A Cure for Family Fatigue Dr. Ed Bonniwell This morning we are beginning a family series and todays message is entitled A Cure for Family Fatigue.  Now I want you to work with me for just a moment; because after all a sermon really is, in effect a kind of self surgery as it were, that we do on ourselves.  I want to begin by asking you this question.  Last Monday morning, when you arrived at work, were you exhausted, tired?  I mean when you got there!  How many times this past month have you over disciplined your child because you were tired?   And thus, it happened because you had a short fuse and you were in bad temperament.  Do you find that you go to bed at night tired and awaken the next morning feeling even more weary and exhausted? You know back in the 1960s, the early 1960s, there was a noted Christian Psychologist by the name of Paul Turniea (sp?)  He was asked what he thought would be the number one problem that Americans would face by the turn of century.  He answered that it would be the problem of fatigue.  A number of years ago I cut out an article from Time Magazine  dated December 17, 1990 entitled The Sleep Gap subtitled too much to dotoo little rest.  And heres what one expert had to say, Most Americans no longer know what it feels like to be fully alert and rested.  They go through everyday, seven days a week at a frantic pace and the long term effect is that theyre in a kind of twilight-zone, wherein; their eyes are wide open but their brain is partly shutdown . So says Dr. William Dimment (sp?), Director of Sanford Universitys Sleep and Fatigue Center.  His overall assessment, Americans are bushed.        Can we really talk?  Are you bushed?  Physically beat?  Talk to anyone now days for more than five minutes and youll begin to hear people say things like Well you know I just feel so tired;  Im run down;  Im really in need of rest;  I feel exhausted;  I just wish I could get some time off to myself.  Even Billy Graham a few years ago was asked, what he wanted to do when he arrived in heaven?  Interestingly enough he answered, Oh, the first thing I want to do is sleep a hundred years.  And you know we all feel it.  Modern life has us on the run.  How often I have said it from this pulpit?  That the new holiness is busyness and/or busyness is the new holiness.  Everything is so complicated, so physically draining, so emotionally flattening.  Its like were caught up in some maddening undertow.  Life is moving at a pace that most of us can hardly cope with.  Can we really talk?  Im not sure its going to get better.  I dont think its going to slow down for us.  Our minds are in overdrive, our hands shake, our blood pressure soars.  And worst of all, we are tired and hurried people and were raising tired and hurried kids.        Chuck Swindoll is a name that all of you know.  He tells of an earlier time in his life when he was in backwash of too many commitments, and he was sort of running on the ragged edge.  So tired and exhausted he would fly into town, hed be home for several days, be down at the church late at night while home; then back on the airplane, speaking here and there and yonder.  He said that he found himself  just choking down his food, getting irritated at the slightest intrusions and by the way, can I point this out? When your response to something is totally out of proportion to the stimuli, then you know that youre on the edge emotionally speaking.  Well, one evening Chuck says that his daughter, (very young at the time) Colleen wanted to tell him something important that had happened to her that day at school.  And she said, Daddy, I want to tell you something, and I will tell you really fast.  Realizing her frustration, he said to her, Honey, you can tell me.  You dont have to tell me really fast.  Say it slowly.  Says Swindoll,  I never forgot her answer.  OK Daddy, then listen slowly.        You know, fatigue does this, but not only to our family life but to ourselves.  There was a famous doctor over in Switzerland many years ago.  Who conducted a series of experiments that caught the attention of the world.  The experiments had to with oxygen and the human body.  And he discovered that our bodies expend more oxygen in a day of toil than they recover in a night of rest.  This scientist went on to argue scientifically, that a weekly day of rest is necessary in order to restore the cumulative loss of oxygen from our six days of labor.  Then a British doctor by the name of Sir James C. Brown, picked up on that same study.  Who was into treating folks for wide variety and array of nervous disorders.  He found that by prescribing long periods of rest that the patients improved significantly, quite apart from their usual therapy sessions.  Then he made this amazing statement,  Rest its self is now being penned by many of my colleagues for the kind of nervous disorders were seeing.  Prescribed periods of rest.  What we are really doing, and really, get this Is prescribing Sundays in-a-rears.        I believe that one big cure for a lot of family fatigue, might just be found in  our reclaiming our Sundays in-a-rears.  Let me tell you what Ive done.  I have recently reached into my theological storage bin, as it were, and I pulled from my old dusty shelf all of my notions about Sabbath keeping and I have reconsidered them.   Admittedly, I think this morning that Im on to something.  Now for a lot of years, any mention of Sabbath keeping, more or less curled my theological toes.   Thats Old Testament.  I would tell myself.  Thats law.  Were under a whole different dispensation.  That doesnt apply to us.  After all Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  You know technically speaking, on this side of our dispensation Sunday celebrates the resurrection of our Lord.  Not rest from labors, or even deliverance from Egyptian bondage, as the Sabbath once did.  So as believers were free to love Christ and do what we want (after church of course).  And we do, except a lot of our leisure on Sundays is something we tend to go at with a vengeance so that it becomes a day that unfolds like a Chevy Chase vacation.  Now you know Im telling the truth.  For a lot of Christian folks come Sunday night they dont go to bed, I mean, they just collapse.  Tired, worn to a frazzle, only to begin another week that will only heighten their sense of extreme weariness.  So I think a return to some degree of old fashioned Sabbath keeping, might just be what many of us need.       You know my Grandfather Bonniwell (that Ive spoken of frequently from this pulpit) was a Sabbath keeper.  Now I was raised across the Bay in Hampton, and my parents were members of a mainline denomination.  I had a Grandfather who was such an exciting man, sort of a combination John Wayne/Billy Graham.  He had a great heart for God and loved life.  But he was a Sabbath keeper and on Sundays, I mean you didnt do anything. That was hard for me as a  young child.  I grew to love the way they lived, their lifestyle and Sabbath keeping.  By the time I was eight or nine years of age I didnt have any problem with it.  But they were Holiness Methodist Sabbath Keepers.  Listen They did not cook on Sundays.  They didnt play Parcheesi.  They didnt watch television. They didnt do the budgets.  They didnt wash the car.  They didnt hunt or fish.  In fact all they did was sit on the daven-port, read the Bible, pray, eat, take naps, visit with family, and you ate cold cuts.  There was no cooking.  It was tough getting adjusted to that.  But you know, at my seasoned age I see more wisdom in that then ever before.  And I have to make a confession here, Im not good at leisure.  Especially on Sundays.  Normally, my adrenaline is flowing to the point that its Tuesday morning before I get calm again.  But I want to improve and I want to grow in this area.  Donald McCloud at Princeton used to say, Preach to yourself and youll preach to others.  This sermon is for me.  I need to tell me that, because when I get home my wife is going to tell me that.       Would you take your Bibles and look at Ephesians 5:1 please.  This is a fascinating verse and it actually means what it says, as does the entire word of God, for that matter.  But Ephesians 5:1, look at this these are the words of the apostle Paul he says, that we are to be imitators of God.   Are you up for that?  Can that really be right?  Oh yes!   The imperative reads, Ephesians 5:1  Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children  Now thats a very strange command. Be imitators of God.  Now, the Greek word here for imitators, is a word from which we get our word mimic.  W.E. Vine says that this verb is always used in the continuing sense, suggesting a constant habit or practice.  In other words, this is neither a passing thought nor a once-in-a-blue-moon experience.   The practice of our being people who mimic God is to become our daily habit or practice.  We need to do what He does.  We need to model His style and that means, that we need to mimic Him in His pattern of rests. You know, long before the law was given at Sinai with the instituting of the Mosaic Sabbath, God, Himself observed the Sabbath. In fact, if you can get there and you were Baptist, youd already be there.  Genesis 2, look at verse 1 it says, On the seventh day God rested from all of his work.  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.        Now if we are to mimic Him, then that means, that we must rest also.  Even in the decalog, the Ten Commandments, the great emphasis of the fourth commandment is on total rest.  Nothing in the fourth commandment is said really, about worship or religious observances, although such things are certainly implicit.  You see this is a very important emphasis that we need now more than ever, the Sabbath.  And by that I mean our Sunday of course, ought to be a day that helps to recreate us.  It ought to be a day, wherein we are rejuvenated.         One of the basic principals of personality, whether divine or human, is the need.  Listen to this The need for rhythmic alternation, rhythmic alternation between work and rest.  God worked creatively for six days then rested on the seventh day.  This fourth commandment was written not only on tablets of stone; but its also written on the tablets of our hearts and bodies, our emotions and minds, indeed its written into every cell of the human body.  Because church look at me when you think about it there is a rhythm, undeniably, a rhythm to all creation and life.  Tides rise and fall.  Day alternates with night.  The seasons change.  The dry season, the wet season, the hot season, the cold season.  Nature has a rhythm.  A time for fruitfulness of harvest and a time for rest of long barren winters.  The same is true for us.  We need it.        This is interesting from history.  After the French Revolution a tremendous anti-God and anti-church spirit settled in on that nation.  The French people (for the most part) severed ties with religion in any formal sense, and weekly Sunday observance was abolished.  A decree went out, that one out of every ten days was to be designated as a day of rest. But this experi-ment was so disastrous that, despite strong anti-religious feelings, government officials had to reinstate one day out of every seven as a day of rest, because the health of the nation was at stake.  Isnt that interesting?  I think thats interesting.  You see, were not getting the rest that we need.  I think this is fascinating.         Take your Bibles and turn back to that Old Testament passage, there in Jeremiah, that was read a few moments ago, Jeremiah 17.  And as we arrive here (just by way of background) the whole nation was in deep sin.  And what does God do?  What is the remedy?  You see at this point there was still a remedy.  Now ultimately, the nation sinned, and sinned, and sinned; until according to 2 Chronicles 36, there was no remedy.  But in those forty  years, wherein Jeremiah ministered, there came this amazing word of hope from God.  You know God is a God who speaks hope, you know that?  So the nation was in terrible sin and God tells them,  Keep the Sabbath.   Now you go back and read Jeremiah 17:19-27 and youll discover that, that is the remedy.  You say, Thats it?  Yes!  He says, You keep the Sabbath.  Now the first time I taught in an expository way through this great book, I was absolutely baffled because the profit doesnt say repent.  He doesnt say go and remove your idols. He doesnt say stop sacrificing on every high hill.  He doesnt call for them to end the slaughter of their babies to foreign gods.  They were throwing them in the fire and offering to the heathen god Molech.  He doesnt say dissolve your foreign alliances or depend upon me more.  Jeremiah simply points to the Sabbath and he says to the nation:  Keep the Sabbath holy.   You wonder, how could Sabbath keeping be the pivot on which the fate of the nation turned?  What I discovered is that the Lord knew that if they would start keeping the Sabbath outwardly, listen look at me that it would change them inwardly.  Outward reformation will set us up for internal regeneration.  Let me give you a principle.  If you start doing what is right, ultimately you will feel right.  Now I know what some are thinking, But Jesus broke the Sabbath. we protest.  Indeed he did, but He broke a man made Sabbath.  For a hundred and fifty years prior to Jesus birth the rabbis had so trivialized the Sabbath with their numerous regulations, and strictures that the Sabbath was impossible to keep.  In fact, listen to this the rabbis had created over five hundred and twenty-one rules and regulations that governed what you could and could not do on the Sabbath.  Those rules meant absolutely nothing to Jesus.  He just blew them off.  Youve got to be kidding?  It didnt matter to Him a bit.  It earned him the contempt of a lot of religious leaders.  But this is the important thing.  He never broke Gods Sabbath.  I wish I had more time, Id love to tell you why.  I can only  point to Matthews gospel that tells us that Jesus said that he did not come to abolish or destroy the law but to fulfill it.  He had broken the rabbinical law but not the Biblical law of His Father.         Now, we can be a techni-crowd about all this and we can say, Well, the Sabbaths distinctive was rest, a cessation of labor, and the Lords day distinctive is worship of the Risen Lord.  Other than that, were free to do what we please.  So we can buy groceries, and fight the traffic, and go to ball games, and restaurants, and fuss with the family budget, wash the car, go fishing, and take the kids here, there and yonder, run to the mall, and so forth.   Following church for the next nine or ten hours, you can just do what you want and go at any kind of pace.  After all thats our right, thats our Christian liberty.  You know what?  Thats and option.  That is truly a part of our Christian liberty, as I understand the New Testament.  As I read the New Testament (judiciously speaking) one is free to do what one wants on Sunday.  But there is this case that can be made for rest.  That our Lords day does in fact, gather up some of the nuances of the old Sabbath.  I think it does.   Of course, you and I are the ones that have to work that out.         You cant go to school where I did and not learn about John Calvin.  John Calvin of course, was the great reformation leader of the 16th Century.  Now, most of us tend to think of John Calvin as a very austere and humorless individual, and thats unfortunately a wrong image.  He spent all of his Sundays there in Geneva, of course, proclaiming and teaching the word of God.  He was a very effective preacher.  Interestingly enough,  Calvin spent every afternoon among the people of God playing Skittles!  Do you know what Skittles is?  It was an ancient form of bowling.  Now Calvin was not a Sabbatharian, he would not have liked life with my Grandfather.  Calvin played on his Sundays and he rejoiced in his Christian liberty, and he died fifty-five years young.  My Grandfather rested on his Sundays, celebrated the Sabbath, kept it tenaciously, lived to be ninety and he didnt die tired.          Now Saints, just between us chickens I think a judicious approach to Sabbath observance would be just the thing that would assure a lot of family fatigue.  But hey, its your life, its your family and its your life span.  So, am I laying something on you this morning?  Preacher says, I got to a go home and sit on the davenport, and I cant do anything.  No Im not saying that.  But I am asking you to really think about it?  And to think about how fatigue maybe abbreviating the life abundant that Jesus wants you to have.  How fatigue may be having a deleterious effect on the relationships in your very home.  How fatigue may be facilitating a hurried rushed spirit in your life.  Would you be willing to think about that?  We need a Sabbath rest, because life is meaner, and more demanding than ever.  You think about that!   Amen.   '      Let us pray  Father how we love you.  Sometimes Father were just too busy to pray.  Too overrun with demands to carve out any time to serve you, let alone rest.  And the truth is Father, were really not into rest as you have called us to rest.  Lord we do want to be imitators of God we want to mimic you in your rest.  Father, help us to think on these thoughts and to sort it out for ourselves.  Most of all, may we live in a way, that carries the approbation of the Holy Spirit.  So that as our days unfold, we may live in them with vigor of spirit and strength of heart, because we have adequately given our human temple sufficient rest.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord.   Amen