The Sabbath The Still

Transcript

Let’s turn to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus chapter 20

We’ve been doing a series on the 10 Commandments or as Ron Mehl, put it in his book The Tender Commandments.

And he calls it reflections on a loving father or a loving heavenly father. And that’s what the main difference is about.

How you view commands, how you view the Lord. Giving you instructions on what to do, whether he’s trying to be mean, or whether he’s trying to really spare you something.

And so I think you’ve seen already in the few weeks that we’ve been into this, that there’s so much for us and I just I get.

I get so excited just getting to talk about all this stuff and I every time I read it I see things I never saw before and it’s no different with what we’re going to be hearing about today. Verse 8.

Remember the Sabbath day.

By keeping it holy, now I’m reading from the new international version the King James version may be obviously worded differently.

Keep remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the 7th day is a Sabbath to the Lord.

On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son, or your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your animals nor the alien within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens in the Earth to see all that is in them, but he rested on the 7th day.

And therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day.

And made it holy.

Said remember the Sabbath.

I really wish I could be here all morning. I’m going to get to do this service and Pastor Brent going to do the next one I need to make a trip back East to teach a seminary class, but I’d be fascinated to see how both of us treat this thing in the different ways that we approach things every time we sit down and talk. I’m amazed at what he gets when he reads.

His Bible and how he sees that and and we we always look at the same thing in general sense, but it’s always so much different and richer and I’m I’m excited for the people in the second service going to get to hear that today.

But I sort of focused on the word remember.

The Sabbath day, to keep it holy, but the word remember that the Hebrew word that is translated remember.

Is a word that really has a lot of intentionality associated with it. It means to mark it down for the purpose of remembrance. It means to mention it too.

Rehearse it, recount it, record it.

Think on it.

I remember reading a pastor one time that was trying to exhort his congregation to participate in a big campaign.

They were going to have to build a new building and so he talked about priorities one Sunday and he reduced it to a mission statement for his church.

It was Bill Hybels from Willow Creek Community Church, probably one of the largest churches in the world, and he said.

If you want to find out where your heart is, Jesus put it that way too. By the way, he said where your treasure is there, your heart is, and so he said. If you want to know something about somebody’s priorities, look at their day timer.

If they have one.

And see what they give their time to.

Then look at their checkbook Ledger and see what they give their money to. And then just look at their day and see how they spend it and you’ll find out what priorities exist. I remember a far side cartoon that I laughed so hard I almost hurt myself.

It was a shark.

And the shark had his calendar up on the wall, and you cross off days. And if you looked on his entries for every day, it said go out, find something, kill it and eat it. Go out, find something, kill it and eat it. And that was his month.

That was it.

I was thinking about that. That’s pretty intentional. I mean my priorities today as well, because something needed.

But what about the intentionality of setting apart today? And why would the Lord say regarding this whole concept of Sabbath or rest or cessation from our laborers?

Why would he start by saying Mark it down and make a commitment to do it? He did that because if if he didn’t do that, we wouldn’t do it.

I worked as a nursing assistant for years in hospitals. When I went to college and seminary, probably about 10 years. In all a little bit of everything.

Orthopedics orthopedic surgery and I worked in a medical surgical floor. I worked in the emergency room. I worked in Psych for a few years and and.

So I I found out where it didn’t take me long to figure out where I was in the created order.

Uh, I was an orderly as it was. Most of the intern they used. If you really wanted to be fancy, you called yourself a nursing assistant, but I really got fancy on a resume when I wrote my resume, I was a paraprofessional in the Allied Health Sciences.

Well, I was in orderly.

That’s what I was. I was in orderly and and in God created order. There’s there. There’s the Trinity.

There are archangels, and there are angels, and there is man, and there are crustaceans and there.

Are orderly’s

And so the orderlies always got the job that nobody else wanted to do, you know?

Sometimes orderlies don’t always get names either.

You can be hey you.

I had another job one time I worked as a bellhop guy called me slick one time.

Hey slick.

So this this one particular time, here’s one of the jobs they gave.

Me to do as an orderly.

That I remember, I hate this. I hate.

When they make me do this.

My job on night shift was to go in and wake people up.

And tell them it was time to take their sleeping pill.

They uttered adult words at me.

Regularly now think about that. Can you sleep in the hospital by the way, Roger, I am so thrilled that you are back with us.

This morning I am really.

Welcome back.

Second, I would we would go visit Roger and say how we talk about how things are going. They said you’re getting a lot of sleep and he just looked at me like you’re a cruel person, aren’t you?

They sleeps in hospitals.

You know that they come in and climb around, make all that noise you finally fall asleep and you wake up and they find so you wake up, and then you finally get like it’s quiet in the room and they put in a roommate and said, oh, good, I was hoping I have somebody to talk to, you know, I I was with the Marines once in a training exercise out here at camp Rilea

And we were in shelter halves, which means there’s two little people crammed into this, like one. Each marine carries half of a tent in their pack, and you put together the shelter, and you’re laying there and and it had been about an 18 hour, 20 hour day to this point. We might have got three hours sleep if we were lucky.

And so I crawled into my half of the shelter half and I was just ready. I just I want to sleep.

This guy crawls in next to me and he says, oh, good, the chaplain. I’ve been wanting to talk to something about this problem. It’s on my.

And I was. I was thrilled on one hand, but it was, you know, like?

There’s just something about this this whole.

Fat, did you ever try to relax?

Somebody comes and says try to relax.

I saw a Popeye cartoon once. Popeye was a cartoon character from another generation, but there was a Popeye cartoon in.

He’s trying to sleep in a fly is landing on him. Did you ever see that was one of the best ones I ever saw. He ends up destroying the house trying to kill the fly because he wants to go to sleep.

Rest and relaxation and the cessation of our labours, does not come naturally to us.

There does have to be at least a rhythm established in your life where you say I’m going to stop now.

Because honestly, if you don’t, your body will help you. Your body keeps score.

And you’re going to get on your back one way or the other.

Either you chose to lay down or something, put you down and and that’s how it works. Remember it to keep it holy.

They said it’s not just about you.

It’s about all the people that live with you. It’s about all the people that work for you. Have you ever worked for a boss?

That has no sense of time, has no sense of rules, has no sense of, you know they have a work ethic that says they work 23 1/2 hours a day and they expect you to.

Virginia put your hand down. I don’t know, never mind.

But seriously, it’s you know those stories are legendary about people who just don’t.

Don’t know about how to stop. There’s all sorts of fancy terms in research about sleep deprivation, but I thought this one was close to our point.

In the British Royal Navy.

There was a tradition.

That whenever any sudden disaster, such as an explosion occurred, it is the bugler’s duty to play what is called.

The still.

When the men hear it.

They’re all supposed to stop perfectly quiet for an extended period of time, each to recollect his senses, and thus be better prepared for intelligent action in the emergency at hand.

The 1st signal from the bugler is still.

The Marines have one before you’re going to get into a formation. The first Sergeant or the Gunny will come up and they’ll say stand by.

So that means you drop everything you know something is going to happen where you have to form up or hear something important, but the first one is stop.

Just stop what you’re doing.

I wish I could tell you I’m smart enough to do that, but you know what I do, I redouble my efforts when that happens and try to fix it myself in a hurry.

Still seems to be do more of it quick and maybe you’ll fix it, so then it won’t be a problem anymore.

I know none of you act like that at all. I’m not even going to look up to see the liars that aren’t responding to that.

Psalm 46 would you turn there?

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and our strength.

God is our refuge and our strength and ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. Though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God the Holy Place, where the most high dwells. God is within her. She will not fall.

And God will help her at the break of day.

OK, nations are in an uproar, kingdoms fail.

He lifts his voice.

And the earth melts.

The Lord Almighty is with us.

And the God of Jacob.

Is our fortress.

Now look, it says come and see the works of the Lord, the Desolations. He’s brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow, shatters the spear, burns the Shields with fire, and then he says.

Be still.

Be still.

And know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us.

The God of Jacob is our fortress, he says, be still, but then even then he doesn’t stop. He says, be still.

And no.

Remember what Moses told them right before they got to the Red Sea?

Do you think there might have been just a tad the little bit of anxiety? There’s over a million Hebrews with their wives and babies and livestock and they have taken the strangest route they can imagine fleeing Pharaoh’s army and somebody I’m sure reported here comes Pharaoh’s Chariots.

They turned behind them and the armies of Egypt. Of those people that had oppressed them as a nation for 400 years who have just been through some very bad plague kinds of experiences that have been blamed on the God of the Hebrews.

They’re real mad. The dust cloud is coming. The cavalry is coming and they turn around and there’s a an ocean.

In front of them basically.

Party just wants to save. Excuse me I I don’t mean to ask is we have a plan here.

What would the plan? But we don’t have anywhere to go. There’s a mountain over there. Very mad Egyptian army here.

And I think that’s a C.

I’m not nervous.

When it says, be still and know that I am God. It’s the same word where the when the Lord told Moses to say to the people.

Only stand still.

And you will see the salvation of your God.

Stand still, that’s so hard, though, isn’t it?

Our nature just wants to say sandals don’t desert me now, you know and just start running. That would be a Hebrew connotation to an old.

But but the the word there.

Carries with it the idea of not just.

It’s not just standing there, it’s to be ready to. It means to be prepared. It means to be anticipating that some things coming be still like the bugler would sound when the Royal Navy

It’s like you’re not just waiting to see what’s going to happen and hope you survive it. It’s not that it’s being ready for the.

It’s the commanding officer in that instance, or be ready for what the Lord’s going to say. But be attentive to him. That’s the flip side of it. It’s not.

Just, you know, take some deep breaths and learn how to relax and just relax yourself. That’s not what this is talking about.

Not with this thing about.

It’s saying gets did quiet enough and get still enough and get intentional enough that you’re waiting to hear like Samuel in the Old Testament. Speak, Lord, your servant is listening. That kind of be still.

So the Lord says, in the rhythm of our life is a day that we need to stop routinely. Now I know, and I’m not going to go there this morning.

I know that there’s some controversy about what day the Sabbath day is, whether it’s the 6th day or the 7th day, and what calendar that you look at. I’m not saying that’s insignificant or it’s unimportant I, I’m sure.

Really good people.

Have that as a major issue. For my purpose, I want to know why the Lord told us to do that.

And what it means to him? And certainly the overarching principle of that passage is.

Keep this day holy and in midst of all that. Stop your stuff.

And get before me whatever else it means. Stop everything you’re doing and just regard me.

And get.

Only stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

See, that was great organization required in getting over a million Hebrews to the mountain of God when Moses came down with these 10 commandments in the 1st place they marched in order.

They marched by tribe. There was great organization to that. The tenant said when you get to the mountain don’t move. Don’t anybody move, don’t touch the this stay there. So they’re standing there and it’s like.

Thunder and lightning and earthquakes and God speaking to a man on the top of the mountain, and they’re just kind of.

That’s hard.

It’s hard, definitely. When you’re used to trying to solve things. That same word still is used when I sit. When Saul king Saul.

Is trying to lie to Samuel about what happened when he started to not do what the Lord told him to do?

The Lord said he wanted him to destroy this whole thing and take everything and don’t keep anything or take no prisoners and to not keep anything. Remember that so Samuel shows up and Saul says I did what the Lord told me to do.

Soon and Samuel says, pardon me.

They said it’s not a sheep.

I hear where’d that come from.

And so.

Saul starts arguing with him and saying, well, so the men took at it was the men. Yeah, it was the chain of command. It was. It was Rumsfeld.

Yeah, and they started on and they started arguing everything and you know what Samuel says to him?

He says.

In in, in my.

In the nivs it says stop, but it’s the same word. Still he says.

Still stop.

One of the best things for me to do when I pray.

Is to shut up first.

Sometimes I come in here and I just sit in this empty room and I just sit and I don’t say a word and I’m tempted to want to give the Lord my account of things and start to say no. Lord I want to pray but I want to explain to you.

Yeah, I’m going to explain something to Almighty God.

Be still.

Drop off.

The snow job before the Lord. That’s the Jenkins amplified version drop off the snow job. Don’t even try it.

Just as you are.

Many, many things we insist on rituals long after we’ve forgotten why we observe them. You know, sometimes you do something just because you’re adhering to to hear about the newly married couple and the the bride really wanted to show her husband new husband what a great cook she was going to be. And then he came into the kitchen and and he saw her just.

For 15 minutes.

He’s looking at the stove and.

As the newly married man found his wife sitting stock still in the kitchen, she was following the recipe that said don’t stir for 15 minutes.

That was in honor of Brent.

Who didn’t get to?

You know?

The Jews don’t want, didn’t want to violate the Passover. This is how crazy it can get if you get really legalistic about saying you know what minute does the 24 hour period stop the generous when you give somebody, say, you can’t do this also and they get to be lawyers all of a sudden and try to find little outs and everything. The Pharisees were like that they could tell you everything.

You couldn’t couldn’t do on a Sabbath. It got ridiculous. Jesus said you could string or you could pull the wings off on that, but you swallow camels whole.

You know, uh, pharisee lady.

Could not own a mirror or have a mirror on the Sabbath, did.

You know that.

Because if she looked into the mirror, she’d see her image. If there was a hair out of place since she plucked it out, that was labor, and you couldn’t have labor or work on the Sabbath.

You couldn’t spit on the ground on the Sabbath because when you spit on the ground, it might displace a little bit of Earth.

And that was like plowing and plowing work so you can’t spit on the Sabbath. That’s how ridiculous it got.

What was behind the Sabbath? You know, the Jews were so concerned even when they were crucifying Jesus. This is the great irony of all time to me.

They so constructed the intrigue around, arresting and falsely accusing Jesus and taking him to Pilate that they wanted everything done within their time frame so it wouldn’t happen on a Sabbath.

And yet the Sabbath was all about the one they were about to kill.

So let’s not beat up on a people group. I’m just saying those particular individuals that did that particular thing as we do particular things can get very precise about.

You know things that we do and then not not think at all about other things we give ourselves permission to do.

Paul observed the Sabbath, but he wasn’t a slave to it. His whole pattern of evangelism was to go into the synagogue in a new town on the South.

And he would reason with the Jews from the Scriptures, and show him that Jesus was in the side. So we know that he observed that.

But we also know that Jesus and his disciples, they did things on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees said, you’re violating the Sabbath. One of them was he healed a man.

They actually came. The healed man had been tormented his whole life. Jesus healed, but it was on a Sabbath.

They said that’s like work and you violated the Sabbath. I mean, that’s how ridiculous it can be if we get all caught up in the minutiae. Colossians Chapter 2 turn there, would you?

Colossians the second chapter.

When I teach this at Eugene Bible College, I get to teach a course called Prison epistles, and this is one of them, where Paul was in prison when he wrote to this group of people in colossae and and you can deduce a few things.

By what he writes, we.

You can almost construct what it was he was reacting to.

There was some false teaching that was already causing grief in the church, and scholars have called it the Colossian heresy.

And and they were saying, yes, you believe in Jesus, but you have to do this and this and this and this and this and this too.

And Paul said no, and he began to argue.

About all these things, and one of them had to do with the seven. Verse 16.

He tells them therefore don’t let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ.

Is anybody in here remember what blue laws were? Did you ever hear that expression of what were blue laws?

Or blue.

Bye bye.

No work on Sunday you couldn’t have, you know selling or or commerce or anything like that. Everything had to shut down on Sunday and with the advent of malls and chain stores and all the rest of it, you know it it.

There was kind of a rhythm to life when at 11:00 o’clock, all of a sudden your television went.

And then you just went to sleep.

Now there’s 24/7 news stuff to terrify you all night.

Nightlong if you want.

If you want.

Tell you why you need to be afraid for the coming day.

You know?

The blue laws and all the rest of it that that was an effort of the secular culture to respond to the concept of a Sabbath. The reality is found in Christ.

And I’m not going to say much more. I think Brent’s going to touch on some of that part of it in the next service.

A day to set apart your attention to God. Provision and a day to cease from your laborers.

Turn to Jeremiah chapter 50.

Chapter 50

I see some of you that are parents.

You might think that you have the cutest kid in the world.

But I was informed that you don’t Todd Boxberger has the cutest baby in the world. He has all of them in his family.

As the cutest.

I’m teasing, but you know, it’s just been so much fun watching their family grow and develop in in the time that we’ve gotten to know them.

And and they just made a trip to visit family members and he was talking about the effect that there.

His kids were having just with their extended family about what a blessing the kids were.

I can remember now if you don’t think that you can be a blessing and be doing something profoundly spiritual.

Think about this one.

Now, in our instance, I’ve gotta stretch a little bit ’cause mine are in college now, but.

I do remember this very clearly.

I logged a lot of time that no one ever saw.

When they were sleeping.

When I’d opened the door.

And I’d get down. I’d look through the little things on the crib.

I used to just like to watch him breathe.

I used to just sit there and oftentimes there would be tears in my eyes and I would look at him and said.

I would alternate between that and being scared to death about the future and about responsibility and but what was happening is while they were just laying there resting.

They were being loved by their father.

I believe it was George Mueller. It was either George Miller or William Carey. I always get this particular one mixed up, but both career missionaries, both incredibly fruitful in their lives.

I think it was carrying now. The more I think about it.

He reached a point where.

He couldn’t do anything much anymore. He couldn’t do the physical things that he wanted to do. He couldn’t build what he’d like to build, or he couldn’t make the journeys to the far places that he hadn’t reached in China yet and.

He had reached a point where basically he was confined to his bed.

And he wrote in his journal or responding to a letter that somebody had written him, and he said, it just seems like all my faculties are failing me. Now I I don’t have the strength to do much of anything he said, I guess.

I’ll just have to lay here and let Jesus love me.

That’s what the whole exercise was for in the 1st place was to get to the point where you become convinced because you can’t fix everything. You can’t do everything. That’s then more than ever you realize how greatly beloved you are.

From your heavenly Father and in Jeremiah Chapter 50, the Prophet is trying to get people to think about how they’ve been acting.

This is the word of the Lord.

Spoken through Jeremiah the prophet concerning Babylon and the land of the Babylonians.

Announce and proclaim among the nations lift up a banner and proclaim it. Keep nothing back but say.

Babylon will be capped.

Richard Bell will be put to shame. Marduk will be filled with terror and her images will be put to shame her idols filled with terror, a nation from the north will attack and lay waste her land.

No one will live in it. Both men and animals will flee away, and in those days at that time declares.

People of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the Lord your God their God.

They will ask the way to Zion.

Turn their faces toward it.

They will come and bind themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten. Look at the next verse.

My people have been lost sheep.

There shepherds have led them astray and cause them to roam on the mountains and they wandered over mountain and hill.

And forgot their own resting place.

Forgot their own resting place. Whoever found them devoured them. Their enemies said we’re not guilty, for they sinned against the Lord their true pasture.

Go Lord, the hope of their fathers.

I’m going to be making a trip for about a week and a half or so, and I’ll be in a hotels.

No matter what you do to a hotel bed.

It is not your bed.

No matter how fancy those little soaps are, they’re not your soap.

And no matter how good the maid is to make up the bed, no one can nag you about your clothes on the floor like your own wife.

You’re going to laugh it. You know what I do when I travel.

I make the bed that’s frightening. I do.

I’ve begun to make the bed. This is a scary thing. No, actually, you know what it helps. It reminds me of home.

And and what reminds little things that your bed isn’t it when you’re really, really tired? Isn’t that you almost fantasize about your bed?

The particular scrunch that you can get with your pillow that no other pillow can do. There’s your your pillow scrunch.

You know?

Prophet was telling them they said and he mentions these strange names. Marduk can bell they were the false gods of the Babylonians. Marduk was a God that.

That had to do with learning or writing.

Or, or Knowledge Bell is the same as beyal.

Was like the Lord of everything that had particular manifestations like the Lord of the Thunder and the Lord of the Rain and all.

But it was a Pagan substitute for God, and the Lord was saying all that stuff is going to fail and you’re going to feel like you’re just roaming around somewhere waiting to find your own bed. And it said, my people have forgotten their resting place and it says.

The Lord is there pasture Ure not pasture pasture. The Lord is where they were to go to rest and to lay.

Goliath, the Mighty hunter, our cat.

We called him Goliath, ’cause he’s polydactyl. He’s got the extra toes.

So we called him Goliath. He had six toes too, so.

We had somebody come over to our house first time they’d been there and there was a boy in the family and he saw Goliath and the two of them were were kind of just checking each other out and I knew the little boy wanted to play with him. But Goliath was looking at him like I don’t know you.

So we went in the house and did whatever we were doing and I came out.

And Goliath looked like the cleanest Shiba. He went over in the neighbors yard. That was just real lush. They’ve done a lot of work to get their yard and and he was just laying there like he was holding court.

And the little boy was about 3 feet away. Just kind. They were looking at each other. Like can we be friends? But Goliath is like.

Excuse the pun, but.

I’m on my own turf.

He was, but it wasn’t his. It was our neighbors and.

We’ve gotten a lawyer in the lawsuits. Not going to be that bad, but it’s.

Turn to Psalm 116. Would you?

But there was just something about how he looked like. I know this, I know where I am. This is where I should be.

Psalm 116

I love the Lord.

For he heard my voice, and he heard my cry for mercy.

Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. The cords of death entangled me in the anguish of the grave, came upon me and I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord, oh Lord, save me.

Now look at this next statement.

The Lord is gracious.

And righteous our God is full of compassion, and the Lord protects.

The simple hearted.

When I was in great need, he saved me be at rest once more. Oh my soul.

For the Lord’s been good to you.

I had a note in my Bible it says rests.

A state of unthreatened well being.

A state of unthreatened well being and to be simple hearted it just means to be a person as childlike in his sense of dependence.

And trust in the Lord.

I love when little kids have played their last two minutes and have nothing left.

And they start tugging at their ears. Or, you know, curling their hair with their finger, or all the things little kids do, and it we use the expression they’re played out, you know?

Well, Judy and I have when we say, you know, meltdown is about to occur.

And it’s like nothing works anymore is.

The carpets pays you.

Anything, it’s just I’m mad, you know that one, I think.

And the remedy is always the same.

OK.

They kind of just get to where they start to just whimper about anything and either mom or dad goes over.

And they pick them up and it’s it’s like total abandoned. They just throw their arms.

And they’re asleep just like that.

And they’re so asleep you could pick him up by their belt and they’re not going to wake up. You know, I mean, wouldn’t you love to sleep like that again?

You know and and and then the mountains could be quaking, you know the stars could be falling from their sleep, and they know somehow mom and dad it’s going to get done. They’re going to be all right.

Peter Marshall

Was the Chapel in the United States Senate at the.

Early 1940s.

And Marshall was an amazing preacher. I still have a it’s a precious thing for me. I have a book of his sermons. He wrote a book called.

Mr. Jones meet the master, and it’s a series of messages that he preached, but this particular one, maybe we’ve even seen the old black and white movie called a man called Peter.

Richard Todd plays him, I think.

Anyway, Marshall was an immigrant to America and he was so proud of his American heritage and one of the great honors that came to him before he became the chaplain of the United States Senate. Around that same time.

He was invited to address the graduating class at the United States Naval Academy.

And I’ve been to that that you can’t call it a Chapel. It’s like a cathedral. It isn’t. Have there been anybody been to Annapolis to see? It’s an amazing thing.

I went back years later to fill in for the chaplain that runs the naval station next to the Academy that helps with the boats and the training that they do on the longboats and.

So I went over to see it. There’s a great tradition associated with the place. I don’t know if you know this.

Do you know to this day there is a 24 hour marine core honor guard that guards the tomb of day of John Paul Jones in the basement of that church?

They changed the guard in there in full 24 hours a day. They guard that it’s it’s an honor thing to John Paul Jones, the father of the Navy.

But I remember looking at that pulpit and I met the chaplain that was the presiding chaplain there and I got to see it. And I pictured Peter Marshall doing this ’cause it was depicted in the movie.

But he had his message ready.

And he was driving there.

Phone to where Annapolis was and.

He has a part where he looks at his notes and he put his notes down and he was a very.

He was a preacher, preacher, this guy. I knew preaching. He was ready and it was a it was an artist thing that he did but he put it all down.

And he looked out, and he, he said, I’ve changed my text this morning.

And he talked about the resurrection from the dead.

And in the middle of it he told an illustration. He said there was a little girl.

Who had a terminal disease?

Who came into the kitchen one day and asked her mom said?

Mommy, what is it like to die?

Can you imagine parents in here?

You know that this is a gravely ill child. You don’t know how much they know, but they’re asking you what is it like to die?

When she stepped into the kitchen for men, she said, I’ll be I’m going to come right out and she dropped to her knees and said, oh God, if I’ve if I ever needed you, now I need to know what to say to her. Help me.

And she went back.

To the little girl and she sat her down and said, honey.

Do you know what it’s like?

When you’ve been playing hard all day and you’ve just had a great day and you’ve played as hard as you can and you’re absolutely exhausted.

And you just fell asleep in the living room or out on the porch or even out in the yard somewhere.

And somehow you don’t know how it happened.

But the next morning you wake up in your bed with the covers all tucked in.

Well, what happened? Honey is when you fell asleep.

Your daddy came with his big strong arms and he picked you up.

And he held you close, and he carried you to your own bed.

And he said his prayers, and he kissed you, and he tucked you in.

And you woke up safe in your own bed where you belong.

That’s what it’s like to die.

I wonder about the things that we’re afraid of. I wonder about the things that grip us and begin to cause us such anxiety that we have trouble sleeping or that we have fitful sleep and all the rest of it.

It’s really possible that maybe what we need is a Sabbath rest, where we stop and say today Lord, I will do nothing other than consider how gracious you have been.

How powerful you are.

And what great love you’ve modeled for us.

Turn to Isaiah 30, would you? We’re going to close in just a moment.

Isaiah chapter 30.

I’ve always been kind of fascinated by grieving and grief rituals that different cultures have.

There was one expression for thankfulness.

It’s in an African dialect known as the Carre.

The expression in their language try, you know, as as well as you can translate something from one language to another in English, it means to sit down on the ground before.

To sit down on the ground before.

A thankful karre will go to the home of his benefactor and sit on the ground before his Hut.

No word needs to be spoken. His silent vigil signifies his gratitude.

The man who is thankful to God therefore sits before God to enjoy his presence. He’s never satisfied merely to tip his hat to God as he passes. Gratitude demands that he seek God’s fellowship.

And presence.

To sit before to just.

Sit there.

Road to the obstinate children declares the Lord, those who carry out plans that are not mine by forming an alliance, but not by my spirit.

Heaping sin upon sin, who go down to Egypt without consulting me who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection.

I wonder how many people in that million or so Hebrew group that was standing at the Red Sea.

I wonder how many people would think we can still cut a deal.

Let’s send somebody and try and stave this off. Send somebody.

The Pharaohs protection will be to your shame. Egypt Shade will bring you disgrace, though they have officials in xoan. Their envoys have arrived in Heynis. Everyone will be put to shame because of them.

Now in this all these things. But here’s the solution.

Verse 15 this is verse 15 of Isaiah 30.

This is what the sovereign one, the Lord, the holy one of Israel says.

In repentance.

And in rest is your salvation in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.

You said no. Will flee on horses, therefore you will flee. You said, we’ll ride off on swift horses. Therefore your pursuers will be swift.

1000 will flee at the threat of 1 and at the threat of five you will awfully away.

So you are left like a Flagstaff on a mountain top, like a banner on a hill.

The Lord longs to be gracious to you.

He rises to show you compassion.

For the Lord is a God of justice.

And bless it or all those who wait for him.

Oh, people of Zion who live in Jerusalem. You will weep no more. How gracious he will be when he hears your cry for help as soon as he hears.

He’ll answer you, and although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more with your own eyes. You’ll see them when you turn to the right or to the left. Your ear will have.

A voice behind you saying this is the way walk in it.

But that’s directly tide to.

Repentance and rest.

And quietness.

And trust.

He says things in that same passage. You build walls, but they don’t work anymore. He longs to be gracious to you and you’re going to hear a voice. But you have to stop.

My wife.

Works with the music program at the middle school and the high school.

Choirs and and bands and everything. And so. And I live with three musicians. You know. I keep hearing about music and how it’s supposed to sound and.

You know, and and I watched when the when I’m learning something you know I tell you I need a car with three steering wheels, three sets of brakes, 3 turn signals, three everything because there’s they’re also opinionated and strong in their personalities and notes, but they’re not.

Go say we need to wait. That’s and when it comes to music you do this, but here’s what I’m not real good.

Music, but I know this.

I just learned all times phrases coming together. That’s the story this old mix. But now you have the last lesson learned.

2nd for me from all my fears.

Wasn’t that edifying?

It’s supposed to go.

I will bless.

The Lord and.

All times.

This praise shall continually be in.

My soul shall make her boast in the Lord.

I’m not a musician, but I came across this. I had this old devotional book. I picked it up when I first got saved. Mrs Charles Coleman, who was the wife of a missionary, wrote this in her devotional book.

There is no music.

In arrest

But there is the making of music in it.

In our whole life melody, the music is broken off here and there by rests, and we foolishly think we’ve come to the end of the tune.

God sends a time of forced leisure sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts. He makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our life and we lament that our voices.

Must be silent and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the creator.

How does the musician read the rest? See him beat the time with unvarying count and catch up to the next. Note true and steady as if no breaking place had come in between.

Not without design. Does God write the music of our lives, be it hours, to learn the tune?

Do not be dismayed.

At the wrests.

There not to be slurred over. Not to be omitted, not to destroy the melody, not to change the keynote. If we sadly say to ourselves, there is no music in arrest.

Let us at least not forget there is the making of music in it.

My mother.

Had a little.

Rhyme she used to tell us all the time.

It went something like.

Be still my child and do your best.

And God, my child will do the rest.

I don’t remember a whole lot, but I remember that she must have said it a lot.

She had me as a son for crying.

Out loud she probably.

Had to say it every 10 minutes.

But there’s something to be said for just the cessation of our trying to do everything and.

The Lord was strong enough about it to make it a command in his word.

Just like thou shalt not commit adultery, he said, thou shalt remember.

The Lord Sabbath day to keep it holy.

To be set apart to regard him and who he is and what he can do.

Let’s pray.

Lord, I want to rest in you today.

Rock of Ages. Cleft for me.

Let me hide myself in the.

Lord, I pray for those that have been burdened in her carrying such heavy things that you would give them a remarkably restful day today.

A rest that would result in refreshment and renewed vision and strength and clarification. I know you can do these things, Lord.

And I believe you for it.

And I love you, Lord in Jesus name.