For many years I worked in information systems, which is a polite way of saying I was a slave to computers. I had some good jobs, but every one of them included the expectation that no matter when  computer decided to throw up, I was to come running and clean up the mess. I have done a lot of searches for jobs that use computer skills, and almost every one has the same requirement. Be available 24/7.

In her book Practicing Our Faith, Dorothy Bass writes, “We need Sabbath, even though we doubt that we have time for it.” Those of us who work in today’s fast-paced businesses know that feeling. It isn’t just the technical support teams who work round the clock. It hits everyone. Single mothers with two jobs. Fathers who work for advancement so they can pay for college for their children. Mothers who give themselves to a career and a family simultaneously. The recent upswing in work-at-home options have only added another layer of stress to busy lives. It appears that there is no sacred space any more where someone can truly rest.

On Mount Sinai, God wrote his rules for people on stone tablets, and the third was about rest.
Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

This statement sounds like a real blessing. Imagine how it sounded to the Israelits who had just escaped from Egypt. They were accustomed to be bossed around all day every day, with hardly a minute for themselves or their families. Suddenly they were given one day out of every seven to be at peace. Nobody worked. What a beautiful gift.

Jewish history is full of people who looked at that beautiful gift and made it an onerous burden. They devoted a great deal of time and energy to calculating exactly what constituted work and what might be considered rest. Women were reduced to the necessity of checking dishwater (it was okay to wash dishes used for meals on Sabbath) for seeds. They needed to be sure they did not throw out seeds along with dishwater, lest a seed germinate, thereby incurring guilt for farming on the Sabbath. Thus people contrived to make God’s gift of rest a burden.

Christian history is full of a record of similar arguments. Christians worry that we aren’t really observing Sabbath at all, because we worship on Sunday, resurrection day. So some Christians decided to worship on Saturday, and throw theological stones at the rest of us. Most Christians think we should worship on Sunday, but they worry that we might have too much fun. Frivolity would be unseemly on the Lord’s day. Some get very disturbed about our society, a culture in which stores are open 24 hours and people may very well work on a schedule that includes Sunday, with some other day off for rest.

Martin Luther wisely observed that we are silly to get all hung up on the day of the week. God ordained for us a day of rest for every seven. We don’t have a calendar record of the day God supposedly rested, so we don’t really know what day Sabbath is anyway. What’s more, as sinners saved by grace through the blood of Jesus, we just can’t be expected to submit to a Pharisaical interpretation of God’s words. The God who sent his son to die for our sins on the cross would simply not want his children imprisoned in a legalistic calendrical prison. Jesus said that he came to fill the law full, he overflowed all the Pharisaic legalism and set us free. Free to enjoy the gift of rest God ordained for us. Free to worship any day, every day, Monday, if that is how it works out.

Jesus thought we were confused about the Sabbath, too. One Sabbath day he visited a synagogue where there was a woman with a terrible condition. She was bent over so far that she could not see anything but the ground. She had endured this condition for eighteen years. Jesus healed her right in the synagogue, and she stood up straight. People got very excited about it and the whole ritual of the synagogue was ruined. The president of the synagogue told Jesus, “You have six days of the week to do your healing. What made you think you had to heal this woman on the Sabbath?” Jesus said that the people needed to relax a bit. It was okay to do good on the Sabbath, even if it upset the routine a bit.

God set us free from sin, and he set us free from silly semantic arguments about when and how we rest. God loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for us, and God wants us to know the joy of work and the joy of rest. He does not want us tied in knots trying to figure out how to relax. God’s Ten Commandments Rock!

 My cell phone service provider is Virgin Mobile. When I have any occasion to call customer service, I am greeted by a recording that says, “Virgin Mobile customers, you rule!” I like that greeting. It predisposes me to believe that someone will actually listen to my problem and help me solve it.

Most of us like the feeling that people defer to us. It is the cardinal principle of customer service, in fact, to make customers believe that it is all about them. The greatest challenge of any part of public relations, including customer service, is to make it appear that the only rule is, “The customer is always right,” while enforcing company policy in ways that drive profits.

God doesn’t need profits. In fact, he doesn’t need anything at all. When we understand this truth about God, we are prepared to understand his first rule for everyone: “You shall have no other gods.” [Exodus 20:3] This rule sounds pretty arrogant and exclusive, but like all the other Ten Commandments, when you understand it, it rocks!

Job was a man who had been faithful to God all his life. At one time, he was the richest man in his country. He had a wife, seven sons and three daughters. One day, thieves stole all Job’s wealth, and his children all died in a freak windstorm. All these things happened in one day! Shortly thereafter Job was struck by a disease that covered his body with boils. He was so miserable that his wife suggested he curse God and die. She thought God was vindictive because he wanted everyone to worship him and abandon all the other gods. She obviously expected that when Job cursed God, God would strike him dead. Under the circumstances she thought being dead would be better than being alive.

As if his wife were not discouraging enough, Job was visited by three men claiming to be his friends. They spent hours trying to persuade Job to confess what he had done to deserve all this tragedy. I have had friends like this. When I lost a job for no reason I could discern, a friend tried to tell me that my whole problem was a lack of faith. She assured me that if I had simply had more faith, God would not have let this happen. It was all my fault! Job’s friends preached that same sermon.

My friend and Job’s friends were really saying that money and property are gods. They preached that if you have money and property, you have your god. If money and property depart, your god has abandoned you. You should feel very hurt if money and property keep company with other people and not with you. People who use lies and fraud to take money from others and gather it to themselves demonstrate that money is their god. They give all their allegiance to money. Government can establish state gods of money and property. You see it when government takes money and property from those who have it and gives it to those who don’t. It should surprise nobody when such government leaders skim money and property off for themselves as it passes through the government’s hand, because money and property are their gods.

There are other gods. Some people cling to intellectual achievement. Others worship their own families. Some sacrifice everything to the god “popularity” or “celebrity” or “prestige.” You can tell when someone worships a god. If a person worships popularity, that person will wear clothes she hates and put up with people she despises in order to be popular.  People expect to give up something for a god, but they expect to get something, too. Most people act as if worship were half of a transaction akin to buying underwear; they pay their god worship and praise, and the god dispenses all their heart’s desires.

Job recognized that everything he possessed was God’s gift. In fact, on the day he lost his wealth and his children, his first reaction was to worship God and acknowledge that everything he ever had possessed was always God’s.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.    Job 1:21

However, when loss of health followed loss of wealth and family, even Job wondered what was going on. He cried out,

Oh, that I knew where I might find him,that I might come even to his dwelling? I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.  Job 23:3-5

God didn’t speak in support of Job’s friends. God did answer Job. God’s answer to Job is his answer to each of us who wonders why God is so selfish, wanting all the worship and praise for himself. God said,

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! 

Later God said,

Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? Job 32:4-5, 19-20

In other words, God pointed out to Job that only the creator of all things, seen and unseen, knows the answers to these questions. Who deserves our worship and praise more than the one who was able to say the word “Light!” and light came into being? He doesn’t owe us anything. We owe him everything.

After that, God told Job’s friends that they needed to ask Job to pray for them, because they had not spoken properly about God as Job did. They had consistently suggested that Job make up for his mistake, whatever it was, in order to manipulate God into returning all his property. Instead, Job completely let go of his ownership of the property and laid himself before God. Instead of trying to manipulate God, Job asked to get to know Him.

Job honored God when he cried out, “I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.” He asked for what God wanted – relationship. He showed respect for God and promised to listen to God. Job did not scorn God for failing to do what he (Job)  wanted. Instead he humbled himself and promised to listen to what God said to him.

Paul said it another way. He was preaching in Athens two thousand years ago, explaining to Greeks who served a multitude of gods why they should worship the God who created all things. He said, “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. …In him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:24-25, 28

In other words, all that Hubble stuff? God did that. Mount Everest and Antarctica? DNA and mitochondria? Whales and orangutans? Mushrooms and amoebae? God did it all. There is nothing greater than God. All the other little gods are merely dolls. Fakes. We cannot trust them, we cannot turn to them for help, and we cannot be blessed by them. They are complete frauds.

Why does God demand complete, single-minded faith and worship? Because he is God. He made everything, he knows how it all works, and he is in charge. God rules! That’s all there is to say about that.