and a musical interlude interlude plays or there's silence others think that everything stops at this point but why well some of those scholars think that the term might mean stop and listen the idea is that the singers would stop for a musical interlude to play like we just mentioned but keep in mind that many of the Psalms particularly those that include this term selah are liturgical Psalms that means that their purpose was to be sung or recited in corporate gatherings of worship many of these Psalms are hymns or liturgy which is sung or spoken when the people are gathered to worship God so as people have contemplated and pursued this idea of what the selah appearing in these Psalms is about there's a further suggestion that at the point in the Psalm where selah is marked the singer or singers or congregation whoever was singing the part at that time would stop and the space that was provided as the music continued or in the silence everybody was encouraged to contemplate reflect and ruminate on the words that had just been said or sung as the instruments played a musical interlude of sorts or as we mentioned there was silence so stop and listen not to what's going on not to the music or to the silence but to listen to what was just said you know chew on these ideas in your head how beautiful an idea is that and one worth thinking about in terms of what we do in our time of Sabbath rest I mean how much information do we consume every week not just the things that we consume like books and newspapers and the news and all of our online consumption and so on but add to all of that the things that get trust before us like ads and sound bites and emails and billboards and so on some of that is not important of course but some of that is I mean in all that we've got our reading of scripture or the books that we're you know trying to learn from and the teaching or articles that we're reading to grow ourselves in our hearts so all of those things that are important to us how much time do we give to allowing that information to sink down deep into our hearts and souls I mean I'm sure there are many churches that might already practice this idea but how many don't give time of silent reflection on the reading so that they have some space to absorb the words they've just heard and I mean gosh maybe in some churches they could throw in throw the sermon out and just use that time in silence to let the scripture sink deep into us in any case I'm sure you can see what a wonderful idea it would be to take time to stop and to listen I mean how much would this radical practice stop us from making silly statements or entering useless arguments during our conversations with people if we were to stop and listen before we opened our mouths to speak I mean how would your relationship with your partner or your children be if we took to the discipline of seh lah when they wanted to tell us something or how often because of the noise of information that comes our way all the time do we find ourselves without space and time to listen deeply for the voice of God in our situation or even to our own souls to ask ourselves the question so how are you and in the silence let our hearts take stock and speak up about their condition and give space for that our hearts to speak and then be there to listen I'm sure there's many other cases and situations that you can think of too we could all do well to stop and listen to say lah to give intentional time to slow down and allow the information we have all around us that we are consuming some time to absorb into our lives and become a part of us and also to see which information we should let go of because we can see that it's not going to be healthy for us to let it into ourselves in our time of Sabbath ceasing some of that could and should probably be given time to say lah to stopping to listen to each other to God and to our own hearts oh okay let's keep going here the next word is manuha this is the one that I referred to a little bit earlier and manuha I love saying it it means rest now let me ask you what good can come out of chaos manuha for me has become a really important word its root is when Noah's name came from and it's the word used in the flood story where the ark comes to rest on the mountain after the flood Noah's story is a movement from chaos to rest it starts with a flurry of activity to make a boat to survive the flood of all floods and it ends with finding a place of rest and contemplation at what has happened how you've grown where you've come from and how far you've come this is a big thing for me the move of God is always from chaos to rest this is the word manuha that we find in Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd I shall not be in want God makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters that word that most English translations have as still waters the Hebrew there is manuha waters so while the water itself is likely still and at rest the Psalmist is also speaking of a restful place which is what manuha literally means a place where one can repose to lay down and rest after a time of turmoil where a pause can be taken manuha is the essence of Sabbath which begins with ceasing Shabbat and then moves into a time of manuha rest in which we find repose and a space in which we can reflect on and find some understanding or comprehension of what has happened manuha carries this essence in it of contentedness now modern world when we think of gratitude we think of naming a few things that we can be grateful for you see people do this around tables or in prayer circles at church or whatever and that's it's a good thing but honestly I think naming is only the start of gratitude manuha invites us not just to name what we're grateful for but to stop and rest in those things and allow that gratitude to move deep down into our hearts and take root this is especially true if the rest that you are in is rest that has come at the end of chaos to take time to let that gratitude move deep within is an important part of coming fully into an attitude and posture of true rest in that space you can look at the journey you have come on through the chaos and into the rest and then in that awareness that gratitude has time to reach down within us in such a way as to bring about not just a fullness of gratitude and rest but also to allow the wisdom we learned within the turmoil as we came out of it to take up residence within us and you'll notice in the psalm that the green pastures and restful waters are wherever God the shepherd in the analogy is we've come through the valley of death by following the shepherd who brings us to the green pastures and the new hot waters so we can repose and lay down and find rest and we can dwell on the journey peacefully because the shepherd is there with us and will keep us safe as we rest and find restoration for our souls and yes as we reflect it's likely that sometimes there are parts of the journey out of chaos you have been on that cause you anger and tears and pain and hurt no no that in that space the shepherd will simply sit with you and hold you until healing comes in a culture that tends to promote and reward anything but rest may we find the courage to set ourselves to intentional rest and the new car within which you find both gratitude and peace who okay how you doing let's let's keep pushing on here Rafa the Rafa is probably the most difficult word but it's also my favorite Rafa is translated still in most English translations of the Bible that's the word that's used in Psalm 46 10 be still and know that I am God but its meaning goes way way deeper now while the essence of the word is to be still or even relax or go limp there's a sense in the word of sinking or falling and even more so doing so sinking or falling helplessly now think about it when the crap's hitting the fan our tendency often is to fight and hold on for all our strength but sometimes sometimes our strength doesn't cut it the only way to find peace is to stop to let go and allow ourselves to humbly fall into the hands of God I understand that this is a huge task it seems so unnatural you know for all the let go and let God bumper stickers that are out there there's someone gripping to the edge of a hole holding on for their dear life with no idea how far they might fall if they let go it comes a point though when you realize that your strength is never going to get you out your strength alone will never pull you up that sometimes the answer is to abandon the climb in your own strength to fall limp to let go and let God's strength be made perfect in our weakness as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12 let God's strength lift you above the thing you are holding on to so much who now there's a lot in that one that wasn't very long I know but I think for some of us there's a lot in there that we can really sit there and reflect on okay so one more Shalom now generally non-Jews tend to think of Shalom as being equated with peace it doesn't take much research to show you that such a translation is far from adequate like all of the words we've looked at here Shalom goes way deeper than just peace the root of the word Shalom actually means wholeness and this wholeness is about coming to terms with opposing opposites a peace that comes from realizing that all of our opposing energies are linked as part of a single whole Rabbi David Zaslow teaches the true Shalom and I'll quote him here is the most radical union of opposites imaginable Shalom he says brings the binary mind together Shalom brings together two sides of a view so that people will listen deeply to the other side it is the people you do not agree with who have the greatest gift for you he says the gift of the potential for wholeness sit with that one for a while that's pretty heavy right there however as you can tell just from thinking about that that wholeness doesn't come without wrestling and hard work coming to terms with what we've made to be an other whether it's a person or something else isn't necessarily a walk in the park but it's work that we have to do Rabbi Zaslow points out that this work requires and I quote now this next bit is an entire quote this is what he says it requires dialogue tough dialogue heart-wrenching dialogue gentle dialogue but always dialogue speech that goes back and forth with each side constantly challenging refining and purifying the other until we recognize that the other is none other than a reflection of our own selves end quote in Judges chapter 6 God appears to Gideon and says to Gideon Shalom do not be afraid you are not going to die this is a beautiful verse on which to meditate to understand the balance and wholeness that Shalom calls us to you can imagine Gideon both comforted by the fact that God has appeared to him and yet completely freaked out that God has appeared to him Shalom God tells him find the balance between these two tensions Gideon that in that balance you'll have peace yes I'm here before you but you're not going to die likewise in Proverbs 3 we're told that the ways of wisdom are pleasant ways and all her paths are Shalom this is why wisdom is such an important virtue it's far too easy to get caught up in favoring one of the two sides of a situation wisdom requires us to contemplate both sides carefully note what both offer feel that tension and bring it into balance it is then that we find the wholeness that is true Shalom a bird can't fly with only the left wing or the right wing it needs both wings in order to soar coming to terms with the tension and embracing that wholeness is what brings us to that place of peace true Shalom is an inward sense of that wholeness that leads us to a place of inner tranquility this takes both courage and patience but friend the work is worth it now I started with Shabbat and I concluded with Shalom on purpose because these two are the two words we often hear when our Jewish friends enter Sabbath they say Shabbat Shalom in essence when we hear Shabbat Shalom we're literally hearing cease and find wholeness rest and find balance stop and find peace Shabbat Selah Menuhah Rafah Shalom five words that speak to us of the essence of what it means to embrace Sabbath rest in our lives and there's so much more that we could still talk about in terms of Sabbath we haven't talked about the ecological and sustainability issues to do with Sabbath we really didn't get into the justice issues to do with Sabbath to do with making sure that other people are treated right because of the way that you observe Sabbath and because of the spirit of Sabbath I mean there is just so much to this about the way we treat others and the way we treat the earth and creation that are all connected to this idea of Sabbath it is just such a big big thing which is why I think it's so important and why I can see you know this becoming more and more prominent in our world today before we finish we're just going to go back to Exodus one last time when God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel they'd just come out of over a hundred years of living in Egypt as slaves with discrimination that had begun and grew from about a hundred years before that so altogether 200 years it's about eight generations living in a world of discrimination and then slavery the latter four generations of which grew up living in and knowing nothing else except the system where their people were slaves a system in which they'd been told that they had to provide more a system in which they'd because their masters kept changing the expectations they didn't know where they stood a system in which the god of the system had Egyptians Egyptians considered to be the Pharaoh approved of this slavish work ethic and the system of oppression for some people and this is the only system the latter generations knew and it's these people that God is giving the commandments to in the desert on their way to Canaan by the way is that system sound a little bit familiar to you so with that backdrop after living in a system where your grandparents and your parents and then you and then your children were continually in a place of having to produce of having those production levels consistently lifted of an expectation that you will literally do or you will die think about what a commandment that states you will stop for one full day in the week and do nothing in this new world think about what that says to you consider the relief consider the feeling of a white that would be lifted from your shoulders to learn that from now on you don't have to leave that way anymore it's okay to stop you have done enough then think about this in Exodus chapter 16 God provides manifest with the Israelites to eat manna by the way literally means what is it every morning when the dew was gone thin flakes like frost were on the ground which was like apparently white coriander seed and tasted like wafers with honey or so we're told so the deal was that they were to go out and collect this manna each morning just enough for each person in their household once the Sun grew hot any manna that remained on the ground melted away if they took more than they needed and tried to save it by the morning it was for maggots and it's meld right so during that first week of manner provision though in which the people are getting into the groove of going out and getting the manna and learning that if they try and gather more than they need and save the extra it's going to go off God tells them through Moses that and I quote from verse 23 of Exodus 16 tomorrow is to be a day of rest a holy Sabbath to the Lord so bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil save whatever is left and keep it until the morning see that so on the sixth day of the week they collected twice as much and on the seventh day of the week the portion that they'd saved over hasn't gone smelly and maggoty because the Sabbath is a day of rest there's no going out to collect manna yeah so God lets them take extra just before Sabbath and doesn't let it go off so they're still gonna have something to eat on the day of rest now remember that these were the people who'd grown up among discrimination and slavery people who likely lived most of their days with only just enough or even barely enough or for some simply not enough and now here they are in the desert and God is going to literally drop bread from heaven and all they have to do is pick it up but after living with barely enough what's your inclination is to take more and save it isn't it because tomorrow you have no idea where your next meal is going to come from but there's two levels here on the one level you have the just take what you need per person level but then one day a week you trust that what you have gathered will be enough and you can imagine that first no manna Sabbath day in Exodus 16 verse 27 where it says nevertheless some people went out on the seventh day to gather it and they found none I don't think they were being greedy they were simply playing the same survival game that they'd been playing in their family for generations the same survival game that they had watched their parents grandparents and maybe even their great-grandparents play and they played it because they didn't know if tomorrow they would have enough so consider what it's like when they finally get it and I realize that what God is saying to them is this even when you rest you will have enough because you are enough did you get that you have done enough you have enough you are enough you don't need to go out and buy that thing today you are enough yes you might miss out on it because it may not be there tomorrow but stop and look at what you do have you have enough no you don't need to produce anything today and you should not feel guilty for not producing anything today because you have done enough who Sabbath isn't about a day off it's about freedom rest peace and justice it's about finding these things because in the midst of moving into Sabbath rest you learn that it's all about enough boy Shabbat the new ha Rafa Salah and Shalom what might Sabbath rest look like for you what is the spirit of Sabbath calling you to in your own life please allow me to pray for you as we finish up my friend may you know you have done enough you have enough you are enough May the God who created Sabbath rest bring you peace freedom justice and restoration may you as you rest in God and with God know that you are enough and may grace peace and love be with you this day and always.

Amen.

Feel free to reach out here on Instagram at MonckinDocs wherever you can find me I'm very happy to answer your questions hear your stories and just know that my heart and hope is that you will begin to live into the spirit of Sabbath and the spirit of Sabbath will slowly but surely find a fullness of place in your life much love my friends Shabbat Shalom goodbye for now peace be with you.