Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Sabbath Ep 2. |Sabbath in the Old and New Testament (with Kelsey & April Pryor)

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Sabbath Ep 2. |Sabbath in the Old and New Testament (with Kelsey & April Pryor) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:01
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and this season is all about crafting a family-friendly day of rest.
• 0:19
  We'll talk about the biblical idea of Sabbath, hear testimonies from different families, and also discuss practical ways to do this with kids. Make sure you give us a follow so you don't miss out on future episodes. All right, guys. Well, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. I'm joined today by my lovely wife, April, and our lovely daughter, Kelsey. Hello. Hi. Hi.
• 0:47
  We're jumping on the Zoom call, different parts of the house, to talk to you guys about the topic of the Sabbath and how to create a family-friendly Sabbath day of rest. And one of the things that we are constantly asked when we dive into this topic is, how does this work for Christians? Like, what does the Bible say about the Sabbath? And how do we think about this from a theological perspective? So most of what this whole season is going to be about
• 1:16
  are very, very practical conversations about how to do this. We want to really answer the how-to questions, but we also know that that gives rise to all kinds of theological questions. So we want to address those, talk through how we think about this theologically, because this is a really challenging topic. I think that the church has had
• 1:36
  a very interesting history with the idea of the Sabbath. There was a time, of course, in the first and second century where the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sabbath were likely being celebrated in a very similar way. Then there was a very stark separation that occurred in the third and fourth century where the Sabbath day was really
• 1:56
  altered from its original time on Saturday to be the worship day for the Christians on Sunday. We've merged those two concepts at some point in the future in our history in the third and fourth century. Then the Jews started to, the Christian church started to really try to purge kind of their Hebraic root structure and kind of eliminated and even in many cases made illegal the idea of a Saturday Sabbath, which
• 2:24
  really changed the trajectory of the way we think about that day now as a primarily a worship slash rest day. And then there was a history during the Protestant Reformation of there being some very strong Sunday Sabbath keeping and Sabbatarian different denominations. And then coming all the way to today, people don't really know how to handle this topic. I mean, it's weird when you look at the history. And for us, having spent a lot of time in Israel, it's strange to
• 2:52
  confusing this topic is and how different these kind of trajectories have created. And we really want to talk about this. We want to look at the theology of this, but we also want to understand this from a family perspective, because we think.
• 3:04
  man, it's really important for families to understand this idea of rest. And so we don't want to over theologize this topic, but we do want, also don't want to under theologize this topic. We think about this and you guys will see this as we go through these passages. We really see this as a gift and something that is sort of being offered to families as a way of really getting to a place where you can spend time together
• 3:29
  and really experience a good rhythm of work and rest in the life of the family. And so there's a lot of opportunity given to the family when it comes to this topic, but it usually and very quickly becomes a hyper-religious conversation. Do I have to keep the Sabbath? People almost immediately want to ask. Does God have an opinion about which day to keep the Sabbath? Yeah.
• 3:54
  What is the gospel and what Jesus has done for us on the cross? How does that impact the Sabbath? How do we think about Old Testament passages? Are they still relevant today? And then is it appropriate to learn from other traditions about how they keep the Sabbath, whether it's Jewish traditions or other Christian parts of our larger Christian family? Yeah.
• 4:16
  These are hard questions to answer. And so we're going to not answer all of them, but we're going to dive into this conversation and give you guys insights into kind of the ideas that are in the Bible, the theology of Sabbath that's really impacted our family the most. So I'm excited to dive in. The way we're going to do this conversation is I'm going to just share a little bit about the passages that for our family have really impacted us. And then I'm going to just ask
• 4:38
  April and Kelsey to kind of chime in, because we've all been on this journey together. And I can tell that for all of us, there's been different ways that these ideas have impacted us. So I'm going to start with where for me, the whole conversation started from a theological perspective, which was in Mark chapter three. And when I was, we were first building our family
• 5:01
  I was really influenced by a Presbyterian pastor named Earl Palmer. He was a pastor in Seattle and he was giving a talk on the fourth commandment. And he really kind of camped on Mark three. And up to this point, I would say that my perspective on the Sabbath was very much, that's a Jewish thing. That's like an old Testament idea. I really,
• 5:24
  because April and I met in Jerusalem and spent time there, I really saw the beauty of what that meant in that culture, but I didn't really see how it applied to me or my culture. And I grew up in a, in a tradition that really wasn't very, didn't have, didn't have a very strong idea of what Sabbath keeping looked like. We worshiped on Sunday and that was, and you know, would, you know,
• 5:45
  have kind of a chill day on Sunday, I would say, but it wasn't a big part of our tradition. And so when he pointed this out, it really caused me to take a big step back and think about this much more deeply. So if you guys know in this passage in Mark 3, I'm going to start in verse 23, it says, one Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
• 6:10
  And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? So, if you guys understand this, the scene here is that you're not allowed to harvest on the Sabbath, right? And the Jews were, at this time, the Pharisees were very, very intense about defining exactly what Sabbath keeping meant.
• 6:32
  and enforcing that on the people that were around them. Part of this was just because of the trauma of exile that the Jews had gone through, that they were very adamant that we do not want to disobey the Lord. And so they...
• 6:48
  The Torah, the first five books of the Bible that really outline this command of Sabbath, there's not a ton of detail, right? And so it left open lots of questions, like exactly what is work, exactly what is harvesting. And so they had decided that even what the disciples were doing by walking through this grain field and just plucking...
• 7:08
  grain and maybe popping it in their mouth on the Sabbath day, that that was out of bounds, that that is harvesting on the Sabbath. And so they were getting confronted. Verse 25 says, and Jesus said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He and those who were with him.
• 7:26
  how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
• 7:42
  So the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. So one of the really confusing realities of the gospels is that Jesus would often illustrate his points about the gospels, about the idea of the gospel of the kingdom, the freedom of the kingdom and what he was bringing by breaking man-made laws and rules. And so Jesus had to, you know, and so he was very comfortable with,
• 8:09
  making sure that there was a delineation between the laws that are still enforced from the Hebrew scriptures and the Torah in particular, and the man-made traditions that were really layered on top of the law. And so part of what happens when Christians read the gospels is they see Jesus constantly violating Jesus,
• 8:30
  the man-made traditions on the Sabbath. And that has caused a lot of people to think that Jesus was not a Sabbath keeper and that he had a very kind of low view of the Sabbath because he was doing this. Now, what actually is happening, and I think this passage illustrates this better than maybe than any other passage, is that Jesus was very concerned that the Sabbath, not that it not be kept, but that it be kept according to its original purpose, which was that it is something given
• 8:58
  for us. We're not here to serve the Sabbath. The Sabbath is here to serve us. It's a gift and one that we can choose to receive and we can choose to enjoy, and that Jesus himself, because of what he does in completing the law, is the Lord even over the Sabbath.
• 9:17
  And so this idea that we shouldn't primarily look at the Sabbath on this side of the cross as a law that is to be kept in order to achieve some kind of spiritual status with our record keeping of the law. But it's something that is a gift that we need to seriously consider whether or not we may need to
• 9:43
  receive that. So that's kind of the big picture, I think, behind what Jesus is talking about here. But yeah, April and Kelsey, anything that kind of stirs up for y'all? Go ahead. Well, I think what you said about people see Jesus breaking the man-made traditions, and so they think that that's like him shunning that original command is really key, because when a lot of Christians will approach this topic,
• 10:11
  a lot of the times it's like, what's the Christian thing to do? Or how do I, you know, and it's not a lot of understanding about where this command, you know, originated from and Jesus intention in rebuking the Pharisees at these different points and things like that. And so I, I think that just what he says at the end, the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath is still just super key to understanding its nature as a gift and,
• 10:41
  Um, especially even if, as even if we take this and we say, okay, he's rebuking all of the man-made traditions and he's saying, you should just go back and simply follow the Torah. But then he, you know, he dies in the cross and like, then we're left with this. What do we do with the Torah after? So he's like rebuking the man-made traditions and saying, follow the Torah instead. But then now here, you know, on this side of the cross, we still have to ask the question, what do we do with the Torah?
• 11:08
  And so I feel like there's a couple of layers to that question of like the religiousness of this rule is how many, how do we approach the man-made laws for this? How do we approach even the Torah law for this? And so to have Jesus say that the son of man is Lord over the Sabbath, it's made for man and it being a gift. And so instead of us immediately wanting to heap whether it's Torahic or man-made laws on this day,
• 11:38
  just coming at it from a gift standpoint, I feel like is a good, is like necessary to like start from there and then build on it after that. So, yeah, I think for me, I grew up in a tradition that had a lot of man-made rules around, we wouldn't have used the word Sabbath, but around Sunday and the day that you're supposed to rest and that kind of thing. And so, yeah,
• 12:06
  you know, I think the human heart longs for religion. Like is if I know what I'm supposed to do and, and then if I do those things and that means I'm a good person or a good Christian, I can check all the boxes. Then I feel really good about myself. And, um, to me, the gift that this is, is, is freedom from that trap of being bound by religion. And, um, Jesus saying like,
• 12:33
  this is actually good for you to have rest. You need to understand that you need me and I'm bringing you into rest instead of into more works. And there's freedom from these man-made things that you're setting up for yourself. Yeah. And you guys will see maybe putting a pin in this idea that one of the things that has caused a lot of modern Christians to reject the idea of the Sabbath is because the,
• 12:59
  They, as children, if they grew up in Christian families that were sort of Sabbath keeping in any way, often remember it as the worst day of the week, the most boring day of the week. And when you're thinking about actually like doing something that your kids will receive as a gift, like, oh, I love the Sabbath. I mean, the idea of keeping a Sabbath to them is going to, sounds so religious.
• 13:21
  and so onerous for a child to try to keep that. It's something that is a burden and not a gift. This is a big thing we're going to look at more and more. Now, I just want to briefly hit this next passage. Right after Moses takes the Israelites out of Egypt,
• 13:46
  The first time we run into this idea of the Sabbath is in Exodus 16, when God begins to provide manna from heaven, and they're not to gather manna on the seventh day. And this was a very hard thing for the Hebrew slaves, former slaves to receive, because what they were used to is a slave works seven days a week.
• 14:13
  You don't take a day off. It's not safe to take a day off. It doesn't make any sense. You're a slave. You keep working. And so this is stated as, you know, you can get the slave out of Egypt, but how do you get Egypt out of the slave? You have to somehow train them to rest. You have to cause them to really experience something different. And in Exodus 16, when they began to go out on the seventh day and they
• 14:42
  gather manna, this is how God responded. He said, they must realize that the Sabbath is the Lord's gift to you.
• 14:50
  That is why he gives you a two-day supply on the sixth day. So there will be enough for two days. On the Sabbath day, you must each day in your place, do not go out and pick up food on the seventh day. And so this, I think, I love this line because it feels like we're hearing this very similar to what you see in Jesus's response to the Pharisees. Like, hey, the Sabbath is God's gift to you. Why are you rejecting the gift? Stay in your place and enjoy the Sabbath.
• 15:20
  And this is really hard for slaves to do. Another passage, I'm curious what you guys think about this one. So Isaiah 58, you have a picture of the kingdom that's being described in the end of Isaiah. And he talks about the Sabbath and he uses this phrase that has been really important for us. So he says, keep the Sabbath day holy. Don't pursue your own interests on that day, but enjoy the Sabbath.
• 15:43
  and speak of it with delight as the Lord's holy day. Honor the Sabbath in everything you do on that day, and don't follow your own desires or talk idly." Now, this is simultaneously the strongest passage I know of in the entire Bible that tells us that the Sabbath is supposed to be the zenith of the week, the day that you talk about differently, that you look forward to.
• 16:06
  and that you enjoy and that you speak of as a delight. And it also, in the same sentence, says, don't do, just don't follow everything you want. And this is a very challenging contrast. And so I know in our family,
• 16:22
  we kind of have done it in the order of let's, let's get to the place where we're all speaking of the Sabbath as a delight and that we're enjoying the Sabbath. And then let's like, try to understand, you know, kind of go into a journey of from that position of like really enjoying the Sabbath. How do we honor the Lord with this day? You know? And so that's, that's a really,
• 16:44
  challenging contrast. But I think for parents of young children, the question of how do we design a day that our children will actually enjoy and speak of it with delight,
• 17:02
  how does that, how is that done? So yeah, how does, how have you guys seen, and we're going to have a whole podcast where kind of walk through our journey of how we, we practice the Sabbath, but at least at the theological level, how have you guys thought about this idea of delighting in the Sabbath and also the, it's the Lord's day? Well, I wanted to say one thing about the slavery component because of what you said. You said something about freedom. And so I think it's interesting to think about
• 17:31
  how our gut response to having a Sabbath day is more constraint. When you look at the actual, like in Exodus, like in the Torah, when it's being given to them in the law, it's being given to them for freedom. Like that's its purpose is like to learn how to be free.
• 17:47
  And so even though a lot of rules came with that, it was like on training their slavery ways. And so I just think it's interesting how our tendency is still to like almost think of it like we're a slave to it instead of like it's offering us freedom when that was its original purpose, even in the loss. So I just wanted to touch on that. But yeah, so Isaiah 58. Did you have anything to say? Yeah.
• 18:13
  Have something to go ahead. Okay. So I think, you know, I've probably been doing Shabbat as long as you guys, but most of it as a kid. And so not thinking of it the same way as you guys have. But I think growing up, there was different things that we would do to make it fun where I always looked forward to it as a kid.
• 18:38
  Um, but I think that that because of that, like you're saying, coming at it from like, first, let's learn how to like, look forward to this as like, the climax of our week. Um, and then let's like, think more deeply about it. I felt like that, that is kind of how it went for me with like,
• 18:58
  oh, I can't wait for this day. But as a kid, that means like, oh, we have grape juice at Shabbat dinner and I get to, you know, watch more episodes of X-Men and Avatar than I do on a normal day. So I'm not obviously thinking very deeply about it, but it's something I'm looking forward to. And so as an adult, I think that
• 19:20
  as I've learned different things about the Sabbath and like studied it deeper, either on my own or like, as we've talked about it as a family, or I've read books on it, then it gives me like a deeper appreciation where I already have this place in my soul where I like appreciate it, but I like, or like, I look forward to it, but I like appreciate it deeper every time I learn something new. Um,
• 19:44
  or I experience it in a different way. So I think that I still am tweaking how I live that out on a weekly basis, but I know that I had a long season where I would read like a chapter or a section of The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
• 20:01
  And that helped me like, oh, like I only wanted to, I really only wanted to read that book on Shabbat anyways, because if you read out any other day of the week, it was like, oh, I want that so bad. And then so if you read it on Shabbat, then it's like, I have that. That's what I am experiencing right now. So I feel like as I've become an adult, I've started experiencing it in deeper ways. But I know you have more to say about that. So.
• 20:28
  Yeah, I think it's, I'm thinking back to when the Sabbath was originally, originally given to us in the creation story and how God set apart the seventh day. So he created man on the sixth day. And then our very first day of existence was a day of rest. Like we started things off with a day of rest.
• 20:51
  And the gift that that is, and that that's how he started off our life as, you know, the human race and our existence is resting, is something that was very counterintuitive to me. And so trying to figure out how to believe that for myself as an adult, but then also how to impart this to our children or how to.
• 21:17
  live it out in front of them or how to flow as the seasons change and your kids become more independent and they're making their own choices of how to spend their days. You're not like just trying to keep them alive and, you know, make sure that their diaper gets changed on that day or something. So there is an ebb and flow to this life of this. Isaiah 58 passage definitely seems more of like
• 21:45
  when people start to have a choice about how they want to spend their day, how to like, don't pursue your own interests on that day, enjoy the Sabbath. So what does that mean? Because I think a lot of what we were teaching our kids when they were little was like, what would be fun for you today? Or like, like you said, like trying to make it an attractive thing. And so I think that that is a conversation that we typically have as a family because like we'll get into a new season and the thing that we were doing just
• 22:15
  needs to change for a certain reason or something like that. And so this is a great passage to discuss as your kids get older and have more of an opinion and things that, you know, people rest differently from each other. What does that mean? All of that. So this is a great passage to focus on those things. Yeah.
• 22:36
  And there's kind of a really practical question you can kind of aim for. And that is, if you ever were to ask your children, what is your favorite day of the week? And this passage seems to say, if you're doing it right, then they should say, without any prompting or manipulation or whatever, my favorite is the Sabbath. And I think that the fact that for so many children,
• 23:01
  they would have said their least favorite day of the week. And it's, is the, in fact, you know, there's so many people, even in our culture today that aren't believers, if I asked them what their least favorite day of the week is,
• 23:14
  I've heard so many people say their least favorite day is Sunday. It's a weird thing. I've pondered that, why that is so frequently. At least anecdotally, I've heard that a lot. People don't know what to do with that day. Now, we Sabbath on Saturday, but I think that there's something that's kind of gone rhythmically off. And I don't know that it's even been contained inside of the sort of Christian world. I think it spills out everywhere, that there's something about the rhythm of the week
• 23:42
  that's been compromised. And I think we're kind of seeing restored. I think that part of that is just when your kids delight in the Sabbath, something gets restored that's really important in the rhythm of the way that we view time itself. And Kelsey mentioned that incredible book called The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. By the way, that's probably my favorite book
• 24:03
  It's so beautifully written about this Jewish man who has thought through just how to make it a delight. I mean, that's really what he's describing there in that book. And he does it so artfully. So that's a really great read if you're looking for meditation for the Sabbath. So I wanted to also then, let's dive into the actual commands in the Ten Commandments.
• 24:27
  that we have about the Sabbath. I want to talk through these two things. Now, the first thing that's really interesting that we've really tried to understand is that the rabbis have really struggled with this. The Ten Commandments are given twice in the Torah, once in Exodus 20 and the second time in Deuteronomy 5. When you get to the fourth commandment in those two lists of the Ten Commandments,
• 24:51
  they start with a different word. Exodus 20 says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. Then in Deuteronomy 5, the same list, it doesn't have the word remember. It says, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded.
• 25:09
  And so one of the differences is there. There's one other difference I'm going to point out, but I think that we can have a fuller understanding of the purpose of the Sabbath by understanding what it says in both lists, but also how they differ. But either of you want to describe one of the ways that we talk about, why is it that Exodus uses the word remember? Yeah.
• 25:33
  and how the rabbis talked about how Deuteronomy is the word, word observe. Yeah. I need, what, what, what have we kind of discovered about that? Yeah. What it makes me think of is how the, the rabbis say that you spend the first three days of the week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, reflecting on the Sabbath day you just had. So that would be kind of like remembering. And then, um,
• 26:01
  I guess Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're looking forward to the Sabbath that's coming. And so that's kind of like the observing you're looking towards. And I think that that is another way of kind of like the zenith of your week. If you are doing it in a regular consistent way that it becomes kind of like the, what you build your week around.
• 26:24
  And I think that's pretty cool. But I also think that the remembering, if we go through life only thinking forward and we don't take the time to reflect on the past, I think that we can get locked up in some ways that can kind of slow us down in the longterm. And so if we have a whole entire day a week where we can remember, reflect,
• 26:51
  Maybe we need to mourn something, a change that we've noticed that we're going through that we need to like mourn the past for a minute and kind of be able to move on. It gives you, it's a day and a time, a set apart time to be able to work through some remembrances. And then the observing or like, it could be, that could mean like keeping it and preparing for it.
• 27:21
  But it could also be the just stopping and observing what's going on around you when you stop and you smell the roses, so to speak. You know, when you get to be outside and appreciate nature and you're not busy running off somewhere, but you're just observing what's happening around you. I think that that's a really big part of it, too. Yeah. But the preparation is a big deal. Yeah. I don't want to talk about that at all. The preparation like on Friday? Yeah. The difference.
• 27:50
  Yeah, well, it, I mean, it takes work to, to rest. I don't know if you were planning on talking about that, but it takes work to like prepare yourself to rest. Like even in the example in Exodus, they had to gather extra food for the Sabbath day so that they weren't working. One of my experiences was at, in a Jewish home on Shabbat, they will, you know, cook twice as much food and they have like
• 28:20
  a warmer in their kitchen that they keep all their food on to keep it warm throughout the day so that they don't have to cook and they don't have to light any fires and all that kind of stuff. So it's just like the thought that has to go into getting ready to not work is a lot harder than some people might think. Or not harder, but just effort. There is effort. Intentionality. Yes, yes. Intentionality because you don't just like accidentally like not have to work all day. Right. So I think that the,
• 28:50
  The looking back on the Shabbat that just happened and then looking forward to the next one is something that is very like, it keeps you in this like rhythm that's super cyclical and like constant. You're always, every day is revolving around Shabbat in some way. It defines every other day because, you know, if you have a rest day, the day after that becomes a different thing. It usually becomes the day that you have the most energy.
• 29:18
  And the day before Sabbath is that preparation day where you're getting ready to rest.
• 29:22
  And so, and then that has a ripple effect on every other day of the week. And so we talk a lot about the importance of living in a rhythm of seven. And a lot of people have asked us, how do you get into a seven day rhythm? And the answer is extremely simple. You rest one day a week and you won't be able to stop yourself from having a seven day rhythm. Because if you keep a Sabbath, that's very different than the other days. And it's, you discover how to fully rejuvenate, and you start to have this remember, observe, remember, observe rhythm.
• 29:51
  to the other days of the week, that'll all naturally happen. When you begin to keep a Sabbath, you will begin to fall into a rhythm of seven days, which is very, you know, very life-giving. And I think that there's something about the way that our bodies and our minds and our spirits are designed to live in that kind of a rhythm.
• 30:09
  I watched a 60 Minutes episode where they talked to the Seventh-day Adventists who have really faithfully kept the Sabbath. And the reason they went there was because they were living so much longer than other Americans. And so there was other variables in their life, but one of the main variables was that they were extremely consistent keepers of the Sabbath. And so, so many of them were living past 100 years old a day.
• 30:35
  They've been like a major case study in the United States of the greatest example of like a whole community where they're all living longer. And I think that this rhythm is a lot to do with it. The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores and notes for the family all in one place. Visit FamilyTeams.com to purchase.
• 31:02
  In Deuteronomy 5, it goes on to say this other really interesting thing he adds to the Ten Commandments. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. One of the things that I kind of wrestled with when I first began to study a lot of Jewish traditions on the Sabbath was I wasn't finding good traditions.
• 31:28
  examples of them keeping this particular command in Deuteronomy five to remember that you were slaves. And, uh, and so we've, we've developed traditions over the years of trying to like, like have this conversation, which is that part of what, what makes the Sabbath so amazing is that, is that it's, it's,
• 31:48
  our ability to understand where we're at in the story. We are existing inside of a story in which we are slaves set free. That is true, of course, of you, whether or not you were a physical slave in Egypt or whether you were a slave of sin and have been released and restored by the gospel through Jesus.
• 32:10
  I think that's a really key thing is to remember the gospel. I want to talk about some of the things that, and get your guys' thoughts on some of the ways that we've really worked this out. So part of this is kind of going back to the first time that Sabbath is ever mentioned, not by name, but it's just as a rest day in Genesis 2, right after the creation, right? So you have, it says that God rested on the seventh day.
• 32:38
  in Genesis 2. And April, you mentioned that part of what we get to experience there is that Adam and Eve, their first day of life was a day of rest. And that kind of began the pattern that you don't rest from work, but you work from rest. In other words, you first experience the presence of the goodness of God, then you go and
• 33:02
  experience what it's like to live a whole life in devotion to him. You do your work from a place of acceptance, from a place of deep identity, from a place of rest. You're first saved. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When the Hebrews were being rescued from Egypt,
• 33:20
  He didn't say, do all these things and then I'll set you free. He set them free first from Egypt, then he gave them the Ten Commandments. This is the constant rhythm in the scriptures and it's the reverse of that traditional religious spirit, which is you earn your way slowly into a position of sonship or into a position of identity. You earn the right to rest by work and that the gospel reverses that.
• 33:46
  you are given this identity and given rest. And from that place, you find your rest and you find you work from that place of rest. And some of the, probably the part of the scriptures that
• 34:01
  illustrates that the most starkly is when Jesus was on the cross and said, it is finished. I feel like that is probably of all of the lessons about the Sabbath, the one that is most important to us and our family. And I know in my own spirit is just that simple phrase, it is finished, that was spoken over us because Jesus did the work. And so one of the questions I always like to ask the kids on the Sabbath a lot of times is, hey, what are the two kinds of work?
• 34:32
  So Kelsey, you want to tell us what are the two kinds of work we can dive into the gospel implications of Sabbath? I mean, the two kinds of rest. Yes. So we talk about how there's like body rest when you're exhausted and you need to sleep like every night or, you know, you put your feet up after a long day's work or there's soul rest, which is what Shabbat is for. So it's not just for like getting to sleep in and not getting...
• 35:01
  having to go to the office or go to school, but it's also to rejuvenate your soul. And one of the things I just realized when we were talking about the, when, when you were just now talking about the, it is finished, but also when we're talking about the observe, the remember and the observe. And like our part in the story is like how the remember and observe can be in a seven day cycle. Like we're, we're remembering and observing the,
• 35:28
  previous Shabbat and the coming Shabbat, but it's also like a story arc where we can remember like creation, the original Shabbat and then the fall and the slavery that that put us in and how we're living in the part of the story where Jesus says it is finished and sets us free and we get to live in this there. The work is finished. It's kind of the soul rest that we get to live in is there is no work to do. Like it,
• 35:54
  the ultimate work, the job that had to be done on the cross, completable only by Jesus has been finished. And we get to live in that. And then the observe kind of like looking forward to the day when we get to do that with him. And when he like brings that like peace onto earth forever. So it's kind of not just a seven day cycle we can go through, but it's also like a story arc from creation to recreation that we can,
• 36:24
  And part of our soul rest is to remember and look forward to the part of the story that we have been in, that we are currently in, and that we get to participate in in the future. Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of the, that it is finished, the way that's really impacted me is I, I can come to the dinner table. We, we kick our day of rest off with a Friday night meal, and I can come to that Shabbat dinner and,
• 36:54
  with a list of things that are still not finished.
• 36:59
  the emails, the to-do list, the thing I forgot to do. Even sometimes it's like the thing I meant to do for the dinner that night that I forgot to do. And it's just like, oh, it's this, it can be this overwhelming feeling of like, it's never gonna be good enough. I'm never gonna have a week where I'm completely caught up, completely done with everything on my to-do list. I'm completely like check marks are everywhere on my list. And that can just be really overwhelming. Yeah.
• 37:26
  to the human soul. And so to allow the truth of the gospel where Jesus said it is finished on the cross gives such perspective where it's like, Oh, that's right. I am really caught up right now in my, you know, to-do list, email, whatever, all the things that are not done that are probably not super important, but they feel really important at the time or something
• 37:56
  just to remember that Jesus is the one who gets to set the perspective and he's saying, Hey, it's done. Like you need to remember that and focus on that for a little bit before you get back to it. Yes. Yeah. And that's, that's our whole, that's the foundation of the entire Christian faith, right? What we tell people salvation, that sort of the essence of salvation is trusting in what Jesus has already done. But when do you do that? Well, you know,
• 38:25
  The few seconds after you first hear the gospel, you're like, yeah, I want to trust that. Let me say that prayer. Like, that's not like, like, this is not just what saved us. This is what saves us ongoing is the ability to, to in a, in a perpetual way, I am constantly living in a state of trust on Jesus's work for me, not on my work for myself.
• 38:46
  And I live out of that place of rest, that identity. And so the Sabbath is an incredibly useful tool for training in the gospel. And this is probably what captured me the most about getting our kids and our whole family into this. Cause it's like, I want my kids
• 39:01
  to experience the goodness of the gospel. Not, not again, not, not just in the, in the day that they, they choose to confess Jesus as Lord and, and put their trust in him as their savior. But I want them to experience what it's like to be saved by Jesus every single week from the,
• 39:19
  from this litany of justifying yourself through your own work. And so that's the soul rest we're talking about, right? There's the rest that comes from I'm exhausted and I just need a break. But then there's the soul rest that says, I just want to enjoy what's already been done. You know, like I always picture like somebody who has some massive project, like they're, you know, they're making a garden that takes like three months to,
• 39:45
  And they work their butt off every single week and they need to like, they crash constantly because they're exhausted. But there's going to come a day where they're going to be, they're going to be completely done. And that might be right in the middle. Like they might, they might have plenty of rest that particular week and, but they're done.
• 40:04
  And now their job is to experience soul rest by enjoying the work that's been done. Not, not because they need to rest because they're so tired, but because they want to enjoy what is already good. And that's really the picture we get in Genesis, right? I don't know how exhausted God was, but, but there came a point where he was like, it is very good. And he's like, now let's like, I want to enjoy this creation that I've, I've, I've, I've, I've made.
• 40:34
  that's part of what we want to experience on the Sabbath. Like what are ways that we can,
• 40:38
  experience the work that's been done. Let's not just have redeemed relationships in our family because of what Jesus has done. We can live at peace with a whole community of believers and within our family, but let's enjoy that during the Sabbath. That's the thing that we get to do. And that's why this whole thing is a gift and a get to. And it's been almost exclusively relegated to the should and have to.
• 41:07
  sort of category. And that's really what we're working through. All right. I want to talk for a little bit about, there's a few really interesting things
• 41:19
  I would call them guidelines in the Torah about the Sabbath. So I'm going to throw out three and curious what you guys, any of these that have really meant something to you as you thought about it. So in Exodus 31, it says, he really makes the point, do not do any ordinary work. You have six days each week, the Torah says, for your ordinary work, but the seventh day must be a Sabbath day of complete rest, a holy day dedicated to the Lord. A lot of people will ask, what is...
• 41:47
  what is off limits on the Sabbath, right? And again, we're not talking about this from a religious perspective, but just from a practical perspective, what should you try to avoid if you really wanna rest? And the answer in Exodus 31, at least, is don't do your ordinary work. I find that really helpful because some people we talk about, if you're a landscaper, maybe gardening on the Sabbath isn't a good idea because it's too close to your ordinary work. But if you're like sitting behind a computer screen all week
• 42:14
  gardening might be the perfect way to rest, you know, so that as opposed to having fixed categories for what is rest. That's one cat. That's one. Another one that's meant a lot to us is it says in the Torah several times in X35 three says you shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day. And in Abraham Joshua Heschel's book, he talks about the importance of not kindling the fire.
• 42:36
  of indignation. And so there might be certain topics that just get your blood boiling, you know, and those things need to be resolved and those things need to be discussed. And those things, there might be things, hot topics that are really hard to talk about. And maybe if we're doing a good job during our work week of addressing those things, we can say, look, let's just not kindle a fire on the Sabbath. Yeah.
• 43:02
  let's not bring up topics that are, that's going to make it hard for our souls to remain in a state of, of Shalom of peaceful rest. And the last one, we read this from Exodus 16 on the Sabbath day, you must each stay in your place. So this is kind of the idea of, um,
• 43:19
  like trying to figure out what kinds of, like, what does it mean for you to enjoy, like where you are on the Sabbath? And I don't know how that might apply to different people, but yeah, any of those, either ordinary work, kindling a fire, staying in your place, there's a lot of really interesting guidelines there that either of you have experienced as being kind of helpful for the way that you keep a Sabbath.
• 43:44
  Well, I was thinking how we work in a fabric shop, but we still really like to sew on Shabbat. And I was thinking, is that like too close to our ordinary work?
• 43:55
  But when I think about it, it's like, no, we've worked six days a week to maintain a store that has all the supplies you could possibly want for sewing and for, you know, giving other people those supplies. Shabbat is the day we get to actually enjoy the fact that we have all of these resources and use it for our fun. Like, you know, every now and then there's a project we have to do for work and we won't do that on Shabbat, but it's like,
• 44:20
  Oh, I, this is a personal part. We have like our work projects and our personal projects. So we like doing our personal projects on Shabbat because we enjoy, it's almost like the fruit of your labor. You get to just experience that. So that's what I thought of. I think sometimes it sounds too close to home, but it's not for us. And I think that just depends on the person and the activity that you're considering.
• 44:43
  And then, yeah, I think that lighting no fire, like not starting any arguments or having any hard conversations on Shabbat is a big one just because, you know, there's, you want to be able to enjoy your relationships without strife, like at least one day a week, where either maybe that means you don't engage in those relationships.
• 45:04
  relationships that day. Or maybe it means you like it's a specific relationship where you can participate in something together without bringing up this difficult conversation or something like that. So yeah, I think one point that I take from the Exodus 31 passage where it talks about working six days in your ordinary work and then resting one day is I think in our American culture, we have adopted the weekend so completely fully that we
• 45:33
  in some ways feel like we have two days to rest, but then we end up filling the two days with not rest. And so, you know, it can get really confusing. Like they are different from Monday through Friday. Either the kids are off of school or maybe you're not working or something like that. But if, how do we take working six days and then resting one,
• 45:57
  And how does that apply? How can we make that work in our life so that we are actually being kingdom workers six days a week? And that kind of leads to my thought on the not kindling a fire because relationships are work as well. And there's a lot of heart, like soul work that goes into maintaining healthy relationships and dealing with things as they come up.
• 46:27
  And so that is part of the work that you do, the six days a week. And resting one is, you know, like for us, we go, we end our Shabbat, our day of rest by Jeremy and I going on a date. And at date night, we don't bring up the things that would feel exhausting or overwhelming or frustrating or bring up tension. Now we do need to have a time throughout the week when we're, you know,
• 46:56
  those are our work days where we can work through that topic or work through that thing. But, um, just fully embracing the lighting no fire on Shabbat is actually part of the gift of getting to just rest and enjoy people and not feel like you have to work on them or work on you, or that can be really exhausting throughout the week. And part of the rest is just being able to, um, not need to bring things up or not need to instigate those things. Um, yeah.
• 47:25
  Yeah. And I think, I think that's so important to you guys, because it's, if you think about,
• 47:31
  part of where I think a lot of this can break down for a family is if you only think about work as something you do outside the home and you don't really work on, you don't have family meetings, you're not dealing with, you know, hard conversations, you don't take, bring what we call, we kind of talk about as our families, our work brain into the home, then there can be so much left unsaid, undone work that it overwhelms you on the Sabbath, right? So that, you know, fires just get
• 47:58
  because there's so much neglect going on. There's no work being done and there's not enough work being done to maintain those relationships, to figure out how to do things, you know, productively and efficiently as a family. And so part of why, you know, I think we really work hard at working in the home and working on the relationships and working on our household really then allows us to have this fire-free Shabbat experience. That might take some time, but there's a lot of sort of undone work in the home.
• 48:27
  So those are the guidelines. There's a lot in the Torah. I just wanted to bring some of those up. Now, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the idea that kind of getting back to this religious question and the New Testament. What does the New Testament do to the idea of the Sabbath? You guys can see that primarily we're really seeing the Sabbath as this amazing gift.
• 48:47
  But one of the confusing things that people really try to work through is you have really almost two positions that I've heard articulated. One is that, look, it is a law that Christians ought to keep. The reasons are, number one, it's spoken about in creation and creation is not a Jewish thing. It's not something that...
• 49:07
  It's given to all of creation to rest. And so because it's rooted in Genesis and not in the law parts of the Torah, it's something that is incumbent upon all of us as creatures. And number two, because it's in the Ten Commandments, that's a general description of morality.
• 49:29
  And nine of the 10 commandments are repeated as commandments in the New Testament. The only one not repeated is this one about the Sabbath. And so people have taken that two directions. Some people say, well, because it's not commanded of Christians to keep a Sabbath in the New Testament, it's maybe no longer a command that we need to worry about. And then other people have said, well.
• 49:50
  it's just totally by, you know, the New Testament didn't need to repeat every commandment. It repeated nine of the 10. It's of course to be assumed that the entire 10 commandments is still enforced. Now,
• 50:03
  I think that that would be those, I would be very confused about where to take that argument. If it wasn't for something that Paul wrote in Colossians chapter two, because I think this is a really important thing to understand. Colossians chapter two, Paul says something definitive about the Sabbath.
• 50:21
  And I think we have to take very seriously what he says as sort of the word about the Sabbath given to those of us on this side of the cross, New Testament. And I think he's probably primarily speaking to Gentile believers here. So I think it's important for us to take very seriously what he says. And so Colossians 2, 16 and 17 says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you.
• 50:45
  in questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival, or a new moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of, and then he puts in that list, about the Sabbath. Don't ever judge somebody else because of how they are or are not keeping a Sabbath. Okay.
• 51:09
  What that means to us and the way our family has taken that is this certainly does not mean that you shouldn't keep a Sabbath. Again, all the things the Bible says about the Sabbath are still true. It's rooted in creation. It's a gift given to us. It is a part of the 10 commandments. I think our bodies were designed to live in a seven-day rhythm. And I think that there's great wisdom in keeping a Sabbath. But I feel absolutely no compunction to judge somebody else.
• 51:37
  their family and their traditions if they do or do not keep a Sabbath, because I'm commanded not to judge and I'm commanded not to let others judge on this exact topic. And so we just like to say that the Sabbath is a judgment-free zone. It's been declared a judgment-free zone by the Apostle Paul. And if you take seriously what Paul says and believe that it's the Word of God, then it's really important
• 52:02
  to maintain this extremely explicit and very clear command given to us in the New Testament, not to judge one another based on a Sabbath day. I think that that is so important because it allows people to receive it as a gift. I mean, I think if this verse was not in the New Testament,
• 52:21
  I think that people would, I think the percentage of people that would keep a miserable Sabbath would explode. And I don't think that's what it's designed to be. It's designed to be a delight in this side of the cross because of what Jesus has done. Because as Paul says at the end, like those are shadows. The substance is Christ. In other words, Jesus himself perfectly kept the law. He perfectly kept the Sabbath and he died in our place. And so his perfect Sabbath keeping record is given to me.
• 52:50
  And my terrible Sabbath keeping failure is given to him. And so in the gospel, I have the freedom to never feel judged because of something I might do on a Saturday or Sunday or whenever you choose to keep the Sabbath or not keep the Sabbath. But I think that that then creates this huge open space of freedom.
• 53:12
  to ask, is this something that you want to do? Is this, and so is this a gift that in this season of your family's life you want to receive? So I really love the, that posture towards the Sabbath that Paul is describing in Colossians 2, but how have you guys kind of wrestled through that one? Well, I feel like the Sabbath is one of the biggest ways that God displays his character to us. Not the only way, but I've learned a lot about who he is through Shabbat. And so
• 53:42
  I think that that in particular, even like the lifting off of this is not supposed to feel like a burden, but it is a gift and it is a choice. It's such a huge part of who God is and how he gives us his gifts. He wants them to be like 100% your choice to receive. I mean, like salvation is like that, like deciding to choose relationship with him. It's just like every aspect of our relationship with God has to be a choice.
• 54:12
  And it's not pushed upon us by him. And so I just think it's really interesting that that is the one commandment that is your choice to keep. But it's still a good idea. Like it's still, there's immense wisdom in doing it. And there's still, like you said, all the other reasons in scripture to keep a Sabbath. But at the end of the day, you're not supposed to be like, you're not given a burden to do it.
• 54:42
  yeah, I just think that that, that teaches me a lot about who God is and it makes me want to accept the gift even more. Yeah. I think I just, it's really impressive to me how, um, how much, how like adamant Paul is about this because he was a Jew keeping the Sabbath perfectly or, you know, perfectly as probably thought. Yeah. And then, um,
• 55:08
  he's, he's saying, don't, don't do that anymore. And it's like in his own lifetime, he's making this transition. And so I think that that calls us into it even more. And again, it's kind of like what I said earlier, that our hearts for whatever, like the broken part of our, the way we are is that we desire religion and rules. And, and I think part of that is so that we can just rely on ourselves. And so that we don't need anybody else. And so that we don't need
• 55:36
  the cross. We don't need Jesus and we can just do it ourselves. And so I think part of this is saying, shake that off and rest in the work that Jesus did on the cross and let people be on their own journeys. And if someone wants to keep this element, but not that element, then
• 55:55
  that's not, that's not up to you. It's, it's up to the Lord and, and the relationship with him and anything we do anyway is just a shadow of the things to come. Like we're already, you know, practicing it and perfectly, and he's graciously teaching us things about him and, and our shadowy attempts, um, to keep the Sabbath.
• 56:19
  Good. Yes, guys. So this is this journey. I love that language that we each get to have into getting to receive this gift is so important. And wherever you guys are at in that journey, we just want to encourage you not out of a spirit of religion or obligation, but out of a spirit that God is good and that God.
• 56:41
  In His divine revelation in scripture, He's given us so much insight into how He designed the world, how He designed us, how He designed time itself to serve us in a way that we can experience. And I think that what He's wooing us into ultimately in the Sabbath, what He really wants is if you are a working being, right? If that's a big part of our life, we were designed from Genesis 1 to steward creation. We're going to experience a lot of fulfillment and a lot of, a lot of, um,
• 57:10
  a lot of our experience is going to be in the work realm that we need to put some real intentionality around. How do we experience our identity, our relationships, especially our connection with God through a Shabbat, through a time where we stop?
• 57:27
  Shabbat is the Hebrew word for Sabbath, but it doesn't actually mean rest. It means stop. So how do we experience rest through stopping, through a day of stopping, through a day of ceasing to continuously work? And in Psalm 4610, it says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. Yeah.
• 57:53
  And we need time to just be still and know who we are, who God is. And so this is the invitation to you and to your family and to your children to experience the goodness of God and the rest of the gospel.
• 58:09
  Not in an abstract sense, but through the experience of time and rhythmic time on a weekly basis to just sit together in the goodness of God. So thank you guys for joining us on this journey. We've got a lot more episodes in this episode.
• 58:27
  in this series. And so we're excited to talk about what it looks like for each of us to understand how to lead our families into a family-friendly day of rest. So Kelsey and April, thanks for being a part of this conversation today. Yeah, absolutely.
• 58:44
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.