God's Words to the Busy and Distracted

Today is week four of our series. We've been going through the ten Commandments and we all know the fourth commandment. As Seventh-day Adventists, It's our favorite. Right? Remember the Sabbath day. And for our guests that are here today, we just did a six week series in the fall on Sabbath. And so I kind of feel like we said everything there is to say about the Sabbath. So we're going to see if we can find something new here today and keep it interesting.

How many of you have ever wanted to... You like to make things. Maybe you got a little wood shop, maybe a little metal shop. Maybe you make stuff with fabric or yarn. Maybe you make stuff with ingredients in the kitchen. That's my favorite kind of people that make stuff, right? It's fun to make stuff. And maybe you didn't make it, but you assembled it. Anybody been to IKEA? 278 pieces of wood and 14 screws. I don't know how this goes together. Right? Or you bought the little toy for the kids. It's a little slide and swing, little plastic set for when they're real little. As you're putting it together, you have some understanding of this now, hopefully you know that that's built to hold a 30 pound kid and not a full grown adult. And you don't try to go down the slide and break the slide. Right? You get some understanding of the thing as you put it together, whether you create it or whether you just assemble it. You kind of know something about this thing.

And I think about Creation Week and our creator getting to the end of the week and kneeling down in the dirt and forming Adam out of the dirt and making his legs and his arms and his fingers and his toes and his head and his face and then bending over and breathing life into him. That's a different creation than everything else, because everything else he just says the word. And the skies are full of birds, the seas are full of fish, and the land is full of mammals and insects. But with humans, he does it a little different. Does he have an understanding of how to create us? Yes. And in fact, he knows our limitations. He knows that we need rest. And on day one, he built what? Day and night. Because we need to rest. We can't run 24/7. You ever tried to go 24/7? How long does that last? Like two days, right? And then it's like, I can't do this anymore. I got to sleep. We need rest. And he knew that. And he created a day of rest way before he creates us. He was planning ahead. You were designed with purpose. And not only did he create a nighttime to rest, but he says, once a week, I need you to take even more rest. I think he understood his creation and he knew what they needed. Right?

Now we've got some questions that we've been going over each time when we talk about these commandments. And my favorite one is, what does this commandment reveal about God or God's character? Because I have never thought of the commandments that way. The commandments were just a list of do's and don'ts. Be good, obey them. But to think about what does this commandment reveal about God?

Take out your sermon notes if you haven't already. I think that our Creator understands us and wants to be with us. Right? He understands us and wants to be with us. Is God surprised about how you are made? No. He knows how the muscles work, how the tendons work, how your organs work. He knows how the nervous system ties it all together. Things that we're still discovering in the medical world. God already knew. Amen. And he understands us, and he wants to be with us.

Open your Bibles with me to Exodus, chapter 20, verses 8 through 11. This is the fourth commandment. Many of us could probably recite this. And in fact, let's read it together. And I don't care if you have a different version. It's cool. God will understand. Amen. All right, Everybody there? Exodus 20:8. I'm reading from the NIV. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Read with me. Six days you shall 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. Neither you, nor your son or daughter, or your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. But he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

You've heard this before, right? If you grew up in the church, you've heard this, like, every week of your life, okay? And it's good, it's good, it's good. But when we look at that, that's a lot of words. And so we like to do what? Simplify. Let's make that a little easier. So we look at that and we go, well, what do we gotta do? Let's see, it says, remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Holy good, holy. And don't do any work. Got it? Holy and no work. Got it. And we think that's it. So we begin to think about the things that we do and say, well, does that work? Does this work? Yes or no? Can we do work? Can we do that? Can we do this? That's work. That's not work. And then we think about, well, is that holy? Cause something might not be work, but is it holy? Could I go to the concert or the game or the movie or whatever? Are those things holy? Can I do that? And what do you end up with? A bunch of lists. I can do this, and I can't do that, and I can do this, and I can't do that. And if you grew up in the Adventist church, you know that if you go on a hike on Sabbath afternoon and you end up anywhere where there's water, you can take off your shoes and put your feet in, but thou shalt not get thy pants wet, Right? How many of you heard this? Really? I'm the only one. There's a few of us. This side has heard it, this side hasn't. You guys are sinners. You ever get your pants wet on Sabbath? Right? And we end up with all these lists. And this is exactly what happened to the Jews during Jesus time. It started out in a good place. Let's not work. Let's keep the Sabbath day holy. And pretty soon you got 6,000 laws, nobody can keep them all. And Jesus says, that's a bad thing. Let's not do that anymore.

So kind of the question is, what should we do afterwards? Let's look at this a different way. How many of you guys like motor sports racing? Anybody here? Yeah. All right. Couple of us. I'm surprised, the number of ladies that are like, yeah, my kind of people, right? And there's all kinds of racing. There's NASCAR, there's Formula 1, World Rally, off road racing, dirt bike racing, street bike racing. But the best one of them all, in my opinion, is the NHRA, the National Hot Rod Association. They got the best name. They're racing hot rods. Drag racing. Right. Drag racing.

Now, before we can talk about racing, I need to let the engineer out for a minute and talk to us. And I apologize in advance. Sometimes he gets away from me. I try to keep him under control. But we'll let the engineer out to talk a little bit. Because when we talk about cars and engines, there's two kinds of power that they make. They make torque, and they make horsepower. And you need both. Torque is strength, right? Torque is what makes tractors and semi trucks strong. They can pull heavy loads. Do they Go very fast. Do tractors go fast, guys? No, tractors go slow. But they're strong. Horsepower is what makes you go fast. That's your top speed. That's what gets you going 200 miles an hour down the back stretch. Okay. So ideally, cars would make lots of both. I want lots of torque. I want lots of horsepower. The problem is the things you do to make torque hurts your horsepower. The things you do to make horsepower hurts the torque. So it's a very delicate balance of how to try and make both, but you need both. Torque is what gets the car off the line quickly and moving, pulls you out of that slow corner, and then horsepower starts kicking in, and that's what's driving that top speed. Okay, so we need horsepower and torque.

So what kind of numbers are we talking about? If we went out in the parking lot out there and we looked at some of the average cars, the horsepower that your average car makes is somewhere in the 200 range, usually low 200-to high 200 would cover most of the cars in the parking lot. Now, if you have one of those little tiny economy cars that gets like 600 miles to the gallon, you know they'll make less. They've got like 2 horsepower. But if you've got like a big suburban or big truck or an honest-to-goodness sports car, they're making a little bit more. Okay. But the 200 range is pretty good. My Honda Ridgeline makes about 280 horsepower. Pretty, pretty average. And the torque would be like maybe 170 to 250 foot pounds of torque. Okay. And you don't need to know those numbers other than we're going to talk about now what some of the race cars make. You guys are familiar with Formula 1, right? Formula 1 cars. These cars are amazing. And they cost $15 million each. The steering wheel costs between one and $2 million. They're made of carbon fiber. They have a little itty bitty engine. My Honda Ridgeline has a 3.2 liter V8, not a V8 a V6, not a huge engine. These have a 1.6, half the size. My Honda Ridgeline maxes out about 5,000 RPM. Those will max out somewhere around 11,000. What kind of horsepower do they make? About 500 horses. Okay. But they have an electric hybrid system that they can hit for sections, small sections that will give a boost them to about 1000 horsepower. Now we're talking, how much torque do they make? Almost none. About 160 foot pounds of torque. And if you've ever watched Formula one race cars, when they start the race. They're really slow off the line. It takes them a while to get going. But when they get going, baby, and they're really moving, okay. They don't have much torque. They're slow off the line. But they got a lot of horsepower. They got a lot of top end.

What about maybe the most popular cars here in America? Nascar. Okay, Any NASCAR fans here? Couple of us. Now, their horsepower is limited. They were getting so fast we had to limit their horsepower. So on most tracks they're limited to about 670 horsepower. About half [of Formula 1]. But how much torque are they making? About 530 foot pounds. So they're making a lot of torque and a lot of horsepower. You see when they come out of that corner and they just start pulling like a freight train, Right. They can really get going and that horsepower kicks in. They're doing 200 miles an hour on a track that's only half a mile long. My Ridgeline won't even get to 200 miles an hour, let alone in half a mile.

Okay, but they don't even compare to the Top fuel dragster. The dragster is the long skinny one. The funny car is the one that kind of looks like a car. They run about the same engine, which I showed there. That's 500cc V8 to Hemi. They got a hemispherical head that's shaped in a circle. A lot of good reasons to do that. You know how much horsepower they make? You ready for this? Between 10 and 13,000! That's like a whole different level. You know how much torque they make? 8,000 foot pounds of torque. I mean, it's hard to comprehend.

If you've ever been to a drag race, it's a visceral experience. When they go down the track, the whole track, the ground shakes. You can feel it inside. It's amazing. Zero to 60 in 0.4 seconds. What's the zero to 60 on an average car? 7, 8 seconds, 9 seconds, depending on your car. If you got a really fast electric Tesla, it's like 2 or 3 seconds, 0.5 seconds. 0 to 100 in less than a second. If they started right here. By the time they reach the back door, they're going 100 miles an hour. At the end of the track, they're doing between 330 and 340 miles an hour in three seconds and change. They used to race a quarter mile, which is 1,320ft. They had to shorten it because cars were going too fast. So now they only race 1000ft took 300ft off so they would go slower. They now cover the thousand feet in the same time they used to cover the 1300ft. They keep going faster and faster and faster. All right, I could keep going on about these, but I don't want to bore you, but these are some amazing cars. If you ever get a chance to go see them, go do it. It's kind of worth it.

But what a lot of people don't know is there's two races that go on. There's the race down the track, and then between every race. They have to completely rebuild the motor. It makes so much power that it destroys itself every three seconds. And they completely rebuild it. Everything heads off, get rebuilt, pistons come out, crank comes out, bearings come out, and all new stuff goes in. They have 75 minutes to do it. A good team can do it in 35. If nothing goes wrong. And they have seven to nine people working on it at once. It looks like chaos, but it's an organized symphony of getting everything done in that amount of time. And when I watched that happen, and I watched the guys that built this motor, that designed this motor take it apart, and parts that look fine, they don't look broken. You take out that piston, it looks fine. But it's taken such abuse in that run, we can't trust it to do two. It could break next time. So we put a new one in. And I think about Sabbath and our Creator. And he says, you know what? I want to sit with you and help you remove some of the broken bits that you acquired this week.

See, the drag racer has a duty cycle of one race. We have a duty cycle of one week. And the Savior says, I want to be there with you and help you. He wants us to grow and to be more like him. If you've got kids, many of you do, they're here in the front row. Or you've got grandkids if you see them developing a habit that maybe is not so good. Little Junior likes to go to kindergarten and punch other kids. We gotta stop that. Don't do that no more. Right? Because you want them to grow and to be good. And so you try and get rid of some of the bad habits and instill good habits. And this is what parents and grandparents do with each other.

Mark, chapter 2, verse 27. Says, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He's not talking about that because Sabbath somehow serves us. It's because Sabbath makes us better. Sabbath gives us an opportunity to be better, to be more Like God. God knew that we would get so busy and distracted, so he made a whole day of the week that we could spend with him and he could help us. He could take out some of those broken bits, some of the pain, some of the guilt, some of the shame, some of the pride, some of all those bad things and replace that with the good things that should have been there. The love, the kindness, the mercy, the grace, the humility. And once a week, when we spend time with Jesus, Jesus says, I want to help rebuild you and make you more like me. And when we treat Sabbath like, hey, it's a day off work, great, I can go home and I can take a nap this afternoon. That's okay. Been there, done that. But if that's all Sabbath is, you're missing out. You're missing out. It's like when you go to the movie and you don't stay for the outtakes, right? Gotta stay for the outtakes. That's the funny bits. Don't get halfway through and then bail. Okay? See, we aren't perfect.

We have broken bits. And we are in need of someone to make us whole. I need God to work on me. And the more he works on me, the more I need him to work on me and become aware of how much more work there is to do. It's like when you start a project there or start, like, remodeling a room. You think this will be easy coat of paint? Oh, I can't paint that. Better sand first. Ooh, that piece of wood needs to be replaced. Oh, the frame is bad. Pretty soon you've torn down the whole back half of the house, and all you were going to do is paint. Right, Parents, that puts a little bit of pressure on us because we'd like to go home and take a nap. But our kids are fueled by nuclear reactors, and they have lots of energy. My nuclear reactor is mostly radioactive waste and spent fuel rods. Not so with them. That puts some pressure on us to make the day good and happy and enjoyable for them. And not a list of do's and don'ts, because I think there's good things we can do.

Pastor, you have something you want to share with us? Yes, Bill. Check, check. So Bill and I were talking. You know, we try to do something every month, but I'm actually. In discussing this, I've actually been marinating on an idea that I think maybe we're going to have to make standard at our church. And it's called the shine principle. Anybody know what the shine principle is this week? This month, over the next couple of weeks and further and beyond. But over the next couple of weeks, especially today, how can you serve someone today? And not just serve, but how can you help somebody? How can you inspire somebody or maybe even nurture? And lastly, we want to encourage you to engage and talk to others. All of these things are ways of engaging. So you're wondering, what can I do on Sabbath or every day of this week, shine? Does that make sense? How many of you that just completely scares you to death. You can shine even without saying a word, A kind word, a kind gesture, something.

Now here's where Bill and I are going out on a step of faith because we want to hear stories of you shining for Jesus. Okay? Downey Church and even our Aus family. What are some ways we want you to practically go out and shine for Jesus? And what did we say? Was it the 28th, the last Sabbath? Okay, here's where we're going on faith. We need you to go shine and think of stories and then we'd like you to come and share the story here. I'm not gonna ask you to do a sermon, but a 30, 30, 60 second snippet. And if you are so scared and petrified from coming up here, Bill and I will tell your story. Okay? Just give us, give us a little bit of room to be able to know what to say. But over the next couple of weeks, and you don't even need to wait a couple of weeks, if you have a story this coming Sabbath, let us know. We'd love to invite you to come up and share that story. So where can you serve, where can you help? Where can you inspire? Where can you nurture and where can you engage? We want this to be part of our DNA here at Downey Church. Sound good? All right, thank you.

And this doesn't have to be a big thing. Expensive. I don't have to spend a lot of money. There's things you can do for free. Okay, Maybe just giving some time somewhere to somebody that needs it.

Okay, so last question I want to cover today real quick is what promise comes with this commandment? Because most of the time we think of the fifth commandment as having a promise, right? Honor your mother and father that your days will be long. We think that's the one with the promise. But I think all the commandments come with a promise if you think about it hard enough. So what's the promise that comes with the fourth commandment? God wants to be with us. God wants to spend time with us. God wants us to become more like him, to grow. If we do those things, what's the promise that comes? Life is better with the Sabbath and we are better with the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not here to weigh us down. The Sabbath is not here so I can take a nap. The Sabbath is here to make me better, to help me grow, to help me be more like God. We know that money doesn't buy happiness. We hear this story all the time about people that have fame and fortune and everything. And money doesn't buy it. We hear that story over and over and over again. But God knows how to make our lives better and fulfilled. And it's going to be different for us. Some of you are going to want to be teachers. I can't do that job. I've substitute taught for a while. That's my level of being able. I can come in and substitute. I couldn't do it day in and day out. Some of us are going to be nurses or doctors. I can't do that job, can't watch all those people injured. Can't do it. Some of us are going to be all kinds of different things. And there's going to be ways for you to serve in that community, in that group that I will never have the opportunity to do. Maybe you're a plumber. I don't get to talk to plumbers except for when my toilet plugs up. But you get to talk to plumbers all day long. Maybe you're a truck driver. I don't ever get to talk to truck drivers. You get to talk to truck drivers all day long. We all have a spot. We all have a purpose and a way that we can make things better.

All right, Reflection for this week. Am I spending enough quality time with God on the Sabbath for him to rebuild me? This takes a minute. That's why God put the whole day out there to do it with. You can't do this with a 5 minute devotional every morning. It's not enough time with God. I'll be honest with you. I have a love hate relationship with those devotional books because we read a page and think, that's it. I'm good. I don't think so. It's okay. Reading a page is okay. It's good. But it needs to be more than reading a page.

Challenge. Look for ways to SHINE this week. Okay. Look for ways to shine. Doesn't have to necessarily be a lot of money. Doesn't necessarily have to be a lot of time. But how can you make a difference in somebody's life? Maybe your neighbor needs a ride to the grocery store or help with the yard work or whatever. There's a million ways you can do this. We want to hear your stories.

Let's pray real quick. Heavenly Father, thank you so much, Lord, for what you're doing in our lives. Thank you so much for how much you want us to be better that you made a whole solar system with a day off that we would have the opportunity to spend with you. We can't get too busy and distracted because you built a day for us to do it. Lord, help us to take that. Help us to run with that, to embrace that for what it is. Lord, you love us so much that it's almost hard to comprehend. I don't understand how somebody gives up heaven to come here, but I'm sure glad you did. Lord, help us to just show just a fraction of that love to the people around us, our family members, to our workmates, to our neighbors, to the people that are sometimes difficult to love. Help us to be more like you. In Jesus name, amen.