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THE RABBI'S SECRET RECIPE

In her new book, The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life, radio superstar Dr. Laura Schlessinger shares this essay from an unknown poet:

"To realize the value of ONE YEAR, Ask a student who has failed his final exam. To realize the value of ONE MONTH, Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby. To realize the value of ONE WEEK, Ask the editor of a weekly newspaper. To realize the value of ONE DAY, Ask a daily wage laborer who has ten kids to feed. To realize the value of ONE HOUR, Ask a couple waiting for the wedding ceremony. To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, Ask a person who has missed the train. To realize the value of ONE SECOND, Ask a person who has survived an accident. To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics."

She then tells about one of her radio listeners named Renay, who made this confession over the airwaves:

"I feel like my problem with time is that I have gotten into a bad habit of filling every minute of my time with something I think absolutely must be done and now I will not allow myself down time without feeling like I should be doing something. I am always exhausted from overworking myself; I am cranky and stressed out and not much fun to be with."

Well, as I shared yesterday, more and more and more people around the world are discovering or RE-discovering the cure for Renay's dilemma. And that cure has been around for a few thousand years; it's called the Sabbath. Dr. Schlessinger, as a brand-new orthodox Jew, keeps the Bible Sabbath, of course, from sundown Friday evening to sundown Saturday evening. In fact, she leads into this book chapter — the fourth chapter, of course — by quoting word-for-word from the Sabbath commandment found in Exodus chapter 20. Here it is:

"Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it [or keep it holy]. Six days shall you work and accomplish all your work; but the seventh day is Sabbath to the Lord, your God; you shall not do any work — you, your son, your daughter, your servant, your animal, and the stranger within your gates — for in six days The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day. Therefore, The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it."

And there it is. There's #4 in the Ten Commandments, and people from all walks of life, all persuasions, are finding here in 2001 that you just cannot ignore this commandment and still be a happy person. You simply cannot do it. Without the gift of Sabbath rest, you're going to work yourself to death, shop yourself to death, shred yourself emotionally, spend yourself physically, and wear yourself out mentally.

But today I'd like to be just a little bit bold and point you and me both to the closing line in that fourth commandment. Because we've chosen as our title for the week these words: THE MISSING SPICE CALLED SABBATH. So let's go back to Exodus chapter 20, verse 11, and read the final line again:

"Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it."

Now friend, what are the ramifications of that statement? God took a thing called time — a day, a 24-hour period — and He added something to that day. The Bible tells us He blessed it. Now if God blesses a thing like a temple, we consider that something special has happened. That temple becomes holy. That's why all of us endeavor to be reverent, to act holy when we're in church. When young mothers brought their children to Jesus, we read that He blessed them. And any parent would consider that something real, something with spiritual tangible-ness happened whenever Jesus blessed a kid. In the Old Testament, old, nearly blind Isaac gave a blessing to Jacob instead of to Esau, and things were very different for those two boys. A blessing put on something by God is real, friend; it makes a difference. And here in Exodus 20, God Himself states that as the Creator of this world, He was putting a special blessing on a DAY, a gift of time.

What's more, according to Scripture, God made that seventh day holy. He "sanctified" it, says one version. Or He "hallowed" it. In the Clear Word, it's put this way — God speaking:

"That's why I blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy, so you can rest and rejoice with Me."

Notice something important here with me. God doesn't say here, as He speaks these ten statements down from Sinai, that "(quote) I am doing this right now. That ‘I am blessing right now' the Sabbath." No, He refers to Himself as Creator, and speaks here of having blessed the Sabbath in the past tense.

All right then, let's track back to the beginning. Genesis chapter two. God has just finished creating this world in six days. "And the evening and the morning were the first day," and the second, and the third, and so on. But now He's done. In six days He's finished. So what happens next. This is in the very second chapter of the entire Bible: Genesis chapter two.

"By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work." Now, was He tired? Of course not. It would be foolish to think so. Nevertheless, God rested. But now here's the next line of Scripture: "And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done."

So here we have a very wonderful gift, which had been given the unique treatment by God. It's not a place, which might be hard to get to. It's not a thing, which you might lose. It's not a bag of money, which you might spend and then not have anymore. No, this is a gift of time. A day, which, no matter where you are on the planet, simply comes to you. You don't go to it; God brings it right to you, to your doorstep. And because God Himself, who never sleeps, wasn't actually tired, we can know, friend, that this was a gift meant for us: for you and for me. Jesus Himself said so 4,000 years later, telling His accusers: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." But let's not lose sight of the very clear truth that God ADDED the miracle of blessing to this day.

What's more, He added the gift, the miracle, of divine holiness to this 24-hour period of time. Right there in Eden, He made that seventh day holy. At Sinai He reaffirmed that He had done so. The seventh day had a blessing to it; it was different from the other days. It was hallowed, sanctified, set apart, just like the holy ground around the burning bush or the holy ground at your church, where you adopt, and rightly so, an attitude of holiness.

I have a friend who's a medical doctor — kind of a breakthrough thinker and lecturer in the field of preventive medicine, a healthy lifestyle. Dr. Sang Lee is his name. He too is a born-again Christian who observes this seventh-day Sabbath. And I remember a public presentation he made once where he said very openly: "This seventh day is simply different. It's like a day that has had a million volts plugged into it. True, the sun is still shining and the sky is blue on the other days. But that seventh day is holy; it's blessed. The Sabbath is a million-volt day. If you plug into that seventh day you will be the recipient of those million volts." In a positive sense, of course. (No pun intended.)

I mentioned yesterday the songwriter artist, Michael Card, who today celebrates with his family the seventh day Sabbath, the Bible Sabbath. And he's fully aware of many theological arguments and discussions and issues that swirl around the question of when a Christian ought to worship and observe God's day. But for this dedicated Presbyterian believer, it came down to the simple fact that the Bible describes God blessing the seventh day. Back in Eden God did something to that day, that crowning work during Creation Week, that wasn't done for some other day. And for Michael Card, that plain, uncomplicated truth is enough to change his life.

He confesses as well — and I hope this isn't an inappropriate sharing of a quiet secret — that his good friend Steve Green, also a hugely popular Christian recording artist, now is keeping the Sabbath each Saturday. And he muses about another singer, whose name I won't divulge here.

"I don't know if [he] does," he admits. But then he adds this: "I know that the desire of his heart is to live biblically, so if it's not an important part of his life, it will be."

In his outstanding book, The Ten Challenges, psychologist Leonard Felder relates a traditional story from the Talmud, where Rabbi Judah makes a Sabbath banquet for Antoninus, the Roman emperor. Now, the food is served cold, because of the orthodox tradition of not cooking, working at lighting a fire during the Sabbath. But it's an incredible feast.

Sometime later both Antoninus and this Rabbi Judah are guests at another banquet, where there are both hot and cold dishes. Everything's good, but the emperor admits to Judah: "Your food was really better. Something was missing here."
And the rabbi tells him: "This banquet lacked a certain spice."
"Well, tell me where to get it," the king demands. "Anywhere in my kingdom. Spare no expense."

And the rabbi looks directly at him. "The missing spice is the Sabbath, and it cannot be bought."