Like many others, my life has been out-of-balance for many years, working too much. In taking the chief engineer position last year, I only complicated matters even more. When I volunteered to teach for my pastor during his Thanksgiving vacation, I decided to spend some time on a study of the Scripture’s perspective on balancing work and rest. Below is a summary of what I found and a link to the sermon on my church’s web site.

David

A summary of “Balancing Work and Rest”
A sermon for December 7, 2008
David Barfield, Community Bible Church, Lawrence, KS

• To listen or download the sermon
• Disclosure: The insights of Steve & Mary Farrar’s Overcoming Overload was helpful in my study. It is a good read if you want more on this topic.]

Introduction – This teaching was motivated my need to deal with my own imbalance. I love to do worthwhile work and have overfilled my life. So this sermon is for the overwhelmed. I believe it is also significant implications for the distracted, those who overfilled their life with other things.

We live in a unique day: “24/7; always on” society. A day that always offers “more”: more choices everywhere, more activities, endless entertainment, endless pursuits of whatever your interests.

The danger: squeezed out of our lives is time to rest and reflect, making it is easy to buy into the lies of our day among them: 1.You can have it all, and 2. You can do it all. 3. You deserve it all.  It pushes things out of our lives that are most important: time to think, time with God, time for relationships, etc.

The remedy: slow down, stop and listen, pause to remember our God and to hear Him.

Work – The focus of this message was rest, but a couple of points on work:
•    We were not made for rest but for work. Profitable work in the garden before the fall.
•    What is “rest” without meaningful work? Boredom.
•    As we will see, 6 days we will labor and one day we will rest.
•    Good passages on work and the diligence and care we are to take in pursuing true life: Eph 2:10, Col 3:22ff  2 Tim 2:15,  Eph 5:15, 2 Tim 2:3ff.

Yet, part living skillfully as Eph 5:15 commands is to live a life of balance. See also the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38ff where Christ corrects Martha. Serving Christ is important but there is a necessity to sit at times.

Rest – While the scripture says a lot about rest, its focus is the pattern of weekly rest God established at creation (Gen 2:2-3), He commanded for the nation Israel (Gen 20:8ff).

Gen 2:2-3 “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Ex 20: 8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

See also Ex 16:21ff, Ex 23:12ff, Ex 31:12ff.

This pattern/command of a weekly day of rest was established before the Fall, it is declared part of God’s design for man. The work Sabbath means to cease, to desist. God commanded it to be kept.  Its purposes are to allow us to reverence him and to allow all to be refreshed.

Jesus was the Sabbath reformer, not its abolisher – Long before Jesus’ day, the religious leaders had created a great body regulations concerning keeping the Sabbath. Jesus rejected their rules but not the Sabbath itself. See for example, John 5:5-11, Matt 12:9ff, Mk 2:23ff

Jesus declared that man was not made to benefit or serve the Sabbath day but the Sabbath was God’s idea to benefit us.

The epistles say little about this idea of a regular rest. There is evidence that its practice was continued by early Christians by moved from Saturday to Sunday.

Like Jesus, Paul declared in Colossians 2:6ff, and esp. verse 16, that our celebrations of the Sabbath should be according to our own conscience, not according to the expectations of others.

Closing thoughts

• Sabbath = God’s space between the activity of life; a protection against 24/7
• Without a Sabbath, life loses its rhythm, refreshment, reverence.

It is my growing conviction that I need a regularly putting aside time from both work and other forms of busyness to be refreshed, to worship, to take time to read and reflect on God’s goodness and what He has for me in this life.

William Biloxi (p 48) “the Sabbath is God’s special present to the working man. And one of its chief objects is to prolong his life. The savings bank of human existence is a weekly Sabbath.”

1) The Sabbath rest is for worship, for reverence
2) The Sabbath rest should result in refreshment.

In their book, Overcoming Overload, Steve and Mary Farrar argue that, for our Sabbath rest to refresh and restore it should also include solitude that require a sanctuary: a safe, quiet place to reflect.

• Taking time to rest is like a tithing of our time. It takes faith.
• Gathering with others for worship should be a natural part of our weekly rest (Hebrews 10:24-25)
• Jesus sought to be alone regularly. Matt 15:22ff, Mark 1:35ff, Luke 2:42
• We need to withdraw to think clearly, to free us from blindly following the herd. The Farrars argue that periods of solitude are needed to preserve our vital moral and cognitive differences with the world; to avoid accommodation.
• We must say “no” to many things so we can say yes to time with the Father.

What do we do with the regular time of rest?

• Traditionally, a day for us, as his church, to gather.
• Time with my family.
• Time in the Word, to got to my closet to pray.
• To read, to reflect, to write, to take a nap.
• To go for a long walk.
• Whatever refreshes and rests and worships is fair game.

Why do I need this?

1) Refreshment, rejuvenation – it energizes. C.H. Spurgeon, “Look at the mower in the summer’s day. With so much to cut down before the sunset, he pauses in his labor. Is he a sluggard? He looks for a stone and begins to draw it up and down his sickle (scythe) , rink a tink, rink a tink, rink a tink. He’s sharpening his blade. Is that idle music? Is he wasting precious moment s? How much he might have mown while he was ringing out those notes on his blade. But he is sharpening his tool. And he will do far more, when once again he gives his strength to those long sweeps which lay the grass prostrate in rows before his. Even thus a little pause prepares the mind for greater service in a good cause. Fisherman must mend their nets and we must, every now and the, repair our mental states and set our machinery in order for future service. It is wisdom to take occasional furloughs. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.”

2) To gain perspective – as I put away the hustle and bustle. As I look at God’s word, hearing it here, looking at it myself.

Conclusion

“Enough” – Does a Sabbath rest solve my problems of being overloaded? No, it complicates it now as I have a day less to get things done.

What is the answer? Learning what is enough. I seem to not be satisfied that I am doing enough. If God is content with six days of labor and a day of rest, why am I not satisfied? 6 days labor is enough…

• Matt 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
• Let’s not avoid His yoke for the distractions of the world. This will be to miss life.
• But let’s take a yoke of our own making – more difficult than it needs to be.

Gen 2:2-3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.