Sermon by Rev. David Roth

Lessons: Jeremiah 17:7-8; Isaiah 65; True Christian Religion 301

Prayer: Lord, let us not let this day of Sabbath, this day of rest, go to waste. Help us to find peace today, find comfort in your words, and slow down our lives so that we can hear your still, small voice that longs to instruct us, longs to lead us, longs to fill us with joy and the light. Thank you for this day of rest, help it to rejuvenate us as we go forward into the week. Amen.

Sermon: We are in Week 3 of our spiritual growth campaign called Rise Above It, spiritual development through the Ten Commandments. The goal for this campaign is to learn how to rise above selfishness, worry, fear, anxiety, anger, negative emotions and motivations that separate us from experiencing the pleasure that the Lord wants us to experience in life. We are going to try to make choices guided and inspired by what’s higher, by what’s closer to the Lord. This takes effort and attention on our part. It doesn’t happen without our work, because our natural impulses, without spiritual truth and goodness guiding them, can lead us away from the Lord and the experience of the Lord.

The Lord says “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” We have to be reminded to take the time to reconnect with God.

I invite you to close your eyes for a moment. Close your eyes, get comfortable, and begin by taking a deep breath. Feel that breath fill your chest cavity, and exhale it, and fall into some natural breathing. Feel the breath of life fill you, cleansing your bloodstream, clearing your head, stilling your body. In your mind’s eye I invite you to picture a green meadow, with sweet grass, beautiful flowers, and swaying trees. It’s a warm, sunny day, and you’re lying under a tree in the soft grass, with a gentle breeze flowing. You hear a quiet stream flowing from a tranquil pond nearby, and birds singing their beautiful songs. You feel peaceful, you feel content. You know that you are loved and cared for, and you feel hope because you know that any struggles you face will pass. You hear these words from the Lord. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

We have the opportunity to take our minds to a place like this any time we want, to meditate on the Lord’s Word, and know that He is there. It says “Be still, and know that I am God.” And when you’re ready I invite you to bring your attention back to this room, sorry I can’t leave you there for the rest of the day. I think it’s interesting that this Commandment begins with a reminder to remember, what is it the Lord has to tell us to remember? “I command you to remember this,” and one way to remember is to put our minds in a quiet place. Slow down, and meditate on the Lord’s Word. The Lord says in His Word, “Do this lest you forget.” He wants us to pay attention.

Long after the exodus journey, the Lord speaks to the Children of Israel in the book of Deuteronomy about all of the things He had already told them during the exodus. The name “Deuteronomy” means “a second telling,” and it’s full of reminders of past events. For example, Deuteronomy 5 says “remember that you are a slave in the land of Egypt,” and “remember the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm,” therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. He says to the Children of Israel that they need to keep the Sabbath because they need to set time aside to remember these things.

The Lord does the same thing before He begins the Ten Commandments, He says ‘remember how you were slaves, and remember how I carried you on eagles’ wings out of slavery, now let me tell you these commandments.’ So there are two things He’s asking us to remember – number one, remember when you were slaves, which for us means to remember the hard times in your life and the difficulties you’ve experienced, and two, remember how the Lord has set you free. Remember you don’t want to go back there, you don’t want to go back to Egypt, you don’t want to go back to enslavement to those bad habits. We need to remember so that we don’t go back there. Remember that you have a certain tendency that you struggle with, whatever that is. Keep it in mind so you don’t set yourself up for failure to fall into that trap again.

Two simple lessons, remember what life is like without the Lord, and number two, remember what life is like when the Lord is in your life. The Lord does so many countless things to remind people He’s there. He tells them to remember the laws and the covenant that will lead them to happiness.

He said before He administered the bread and the wine at the Last Supper, “do this in remembrance of me.” Why are we doing this? We’re doing it to remember the Lord.

When the Children of Israel crossed over the river Jordan, and they finally entered into the Promised Land, they were commanded to set up an altar with twelve stones, and they said “do it purposefully so the children see you doing it, so later on they’ll ask you, what were you doing up there, when you set up those altars?” He said “do it to remember the power of the Lord, make it deliberate so the children of Israel will ask you later, to tell them about it.”

The Children of Israel had the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of remembrance, the feast of the Passover, all of these things to remind them of how the Lord led them through their life. They even had a blue thread in the tassel of their garments that would remind them of the Ten Commandments. They would see those threads and go “oh yeah, I’m supposed to not kill, or I’m supposed to not do this,” and so on.

The Lord says take the Commandments and talk about them with your children, when you rise up, when you sit down, at meal time, do it often. The Lord said attach these times in our lives to times of remembrance. We need to sleep, we need to eat, souse those times to talk about the Ten Commandments. Because you’re going to have to do that anyway.

He even told the Children of Israel to write the Ten Commandments on the doorpost of your house, so when you leave the house, you’ll see it and you’ll remember. They were also told to put the Commandments around their hands, and on their forehead. They had little boxes of scripture that they would write on their forehead, so they would see the scripture on other people’s heads and be reminded They had many, many reminders.

In the Rise Above It group, if you’re a part of the small groups that go along with this campaign, you know that the task this week is to write down little prayer notes to yourself on post-it notes and to put them around the house to remind you to pray. Why? Because we’ll forget otherwise. It’s just the way we are. If we don’t remind ourselves, we’re going to forget.

A friend and I were talking about a T-shirt we were thinking of manufacturing for parents to buy to put on their children, with phrases like “be patient with me,” or “count to 10” to save themselves from their parents impatient wrath. Wouldn’t it be great if you had that on your kid’s back when you saw them? Or some would say “I’m still learning,” or “You do love me.” I think it would be great if our kids wore these shirts, so they will remind us, keep us on task.

The Lord knows we have many cares and concerns, and that without a purposeful break to stop and reflect on what truly matters, and what’s eternal, we will be dragged down. We will be dragged down. We’ve all experienced that. How many mornings do you wake up, and let time and space rule the day? If you have children, you’re trying to get them off to school, force the kids out the door so they’re not late, through tears and breaking their spirits with impatience and anger and frustration, because we’re choosing how we look to other people, we want to make sure we’re on time so that people think that we’re smart and have it all together, over the feelings of our children. That’s a choice we make, but if we don’t rise above it, we’ll make a bad choice. So the Lord is saying, remember the Sabbath day.

To the Lord, Sabbath means literally “rest.” If we can’t remember where we leave our car keys, and we can’t remember what time we’re supposed to pick up our own children, how are we going to remember all of the teachings that the Lord has for us? How are we going to remember His Commandments? We aren’t, unless we remind ourselves, and enforce ourselves to do things that will help us to remember. If you only go to church one hour a week, and this is the whole time that you spend thinking about the Lord, it’s probably not enough to remind us, based on all the things we forget.

So today, we are in church to remember the reason we exist. We take time out once a week to remember why the Lord created us. We were created to love the Lord with all of our heart, with all of our soul, all of our mind and all of our strength, and our neighbor and each other as much as, or more than, ourselves. You know that that doesn’t happen automatically. It takes effort and attention.

When we leave church today and go about our daily lives, we may forget. What can we do to keep the Lord’s purpose before us? How do we keep His Commandments in mind? One way is through prayer, building time in your life morning, night and at meals, to pray. Those are standard times that we can remember it. Or take time to read the Lord’s Word daily, remind yourself by putting those truths in your head, so that they come to mind. Have something you’re working on, some habit you’re working to change, and keep that in mind, so that anytime it shows up, you work on it. It’s important to have friends you’re accountable to in your spiritual life, someone that knows what you’re dealing with, and you can talk to about it.

Use those post-it notes, 3M did us a great favor by creating them by accident, but that’s how they were created, and they work. They were trying to make a really strong glue that wouldn’t separate, but it became Post-It notes. The Lord was in charge of that project, perhaps.

Go be of service somewhere, find someone that you can help, because when you help other people, it gets us out of ourselves, and makes us think about higher things. Think about how we can be useful- how we’re created. Be part of those home groups that we’re doing these ten weeks, because that accountability to other people, that being with other people and focusing on these tasks really lifts our minds above our week and our struggles.

The text says “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall do no work.” Don’t you love it that our Creator, the Lord our God, demands that we take breaks? He’s demanding it of us, telling us you have to do it. Actually, someone shared with me a study that says people that go to church live longer. Why do you think that is? It’s probably because they’re taking a break, they’re slowing down and having their heart rate slow down and having a chance to really focus on what matters, so they live longer with less stress. You may have done a great service to your physical health just by being here today.

In one sense, we would be nuts not to take a day to just relax. Well, the Lord asked you to. Why wouldn’t we do that? Think about spiritual things for a day. See how you can be of service for a day. If your boss says you have to work, say no, this is part of my religion, I have to do it. Just tell your boss, I can’t do it, I have to take the day off. My pastor says so.

I wonder if this Commandment isn’t the hardest one for our generation to keep on all levels. In the natural sense we have six days to do all our work but the seventh is the day for the Lord, devoted to His service. He only asks for one out of seven. That’s kind of minor, if you think about it. One out of seven days. Yet we have a hard time with that. Often we think we only have value as a person when we’re working, or when we’re producing something. There was a study that was done at Penn State University, that showed that people actually exaggerate about the amount of time they work. They tell people they work more than they do, because they believe people will respect them more if they know they worked harder, or worked longer hours. I’m amazed by the fact that in Japan, there is a word in their language for working so hard that you die. They had to come up with a word for that because it happens. It’s called “kuroshi”. I’m glad we don’t have that word in our language. But when we focus on work for six days, it’s hard not to get caught up in the importance of what we do and what we’re creating. We tend to think this is so important, this is the most important thing we can imagine, because we identify with what we do, and what we create.

But the Lord says to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. He is commanding us to do this because- what do we have to do when we take a break from our work? We have to let go. We have to give up control. We have to trust that the business is going to be okay without us. That things will get done in time.

What about chores at home? Those are really important. Fall’s coming, I have to get the yard work done before the first frost, or whatever. No, you don’t. It can all wait. You can’t take it with you. You can’t take it with you, so why are you worried about it? The Lord knows we need to stop, He knows that we need to take breaks from all of the things that we do, He is not saying those things aren’t important, but He’s saying that you need to take breaks from them. In fact, the Writings from the New Church talk about a type of charity that is defined by taking a break from your work. Those breaks are called diversions of charity. The Lord says it’s actually an act of charity for you to take a break from what you’re doing. He says if you don’t, you won’t be able to continue doing what you do well. You’ll be stressed out and you won’t be able to see clearly. He gives an example of it: it’s like staring at the snow for too long. If you stare at the snow for too long, you become blind to other things. He also says it’s like a bow, if you have the string on the bow and you just leave it like that, that bow will lose its elasticity, so you have to take the string off of the bow and put it on when you need it, but if you leave it on, it’s going to lose it’s strength.

He’s telling us, we need to stop. We create false gods out of what we’re so busy doing. We’re so focused, our work becomes so important to us, that it becomes a false god for us. The Lord says no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon, which means money, or things that money gets you – stuff.

There is a related story in the book of Numbers in the Lord’s Word about a man who is gathering sticks on the Sabbath day to build a fire. The problem was, it was the Sabbath. So guess what? It was commanded that the Children of Israel grab him, pick up stones, and stone him to death. That used to be the law of the Sabbath. If you broke it, you died. I don’t think any of us would be left standing if we took that Commandment literally any more, would we?

The Jews were very serious about the Third Commandment. Lawmakers made up all kinds of rules about it so that people would know exactly what they could and couldn’t do. For example, if you wanted to squeeze lemons on the Sabbath, you couldn’t do it. They had an exhaustive list of the things you were allowed to do, but you weren’t allowed to squeeze lemons.

I think that we’d have a very busy Sunday morning here if that stoning law was still in effect. We might actually have more success with our advertising. Our sign might say something like “avoid stoning – worship with us this Sunday!”

But this law was discontinued when the Lord came on Earth. He said, you don’t have to do the external act any more, instead I want you to do something else. I want you to love each other on that day. I want you to take time to serve one another. It’s not about not working, it’s about what you should do on that day, is listen, learn about the Lord, take time to learn spiritual things, but also to focus on being kind to your neighbor of serving one other. So He changed what the Sabbath was about. He said it’s all about loving your neighbor, learning, and taking time off. In True Christian Religion, it says that the things the Lord did and taught us show us that that day became a day of love towards the neighbor.

You’ll notice that throughout Jesus’ ministry on earth He did all kinds of things on the Sabbath, which went against the Jewish law, and He did it to prove a point. He said the Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, so I want you to serve each other. He healed someone with a withered hand, He healed a woman that had had an infirmity for eighteen years, He healed a man who had dropsy, He healed a man that, sitting at the pool of Bethesda who had had an infirmity for thirty-eight years, He healed a man that was born blind on the Sabbath. He was saying this day is not special, He didn’t say I don’t need to keep this Commandment any more, He said that I want you to focus on serving your neighbor on this day. Take time to learn what I teach, and apply it on this day.

The Writings for the New Church talk about a spiritual sense of the Word, a higher sense, that it’s not just the literal meaning. This spiritual sense of this Commandment paints a picture of our regeneration, or our spiritual life. The six days of work picture our fight against the lusts of our flesh, to put it bluntly, and against the evils and falsities from hell. The Lord says that those six days illustrate the conflict that you will go through as you try to regenerate, as you try to connect with the Lord. The seventh day, the day of rest, is when that connection actually happens. And you can see a parallel to the seven days of creation. It says that the seven days of creation are not about how the earth was created, it’s about how the Lord changes each one of us- if we’re willing to grow spiritually.

He says in the beginning, there was darkness over the face of the earth, that face of the earth is our outlook. Our outlook was dark, we were confused, we didn’t know what we were doing. The Lord says, let there be light. And that awareness that there is a God, and that He has a plan for me, that first thing, and each of those consequential days, each day that follows pictures some development within ourselves as we try to follow the Lord and obey His Word, until finally there’s that day of rest, when we’re not fighting any more, we’re not struggling with our bad habits any more. That’s when we’re connected with the Lord.

The seventh day, the day of rest, is a time to remember that it is the Lord that fights for us. It’s the Lord that helps us overcome the battles of our life. So think of the Sabbath day as a day to equip yourself for the weekly battle that you fight. A day to intentionally refocus your energy on your relationship with the Lord, or your relationship on serving other people. A day for strengthening your inner self, a day to be in touch with the divine. Ask yourself, what is my day filled with? What is my Sabbath filled with? And how many of you think you can maintain a healthy relationship with somebody else without investing any time or energy in that relationship? It’s really not possible. You have to work on your relationships to sustain them. And the same is true of our relationship with the Lord. You need to take time to focus on it, to develop it, to strengthen it.

Why did the children of Israel want to get out of Egypt? Because they didn’t have a day of rest. They didn’t have a day during which they could worship the Lord. They were set free so they could have their own time to serve the Lord – apart from the point that it was no fun being a slave. They were set free so that they could serve the Lord. That’s what the Exodus story is about.

Symbolically, the story about the man who was stoned to death illustrates our greatest pitfall, which is that working on the Sabbath is going against the Lord’s commandment because it represents us when we still labor from ourselves. We still believe that we are the ones that have the strength, and that we have the power. We don’t trust that the Lord can accomplish things in our life, so we scramble around, trying to make it happen. We try to do the Lord’s job for Him, so to speak, because we don’t trust that He’s doing it. It represents that part of us that cannot rest- cannot trust the Lord. I think our greatest challenge is to let go, and to trust that the Lord’s laws, if we keep them, will provide us with everything that we need. He’s laid out the plan for us about how to be happy, how to be content, how to be joyful, how to live forever, in a good state, and if we obey those laws, that will be our existence. But part of us is not willing to let go and trust that it’s really true. Maybe that is something to think about this week – what part of my self is resisting the Lord’s leading my life? What part of me is preventing me from getting aligned with His teachings for myself? What am I unwilling to let go of? Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. In Psalms it says rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. I think it’s very wisely put. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently. Because most likely that’s the part that’ll give up the patience. And in Psalms again it says wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.