Shabbat

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TRY SOFTER part 5

Are you really enjoying your life?

God will one day hold us each accountable for all the things

He created for us to enjoy, but we refused to do so.

  • Rabbinic Saying

 

SHABBAT

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

  • Jesus, Mark 2:27-28

Biblical Sabbath is a twenty-four-hour block of time in which we stop work, enjoy rest, practice delight, and contemplate God.

  • Peter Scazzero

THE RHYTHM OF CREATION:

  • God designed the day to begin with REST, not WORK.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:1, 5

  • God created humanity to be CO-WORKERS with Him. 

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1:27-28

  • God set BOUNDARIES to work for our good.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.  Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Genesis 2:2-3

THE EXODUS & TEN COMMANDMENTS:   

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Exodus 20:8

  • Sabbath keeping is an act of FAITH.

Sabbath dethrones humanity from its self-aggrandized place of lordship over creation by handing authority of the world back to the One to whom it already belongs.

  • A.J. Swoboda

Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God… 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.

Deuteronomy 5:12, 15 

  • Sabbath keeping is an act of RESISTANCE.

Anyone who cannot obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one. Your own heart, or our materialistic culture, or an exploitative organization, or all of the above, will be abusing you if you don’t have the ability to be disciplined in your practice of Sabbath. Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom.

  • Tim Keller

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO SABBATH:

  • Start SMALL, but start NOW.
  • STOP, REST, DELIGHT, WORSHIP.
  • Stay CONSISTENT and be CREATIVE.
  • New SEASONS often require new RHYTHMS.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

Subversive Sabbath by A.J. Swoboda

The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero

Leading on Empty by Wayne Cordeiro