10 Keys To Successful Living
4 - Take Time Out
Ex 20.8-11

What was the best holiday you ever had? I know for some people a holiday means a trip up north. For others it means going to Florida, or a Caribbean cruise. Some of us can’t afford either of those and have to do the best we can with the resources we have.

One of the best holidays I ever had was when we were working in Pakistan. The situation had gotten pretty hectic and we decided we needed to get out of the country for a break, so we went to Malaysia. After travelling around the country a bit, we ended up spending about five days on an island called Perhentian Kecil. There was no electricity. There was very little in the way of amenities; a couple of small stores, a few restaurants, a dive shop, and some accommodations that were basically huts by the beach. (For those of you who remember the story of me almost sitting on a scorpion on the toilet seat – that was at Perhentian Kecil).

Even with the almost scorpion story, those five days stand out in my memory as one of the best holidays I ever had. Because I just stopped! Often, when I go on vacation, I’m running around as fast as when I’m working. The family love to make fun of how I get off a train or bus and go racing off into the distance to find a hotel or other place to stay. But at Perhentian Kecil, I just stopped.

That’s actually what the name means. Perhentian Kecil means “little stopping place.” The neighbouring island, Perhentian Besar, means “big stopping place.”

This morning we’re going to talk about stopping times and stopping places.

This is the fourth message in a series called “10 Keys to Successful Living.” We’ve been working our way through the Ten Commandments, and we’re looking at them, not as heavy rules laid down by God, but as his instructions for living well. We started with “Be Clear On Who’s In Charge” and we talked about how God says we need to be clear about who or what is at the centre of our lives. Then we had “Don’t Chase Shadows” and we talked about some of the things that we can put in that place instead of God. The Bible calls them “idols.” Then, last weeks key was “Mind Your Tongue” and we talked about how we carry God’s name and how we can bring honour or dishonour to his name by our words or actions.

This week’s key is “Take Time Out” and we’re looking at the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ 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 maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, 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.”

Our word “Sabbath” comes straight from the Hebrew word “shabat,” and “shabat” means… “stop.” When I got back to Malaysian mainland I suddenly noticed that the word “perhentian” was everywhere. That’s because it’s what they have on bus-stop signs in Malaysia. The Malay word “perhentian” isn’t just the name of an island, it means “stopping place.” And the Hebrew word “shabat” isn’t just the name of the seventh day of the week, it means “stop.” It became a deeply religious word, but we have to realise that, at its core, Sabbath is about stopping.

So let’s try putting “stopping time” in the commandment instead of “Sabbath.”

“Remember the stopping time by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a stopping time to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the stopping time and made it holy.”

Why take time out?

Why stop? Why not just keep on going? I mean, don’t they say that time is money? Why should you take time out? It’ll only put you a day behind.

To stay in harmony with creation

The Bible gives three reasons to take time out; one of them is here in Ex 20. One is in Deut 5, where the Ten Commandments are restated. And the third is in Mark 2.27. Let’s take the Exodus 20 reason first.

¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the stopping day and made it holy.

So, God took a break on the seventh day. What’s that got to do with me? 

The creation story tells us that there is a rhythm in creation; work and rest, work and rest, work and rest. God stamped that rhythm on the world when he made it. This time last year we were studying in Proverbs and talking about how God made creation in a particular way. You can work with the grain of creation, or you can work against it. If you work against it you’ll get slivers. This rhythm of work and rest, work and rest, is part of working with the grain of creation.

In his book “The Rest of God” Mark Buchanan says, “The root idea of Sabbath is simple as rain falling, basic as breathing. It’s that all living things – and many nonliving things too – thrive only by an ample measure of stillness. A bird flying, never nesting, is soon plummeting. Grass trampled, day after day, scalps down to the hard bone of earth…God stitched into the nature of things an inviolable need to be left alone now and then.”

Taking a day to rest also helps us see ourselves in a proper perspective. How many times have you heard it said that humanity is the high point of creation? We are the pinnacle of all God did when he created the heavens and the earth.

Is that so? Take a look at this slide…

So, if we ignore the chapter break, which isn’t in the original (it was added much, much later to help us find things in the Bible) humanity isn’t the pinnacle of creation – Sabbath is!

The final picture of the creation story isn’t humankind filling the earth and subduing it, building houses, raising cattle, growing vegetables. The final picture of creation is God at rest, enjoying his creation (including us) and blessing that time and calling it holy.

The whole reason there is a creation is for God to be able to enjoy what he has made and for us to enjoy our relationship with our creator. That’s what Sabbath is about. The first five days of creation he described as “good.” The sixth day – our day if you like – he called “very good.” But the Sabbath day (the stopping day) he blessed and called “holy,” set apart, different from the rest, a time to reset our priorities and regain perspective on our lives and our place in creation.

To remember you’re a human being

The second reason the Bible gives for taking time out is in Deuteronomy 5.15, “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” 

They had been slaves in Egypt. A slave is the possession of his or her master. In law, they don’t even own their own bodies, never mind their time. They are at their master’s beck and call 24/7. Each day of hard grinding toil was just like the day before, and the day after. No chance of change, no way out… until “the LORD [their] God brought [them] out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”

Suddenly these people, who had been defined purely by their labour, who had been valued only for what their muscles could accomplish, suddenly, they have a new status. Now they are no longer slaves. Now they’re free! And one mark of their freedom is that they stop working for one day every week.

The Israelites in Egypt were slaves, defined by their work. We’re not slaves, but most of us are still defined by our work. What’s one of the first questions you ask when you meet someone new? “So, what do you do?” There’s this sense that if I know what you do, then I know what and who you are.

Let me tell you, as a pastor that’s a real pain. Few things are quite such a conversation killer as “So, what do you do?” “Oh, I’m a pastor.” [long pause] “Nice weather we’re having…” I can see them filing me away in their mind in a neat little box marked “pastor, be careful what you say to him.”

Work is God-given and good – after all it was written right into God’s commands on the sixth day of creation – but it’s also broken. Sweat and frustration are part of sin’s mark on the world. We all hate our work at times and dream about escape. We’d like to leave behind the drudgery of responsibility, but still have all the money, time, and freedom we want. God’s surprising answer is to give us rest right in the middle of our work and distress. He invites us to come to Him for rest, and the Sabbath is His clear call and means of finding that rest.  

Sabbath reminds us that we are not defined by what we do. As a friend of mine loves to say, “you are a human being, not a human doing.” Taking time out in Sabbath enables us to remember that.

To be refreshed and renewed

The third reason for Sabbath comes from the lips of Jesus. In Mark 2.27 he says “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”

He had been walking through a field on the Sabbath and his disciples had picked some of the heads of grain. (I imagine that they had rubbed them between their hands to get rid of the husks and eaten the kernels, but the text doesn’t tell us that.) Jesus’ response is to cite a story where David ate the special bread in the temple. I think his point is that Sabbath is supposed to refresh people, not bind them.

The commandment is first and foremost a positive one “keep the Sabbath.” The negatives come in the explanation of what that means, “On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.”

If I understand this correctly, the point was that everybody had to have some time to be renewed. And that means everybody. Look at the list of who isn’t allowed to work; sons, daughters, manservants, maidservants, animals, and especially foreigners. The Israelites were not to treat anyone else the way they had been treated in Egypt. They weren’t to have their leisure at the expense of someone else’s labour, even someone from outside their own society.

As westerners, we have a pretty easy life of it. (Trust me, I’ve seen how the 2/3rds world lives.) The commandment of Sabbath forbids us from taking our leisure at the expense of the back breaking work of other people, even if we can’t see them, even if they’re on the other side of the world. If we benefit from cheap goods produced in sweatshops where people work 12 hours a day, seven days a week (and far too many of such places do exist) then we’re breaking this commandment.

Granted that sometimes we don’t know where our cheap stuff comes from but, as Christians, we have an obligation to do our best to see that what we buy isn’t produced by the equivalent of slave labour.

How to take time out

It’s ironic that I’m preaching on Sabbath at the end of one of the busiest weeks I’ve had for a while. But that is precisely when we need to be thinking about this, when we’re busy. Because Sabbath isn’t a reward for work that’s finished – because the work will never be finished. Sabbath is a stop-work order in the middle of the work.

But how? How do we “do Sabbath” in a world that runs 24/7? How do we stop when everything is racing around us? And what do we do when we do stop? It used to be easier in some ways when there was a kind of Christian consensus that Sunday was “the Sabbath.” That time is gone, and I doubt if it will return any time soon. So it’s up to us to figure out how to do Sabbath in this world, rather than pining for a world that’s gone.

At its core Sabbath is about stopping work, stopping what is necessary for survival. As Mark Buchanan says, “You get to let go of the have-tos and lay hold of the get-tos.” Sabbath is when we get to do the things that fill us and build us up.

Here are some suggestions of ways to practise Sabbath in your life. These don’t necessarily have to happen on Sundays. My own Sabbath is on Monday. Here are some suggestions.

Take time out in solitude to listen

Take time out in solitude to listen. Listen to scripture. Sabbath is a good time to read a big chunk of scripture and let it sink into your soul. Listen for God’s still, small voice, prompting you in the way you should go. Listen to your own heart. What is it saying to you? We’re so busy and rushed much of the time we don’t even know what we are thinking and feeling. To quote Buchanan again, “Reflection flourishes only in rest: stopping long enough to coax out and face things inmost and utmost, things hidden, things lost, things avoided.”

Take time out to listen.

Take time out in community to celebrate relationships

Take time out in community to celebrate relationships. The Jewish practise of Sabbath has the effect of making people spend time around their home, with their family. They can’t go to work. They can’t go that far away, since travel is forbidden. So they spend time together.

It’s not a bad idea. Sabbath is a time to celebrate the relationships that God has given us. Often the best way to do that is by having a meal together, but not always. Yesterday at the Ride For Refugees, Tracy was commenting on how much she loves the fall and yet how often she doesn’t get out to enjoy the beauty of the season. She was suggesting that a bunch of them go walking through the fall colours. What a wonderful way to “do Sabbath.”

Take time out to waste time and play

Take time out to waste time and play. How often do we play? How often do we do something just for the joy of being alive? Sabbath is for play, for spending some time “uselessly.” How often do we spend a day or an hour even, just in laughter and fun, creating memories? Sometimes playing hard is the best rest of all. So much of adulthood is consumed with responsibilities and obligations and lists of work to be done. Grown-ups usually feel burdened by a life that’s all work and no play. It’s hard to justify playtime when there is just so much to do. Maybe when Jesus told us to be like children, he meant we ought to play and laugh and enjoy life more. Take time out to waste time and play.

Conclusion

I grew up in Scotland when the country still totally shut down on Sundays, yet I never heard of Sabbath as anything other than a list of things that you couldn’t do. I never heard of it as God’s gift to us; to draw us closer to himself, to draw us closer to each other, and to renew and restore us to life.

This week, maybe even today, take some time out to do Sabbath; to rest, to reflect, to celebrate and to be made new by the spirit of God.