Abide in Christ” and a Sermon by Matt Chandler

WEEK EIGHT – Action Plan #3: Rest – Part 2

• Dehydrated hearts and shriveled-up souls NOTES As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul ______pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, ______for the living God. – Psalms 42:1-2 NASB ______- We all know what itʼs like to be thirsty - Our bodies crave water (80% water) ______- We canʼt live without it ______- Deprive your body of water, and it will tell you - Youʼll see the signs ______- But what about spiritual thirst? ______- Deprive your soul of spiritual water, and it will tell you ______- Dehydrated hearts send desperate signals ______- Uncontrolled anger - Waves of worry ______- Guilt and fear - Doubt and anxiety ______- Hopelessness ______- Sleeplessness - Loneliness ______- Resentment ______- Irritability - Insecurity ______

At rest In anxiet______y ______- you are led - you are______driven ______- you have a calling - you have a job - you relate to the people around you - you need______to fix things ______- you can just be who you are - you have______to do things to show others______who you are - you listen to others so that you can share - you listen______to others so that you can______tell being human together more about yourself - you measure your results in heart change - you measure______your results in numbers______- you can embrace the mystery and the adventure - you strive______for more control in life ______of life ______

©2010 Ken Miller Christ______Chapel Bible Church, Fort Worth,______TX 76107 ______NOTES • Godʼs way Vs. The Worldʼs Way ______The Lord said to his people: “You are standing at the ______crossroads. So consider your path. Ask where the old, reliable paths are. Ask where the path is that leads to ______

blessing and follow it. If you do, you will find rest for ______your souls.” But they said, “We will not follow it!” – Jeremiah 6:16 NET ______

______- God has a better way - God has a way He wants us to live ______- It leads to rest for our souls - But we have refused it! ______- We donʼt want to walk in it ______

And the LORD will cause your heart to tremble, ______your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. – ______Deuteronomy 28:58-65 NLT ______- So we suffer from… …A restless heart (anxious) ______…Longing eyes (pining) ______…A homesick soul (despairing) ______• Rest is a condition of the soul, not just a ______destination So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of ______God. For all who enter into Godʼs rest will find rest from their labors, just as God rested after creating the ______world. Let us do our best to enter that place of rest. ______For anyone who disobeys God, as the people of Israel did, will fall. For the word of God is full of living power. ______It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into ______our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are. – Hebrews 4:9-11 NLT ______

- There is a future aspect to this rest ______- But there is a present reality as well ______

So God set another time for entering his place of rest, ______and that time is today. God announced this through ______David a long time later in the words already quoted: “Today you must listen to his voice. Donʼt harden your ______hearts against him.” – Hebrews 4:7 NLT ______

- This is written to believers ______- This rest was available to them immediately - This isnʼt just talking about heaven ______- Rest wasnʼt the Promised Land ______- The ones who finally got there didnʼt experience rest either ______- Rest is found in reliance on and faith in God ______

- We rest when we trust Him NOTES - We find rest when we rely on His power and His ______promises ______- We rest when we stop striving and start trusting - Resting is abiding, allowing God to work through us ______• Sabbath Rest - This idea of rest was Godʼs idea ______- He made us and He knows we need it - So He ordained the Sabbath day ______Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. For six days you may labor and do all your work, but the ______

seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it ______you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, ______or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your ______gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he ______rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. – Exodus ______20:8-11 NLT ______

set it apart as holy – qadash – set apart, separate, treat ______as sacred ______

- God says to set aside one day ______- It is to be a special day - It is to be a rest day ______- God made the seventh day a special day with a ______special purpose - This was not the first time God had done this ______- He had set apart the seventh day, long before ______He gave the Law ______He replied, “The LORD has appointed tomorrow as a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. On this day ______we will rest from our normal daily tasks. So bake or ______boil as much as you want today, and set aside what is left for tomorrow.” The next morning the leftover food ______was wholesome and good, without maggots or odor. ______Moses said, “This is your food for today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD. There will be no food on the ______ground today. Gather the food for six days, but the seventh day is a Sabbath. There will be no food on the ______ground for you on that day.” Some of the people went ______out anyway to gather food, even though it was the Sabbath day. But there was none to be found. “How ______long will these people refuse to obey my commands ______and instructions?” the LORD asked Moses. “Do they not realize that I have given them the seventh day, ______the Sabbath, as a day of rest? That is why I give you ______

twice as much food on the sixth day, so there will be NOTES enough for two days. On the Sabbath day you must ______stay in your places. Do not pick up food from the ______ground on that day.” So the people rested on the seventh day. – Exodus 16:23 ______- The Sabbath day was a gift from God to man - He doesnʼt need us to fill it with work for Him ______- He ceased from His work on the seventh day - He rested and He wasnʼt tired ______- He set an example for us ______

• The Sabbath is about more than just rest ______- This isnʼt about naps ______- This isnʼt about doing what you want to do - This isnʼt about bringing yourself pleasure ______- It is and always has been a Sabbath to the Lord ______- The Sabbath is about you and your God Rest Revelation ______Reliance Renovation Relationship Reprioritization ______Relaxation Repentance ______Relief Reevaluation Restoration Reverence ______The people of Israel must keep the Sabbath day forever. It is a permanent sign of my covenant with ______them. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but he rested on the seventh day and was ______refreshed. – Exodus 31:16-17 NLT ______

- This is an anthropomorphism (attributing human ______qualities to God) ______- He wasnʼt tired, so why did He rest? - To provide us with a model ______

refreshed – naphash – to refresh, to rest, it refers to a ______renewal of energy in mind and body ______

- The word is related to “life, soul” or more ______specifically “breath, throat” ______

soul – nephesh – breath, inner being with its thoughts ______and emotions, the soul ______- It is clearly intended to teach people to stop and ______refresh themselves physically, spiritually, and emotionally on this day of rest ______

______

• Rest Vs. Restlessness NOTES “The thiefʼs purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My ______purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” – John 10:10 ______NLT ______- Satan is the god of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) ______- He has an agenda - He is out to destroy the plan of God ______- His purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy - He is out to establish his own kingdom ______- His kingdom is the antithesis of Godʼs kingdom ______

How is Satan stealing, killing, and destroying us as ______believers today? ______- By convincing us that rest is unnecessary - By portraying the Sabbath as a duty, not a delight ______- By telling us that achievement is the measure of ______our success - By assuring us that progress will bring us prosperity ______- By fooling us into putting our trust and hope in anything other than God ______- By replacing the God-given rhythm of rest with a ______relentless restlessness ______“Doctors are now medicating unhappiness. Too many ______people take drugs when they need to be making changes in their lives.” – Dr. Ronald Dwarkin, M.D.. ______Artificial Unhappiness: The Dark Side of the New ______Happy Class ______- We have no sense of rhythm - We donʼt enjoy true rest ______- Everyday has become the same – the definition of ______burnout - We suffer from a hurry sickness ______- And God is offering rest ______- He is commanding us to rest - To Sabbath with Him ______

In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is ______laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest, we miss the rest ______of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know ______that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only ______received. And for that, you need to be still. Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is ______both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart. It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. ______Sabbath imparts the rest of God – actual physical, ______mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of God – the things of Godʼs nature and presence we miss in our ______busyness. – Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God ______

WEEK 8

If last week was any indication, rest is probably a pretty timely topic for most of us. We live in a restless world where time is a valuable commodity and fatigue is a way of life. Jesus invited us to find rest in Him. Yet many of us find rest hard to come by. Especially the kind of rest He is talking about – soul rest. Weʼve lost an understanding of the rhythm of life that God intended. We live full-throttle lives with no time to recharge or renew ourselves. The idea of rest is as old as the creation story, but for some reason we donʼt think it applies to us and, as a result, we are paying the price – with restless hearts, longing eyes, and homesick souls.

1. READ PART ONE OF “THE ME I WANT TO BE” BY JOHN ORTBERG Weʼve finished the David Jeremiah book and are now moving on to read a brand new book by John Ortberg called “The Me I Want To Be.” John says the most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become. This book will give some great insights into Godʼs vision for your life. I think youʼll find it a true guide to spiritual growth and an operatorʼs manual for building a Spirit-filled life.

2. FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE This week we have something old and something new. A few chapters from Andrew Murrayʼs classic book, “Abide In Christ” and a sermon by Matt Chandler. Also a wonderful article by Mark Buchanan, as well as a great article about resting in God. • Abide In Christ by Andrew Murray • The Path (Part 9) – Sabbath by Matt Chandler • Be Still and Rest In God by Emily Schanksweiler • Trapped In the Cult of the Next Thing by Mark Buchanan

3. MEDITATE ON PSALM 3 David wrote this Psalm right before going into battle the next day. Think about the condition of Davidʼs soul. What was he feeling? What was his view of God? How could you apply what you read to your own life?

4. LISTEN TO OUR RESOURCE CDs This week you have three CDs to listen to and discuss with a friend. One is by Matt Chandler, another by Ray Stedman, and a third by Steve Hill. Take some time this week to hear what these three men have to say about the topic of rest.

5. JOIN US ON THE QUEST This week we start the book of Exodus, so join us in reading through the Old Testament. For a reading schedule go online to: http://www.ccbcfamily.org/ministries/quest/ot-scriptures

ABIDE IN CHRIST Andrew Murray

Chapter One: ALL YOU WHO HAVE COME TO HIM

“Come unto me.” -- MATT.11:28 “Abide in me.” -- JOHN 15:4

IT IS to you who have heard and hearkened to the call, “Come unto me,” that this new invitation comes, “Abide in me.” The message comes from the same loving Saviour. You doubtless have never repented having come at His call. You experienced that His word was truth; all His promises He fulfilled; He made you partakers of the blessings and the joy of His love. Was not His welcome most hearty, His pardon full and free, His love most sweet and precious? You more than once, at your first coming to Him, had reason to say, “The half was not told me.”

And yet you have had to complain of disappointment: as time went on, your expectations were not realized. The blessings you once enjoyed were lost; the love and joy of your first meeting with your Saviour, instead of deepening, have become faint and feeble. And often you have wondered what the reason could be, that with such a Saviour, so mighty and so loving, your experience of salvation should not have been a fuller one.

The answer is very simple. You wandered from Him. The blessings He bestows are all connected with His “Come to ME,” and are only to be enjoyed in close fellowship with Himself. You either did not fully understand, or did not rightly remember, that the call meant, “Come to me to stay with me.” And yet this was in very deed His object and purpose when first He called you to Himself. It was not to refresh you for a few short hours after your conversion with the joy of His love and deliverance, and then to send you forth to wander in sadness and sin. He had destined you to something better than a short-lived blessedness, to be enjoyed only in times of special earnestness and prayer, and then to pass away, as you had to return to those duties in which far the greater part of life has to be spent. No, indeed; He had prepared for you an abiding dwelling with Himself, where your whole life and every moment of it might be spent, where the work of your daily life might be done, and where all the while you might be enjoying unbroken communion with Himself. It was even this He meant when to that first word, “Come to me,” He added this, “Abide in me.” As earnest and faithful, as loving and tender, as the compassion that breathed in that blessed “Come,” was the grace that added this no less blessed “Abide.” As mighty as the attraction with which that first word drew you, were the bonds with which this second, had you but listened to it, would have kept you. And as great as were the blessings with which that coming was rewarded, so large, yea, and much greater, were the treasures to which that abiding would have given you access.

And observe especially, it was not that He said, “Come to me and abide with me,” but, “Abide in me.” The intercourse was not only to be unbroken, but most intimate and complete. He opened His arms, to press you to His bosom; He opened His heart, to welcome you there; He opened up all His divine fulness of life and love, and offered to take you up into its fellowship, to make you wholly one with Himself. There was a depth of meaning you cannot yet realize in His words: “Abide IN ME.”

And with no less earnestness than He had cried, “Come to me,” did He plead, had you but noticed it, “Abide in me.” By every motive that had induced you to come, did He beseech you to abide. Was it the fear of sin and its curse that first drew you? the pardon you received on first coming could, with all the blessings flowing from it, only be confirmed and fully enjoyed on abiding in Him. Was it the longing to know and enjoy the Infinite Love that was calling you? the first coming gave but single drops to taste--'tis only the abiding that can really satisfy the thirsty soul, and give to drink of the rivers of pleasure that are at His right hand. Was it the weary longing to be made free from the bondage of sin, to become pure and holy, and so to find rest, the rest of God for the soul? this too can only be realized as you abide in Him--only abiding in Jesus gives rest in Him. Or if it was the hope of an inheritance in glory, and an everlasting home in the presence of the Infinite One: the true preparation for this, as well as its blessed foretaste in this life, are granted only to those who abide in Him. In very truth, there is nothing that moved you to come, that does not plead with thousandfold greater force: “Abide in Him.” You did well to come; you do better to abide. Who would, after seeking the King's palace, be content to stand in the door, when he is invited in to dwell in the King's presence, and share with Him in all the glory of His royal life? Oh, let us enter in and abide, and enjoy to the full all the rich supply His wondrous love hath prepared for us!

And yet I fear that there are many who have indeed come to Jesus, and who yet have mournfully to confess that they know but little of this blessed abiding in Him. With some the reason is, that they never fully understood that this was the meaning of the Saviour's call. With others, that though they heard the word, they did not know that such a life of abiding fellowship was possible, and indeed within their reach. Others will say that, though they did believe that such a life was possible, and seek after it, they have never yet succeeded discovering the secret of its attainment. And others, again, alas! will confess that it is their own unfaithfulness that has kept them from the enjoyment of the blessing. When the Saviour would have kept them, they were not found ready to stay; they were not prepared to give up everything, and always, only, wholly to abide in Jesus.

To all such I come now in the name of Jesus, their Redeemer and mine, with the blessed message: “Abide in me.” In His name I invite them to come, and for a season meditate with me daily on its meaning, its lessons, its claims, and its promises. I know how many, and, to the young believer, how difficult, the questions are which suggest themselves in connection with it. There is especially the question, with its various aspects, to the possibility, in the midst of wearying work and continual distraction, of keeping up, or rather being kept in, the abiding communion. I do not undertake to remove all difficulties; this Jesus Christ Himself alone must do by His Holy Spirit. But what I would fain by the grace of God be permitted to do is, to repeat day by day the Master's blessed command, “Abide in me,” until it enter the heart and find a place there, no more to be forgotten or neglected. I would fain that in the light of Holy Scripture we should Meditate on its meaning, until the understanding, that gate to the heart, opens to apprehend something of what it offers and expects. So we shall discover the means of its attainment, and learn to know what keeps us from it, and what can help us to it. So we shall feel its claims, and be compelled to acknowledge that there can be no true allegiance to our King without simply and heartily accepting this one, too, of His commands. So we shall gaze on its blessedness, until desire be inflamed, and the will with all its energies be roused to claim and possess the unspeakable blessing.

Come, my brethren, and let us day by day set ourselves at His feet, and meditate on this word of His, with an eye fixed on Him alone. Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice-- the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks--breathing its quickening spirit within us, as He speaks: “Abide in me.” The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word, receives with the word the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers.

And it may please Thee, blessed Saviour, indeed, to speak to us; let each of us hear Thy blessed voice. May the feeling of our deep need, and the faith of Thy wondrous love, combined with the sight of the wonderfully blessed life Thou art waiting to bestow upon us, constrain us to listen and to obey, as often as Thou speakest: “Abide in me.” Let day by day the answer from our heart be clearer and fuller: “Blessed Saviour, I do abide in Thee. “

Chapter Two: AND YOU SHALL FIND REST TO YOUR SOULS

“Come unto me, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; and ye shall find rest to your souls.” - MATT.11:28-29

REST for the soul: Such was the first promise with which the Saviour sought to win the heavy-laden sinner. Simple though it appears, the promise is indeed as large and comprehensive as can be found. Rest for the soul--does it not imply deliverance from every fear, the supply of every want, the fulfilment of every desire? And now nothing less than this is the prize with which the Saviour woos back the wandering one-- who is mourning that the rest has not been so abiding or so full as it had hoped--to come back and abide in Him. Nothing but this was the reason that the rest has either not been found, or, if found, has been disturbed or lost again: you did not abide with, you did not abide in Him.

Have you ever noticed how, in the original invitation of the Saviour to come to Him, the promise of rest was repeated twice, with such a variation in the conditions as might have suggested that abiding rest could only be found in abiding nearness. First the Saviour says, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest”; the very moment you come, and believe, I will give you rest--the rest of pardon and acceptance--the rest in my love. But we know that all that God bestows needs time to become fully our own; it must be held fast, and appropriated, and assimilated into our inmost being; without this not even Christ's giving can make it our very own, in full experience and enjoyment. And so the Saviour repeats His promise, in words which clearly speak not so much of the initial rest with which He welcomes the weary one who comes, but of the deeper and personally appropriated rest of the soul that abides with Him. He now not only says, “Come unto me,” but “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me”; become my scholars, yield ourselves to my training, submit in all things to my will, let your whole life be one with mine--in other words, Abide in me. And then He adds, not only, “I will give,” but “ye shall find rest to your souls.” The rest He gave at coming will become something you have really found and made your very own--the deeper the abiding rest which comes from longer acquaintance and closer fellowship, from entire surrender and deeper sympathy. “Take my yoke, and learn of me,” “Abide in me”--this is the path to abiding rest.

Do not these words of the Saviour discover what you have perhaps often sought in vain to know, how it is that the rest you at times enjoy is so often lost. It must have been this: you had not understood how entire surrender to Jesus is the secret of perfect rest. Giving up one's whole life to Him, for Him alone to rule and order it; taking up His yoke, and submitting to be led and taught, to learn of Him; abiding in Him, to be and do only what He wills--these are the conditions of discipleship without which there can be no thought of maintaining the rest that was bestowed on first coming to Christ. The rest is in Christ, and not something He gives apart from Himself, and so it is only in having Him that the rest can really be kept and enjoyed. It is because so many a young believer fails to lay hold of this truth that the rest so speedily passes away. With some it is that they really did not know; they were never taught how Jesus claims the undivided allegiance of the whole heart and life; how there is not a spot in the whole of life over which He does not wish to reign; how in the very least things His disciples must only seek to please Him. They did not know how entire the consecration was that Jesus claimed. With others, who had some idea of what a very holy life a Christian ought to lead, the mistake was a different one: they could not believe such a life to be a possible attainment. Taking, and bearing, and never for a moment laying aside the yoke of Jesus, appeared to them to require such a strain of effort, and such an amount of goodness, as to be altogether beyond their reach. The very idea of always, all the day, abiding in Jesus, was too high--something they might attain to after a life of holiness and growth, but certainly not what a feeble beginner was to start with. They did not know how, when Jesus said, “My yoke is easy,” He spoke the truth; how just the yoke gives the rest, because the moment the soul yields itself to obey, the Lord Himself gives the strength and joy to do it. They did not notice how, when He said, “Learn of me,” He added, “I am meek and lowly in heart,” to assure them that His gentleness would meet their every need, and bear them as a mother bears her feeble child. Oh, they did not know that when He said, “Abide in me,” He only asked the surrender to Himself, His almighty love would hold them fast, and keep and bless them. And so, as some had erred from the want of full consecration, so these failed because they did not fully trust. These two, consecration and faith, are the essential elements of the Christian life--the giving up all to Jesus, the receiving all from Jesus. They are implied in each other; they are united in the one word--surrender. A full surrender is to obey as well as to trust, to trust as well as to obey.

With such misunderstanding at the outset, it is no wonder that the disciple life was not one of such joy or strength as had been hoped. In some things you were led into sin without knowing it, because you had not learned how wholly Jesus wanted to rule you, and how you could not keep right for a moment unless you had Him very near you. In other things you knew what sin was, but had not the power to conquer, because you did not know or believe how entirely Jesus would take charge of you to keep and to help you. Either way, it was not long before the bright joy of your first love was lost, and your path, instead of being like the path of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day, became like Israel's wandering in the desert-- ever on the way, never very far, and yet always coming short of the promised rest. Weary soul, since so many years driven to and fro like the panting hart, O come and learn this day the lesson that there is a spot where safety and victory, where peace and rest, are always sure, and that that spot is always open to thee-- the heart of Jesus.

But, alas! I hear someone say, it is just this abiding in Jesus, always bearing His yoke, to learn of Him, that is so difficult, and the very effort to attain to this often disturbs the rest even more than sin or the world. What a mistake to speak thus, and yet how often the words are heard! Does it weary the traveller to rest in the house or on the bed where he seeks repose from his fatigue? Or is it a labour to a little child to rest in its mother's arms? Is it not the house that keeps the traveller within its shelter? do not the arms of the mother sustain and keep the little one? And so it is with Jesus. The soul has but to yield itself to Him, to be still and rest in the confidence that His love has undertaken, and that His faithfulness will perform, the work of keeping it safe in the shelter of His bosom. Oh, it is because the blessing is so great that our little hearts cannot rise to apprehend it; it is as if we cannot believe that Christ, the Almighty One, will in very deed teach and keep us all the day. And yet this is just what He has promised, for without this He cannot really give us rest. It is as our heart takes in this truth that, when He says, “Abide in me,” “Learn of me,” He really means it, and that it is His own work to keep us abiding when we yield ourselves to Him, that we shall venture to cast ourselves into the arms of His love, and abandon ourselves to His blessed keeping. It is not the yoke, but resistance to the yoke, that makes the difficulty; the whole-hearted surrender to Jesus, as at once our Master and our Keeper, finds and secures the rest.

Come, my brother, and let us this very day commence to accept the word of Jesus in all simplicity. It is a distinct command this: “Take my yoke, and learn of me, “ “Abide in me. “ A command has to be obeyed. The obedient scholar asks no questions about possibilities or results; he accepts every order in the confidence that his teacher has provided for all that is needed. The power and the perseverance to abide in the rest, and the blessing in abiding--it belongs to the Saviour to see to this; 'tis mine to obey, 'tis His to provide. Let us this day in immediate obedience accept the command, and answer boldly, “Saviour, I abide in Thee. At Thy bidding I take Thy yoke; I undertake the duty without delay; I abide in Thee.” Let each consciousness of failure only give new urgency to the command, and teach us to listen more earnestly than ever till the Spirit again give us to hear the voice of Jesus saying, with a love and authority that inspire both hope and obedience, “Child, abide in me.” That word, listened to as coming from Himself, will be an end of all doubting--a divine promise of what shall surely be granted. And with ever-increasing simplicity its meaning will be interpreted. Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love.

Blessed rest! the fruit and the foretaste and the fellowship of God's own rest! found of them who thus come to Jesus to abide in Him. It is the peace of God, the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind. With this grace secured, we have strength for every duty, courage for every struggle, a blessing in every cross, and the joy of life eternal in death itself.

O my Saviour! if ever my heart should doubt or fear again, as if the blessing were too great to expect, or too high to attain, let me hear Thy voice to quicken my faith and obedience: “Abide in me”; “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; ye shall find rest to your souls.”

The Path (Part 9) – Sabbath Matt Chandler – November 22, 2009

We’ve got two weeks left in this series called “The Path,”which is about Christian maturity and growing in our faith. So we’re going to do Sabbath today and its role, and then next week we’ll close out the series with two great Puritan words, “mortification” and “vivification.” We’ll talk at length about those ideas, but for now, let’s turn to Mark 2. If you get into Exodus 20 and begin to read through the Ten Commandments, a bulk of them, religiously or irreligiously, make a lot of sense. He says, “Don’t make things gods that aren’t God, because if you do, that thing, whatever it is, cannot bear the weight and will collapse around you and harm you and everyone around you. So if you make your spouse your god, that goes bad. If you make money your god, that goes bad. If you make your children your god, that goes bad. On and on and on we could go. If you make something a god that’s not God, it will be unable to hold the weight of your expectations and it will eventually betray you and destroy you.” That’s the first command. It’s a paraphrase, but it’s the first command. “You shall have no other god before me.” And that makes sense. “Don’t be a liar.” That makes sense. “Leave your neighbor’s wife alone.” That makes sense. Don’t try to seduce your neighbor’s wife. Learn to be content where you are. That’s good advice. So if you read through them, you’re kind of going, “Yeah. . .yeah. . .okay. . .of course God would be concerned about that.” That’s what I think when I read them. I’m grateful that He gave those tablets to Charlton Heston, and I can read that and go, “I can see why God is concerned with that.”

Now there’s one though in verses 8 that stands out as a little peculiar to me in regards to what God would be concerned with and what He wouldn’t be concerned with. So there are all these great, ethical themes and He says, “For six days you’ll work, and on the seventh you won’t. Not only will you not work, but your sons and daughters will not work, nor will your servants, nor will your animals. No one will work, for God created for six days and on the seventh He rested.” That last part has some theological problems, because God never gets tired. He doesn’t need rest, and yet He’s taking it. So this idea of Sabbath is peculiar because God is concerned about the weekend, isn’t it? And then if you follow this, if you really want to do a word study on this idea, He gets very aggressive about this idea. If you get into Leviticus 23-24, He literally tells Israel, “If you will not stop, if you will not rest, if you will not celebrate, surely I will destroy all of you.” So we’ve kind of just lost what’s happening here and we’ve forgot some basic, foundational truths of what we believe as Christians. So the Sabbath, from my parent’s generation, was a day where you weren’t allowed to do anything. So my house was like, “Hey, can I go over to John’s house?” “No, it’s Sabbath.” There was just no fun on the Sabbath. “You will sit there and think holy thoughts. This is the day that the Lord has made. You will rejoice and be glad.” So it didn’t make any sense. Sabbath was where you just don’t do anything. Unfortunately that’s not biblically the idea at all.

So that takes us to Mark 2. “One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" And he said to them, "Have you never read what David did. . ."” I love how Jesus quotes Scripture to men who are experts in the Scriptures to show them they are wrong. It is a constant practice of Jesus. He loves the book of Deuteronomy. He’s constantly quoting Deuteronomy to men who had memorized Deuteronomy to prove that what the men were teaching out of Deuteronomy was wrong. Let’s keep reading. “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” Now verse 27 is a monumental verse, and it begins to unpack a little bit the nature and character of God in regards to His commands. “And he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."”

Now this gets us into a constant conflict between what we believe as Christians and what the world believes we believe. Here’s how it works. If you spend a lot of time with people who are not believers in Christ and don’t have a lot of background in it, here’s what they think. They think we obey the moral laws we obey because we believe that if we do not obey those laws, God is going to damn us to hell, give us cancer or send some fire out of the sky to blow up our city. They do. They think that our devotion to the Scriptures and to our God is fear based. Now the reason they believe this is because, for some of us, that’s true, because we grew up where the pastor of our church utilized fear to get earthly numbers at the expense of heavenly ones. So I’ll say this to you. Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it’s a place for those who love God. That’s different. So do you remember the RA sketch at camp where there was a car accident and there were three friends? One guy got to go into heaven and the other two didn’t, so these really big guys come in and drag them away while they’re screaming, “Why didn’t you tell us?” And you get the chills and go, “Oh, I don’t want to go to hell like that guy.” And then you get saved for the record again. Do you remember this? That’s that game. That’s why we have a baptism class for children here where we can meet the parent and meet the child and make sure that the decision is not the parent’s. We want to make sure that the parent has not gone, “Um, do you want to come to heaven with mom and dad, or do you want to burn in hell? Okay, let’s get you baptized.” So we have to put those kind of parameters in place to protect everyone involved. So if you’ll listen to them, we’re portrayed as these sort of backwoods, non-intellectual, kiss your sister, cavemen by the media at large. We do what we do because God is scary and He’s going to get us. So God takes on much more of our earthly father’s persona unfortunately or the god Zeus where He’s in the heavens with His lightning bolt and He’s just waiting for someone to jack with Him. That’s what the world believes we believe, and, God help us, that’s what some of you have been taught.

The truth is, in the Old Testament, when anyone speaks of the Law, they don’t speak of it as weighty or bad or being driven by fear at all. David calls the Law of the Lord honey on his lips. David says that he lays in bed at night and he thinks about the Law. So the Law isn’t viewed as a negative thing. We do not obey the Law because if we do not, God destroys us. We obey the Law because it’s God’s way of leading us into life, depth, beauty, meaning, significance, purpose and hope. We are far more hedonistic than anyone else, because we’re on the path because it leads to our joy and His glory. So we obey the Law because the Law is good, not because we’re afraid of lightning bolts, pestilence, cancer or death. This is what He’s saying here. God did not make His rules and then grab man, throw him into the maze of His rules and go, “Good luck. Hey Holy Spirit, Jesus, watch this. Oh, he made a left. . .Liberal. So what do you want to do to him? Tsunami? No, we already did tsunami. I’m thinking pestilence. Get him.” And this is our view of God. Some of us have this unhealthy, wicked view of God. Now I’m not saying that God will not at times crush you, but for the believer in Christ, the believer cries out like they did in the Scriptures, “May the bones that You crush rejoice.” Sometimes God will break your fingers to get your hands off of what will harm you. And that has been true in every book of the Bible and through every year in the history of man. J.I. Packer has got my favorite quote: “And still He seeks the fellowship of His people and sends them both joy and sorrow to detach their hands from the things of this world and attach those hands to Him.” That’s just a great quote from a great man. The Scriptures say that God makes man and then says, “For man to be what he was created to be, here’s what he needs.” And then He creates the Law. So the Law was created not to rob us, but to give to us. So the Law is about life, not about death. So in the end, you have a very benevolent God that has said “Here’s how the universe works. Please use this like it was created to work for your own joy and My glory.” And He gives us the Law.

Now when you take the Law and you make it the point rather than the path, you see wicked fundamentalism. You get men and women defending the Law at the expense of what the Law was given for. Let me show you that exact thing happening in the next part of this text. Mark 3:1, “Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand.” A withered hand would have meant that he was viewed by his culture as having sinned or his parents having sinned. He would have been viewed as a social outcast. He’s begging, so in order for him to eat, somebody is going to have to be generous and give him food. He’s viewed as unclean. On and on we could go here. Now, watch these spiritual leaders in the temple in verse 2. “And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.” What wicked men are these. They have no compassion for this man, no grace for this man, no hope for this man and no mercy for this man. They’re simply watching Jesus and hoping Jesus heals him, but not for him, but so that they might attack Jesus. Let’s watch it play out. “And he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come here." And he said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger,. . .”

I want to highlight that because I always want to do battle on the current notion of Jesus. I think it was the picture that we grew up with in church, the one where Jesus is a white guy with blue eyes, blond feathered hair and if we could just be honest, He’s somewhat effeminate. Is He not? I cannot worship that Jesus. I have a strict “If I can take you, I cannot worship you” rule. It’s like that picture gives us this idea that maybe He has this bag of love dust on his belt and a wand, and He floats about and sprinkles love dust on everyone. He’s never frustrated, He’s never angry, nothing ever breaks His heart and He requires nothing of you. I hate that version of Jesus. It’s a horribly unbiblical one. I mean, this man is angry at this point. The Scriptures tells us He flips over tables in the temple. He’s not weak. He calls the religious ruling party of His day publicly “a brood of vipers” and “whitewashed tombs.” This is an aggressive, ferocious man who happens to be God. So we need to get rid of that picture. He’s a Jew for goodness sakes. He’s not a white guy. I know we’re in the suburbs in Dallas, but He’s not a white guy. For some of you, the floor just dropped out of your world, but we are not the master race.

Let’s keep reading. “But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.” So you’ve got the Law, which is good, which is right, which was given for the heart of man; you’ve got men who have perverted the Law of the Lord and made the Law of the Lord the point rather than the path, which leads to grace and mercy and hope absolutely evaporating to the point where you’ve got guys defending the Law at the expense of human hearts. The foundation got all screwy.

Let me show you a couple of things, and then I’ll tie this together. Flip over to Isaiah 43:6-7. If you read verses 1-3, you’ll see that He’s talking about the creative order. He’s talking about creating all of us as men and women. He is the Creator, He is the Sustainer, He is the One who did it. I’m going to just read verses 6-7 because they speak to the purpose for which we were created, not just that He is the Creator. “I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” One of the things we’re going to do over and over again in my forty years here with you is get you into the story, the metanarrative, the story of the Bible. This is not 66 separate stories. This is one story, the story of God reconciling man to Himself. That’s the story of the Bible. When you forget that and concentrate on this paragraph or these two verses, you unfortunately end up teaching moralistic deism, that there is a God and you had better behave. But the metanarrative is this: God created you as image bearers. God says, “Let Us make man in Our image” and creates you and me as image bearers and then gives us the cultural mandate that you see in Genesis 2. God says to mankind, “You are My image bearers. Fill the earth and subdue it, create art, build cities, start businesses, plant crops, get married, have children, be a grandparent, celebrate, live, love, laugh. . .” Sin fractures that cultural mandate, and in that fracturing, we become cracked image bearers that no longer reflect the glory of God. Instead, we make creation our god, it cannot bear the weight of it and so it collapses around us. We make our spouse our god, our kids our god, money our god, power our god, position our god and physical beauty our god. We make crummy gods, they crumble around us and then we shake our fists and ask, “Why?!?” You’re broken, I’m broken. David says, “Surely I was brought forth in iniquity.” I was born broken. It’s not something that happened to me. So we’re cracked icons and are not displaying the glory of God. So Christ restores and reconciles. The atoning work of Christ on the cross restores us to God, which gives us a right view of ourselves, which leads to right relationships with others for the good of the world.

Now here’s another Western thing that we’ve got to address. That rugged individualism where Christianity has become all about you being saved? That’s a perverse version of what we believe. Pentecost didn’t create individual believers; it created the church. So we are reconciled to God, formed as a community and now live missionally in regards to every venue in our lives. So here’s what it looks like to live as a Christian. I am a restored image bearer, my wife is a restored image bearer and we are praying that our children become restored image bearers. We bear the image of Christ to the world around us, which simply means this. We are agents of reconciliation everywhere we go. So I always stop at the same Starbucks, the one on F.M. 407. My barista has a soul. He or she is not just there to get me my coffee and get it to me now. My waitress at the restaurant, she’s not just there to get me my chips and hot sauce and do it now, although I would appreciate the quick service. She has a soul. And if she’s catty and rude, it’s my understanding that there is hurt, fear or brokenness involved in her cattiness to me. And since I have been restored, my response to that cattiness will be grace, patience and maybe a larger tip instead of a smaller one. Why? Because I’m an image bearer. And it means I live a certain way in my neighborhood, I live a certain way with my money, I live a certain way with my family, I live a certain way with my vacation, I live a certain way with my hobbies and there is no sacred/secular divide for me. Everything is sacred because I’m an image bearer. And this is what I was created for. The reason I think the bulk of Evangelicals are bored out of their mind and spend all of their energy and efforts trying to quit cussing and looking at porn is because, in the end, they’re outside the missio Dei, they’re outside of the purpose for which they exist. You are sanctified as you live missionally in the world you’re in. That’s how you’re sanctified. Because if you start going, “Oh, I don’t want to give up my money. I want stuff for me,” you don’t want to treat your waitress like she has a soul.” And what’s being revealed is that the grace shown to you in Christ, you don’t show to others. You need to repent. This is how we grow, not by going, “I’m not going to be bad anymore.” Yes you are. I always like to ask, “How is that working for you, not being bad anymore?” Those of you who have been doing this for 20 years, how’s that working out for you? Have you attained perfection yet? No?

So now God is saying, “You are an image bearer, and if you want to walk like this, you’ll need the Sabbath.” Here’s why. When He’s writing this, he’s writing to a predominantly agrarian society, which means there’s no electricity, no TiVo and there’s no Twitter. So when the sun goes down, the day is over. It’s just done. But for us, life has a way of endlessly piling upon itself until our very existence is just one giant obligation and we go from place to place to place doing thing to thing to thing to thing and lose sight of what matters and the tender mercies that God has given to us. I’ll give some examples. I was having lunch with Lauren yesterday, and I saw a man with his wife and two kids. Probably about fifteen minutes into the meal, I started keeping count, and in 25 minutes there, he checked his phone no fewer than 20 times. In this world, where we are wired in always, we’re never where we are, never. I have found myself at a table with my wife and kids but I’m not there at all.

The Scriptures say the Sabbath is given because if you live life like that, then people become commodities to you. They’re there to meet your needs, they’re there to do what you say they should do and you no longer have real, deep relationships. Or have you ever found yourself snapping at your kids when they interrupt you from doing something that, in the end, is probably stupid? “What do you want?!? I’m updating my blog!” That kind of thing. “Can you give me a second?!? I’m tweeting!” Do you ever find yourself doing that? Of course you don’t. They just interrupt you when you’re praying and studying your Bible. Now what’s happened? Well, your wife is a commodity to you. You don’t have to listen to her; you have to answer this e-mail. And your children are a commodity to you that you can buy and sell and don’t really have to engage and you don’t have to go after their hearts. Do you have a day where you’re unplugged? Do you have a day where you’re not looking at your e-mail and people can’t text you or call you? And I know some of you are going, “Oh whatever, pastor. I have a Fortune 500 company. I have to rule the universe.” Okay, here’s what I would say to you while you count your gold. Maybe a day where you took a step back and kept yourself from believing that you’re God and that the universe would collapse around you if you weren’t available might be a great thing for your perspective. Do you have a day that you unplug and stop doing and simply are? Do you have that day, because that’s the Sabbath, a day set aside, a holy day? Did you know that in Isaiah 58, the Lord promises that those who do Sabbath will mount up and ride upon the heights of the earth? Do you have a day where you just are? Do you have a day that you’re unplugged, a day that you enjoy the simple beauties that God has given us?

So what does it look like to do Sabbath? That’s a very difficult question to answer. I can give you some answers historically. In the more liturgical traditions, it’s inhaling the incense, it’s doing the Lord’s Supper, it’s reading the Word, it’s doing the liturgy. But Sabbath is just a day where you slow down and take in all that is good that God has given you. It could be going for a walk, but not to burn calories. On Sabbath we don’t walk to burn calories; we walk to walk. We go for a walk, we drink a glass of wine with good friends, we get some of our closest friends and we go to the store together and buy unprepared food. We pick out the meat, we pick out the vegetables, we pick out whatever and we go back to a house and cook it. We drink and we cook and we laugh and tell stories and then we eat it slowly. Dinner lasts for a long time. And then we all clean it, because you don’t want one couple to hate Sabbath. And this time of year, my wife loves a fire in the fireplace, which is unfortunate because we live in Dallas. So there are literally times in my house where we have turned on the air conditioner to have a fire. It’s horrible stewardship financially but great stewardship maritally. So we’ll have a fire and the crew and our wives will sit around the fire and tell stories about our kids. We talk about how we are and dream about vacations together where the pace isn’t the pace that we run in here. My phone is turned off on Thursday night (our Sabbath is Friday). So at dinner on Thursday night, I turn off my phone. E-mails do not come to my phone. And the reason I have to do that is because I will immediately check and see that there’s an issue or problem that needs to be resolved, and the second I read it, I’m solving that in my brain and I’m no longer where I am. And here’s what I’ve found. I don’t get e-mails to my phone, and I only look at e-mail three days a week. I’ve found that nothing disintegrated, no one died, puppies and kittens didn’t burst into flame all over the world and everything worked out just fine. And I know there’s a disjoint here. Maybe you’re thinking, “Chandler, you don’t live here in the real world.” I would argue adamantly that I live in the real world far more than you do. How many little kids have you put in the ground this year? How many people with cancer have you sat by in the hospital? Every day we walk through sorrow upon sorrow upon sorrow while getting to experience joy upon joy upon joy. No one is more dialed in to the highs and lows of life as pastors are. And what we’ve learned is that being available 24/7 to everyone is unbelievably unhealthy.

Do you have a day where you’re disconnected? To go for a walk? To stare at an icon? To make love to your wife? To drink a good bottle of wine with friends? To have good conversations? To read a book? To listen to good music? To play in the yard with your kids? To go to the park? To just walk outside, breathe and feel the air? You only get a month of that here. The rest of they year, the air feels you. But for just a month, you can walk outside and feel it. Do you have a day where you don’t do but you are? Because the Bible doesn’t request this; it commands it. This is not God going, “When you get a chance, you ought to rest some.” And it’s not doing nothing, because all of us would have those days we did nothing and felt worse for it. Do you have this day?

Now my favorite part of Sabbath is it’s a shadow for something else. Sabbath is not the point. The point of Sabbath is the cross. If you have a day where you’re not doing and you simply are, then on that day you are reminded that you are accepted by God not because of what you do but because of what He did. When you have a day where you’re just enjoying Him and the simple pleasures He brings instead of, with a great deal of fanaticism, going from Bible study after Bible study after Bible study with no Sabbath to actually think about and apply that, the Sabbath becomes this picture of what Christ did for us in the cross. It becomes that picture of our acceptance and justification before God not being built on our merit. And the reason some of you are so frantic in your religious activity is, despite the fact that you’re hearing that constantly, you can’t get it out of your head that you have to earn God’s love. And the Sabbath slams on the brakes when it comes to that idea and points us back to the cross. What the Law could not do, weak as it was in the flesh, God did in sending His Son in the likeness of sin. Sabbath reminds us of what Jesus did on the cross. It reminds us that the people around us have souls. We get to look at our wife and remember how beautiful she is, that she’s not a commodity, that she has a soul and a mind. We get to look at our children, and they get to not be annoying to us that day for the most part. We get to eat good food and remember that God came up with these flavors. And in enjoying all that, we’re reminded of how good God is and how gracious He’s been and how loving He is. And we remember.

So when do you do Sabbath? For my family, it’s Friday. But when do you do Sabbath? When do you stop? When do you breathe? I think if you don’t say, “This is the day we do it,” then you’ll never do it. Because stuff has a way of violently invading space. Some of you are going to have a very difficult time with this because your whole worth is made up in what you do. Some of you are just addicted to connection. Like it’s just going to feel wrong to you that you can’t tweet that you're Sabbathing. It’s going to feel wrong that you can’t update your Facebook page of what you’re doing on Sabbath. You giggle, but just try it and watch it woo you, watch it call to you. It means that you’re addicted to technology and you need to breathe. When are you doing it? And then you’ve got to figure out how to do it, how to rest in the Lord, how to set aside a day to enjoy and pursue the Lord. Abraham Heschel is a rabbi and would say it this way, “A man who works with his hands will Sabbath with his mind. A man who works with his mind will Sabbath with his hands.” I don’t know if he’s right, but it sounds good.

So maybe you need to ask for forgiveness because your view of God has been that He is a strict, uptight, Zeus-like God who has been ready to pounce on you from day one. Maybe you need to repent because you’ve been trying to earn what was freely given instead of celebrating and resting in what He has freely given you. Sabbath is not a suggestion. Are you tracking with me. You need it. I need it. We need it. He doesn’t say, “Five days you’ll work and two days you’ll rest,” for those of you type-A accomplishers. He said, “Six days you’ll work and one you’ll rest.” Six days is plenty to work. When will you Sabbath? How will you Sabbath? Husbands, this falls on you to lead out in your home what it looks like and what it doesn’t look like. It’s been my experience after three years of trying to figure this out that it takes a bit of time to figure it out. May you learn to rest well in Him, may you learn to see the simple mercies, may you learn how those simple mercies point you to the cross and may you find your strength, vitality and hope there and there alone.

Let’s pray. “Father, I thank You for these men and women and for a chance to come together and learn how You designed the universe to be. I pray where we have made much of ourself in regards to accomplishments and tasks that that would give way to resting in just who You are. Help us. We need You. It’s for Your beautiful name. Amen.” Be Still and Rest in God by Emily Schankweiler

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide; In every change, He faithful will remain. Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake to guide the future, as He has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; All now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be Still My Soul: by Catharina von Schlegel

With so many things in this world vying for our attention and focus, how is it possible to find rest in God? How is it possible to be still when the world seems to be racing all around us?

The author of Proverbs explains it this way: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)

To trust in the Lord with all your heart and to lean on Him means first abandoning all hope of trusting in other sources. It means looking to God alone as the source of all rest and strength. I once heard it described as leaning against a wall or podium… if we can still stand if that wall or podium is taken away, then we really aren’t leaning against it.

God wants our dependence on Him to be such that we cry in full dependence, “God, if you are not there to catch me, then I will surely fall flat on my face.” I find that often in my life, I try to avoid this feeling. I hate feeling dependent on something other than myself. But God in His kindness always shows me the futility of depending on my own strength and graciously offers His provision and strength instead.

Resting in God is not a passive activity, rather something that we must continually work towards. Our human nature does not naturally bend toward resting in God, but we have the promise that as we grow in this discipline, He will guide our paths. And when I see God’s faithfulness displayed as I learn to trust in Him, my soul begins to rest.

My soul can be still in the midst of chaos, storms and confusion because I know the Lord is on my side. I know that through every change He remains faithful. I know that as He has faithfully lead in the past, He will continue to guide my future.

For God alone, my soul waits in silence. From Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. Psalm 62:1-2

[copyright, 2009, Emily Schankweiler; A Sacrifice of Praise]

Trapped in the Cult of the Next Thing If ever there was a cult that gave us stones when we asked for bread, this is it. Mark Buchanan

September 6, 1999

I belong to the Cult of the Next Thing. It's dangerously easy to get enlisted. It happens by default—not by choosing the cult, but by failing to resist it. The Cult of the Next Thing is consumerism cast in religious terms. It has its own litany of sacred words: more, you deserve it, new, faster, cleaner, brighter. It has its own deep-rooted liturgy: charge it, instant credit, no down-payment, deferred payment, no interest for three months. It has its own preachers, evangelists, prophets, and apostles: ad men, pitchmen, celebrity sponsors. It has, of course, its own shrines, chapels, temples, meccas: malls, superstores, club warehouses. It has its own sacraments: credit and debit cards. It has its own ecstatic experiences: the spending spree.

Most of us spend more time with advertisements than with Scripture.

The Cult of the Next Thing's central message proclaims, "Crave and spend, for the Kingdom of Stuff is here." Sanctification is measured by never saving enough: for the cult teaches that our lives are measured by the abundance of our possessions. Those caught up in the Cult of the Next Thing live endlessly, relentlessly for, well, the Next Thing—the next weekend, the next vacation, the next purchase, the next experience. For us, the impulse to seek the Next Thing is an instinct bred into us so young it seems genetic. It's our paradigm, our way of seeing. It's our unifying Myth. How could the world be otherwise?

For Christians, this is a problem. The problem is ethical, spiritual, theological. And, of course, practical. The one time Jesus got violent was when the temple had been made into a marketplace. Jesus brooked a lot of things with uncanny calmness—demoniacs yelling at him, religious leaders plotting against him, thick- headed, slow-hearted disciples bossing him. But moneychangers and holy-trinket sellers put a wildness in him. And lest we miss the object lesson, Jesus puts his opposition to the Cult of the Next Thing in plain speech:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. … So don't worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs (Matt. 6:24, 3132, NLT).

Paul, too, had a thing or two to say about the cult: People who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows (1 Tim. 6:910).

We know all this, but simply knowing it doesn't usually help. The cult is big, powerful, well organized, flawlessly run. It is so dominating it can usurp almost any impulse—even the impulse toward simplicity: You can package it, market it, and make a profit off of it. It renders even its enemies into minions, turns even protests against it into pithy slogans. Recently, a whole range of ads—from cars to clothes to CD players—have traded on a growing resentment against commercialism. Forty-thousand-dollar sports utility vehicles are touted as the magic means of escaping the artificiality of a world locked into work and shopping. These ads are put together without any hint of irony.

No satisfaction

I am writing this on a computer I bought a little over a year ago. Then, it was one of the most powerful and advanced machines available to the ordinary consumer. Now, a year and some months later, it is, by industry standards, sluggish and clumsy, unable to handle the latest innovation in software. But here's the real problem: all that bothers me. I look, every week, at the fliers from computer and electronics superstores and see computers more powerful, with greater speed and bigger monitors and much more memory—and for considerably less money than I paid—and it bothers me. I feel cheated. I feel saddled with a clunker. I wonder: Should I upgrade? Should I trade up? Yet here I sit, the words popping up as fast as I type them, amenable, at the stroke of a key or the click of a mouse, to all kinds of effortless manipulation—cut-and-paste, deletion or duplication, spell and grammar checks, graphic enhancements. I have dozens of fonts and pictures, and if that doesn't please me, I can pull up endless more from CD- ROMs.

This computer will play music while I work. It can answer my phone. It can link me to the resource catalog of the New York Public Library. I can shop for just about anything, pay for it, and have it delivered, all without leaving my chair. This computer talks to me—a lovely, slightly seductive female voice, perfectly pitched between a business tone and an intimate one. I have a microphone, and if I could figure out how it worked, I could talk to this computer. This machine is more than I'll ever need. It is, in truth, more than I'll ever use: whole sections of its labyrinthine workings are terra incognita to me, a middle earth of the grotesque and the exotic. But every week the fliers come, and this computer doesn't seem enough. I told you, I belong to the Cult of the Next Thing. If ever there was a cult that gave us stones when we asked for bread, this is it. It promises so much. Look at the ads. If you get this car, take that trip, buy these clothes, use this detergent—what joy! What fulfillment will finally and fully be yours!

One of the strangest ads I ever saw was a television commercial for Kool-Aid. It showed a bunch of kids sitting slumped and sullen on a gorgeous summer day. They're bored, numbed with it. It's almost a portrait of suicidal despair. Why go on living? Then the mother brings out a round, dew-beaded pitcher of Kool- Aid, ruby red and jiggling with ice. The kids go crazy. They leap, they clap, they cheer, they run, they gulp. This, yes this, is something to live for! The impression we're given is that the exuberance over that moment lives long past the moment: that there is something redemptive about the pitcher of Kool-Aid, that it restores purpose and hope to all of life. Well, my own children like Kool-Aid. Just not that much.

The silence of simplicity

I'm working on the discipline of ignoring the god of Things, of dropping out of that cult. What helps best is to cultivate a substitute discipline. I practice simplicity.

I built a shed this past summer. My garden equipment—shovels and rakes, a fertilizer broadcaster, a lawnmower, hoses and sprinklers—were aging and rusting too quickly leaning against the house. And someone kept stealing my gas can. So I decided I needed a shed. I went down to the building supply store in town. The cheapest one—emphasis on cheap—was $500. That was too much. But while I was looking at one store, I noticed a large lot of cedar two-by-fours being cleared out—600 feet for $50. I bought it, and went home and framed up the shed. It sat, skeletal, for several weeks. Then a friend offered me the sheeting board to cover its exterior; he had bought a lot of wood on clearance the year before and wasn't going to use the sheeting. Over the next month, I scavenged. Driving by a house that had just been built, I noticed that several bundles of unused shingles and a partial roll of tar paper sat in the side lot. I tracked down the contractor and made a deal. I got them for half price. I found an old door and some planks for shelving in the crawl space at the church. And so it went: foraging, salvaging, bartering, scrounging, improvising. In the end, I had a great shed. It cost about $300, but I recently saw one like it in a catalog for $1,800. In one sense, this wasn't simple. It took more time—a lot more—than if I had simply bought a kit and put it together in a day. Sometimes simplicity is just trading one complexity for another. But the time, most of it, was spent en route, as I went. It was more adventure than project. In the course of it, I had some good conversations, met some new people. My wife and children got the benefit of my childlike joy when I came home to announce, "You won't believe it. I've just been given all the batting for finishing the edges on the shed."

There's a deeper lesson here. In the midst of living this way, I have come to appreciate small things more. I made a garden in the front of my house. I gathered all the elements—granite rock to edge it, soil, trees, flowers, driftwood—the same way I got the material for the shed. Because it took work—a dedication to simplicity doesn't always come simply—I delight in the color of the flowers. I see the bees flit from one to the next, and it gives me a deep down satisfaction. Those bees are a signature of divine pleasure—God must like what I've done. I'm not sure I would think that—or even much notice the bees—if I had paid a landscaper to do the work.

But sometimes simplicity means forsaking the garden for the wilderness. Nehemiah did that. He was willing to walk away from the luxuries of the lavish Persian court—the gardens and pools and palaces—to go live among the miseries of ramshackle Jerusalem, with its open sewers and piles of rubble. Why? God had put it in his heart (Neh. 2:12).

The quest for simplicity can lapse into legalism. It can decay into brittle, mirthless austerity, or puff itself up into heroic do-it-yourselfism. And then it's as barren as the Cult of the Next Thing. I once spoke with a man who imposed on his family fasting from television for a year. He said it was terrible. His family still resents him for it.

Simplicity is something more, something other than just doing without or doing it yourself. Its essense is neither forsaking nor striving. Its essence, rather, is listening: What has God put in your heart? Simplicity is, once having discerned that, being content with it. Simplify it further: simplicity is being content with God.

Mammon is a good servant—obliging, gracious, versatile. As a servant, he's willing to be used for anything. He'll slum or hobnob, it doesn't matter. I've used money for a holiday in Thailand, bought Thai silk, rode an elephant, snorkeled amid schools of bright-colored fish. And I've used money to buy those sticky wax rings that seal sewer pipes on toilets. Mammon was handy in both instances.

But Mammon makes a poor god—demanding, capricious, conniving. He's surly and brutish, rarely lets you sleep well or long. He is sometimes generous, in a fickle way, but has a well-practiced habit of depriving us of taking deep and lasting pleasure in his gifts: he brings with his gifts the sour aftertaste of ingratitude (it's not enough), or fear (it won't last), or insatiableness (I want more). Maybe this is the worst irony of the Cult of the Next Thing: It trains us, not to value things too much, but to value them too little. It teaches us not to cherish and enjoy anything. Otherwise, we might be content and not long for the Next Thing.

And this: Mammon outshouts God. It's hard to hear what God has put in your heart with Mammon roaring. I write this on an island between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. Earlier in the day, I walked along a forest trail and returned to my cabin along the shoreline. The greenness of the water, the clatter of stone and shell underfoot, the natural sculpture of driftwood: it is a gallery of art. I sat on a shelf of sandstone that sloped down to the water. The sandstone, with its pits and ridges where the water's persistence has pried loose embedded stones, resembled a rough lizard hide, hugely magnified. This is a place of good silence. There are sounds, but they are woven into the texture of air and earth and water. It is a place for listening.

Walking home, in early evening, I heard voices. They sounded near, but they weren't. They came from across a vast expanse of water, sweeping effortlessly, like herons skimming the water's surface, over the distance. The voices traveled that distance intact, the shades of inflection still in them, no echo blurring their edges. I heard every word.

Simplicity is like a silence. It is a place for listening to a Voice that otherwise we might never hear. Enough is enough After silence comes speaking. There are two sayings, plain sayings, that are helping me live into simple contentment with God and what God puts in my heart. The first is "thank you." I was in Uganda, Africa, about seven years ago, in a little township called Wairacka. Every Sunday evening, about 100 Christians from the neighboring area would gather to worship. They met under a tin- roof lean-to that was set at the edge of a cornfield. They sat—when they did sit—on rough wood benches. The floor was dirt. The instruments were old. Some of the guitars didn't have all the strings. But could they worship! They made hell run for shelter when they got loose. There was one guy with us, a real stiff- backed, buttoned-down white boy who liked his worship staid and orderly and brief, and even he couldn't stand still: he was jumping, clapping, yelling out his hallelujahs.

One Sunday evening, the pastor asked if anyone had anything to share. A tall, willowy woman came to the front. She was plain featured, but she was beautiful. "Oh, brothers and sisters, I love Jesus so much," she started.

"Tell us, sister! Tell us!" the worshipers shouted back.

"Oh, I love him so much, I don't know where to begin to tell you how good he is."

"Begin there, sister! Begin right there!"

"Oh," she said, "he is so good to me. I praise him all the time for how good he is to me. For three months, I prayed to the Lord for shoes. And look!" And at that the woman cocked up her leg so that we could see one foot. One very ordinary shoe covered it. "He gave me shoes. Hallelujah, he is so good." And the Ugandans clapped and yelled and shouted back, Hallelujah!

I didn't. I was devastated. I sat there hollowed out, hammered down. In all my life I had not once prayed for shoes. And in all my life I had not once thanked God for the many, many shoes I had.

As I later tried to sort that out, I looked at a lot of Scriptures about being thankful. I discovered that being thankful and experiencing the power and presence of Jesus Christ are tightly entwined. As we practice thankfulness, we experience more of God's transforming grace, God's thereness.

I looked again at 1 Thessalonians 5:18: "No matter what happens, always be thankful." And then at Ephesians 5:20: "Always give thanks for everything to God." And it came to me that the deepest theological concept is not the doctrine of the Incarnation, or the theories of Atonement, or the arguments for theodicy. Not views on premillennialism or supralapsarianism, nor ideas about tribulationism or dispensationalism. No, the deepest theological concept is thankfulness. Because to know God is to thank God. To worship God is to thank God. And to thank God in all things and for all things is to acknowledge that God is good, perfectly good, and perfectly just, and perfectly powerful—and that all things do work together for good for those who love God and have been called according to God's purposes. Thankfulness is an act of subversion against the Cult of the Next Thing.

The other saying, like "thank you" both simple and hard, is "enough." In the Garden of Eden the first thing the serpent did was create in Adam and Eve a sense of scarcity. "Did God really say you must not eat any of the fruit in the garden?" (Gen. 3:1).

God did say—commanded, in fact— that they "may freely eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die" (Gen. 2:16). The serpent's trick, then as now, is to turn this staggering abundance and gracious protection into frightening scarcity and bullying deprivation, the stinginess of a despot.

The serpent lied, and we got taken in. Now, despite the overwhelming evidence that we live amidst overflowing abundance—abundant food, clothes, warmth, friends, things—we always feel it's not enough. We sense it's running out, it's insufficient. We live for the Next Thing.

There is an Indian parable about this. A guru had a disciple and was so pleased with the man's spiritual progress that he left him on his own. The man lived in a little mud hut. He lived simply, begging for his food. Each morning, after his devotions, the disciple washed his loincloth and hung it out to dry. One day, he came back to discover the loincloth torn and eaten by rats. He begged the villagers for another, and they gave it to him. But the rats ate that one, too. So he got himself a cat. That took care of the rats, but now when he begged for his food he had to beg for milk for his cat as well. "This won't do," he thought. "I'll get a cow." So he got a cow and found he had to beg now for fodder. So he decided to till and plant the ground around his hut. But soon he found no time for contemplation, so he hired servants to tend his farm. But overseeing the labors became a chore, so he married to have a wife to help him. After time, the disciple became the wealthiest man in the village.

The guru was traveling by there and stopped in. He was shocked to see that where once stood a simple mud hut there now loomed a palace surrounded by a vast estate, worked by many servants. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked his disciple.

"You won't believe this, sir," the man replied. "But there was no other way I could keep my loincloth." I know this trap. Earlier, I held up my shed as an example of simplicity. But why did I build it? There was no other way I could keep my rakes and shovels, my lawn mower and gas can. This business of enough is slippery: the staked pit of legalism on one side, the quicksand of rationalization on the other. What is enough? I think I'm learning to live with enough, but what I call enough is staggering lavishness to most of the world.

A woman from a poor village in Bangladesh was visiting a Christian family in Toronto, and the morning after she arrived she looked out the kitchen window of the people's home. "Who lives in that house?" she asked the woman from Toronto.

"Which house?"

"That one, right there."

"Oh, that. No one lives there. That's a 'house' for the car."

The woman from Bangladesh was nonplused. "A house for the car," she kept saying. "A house for the car." I picture that woman, looking out my kitchen window and seeing my garden shed, puzzled, saying again and again, "A house for the shovels. A house for the lawn mower."

We live in a culture of excess. A culture of more. A culture where we need to accumulate endlessly just to keep the loincloth. And the only way to break it is deliberately to lay hold of another way of seeing and living: we need an attitude of enough. G. K. Chesterton said, "There are two ways to get enough. One is to accumulate more and more. The other is to need less." The attitude of enough—actually, it's a spiritual orientation— is marked by trust, contentment, and thankfulness. It is the decision, without rationalization, to say, "This is enough. My home is big enough. My car is new enough. My possessions are plenty enough. I've eaten enough. I've taken enough. Enough is enough."

And when we begin to live out the spirituality of enough, there comes a point when we see that maybe we have more than enough.

Just say no

There is a lady I know who lives this way, thankful with enough. Her name is Helen, and she attends the church of which I am the pastor. Helen is who I want to be when I grow up. She lives, as far as I can discern, completely outside the Cult of the Next Thing. She doesn't even defy it: she ignores it. Helen has every reason to fear scarcity: never to say enough, never to say thank you. She grew up in Russia during Stalin's purges and engineered famines, and her family, of German origin, suffered terribly. When she was still in her early teens, she and five other girls from her village fled to Germany. It was a harrowing journey—across frozen or muddy fields, slipping through tangles of barbed wire. They left almost everything. They lost two children on the way from disease. Several times they came close to starving. There are photos of them with stark flesh and sharp bones, eyes defiant and sorrowful and afraid, gathered in a huddle. Their clothes hang loose.

Her family later tried to join her. But the Russians caught up with Helen's parents and siblings and sent them in stinking, crammed cattle cars to Siberia, where her parents died. Helen remained in Germany. She worked there for a woman who threatened to shoot her if she ever tried to leave. She didn't try. Anyway, Hitler found her useful: he put her to work digging ditches for his war. There is a photo of Helen, rawboned in a plain dirndl, standing with other women beside a pile of raw, wet earth. They hold shovels. Guards are in the background, at the edge of the photo. The women smile. The guards don't.

After the war, Helen came to Canada. She had a cousin in Manitoba, a prosperous realtor and a church elder, and he and his wife took Helen in as their housemaid. Helen believed the grief was over, now only a memory to scatter under the weight of forgetting and forgiving. She was wrong. Her cousin raped her, repeatedly. She owed her cousin and his wife the money for sponsoring her trip to Canada. She didn't yet speak English. Alone, afraid, she gave in to him. Helen got pregnant. Both the church and her cousin's family banished her and the child.

Helen came west. In time she married and lived modestly. Several years ago, her husband died and left her a small pension. She has every reason to hoard, to hide, to be angry. She has every reason to have banished the words thank you and enough from her speaking and thinking. And yet those words define her life, shape its inner places and outward forms.

Money, things—they don't give freedom.

One day in church as I led prayer, I asked if there was anyone who would like to thank God for anything. Helen stood up. "Oh, Pastor Mark," she said. "I praise God!"

"Tell us about it, Helen."

"Well, the other day, it was such a beautiful day. I decided to wash my car, and as I'm washing, what do I notice? My insurance expired three days earlier. Well, right away, I walked downtown and bought new insurance. Then, I was telling a friend of mine about it, and she said, 'You're lucky. That happened to me, and the police stopped me. I was fined $300.' "

I thought that was the end of her story —praising God that the police didn't catch her. But it wasn't the end of the story.

Helen says, "God has given me $300. That's how I see it. The Lord has done this. So I asked, 'Lord, what am I to do with this $300?' He said, 'Give it to the church.' So today, I have $300 to give to the church, and I'm praising God.' "

Another time, our church held a business meeting. The big vote that night was whether to hire a youth pastor. Our church finances had not been strong, and many people were saying that we just couldn't afford a youth pastor, even though the need was great.

Helen got up. She is 73 years old. She has one daughter—her child from her cousin—who is middle-aged. She has four grandchildren, who live in another city. Helen has two stepdaughters with children. They also live elsewhere. She has no vested interest in youth work in our church.

Helen said, "When I lived in Russia, growing up, I wanted so much to have a piano and to play it. But I could never afford it. When I married, we had a piano, but I never learned to play it. Last month, I decided that I could now afford $60 a month and fulfill my dream since I was a girl. I signed up for piano lessons." She stopped. Her voice was breaking. She continued, slow, soft. "Tonight, I realize that our young people are far more important than my learning how to play the piano. I love young people and want them to know about Jesus. So I am going to quit piano lessons and give that money every month for a youth pastor." That changed everything. The church voted unanimously to hire a youth pastor. It's what one person can do who, having enough, being continuously thankful, pays no tribute to the Cult of the Next Thing.

God vs. the pig-god

Money, things—they don't give freedom. Freedom, rather, is in the opposite direction, in refusing to love money, to pay Things an honor they don't deserve, to give to the Cult an affection it will never requite. To live, real freedom requires something more than, other than, force of will. Earlier, I spoke about defying Mammon, breaking out of his cult. But that in itself leads nowhere. Once we defy it, then what? If we refuse the lure of the Next Thing, what will we replace it with?

The answer is God. We will live—fully, joyfully—in the presence of God. Consumerism's worst effect is it shunts us away from God's presence. It always ushers us into the wrong place. Is it possible that the God who made the heavens and the earth, who hewed mountains and poured seas, the God who raises the dead, the God who knit you together in your mother's womb, numbered your days, knows your thoughts, knows you by name, and says to you, "Everything I have is yours"—is it possible, I'm asking, that that's not enough? That we won't be happy until our kitchen is renovated, or we've bought a better car, or visited Europe? And then we won't be happy anyway? Is that possible? The Cult of the Next Thing guarantees it. Is God who he says he is? That is the crux. If God isn't, then "let's eat, drink, and be merry. … What's the difference, for tomorrow we die" (Isa. 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32). But if God is God, it is only a cruel form of self-spite to spurn the true God for a lesser god—especially a sloppy, bullying ingrate like Mammon, the pig-god, and his miserable cult.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a novel a few years ago called Because It Is Bitter, & Because It Is My Heart. The title comes from a Stephen Crane poem about a beast who devours his own heart and, when asked why, responds with that line. Oates's novel is about a young black boy and a young white girl in middle America in the 1950s. They fall in love, but of course everything in their world wars against their doing anything about that. Their options are completely shut down. All they can do, all they have freedom for, are acts of self-spite—self-mutilation, self-humiliation, self-recrimination, self-punishment. They resort to it and destroy the promise of their own lives.

The only freedom the Cult of the Next Thing grants us is acts of self-spite. Be cause it is bitter, and because it is my heart. Mammon has no need to hurt us. Worship him, you devour yourself. The stunning folly of this, the bewildering tragedy, is that we can choose otherwise. "Stay away from the love of money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, 'I will never fail you. I will never forsake you' " (Heb. 13:5).

Is that enough to be thankful for?

Mark Buchanan is pastor of the New Life Community Church, Duncan, British Columbia, Canada. This essay won the first place in CT's "Faith and Consumerism" contest, funded by the Global Consumption project of Pew Charitable Trusts, Inc.