May 12, 2024
Life Giving Moments
- Matt Nickoson
Sermon Notes
Exodus 20:8-11 NIV
“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 male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 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.”
Sabbath:
- An example set and then commanded by God
- A day dedicated to the Lord
- The last day of the week
- It was to be “holy” (set apart/different) from the other days (i.e. no work, lots of rest, worship, and recreation)
Sabbath is not the gift at the end of our work. It’s the gift in the middle of it. Our work is NEVER finished!
“The rest of God—the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover that part of God we’re missing—is not a reward for finishing. It’s not a bonus for work well done. It’s sheer gift. It is a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations. It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.” – Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God
Luke 13:10 NIV
On a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues.
Luke 13:11 NIV
And a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all.
Luke 13:12-13 NIV
When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.
Luke 13:14 NIV
Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
Luke 13:15-16 NIV
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
Luke 13:17 NIV
When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.
The truth can humble or humiliate.
The goal must be to confront whatever is binding and keeping people from freedom in Christ.
Luke 14:1 NIV
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.
Luke 14:2-4 NIV
There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
Luke 14:5-6 NIV
Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” And they had nothing to say.
Jesus loves to clarify where unhealthy thinking is ruining peoples’ lives!
Mark 2:27-28 NIV
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
How are you practicing both rest and responsiveness to God?
“This simple act of not working revolutionizes our lives by re-centering our identity on being with God rather than on what we do for the world. Workaholism, in the end, is the result of our sense of self not fully coming into the light of Christ. Workaholism is very different from alcoholism—for the alcoholic, there is no slowly reintegrating alcohol into their life after getting clean. They must go cold turkey; there can only be a clean break. Workaholism is different. For a workaholic, the issue becomes learning to live rightly in relationship to work. A workaholic will most likely have to get back to work.” — A. J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World
Luke 13:18-19 NIV
Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”
Luke 13:20-21 NIV
Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
Your life has the opportunity to present a place of rest to the whole world.