Well, if you missed last week, we started a conversation, I would say, about rest.

You need to go back and watch that sermon that says, enter God's rest,

because that is the theological background behind the sermon that I'm about to preach,

connecting the word Sabbath, that we would make every effort to enter into God's rest. So the title for the sermon is Sabbath. Make every effort.

Make every effort. The word Sabbath is the Hebrew word for Shabbat, which means to stop, quite literally.

And honestly, up until a few years ago, I thought that Sabbath was primarily

meant for Jewish people. And the only context that I had for Sabbath at all was that Chick-fil-A

closed on Sundays, and God seemed to bless them. That was about it, with heavenly chicken and

then a lot of money. So it made sense to me that Sabbath, like that was kind of it. Or I grew up in a

church tradition where it felt like all of Sabbath was just make sure you attend church and then master the post-church nap. Some of you all know what I'm talking about. You're really good at it. Where you wake up and you're like in another dimension after church. Like that's my whole entire context related to Sabbath. And what I realize is that so much of my

backing in the church was what I would call all about orthodoxy, which is good. All of Paul's

letters start with orthodoxy. But when it came to orthopraxy, to making every effort to practice

the ways of Jesus, I found in my life that I was severely lacking. And I found in my life that,

typically speaking, most of the orthodox thoughts that I had meant that theoretically, if I was

a Christian, what that meant is that I would one day pass a cosmic quiz about doctrine in heaven,

and I'd be good. Like my whole thought process was all about that. When in actuality, if you read the early

church and you read the New Testament, what you see really early on is that they were followers of

the way, meaning a way of life. So here at this church, we talk about a radical discipleship that we're

inviting you into. And most of the time, what that looks like is so much more

about a way of life. We call it a cultural tide that when you come to this church, you will notice

that there are certain things that are different. There's distinctions. There's something about the

way of life that you're invited into. And our hope is that you'd be swept up by that tide.

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