This sermon highlights the biblical basis for holy time, drawing on Genesis and Leviticus, and encouraged finding quiet places to refresh, reflect, and deepen one's relationship with God. Various Jewish festivals are explained, illustrating how they modeled God's appointed times, and how they can guide contemporary Christians in creating sacred moments amid busy lives. The sermon concluds with a call to live intentionally on holy time, emulating Jesus and God, to experience true rest and spiritual fulfillment.
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:21 Theme for the Year: Walk Like Jesus
01:36 Struggles with Silence and Time
03:38 Biblical Perspective on Time
05:01 Israel's Sacred Calendar
06:06 Purpose of Israel's Festivals
13:37 Lessons from Israel's Calendar
14:27 The Importance of Sabbath Rest
23:30 Creating Holy Time in Our Lives
32:18 Conclusion: Living on Holy Time
Good evening. It's good to see everybody out tonight. I appreciate the, the prayers and the songs led already. A lot of intentionality behind the words and the, the prayers and the songs we've been singing tonight and I really, really appreciate that. And if you're busy with this glad that you're here.
With us as well Like i'm a little quiet and you're on our guests. We're glad you get glad that you're here We'd love to spend some time getting to know you a little bit more after services tonight and Letting you know a little bit more about who we are and what is we're trying to do for the the work of god's kingdom Here at timberland drive but speaking of intentionality we're trying to start the year very intentionally with our theme for the year.
And if you weren't here this morning, or if you were visiting, our theme for this year is, you saw the beautiful banner, Signs by Debbie Walk Like Jesus Debbie's phone, no, the name of my phone is actually Debbie Signs By. I haven't figured out her last name yet. I'll have to figure that out.
But we're trying to walk like Jesus. We're trying to get into a pattern in our life where we're seeing how Jesus lived Himself, how His disciples were called to live after Him. And then practicing a lot of these kind of spiritual practices in our own lives. And our theme this year is, it's an imperative, right?
That was my one contribution to the theme. Reagan was like, what do you think about this? And I was like, you know, big idea, let's take off the I N G. It was walking like Jesus, let's take off the I N G. So that's, that's what kind of big ideas you get with me being here. But it's an imperative, right? Like we're trying to encourage all of us to kind of take this on and take on these practices ourselves.
And so for this first quarter, as we talked about this morning, is we're trying to find quiet places. And I think this is a really big struggle for us on for a number of reasons. We talked a lot about our desire to, or our struggle with silence this morning. And that's so true. And I think tonight when I want to kind of focus more, it's just about our mindset and how we struggle with time.
And how we think about time. And like we talked about, in our western context, silence isn't something we particularly enjoy. We often talk about awkward silence, or being uncomfortable when, when when it's silent. And when things get really quiet, we try to feel our time, as Reagan talked about this morning.
And all this interrupted chaos has kind of made us not only uncomfortable being alone with ourselves, but being alone with God, too. And I think in conjunction with what Reagan said this morning, not only does it make us uncomfortable with the quiet spaces, but it's even kind of skewed our perspective of time as well.
For us, time, I think, time is money, right? That's how we talk about time. Time waits for no one. So, we gotta make hay while the sun shines. We're always perpetually fighting against the clock. For us, time is something, it's not a friend, it's something we war against. It's something we're struggling against.
It's something we have to maximize. We have to take advantage of before it takes advantage. And we're trying to master time ultimately so that we can kind of use it or use maximize our time so that we can master the realm of space. And I think we, we all recognize we live in time and space, but we really like to focus our mind on the space kind of thing, right?
We like to think about things. We like to think about people or objects, things that we can, are tangible, that we can control ourselves. But time is something that's a little bit more elusive. It's something that we can't And so when we think about time, like we said, it's like an enemy. It's something that's working against us.
And so we try to dominate it or we just try to ignore it altogether. But to borrow Jesus words, But from the beginning it was not so. And if you'll read with me in Genesis chapter 2, In the beginning it wasn't a person, it wasn't a place or a thing that was declared holy, but it was time. In Genesis chapter 2, in verses 1 through 3, it says, The heavens and the earth were finished, along with everything in them.
On the seventh day, God had finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as holy, because on it He rested from all His work of creation that He had done. And so God, from the very beginning, He declares, the first thing He declares holy is a period of time, the seventh day.
And so from the beginning, the foundation of the world, Israel is being told in the Old Testament, they're being taught that holiness is not something that's limited to spiritual, or to physical spaces like the tabernacle or the temple. But it's something that's supposed to penetrate even their time, they're supposed to have sacred times.
And so Israel's life from a weekly basis, the Sabbath day every seventh day, but also on an annual basis based on the different festivals of the year that they, that they would have, required them to live on holy time. And so this evening, what I want us to do is we're going to kind of do a couple of selective readings out of Leviticus chapter 23, might seem like kind of a weird place to start for talking about living on holy, or finding the quiet places, but I think it's going to have some significance for us and helping us kind of try to reframe how do we spend our time as we're trying this first quarter of the year to find the quiet places.
And if you want a helpful reminder on how to remember this sermon, just remember the old Don Williams song, Living on Tulsa Time. That was in my head. I was going to do take time to be holy. I mean, that's a hymn, but I was like, I'll go with the country song, right? So it's pretty catchy. Price says more about me than anything.
But think about Don Williams and I don't want any, any of you older people telling me afterwards, how do you know that song? Don't, don't say that to me. I can know old songs, but we're only talking about tonight. Living on holy time. And so we're going to kind of briefly summarize the events that take place within Israel's calendar year and the purposes behind each festival really quickly.
But what I really want to do is kind of highlight kind of three different things that at least my kind of observations or what was the underlying purpose for this kind of calendar that Israel was given And how can that help? Because we're trying to kind of find these quiet places. Well, one of the first things we want to realize is that Israel modeled God by having these appointed feasts.
Your translations may say something different, like a times, appointed times, or festivals, or the New King James, it says feasts of the Lord. But if you look with me in Leviticus chapter 23, In verse 1 and 2, this, the, this section, this prescription kind of starts with a summary statement. It says, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, these are the appointed feasts of the Lord.
The You shall Proclaim is holy convocations. They are my appointed feasts. And these appointed feasts, these appointed days were something that were ultimately, as we'll see, tried to give Israel kind of a rhythm to the year, something that they would look forward to and expect. And the word here, holy convocations, it's just kind of, it comes from the, the Hebrew verb to call out.
So it's calling them out of their, their day-to-day lives and inviting them into a special. time, a holy time within the year. And even the word, the appointed feast here, that my translation, the ESV I'm using uses, it's really unique at this point in God's story with his people in the Pentateuch. In Genesis, it's used a few times, a couple times referring to kind of special appointed times in the future when God is going to act on behalf of his people.
He's going to make something happen. So the thing about the birth of Isaac is, is talked about in the same kind of language. Or the, even the ten plagues I think it's the livestock plague in the death of the livestock in Exodus chapter 9, verse verse 5. So there's events in the, in the future that God kind of says He's appointed.
But I think what Leviticus is really echoing, if we look back in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 14 God is, is creating the seasons here, and if you'll look in the language here I've got highlighted, it says, God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to divide the day from the night, and let them serve as markers to indicate seasons, or appointed times, it's the same word, Days and years.
And so just as God appointed seasons in creation, Israel's supposed to model Him by keeping these kind of appointed festivals. These appointed seasons. I mean, we talk about holidays and special times of the year like that too. We just came from Christmas, right? That is the season. People talk about holidays in terms of seasons as well.
And so Israel is modeling God by just appointing these, but as we look at kind of the structure of the calendar and how it's laid out, it's kind of laid out in two separate halves. And it's divided with this statement in verses 22 through 23, I am the Lord. You're God, there's this reminder that the people are supposed to keep these festivals because God, Yahweh is their God.
And so there's six festivals. There's three that lie in the spring, verse three lie in the fall. And they're either based on historical events or agricultural cycles. And so when we look at kind of the first three of the year. It begins with the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Leviticus kind of lumps those together, so you could say that there's seven total, but I think the Levitical writer lumps them together because they are, they are definitely related.
Because they're based on the same historical event, right? They're, they're they're reminding the people of Israel. Of when God saved them. The day that the Angel of death passed over right before they exited the, the land hastily in the land of Egypt. And that happens on the first month, the first month of the 14th day.
Well, after that we have the feast of first fruits, maybe one that's a little bit less familiar to us. I know we see the. idea of first fruits repeated a lot in the New Testament, especially Christ's resurrection being the first fruits of the resurrection that we'll all partake in. But it was something that happens after the first Sabbath that is after the wheat and the barley harvest.
And so this one's based on an agricultural cycle. It's Israel's kind of major crop that they would survive on. So whenever that, that, that crop starts coming up, They're to take that and give it to the Lord. And so this is a time of thanksgiving. It was a time where all the other neighbors that Israel had were worshiping Baal and saying, well, Baal's the one who gives us rain.
Well, this is a political, this is a religious statement they were making. They were recognizing God was the one who gave rain and who provided for them in the promised land. Nobody else. And then this is followed about 50 days after the Passover, the festival of weeks. Which we've no more frequent, or we frequently call the the Day of Pentecost, right?
We think about Acts chapter 2 and this the weeks is kind of the, in Hebrew it's literally just seven. This is kind of like the Feast of Sevens, because it's playing off of the idea of the seven weeks that you count. Forty nine days, plus one, fifty. To get to to this festival after the Passover.
And so when we talk about the Pentecost, this is a Greek word for 50th. And so there's 50 days that kind of take place. And this one likely celebrates the end of that harvest that kind of began with the festival of first fruits. And so we kind of got the first half of the year down. A little bit of history, a little bit of agriculture going on, a lot of things kind of happening.
I know I'm throwing a lot at you here, but we'll get to the point here in just a second. And then second half of the year, what's really interesting about these three festivals, they all partake, or they all happen in the seventh month of the year. Again, seven is really crucial here. And so the seventh month begins with the blast of trumpets on the first festival, the festival of trumpets.
And like the Sabbath year, the jubilee years that come later, that happen on a seven year or fifty year basis, This kind of consecrated the entire month as being a holy and a special month, which makes a lot of sense because right after, on the tenth day of the month, is the Day of Atonement. And the Day of Atonement is one we know really well.
It was a time when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies and he would make atonement for the sins of the people. It was a time of solemn rest. It was about personal affliction, which people usually take to mean fasting. It was a time of repentance. So it's a really somber occasion, which gives way ultimately to the last festival of the year, which is the Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles.
It was often called the Festival of Ingathering. And this is really interesting following after the Day of Atonement, which is really somber, because this is supposed to be seven days of rejoicing before God. It was like a big campout, right? This one is like, it's just like the Passover, and they're celebrating, and they're remembering God's saving acts in the past, and the exodus.
And the subsequent dwelling in the wilderness. And so this was like a, a, a big old camp out where everybody would be dwelling in tents for a week's time. And so, we got this year right in front of us, that's what we're looking at. Spring, fall, there's ideas of history, there's agriculture, there's a lot going on.
All the different festivals are based on different things. They're trying to communicate different things. What do we do with all this, right? Well, I want to kind of look at it more conceptually and kind of what is the undergirding applications that we can pull from it. Of course we can look at these individually, and I think we can learn a lot and see how they foreshadow Christ and, and, and how they have influence and bearing in the New Testament as well.
But I just want to look at kind of three underlying kind of purposes for the entirety of Israel's calendar for the year. And I think there's three things that, that stuck out to me as I was reading this week. And I think Israel's calendar, one, provided refreshment. Two, it provided an opportunity for reflection.
And three, an opportunity to deepen their relationship. And so I want to briefly talk about these three elements and we'll close in just a few minutes. But I think the foundation of Israel's year, it laid not in these festivals that were taking place, but in the weekly Sabbaths. Look in verse 3 of chapter 23.
Moses says, or God says, six days you shall work, or work, six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places. And so the Sabbath is really the building block that all the other festivals were kind of based off of.
The Sabbath was a special day for Israel, for all of Israel. Not only the native born, but the foreigner, the slave, and the free. Even the animals were called out of their regular festivals. That's what Exodus chapter 20 in the first discussion of the Ten Commandments tells us. And so, the Sabbath day was something, as we already pointed out, it's rooted in creation.
It was when God had rested from His handiwork and now Israel is called to imitate God just as He did His good work and stepped out of it and saw that it was good. Now they're supposed to do the same thing. And so rest and refreshment was really foundational to how Israel spent their week. But, and, and we see this even more, and we talked about some in class this morning, in Egypt when this when the Sabbath gets called to mind again in Deuteronomy chapter 5, The Sabbath looks back to Egypt, not to creation this time.
Because Israel needs to be reminded of something. The Sabbath not only was a way to model God, but it was also a reminder of their identity and who they were. Because in Egypt, Israel was subject to really harsh slavery. They were, there was no rest at all for Israel. They were treated like machines. They were run, ragged, and probably worked until they died an early death.
But in Deuteronomy chapter 5 and verse 15, God says, You shall remember you were a slave in the land of Egypt. And the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commands you to keep the Sabbath day. And while this is a really painful memory to call to mind, especially if you had been an Israelite who had lived through the actual Exodus, The Sabbath was something that was important because it reminded the people that they weren't machines, they weren't mindless machines, but they were image bearers of God.
And so, while on one hand the Sabbath recalls the Day of Creation, they're supposed to model God as He rests, it also recalls the excess and reminds them that they're not supposed to work their fingers to a bone, they're not just mindless machines made for work, but they're made to bear the image of God.
And so the Sabbath rest is something that's foundational. It's the bottom layer to the calendar, and it extends through the rest as well. And so often, if you read Leviticus 23, which we don't have time to, you'll see so many repeated statements about, you shall not do any work. You shall not do any work.
But the one that I really like is the, the really unique and repeated phrase in, in this chapter, that you shall do no ordinary work. And Israel has a total of seven extra days at least. Some people disagree on, you know, some people think you rest all seven days, the days of booths. There's kind of disagreements of Leviticus 23.
But regardless, there's at least seven extra days of rest that take place in Israel's calendar. And so even rest and refreshment was something that was woven not only into their week, but also to their year. And I think the lesson for us as we come looking at Israel's calendar and thinking, what's the lesson for us?
Well, I think we notice in our culture how much we value working hard, right? We believe in the American dream. If you'll work hard enough, if you'll outwork anybody else. Then you can get whatever you want, you can be whoever you want. And while working hard is really good and it's something that we should value, oftentimes our work kind of gets perverted and looks more like the work of the Israelites in the land of Egypt.
And though we may be willingly subjecting ourselves to work, unfortunately our cultural values of materialism and greed oftentimes enslave us to our work. And so the danger for us is that our ordinary work takes over not just all seven days of the week, but takes over 365 days of a week. And so when we think about finding the quiet places, We might slip off this pursuit because we might think, okay, well, it's disruptive, or it's something that's kind of inconvenient to my set schedule.
And you know what? It kind of is, right? Like, Israel coming before God during the harvest time is something that would have been really inconvenient for them to do. But I think we, as Reagan pointed out this morning, we need that disruption and that inconvenience. We need to remind ourselves repeatedly.
It's not all about us. It's not about the things that we produce. It's not about the legacy that we can amass for ourselves. And I think even more so when we take time to take a break and a rest from our our labors, we can return refreshed so that our work doesn't become toilsome, but it becomes enjoyable as God intended.
And so when we find the quiet places, we're not saying, you know, we need to keep the Sabbath day or anything like that, but calling ourselves out of our work regularly. We need to find quiet places so that we can experience this refreshment, so that we can move from ordinary time to find places to where we move to holy time.
And what better way to spend our time than in time of refreshment. With our God and we've been reading Matthew chapter 29 if you'll turn over there for just a moment In our last couple weeks idea of you know Following after our prince of peace finding peace him being the one we go to for peace and I love this passage especially for this point with the the connection of sabbath because Matthew chapter 12 leads into a discussion where jesus has a dispute About the sabbath and so this is what jesus says before he gets in a discussion You He says, come to me all who labor in our heavy laden.
Do you ever feel like that from your work during the day, during the week? All who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So even Jesus, like God did for Israel, he calls Israel their normal work.
He calls them to come find rest. When we find the quiet places, we're coming to Jesus and we're seeking that same type of refreshment and rest that the God of Israel gave them. And so, we need to move from the ordinary time to learning to live on holy time. Secondly look at the idea of reflection as well.
I think we need to recognize as well that when we, when we talk about coming to the quiet places, it's not just for mere relaxation purposes. The Sabbath or any of these other festivals were not something that was purely for relaxation. While that, I think, is definitely a part of it of physical restoration.
But, the people are called to spend their time purposefully. They're not just kicking back, right? These times of refreshment, they weren't meant to just simply revive them physically, but they were also supposed to revive them spiritually. And I think what's so cool about Israel's calendar is it begins and it ends, it bookended, by these two festivals that recall God's saving acts in the Exodus, in the Passover and the Feast and Living Bread.
Sorry, I'm backwards, so you guys are the way. Passover and Feast and Living Bread and the Feast. of booths. And so the people are coming to renew, to reflect on God, to renew the relationship, but it's not just through just mere sheer remembrance, but it's active participation in reenacting the actual stories from from Israel's past and all generations going forward are called to kind of take on this history, even though they may not have been there and experienced it themselves, they're supposed to reenact the Passover feast.
The Day of Unleavened Bread, they're supposed to reenact dwelling in the wilderness and take on that history as theirs. I like verses 42 and 43 in in Leviticus 23, when he kind of, it makes this explicit for the Feast of Booths. It's, it's not stated in the Passover, but we understand from Exodus 12 that's kind of the purpose.
But it says, you shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in Booths, that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in Booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God. And so for us as Christians, when we're looking at Israel's calendar, trying to find what is it that we can learn from this, I think we also recognize we have kind of those sacred, holy times throughout the week that are set every single week.
Like Acts 20 verse 7 talks about, you know, Christians came together on the first day of the week. to break bread. And isn't exactly like Israel partaking the Passover or the Feast of Booths re enacting that history, even though they weren't there. Isn't that exactly what we're doing when we partake in the Lord's Supper?
We're re enacting the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. And just like Israel, we're sitting here like we did this morning, like we will in a few moments, we're remembering God's saving acts from when He saved us from being slaves to sin. And I think a lot of times when we bring up the idea of reflection or coming together and worshiping, we emphasize a lot the need to attend assemblies and to worship collectively.
And maybe that's something you need to work on personally, but I'm probably preaching to the choir if you're here on a Sunday night, right? But what about those of us who, okay, I am coming regularly, I am coming, I'm reflecting regularly, what's the lesson for me beyond that? Well, I think it's this, that we need to look to create more holy time in our schedules as, as Reagan talks about, but not so much.
In conjunction with what Reagan said this morning not only private times, but even collective times that we can come together and, and kind of talk about as holy times maybe. And not in the same sense as like the Lord's Supper but when we think about the kind of consecrated times we have throughout the year, think about the things in our own tradition or what we do here at Timberland Drive that we partake in, like gospel meetings.
We have announcements about that, some of that's coming up really quickly. We have kind of set aside times where special special teaching on a particular topic is going to be done by a special preacher. I mean, you definitely want to come and hear Don Truex's voice over mine. I mean, that guy has just velvet, beautiful radio voice.
Meanwhile, you've got, like, nasally, like, North Florida accent, like. You'll at least get a good, you know, you'll get a good message, but also a good voice to hear. But not only like things like that, but we have, you know, we monthly singings. We have special times where a lot of the young guys are, I know Eric and Daniel have put together things where we can come on some nights and learn new songs, so our worship can be even more meaningful.
Profound. We learned some different songs that are, are beautiful. Not only the melody, but the words and the lyrics. But we have men's and women's classes. And I've already been told by the women, I'm not going to park under the awning when you guys are here. I've learned my lesson. Make sure I don't do that anymore.
We got young adult studies things, consecrated times. We're trying to come together and trying to not only deepen our relationship to God, but deepen our relationship to one another. And even in families, we've got individual things that we're doing, consecrated times. Think about the, the Christian camps that everyone does.
The feeling I always got coming back from those camps besides being totally love struck by Abby With you know, the feeling, everybody's always telling me, I'm refreshed, right? I feel spiritually refreshed. And we have youth singings and lectureships, all these different times. We need to be trying to create, if we can, if we have an opportunity to create those types of spaces and times.
But also participating in those as well. And we need to be trying to do as God has created us to do as His new covenant people. The thing I love about Leviticus 23 is the command to uphold the festivals is not to the priests, it's to the people. Moses told to speak to the people. The onus is on them to celebrate these festivals.
It's not The clergy is not the, the, the leadership but it's all the people are to to partake in this. And as New Covenant Christians, we're all priests, we're all ones who can mediate the, the blessings of God. In, in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 9 says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own position.
Why? So that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. We need to be able to reflect and to proclaim these, these wonderful excellencies of God because of His saving acts for us as His people. And so when we find quiet time and reflection, Well, we move towards living on holy time.
And then lastly the idea of kind of relationship, I think is really important in Israel's calendar as well. And I think when we read Leviticus with our Christian eyes, right, we look back on it and we're like, this book is, Like there is a lot of stuff in here that I just don't understand. And there seems like there's a lot of barriers.
It doesn't seem like it's something that's going to bring me closer to God or would have brought Israel closer to God. But that's not how Israel thought about Leviticus. Leviticus was the way in which God's presence was able to be, the rights and the regulations and all these things were the way that God was able to keep His relationship with His people.
With the, with his people and it was able to keep the relationship not only intact but also to deepen their relationship as well. And Israel's festivals, I think, play a really important role in bringing that blessing. They have these six festivals and they're called to come before God at least three, four times.
They're calling, they're coming before God, before his presence numerous times during the year. But I think for us when we, we, we obviously understand as Christians that these weren't the end all be all. But even God kind of gives a hint to Israel in Leviticus chapter 26. Verse 11 through 12 sorry, I deleted my slide there, I guess.
You have to open your Bibles. Leviticus 26, 11 and 12, where God kind of gives a hint that there's something more, that this is leading to something more. And in the blessings for obedience in Leviticus 26, God tells Israel this. He says, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.
And I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people. And of course this echoes for us the idea of God walking among his people. It definitely echoes in Genesis chapter 3 when the Spirit of the Lord is heard walking through the garden. But even after God has become flesh and the form of man, and we know that happened in the person of Jesus, I think like Israel, we're still longing for something more.
We want to walk side by side by God. We want to see Him face to face. We want to see the picture that John talks about here in Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 3, 21 verses 1 3, when he depicts this new heavens and new earth, and he says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be be with them as their God.
And if you'll look in verse 23, just a few few verses down, he goes on to say this about the city of New Jerusalem. It says, the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. And so John is depicting a time where all things will come to an end, where a place where God is going to dwell with man, and there's no longer seasons like God created in Genesis chapter 1.
There's no longer these holy festivals that Israel is called to partake in. Or any type of sacred, specific sacred time, but it's the idea that all time and all space should be declared holy. And so when we find the quiet places, what we're doing is we're showing God that we desire above all else, everything that we desire to be His.
That we desire to be alone with Him and to dwell with Him and to be content with just having Him and nothing else. In finding the quiet places, what we're doing is we're preparing ourselves for eternity. And when we make quiet time, when we deepen our relationship to God, that's when we begin living on holy time.
And so tonight, the purpose of this lesson is to say, okay, well, we all need to be following a liturgical calendar or something like that, right? Of course, unlike Israel, with our, with the exception of our worship we're not really called to observe holy days. We're not commanded to observe holy days.
And so the, the desire to observe any type of holy days is really kind of up to our own discretion. If you want to follow holy days, if you want to follow a calendar of some kind, that's great. You just don't impose that on other people. If you don't want to, that's great too. And I like how Paul puts it, and I think this is what we'll kind of conclude with tonight.
Paul puts it this way. He says, One person esteems a day. It's better than the other, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God.
While the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lords. And so, tonight, here's really the point, is that we all need to be fully convinced in our own minds in how it is that we are spending our time.
And after, are we really living in such a way that That, as Paul describes it, it shows the world and it shows each other that we are the lords. Or as Leviticus would say, that you shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy. Our pursuit of holiness is something, it's got to, it's got to extend not just to our space but all, to all of our time.
And time isn't something we fight against. It's not something that's working against us or something to be maximized or abused. But time is something that God is coming to make holy. And we need to create time to be alone with God so that we can all be refreshed, so that we can reflect on His saving acts, and so that we can deepen our relationship to Him.
And if we choose to live on holy time, that's when we're going to find true rest. That's where we're going to re experience God's saving acts. And that's where we're going to prepare ourselves for, for eternity with Him. So tonight, if you have a desire to partake in this covenant to community, where we're trying to consecrate all aspects of our life, even the time that we spend, if there's any, any way that we can help you tonight to, to come And and know this God the Bible more fully in your life than we'd ask you now to come as we stand and as we sing.