Purified People

Morning again, man. Lots of, lots of reasons for us to give thanks today, right? Yes, right there we go. Okay, goodness gracious, man. No, I’m super thankful to be here today. Oh man, it’s just always fun to be with everybody on a Sunday morning. If you are new with us, then I just want to say thank you so much for being here today. We really would love for you to take that bulletin connect card, write a little bit of your information on it, tear it off, and put it into one of our giving plates, which are in the four corners of our worship area. You do that, and I’d love to text with you or call you on the phone later this week. We could just chat a few minutes, or if you want, we meet up for a cup of coffee. I’d love to get to know you and pray with you and see how I can help you out. You know, one of our desires here at our church in particular is that this would be a good spot where anybody could lean into a relationship with Jesus and find their next steps of what it means to walk with Him. So if this is the place for you, then may we love to be that place.

This past week, Becca, myself, Carter, and Donna, we got to represent Sauldam Baptist Church at the South Carolina Baptist Convention. So this is an annual gathering of pastors and messengers from various Baptist churches across our state. We kind of all convene on one church and take it over, and it looks a little like an anthill whenever everybody gets out of the building. If you kick the anthill, everybody scrambles out, you know, as we’re all trying to get lunch or whatever. But man, it was just so encouraging to see what the Lord is up to in other churches across our state, and I’m just so, so proud, honestly, to be part of that, but also so proud to represent our church there as well.

So something I wanted to do this morning is just to pray for other churches. You know, we spend some time every Sunday morning during the service praying for something in particular, and we pray for ourselves a lot, man, that’s totally fine. But something I want to do as we have so many reasons to give thanks and so many reasons to be excited about church life, I just, I want to pray that other churches would be right where we are, where God would be blessing them and working amongst them. So I think that we’ve got some other churches. Yeah, there we go. So what I want you to do is just buddy up with somebody, buddy up one of your neighbors, and pray by name for one of these churches. You may know somebody there, you may know the pastor, you may not know anybody at any of these churches or where they are, but what we’re going to do, we’re just going to pray for them, asking that God would bless them particularly as we go into the Christmas season, asking that God would bring some guests to those churches, that people at one of those churches would come to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ this Christmas season. All right, y’all take it away, and I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment.

Thank you, y’all. Father, You say in Your Word that the prayers of Your saints is like incense at Your throne. God, You’re, You’re not just hearing us pray to You, but Father, I think it’s a sweet aroma that we would call on Your name on behalf of others and other churches in our community. Father, may You be pleased with the aroma of our lives and our worship, Lord. Father, I, I pray for those other churches on the slide, God. They are all in different situations, Lord. Some of them have some incredible things going on, and they are leaders for our local association in terms of evangelism and leader development, God. Some of them may just be holding on, but Father, these are, these are five communities of Christians that have called themselves the local bride of Your Son, Jesus Christ. God, I pray that You would put Your arms around them this Sunday morning, God. They would know Your comfort and Your presence, God, that You would do something beautiful and different in their worship services, please, not for their glory, but God, for Yours. Would You grow them deep and wide, that they would be a beacon for the gospel in their communities, please, God. Of course, we Want that for ourselves, of course, Lord. We want people to drive by our church building and know that there is a church body that worships there that is serious about Your mission and loving You with everything we have. God, may today, may today help push us in that direction. God, may You open my mouth that I would speak Your word. God, may You open all of our hearts that we would receive it. God, we’d be good soil like the parable of Jesus that would, that would produce fruit. Lord, may our lives produce fruit, please, God. I love You. We love You. We just want to help others love You as well. It’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Thank you guys so much. Well, how about this? Do you go ahead and open up your Bibles to the book of Nehemiah, chapter 13. I’ll meet you there here in a moment. Nehemiah, chapter 13. This morning, I was reminded as I got to the car and started heading up here to make some final preparations for this morning that, man, fall has arrived. I think we’re safely past summer two and maybe summer three, you know what I mean? I think we’re safely past. So I have decided it’s time for me to do something, time for me to start wearing my Christmas socks. Yeah, yeah, Christmas socks.

So, you know, with fall being here, that means Christmas is coming up soon. And as I was thinking about my Christmas socks, I remembered what it was like as a child to get socks as a gift on Christmas Day. Anybody else felt the highs of anticipation to get in that toy and the lows of opening up another bag of socks? Am I the only one? You experienced that? I think sometimes, man, God gives us gifts or family gives us gifts that are, they feel unwanted, yet they are very much so needed. At this point in my life, at the ripe old age of 31, I’m excited about socks. I was excited to go to a store a month ago and pick up my own undershirts, you know, that are slim in the right spots and a little loose in the other spots, you know what I mean? Anyways, unwanted gifts, I think sometimes are the things that we need the most.

Nehemiah discovered that the people of Judah and the people of Jerusalem were neglecting a key gift that God had given them. They were given a gift that looked a little like socks that they didn’t want, but, man, they needed. So today, what I’m going to do, I’m going to focus on how he exposed their neglect while I’m also going to try to offer something for all of us to take away as well. So Nehemiah, chapter 13, I’m going to start off with just a quick walk through the passage to get us kind of oriented to see what had happened. This is Nehemiah 13:15 and 16. We’ll just take it a chunk at a time.

At that time, Nehemiah says, I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath. They were also bringing in stores of grain and loading them on donkeys along with the wine, the grapes, and the figs. All kinds of goods were being brought to Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I warned them against selling food on that day. The Tyrians also were there importing fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah and Jerusalem.

Our passage starts off with that phrase, at that time. Chapter 13 is these three reforms that the man Nehemiah was leading the people of Judah through after he had helped rebuild the wall around their city, after he had helped reinstate worship in the temple. He keeps finding these arenas of life that aren’t quite up to standard. This morning, we’re looking at number two. Next week, guess what? We’ll look at number three, guys. So all these things are happening at that time. At that time, Nehemiah saw that the people were neglecting a gift. The gift is called the Sabbath. The people of God were neglecting this gift that God had given them, the Sabbath.

Now, let’s think, what is the Sabbath? And I’m preaching to a bunch of folks that showed up to church on Sunday mornings. Man, you guys are doing it. I was telling Connor this morning, I’m like, I feel like I’m preaching to the choir today because I’m going to talk about how it’s good to go to church on Sundays and here You are so good. Job to you guys. All right, the Sabbath. All right, what is the Sabbath? I’ll put it up on the screen for you. It is a 24-hour block of time in which we stop work, we enjoy rest, practice delight, and we contemplate God. I’m going to come back to those four categories here in a minute, but we stop work, we enjoy rest, we practice delight, and we contemplate God. That’s according to Pete Scazzero from his book The Emotionally Healthy Leader. Pete Scazzero, he is a Protestant church planter and pastor that ran his life into a ditch, and he just burned himself out, and he needed to figure out how in the world do I get myself healthy again so that I can be a good pastor, so that this church is healthy. So he started researching all these ways of being healthy, and he stumbled into the Sabbath, and that’s kind of his product of it. The Sabbath, this is a 24-hour block, but the people of Judah, what we already saw is that they are neglecting it. They’re working, man. They are working on the Sabbath. They’re doing all sorts of things. They are making wine by treading in the wine presses. They are transporting and moving goods to the market. They are buying those goods at the market. They are selling things at the market. Now here’s the deal: nothing is inherently wrong with work. Work is a good thing. Work existed before sin even came into this world. Work is good. Nothing’s wrong with work. However, there are some parameters around work that God had established. What Nehemiah was seeing is that there is no divine rest for the nation of Israel, and if there’s no divine rest happening, there’d be no real difference between them and the rest of the nations. You even see it in this passage. The people of Tyre, verse 16, the people of Tyre are participating in all of the local commerce. These folks were non-Jewish merchants on the coast, so you have these Gentile merchants coming in, and instead of them becoming like the people of God, it’s the people of God are becoming like them because the people lacked rest. There was no real difference between Judah and the nations, and that goes against God’s intention for them as a people. Here’s your word for 2024: this world in your flesh wants you to work like a slave. This world wants you to constantly worry about where you are financially and in life, but embracing Sabbath rest, God’s design for you, it is weird, it is different, and it is good. Nehemiah discovers the people are neglecting this gift, so after he discovers that, he gives them a warning against their work. Look at it again, verses 17 and 18. Nehemiah steps into the situation. He says, “I rebuked the nobles of Judah and I said to them, ‘What’s this evil you’re doing, profaning the Sabbath day? Didn’t your ancestors do the same thing, so that our God brought all this disaster on us and on this city? And now you’re rekindling His anger against us, against Israel, by profaning the Sabbath.’” Man, my man Nehemiah, he just leans in and he just warns them. He says something that’s crazy. He says profaning the Sabbath, this gift of God, it is evil and it is punishable. I brought it up last week, this word “evil” that he uses in verse 17, it’s the same word that he uses way back in verse 7. We looked at this last week. Go online to watch that sermon. What happened there was that there is a Gentile living in the temple, which means that the people of God weren’t worshiping God on His terms. That feels a little extreme to us. That word “evil” in the Hebrew text, the original language, is the same word used to describe what all the people are doing way back in Genesis 6, when God’s only resort to cleanse the world was to send a worldwide flood to wipe everything out. Nehemiah, inspired by God, speaking the word of God, says what you are doing by working on Sunday, it’s as if we are covering the world with sin and evil. It’s on the same level, and because of that, it is punishable. He says it, he makes it explicit. “Didn’t our ancestors do this exact same thing? This is why we’re in this mess. This is why the wall got broken down. This is why we’ve been besieged and invaded by Babylon and Persia and Assyria. This is why we had to rebuild all this. This is why our temple now doesn’t match the temple that Solomon built this. This is why this is happening, and now you’re doing it again, man. He’s warning them. He’s pressing on them, and he’s saying, “Your pain is because of your sin.” How often do we get in a place in life where we are—we’re just in pain, and we are uncomfortable, and it’s—it’s not because Satan’s coming at us. It’s not because we’re making a stand for the gospel, and this world is hating us. It’s because we’re doing things that God has explicitly told us we shouldn’t do. Like when I feel the pain of being alone, but I’ve spent my week gossiping, or I feel the pain of financial struggle when God has already told me, “Hey, give me a 10% tithe, and go above that in your financial gifts to me.” We go through life experiencing pain sometimes because we’re not doing what God has told us to do.

Man, that—that was Judah’s situation. They were experiencing the pain of having been conquered and then exiled, not because they were making bold stands for Yahweh, not because they were trying to live different lives. It’s because they had neglected a gift that God had given them. They were leaning into evil, and God said, “Hey, if I don’t punish them like a good dad punishes—if I don’t punish them, it’s going to get worse.” That was their situation.

Man, we need to be reminded that going against God’s design never goes well. Or to say it a little more plainly, to say it a little more plainly: if we are living in wrong, we must get right. And man, that only happens through confessing that sin and repenting and making a turn away. What the people here needed to turn from—they needed to turn from profaning the Sabbath. So Nehemiah, being a good leader, he gives them some guardrails for how they can honor the Sabbath and enjoy a 24-hour block where they worship God, they enjoy life, they stop work. Read it with me, verses 19-22: “When the shadows began to fall on the city gates of Jerusalem just before the Sabbath, I gave orders that the city gates be closed and not opened until after the Sabbath. I posted some of my men at the gate so that no goods could enter during the Sabbath day. Once or twice the merchants and those who sell all kinds of goods—they camped outside of Jerusalem, but I warned them, ‘Why are you camping in front of the wall? If you do it again, I’ll use force against you.’ Your text may say, ‘I will lay my hands on you.’ I love that. After that, the merchants—they did not come again on the Sabbath. Go figure. Then I instructed the Levites to purify themselves and then guard the city gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy. Then I pray, ‘Remember me for this also, my God. Look on me with compassion according to the abundance of Your faithful love.’”

Nehemiah exposes how they were neglecting the gift. He warned them against working and further profaning the gift, and then, like a good leader, he sets up some guardrails so that they can enjoy the gift. Now, now there’s this mention of shadows beginning to fall. This is where our idea of what a day is is different than what the Jewish idea of a day. For them, day began at dinner time. It would be—it would begin at dinner, and it would go through the night, all through the next day, and the next day would begin again at dinner time. So for them, the Sabbath would have been evening on Friday all the way until evening on Saturday. So there’s this very natural guardrail: once the shadows started to fall on Friday, everything’s done. You’re done buying, you’re done selling, you’re done making, you’re done creating, you’re done moving, you are done working.

So he doesn’t necessarily trust everybody. He says, “Hey, not only am I just going to declare that we’re going to keep these rules, but I’m even going to close the gates because the temptation’s too good. It’s too great for us. I’m going to close the gates that these merchants from Tyre and the other merchants that are Jewish that aren’t going to honor this—they can’t tempt us because they’re not even allowed into the city. I’m going to close these gates, and then I’m going to set up some guys that are reliable and holy to guard the gates. These Levites and the priests—they’re going to guard the gates and make sure nobody is there.” He’s going to set up some guardrails so they can enjoy the gift that God had given them. Now for us this all feels a bit extreme, right? A little bit odd. But to understand why neglecting rest is such a big deal, and why Nehemiah would set up guard rails around the gift of the Sabbath, we need to understand the background of the Sabbath. Okay, so hang with me for a minute.

Back in Genesis chapter 2, God had spent six days creating everything. Six days creating the universe and solar systems and planets. Six days filling those places with animals and even people. Six days of God working, as we would call it work. According to God, though, it’s a little different. Six days of God doing that. On the seventh day, God Himself takes the first Sabbath. He rests on the seventh day. That’s Genesis chapter 2.

You fast forward to Exodus chapter 20. God is starting to create a people for Himself. He’s already called Abraham. He has already gone through the lineage. Now He’s talking to a guy named Moses. Moses is with God. This is after the people of Israel have already been Exodus. They have already been exited. They’ve already been redeemed from Egypt. He is establishing His law. He’s given them the Ten Commandments. Exodus ch. 20:8-11, God makes the Sabbath the seventh out of the Ten Commandments. God legislates a day of rest in His kingdom.

Then the greatest Old Testament Sabbath ever, in my opinion, was God providing for the people in the wilderness through Manna. You see, these people, they are wandering through the wilderness just trying to get from Egypt to the promised land that God had originally told Abraham about. And the way God’s providing is that while the people are asleep, He is making bread. He’s making bread come down and rest on the ground so that they would wake up, they would go outside, they would collect their bread. God says, “Hey, on Friday morning, you know the Sabbath is about to come, only gather enough for you and your family for that extra day. Don’t go out and hoard for next week.” The people had to functionally trust that God would take care of them. He had to trust that that that He was good on His word.

And some of us, I think we don’t take the Sabbath because we we’re just afraid on some level that God, He won’t keep His word and He won’t take care of us. So we strive and we work and we worry. The good news is God knows exactly what you need. He knows exactly what you want. Doesn’t always provide the wants, but God will always provide your needs. The Sabbath is an opportunity to take God at His word and to trust Him for that.

And then next, in Exodus chapter 31, we see God doesn’t just bless the Sabbath, He doesn’t just commands the Sabbath, but He even says that, “Hey, if you break the Sabbath, eventually I will break you.” There are some parameters set up around the Sabbath. But hey, here’s the deal: it’s not just an Old Testament idea. No, it even blends into the New Testament, but in a different way than you might expect.

In Mark chap. 2, ver. 27, Jesus says incredible words. He says, “Hey, the Sabbath was made for you, not you made for the Sabbath.” Which means that as we celebrate the Sabbath, we don’t have to hold slavishly to a set of rules that we create for ourselves. If that wasn’t true, then Paul in Colossians chapter 2 couldn’t say that God doesn’t actually care about what day you celebrate the Sabbath on. Here’s the the deal: “Therefore don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food or and drink in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of what was to come. The substance is Christ.”

The point of the Sabbath was never to lay rules and burdens on us. The point of the Sabbath was meant for it to be a gift that would lift us. Even Matthew chapter 28, the Sabbath, the whole point of the Sabbath is is to not work, right? Matthew 28:1 says that Jesus had already risen before the Sabbath day ended. When Mary and Mary went to go check on the tomb and prepare Jesus’s body for burial after the Sabbath, at as the first day the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb. Jesus went there, which means Jesus did the work of even saving you on the Sabbath. He did the work of accomplishing salvation for you. You, the Sabbath is not just An Old Testament idea, it is a New Testament gift to us as well, and it’s not just for our calendars here and now. The Sabbath will go on into eternity. Hebrews 4:9 says there is an eternal, unending Sabbath. In effect, there’s one already happening. If Joshua had given them rest by bringing the people into the promised land, then God would not have spoken about another day. Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people, which means that Sabbath rest is what we get to enter into in our totality when we pass from this life into the one to come. When we step from life to death, back into eternal life, we are going to get into an eternal Sabbath, a day of unending rest and enjoying God and enjoying life that is available to all who have faith in Jesus Christ. It’s available to all.

What Connor was displaying by going into the waters to be baptized was not him saving himself. It wasn’t me saving him. It wasn’t trust in a ceremony to give him enough credits or enough points with God or to tip the scales in his favor. It was him saying, “I have entered Sabbath rest in a total sense, partially now, but one day, brother, when your life ends and you take your final breath, you will get into heaven, into the very presence of God, where your enjoyment of the Sabbath is unending, unhindered, where sin and death and struggle are afterthoughts because we will be before the Lord who has saved and redeemed us.”

The Sabbath is a gift. The Sabbath is a gift. This is the one thing I really want you to take away from this. If you’re a note-taker, just write this down: The Sabbath is blessed rest. The Sabbath is blessed rest. It is a gift by God for His people so that we would enjoy an authentic, living, loving relationship with the God of the universe. We would experience God’s provision for our needs and our wants. It is a day of rest that God has pre-blessed. He’s already put His seal of approval on it. You want freedom? You want a little peace, a little joy? Man, celebrate the Sabbath and take God at His word and give 24 hours of your life to enjoying what God’s given you, to contemplating God, resting from work.

Man, in a room this size, I have to imagine there is someone here who feels tired on the inside. I have to imagine there’s someone here that is wishing there is something more to life than just work, work, work. I have to imagine there’s somebody in here who is ready to stop with the worry and the anxiety that life in a sin-filled place like this can produce. My offer you this morning is that the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, that is the way, that is the way that you enter rest. See, here’s the good news: there is a free gift of eternal life and unending peace and joy and rest, and it is available to all. In Isaiah 55, there’s this invitation that says, “Come, buy and eat. Come, buy milk, buy honey, but without money, without having to pay for it. Come and be satisfied. Come and get what you need.” But it’s not through our striving. It’s not through our work. It’s not through our religious ceremonies. It is through the free gift of grace that God offers.

The gospel is an invitation for you to trust God in all areas of your life and see Him provide for your deepest need of being forgiven and being cleansed, and then provide for every other need. I’m not going to sit here and say that if you just pray harder, then God will bless you financially. I am not sitting here saying that if you just trust God and you stop working, then He’s going to make your bank account increase in commas and zeros. I am not saying that. But what I am saying is that God has already invited you into a rhythm of rest that will sustain you.

So what do we do? How do we celebrate the Sabbath? Once again, I’m preaching to people that showed up to church on Sunday. Man, you guys, you’re already checking one of the four boxes. Good for you guys. All right, what do we do on the Sabbath? It’s four things, man. We stop work, we enjoy rest, we practice delight, and we contemplate God.

Man, stopping work, that’s really about embracing limits. Here’s the fact of the matter: you are not designed to run the universe. You are not made to work every day.

of your life. You’re just not. God is designed that way, if I could use that word toward God. God is able to work ceaselessly, yet God Himself rested on the seventh day after creating everything. If God took a Sabbath, then why wouldn’t we? Do we think we’re bigger and better and stronger than God? I know I’m not, and the fact of the matter is neither are you. So on the Sabbath we stop work because we’ve got limits. We don’t just stop work. Let’s keep it up there. We don’t just stop work, but we also enjoy rest. Here’s the thing. I’m a nerd, okay? Can’t tie the back. I’m a nerd. For me to rest looks like later this afternoon I’m going to make a little bit of coffee and I’ve got a book that I’m reading about the hostage crisis in Iran in 1970s. I’m going to read that book, and for me that is extremely restful, okay? That may not be very restful for you, okay? Cat out of the bag if you couldn’t tell. So you enjoy rest, whatever rest looks like for you. You practice delight. Once again, there are things you enjoy about a world that though is touched by sin still has some beauty to it. If you’re an outdoors person, then man, what I want you to do this afternoon, go take a walk in the woods, and if we’ve had an argument, take a longer walk in the woods, okay? You practice delight, and then you contemplate God, and that’s why I’m saying, man, this one’s being handed to you because you’re here. This is where my life, I’ve got to get a little creative because this for me is fun, but it’s not necessarily [inaudible]. A couple years ago when Becca and I were heading overseas, we were challenged by our missions organization to start practicing the Sabbath, and that for us began a rhythm that we started when we were overseas, and we, I would not say perfected, but we’ve like doubled down on. So for us every Friday night we have the same thing. We always make homemade pizza, and now we watch movies, and it’s fantastic. We get up Saturday morning, I make a big breakfast because for me that is how I practice delight. It’s pancakes and bacon with my rodent hair cinnamon. Once again, listen to last week’s sermon. And then we go and play. We exercise our bodies, we get some sunshine because we, as we like to say, Becca is solar powered, so we need to get her in the sun, so we get outside. That’s how we do this thing. I’ve got to grow. I’ll be honest, this is Pastor confession time. I’ve got to grow in contemplating God with my Saturday afternoons. As you can guess, there’s a different way that I enjoy spending my Saturdays right now, and honestly in a month from now I’m excited for college football to end because it’s going to force me to find something else that is more deeply satisfying. So that’s how we do it. That’s what we do on the Sabbath, and I want to help you set some guard rails. Again, these are not rules for you to live by. These are guard rails to keep you in the lane. There’s another slide for you. The first thing you need to do if you want to enjoy the Sabbath is, man, you need to schedule it. You need to write on your calendar at home, Sabbath. If that’s going to be Sundays, then great, put that on every Sunday of a month on your calendar. You go ahead and schedule it because what you schedule you usually do, right? What you don’t schedule you probably don’t do. Then you’re going to go ahead and decide how you’re going to spend time with God. That might be catching up on a Bible reading plan, that might be watching a sermon, that might be reading a devotional book. Third, my encouragement is to remove screens from your Sabbath because the thing is your phone does not want you to put it down. It wants to keep you kind of worked up. Your phone is not very restful, the TV is not very restful, your computer is not very restful. As much as you can get rid of screens. And the fourth thing is, man, believe that God, God is enough, and that He has enough for you because you have to stop working. Think about how wild it is that God would tell us, hey, one day out of every seven I need you to stop working, stop producing, stop striving, and instead of catching up on a seventh day of amassing, on a seventh day of earning, on a seventh day of acre. Trust me, and what I provide those six days is going to care for you on the seventh day. We live in a very unique time in the history of the world. Most of the world’s history would have operated as if working six days and not working on a seventh was a matter of life and death. I mean, in fact, when Becka and I lived overseas, we interacted all the time with people that worked very much so hand to mouth. That meant that what they earned that day, they ate on that day. If they didn’t work that day, they probably didn’t eat that day. That’s most of history for most of the world. We live in the world of 401ks and savings and investments. We live in a world where our money works for us, and that’s great. We’re going to talk about that next year, actually. But hey, even if we’re not totally in touch with the physical reality that God got to provide for us every day and every week, let’s tell ourselves that that is actual reality, and what the bank account says is not actual reality. Let’s tell ourselves that God is the one that provides. Let’s tell ourselves that God is the one that’s actually running the universe, not us, not the bank, not your revenue stream, not your investments.

I want to point your attention back to the passage for this key phrase at the very, very end. Look at verse 22: “Remember me for this also, my God, and look on me with compassion according to the what, man? The abundance of your faithful love.” The abundance of God’s grace for you is an invitation and an offer for you to rest in Him. So here’s my question for you: Do you want to rest? Like, do you want rest? Some of us, I believe, need to—we need to embrace the ultimate rest of trying to work hard enough to save ourselves and satisfy our souls. There is a type of rest that you need that you don’t have because you do not yet trust in Jesus Christ for your Savior. There’s a type of rest that you don’t have because your life is an empty void, and you’re trying to stuff it with things that you think are going to help and satisfy. A little bit of religion here, a little bit of social activities there, a little bit of my kids’ success here, a little bit of that hobby there—or it goes in some other directions too—a little bit of this drug or this drink here, a little bit of that sexual sin there, a little bit of this relationship to satisfy me here, a little bit of that financial capability and success there. The thing is, your heart has a God-sized and God-shaped hole in it that is not satisfied by anything else in the world except for God Himself, and there’s nothing you can do or the world can do to satisfy you. You’re actually, every time you put something in it, you’re just digging yourself deeper, and the only way out of that is to say, “God, I’m done. I accept and embrace Your help because that is what I need. That is the way that I get salvation. That is the way I get satisfaction.” That is what my friend Connor declared when he was baptized—that he’s dead to himself, he’s dead to trying, he’s dead to striving, that God would forgive him, and he accepts God’s forgiveness instead. Man, if that’s you, then my invitation and my request is that you would stop listening to me, and you would do a little business with the Lord who is wooing you and calling you to Himself, who is saying—God, please—it’s like He is saying, “Hey, please accept my grace for you.”

The rest of us in the room, we might need to reexamine how we spend the Sabbath day, and we might need to establish a practice that we can sustain and one that will sustain us. In fact, here’s my—here’s my real invitation for everybody: Let’s close our eyes, let’s bow our heads. I just want you to ask the Lord, just privately, right there by yourself: “Lord, am I really resting in You or not? Have I really accepted and embraced Your love for me or not?” If you haven’t, please, Romans 10:9-10 says that anyone—anyone who says with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised Him from the dead, they will be saved. They will receive the rest of God, the free gift of God, Him giving His entirety to you. If you need to accept the gospel, then please, please just say, “God, I believe. Help me in my unbelief, but I believe. I turn from my sin and I give myself to You.” Just say that to Him. And if you have had that moment, if you are a follower of Jesus, but you want to reexamine, you want to establish a healthier, deeper Sabbath practice, then then you would just say, “God, how do I enjoy more of You on the Sabbath?”

Eyes are still closed, heads are still bowed. I’m not going to expose you, but I would say if if there’s anybody in the room that just prayed to receive Jesus Christ or just knows that they need to do something else to enjoy God more on the Sabbath, would you just raise your hand?

Father, thank You for the obedience of the folks that just raised their hand. You can put them down. God, would You please honor that? Would You please continue to do a work in them, God, that they can only attribute to You? Lord, would You please give them true, deep rest in their souls? God, would You help them establish a practice that would carry them and sustain them? Please, Father, out of the overflow of that, may we be a beacon of the good news of Your grace for a dying world. Thank You, Lord. Amen. Amen.