Sabbath Margin

“The things that are “freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12) are the only things we need to know now. A lot of the reason we grow so upset and disturbed about not hearing specifically from God is that we want what isn’t “freely given.” When we pray, “Lord, show me Your will,” we’re often asking for things that He knows are not pertinent for another twenty years. We want God to paint the whole picture right away, but He wisely withholds certain truths and information from us until we need it, when we can actually do something with it besides just mess it up.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks

Yes, amen.
Have you had a good day today?
And are you excited about the fact that even when we’re filled, we can be filled up to overflowing somebody saying, Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for this opportunity to be in your presence.
Lord, we are so humbled by the fact that you would meet with regular people just like us.
Lord, thank you Lord that you know us and and yet you still call us your friends.
We pray now that you would speak clearly to us in Jesus name. All God’s people said, amen.
You may have your seats. It is a privilege to be sharing with you tonight.
I wanted to to to start out by simply thanking you all for allowing me to participate with you and to serve you in this capacity over this weekend.
Um It has been a humbling experience for me. This is my first Hillsong church conference.
I have been to color several times and have been able to serve uh Bobby in that capacity.
But this is my first time at the church conference.
I have been blown away as I am sure you all have as well.
And to be able to be a part of your 25th year, I do not take that lightly.
And I’m so thrilled to have had the opportunity to serve these, these people, the leadership team and uh the great body of believers that God has given them.
It is a privilege to be able to partner with them in ministry.
And I, and I’m thrilled to be able to share with you some thoughts about a very practical concept tonight, very practical concept.
One that matters not only to me but will matter to you as well.
And I began to think about this.
The Lord began to convict and challenge me regarding this particular theme earlier this year.
It was actually in the month of January that Dallas Texas where I am from, Dallas Texas had a snow storm.
Now, snow is just about as um something it’s just as expected in Dallas as it is in Sydney, Australia.
I mean, we just don’t, we just don’t expect snow, but over the past couple of years, we actually have had not a couple of inches of snow.
We have had maybe a foot or more of snow that has hit the ground.
And it is unusual for us, we don’t know what to do with ourselves when there is snow on the ground.
And so this past January, February, somewhere in there, we were kind of snowed in for a week.
I mean, you get a little bit of snow in Dallas, everything shuts down, businesses shut down, schools are closed.
The city is just not set up to handle large amounts of snow.
And so for about a week I was at home with my husband, my three boys, we were all kind of cuddled up together in the four walls of our home doing things that you do when your Children are at home.
Um, you know, making up reasons for them to take a nap and, you know, we had hot chocolate and I’d let them go run outside in the snow, but we don’t really have lots of good clothing for that.
So they’d run out in their jeans and tennis shoes, they’d get soaking wet in 10 minutes.
So I’d let them come back in, throw all their clothes in the dryer, give them some hot chocolate and then put those warm clothes back on them and throw them outside again.
And so it was fun.
I enjoyed those days playing all the board games that you have forgotten or in your closet and spending time just kind of talking to each other and hanging out together.
And I enjoyed those days. But towards the end of that week, I ran across a news article and the news article headline said this Dallas Fort Worth stricken with cabin fever.
They then had some quotes of people that live in the Dallas Fort Worth area that had been closed into their homes just like I had been here, here were some of the quotes from some people snow ice, single digit temperatures.
Could the plague of Locusts be far behind?
Someone else said no school again tomorrow, I think I’m gonna go nuts being stuck in this house.
Somebody else said this has ruined what was going to be a very fantastic week and it’s made me used up, use up two of my holidays from my job.
Somebody else said, well, isn’t this just great? All the electricity on my block just went out great.
So now you can add trapped at home with no electricity to the list. Fantastic.
Dallas Fort Worth stricken with cabin fever and at the time of this kind of snow in that we had all the ice that was lacing the roadways.
It was the exact same time as our Super Bowl.
It is the, the, the pinnacle event of sports in the States in the national football league and two of the uh the, the teams from the more northern states in our, in our country, they were playing against each other.
But Dallas in the south was hosting, was hosting the Super Bowl this past year and the snow came right about the time that we were hosting the Super Bowl and normally we get snow in the north of the States, but not in the South where we are.
And so someone said, dear God, I am not sure what we’ve done wrong here. In Dallas.
Maybe we shouldn’t have hosted the Super Bowl. I’m not sure.
But would you please forgive everybody and bring back our friend, the son?
We promise never to host those Northerners again.
I mean, you would think that being made to stay home for a little while might be a gift.
You would think that being made to rest and relax would be something that people might delight in.
I mean, you would think that a break that is forced upon you would be something that would be to enjoy with your family, with your friends just having some time to be still.
But, but from the, the headlines of that article that occurred to me that sometimes when we have an opportunity to rest, to take a load off, to have some breathing space in our room to have a little margin outlining our lives that we feel according to the news article stricken by that, have we become so addicted to stress that we don’t even know how to enjoy rest anymore?
Have we made an idol out of our exhaustion?
Do we feel like unless we are completely spent and completely worn out that we have not done everything that needs to be done and be accomplished.
And, and as I was thinking about this in my own life, I thought about how, how often times the enemy comes against us in ways that we are expecting.
There are things that maybe we’ve put up guards against because we, we know that the enemy is crafty and may come against us in that specific area.
But could it be that this area causing us to spin our wheels endlessly, to be exhausted, to not enjoy the rest that God has come to give us?
Could it be that that’s the way that our crafty enemy is deceiving us and cheating us out of the abundant life that God has come to give us.
You know, Jerry and I live in a fairly rural area of Dallas.
Uh We moved from a neighborhood where there’s, uh, you know, concrete pavements and uh houses that are right next door to each other.
We moved out a little further south so that we could live on a little bit more, more property, not much, but a little bit more.
And I needed these three boys to be able to run around and play all day long because you know that when the Children are out of school, you are praying for bed time every day, you’re just trying to fill up the hours until bedtime.
And so we, we, we live on a little plot of land where they can run around and play and really enjoy being outside as boys should.
And, and, and in this little rural plot of area of ground where we live, we have put up some pretty specific guards against little critters that are out there most notably snakes.
Now, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve actually been there three years now.
We’ve not seen one ourselves, but we have heard from the neighbors that live, that they’re nearby and you need to have precautions.
So I have said to my boys, you know, if you can’t see your feet walking somewhere, then don’t go there.
If the grass is tall, don’t wade through any tall grass.
You know, we don’t leave our garage door up for long, long, long periods of time because we don’t want them to think that they’re welcome and can come on in and make themselves at home.
You know, we’ve just put up a few precautions here and there.
I’ve been aware of the fact in this fairly rural area, this new area where I live, I’m aware of the fact that that it’s possible that snakes could be around.
And so I’ve put up safeguards because I’m expecting them there.
Which is why when my husband called me one day, I was very shocked to see him with this picture.
Now, you need to know that when my husband sent me this picture, he was not sending me a picture of a snake he had found and killed at our home.
He was sending me a picture of a snake that he had found and, and he’d had to kill.
That was at our previous home.
That was right in the middle of a concrete jungle, right in the middle of a neighborhood.
The last place that we would have anticipated or looked for or stood guard against a snake.
And it occurs to me that this is exactly the way the enemy is because in one area of our life, we are putting up safeguards, we are protecting, we are, we are expecting him to come.
So we are preparing ourselves and all the while the snake is coming in the other direction, the snake is coming in another way to deceive us and to cheat us out of what it is that He has for us.
And I wonder if this is part of the way he’s doing it because we think often times about the sins in our lives, the hindrances, the bad habits, the ungodly Proclivities, the things that we’re used to considering when we talk about being enslaved to things in our life.
But could it be we’ve become enslaved even to the things that God has given us to enjoy, even the things that are lawful for us, the things that He has given us, the privilege to experience in our lives, maybe we’ve even become enslaved of those.
And he doesn’t want us to just be free from the sins and the hindrances and the un godly Proclivities in our life.
He wants us to be free from any and everything that would seek to steal our attention, our, our devotion away from where it really belongs.
And that’s to him. There is nothing, not even a good thing that should hold our allegiance more than our relationship with Jesus Christ.
And so I think about all the things that we overdo, all the things that we have an incessant compulsion to continue long after.
Maybe we shouldn’t. I was in the airport with Jerry, um, a, a couple of months ago, we were on our way somewhere and he was walking over to Starbucks to get a drink and he said, hey, would you like something?
And I thought for a second and say, uh, yeah, sure. I guess so.
He said, Priscilla, you do know you don’t have to get something. Right.
Oh, yeah, you’re right.
Why is it that I felt compelled to get something that maybe I really didn’t even have a taste for right.
Then maybe for you, it’s not coffee. Maybe it’s food. You just can’t seem to stop.
Maybe for you. It’s not either of those things.
Maybe it’s your, your busines in your ministry or on your job, you just are filling up every single moment on your calendar with incessant activity and continued activity.
And before you know what, you have sacrificed your family for that job or for that ministry?
Could it be that it’s not your time that you’ve overdone it with the activities that fill up your calendar?
Could it be that it might be the space in your home?
You keep accumulating and accumulating and accumulating and this home that God has given you to enjoy the office space that God has given you to enjoy.
You can barely enjoy it anymore because it is so crammed with all the clutter that you keep on accumulating.
Could it be that often? We become enslaved to the very things that God has given us to enjoy?
And so what God does is put boundaries around even the things that He has given us to enjoy.
He puts boundaries around him. And we’d rather not have the boundaries.
We’d rather have the freedom to do exactly what we want to do when we want to do it the way we want to do it.
We don’t appreciate boundaries. But what we don’t realize is that without the boundaries, we will in our human Proclivities, we will become enslaved again, even though he died to free us, not only from sin, but from anything that would seek to steal our devotion away from him.
I think of a fire. We appreciate a fire because it gives warmth to us.
It helps us prepare things that need to be prepared.
We appreciate the beauty of a fire on a cold day.
As long as that fire is in the fireplace because that fire outside of the boundaries in which it needs to be contained.
That same fire that is to be enjoyed will cause destruction and disaster and calamity.
And so boundaries are to be appreciated.
And there is a boundary that the Lord set in place way back in the Old Testament.
And that continues to be a model for us in our lives today.
And I want to challenge you with this tonight. With this very practical concept.
The story revolves around the central characters in this story are the Children of Israel, the Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, approximately 400 years.
And as slaves in Egypt to Pharaoh, they had been trained in busines, They had been trained in incessant activity.
They were made to toil rigorously and they were made to toil constantly. Their work was not, was, was unending.
It was unrelenting. They had vigorous activity that they were involved in consistently.
And yet after 10 miraculous plagues and a stunning deliverance by God out of Egypt and into the wilderness on their way to Canon God did for them.
Exactly what he did does for us. He set them free. They were in bondage, they were shackled.
They had a mandatory allegiance to another entity other than yahweh and he set them free.
But there’s a problem because when you’ve been born in slavery, when you’ve been raised in slavery, when you’ve been trained in the way of a slave, your mindset has been molded into that of a slave.
And what he did not want were slaves that he had made free and that physically were freed legally, were free, but still wanted to go back to Egypt in their hearts.
What he wanted were people whose hearts and whose minds have been changed and transformed into the free people that he had given them the opportunity to be.
And so he wanted to do more than just free them from Egypt.
He wanted them to walk like free men and women.
And listen, he doesn’t want us just to be free from the bondage of sin in our lives.
He wants us to know what it feels like to walk as free men and women to experience the freedom that He has come to give Galatians 5 1.
He says, it is for freedom that I have set you free.
Therefore, would you stand firm and not be subject to a yoke of slavery ever again, it’s for freedom that he has set us free.
And these people whose value had been determined based on how hard they could work, how much they could produce.
These people had to be retrained, refocused in their mindset so that they could be the free people that God had called them to be.
Yes, they were out of Egypt. But now Yahweh needed to work Egypt out of them.
And one of the ways that He was gonna do this was by putting a boundary around even the things he had given them to enjoy.
And we see this boundary in Deuteronomy chapter five in Deuteronomy chapter five, beginning in verse 12, he says, observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy as the Lord, your God has commanded you six days, you shall labor and do all your work.
But on the 7th, 7th day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God in it, you shall not do any work.
Verse 15. And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.
And the Lord, your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm.
Therefore, the Lord, your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath Day.
There it is the Sabbath day, God had gone out of his way to give gifts to his newly freed people.
He had given them Manna from the heavens.
He had given them quail when they had gotten tired of the manor.
He had given them water from a rock.
When they were thirsty, he made sure to put shoes on their feet that would not wear out in their 40 years of wondering.
He wanted to give them good gifts.
And there was another gift that at the time they would not have considered to be a gift.
And it was the Sabbath Day.
It was the gift of a boundary, a margin that he was placing around the good gifts that he had given them.
It was one day out of every seven days that he told them that they were not to work, that they were to have a rest.
The Sabbath Day was a gift. It was a privilege.
It was a benefit that they that was given to God’s people.
These people knew nothing of resting, of having an opportunity to just enjoy the fruit of their labor.
And by the time the Jewish leaders of the New Testament came along, there were more rules and regulations and details and meticulous specifics attached to this law of the Sabbath than any mere human could carry out.
No one looked forward to this, this idea of the Sabbath Day because it became a burden when in the beginning, it was a gift that was given by God to his people.
Few people treasured this gift. This refreshing respite that this law was originally intended to, to give to God’s people.
But in its original meaning and application, the implication for us is absolutely staggering.
It was a margin that was given so that the gifts that God gave to His people could be rightfully enjoyed.
And so the Children of Israel were given the Sabbath day.
I want you to think about this concept as we talk about it for just a few moments in the scriptures.
I want you to think about this, not so much as a day, but a principle or an attitude, the Sabbath attitude, the Sabbath principle, that word in the original language is Shabbat and it means to cease to stop, to pause.
It means to take a deep breath, it means to have some breathing room, it means to have some margin in your life.
It is an attitude, a principle, not necessarily a day, don’t think of it that way for you.
And I, we need to think of it as a, an attitude that we take into our everyday living.
And I want you to think about this, not only with your time, the way you spend your time on your ministry in your job, in that activity, in which you’re involved.
I want you to think about this in regards to your space. Do you have any breathing room?
Do you have any margin in the space you work in, in the space that you live in?
Gordon mcdonnell is an incredible expositor of God’s word.
He says this, I’m of the opinion that busines is a deeper threat to the soul than pornography ever was.
And so this principle of the Sabbath, it was a gift and I wanna share with you three things that from this passage will help you.
And I to remember the, the beauty, the, the power of the Sabbath Day and the way it can transform our life in this simple passage, we get to see how the Sabbath Day is to be implemented or the Sabbath principle.
The Sabbath attitude is to be implemented in the lives of people who have been given the stamp of freedom on their lives.
The first thing that God says to us, to the Children of Israel and by the Holy Spirit’s power to us.
Deuteronomy chapter five verse 14. He says in the beginning of that verse, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord, your God and in it, you shall not do any work.
I can just see the stunned look, the stunned expression on the face of the Hebrew Children as they are being told by God.
You shall not do any work. They had never heard these words before in regards to them.
I can just, I can just see them, their, their skin burned from the scorching Egyptian sun, their eyes glazed over from lack of sleep and nutrients.
Their continuous 24 7, 365 days a year calendar where they had to work to build storehouses for their, their slave drivers, their slave master pharaoh and the task masters that he set over them, they knew nothing of rest.
And in that polytheistic culture that is a culture where there are many gods that have to be appeased.
Not only did they have to work and toil to please their earthly master.
But in order to stay on a good note, in order to stay on the good side of all those gods, they had to go out of their way to appease all the gods working incessantly to make sure that they had uh worked enough to cover for their sins.
But now God Yahweh was taken this people and transforming them from a people who had a polytheistic mentality who felt like their valley value was placed on their amount of productivity.
He was taking them out of that lifestyle and he wanted to transform them into a nation God’s own people, his beloved chosen ones.
And he says, in order for you to fully realize what it means to be a child of God, I need you to know that you’ve got to resist the urge to continue.
You’ve got to resist the urge to continue in with incessant activity as you’ve been used to doing in slavery.
You gotta know when to cease to come to an end to pause.
He says on that seventh day, you shall not work.
Listen, if you’ve been trying to find a Bible verse that your teenager will memorize.
This is probably the one you shall not work. They’ll get that one.
Don’t get that one, but it is not a golden ticket for laziness.
It is not a ticket for slothfulness because this principle, uh this day in this time, the seventh day that was given by God to the Children of Israel.
It was given to them after verse 13, verse 13 says day one through six, you ought to do your work.
It’s just the seventh day that you ought to have as a margin around the work that you were doing.
And so it is not a ticket to laziness.
It means ceasing from the normal activity of your day in order to have time for the things you would not normally spend that time doing, it doesn’t mean to do nothing.
It means to stop doing the stuff that normally consumes your time, the stuff that you have a compulsion to keep doing to stop doing that, to discipline yourself, to stop doing what you normally do day one through six.
So that on day seven, you can concentrate and spend time doing the things you do not normally do.
I’m thinking about the fact that in this conference here, you and I have been given this incredible privilege to sit underneath the anointing teaching of God’s Word from so many gifted folks who have taken this platform and who have shared with you and I uh the, the great news of God’s Word and the worship that we have been able to participate in that has been led from this platform.
What a great opportunity for us to Shabbat and some of us are barely able to stand the fact that we have to stop, cease checking our Facebook status or checking our Twitter links or checking our email or continuing to do the things we would normally do and fully invest in this opportunity.
We have to cease striving to be still and know that He is indeed God.
And so I wanna ask you what is compelling you, what is luring you?
What is that thing that you are just compelled to keep on doing?
The principle of the Sabbath teaches us to resist the urge to continue that at some point when you sense the Holy Spirit saying enough is enough, you’ve got to be willing to say, OK, I’m gonna Shabbat, I’m gonna take a breather so that I can enjoy what it is that God has already done.
Somebody’s got to know when to stop. They have to know.
I have to know when we’ve worked enough when we’ve tried enough when we’ve gathered enough when we’ve purchased enough.
When we’ve said enough, when we’ve stored enough, when we’ve kept enough, when we’ve created enough, when we’ve produced enough, when we’ve generated enough, when we’ve consumed enough, when we’ve labored enough.
When we’ve expended enough. When we’ve spent enough, somebody’s got to know when to say enough is enough.
Look at your neighbor and say enough is enough. Enough is enough.
This principle, this principle is so uh very clearly demonstrated for us in the book of Exodus.
And, and I’m gonna hop over to Exodus uh quickly because I want you to see this.
Are y’all still with me? Did I lose you?
I want you to see this principle really briefly.
There are two other points I want to share with you, but I want you to see this principle because in Exodus 16, it is the very first time that this is mentioned, the very first time that this principle, other than the creation story, which I want to show you something about that in a moment.
But other than the creation story, this is the first time this is introduced to the Children of Israel, OK?
They are given gifts by God. Remember they are given many gifts.
One of them is man straight from the heavens and they are given a boundary around this gift that God has given them to enjoy.
They are given a boundary. And so it says in Exodus chapter 16, verse 25 26 Moses says to them, and this is the Sabbath day that Moses is speaking, it’s the seventh day.
He says, eat it today for today is the Sabbath day to the Lord.
Today, you will not find any in the field. Six days you shall gather.
But on the seventh day, there will be none.
He says to them implicitly don’t even worry about gathering on the seventh day.
You are going to be wasting your time to go out into the field and gather man on the seventh day days, one through six.
And Pastor Jensen alluded to this last night, but day one through six, they were to leave their tents, they were to go out into the field, they were to gather man up.
But on the seventh day, Moses says, don’t even don’t even get out of your pajamas on the seventh day and go into the field because I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to find any.
But the Children of Israel are so much like us because it says that they went out anyway, verse 27 and lo and behold, what did they find?
Nothing? One of the ways that you can know that you have stepped over into the seventh day in your life.
One of the ways you can know that you are infringing upon the Sabbath territory that the Lord would have, you mark out in your life so that you can not have every margin of your time and every margin of your space filled to capacity.
One of the ways you can know is if you’re gathering, if you’re trying, if you’re working and yet you find that you have nothing show for your efforts.
There have been so many times in my life in my writing.
For example, when I’m sitting in front of the computer on day one and day two and day three, and I’m doing what it is that needs to be done.
And I feel like I’m being productive.
But then there’s a time when the Holy Spirit, I just sense a holy hush.
Just I need to stop for a while. I need to concentrate on something else.
I need to be with my boys. I need to be a wife to my man.
I need to cook something for dinner for goodness sake.
And I can either keep on working through that because I gotta get this done.
I gotta get this done. But most of the time I know when I’ve stepped over into the seventh day because I’m sitting in front of the computer and can’t get one creative thought on the page.
Anybody ever had anything like that ever happen.
And one of the ways we can know that we’ve infringed on the seventh day is when we’ve not resisted the urge to continue and we have gone out to the field and we can see that we’re not gathering anything, nothing’s happening.
Do you know the late great Michael Jackson? There have been so many documentary memories done on this man.
It’s unbelievable. But one in particular I remember they were doing a uh biography on the making of the Billy Jean video.
You remember Billy Jean? Don’t you? Y’all don’t try to act wholly. Y’all remember Billy Jean, right? Ok.
So Billy Jean in the video, Michael Jackson is walking on this pavement and he’s dancing all over the place.
And every time he walks down this path, every step he takes the square on the pavement, lights up.
Anybody remember this. So he’s walking up and down the path and the square lights up.
And the director of this particular video is being interviewed and he says, tell us, they asked him, tell us about the making of the video and he said, you know what, when he was walking down that path, I had to pull Michael over to the side and say, listen, Michael, you are talented, you can dance your way all over this path.
We all know that you are one of the most incredible dancers to ever grace the face of the face of the earth.
But let me tell you something.
I have already gone before you as the director of this video and I have pre lit certain squares on this path.
I, I don’t care how much capability you have, how great a dancer you are.
If you want this video to work, if you want the squares to light up on the path that I’m gonna need you to corral all your abilities and make sure that you step on the squares that I have already put a light under.
Here’s what the scripture say. He says he has already prepared good works beforehand so that you and I can just walk in them.
And some of the reason why oftentimes we find ourselves, I find myself spinning our wheels is because we are in our own gifts and talents and abilities are dancing all over the place instead of just walking on the squares.
He has called us to walk off.
And if you wanna see your path light up my friend, then you might as well go ahead and stick with day one through six.
And when you feel the prompting of God’s spirit to stop, to resist the urge to continue to resist the urge to continue doing that project, continuing in that activity, accumulating those things, resist the urge to continue.
And when you and I follow along with the path that he has set up.
That’s when we’ll see the squares lighting up and we’ll get to see his work most fully completed in our lives.
The second thing that I love from the Deuteronomy passage, not only does he say to us that we need to resist the urge to continue.
But in verse 15, he says, and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.
I love this so much because in this verse, there was a direct connection between their previous slavery and this current command to obey the Sabbath.
There is an obvious connection in this one verse.
We see the slavery aspect, their past tense slavery and their present tense command to obey the Sabbath day.
I love this. He says to them, I want you to remember the fact that you used to be a slave.
I want you to recall the fact that you used to be in slavery.
You had no choice but to continue. You had to keep on going against what you really truly desired.
I want you to remember what slavery felt like.
Remember what it felt like when there were shackles on your wrists and shackles on your ankles.
Remember what it felt like when you were under compulsion to participate in things that you really did not want to participate in.
And I wonder if there are anybody in the room and you’ve ever been enslaved before?
You know what it feels like be shackled to that addiction, to be shackled to that habit, to be shackled to that lifestyle choice to be shackled to that inclination or that proclivity.
And you just felt like you could never break free from that relationship.
You could never break free from that activity. You would never taste what freedom is like.
Again, he says, would you remember what it’s like to be a slave?
Remember what it felt like when you just felt like your allegiance was to that thing and you could not break free from that.
I bet if we pass the microphone around in here today, we would have some testimony of some people who used to be a slave.
But now they know what freedom looks like. They know what freedom tastes like.
They know what it’s like to have the Holy Spirit set them free from the law of sin and death.
I don’t know about you, but I’m grateful for the fact that he snatched me out of darkness and threw me into his marvelous light.
I am grateful for the fact that I want new slavery.
But now I am a free woman of God who can declare freedom to God’s people.
He says, would you remember what slavery was like?
You are not to feel that way ever again, not only to a sin or a hindrance, but even to the stuff in your life.
He’s lawfully given you to enjoy you. And I are not to be enslaved to those things.
We are not to have a compulsion or an allegiance even to the things that he has rightfully given us to enjoy.
He says, remember that you used to be a slave, but you are not a slave anymore.
In the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation was declared over our country.
In 18 65 African slaves on American soil were set free once and for all.
And you would expect that they would have immediately packed their bags and left their masters as quickly as they possibly could.
But you might be surprised to find out that there was a fairly large constituency of slaves that chose to stay in slavery because they felt that slavery was better off for them than the riskiness of living as free men and women.
They chose to stay in slavery when they had the opportunity to be free.
God forbid, he gave his son on the cross of Calvary that he shed his blood for our sins that he paid such a high price so that you and I might be free and yet we willingly choose to be enslaved again to the things that he spent so much to free us from.
He says, would you remember what it was like to be enslaved?
Remember what that used to feel like first Corinthians 6 11. But such were some of you.
But now you’ve been washed, you’ve been justified. You’ve been sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Second Corinthians, 5 17, all things, they are passed away. Behold all things.
They have become brand new and the Children of Israel in slavery.
Whenever they would have been given a little food to eat, they would have done what slaves do.
The slave mentality would have done.
They would have kept every morsel that they could have kept, they didn’t waste anything or throw extras away.
They would have put it in their pockets.
They would have hung on to it because they needed to, they, they were living in fear of deprivation.
And so they would hang on to everything that was given to them.
Slaves hard but free people give slaves live fearfully but free people live lovingly slaves.
They live with closed fist but free people, they live with open palms, slaves.
They live from a posture of lack but free people. They live from a posture of abundance. Slaves.
They live a position of deficiency. But free people live from a place of holy expectations.
Slaves always think they don’t have enough free people believe that whatever they don’t have.
God will graciously and miraculously provide in his abundant timing. Slaves keep on going and going.
Slaves keep on gathering and gathering slaves keep on operating.
But free people can discipline themselves to stop knowing that if they take care of day one through six, God will step in and take care of day seven.
He says, remember what it was like to be a slave.
All that hoarding. You don’t have to do that anymore, filling in every space of your day and like you don’t have to, you don’t have to be enslaved like that anymore.
He died so that you and I might be freed.
And in Exodus 16 says that when they gathered, there was not only the stipulation of the seventh day that was imposed upon them, but it also he said to them, Pastor Jensen alluded to this last night.
He said to them, listen, when you gather, don’t hold, don’t hold on to stuff until the next morning.
Do not do it. It will become infected and infested with worms.
In other words, it will be completely distasteful to you, it will be useless.
It will become foul interestingly enough in the original language.
The word there that is used to describe foul is the exact same word used to describe Egypt when uh the Nile became distasteful during one of those plagues when the frogs caused a distasteful scent and a foul aroma to infest Egypt.
That is the exact same word used to describe what happened in Egypt.
It’s amazing how, when you and I don’t be obedient to God when we gather beyond what it is that God has told us to gather, that we begin experiencing the same things that are experienced by people who do not believe in God who are pagans and you and I have been called to an entirely different standard.
There should not be uh similarities in what we are experiencing in this regard.
And so the Children of Israel, they are to remember that they used to be slaves, but they are no longer enslaved.
And when they hoarded it says that worms infested it and it became distasteful to them.
And I wonder if your job has become distasteful to you.
I wonder if your ministry is starting to drive you crazy.
I wonder if you look at your calendar and it gives you a headache just looking at the calendar.
I wonder if you walk into your office space and you can barely stand it because you can’t see the top of your desk.
It’s covered with all your stuff.
I wonder if you walk into your closet sisters and you can’t actually enjoy anything you have because there’s too much there.
I wonder brothers, most notably my husband, if I just wonder brothers, it’s just so much technology.
If every new technological device has been gathered so that you’ve got so much of everything, you can’t really enjoy one thing.
And what happens to us is that our homes that we’ve been given to enjoy, they become distasteful to us.
Foul cluttered. It’s just too much stuff everywhere.
The jobs that God has given us to, to enjoy, we just can’t even enjoy them because it’s crammed packed and so things that we’ve been given to enjoy, they become distasteful to us.
The Sabbath principle is a guard against that.
Finally, he says to us in Deuteronomy, not only are you supposed to resist the urge to continue.
Not only are you supposed to remember what you used to be?
But then he says, verse 16, he says, remember that the Lord, your God brought you out of there by a mighty outstretched arm.
I love this. He says, you resist the urge to continue.
You remember that you used to be a slave, remember what you used to be?
And then He says, you recall what God has accomplished on your behalf.
This is what the Sabbath is all about. It’s about recalling what God has accomplished on your behalf.
It is about gathering on day one through six, but then standing on the seventh margin of your life, standing in agreement with God that what he gave you was good.
That day one through six was good that he accomplished a lot.
It is the celebration of God’s activity in your life.
It is taking time to cease to pause to Shabbat and thank God for what he has already accomplished.
Do you know the first time that this is mentioned?
And I wanna show you this so quickly, but it’s so important. The first time this concept is mentioned.
And there is a principle in theology called the law of first mention.
That means any time you are trying to really find the root meaning of something in the scriptures.
If you can trace it back to the first time it was mentioned, you will probably find the details around that particular theme or that idea or that principle.
The first time it is mentioned is in the book of Genesis.
And this is so interesting because when I look at the creation story, I have just seen the creation story, story as a linear pattern of events.
I didn’t see any rhyme or reason or order to why God created something on day one and then something else on day two and something else on day three, I just thought it was one day after the other.
And so when we see the creation story, it looks a little something like this.
On day one, he created day and night. On day two, he created the heavens and the earth.
Day three, land and vegetation. Day four, the sun and the moon. Day five birds and fish.
And then the first part of day six, he created land animals.
The second half of day six, he created man and woman.
And then on the seventh day, God took the Sabbath.
Now, I’ve not seen it for any more than that, that he worked for six days or he spoke the word and called things into existence.
And then on the seventh day, he rested, but a scholar by the name of Sandra Richter helped me to see something very interesting that if you divide this week into two different hals day one through three and day four through six.
You see that there is an order, there is a pattern.
He was very deliberate into how he uh structured the creation of the earth.
And it speaks to us in regards to the Sabbath.
Look at the correlation between day one and four on day one.
He created the day and night on day four, he created the sun and the moon, the the inhabitants for the habitation that he created.
On the first part of the week. On day two, he created the heavens and the oceans.
On day five, the second day of the second half of the week, he created the birds that were to take domain that were to fill, that were to inhabit the heavens and the oceans, the birds and the fish.
On day three, he created land and vegetation.
And on day six, the beginning part of the day, he created the animals they were to fill to dominate to inhabit the habitation.
Do you see the order here? Do you see the pattern that the first half of the week?
He created a domain the second half of the week, the correlating days, he created the inhabitants that were to rule over or take domain.
So when he comes along in the second half of six, the the sixth day, and he creates man and woman, he is sticking with the order, the structure, the hierarchy that he’s already set up.
He is saying now man is supposed to stand in Dominion over all of it.
In fact, he said to ma’am, I’m gonna bless you in this regard.
I want you to take control to take sovereign Dominion over that which I have created.
And so when Jesus, uh when uh God comes on day seven, yahweh and he stands in the seventh day, it is not just the seventh day because he needed a break.
My friends, he did not need a break.
He hadn’t done anything but spoken and it was done and not only was it done, it was good.
He stands in the 7th day as a statement of his overriding sovereignty control Dominion over all that has been created.
And it was this that Adam rebelled against, he rebelled against the principle of the Sabbath Day in his life.
He rebelled against the sovereignty of God.
Do you realize that when we delete the Sabbath day from our life, when we delete the Sabbath margin, the Sabbath principle, the breathing room out of our life.
What we are saying is God, I’m in the position of sovereign in my life.
I’m in the position of the one that is in control in my life.
And the problem with taking control my friends is that if you’re gonna own it, then you have to have the chops to maintain it.
Adam couldn’t maintain it and neither can you and I, and when you and I take the Sabbath day, it means we are standing in that space with God and saying God, I admit you’re in charge and I am not God.
I admit in this seventh day margin in my life, this principle, I’m adopting this principle in my life, Lord, because I wanna stand way with you and look at what you’ve done in day one through six in my life and say, yeah, that was good.
And I realize that it’s not my hands that created it. I recall what you have done.
I recall what you have already accomplished on my behalf.
And so he said to the Children of Israel and he said to, says to us today about the power of the Holy Spirit.
Would you remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy?
Remember this principle in your life that you and I are not to be exhausted, overwhelmed, overworked, feeling like we are completely frustrated with our lives from beginning to end you.
And I have been called according to John chapter 10, verse 10, to have life and to have life more abundantly, to have life to the full and you and I get that privilege when we accept appreciate and stand in the boundaries that God has given.
Not only you but me as well in our ministries, in our families, on our jobs, in our homes, in our office spaces where we work, where we play, where we live, when we have that boundaries, my friend, we get to stand in a space of enjoyment of the lives and the ministries and the businesses that God has given us to enjoy.
And so I want to challenge you tonight.
I want to challenge you. The seventh day.
One day a week amounts to 14% of a week, 14% of a week. One day.
I just want to take that number 14 and challenge you 14.
I want to challenge you to begin to carve out 14 minutes every day.
Just to Shabbat. That is to cease doing what you’re normally compelled to do whatever you check, whatever you’re looking at, whatever you’re participating in to, to, to just pick one thing that you’re gonna Shabbat, you’re gonna stop, you’re gonna stop writing, you’re gonna stop working, you’re gonna stop concentrating on that particular thing.
You’re going to cease doing the normal activity so that you have time for the abnormal to just spend time with your child, to spend time with your spouse to spend time, uh, doing that activity that you never get to enjoy just to not feel guilty because every moment on your calendar is filled up just to Shabbat.
14 minutes a day. I bet you’re gonna be surprised by two things. You’re gonna be surprised.
Number one, how refreshed you can feel from 14 minutes and you’re also gonna be surprised how difficult it is for you to find those 14 minutes.
But then I not only want to challenge you with 14 minutes, I want to challenge you with 14 inches in your space, your living space, your closet, your desk, whatever it is you want to tackle first, but once a week for a little while, why don’t you just find 14 inches of space and Shabbat create some margin, some breathing room.
And I wonder if you and I begin in these small incremental ways to incorporate this principle in our lives.
How we might begin to experience the freedom fully and completely that God has come to give?
I want you to bow your heads with me.
And I want to pray for those of you that have found yourselves bound in some way in this area of your life.
It’s not necessarily a sin, it’s not necessarily a hindrance.
It’s not necessarily something that is ungodly in nature by itself.
It’s just that you have become, you have overdone it in an area of your life.
You have found, you have found that you are expending way too much time or energy and effort on something that is taking you away from what God would declare should be the priority in your life.
Right now. Your family, your friends, your mate, you are sacrificing important things on the back of things that aren’t supposed to be the, the priority in your life.
And I wanna pray for freedom for you.
If that is what it is that you sense God’s spirit saying to you, would you just raise your hand and hold your hand up and I wanna pray for you Lord Jesus right now in Jesus name, I pray for those whose hands are raised, who are declaring and who are saying confessing Lord that they need to implement the Sabbath margin in their life.
I pray that you would give them a holy boldness and a holy courage Lord, so that they might be willing to do and put in place, the measures that need to be put in place so that they can experience the joy of the gifts that you have given them to enjoy.
Lord, I pray that you would help us all to appreciate this concept of the Sabbath margin.
Lord help us to realize that you set us free so that we can really experience freedom in every area of our life.
Lord, we are fully expecting, fully anticipating the good gifts that you will give and the full appreciation of them that we’ll be able to have because of the great gift of the Sabbath that you have given in jesus’ name.
All God’s people said amen. Brilliant.