Entering God’s Rest

Scripture: Numbers 28, 29

Sermon: Entering God’s Rest

Topics: rest, busyness, idolatry

Preached: November 12, 2006

Rev. Mike Abma

PREAMBLE

Tonight we are going to think about time and the pace of life.

Recently National Public Radio (NPR) has been featuring segments on the relaxation industry in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is one of the most fast-paced, high-stress cities in the world. That has made rest and relaxation a huge industry. NPR focused on 3 different ways relaxation is being offered to customers:

* one is what they call “oxygen bars.” You literally stand at a bar and breathe in flavored oxygen – lime, lavender, tangerine, peppermint. Apparently this oxygen is supposed to activate your metabolism, reviving your cells, and maintaining your beauty. This form of relaxation can be yours for just about a dollar a minute.

* then there are the Japanese sleep salons. In the busyness of your day, you can pop over to a sleep salon, enter a quiet cubicle and take a quick nap while listening to your choice of relaxing music. This too, for about a dollar every two minutes.

* lastly, there are Japanese animal-therapy centers. You can enter a house full of cats, and for the low price of a dollar for every two minutes, you can relax with a purring kitten on your lap.

We may think this is all a bit over the top, but most studies put the pace of life in Japan as just slightly more hectic than the pace of life here in America. In other words, we aren’t far behind.

I think we realize this.

* We know we have to spend quality time with the kids – but I have heard of that being reduced to reading the kids a bed-time story from the office, over the phone.

* We know we have to take time to exercise – but there are people who are reduced to wearing one of the electro-muscle-stimulators while at the computer, answering their emails.

* and how many people don’t we see, trying to multi-task — answering their cell-phone, or checking their blackberry for messages – all the while traveling almost double the speed limit down Burton Street.

* That we take a hectic pace of life for granted was evident in the recent political campaign. It seemed a point of pride, almost, for the candidates to have outlandishly busy schedules — campaigning seven days a weeks, for weeks on end. They had no time to rest. And neither did we. No wonder, by this past Tuesday, we all breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally over.

The truth is, every person and every community is faced with the challenge of how it is going to organize its time. What we are going to look at is how God asked the Israelites to organize their time.

NUMBER 28-29

We are going to begin by turning to the book of Numbers.

The book of Numbers, you may remember, is the story of Israel traveling through the wilderness. Before they leave Mt. Sinai, God makes sure they are in order. The tabernacle is in the center. The Levites are around the tabernacle. And around the tabernacle are the 12 tribes of Israel: 3 tribes to the east, 3 to the west; 3 tribes to the north, 3 to the south.

But that first generation that left Mt. Sinai, rebelled and disobeyed. They died in the desert. Now, in the second half of Numbers, it is the story of the second generation. They are on the banks of the Jordan river and are about to settle throughout the Promised Land. They would not longer be able to be ordered around the tabernacle. So God gives them a different way of ordering their lives. He gives them a way of ordering their Time.

In Numbers 28 and 29 we see the structure of Israelite time:

Daily: there would be daily offerings, at dawn when the sun rose and at

twilight when the sun set (Numbers 28:1-8)/

Weekly: there would be a weekly day set aside, a Sabbath, to do no work,

and to offer worship to God (Numbers 28:9-10).

Monthly: and the first day of each month would be set aside to make

offerings and to worship God (Numbers 28: 11-15)

This was the worship rhythm in Israel.

Added to this there were the annual feasts and festivals.

The Annual feasts and festivals are described at the end of Numbers 28 and throughout Numbers 29.

The important thing about these feasts and festivals is that you were to do no work.

In the first month of the year, there was the Feast of Passover, their most important feast recalling their deliverance from Egypt.

50 days later they had the Feast of Weeks, celebrating the harvest.

Then in the seventh month of the year,

there was first the festival of trumpets,

then the day of Atonement,

and the month ended with the Festival of Booths.

In the Festival of Booths, they had to camp out in tents in order to

remember their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.

This was how time was structured in Israel.

This was the order of life.

This was what made Israel Israel.

This was what made her unique among the nations.

All these days and festivals set aside to root them in the goodness of God and the original goodness of Creation:

* they were times to stop work and relax in the goodness of God.

Everyone and everything got to rest and relax:

Once every week, everyone got to relax –

owners and slaves and livestock.

Once every seven years the land got to rest and be fallow

Once every seven times seven years (year of Jubilee)

debtors could rest.

All these days and festivals were ways that Israel was invited to taste and

experience the grace, the freedom, the goodness, of life and of God.

All these days and festivals also harkened back to Creation,

when all things were good,

and God could relax and enjoy his Creation,

and we his Creatures could relax and enjoy God.

We like to think that the Israelites kept these holy days.

But in many ways these holy days kept the Israelites:

These holy days kept the Israelites distinctive from everyone else

and they kept the Israelites close to God.

HEBREWS 3 and 4 (read Hebrews 4:1-11)

It is with this wilderness story of Numbers that we need to hear in the background as we read Hebrews 3 and especially Hebrews 4.

Here are the opening verses of Hebrews 4: 1-11

4Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it. ²For indeed the good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. ³For we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,

‘As in my anger I swore,

“They shall not enter my rest” ’,

though his works were finished at the foundation of the world. ⁴For in one place it speaks about the seventh day as follows: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.’ ⁵And again in this place it says, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ⁶Since therefore it remains open for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, ⁷again he sets a certain day—‘today’—saying through David much later, in the words already quoted,

‘Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts.’ 

⁸For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day. ⁹So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God;¹⁰for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labours as God did from his. ¹¹Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs.

HEBREWS 3-4

Hebrews 3 and 4 have the book of Numbers as their back-drop.

Hebrews 3 is all about how that first generation, that old generation,

never quite found that rest in God.

They remained restless in their unbelief and rebellion.

They remained restless in always wanting to go back to Egypt.

Hebrews 4 starts by saying, “Listen, the promise of entering God’s rest was closed to them, but it is still open to you!”

Don’t harden your hearts.

Don’t disobey.

The way this passage moves is kind of complicated.

What we should keep in mind is this:

the Old Sabbaths and holy festivals in the book of Numbers

were rooted in the goodness of Creation in the past.

For us today, whenever we set aside time to worship God,

whenever we cease from our labors

whenever we come to the one who gives us rest,

we are proclaiming that we a people rooted in Jesus Christ.

We are rooted in his death and resurrection.

We are also rooted in Jesus as the first born of the dead,

the first-fruits of the New Creation.

In other words, whenever we take time to rest, to relax,

to worship and pray,

to take a take a walk and drink in the beauty of this

world,

we are in fact, anticipating the eternal rest of the New Creation.

We are in fact practicing a tiny part of that New Creation

life right now.

The thing is, the way Israel had to organize their time to keep them in

touch with

Creation and our Creator,

is also something we need to do.

We need to organize our time in such a way that we always keep in touch

with Jesus, our Redeemer,

and the promise of the New Creation.

That is the only way to travel through the wilderness of this world.

However that is easier said than done.

We seem to be a culture rich in things and poor in time.

If you ask people how they are doing, many of them reply, “Busy!”

Somehow, we, even we Christians, have come to see busyness as a virtue.

We want to be busy, even need to be busy.

We are frightened of free time and even silence.

We are convinced we need to be busy.

And we may even think God needs us to be busy too.

THE IDOLATRY OF BUSYNESS

The desert fathers said just the opposite.

They said that busyness is not a virtue, it’s a vice.

They said that it’s not that we have to be so busy to show God how good we are.

Rather, we need to stop our busyness to realize how good God is.

It is too easy to get absorbed by the rhythm of the Canaanites — a rhythm of competition and constant consumption.

Instead of pressing forward, it is too easy to look backward to Egypt, a place that simply wants to enslave us in making bricks 7 days a week.

The thing is, in order to live out our true theology, we need a certain rhythm to our days, and weeks, and months, to keep us focused on Christ, and rooted in his eternal rest.

* that is why we emphasize things like daily prayer, weekly worship,

monthly communion.

* that is why the Church Year has become so important.

We need a certain rhythm in our days, and weeks, and months,

to drink in the beauty of this world;

but also to simply

rest in his love,

relax in his grace,

and waste time in his presence.

But we can hardly bring ourselves to do it.

RESTING IN THE LORD

In the recent BANNER article by Phil Reinders called “A Week of Silence,” he writes about accepting the challenged to go on a quiet retreat for 8 days.

It was tough. At first he kept wondering whether he should really be doing something else. But as he accepted the quiet and the rest, he became more and more connected to God and life than ever before.

Regularly setting aside time to enjoy God and his creation is hard.

Fellow Christians, like Lauren Winner, Barbara Brown Taylor, Eugene Peterson, have all written about their struggles to order time in such a way as to rest and relax in God’s goodness; to worship and get a foretaste of the New Creation.^[1]

Our date books, palm pilots, blackberries, cell phones, television, all exert an incredible pull on us.

But the whole book of Hebrews challenges us to persevere in the pilgrimage of faith — to keep going.

And sometimes to keep going means to actually to stop, to be still, and to know that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our Lord too.

Sometimes to keep going means putting the cell phone away, not answering any emails, and spending a day quietly considering the wonders of this creation.

Sometimes the only way to struggle on in the pilgrimage of faith,

is to slow down, quiet down, and to realize that all of life,

from the corn that grows in the fields,

to the grace that lives in our hearts,

is a gift.

And so, in the paradoxical sounding words of Hebrews, let’s make every effort to enter that rest.

1. See Lauren Winter, Mudhouse Sabbath, chapter 1; Barbara Brown Taylor, “Sabbath Resistance” in Christian Century, May 31, 2005; and Eugene Peterson writes of setting aside Monday’s as his Sabbath in a number of his publications. ↑