Hear now the word of the Lord from Ecclesiastes 3:1-15.
3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

9 What gain has the worker from his toil? 10 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-15, ESV
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Well this week we’ve experienced some of the dog days of summer. That time of year when things become extremely hot oppressively. So it’s a little cooler now, but I think it’s going to spike up in about a week again. So maybe you, like me, are starting to look forward to the change of the seasons to the cooler temperatures coming in this autumn.

The fall is my favorite season of the year for many reasons, partially because of the weather, but also because there are so many things that I enjoy doing during that fall season. For example, every year our family goes to the pumpkin patch once or twice during the fall time, it’s a wonderful time. A couple of years ago we went to a particularly impressive pumpkin patch by Chicago when we were visiting family. This one just had all kinds of activities to do, including a racetrack. This was an impressive area where there were obstacles and there was a set of bleachers that could accommodate a large crowd. Yet it wasn’t a race for human beings, it was a race for pigs.

So, there we were shouting and cheering on different pigs who had no idea what was going on. The narrator was announcing things as though they had meaning, but we were all just yelling and shouting and what an exciting time. I have no idea which pig actually won, whether it was my pig or not, but it was entertaining. Yet ultimately it was really pointless. It was vanity, as the author of Ecclesiastes might say.

Now those kinds of animal races are not new, in fact they’ve been going on for a very long time. As I understand it, a hundred plus years ago the same kind of animal races were held in carnivals. They were not using pigs, but rather using rats. They would construct elaborate mazes and they would put rats in these mazes and people would cheer to see which rat would be the first to find its way through the maze to find the crumb of cheese in the middle of the race. They’d do this over and over again and it was entertaining, but ultimately pointless.

Now as I understand it, and you can use Google as easily as I can, that is the origin of the term rat race. When we talk about our lives as a rat race, that’s what we’re talking about, we’re talking about rats put in a maze that are endlessly in an exhausting pursuit trying to find not that great of a prize, the equivalent of a crumb of cheese.

We have so much time in our lives and during that time we’re pouring toil into both our work and into our relationships. As we continue our study in the book of Ecclesiastes, the preacher asks us what do we really gain from all of this time that we spend? What do we get from it in this rat race? What comes out of this? We’re always moving and yet we’re never arriving.

Now in the in the previous passage, which we looked at a couple of weeks ago, the preacher was asking us to consider all the various pleasures in which we might try to find lasting satisfaction and all the ways we might try to live according to wisdom, to try to find a way to get above the curse of sin in this world.

Well today he’s going to talk about activities, but not so much about the activities themselves. He’s talking about time and he’s looking at the fact that time is always moving; the clock is always ticking, we can’t press play or we can’t press pause, we can’t press rewind, we can’t fast forward through parts we’d rather get through quickly. Time is always moving and yet we are not gaining what we hope to be gaining from all the toil in work and relationships that we’re pouring into our lives. We are never achieving the rest that we spend our lives chasing after.

Well as we come to our story or our passage today, the big idea is not as directly reflected in this passage as normally, but again I want to remind us of something that I’ve said a couple of times as we’ve studied Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is often not giving us the solution, the preacher is often clearing away errors to uncloud our vision so that we can see the solution when we look at what the rest of the Bible teaches us. So with that in mind our big idea this morning is this God gives sabbath rest.

I’ll defend how we’re getting to that big idea as we work through our sermon. We have three points this morning.

1. Time
2. Toil
3. Trust
Time
The first section is about time. In verses one through eight, where we have a poem that probably is the most famous part of the book of Ecclesiastes and perhaps one of the more famous parts of all the Bible, even though most people probably don’t realize this is from the Bible. This is because of a very famous song that was written by Pete Seeger as a protest against the Vietnam War. This was turned into a peace anthem, probably the version that you’re familiar with was recorded in 1965 by The Birds. As we’ll see, Pete Seeger really focused on the very last line of this, “there’s a time for war and a time for peace. I pray it’s not too late.”

As we’ll see, pacifism is not the point of this particular passage. In fact what the preacher is getting at is this issue of time that everything has a time and a season, there is a time for peace, but there’s also a time for war and there’s a time for everything else under the sun. That’s what the preacher lays out in the very first verse, which tells us what we’re going to be reading in this poem, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.

Now this is setting up a poem where we’re going to have three considerations. Let me just tell you the three ways to look at what’s happening in this poem. The first consideration that the preacher wants us to have in mind is that the business of life is endlessly changing and it’s never standing still. That’s what is meant by these times and seasons that everything has.

Sometimes there are big changes in life. We read in the very first part of this poem, in verse 2, that there is a time to be born and the time to die, those are the big parts of life. Then if you look at the next part of it you get to some of the smaller parts of life, there’s a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, the smaller parts of life. If you look at all of the pairs this poem is formed along, they’re all pairs of opposites where they’re talking about something on one side and then something on the exact opposite side within the course of life. Now these are what are called mirrorisms. The idea is that when you’re talking about these opposites you’re not just talking about the one thing over here and the one thing over here you’re actually talking about everything in between those two.

So if I say that I am at heart an Nebraskan from womb to tomb, I’m not talking about only the time when I was in my mother’s womb and only the time after my death. I’m talking about the entirety of my life. So we have here time to be born and a time to die and we have all of these opposites in life. The point of all of this is that every last moment, every possible conceivable thing that happens in life, has a time under the sun. but that time is short because that time is only until the next time comes along. Everything is always changing. The business life is endlessly changing and never standing still.

The second consideration is that this constant fluctuation makes it impossible for us to find lasting peace and rest in this life. Because the disastrous painful parts of life have a time appointed for them, just like the good delightful parts of life. Again we can’t fast forward through things and neither can we hit pause or rewind to replay or to linger over things that we want in life. We’re prisoners of time. We’re captive to time. So that we’re constantly reacting to every new circumstance when it arrives.

More than that our own lives are temporary, we don’t get to do this forever. We will be born and there will also be a time to die. So this makes it impossible to find lasting rest and peace in this life.

The third consideration though is perhaps most important, and this is where we’re going to see this passage is eventually going, that God is the one who controls the times and the seasons. That while we have no control over the times and the seasons of our lives, we are entirely subject to them, we are affected by them, we are captive to them, God is the one who appoints every time and every season. That’s a special comfort for Christians who know in Romans 8:28 that God has not only appointed all times in seasons, but that he is actively working together all things for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purposes.

So what does this poem encompass? Well as I said in verse two we have life and death, time to be born and a time to die, also our toil in this world. It’s interesting in the second part of verse 2 the examples that he gives of opposites. He says there is a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. Now that, you would think, refers to the harvest season, you plant and then you harvest. However this idea of plucking up is not the word for harvesting. It’s the idea of weeding something, getting something out that isn’t growing in the way that you need it to go. It deals with getting rid of the failure of your work, of the thorns and thistles in your work. That’s why when he talks about work, so often he talks about our toil, this is hard, difficult work.

In verse three he deals with human actions toward life and human actions toward work. He says there’s a time to kill and a time to heal. He’s not commending murder, but he’s saying there’s a time for this, this happens under the sun. In the same way there’s also a time for us to seek the healing of people under the sun. Then work there’s a time to break down and a time to build up. Again that’s getting to the whole entirety of the work cycle.

In verse 4 we have emotions, there’s a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Again not just happy emotions and sad emotions, but he’s talking about everything in between those things.

In verse five and seven we are dealing with work and relationships, one line deals with work one line deals with relationships in both five and seven. Five talks about a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. In an agrarian society that’s a lot of your work, you’re picking up stones to get them out of the field or sometimes you’re gathering them for another purpose. The Bible is filled with stories of gathering stones for the purpose of building an altar or a memorial to something. There’s a time and a season for both. Then in verse seven the work is a time to tear or a time to sew, and fabric making or garment putting together.

Then also relationships the second part of five is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. The second part of seven is a time to keep silent and the time to speak, in your work and in your relationships there’s a time for everything.

Verse six deals with possessions and achievements, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away. Then in verse eight you have your relationships in both private and public spheres. Privately there is a time for you to love and a time to hate. Publicly there is a time for tribes and nations to enter into war as well as a time for peace.

Now this poem encompasses absolutely everything. Again when you recognize that it’s not just talking about the things on either end, but everything in between, you realize that he’s saying all of life has its own time and its own season for everything under the sun. So that life is always moving but we are never arriving.

Now this seasonality can be a very good thing. After a cold winter, it’s a wonderful refreshing thing to have the warmth of spring. After these dog days of summer and the heat of this past week, we’re very much looking forward to the cooler temperatures of the fall.

Seasonality teaches us to appreciate things when they come along because we know that each time and each season is so fleeting. I know for myself in some of my earlier children I didn’t realize how quickly their infancy would pass by, that’s such a fleeting time, it’s here today and gone tomorrow. Enjoy it while it lasts. In my later children I realized that and I was able to really appreciate that when their infancy came along. Also the seasonality of things is a great comfort in difficult times. We know that this too shall pass, that this is temporary, and that helps us in our lives to get through the most difficult times in life.
Toil
The preacher says, as well and good as that is in this natural order of life there is still a sense of dissatisfaction and even bitterness in this seasonality. Why is that? Well it has to do with the nature of our toil and this brings us to the second section, toil in verses 9 through 11. In verse 9, and some people would actually say that this is just the conclusion of the poem, the preacher asks what gain has the worker from his toil? From all of this, our toil in relationships and our toil in work, what gain does the worker have from all of this? As we talked about last time, you definitely can see modest games here and there and you can make a little progress in this or that area of your life.

At the same time this poem reminds us that some of our work will need to be plucked up or broken down or wept over or cast away. Other times this work will be entirely paused due to the ravages of war or other distractions. Our work, even though we’re always engaged in toil, is not building piece by piece into this ever growing area of flourishing. Rather much of our work yields thorns and thistles in this life.

So in verse 10 the preacher really puts a point on this and he says, “I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.” Very literally this says I have seen the business that God has given to afflict the children of man. This is a word that deals with the affliction of the afflicted.

Now in the second half of Ecclesiastes chapter 1, we talked about that last time we were looking at Ecclesiastes, he talked about what he means. He means the curse that comes from sin. God has imposed futility and frustration on creation. He has afflicted us with frustration in our toil, not because he is cruel but as a just, a righteous, a proper response to the horrors of human sin.

Another part of what he’s saying, he’s not just saying that this has to do with the curse of sin, he’s also saying that there’s something in time itself that frustrates us. So in verse 11 he says this, “he (God) has made everything beautiful in its time.” Now this word beautiful I can refer to physical beauty like the you know I think my wife is beautiful that sort of beauty, but it also can think about something that’s more along the lines of fitting or appropriate. Death and war are not beautiful, but there is a time for both things under heaven and it’s fitting and it’s appropriate for those things in their time.

Then it’s in the second section where he raises this issue, the second part of verse 11. There he says also, “Also, he (God) has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” God has put in our hearts some deep sense of eternity, a sense of it, an awareness of it, some intuition about eternity, some knowledge that there must be an eternity. There must be time and there must be something that is beyond time.

C.S. Lewis talked a lot about this sense of eternity that we have. If you’ve read his books especially “Surprised by Joy”, you’ll know that he sometimes talks about this sense of longing in his life or this joy that he felt. He was always chasing after and it was thinking about this longing or this joy that eventually led him to find Christ. It’s a desire for something beyond the limitations of this life under the sun. We have that sense in our hearts, you might call it the God-shaped hole we have in our hearts. We’re wanting, yearning for something more than what we can find in this world.

Yet we cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. We long to make sense of this world, but the scope of our vision is so limited that we can’t make sense of it. What’s interesting is in Genesis chapter one, when it talks about the creation of human beings and the animals, it uses the same term, a living soul, to describe both humans and animals. Yet of only the human beings themselves does the Bible say that we were created in the image of God. We were created the image of God in a way that the animals were not.

So, animals share our time-boundness. Many of the things written about in these poems are shared by the animals, but it doesn’t frustrate them, it doesn’t bother them. No animal is bothered by this nagging sense of eternity. They are born, they live their lives, they go through their seasons, and then they die, oblivious to the stretch and the scope of eternity.

We don’t. As human beings made in the image of God, where God has put eternity into our hearts, we live with this consistent frustration of our sense of eternity that we’re not quite able to grasp.

Twenty-five years ago, in the year 1996, Dan Herman began a research project that was about four years long until he published his results in the journal of Brand Management, of all places. In the year 2000 and he was the first person to identify what has come to be called the fear of missing out. A few years later this turned into the acronym “FOMO”. You may know this, the fear of missing out, it talks about an anxiety that right now I’m worried that I’m missing out on something else that might make me happy in life. There might be something better out there that if I could just have that I would be happy. It’s this crippling sense of anxiety that makes it impossible for people to enjoy any time, any season of life, because they’re always worried that something somewhere else might be better.

Now what the preacher is telling us here is that there’s actually a sense in which we should be having this fear of missing out. In fact, that idea of the fear of missing out is far too narrow, because the fear of missing out really just deals with a very narrow scope of my right now. It also deals with just me, I’m really not worried if you’re missing out on something, sorry about that, I’m really worried and anxious about me. Am I missing something?

What the preacher says is we should be fearful of missing out on eternity. What God has done in every time, in every life, in every place from the very beginning to the very end. We have a yearning to know this and yet we can’t. We have a sense that it’s there and that it’s meaningful, but we’re helpless to make sense of it all. This is why philosophers never tire of wrestling with what is the meaning of life, because they’re trying to grapple with this.
Trust
So how should we evaluate this? What does it mean to be people who live with this constant frustrated sense of eternity, even though we are creatures bound and trapped in time? Well in verses 12 through 15 the preacher makes two judgments. One we might see is a very zoomed in view, an answer to the problem. Then the other one is sort of a zoomed out big picture view of what’s happening and how to understand it. Both of them boil down to one thing, namely to trust in the Lord. So this is our third and final section, trust in verses 12 through 15.

The verses 12-13 is where we have this zoomed in answer asking us how do I live today? Here’s what the preacher writes in verses 12-13,
12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13 also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
Ecclesiastes 3:12-13, ESV
Now it’s important to understand the preacher isn’t commending hedonism, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. He’s actually commending the pleasures of life as gifts from God. Recognize these as God’s gift to man. We cannot slow the earth’s rotation and lengthen a day, we cannot slow the revolutions that our planet takes around the sun and lengthen a particular year, or speed it up as we may wish to do. Again we can’t press pause or fast forward or rewind to get through, to linger on the bad or the good parts of life. All we can do as prisoners of time is to simply enjoy life as it comes.

That’s a skill that’s an acquired wisdom that we must grow into as we grow in life. Part of that enjoyment means learning that every season won’t last long. Now this is a comfort during bad times, this too shall pass, this is temporary. It’s also a warning during good times; don’t cling to this, don’t hold to this because it will not last. Your hope has to be in something else. In everything, what the preacher is calling us to learn, is to see each season as God’s gift to us.

Well what should we do then in the big picture? Well the next part is the zoomed out answer in verses 14-15. What’s the grounds of the foundation or the big picture that gives us confidence to enjoy each season as God’s gift? Well here we see the unfolding of God’s plan that should give us comfort. Everything happens in the unfolding of God’s plan.
14 I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15 That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.
Ecclesiastes 3:14-15, ESV
In eternity past, before time began, the Bible tells us that God consulted the most wise and holy counsel of his own will. Alone God freely and unchangeably decreed to ordain everything that will come to pass in human history. Everything that is happening is the unfolding of the plan that God made from before the foundations of the earth were laid. He appointed every time, every season for everything that will take place in this world. Nothing can be added to this plan and nothing can be taken away from it.

So why did God make this plan? Well we read in verse 14, so that people fear before him. If we truly grapple with the fact that we are mists passing away, that we are here today and gone tomorrow, that that time between being born and death is so rapid in the scheme of history, and if we also realize that God is the one who endures forever, “our God our help in ages past”, as the hymn declares, well that helps us to fear him.

That puts us in proper perspective not to be afraid of him, not that sense of fearing him, although it’s not less than that, but it’s to fear him in awe and reverence and especially in trust. To trust that each season comes down as a good gift from the unchangeable Father of Lights and to trust in all of this. We can trust him because he is perfectly working out the plan that he has appointed for our good in a constantly changing world. Nothing gives more confidence to those who love God and are called according to his purpose than to know that he is working all things together for our good.
Application
So how should we apply this then well?
1. The first application is that we must meditate or give thoughtful consideration to our time-boundedness and then on the flip side to God’s eternality. You are a prisoner of time whereas God is free and eternal. You did not exist before you were born and one day you will die, whereas God simply is that’s what he gives. His name “I am what I am”, means there is never a time when God did not exist and there never will be a time when God does not exist. He is eternal.

Yet God created you as more than an animal. You don’t just go through this oblivious to God’s eternality, you’re aware of it and it weighs on you. Now that longing for eternity is meant to lead you beyond the temporality and the time-boundedness of this life to the eternity of God.

Again I said earlier that C.S. Lewis found that seeking after this sense of longing, this joy, was what eventually led him to come to know Christ. So he writes in Mere Christianity this, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so I must take care on the one hand never to despise or be unthankful for these earthly blessings and on the other never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy or echo or mirage. I must keep them alive in myself or I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. I must never let it get snowed under or turn aside. I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and help others to do the same.”

That’s exactly what the preacher is telling us in this passage. He’s clearing away the errors so that we can look upon what the rest of the Bible tells us about this other country. This country that is eternal that we were made for, that God is bringing us into.

Of course C.S. Lewis wasn’t the first person to think about this. 1500 years before a man named Augustine wrote this, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Our restlessness is for eternity, we want to know eternity and yet we cannot see the whole picture at once. We want to understand what God is doing from beginning to end. Understand, the Bible gives us the big picture for all of this but we have a longing in our hearts to see everything.

We long to understand how even the deepest pains, how these difficult painful times that are appointed a season in our lives, how these truly were fitting and appropriate and beautiful in their time. That God had appointed for us to discover how God is working all these things together for our good. Understand you cannot find the meaning to your deep questions in this world. Under the sun you can only find answers by faith in God. Not a blind leap of faith that ignores facts, but rather the humble recognition that you don’t have all the facts and you can’t have all the facts. You can’t see what God has been up to everywhere in all people’s lives from beginning to end. Faced with that utter inability to make sense of it all we must turn instead to the one who holds time in his hands. As the hymn declares, “Crown him the Lord of years, the potentate of time.”

The Christian gospel tells us that the timeless one, the one who has always existed, so that there never was a time when he did not exist. This eternal son of God took upon himself a human nature precisely so that he could enter into our time. Indeed the Bible tells us that Christ came into the world in the fullness of time. There was a season and every season before that was leading up to the fullness of time when Christ would enter the world. Even he had to endure the circumstances and the seasons of life for 30 years until his time arrived. That’s what it says the time arrived for his three year long public ministry and then when his time was at hand.

So we talked about it when his time was at hand he gave up his life on the cross because even for Jesus there was a time to be born and a time to die. Now our resurrected Lord declares, “Fear not I am the first and the last.” That’s amirrorism. That’s not just the first and then the last with something else filling the gaps, it’s from beginning to end. I am this one, Jesus declares, and I am the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and hades. Your longing for eternity cannot be fulfilled in this life but your longing can be fulfilled in the one who lives forevermore. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.

2. The second application goes back to our big idea. This application is to seek the sabbath rest that God gives. Remember our big idea is that God gives sabbath rest. We’ve talked a lot about time and we should reflect upon the fact that the God who created time also gave regular order to that time. Where from the very beginning of creation he set apart one day in seven to serve as a sabbath day. Whereas six days of the week we find ourselves drowning in the rat race of life, giving ourselves that to work that can never transcend the time-bound limitations of this world.

The sabbath day is given by God to us as an embassy of eternity that we can enjoy from week to week. You know what an embassy is? An embassy is the sovereign territory of one nation that is set up in the boundaries of the territory of another nation. So if you go to any country in the world that has the United States embassy, at one moment you’ll be standing in the territory of that country but to enter into that embassy is to step upon the sovereign soil of the United States of America. There you have all of the rights and the liberties and the responsibilities conferred upon you by the constitution of the United States. It’s an embassy that’s a little piece of the United States of America in all of those foreign countries.

The same thing is true of the sabbath day. It is an embassy of our eternal rest when we are surrounded by the rat race of life. Not a territory of a place, but a territory of time. This is a day where we have set apart, where God has given us to enter into his territory of eternality and this is told to us in the Bible.

The author of Hebrews reminds us of this truth and urges us toward it in Hebrews 4:9-11. He says,
9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:9-11, ESV
There’s a tremendous hymn that celebrates this about the sabbath day, it’s called “O Day of Rest and Gladness.” You may have heard this because Indelible Grace did a cover of it a few years back. I want to read you verse 3 of this hymn singing about the sabbath day, the hymn goes
Thou art a port protected
From storms that round us rise;
A garden intersected
With streams of paradise;
Thou art a cooling fountain
In lifes dry dreary sand;
From Thee, like Pisgahs mountain,
We view our promised land.
O Day of Rest and Gladness
Mount Pisgah was the mountain that Moses stood on top of to look across the Jordan River at the edge of the Promised Land that he would never enter into during the course of his life. From there he could stand to see it all and to take it all in in a moment, to enter into that sabbath rest by faith from a distance.

If this is true, if the sabbath day is an embassy of eternity, then why would we waste our time on the Lord’s day by re-entering the rat race before the day is over? When we spend the Lord’s day slipping back into the office to tie up a few loose ends or to try to get a jump start on the week ahead or even planning out the next week’s work in our minds, understand that we’re believing a lie. We are believing that what we gain from our toil is better than what God gives in this embassy of eternity, in the sabbath rest that he gives to his people. It’s just not true. What does the worker gain from all his toil?

When we spend the Lord’s day pursuing our own pleasure or filling it with idle conversations about common things, with sports or entertainment or television or movie,s then we’re believing a lie that we have something better to gain from our pleasure than from the sabbath rest that God gives to his people, in the enjoyment of himself in his eternal salvation. I don’t say this to scold you, I say this to encourage you to enter into the joy and the pleasures of God’s rest. Not temporal pleasures, not worldly pleasures, but the pleasures that God promises us on the sabbath day.

One of the greatest promises of the Bible is in Isaiah 58:13-14,
13 “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;
14 then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
Isaiah 58:13-14, ESV
Brothers and sisters, God gives sabbath rest to his people. Let us then strive to enter that rest by resting from our toil in the same way that God rested from his works at the beginning of creation. The Lord’s day is the pinnacle of our week, brothers and sisters, because the Lord’s day is an off-ramp from the rat race of life and it’s an on-ramp into the strong eternal rest that God gives. We have an embassy here of eternity. This day is the sovereign outpost of God’s eternality. Don’t waste your time today, use this day to worship the eternal God.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us Christ this day. That this day above all days that you’ve set apart your sabbath day the Lord’s day, the day that commemorates the resurrection of the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that this would be our soul meditation and focus today. Not that we have to legalistically follow rules but that we would be wise and seek after the true eternal pleasures that you have at your right hand forevermore. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.