God's World Created: Seasons and Rhythms

Preached by Jaren Singh on 3/17/24

Transcript

0:09

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We're startup church. We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together. And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more. You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that. We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today. Have you ever done something or had something in your life that, uh, that was unnatural, but after a series of time, it just became the norm. I think so right now we've, uh, in, in mine and Bianca's room, we, we are in our house. We have an open room right now that we're going to make into like a place that we can, uh, one, it's going to be, I don't know if this is going to work. It's going to be a kid's playroom and also a place where we, uh, where we study and we have like a little office. So I'm, I'm slightly skeptical saying it out loud in our heads. It makes sense. This room, this room though is, uh, we, we have a, the light switch turns on and the light turns on. The issue is when the light turns on, the fan turns on high blast. Uh, Madison at some point found our little like remote switch and changed it so it turns on high blast. For a while she hit the remote and now when we have the remote, it, uh, it takes a random battery and, uh, and the battery's dead. And so whenever the light is on in this room, the fan is on high blast and that's great in a 90 degrees in the summer. It's not very good in 30 degrees or 20 degrees in the winter and this, this, it's a, it's a normal part of our life. It's pretty uncomfortable, but it's become, it's become the norm. When I, when we were in, when we were in college, uh, and, and then coming out of college, we had a, some hand-me-down on hand-me-down coffee maker and we would have the, the college students over frequently and we would make them coffee. And I knew this coffee maker for whatever reason, the drip didn't go like fully down all the way. So I had to only fill it a third of the way. And so I had to make three third cups of coffee, uh, and then it would turn into one full cup of coffee. But I couldn't put all of the water in the basin and then start it. It had to go a little bit, get drained down and then, you know, it was so, uh, it's unnatural, but it became the norm, right? Uh, I, you know, I bet you, you could go on and on. You know, when we, uh, we've had great car luck over this last, uh, three years. I was going to say knock on wood, but just pray to God, I guess is the better response. Uh, but we, we, we had a car that, uh, if you were driving it, it would get in certain seasons where in the winter it would drive really well for whatever reason. In the summer, there was something with the O2 sensor and whatnot, and I just, I'm not good with, I don't understand all the intricacies of it. Uh, we, we ended up putting more money into that car than we, uh, than, than our monthly payment was. I did the math on it at some point, but if, if we would idle for too long, if we were parked and we, and if we stopped and we idled for too long, the car would just shut off. And so we knew leading up to this, there's a, there's a stop, there's a light. We just got to, we just got to coast for a little bit. Like we'll make it, we'll make it coast and don't you dare hit the gas super hard. You just got to slowly and it'll jump, but it'll get going as long as you don't fully stop. Uh, yeah, well the whole upstream downstream, the cat, we changed the cat and then we just got rid of the car. It was a man. I hope it's still driving for somebody really well, but it was, it was a $2,000 fix just to sell the car. Yeah, yeah. Well, we were, we were 26 and five, so, uh, you know this, you see, uh, this, this tree that's growing, it's unnatural to become normal for so long that it just, just kind of, it kind of works at this point. I bet you there's dozens of things if you were to actually sit down and think that are a little bit quirky in your life that, uh, you, this works only when, or this works if, or this light switch turns on if you do it three times and there, there are things and, and unless we have an unlimited budget, that's going to be normal. That's probably going to be a normal part of our, our lives, uh, from now until we die. Uh, but spiritually, I think it's worth considering though, that there, I put before you, there's probably things in your life spiritually, or there's a way that you've operated spiritually that works kind of, or works for the most part. Yeah. The, the goal in, uh, in, in all of this though is not just to survive. It's not just to, it's not just to make it to the end. It's to, uh, be able to run all the way through the finish line as a sprint. Uh, you know, it's, some people say that, that spirituality is not a, uh, it's not a sprint. It's a marathon. Um, somebody else said, I sprint marathons and so, and, and ultimately that's, that's, that's our goal. You know, we're not going to get there all the way. Uh, but our goal is, is to finish strong. Amen. Amen. So on, on that, I want to talk about our, our spiritual rhythms this, uh, this morning. Why is that something? Well, I would say that for, for many of us, and this is kind of, this is a, you know, an informal straw poll that I've taken, uh, at different points, but I would, I would say maybe some of us love routines and are great at routines, perhaps more of us, uh, either coming out of the young child phase or in the middle of the young child phase. Uh, I just like, there's no such thing as, as rhythms. Uh, my, my rhythm is when my, my kids wake me up and my, and then when I take a nap, that those are when they take a nap, I get 30 minutes, 45 minutes, maybe it's 50 minutes. Who knows? That's my only, that's my only sense of rhythm. Uh, and, and what I'll say is I, I feel personally a, this lesson, I feel a little bit like not scared, but I, I feel insecure sharing this lesson because I realized that rhythms are something that I don't really, I don't naturally enjoy. I've, I've over the last two weeks, listen to, read the Bible, listen to some podcasts, read a little bit more, read, uh, extra biblical sources and I'm like, what, what is it to this rhythm thing? And so I, I feel like it's necessary for me to share it with, with you guys as well. If you're scared, uh, join the club is what I would say. And if you're too excited, then take a breath too. We're, we're in Genesis one. Uh, one thing we have to realize is I don't know what value you put on routines and rhythms, but it's important to note that God puts an enormous value on it so much so that on the first page of the Bible, rhythms are communicated and routines are made. And if God puts that much value on it, then perhaps our gauge of its importance or their importance isn't high enough. It says in verse 14 of Genesis one and God said, let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years and let them and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, the lesser night or the lesser light, excuse me, to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day, right away in Genesis. We see that God decides, I want to order these guys day. You think about how difficult it would be to, and maybe some of this, I realized even as I'm saying it, that if this was the only thing we knew, then we would make it normal. But think about if we were to order, we had no concept of what a week was. We just had no concept and all we were operating is by months. That would be pretty difficult. And you're like, well, this month I'm going to do this thing. Okay. What day of the month? Well, the 14th day of the month, you'd have to get good at math pretty quickly, or you'd have, that's three from now. And, and what about, and it'd be a difficult thing yet. God realized seven days for whatever reason is the, is the perfect amount that I'm going to give these guys. This is enough. They can bite off and chew on it. They can make plans, but they can't make too many plans. The, the, the first part though, that he, that he even talks about is he, uh, that, that we're going to talk about what we're going to do is we're going to look at our seasons, uh, just from the Bible. We're going to look at seasons and we're going to go from like the, the big stuff, like seasons, how they shape a year. Then we're going to go to weeks and then we're going to talk about our daily, uh, routines and rhythms and stuff like that. Amen. Uh, and so the, the first component is sacred seasons. If you, if you do a study of the old Testament and you decided I'm going to look for where the seasons are ordered or there's communication of this is what to do at this time. And this is what to celebrate. You would, you might be pretty, you might be pretty, uh, impressed because there's a lot of things that God organizes his people to do in remembrance of him or remembrance of days, remembrance of, of ideas and things that have occurred. Uh, it says, uh, well, here we go. Well, we'll get there in a moment. Uh, you can, you can reference it here. It's Exodus 23 in verse 14. It says three times a year, you are to celebrate a festival to me, celebrate the festival of the unleavened bread for seven days, eat bread made without yeast. As I commanded you do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv for in that month, you came out of Egypt. No one is to appear before me. Empty handed, celebrate the festival of harvest with the first, first fruits of the crops you sow in your field, celebrate the festival of in gathering at the end of the year. When you gather in your crops from the field, this is, this is, it's, it's a normal part of all of our lives for there to be seasons. And we'll talk about seasons. Oh, this is a difficult season in my life personally, but just think outside that there's seasons that shape and order how we operate and what we do on a day-to-day basis. Uh, you know, in, we've, we've probably talked about this, uh, but in during the winter people in the Midwest kind of hibernate, uh, Dominique can preach on it. How is he's not a fan. He's not a fan of it. He looks down on all of us. We, we hibernate, right? This is, and it may, during the winter, there's less sun. And for whatever reason, God decided there's going to be less sunlight on purpose. It's a time that we, we, we hunker down. It's a little bit colder. We're not out as much. It's a time to spend with our families. It's a time to enjoy, uh, celebrate. There's a bunch of celebrations that are set up between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the new year. And, uh, and if you're in our family, we've, for whatever reason, have a bunch of February and the beginning of March birthdays. And so for about four months, we're just, we're celebrating a lot. And I think there's, there's value in that. God decided to do that on purpose. And then what happens in the spring, there's more joy and there's more hope and we're okay. Now we, now we're ready to do anything by this time. The summer hits people in the Midwest realize we've got two and a half months. Let's go every weekend. We got to do something and, and we're going to invite as many people as possible. We're going to have as many cookouts as possible. I don't know if you guys have already, we've already had, uh, four, I think there's been three or four times where we've eaten brats and by about June, I'm done with brats. But until June, I'm like, yeah, we can have them twice a week. Challenge though, for us is to be mindful of, of what season that we are in and what's going on. Uh, right now Dugan's going to come up and share a little bit. I don't know if you guys realize, maybe you know this, uh, actually I see a lot of green do, uh, today's St. Patrick's day. And what that means for the world generally is let's drink a lot of Guinness and, and Irish whiskey. Uh, but there's, there's more to the story. And so Dugan's going to come up and share, what are we going to pull from it? I think just pull, like there's a mindfulness that we can have. You can come all the way up. Uh, there's a mindfulness that we should have, even as we look at the seasons that are going on around us. Um, Hey folks. Uh, so for those don't know me, my name is Dugan. Um, I'm Irish, my family's Irish. Um, first of all, first of all, actually, I just want to say Dayton again. Like that was amazing. Uh, I absolutely love your heart. I love how much like you've, you've come, you know, uh, and changed. So I'm just so grateful for Dayton. Just want to say that. Um, also I want to start off in, uh, Matthew 28, 19, uh, go therefore and make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the father, the son, the Holy spirit. Now there was one man that really took that to heart to every nation. And that was the man we know as St. Patrick. Now, some of you don't know who he is and I'm going to talk about a bit. So St. Patrick was born actually in England. He wasn't even Irish. He was born in England, uh, into a family of deacons. So part of the Roman Catholic church, uh, in the year three 86 AD. Um, and eventually at the age of 16, he was actually captured by Irish pirates and he was sold into slavery. And for a while he was a slave in Ireland, uh, for his young adult life. And he came to like really grow in knowledge of the way the Irish thought. And six years later, he eventually escaped, uh, his slaveholders and he escaped back to England. And his parents were like, Oh, thank goodness you're back. This and that. Um, you know, you came from the land of savages, this and that. And he was like, well, they're not savages. They're just, they don't understand. They're, they're, they're just believed in pagan gods. They believed in mythological heroes and kind of these, you know, beings that are creatures that they worshiped and St. Patrick noticed this. And so he had a, he felt a calling from God to go back there and to tell them about Jesus in a way that they wouldn't understand. So his parents were like, no, no, don't do that. But he's like, no, too bad. I'm going anyway. So he, he trained up for a bit in France and then from France, he went back to Ireland as a young man, probably about the age of 25 or so. Um, and he went there and he started telling them about Jesus in the way that they would understand. And he said, look, this Jesus guy, he's like the hero of all heroes. He's above all these other heroes that you guys worship. He is the ultimate hero that you guys have been waiting for. And the Irish took that to heart and they actually converted like really quickly that they understood it. Um, at a time which, you know, like, um, you know, it was medieval times. So like he was able to spread the gospel across Ireland like fairly efficiently, like in the next couple of decades of his life, he was able to spread it all across the Island and had multiple churches and parishes set up. Um, and I think it's just really encouraging just like knowing his story and like knowing that he just being able to spread that word and spread the message like that. Um, and like, to me, I have, you kind of view him as like Irish Paul, you know, like he went from, he went from hating the Irish, like, oh, they're just savages, you know, uh, to then being like one of the biggest catalysts for, um, Irish faith. Uh, so, uh, but yeah. And so I guess just take this time today to like recognize who St. Patrick is, uh, as much as America has unfortunately changed the holiday into a drinking holiday because, oh, it's an Irish holiday. That much means that we drink. Um, but no, it is, I, to me, I hold a dear in my heart to know that just so many years ago, like God used this man to like just spread so much. And I'm just so thankful for that. So, and, uh, I did write some notes here and then I kind of just glossed over them completely. Um, but yeah. Uh, anyway, I just wanted to share that today. No, the other, the other thing, uh, thanks. Like, I think the point that we gotta be mindful of what's going on around us. Like I, we can create new holidays, but there's certainly there's, there's a number of holidays that there's value in like, let me think, what does this mean for me right now today? Uh, you know, another thing though, is, is that there's, uh, outside of holidays, like outside of us, there's, there's seasons that are going on inside of all of us as well. Uh, it says in Luke 12, uh, Jesus says, he said to the crowd, when you see a cloud rising in the West, immediately you say it's going to rain. And it does. And when the South wind blows, you say it's going to be hot. And it is hypocrites. You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth in the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Jesus is, he's talking about himself that, and he's talking about this group. You guys don't understand what's going on right in front of your faces. You're, you're smart enough. You've been trained and taught enough to see what's going on on the outside, but you're not looking at seasons with a spiritual perspective. The, the, the, the reality is for us, uh, there, there are seasons and there are seasons inside of us. And I think we can feel, uh, we can feel a few things. Uh, one, when I think of seasons and what season am I in? And if I were to ask you, um, it's a question to ask yourself, what, what season are you in? Another, another helpful question to ask is what season are your people in? That's good as well. When I, when I say, what season are you in? Uh, we go, right. Let me think about myself. When I say, what season are your people? And maybe the first question is who are my people? Which is a, which is a good question. Let's say your family and whatever. Two or three other families that are close to you or two or three other groups that are close to you. What, what season are they in? Uh, if I think about only on my end, what season am I in? I get, I can get selfish quickly. Uh, I think about what's going on with everybody and with the, with the small group around me. I think it prompts me to, uh, to, to go out of my way because the reality is if I have to show a little bit of energy and effort, in addition, I've got to spend a little bit more time with this, uh, this, this person, or they have to spend a little bit more time with me. The truth about seasons is they, they do end, uh, and, and seasons then inform how we interact with our group. We have to become those who are able to interpret what's going on spiritually. Uh, that's what he says. Don't you, you can't interpret the present time. Let it not be said of us as Jesus, looking at our church and our life, our lives, that he would say, you don't know how to interpret what's, what's going on. Spiritually. The second thing that we're going to look at, and we're getting a little bit more narrow is worshipful weeks. That this was a longer point. We'll, we'll, uh, we're going to condense the last two here. Um, worshipful weeks. Again, there's a reason why there's the, it's a seven day week. I don't understand exactly why, but God knows it perfectly. Why not eight days? I don't know. God decided. Why not four days? I don't know. Four days would be kind of cool. It might be a two day work week then maybe. Maybe not. Not, not in America. No, certainly not America. Um, it's on the first page of scripture that he decides this is how you're going to spend, this is how I want you to spend your time and, you know, on average, uh, by the time we get to the end of this, for some of us, it'll probably be more like 4,500 weeks, but we've got about 4,000 weeks of our lives. It doesn't sound like very many. It's, it's the right answer though. That is about 76 years. Uh, during that time, uh, we, we have to consider how are we, how are we spending it? The, uh, the, the, the Bible, uh, this is it says right here in Genesis two, thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all the work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Was it, was it tiring for God to create the world? Probably not. I, I'd have an impossible time imagining God being exhausted by, by anything. Uh, he rested though, to show us, this is the importance of rest that even I'm King, I'm ruler. I don't have to do this. I want to show you. So you have no place to stand to say that I have the energy to work every single day, nonstop. You're not going to ever be able to say that because I, who created everything, I'm going to rest. It's not just, it's not just a good idea. God established, he established the Sabbath in the beginning. And then the, the, the truth, uh, because we're humans is that we made a bunch of rules to govern the Sabbath and with these rules, uh, it wasn't, there, there's not rest inside of rules a lot of times. And, uh, and, and, and then Jesus came in and when he says, uh, you know, I've come to, uh, I haven't come to abolish the law. I've come to fulfill it. He's saying, I I'm, I've come to show you guys how to do this in the, in the best possible way. And he says, you guys can come to me and I'll give you rest for your souls. Amen. And so as you, as you think about your day to day, but even week to week rhythm, I want to ask, what does rest look like for you? I wrote these down and I I'll say that these, uh, all three of these, I'm, I'm guilty of it at different points is if you decide I'm going to unwind and rest by watching a documentary about a serial killer, it might not work. If you watch any, if you're, if you decide I'm going to unwind, I'm going to relax by watching any show where, where killing or murder or any kind of sin is normalized. And then perhaps you're not going to leave feeling rested. It shouldn't be a shock though, that when you wake up and you, I'm so tired, maybe, maybe it is from, from what you were consuming last night. We've all been spots to say, I'm going to rest. We got our phones on and then we start scrolling and it's a next video, 10 second video, 30 second video, and then three hours have passed or two hours have passed or the 30 minute block that you decided I'm going to rest have passed. And, and there's no rest that you, that you felt. If the television's always on, if there's always music playing in the background, if your mind always has to be doing something, you might not have to look very far to wonder why you're not well rested. Perhaps we'd feel less exhausted if we were looking for helpful places to rest as opposed to detrimental ones. What are, what are helpful places? I deciding to do nothing is it's almost impossible. I don't know if you guys have tried to just turn off light. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a skill. Is there, is what I, is what I'm learning though. Like, like anything, if you, if I said, go ahead and lift a bunch of weight, you'd say, I can't do that. I'm never going to be able to. But if you started with a little bit of weight, you can add a little bit more the next week, right? Then you get a little bit more of the next week. If I said, we're going to let's, let's pray. Can you pray for 30 minutes without stopping? No, I can't pray for 30. Well, well, you can pray for one minute without stopping next week. You can pray for two. You're not even, you're not even halfway through the year and you got 30 minutes of prayer if you just had a minute, a minute, a minute, a week. It's, it's, it's a skill. And so, so rest then as the world around us is pushing and pressing the rest on a weekly basis, that's a skill. The last component that we're going to look at is daily devotion. The difficulty in, in daily devotion is that we're working, there's, she's fired up about the daily devotion is, is that it's, it's not only a couple of things that, that are comprised of daily devotion is what am I doing throughout my entire day and what am I doing in my focus time with, with God? And so either you might be in either, either camp, maybe you say that throughout the day, I just kind of try to walk with God throughout the day and I pray here and there and I do this here and there. And that's amazing. That's, that's a, that's part of it. Or, and, or maybe you say, no, I don't do that. But when I, when I'm locked in, I'm just, it's me and God time, get that. And I'm done with that. And it charges me up for the day. The truth is we have to, we have to be involved with both. Psalm five, it says in the morning, Lord, you hear my voice in the morning. I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. So when, when does, uh, the, the Psalmist identify that he is walking with God? Well, we could just read that one and say, well, I guess in the morning you can read other Psalms and realize that it's pretty much throughout the entire day. And then this, this difficult, uh, this, this difficult, it's two words. It's a difficult scripture that just says, pray continually. First Thessalonians five, what does, what does your continual walk with God on a daily basis look like? One, one thing I was in, I was impressed with, uh, that I want to share briefly is yesterday I was talking with, with Keith and Dominique and we were talking about trying to kind of setting routines and how are we going to set routines or where, where are we falling short or where, just where are we at? We're taking a litmus test. And, uh, one thing Dominique shared that I was really impressed by is he said, well, every mealtime, uh, me and me and Derek will pray. And I said, oh, great. We do the same thing. We pray for our meals too. He said, no, no, no. We, I just asked him like something. He said, sometimes he doesn't even pray for the food because he's what's happening next. And he's praying for if Laura's coming over, he's praying, oh God, I'm grateful for Laura and I'm excited about Laura. Or if we're going to go to the park later, then he's praying about his excitement to go to the park. And so I said, that's, that's amazing. So you take these, these, these meals that are organized, you make them something that we're continually walking with God, but not just, you know, Madison's prayers, dear God, thanks food. Amen. And, but it's, it's more than that though, is, is what, is what Dominique's communicating. And I said, we're going to, we're stealing it, you know? And, and if we're already going to pray, might as well pray for, for something that's not this, uh, incantation so that we can feel fine about eating, amen. For you and I, as we, as we eat though, might as well pray something serious so that we don't just say this incantation that we can get in the habit of, we can, we can pray real stuff though. Yeah. Amen. Yeah, for sure. Well, how would your life look different? If you assumed that everything was spiritual, if that was your disposition, my assumption is everything's spiritual, everything that occurs in my life is spiritual. How would, how would your, and everything is that's, that's the truth. How would your life look different though? Every, there's nothing by chance. There starts to be a little bit of a game that you can, uh, a fun game that you can play with. God, God, did I trip because you don't want me to go this way? I was walking up the stairs and I'm like, God, did I, did I forget something? Is that why I tripped or is it just because I'm clumsy? You know, I, one of the two, I don't know, or maybe both. And I started thinking and I realized I need to bring the church cards. That's, that's why I tripped. And so I went back downstairs and grabbed the church cards. If your day to day is walking with God, what a, what a great joy that you can feel that there's this interaction that's constantly occurring, you know, as you guys think about, and we bring it in for a landing, consider your, your seasons, consider your weeks, and then consider your days. And my, my challenge, maybe you feel like I've got a lot of free space. My, my challenge would be that that's my disposition is that's probably not where we are at. And so I would challenge us all to look and carve out white space, carve out empty space that you can be by yourself. You can be alone, even five minutes that you can be with your, your family or your, your people unplugged. And that you can then celebrate in, in this community, uh, unhindered. I got to do this tomorrow. I got to worry about this. I got to create white space in order to do that. If we do this one, there's going to be joy in our lives too. I think there's going to be a, uh, a security that we realize we're not, we're not doing too much and we're not doing not enough to how to organize it this way. Amen. Amen. That's the lesson, uh, happy St. Patrick's day and pick up your children. Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast. If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected. Please go to Kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on in any case, you'll be hearing from us next week.