2nd
Sunday after Pentecost at Epiphany on
Mark
I don’t
wanna. Do I hafta?
One Sunday morning a mom knocked on her son’s
bedroom door. She called to him through the door, “Honey, it’s time to get up
and go to church.” “I’m not going to church this morning,” the son replies
grumpily. “You gotta get up and go to church,” mom says. “No, I’m not going.”
says the son. “Yes you are,” says the mom. “No, I’m not. They don’t like me and
I don’t like them,” says the son. “Give me two good reasons why I have to go.”
“Number one, you’re 55 years old and number two, you’re the pastor!”
You know, originally nobody had to tell people
they had to worship God. Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in the Garden
of Eden. They thought it perfectly normal to do so. But then sin came and
everything, especially us, changed. No longer was it natural for people to
worship the Lord. Just about the very first thing Adam and Eve did was try to
hide themselves from God, thereby setting the precedent by which most of
humanity lives and dies.
With sin everything changed. The worship of God,
which had once been joyful, now became a job. The opportunity became an
obligation; the closeness had become a chasm. The people became too busy with
their lives, their work, their families, with other things that took the place
of the Creator of all things, and so they whined, “I don’t wanna worship God. Do
I hafta?”
After hearing the whining, complaining and
excuses long enough, God finally said, “Yes, you gotta. Yes, you hafta.” Now,
this was God so He said it much nicer than that. He said, “Remember the Sabbath
day by keeping it holy.” It became a commandment.
Please understand, although this was a
commandment, God didn’t say people had to worship Him 24/7. He was simply
saying, “Look, what I want is this: six days of the week I want you to work. I
want you to strive. I want you to have a great life. I want you to fall in love,
get married, and have a family. I want you to listen to a baby’s laugh and watch
her first steps. I want you to smell fresh-baked bread and talk to a good friend
for hours. I want you to eat, drink and enjoy. I want you to stop and stand in
awe of My sunrises and sunsets. When it rains, take a glance upward at that
rainbow I put in the heavens. And then, on the seventh day, I want you to think
about how everything you have, everything you are, everything you will be in
this world and the next comes from My loving hand. And then, say a ‘thank you.’
On the seventh day of the week, I have created a Sabbath for you, a day to rest
and worship Me.”
Eventually, along came the Pharisees, the Sabbath
Police. The Pharisees had created 32 different kinds of work that people were
not to do on the Sabbath. Among them were harvesting and threshing grain. Jesus’
disciples were walking through a field, plucking heads of grain, rubbing them
between the palms of their hands and popping the grain into their mouths. That’s
two Sabbath strikes against them – reaping and threshing. The Pharisees were
right there, “Why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
Jesus brought up the
story of when King David was on a military campaign, he and his companions ate
the consecrated showbread which was lawful only for priests to eat. Yet they ate
and lived to tell about it. Jesus’ conclusion: The Sabbath was made for man, not
man for the Sabbath.
About the worst thing you could be in Jesus’ day,
short of a pervert or a murderer, was a Sabbath breaker. The punishment for
breaking the Sabbath was death. God’s commandment from
The rationale was two-fold. It was a weekly
remembrance of redemption. “Remember that you were slaves in
The Sabbath is God’s gift. The Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath. It was a little appetizer, a foretaste of the
rest that comes in Jesus. And so on Friday evening after sundown, you had a nice
dinner, a glass of wine to toast the God of creation, you went to sleep, and on
Saturday morning you went to the synagogue to hear God’s Word and to pray with
your congregation. It was a day to pray and to play, but not to work.
And it was a divine commandment. Non-negotiable.
As I said, the punishment for breaking the commandment was to have the whole
congregation pile rocks on you. That’s how seriously God took Sabbath. The rest
of the world could work its tail off 24/7 if it wanted, but God’s people were
going to show the world how free people live and take a day to rest in God.
And yet we don’t make time to pray, to hear God’s
Word, to worship. We’ve lost intentionality in our lives. That’s what fasting
and Sabbath were about. Living intentionally before God. You didn’t say, “I
don’t have the time.” You made the time. You left room. We’re passing on this
business of busyness to our kids. Too busy for church, to gather, to be quiet,
to stop what we’re doing. That’s not freedom. If you can’t say “no” to work or
play, you’re a slave to whatever you can’t say no to.
We need our rest. God knows that. Turn off your
laptops, your Blackberries, your I-phones or whatever else you are plugged in
to. The weekend soccer tournaments, the overtime pay, the weekend trips up north
or housework or whatever else is all-consuming. Get away from it.
Leave it to the old Adam in all of us to make
rest a work, a burden. God says, “I order you to take a day off,” and we say, “I
don’t wanna. Do I hafta?” What kind of perverse logic is this?
Whether it is our
marriage or vacations, our jobs or hobbies, without Christ our goals become
confused, our energies disappear, disappointments and despairs replace our hopes
and joys. When God isn’t included, our spiritual life is not energized. Our life
suffers disorder. If you want your marriage to be renewed, your vacation to
serve as refreshment, and your life re-energized, then put your hope in the Lord
and He will renew your strength. He will give you true rest and relaxation.
Rest in God’s Word. Rest at the Lord’s
Table. Rest in prayer. Not exercise. Not extra pay. Not vacation time. Not quiet
on the golf course or lake. There is no substitute for the Sabbath.
Unfortunately, many of us have become “ABC”
Christians - Anything But Church. Sports, recreation, hobbies, family not to
mention work schedules, family schedules, busy calendars, busy lives running
from one thing to the next, one activity to the next. Out of the 10,080 minutes
God gives us each week, we struggle to set aside 60 to 90 minutes to hear the
Word, receive the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation, and pray, praise
and give thanks. We do that to the threat of our faith. Faith is born of the
Word and lives on the Word and without the Word, faith in Christ will wither and
die.
The old Adam hates all this. He hates the notion
of resting in God. He wants to turn rest into a work, and he wants you to work
yourself to death. He refused God’s gift in the Garden, and he continues to
refuse God’s gift in you. That’s why it’s such a chore to get to church, but not
to go out to eat. That’s why church is boring to you, while the movies or a
concert aren’t. That’s why we don’t “gladly” hear the Word, why we aren’t glad
as David was glad when they said, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” That’s
why kids act up more than usual. You are being confronted by the Word of life,
by the only thing that can save you from sin and death. And the devil hates it
and he’ll use anything to pull you away from God. The world hates it and will
throw any distraction in your way. Your own sinful flesh hates it and will use
any excuse not to receive what Christ has died to win for you.
Is it also possible that you don’t worship
because you think God doesn’t care about you or your sins are too great for
Jesus to take away? Or is it possible that you don’t worship because you don’t
care enough that your sins have been taken away by Jesus?
Jesus did carry your sins. Even your sins of
apathy and reluctance toward worship. Jesus loves you that much. He loved you
enough to go to the cross for you. Hold that picture in your mind’s eye. See
God’s Son suffering, dying for you. The whip marks on His back. You can’t see
them so clearly as He hangs upon the cross. They were received for you. The
crown of thorns for you, and me, too. Jesus died for you. And when Jesus died,
so did your sins. Jesus did for you what nobody else would – nobody else could.
He lived for you. He died for you. He rose for you.
Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He fulfilled
the Sabbath requirements.
God doesn’t force us to sit our rear ends in pews. Now you don’t
have to worship God. You get to
worship God. It is a command, but it is also an invitation. It is a
responsibility, but it is also a privilege.
It is the Lord’s reminder, “O my people, I love you so much I
am going to let you worship me.” Jesus
rested on the Sabbath day in the grave, making your grave a Sabbath rest. He
gives you perfect Sabbath rest from your sins. You don’t work your way to rest;
you receive it as a gift. Salvation’s Sabbath is not the result of your work,
but trust in the finished work of Jesus.
Jesus bought your freedom. Freedom to gladly hear
the Word of God and cling to it. Freedom to come to the Lord’s Table as often as
you are invited. Freedom to worship on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday evening
or any day or time of the week. In our Sabbath worship, heaven comes down to
earth; your sins are forgiven; God speaks to you here; there is a place for you
here at Jesus’ banquet table; here you have rest from every burden that weighs
you down. Here is a rest no pill can provide, no self-help book can broker, no
vacation can offer. Here is Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, your Lord, your Rock
of refuge, your rest.
We all are busy. We all have choices to make.
Maybe this will help. Did you know the word worship is a shortened form of an
older word, “worthship”? If something is very valuable to you, it is high on
your list of priorities, then it has “worthship,” and that something is worthy
of your worship. Any sight which brings me from hell to heaven, any Savior who
died that I might live, is worthy of worthship.
God made the Sabbath for you. When we want to
say, “I don’t wanna. Do I hafta?” Jesus answers, “I want you to. I’m letting you
worship me. I’m worthy of your Sabbath rest and worship. Amen.