Pastor Tim Brown, Calvary Chapel Fremont, Wednesday March 24, 2010

Download | Duration: 00:41:15

Isaiah 56

Sometimes you can feel like an outsider and that God doesn’t even like you, but our text tells us that faithfulness makes the outsider an insider.   

Sometimes you can feel so broken/that you have nothing to give to God/that it seems there is no way you’ll ever be whole again, but our text tells us that faithfulness makes the broken whole.   

What God requires of a man/woman to live a fulfilled life is deceivingly simple.  If you feel like an outsider/broken, God is inviting u2b made fulfilled/fruitful.  God doesn’t make a fulfilled life hard, we do.  He keeps it real simple – He has to or we’d never get it.  Faithfulness to God gives birth to fulfillment/fruitfulness.  

1-2 Sabbath

What I says in v1 he repeats in v2 in a different way – preserving justice and doing righteousness is to keep from profaning the Sabbath and to keep from doing any evil.  God says, “Do this and don’t do that.”  Simple!  And God’s simple way to a fulfilled life is all wrapped up w/ faithfulness in regards to the Sabbath.   

On the Sabbath -

    * God rested from His works – not rest of exhaustion, but the rest of completion.
    * Man is to rest from his works – not rest of exhaustion/completion, but of faith – resting in work God has done.
    * Sabbath benefited man by:
          o Physical rest
          o Demonstration of the power of God (no manna on Sabbath)
    * Resting on the Sabbath was the means whereby men acknowledged the hand of God.  Ex. manna.  We rest, believing that God will supply us.  Ps. 127:2  Gives to His beloved even in sleep…
          o Sometimes I’ll go home on Wednesday all ready to take in the garbage containers, and Fran has already done it.  It would be dumb to take the containers back down to the curb only so I could wheel them back behind the fence.
          o Resting in the finished work of Christ is the way you acknowledge the hand of God.  How silly to work for what’s been done.

The Sabbath stands as a concrete expression of what God has done/ what He desires to do.  Don’t profane it.  To profane something is to stand it on its head, to do the opposite of what you should do.   

Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot… Lev. 19:29

To profane the Sabbath is to refuse to order your life around God.  A man works when God says to rest because of unbelief.  “I don’t have time for God.  I don’t have time to slow down.  I don’t believe God will take care of me.”  This describes Israel in the days of the kings – didn’t give the land a sabbath rest every seven years.  This also describes America – we don’t have time for God/don’t have time to slow down/don’t believe God will care for us – spiritually drained/physically exhausted.

WORKING LONGER  More than 31% of college-educated male workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22% in 1980. 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31% in 2001. working faster  About 60% of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and 1/3 wolf down lunch at our desks, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Assn. To avoid wasting time, we're talking on our cell phones while rushing to work/answering e-mails during conference calls/ waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out.  WORKING HARDER  The problem, in a nutshell is this: Succeeding in today's economy requires lightning-fast reflexes and the ability to communicate and collaborate across the globe. That helps explain why time pressures seem to be getting worse. Globalization/Internet create great new opportunities, but they also ratchet up the intensity of competition and generate more work. "Nobody wants to give up their territory or their control."  Historically, as countries and individuals get richer, they work less. Over the past 15 to 20 years, people working a 40-hour week received virtually no increase in real pay, according to research by Kuhn and Lozano. Yet employees putting in a 55-hour week saw their real pay rise by 14%. The implication: The gains of two decades of growth have mainly gone to ambitious |or fearful| Americans who are working longer hours.  www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_40/b3953601.htm

So, here it is – we’re working longer/harder/sleeping less/ rushing more – because of competition.  Someone wants what we have and if we don’t work longer/faster/harder it will be taken from us.   

Listen to this quote from the article I just read: Historically, as countries and individuals get richer, they work less.  The richer you are, the less you need to work.  I am rich in Christ.  I do not work for my salvation and I do not work to maintain the favor of God.

God’s simple way to a fulfilled/fruitful life is all wrapped up in the Sabbath – resting in faith.  When we begin to make things complicated, God calls us back to simplicity.

3  The Foreigner

    * ben nekar – son of calamity/misfortune/strange/unrecognizable
          o Joined = share one fate/hold one cause.  This word speaks of conversion.  This just isn’t someone who has immigrated to Israel.  This is someone who has left his religion and has said that the God of Israel is the one true God.  He loves the simplicity of God, but his past has risen up against him.
          o He’s afraid that he’ll be cut from the team/he’s waiting for the pink slip/doesn’t think that God likes him.  Though he longs for the comfort of belonging, he lives in insecurity.
          o His fear is separation - that the Lord will send him away.  “I’m different. I don’t fit in.  I’ll be rejected.  I’m a misfit/outsider.”  His anxiety is that what he is on the flesh will keep him from becoming what he wants to be in the Spirit.  Conversion wasn’t enough to hide his strangeness/foreignness.
          o You – old patterns of sinful desires/thoughts emerge and you worry that you’re really an outsider/misfit.

3  The Eunuch

    * Castrated man – made that way by others.  Beat up/beat down – nothing to offer anyone.
          o Anxiety: I have no future.  No life can come from me.  I will remain alone and have no sons or daughters.  His fear is that what he is in the natural will prevent him from living a meaningful life in the Spirit.
          o He’s sitting on the bench/expecting 2b ignored/he lives in disappointment knowing that God will never use him, knowing that he can’t make any significant contribution.
          o You – why isn’t your life more fruitful/greater impact/more fruit – you fear that you have nothing to offer.

The foreigner looks at where he came from and the eunuch looks to where he is going.  One looks to the past and sees what disqualifies him and the other looks at the future and sees what disqualifies him.  “Who I am determines what I am.  I cannot rise above my circumstances.”  There’s nothing w/in either of them that makes them inherently desirable.   

Whether eunuch/foreigner/something else – there is a simple pathway to fulfillment/fruitfulness.  Mt. 11:28.