Sabbath: Psalm 19

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0:00 Well, hey guys, so my name is Brian for those of you who have not got a chance to really meet. I'm filling in for Ben this morning. And Ben asked me last week if I could, so we've been talking about Sabbath and he had asked if I could speak on the idea of like a final Sabbath and our final Sabbath in heaven. And I was like, wow, like so like revelation style and all that and we're not really going

0:32 into revelations this morning because there's a lot there. But if you would be so kind with me this morning, I'd like this to be a little bit more interactive than maybe normal, like I ask you as to be a little bit more, participate a little bit more, maybe be a little vulnerable with me as we kind of walk through things. So the last few weeks we've talked about this idea of Sabbath and rest and just throwing it out there. Is there anything like new that you guys have experienced or learned in this season as we've been intentionally focusing on Sabbath?

1:05 It's a big open-ended question. No wrong answers. For those of you who have been a part of like the community dinners that we've been doing on Saturday nights, like that's a smaller group have been getting together consistently the last four, three, four Saturday nights and kind of sharing a little bit about our

1:35 week and just kind of what does Sabbath look like. And so it's been really great to hear, well for some people they're able to carve out a day and focus and that's their Sabbath. And for other people they've come into the realization that as a mom or a dad with young kids it's not a day and it's rarely ever going to be a day right now but it's moments throughout the week. And what I love about the Sabbath is God commands us to treat it and keep it holy but I think

2:10 there's grace there like understanding it's not going to be a whole day of just completely set apart for all of us no matter what season of life we're in. I think it's those moments of rest and renewal and so it's a command to keep it holy and to separate, to keep it separate but I love that there's still the grace there of the practice of Sabbath and what it does for us. So this morning Miss Robin Redford's the message version of Psalms 16. We're going to jump back in and we're going to look at Psalm 16.

2:42 Since we're going to camp out most of the morning and I'll read for us the ESV version we're going to do 16 one through 11 just do a whole thing and there's some really great truths in there. So I'll start verse 1 it says, preserve me oh God for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord that you are my Lord and I have no good apart from you. These for the saints in the land they are excellent ones and whom is all my delight.

3:13 The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply. Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup. You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places indeed. I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel and the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me because he is in my right hand I will not be shaken.

3:45 Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices and my flesh also dwells secure for you will not abandon my soul to shield or let your Holy One see corruption. You make known to me the path of life in your presence there is fullness of joy and at your right hand our pleasures forevermore. Let's pray real quick before we get into this and kind of break out a couple of these verses. Hey God thank you so much for getting us here safely thank you for this day.

4:19 Thank you for the season of Lent and laying it on. Ben's mind and as a church our mind of like taking the Sabbath and looking at it from different angles the last few weeks. God we know that you ask us to keep the Sabbath separate you you've given us the Sabbath as a gift and so this morning as we look at it in a different way than we've talked before

4:50 I ask Father that you guide us during this time that you give me the right words to say when to say them. And yeah we just thank you again for this gift this gift of the Sabbath in your name we pray amen. So a couple of things when I look at like the first several verses in Psalm 16 when I think about the Sabbath the first couple of verses like one through four preserve me of God in you I take refuge I say to the Lord you are my God I have no good apart from you.

5:24 What I get from that and something that I've learned and kind of remembered I think during this season that we've been talking about Sabbath is the Sabbath it has to be an active choice it's not a passive thing right Sundays come and that is the Sabbath right we we we hold that open as being the Sabbath but it really in order for it to be I think honored it has to be an active choice. I can remember some weeks ago been talking about active rest versus passive rest right

5:58 I think we were it was like a Wednesday morning he and I were talking and he was talking about like what they're going to give up for Sabbath as a family and on or on Sundays for Lent they're going to give up their phones and their devices and as a family and he said the kids were like real thrilled by that idea except for Hazel she was really excited because that meant everybody was going to play with her this what I remember him saying but he was just talking about like how you're just scrolling on your phone it while we all probably do it I know I do it very often

6:32 it's just a way to just check out and decompress but it really is a passive activity you don't really yield much from it other than you probably found some new memes or some funny video out there that you're sharing with other people but it's really just like a passive thing and so Ben was just talking about the difference of like what scrolling on your phone is that being passive versus like reading being an active form of rest and I couldn't know I know Brandy Michelle's not

7:03 here at the moment but she's been talking about like Sabbath for her and her intentionality lately has been to actively be in nature and intentionally taking that form of active rest and what I see in this first few verses of Psalm 16 is that intentionality of being active and actively pursuing it what I what this made me think of is James 4 verse 8 and I think all of us have heard this verse before and I love this one but it's the draw near to God and he will draw near to you

7:36 and I love that it's like a it's a promise and it's and it's when you take that step forward God's going to come meet you and so I love the idea of the intentionality of being active with your Sabbath and set and being intentional in your pursuit of setting apart time to connect with God the next section that I kind of see going through this is like verses 5 through 8 and I'll just reread those really quickly it says the Lord is my chosen portion in my cup you hold my lot the lines have

8:12 fallen for me in place pleasant places indeed I have a beautiful inheritance and it says I bless the Lord who gives me counsel and the night also my heart instructs me I have set the Lord always before me because he is on my right hand I shall not be think shall not be shaken that phrase that line of I have a beautiful inheritance what that makes me think of is like when you I can remember hearing something some years ago I think it was during covid when we were all remote and we're all

8:46 like staring at screens for a really long period of time throughout the day on zoom calls and I can remember like people talking about you've got to step away from computer you'll get zoom fatigue you'll you know you should just for every for every 20 minutes that you spend looking at a screen you should take two minutes and stare outside like look outside just to give your body your chance to kind of reset and it was around that time I remember hearing like this idea of getting lost

9:18 in nature and getting lost in something and I remember there was like I forget where where I heard this but it was saying like when you're taking those two minutes to break from zoom just go outside and like look at a flower and get lost in it and if you ever do that or if you've ever done that you know like you just look at a flower and we pass by him so quickly so often and we're just like yeah that's a flower that's a plant but if you like really look at a flower you start to see

9:48 the details and this energy and this force that's there and it's like it's amazing to kind of behold like it's a it's a like how is this even a real thing right you easily get lost and what I see the psalmist David doing in these these verses here is like he's gotten into this mode of Sabbath and when you really get into it and you start looking at things it's like looking at a flower you can't start seeing more and more layers of depth right you start cultivating this different

10:22 level of gratitude that maybe isn't there the other six days of the week or the other normal moments of the week but it's like when you take that time set it aside and you're active in your pursuit of Sabbath and you really get into it you can kind of see there's so much detail and there's so much to be thankful for um that beautiful inheritance is something that just reminds me of that it's like pausing for a moment and just being grateful for all that you have all that you've experienced in the last week and so just again asking you guys to be vulnerable with me and to

10:58 just participate is there anything that's happened this week that you're just grateful for you just shot it out it's completely informal osteopath okay anybody else anything else that you're grateful for this week that's happened finished a big project being I know that feeling friends oh that's good that is really good what else anybody else anything you're grateful for

11:30 the weather the weather has been pretty killer this week crossing off a big task is nice yeah um we we do this thing at work um where we do like wins for the week and we have to it feels like we have to produce something that's related to work or whatever and um some weeks most weeks we jokingly like start off with

12:01 like survived right um because that feels like a pretty big win um cultivating gratitude is something that kind of leads into these next few verses that we're going to look at which is really really cool but in my understanding of my studying this week and reading gratitude leads to joy right there's so much evidence and studies of people who have a regular practice or routine of gratitude experience joy on a much more frequent basis than those who don't and you might be

12:35 thinking okay well it's joy um we're going to get into joy in just a second I'm actually pretty excited about this part so let's uh let's look at verse 9 through 11 really quickly and then we'll talk a little bit about um some of these big ideas I've been floating around therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices my flesh also dwells secure for you will not abandon my soul to shul or let your holy one see corruption you will make known to me the path of life and in your presence there is fullness of joy and at your right hand our pleasures forevermore

13:12 so this part of the message and this part of the Psalms um is this idea of the eternal Sabbath the eternal rest is is where I'm going I'm gonna try to help paint this picture when um so when Ben was was talking to me last week and just texting back and forth we were talking about this idea of of the eternal Sabbath that eternal rest and and of course it's it's heaven right and so I did some study in heaven you know I've read some revelations and we don't

13:44 need to get into all those details but I was kind of thinking about heaven and what heaven means to me and what it looks like and it's a it's a really big idea and it's hard to grasp um I came across something this week that was talking about heaven not necessarily being like a place that we go to but heaven being the reconciliation of like God's new earth like heaven and earth coming together and heaven being this idea of being with God um forevermore and this is a pretty cool thought

14:20 and so I remember a few I think it was a few months ago maybe a few weeks ago I don't know times weird right now um I was driving and and I think I was talking to Melanie we were in the car together yeah and we were we were talking about this and I said like there's there's longings that I have as an individual um that I know like I'll never see those fulfilled like in this life right like um our kids um kids what's great about them is

14:54 they're amazing the worst thing is they're growing faster than you can even comprehend and so Wilder and Salah 15 and 11 going on like 23 and 16 it feels like and one of those longings that I was describing to Melanie is like the photos album on your phone like the feature where it pops up memories like worse than Vincen ever but it's the greatest at the same time right you you have this longing

15:26 I have this longing of like having our kids at that age and staying there they don't um but staying there and in our our situation like we're divorced we're a blended family so we we share custody of the kids and so we only get them like 50% of the time I think it quits about 50% of the time so like every other holiday you don't have the kids um it's tough because people are like oh do you have the kids now we don't have the kids or yes we have the kids and it's this this idea I was telling Melanie it's like this longing of like wanting the kids and having the

15:59 kids and keeping them like and those frozen memories on your phone like that moment of time right that's the bummer right but it's a longing and so where I'm going with is the longing that's there that's just one longing there's many right um can't go back in time can't rewind obviously but that longing is there and so I know because that's such a strong thing I know there's there's I don't believe that God's going to give me that longing without having it filled at some point

16:30 I'm so emotional talking about the kids geez I know right um Melanie's just like just water works right now um we love our kids um and um but this this idea of this longing this longing of like being able to like repair relationships that are beyond repair you know and and having like things coming back to like a like perfect like that's a longing and so when we think about this

17:02 idea of heaven I know heaven's real because of those longings that are in my heart I know one day we're gonna see that and when you think about that it's it's a moment of like relief and while there's this heartache of the kids growing up right now um you know one day there's like this relief that's coming and that's what I think of when I think of heaven and it's like this ultimate rest this Sabbath of that's going to come at some point um there's a there's a line here that

17:36 there's a there's like three words that the first couple times I read over this I skipped and I skip the depth that are in these three words but let me just read the whole sentence because it'll make more sense you make known to me the path of life and your presence there is fullness of joy and at your right hand our pleasures forever more so in your presence there is this fullness of joy um okay again participating can anybody name a time where you felt joy

18:14 could be recent it could be some time ago yeah I love that somebody gave her a gift that was completely unexpected sometime and it just brought such great joy for her yeah let me read the definition of joy really quickly by

18:45 somebody I consider a friend and maybe that'll help spark some ideas or remembering something so Bernay Brown's that friend never met her but she's she's pretty great um one of the how does she define joy she defines joy as an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection pleasure and appreciation so um I just I know I don't look at but I just turned 40 um I look older trust me um but on January

19:16 18th I took the day off work and um we took Melanie we went mountain biking in Florida it's a real thing um and we were driving up to Santos which is up in Ocala if you've never been it's actually pretty great day um and so I took the day off Melanie's mom and her fiance were down I say it's because of my birthday but it was really because it was say the soccer game but it's fine they were here from a birthday too and my parents had come down just a few weeks before

19:49 and it was just something about like having that day set apart it was my 40th birthday um and just like going to look forward to do mountain biking and I knew we were gonna have barbecue for dinner like there was just an infusion and inflection of joy that just came over me and it felt exactly like the way it's described here an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection pleasure and appreciation and I look back at that moment because um I remember Melanie specifically called

20:23 out she's like you seem so weightless right now like you seem so free and that's what joy feels like right that's what it feels like when you're you know when you're meeting your kids for the first time in the hospital like that's joy utter exhaustion usually but it's joy um that moment for me on my 40th birthday is just joyous um thinking back another time uh for joy for me is like every time uh and I've been fortunate enough to go three times every time I go to Yosemite

20:59 it's just like intense feelings of joy um that just lasts and I don't know what it is about that place for me but it's just such joy to be able to feel and to behold and the tricky part about joy is it's scary it's one of the scariest emotions actually it's the you're in a very vulnerable state because you when you're feeling joy um as if you especially if you're a parent you get this there's this idea in this notion of foreboding joy foreboding joy right and what the easiest way

21:32 to describe that is foreboding joy is essentially like you're you're you're a little afraid to really step into the moment and feel that moment of joy because you're afraid like like the other shoes gonna drop at some point like your best days you feel this like sense of like oh I can't get I can't let myself freely experience this because I got to watch out because there's likely something's gonna change and something's gonna happen and this is moment's gonna be gone right um research shows roughly about 95% people at some point in their life experience that sense of foreboding joy

22:08 um and so it makes the actual act or the actual emotion of joy um one of like the trickiest ones to feel like when you really feel joy it is so great it's energizing it's freeing you feel the sense of connection you feel like a different version of yourself in fact there's a researcher Matthew Johnson he says that um while experiencing joy we don't lose ourselves we become more truly ourselves and I love that and so when we look at um Psalms 16 and when it talks about

22:49 you make known to me the path of life and your presence there is fullness of joy and it's your right hander pleasures forever more in your presence there is fullness of joy there is a day that is coming that we are going to be in heaven and we're going to experience the fullness of joy because we're in the presence of God and that's like pondering on that and and I've had a little bit of a head start for you guys like like four or five days like planning and looking at this message and thinking about this but like when you take moment and

23:23 pause and you think about it at some point that moment of for me being in Yosemite or meeting the kids for the first time or turning 40 and going mountain biking and eating barbecue um those moments of joy are going to be everlasting and to me the idea of Sabbath now like on a weekly basis we're called to remember to set aside time to be intentional with Sabbath and it's it's really it's for us but it's to remind us like it's a little glimmer of those moments of like hey someday there's

24:00 going to be a time where we get to look forward to those moments of joy forever it's just going to be joy and there's you know uh uh reconnecting with other people what are we going to do while we're in heaven all this I don't know I don't know but it I just know very clearly it talks about that we're going to have an experience of fullness of joy and we're going to be truly ourselves because of who we're around and I just I love that idea I love that notion um and so it's kind of like stepping back and and looking like okay

24:38 where are we going with all of this and kind of looking back and I was reading something so you know the last few weeks Ben's referenced you know the the exodus of from Egypt right so the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt and they were promised long before they became slaves they were promised at like an actual land where they would become their own people their own nation and they would dwell there right and they're enslaved and they escape god leaves them out of Egypt and he takes them into the desert

25:10 and while they're in the desert we get the commandments that Ben talked about last week we get the um we we get these stories and the reminder of god asking the people that hey even though you're in the desert and it's really hot outside remember the Sabbath and I'm going to provide for you and the idea and the notion of the story right with manna where he provides manna every single morning and they go out and they pick up the manna and then on saturday's or the on the sixth day I should say um they there's extra manna because they're supposed to take some for the next day

25:46 right and there's this big idea that I came across with the Sabbath um in those moments in the wilderness and it and it's this is that while they were still in the wilderness god invited them to start living as if they're in the promised land and so that's like the big idea for me today and that's what I think the the Sabbath is is that reminders that invitation that while we're here in the wilderness it's a moment set aside to reflect and to live as though we are in the promised land

26:19 that that promised land is coming one day that that that unification or reunification with christ and having that fullness of joy and everlasting um That's what sundays or that's what the sabbath moments are for is to remind us that hey We are in that wilderness. We are in the desert right now, but there is coming a day where we're going to be in that promised land and that the benefits the health benefits of cultivating a sense of gratitude

26:50 and experiencing joy is something that um It has had profound studies are showing studies are showing more and more There's evidence of how much profound positive impact they can have on your health Cultivating gratitude Experiencing joy and what that can do for your health And so the sabbath the sabbath moments are there to remind us that hey um First off, let's just take a break for a second. Let's take a break from the normal chaos of every day

27:20 And let's remember that hey, this is the temporary place that we're in And that our home is a home that we're going to live in that's that's we're going to experience joy forever more and everlasting And it's an ability for us while we're here We have this ability to recognize God's goodness that God's providing mana for us while we're in the desert That God's providing those moments of relief He's set aside time for us. He's given us this gift called the sabbath to reflect and to remember that that he's still there with us He's walking right there with us while we're in the wilderness that we're in right now that we're living

27:58 Um, so I don't know My my hope is is that we're coming out of that we're getting towards the end of the lint and season We've got to think like two weeks left after today My hope is this I was thinking about it this morning First off like I felt like I've been more intentional with sabbath lately than ever before Maybe it's because the emphasis that we've placed on it as a as a group

28:29 Um, but my hope for myself is is that you know today. We're in march that in september Um, i'm still practicing on a weekly basis intentionality of of You know getting out of the mundane And and practicing sabbath moments, right? Gratitude and experiencing joy more fully And so my hope for you and my hope for all of us this morning is is that um, this isn't just a momentary thing where we focus on sabbath

28:59 This isn't just a momentary like five week or six week study that we're looking at this idea But it's something that we just build in as part of our routine and our regular practice And it's something that brings life to us and when people are asking like hey You seem a little bit more energetic on a wednesday what's going on? And it could just be because you've got this practice that you've just been cultivating for on a regular basis, right? Um, I just I I love this. I've enjoyed this season. I've enjoyed this These times that we've had together as a group that the saturday night dinners

29:32 I like we're sitting around talking about our weeks and talking about how we're practicing sabbath It's just been super great and overwhelming and so Um, if you will join me this morning We're gonna pray really quickly and then mike and carol are gonna come up and leave us in a couple of songs and um We'll just go out from here with the rest of our days um, hey god, thank you so much for Today, thank you so much for the season again for this reminder of how important the sabbath is Um, god. Thank you for that promise that one day we're gonna have and we're gonna realize the ultimate

30:03 Rest and that rest is gonna be an act of rest. It's gonna be a rest that we're Um, we're gonna experience joy ever lasting because we're around you um God help us remember this on wednesday morning when we're in the thick of it That you've you've set apart this time of the sabbath as a reminder for us to reflect and to cultivate This idea that hey Like we can rest in you you're you're right here with us and that while we're in this wilderness

30:36 You are still providing for us Thank you for doing that. Um, thank you for being uh and active participant in our lives Um and it's your name that we pray all these things amen