The Lessons of Winter

Happy winter, everybody! Those are two words that you hear put together very often, are they? I grew up in Minnesota, as many of you know, and I actually always enjoyed winter a lot as a kid. A lot of good memories of playing out in the snow. Winter teaches us a lot of things, though, too, doesn't it? I think for many people here, probably what winter teaches you is it's time to get out of town and go to Florida or Arizona or somewhere. When I was a little kid, I still remember what a big deal it was when we got carpet in the house, because one of the things that I learned early on was when I got out of bed, I needed to make sure I had something on my feet. We had the wood floors, and the way our family was, we were very frugal about everything. The heat was up to 65 degrees during the day, and it was 60 degrees at night. So you can imagine what it was like on bare feet stepping onto a wood floor in the morning. That'll wake you up. Well, I'm a firm believer that God gives us everything that's around us in creation so that we can learn from it, and winter is no exception from that. Learning that we should move to Florida or Arizona, there are a few other lessons that we can also learn from winter. So for those who like titles, I've titled this sermon, Lessons of Winter. We'll just go through three brief things that I think we can learn from wintertime. We won't turn there, but if we look in Romans 1, Romans tells us that all attributes of God are clearly seen from His creation, and we'll look today at a few of those attributes and things that we can learn from considering winter. As a first lesson, I'd like to talk about for a short time is the idea of expectations. Expectations.

And maybe closely tied to that, surprises. Now, is anyone surprised that winter's coming? Please don't raise your hand and say yes. Well, one of the most predictable things that's built into the earth that God created is seasons, right? And the predictability of the seasons. So none of us who are paying attention should be surprised that this season is coming. We know it's coming. We know that after the winter will come the spring, time that we look forward to with great expectation.

But something that we learn from winter is the fact that there are predictable seasons that happen in this world. There are things that go on, things that we know will happen. And to hide from them, to pretend they're not going to happen, to think that things are going to be otherwise, is futile. Because the way God has set up the earth, the earth keeps revolving, it's tilted on its axis, parts of the world are farther away from the Sun at certain times of the year, and winter will most certainly come. We see the leaves changing, we feel and see the days turning shorter, we feel the cold, and we know that it's going to come. It's not just like that in creation, it's like that in our lives as well, isn't it? Turn with me, if you will, to 1st Corinthians 10. The Bible talks of events in our lives in the same way that we need to expect that certain things are going to happen in our lives. 1st Corinthians 10, we'll start in verse 6. Here Paul, writing to the Corinthians, is talking a bit about the children of Israel and the things that happened to ancient Israel as they were going through their wanderings in the desert, going from Egypt into the Promised Land. In 1st Corinthians 10, in verse 6, he says, these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted, not to become idolaters as some of them were, and as it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play, talking about when the golden calf was built and they went to idolatry. Nor, in verse 8, let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day 23,000 fell. Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor complain as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So Paul, writing to the New Testament Church, said all these things that happened to the children of Israel as they were wandering through the desert, all of these human weaknesses that they had, they gave into, they were written to us as an example. And let's look in verse 12, because this gets to the point that we can learn from winter and the changing of the seasons. Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man. So what Paul is saying in this passage as he's writing, he uses the example of everything that happened to the children of Israel, he said, look, you as human beings are going to go through temptations, exactly like they went through temptations.

These are things that are common to humankind. These temptations that we feel to sin, the weaknesses that we have, the difficulties that we go through, as it says here in verse 13, are common to man. Just as we look out there, we see the leaves falling, we feel the temperature falling, and we know that the snow is going to come and winter is going to come.

We know that we as human beings have weaknesses within ourselves. There are expectations we should have, and the expectation is that we, as Christians, are going to have to battle that human nature that's within us. And we're told we shouldn't be surprised.

The children of Israel are given as an example the things that they struggled with, even as God was leading them to the Promised Land with a pillar of fire, with a pillar of cloud. They saw God's presence there every single day, physically, and still they had to struggle with these temptations that are laid out in great detail for us in the Old Testament. We should have no other expectation in our life than that we're going to face those same types of temptations and going to have to struggle with them.

Now, fortunately, as it lays out here afterwards in verse 13, God is faithful. He will not allow us to be tempted if we're able. With that temptation, we'll also make a way of escape that we can bear it. So, how do we acknowledge this in the way that we live our lives? What are the expectations that we've laid out for ourselves in our lives, in our Christian lives? There are a great many things as we look at our lives that we treat as unpredictable or as emergencies, whereas we really sit back and think about them.

Are they really so unpredictable after all? The kind of winters that come into our lives. We might not know when they're going to happen, but the fact is, if we're honest with ourselves, we do know that they're going to happen. One example that I'll lay out is, for example, in our financial lives. Now, any financial planner will say that it's prudent to have an emergency fund, right? We should all save a certain amount of money, not just spend everything that we make. If we earn a living that's sufficient to meet our everyday needs, we should put something aside in order to have money for an emergency.

But this idea of an emergency is also interesting that way, isn't it? Because, yes, things happen that are completely unexpected, whether it's an accident or an illness, but a large number of things that we treat as emergencies are actually quite predictable, aren't they?

Big expenses. The car breaks down, the roof on the house needs to be fixed, washer and dryer breaks down. All of these things, while we might sometimes treat them as emergencies, we actually know, as a matter of fact, that cars don't last forever.

Roofs on houses last a certain number of years. The hot water heater, I've got one that's about 15 years old, and I know it's going to go. And I need to make a decision at some point here in the next year or two to replace it. Because if I face reality, it's not going to live forever.

It's a hot water heater, it's a chunk of metal. In fact, it's not even living now, is it? It's not going to function forever. How's that? But some of these things that we treat as emergencies, and sometimes we're surprised when they happen, when we really sit back and think about it, they're quite predictable, aren't they? It's the nature of things. It's the nature of physical things. We can look at the same sort of thing in relationships.

For those of us who've been married for a long time, we can look back at our marriage relationship. We can look at friendships that we have. And one of the biggest challenges that we can have, for example, going into a marriage or even being in a friendship, is believing that everything is going to be great all the time. In fact, as you see people go through a relationship, sometimes some of the most damaging things can be lack of conflict in a relationship, because it means that people aren't dealing with the underlying problems that are actually there.

They're ignoring them, or they're setting them aside, or they're pretending somehow that they don't exist. In fact, as we've probably learned, all of us in relationships, sometimes having conflict, as long as it's approached and resolved in the right and constructive way, is actually good for a relationship.

And that can be a relationship of any different sort. So I work in a consulting business where I have a bunch of different clients, and one of the things that those of us who've been in the business for a while will say is, you don't really have a strong relationship with a client until you've gone through a problem together and you've resolved it. And it stands for the same proposition, because when you have a conflict, you have a difficulty, it forces you to sit down together and examine a commitment to continue that relationship forward.

And there's something in that acknowledgement of that commitment from both sides that, yes, we want this to continue and we want it to go forward, and because that's the most important thing underlying it, we will find a way to work through the difficulties. We'll find a constructive way that everybody gives up a little bit and we come out ahead at the end of the day. But if we enter into a relationship with the expectation that there will never be conflict, there will never be difficulty, there's never anything we'll have to deal with, we don't really prepare for that type of thing, do we? And then it hits us as though it's a surprise when we probably should have been prepared for it anyway. This carries over seamlessly into our spiritual lives, the core of our spiritual lives. Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Peter 4. We read this passage actually just a few minutes ago in the sermonette, and I'd like to read through it again. 1 Peter 4, we'll read verses 12 and 13. 1 Peter 4, starting in verse 12, Beloved, do not think it's strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you, but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. Look at that in verse 12.

What does it say twice? The word strange, right? Don't think it's strange. We're human beings, we're imperfect physically, we're trying to live God's way of life, and we should not think it's strange when we go through trials in our lives.

It's a part of life, as predictable as the fact that summer will turn into fall, which will turn into winter. We don't always know exactly when it's going to happen, we don't know how it's going to happen, but we should not think it's strange when it does happen, because we're told that it will. Turn with me to John 16. We think a lot about the different promises that God makes to us, which are wonderful and fantastic promises that we really hang our lives on, don't we? John 16 is a promise maybe we don't like to focus on quite as much in the same vein, verse 33. John 16 verse 33, here Jesus Christ speaking to his disciples shortly before his crucifixion, because he's taken the last chance to talk with them about things that they should expect in life. John 16 verse 33, here Jesus says, these things that I've spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be a good cheer. I've overcome the world. So he lays out hope, he says, be a good cheer, don't let it bother you, but he also says, have this expectation. Don't think it's strange when you're going to have to suffer and have difficulty. He promised here that in the world we will have tribulation. We can be of good cheer because he's overcome the world, but we shouldn't think it's strange or unusual when we have to work through difficult times in our lives. Those winters, those blizzards, those storms will come across in our lives. So really, summing up this first point, I think winter is a great analogy for this, because you know we get to wintertime, we know snow is going to come, we know there's going to be a storm, at some point there's going to be a significant lake effect event, and people on the east side of Cleveland are going to be buried in anywhere from three to twelve inches of snow. It's just what happens in the winter, isn't it? And that's what life is like. We know that some of these things are going to come blowing across our lives. As we get older, we will have to struggle from time to time with physical difficulties. It's not pleasant, it's not something we want to deal with. God promises that He'll carry us through it, but it points to the next point that I want to go through, which is preparation. Because we know that we can expect something, we know something is going to happen, we can prepare for it, can't we? We can be ready for it, and we know that God gives so much promise. Just one quick verse before we go to that second point of preparation. Let's go to Romans 8, because I don't want to leave us just on this negative note of all we can expect is doom and gloom, because we know that's not the case either. Romans 8 verse 18. I think this is great too, as we look at the seasons and the cycle of seasons that God gives us, because what comes after winter? Fantastic springtime.

So my best memories as a kid is going out in the springtime, you know, the way the air feels when the sun comes out in the spring, and the snow is melting, and the ice is starting to crack, the water is rushing down the street as everything melts and goes out into the street, and you can see the buds coming out on the trees, and the birds chirping, and it's getting light in the morning. It's a fantastic time in the springtime, isn't it? And that's the other thing that God promises us. Just as surely as spring follows winter, His promises come to us.

Romans 8. We'll read verse 18. Paul says to the Romans, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. So even though we can expect things to be difficult in our lives, and we should, the human condition goes up and down as we make our way through our lives, God promises, just like we have winter, we will have springtime, we will have Jesus Christ's return, He will bring a reward, and the sufferings that we go through today can't be compared in even any small way to the opposite greatness that we're going to experience when that time comes.

So let's turn to the second point of preparation. You know, nature is filled with examples of preparation for winter, isn't it? I remember when I was a kid I used to love watching the squirrels. I haven't seen as much of it happening in Ohio, probably because I'm locked up in an office somewhere all day long, and I don't have much time to watch squirrels.

But when I was a kid, I used to love watching the squirrels. They'd run around the yard in the summertime, and especially as we started to get near the end of summer, and they'd go to the trees where the acorns fell on the ground, right? You'd see these squirrels, and they'd jump around, they'd grab the acorns in their mouth, and they'd go bounding away the way that squirrels run. Remember I'd ask my mom, you know, where in the world are these squirrels going with the acorns? She said, you just watch. They'll go to a certain spot, and they'll bury them in the ground.

Because when the winter comes, they'll have those acorns, they'll have that stash that they put away to get them through the winter. And sure enough, that's what squirrels do. That's the way God created them.

They gather those nuts, they gather the acorns, they hide them away, they prepare so that when the winter comes, they can eat. Now most of us probably don't have the opportunity to sit around and watch bears and what they do, but we've probably seen some nature documentaries as well, right? And bears, as they get near the end of the season, they fatten up. They eat a lot of food, they gain weight, and then what do they do? They hide away in a cave somewhere so they can hibernate for the winter. As long as they've gotten enough food, God's created them in such a way that they can go into sort of a suspended animation.

They live off of the food that they've eaten, and at the end of the winter, they can emerge from their cave, they come out many, many pounds lighter, but alive and ready to go, and go into the springtime.

So anywhere we look in creation, we can see these things happen. When I lived in Colorado, we would always get the geese that come down from the north. And you could always tell when winter was coming because you'd see these huge formations of geese. And anywhere there was an open field, a golf course, anything else, you'd see these large flocks of geese just come down and land, and you'd see them flying around the city from much of the wintertime.

Because it was just far enough south that they could get away from the bad winter. So God wired into his creation, preparation, for wintertime. How does that apply to us as human beings? There used to be a short series on television on PBS. It was called Pioneer Quest.

I don't know if any of you watched it. It was a reality show, and tried to build history into it. What they did is they took some couples, and they set them out on some land. I think it was actually out in Montana. And they set them up in the springtime, and what they had to do was live with the technology, and the tools, and the clothing that was in existence back in the pioneer days, in the late 17, early 1800s.

And they had to work on getting a field planted, getting infrastructure built so that they could survive a winter. And what it really pointed to was what a life-and-death struggle it was for people. If they didn't get the crops in on time, if they didn't get their field plowed, even things out of their control. If there was too much rain, and they couldn't get the crop in before the end of the summer, all of these variables had to come into play in order to be prepared for the winter to literally survive and be able to live through that winter time.

Now, our lives are the same way, aren't they? We talked already about the fact that we have to be prepared with certain expectations, knowing things that will happen in life. Knowing these things that are going to happen in our lives, knowing the fact that we will live through these winters in our lives, these storms that come, how is it that we are supposed to prepare? How does that play out in a spiritual sense? What I'd like to do is just follow a brief thread through a few scriptures in the Old Testament related to preparation.

I think it'll help us to understand and think about some of the things we should consider in our lives. I'll focus on a word that's often translated prepare in the Old Testament. For those who are interested in writing it down, it's Strong's Concordance number 3559. It's the Hebrew word kun.

And this word means a variety of things depending on context, but it means to be prepared, to be steadfast, to be fixed into place, like being grounded and solidly established in place, to be established or firm. And this is the word kun in Hebrew. I'd like to read three scriptures where this word is used in different ways, talking in the overall context of preparation. Let's start in 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles 12, and we'll read verses 13 and 14. 2 Chronicles 12 verses 13 and 14. This is an account of the son of Solomon, King Reoboam. So Solomon reigned in Israel. He had a very prosperous time. As you might recall, he had many wives and concubines, and as a result, many children as well. Reoboam was the one who ascended to the throne, and he reigned for, I believe it was 17 years. And the first three years or so where he followed God, and after that he departed from God. And this passage in 2 Chronicles talks a little bit about it.

2 Chronicles 12, starting in verse 13. Thus King Reoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. Now Reoboam was 41 years old when he became king, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. His mother's name was Nama and Ammonitis, and he did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord.

So this is the first incidence of this word, kun, that I wanted to spend a moment on. And it talked about Reoboam doing evil, but for a specific reason, because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord. He did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord. And again, it's this word kun, which means to be fixed, to be prepared, to be ready, to be established, to be solid, to be stable. And so Reoboam, in his life, he knew he was going to reign. If he had his eyes open, if he was trained right as a future king, he knew he would have to deal with adversity. He would have been trained by people who knew God's way as well, probably by others also, since his mother was an Ammonitis. But he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord because of that lack of preparation he ended up doing evil. This stands for the proposition that in our lives, if we want to follow God's way of life, if we want to weather the storms that come across our lives, we have to play a role in preparing our hearts to seek the Lord. Are we preparing our hearts? Maybe another question is, how do we do it? Let's turn to the next scripture to explore that for a moment. We'll turn to Psalm 10. Psalm 10, and we'll read verses 17 and 18. So in the first passage, we see the fact that we play a role. We talked about Reoboam not preparing his heart. It implies that he could have prepared his heart if he was inclined to do that. Psalm 10, verses 17 and 18. Again, using this same word, kun, again translated prepare. Verse 17, Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble. You will prepare their heart. You will cause your ear to hear, to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may oppress no more. So what do we see here about preparing the heart? Here, as we see in the Psalms, it's said that God will prepare the heart. There's a condition that has to exist, though, first, and that's humility.

So when we think about Reoboam and the fact that he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord, we put it together here using the same Hebrew word for prepare in Psalm 10, where we see that God prepares the heart. What we understand is we create an environment, we have to create an environment in our lives, that will allow our heart to be prepared, and God then is the one who prepares that heart as we seek him. And that quality that's shown here is humility. Now what is it that's at the core of humility? At the core of humility is understanding that we don't have the wherewithal to do it ourselves. We don't have it within ourselves to become righteous. We need God, we need Jesus Christ to forgive our sins. God forgives our sins through the blood of Jesus Christ. Those are things that we cannot do of ourselves. And humility helps us to understand as we try to live our new life in Jesus Christ that it's things that come from outside of us, from God through his Holy Spirit, that allow us to live that productive life. If we go back to our analogy of winter, I think it's a really apt analogy, isn't it? Remember when you were a kid and there would be these big tough guys maybe in your school and they were going to show off by going outside without a winter coat? Maybe you were one of those? How long did that last on a cold day? It doesn't matter how big and strong you are as a human being. The fact is you can only be outside for so long in 20-degree weather with the wind blowing and the snow in your face before you're going to be cold. And it humbles you, doesn't it?

There are certain things as human beings we can try as we might, we're just not going to be able to withstand them physically as human beings, and cold is one of those things. It can be incredibly debilitating really quickly. I think of that in the example here of humility, right? Because as we look at the elements out there, we just have to be realistic about the fact that there's nothing within me that is going to withstand 10-degree weather for more than a few minutes. As a result of that, I prepare. I put on a coat, I put on a hat, I put on gloves, I dress warmly, knowing that that's the only way that I'm going to be able to make it through it. And that's that idea of humility when we look to God. Again, we look at the storms that we know are going to roll across our lives, we know the things that we're going to have to contend with because of our own human condition, and just like we wouldn't think about going out and freezing weather without a coat, we shouldn't think about going out into our lives on a day-to-day basis without asking God to come in, to prepare our hearts, to live within us, to give us the strength that we need to deal with those things. We can learn so much when we think about these elements of nature. Let's go to the third passage using the same Hebrew word, kun. We'll stay in the Psalms, we'll turn to Psalm 57. Now this is identified in the Psalms as a Psalm that David wrote when he was on the run from Saul. And if we remember the story when David was running from Saul, there was a period of time when he basically ran with this crew of just misfit, renegade, rogues, people who were on the run from the law. And he was running away from the king, was trying to chase him. He had this gang of misfits, and they lived in caves, they lived in towns, they lived in holes in the ground, they hid out wherever they could, and they just lived and sustained themselves however they could, and certainly God helped them. But they were hiding because they were running from the law. King Saul at that time was trying to kill David.

And that's the point in time when David wrote this Psalm, Psalm 57. We'll start in verse 7. Psalm 57 verses 7 through 11. My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and give praise. Awake, my glory, awake, lute, and harp, I will awaken the dawn. I'll praise you, O Lord, among the people, I will sing to you among the nations, for your mercy reaches to the heavens and your truth unto the clouds.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be above all the earth. Now that sounds just like something we would do if we were living in a cave someplace, not sure where our next meal is coming from, right?

Isn't that striking? This is what David wrote when he was on the run, living in some awful cave someplace. And by the way, the word steadfast in verse 7 is the same word that we've been talking about, kun, which means to be prepared, to be fixed, to be established. In this case, translated steadfast. David had God's way of life, his understanding of God, so deep within him that he was able to be steadfast. He was able to write a psalm with this kind of thanksgiving and praise to God at a period of time when he was at a low in his life. He was literally on the run for his life.

But the fact that he had prepared his heart, that he had that depth of understanding of what it was that God was working in his life, even though he didn't know exactly how it was going to work out, he knew that God was working it, he knew that that springtime was going to come, he was able to be steadfast and joyful even in a cave when he was running from King Saul in fear for his life. That's what preparing our hearts does, as we think about the fact that we first have to create that environment in our own hearts through humility, through laying ourselves out before God and realizing the fact that we need him.

When we do that, he comes into our hearts as we seek him out in prayer and study, and he prepares those hearts so that when we are in these times, these times of trial and difficulty of winter and blizzards in our lives, we can have this same type of attitude that David had. Not that we say, I'm in a cave, but life's wonderful. David wasn't pretending that, but what he knew was that God was going to deliver him in his time, in his way, and God was going to fulfill his promise for him. And that's the same thing that we can understand and know in our lives.

Let's go to the third and last lesson that I'd like to draw out of winter for today, and that is the lesson of living in a daily environment of adversity. The lesson of living in a daily environment of adversity. I talked about that small adversity I had as a little kid, having to put my bare feet on a cold wooden floor.

There's a lot more adversity, of course, that we deal with day to day. Now, again, the winter teaches us a lot of things. I remember when I was a child, and I still see occasional stories about this. Once every two or three years you'd see a news story, and it would usually be about either a toddler or an older person who'd gotten confused, and they would wander out of the house. And typically they would wander out of the house at night or early in the morning wearing nothing but pajamas. Have any of you heard or seen stories like that? Okay, it's not just a weird dream I had.

And it's tragic, really. It sounds a little comical at first, but it's tragic when you think you've got a morning. And I know when I grew up in Minnesota, a morning could be zero or even five degrees below zero in the morning. You think of a three-year-old wandering out in footy pajamas. It doesn't take very long for that to be a life-and-death situation. And there are stories.

I even was looking on the internet and found some from here in Northeast Ohio from within the last few years where there have been elderly people. They've gotten confused, sat out on their porch overnight, and frozen to death. I mean, it is that critically adverse outside in the winter. And we recognize that. That's why we wear coats. That's why we bring jackets with us. That's why we put supplies in the car in case we get stuck in a snowbank or go off the road and have to end up being in the car for hours at night or in the winter, isn't it?

We prepare ahead for that because we know as every day goes on, we're going to be in an environment of adversity. And if we're not properly prepared for it, it could be a life-or-death situation. How many of you are familiar with hypothermia?

Hypothermia, yeah. So it's a situation that happens when the temperature in our bodies goes down to a critically low point. And hypothermia can sneak up on a person. And the reason for that is, as you get too cold, your mental condition gets impaired. And you don't start to notice the things that are happening to your body. They talk about people who are in the beginning stages of hypothermia being somewhat confused, maybe slurring their speech, might lose some of their motor skills. But what's really interesting is something that happens at the moderate to late stages of hypothermia. And the actual term for it is paradoxical undressing. Now that sounds really strange, but 20 to 50 percent of people who die of hypothermia have taken off all of their clothes. Now that seems like the strangest thing in the world to do when you're freezing to death to take all your clothes off. And researchers have tried to figure out why in the world do people do that. And the two theories that they have is, one, perhaps a malfunction in the brain, in the part of the brain that recognizes temperature differences, where when you're so deep into hypothermia you can't recognize the fact that you're freezing and you actually think you're hot. The other theory that's out there is more of a physical theory, and that is that the muscle fatigue that keeps the blood into the core of your body, the muscles that do that fatigue, and therefore the blood rushes out into the extremities, and the rushing of the blood into the extremities makes you feel like you're warm, and so you take your clothes off. Whichever one it is, the fact is that up to half of the people who die of hypothermia think that they're actually warm to the point where they shed their clothing shortly before they die. Now that's an extreme example, but it shows the type of confusion that can happen to a person when we get to that extreme level of cold, where we can't even recognize whether our bodies need warmth through clothing or need cold by shedding that clothing. Now our weekly walk through life in the world is like going outside on a winter day, isn't it? When we look at it, we know the things that we deal with in the world, the things that we contend with, as we try to struggle and live God's way of life every day. There's lots of ways that we prepare for that in terms of going out into adversity, making sure that we're praying and studying and staying close to God on a daily basis. There's one other one that I'd like to use as a focus point today, and that is keeping the Sabbath, because we're given this weekly time to restore ourselves. As we're going out into a world that's full of adversity and we're dealing with things that are coming at us, one of the huge tools that we have to recharge ourselves is the Sabbath. Now we spent a little time on this in our last fundamental study, and I wanted to just rehearse three things that we see very clearly written in the Bible about the Sabbath, and that we can and should use so that we're recharging ourselves, that we're warming ourselves up spiritually so we're able to face the adversity of the weeks that we go through. The first one is refraining from work, a clear part of the Sabbath command. In Genesis, Genesis 2, we won't turn there, but right at the beginning of the Bible, God talks about, Genesis talks about how in the creation account, God rested on the seventh day.

He ceased from his work. He stopped all of his labors, and that's what we do. I view it as sort of the first hurdle in terms of the Sabbath, because we can't really do the other things in terms of keeping the Sabbath until we've ceased from our work. Deuteronomy 5 verses 12 through 18 is one of the two accounts of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and it goes through fairly painstaking discussion of the fact that we don't work on the Sabbath. Deuteronomy 5, starting in verse 12, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord commanded you.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall do no work. You, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, your donkey, your cattle, your stranger, that's in your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty arm and outstretched hand.

Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. So there's a pretty exhaustive list here, very specific command as a starting point with the Sabbath that we cease from our work. But it doesn't stop there. Let's turn to Isaiah 58.

Isaiah 58, and we'll read verses 13 and 14. To keep the Sabbath and use it as a time of real refreshing to warm ourselves up to make sure that we're not spiritually falling into hypothermia, it goes beyond just what we stop doing, and it goes to what we do. What are the actions that we do? Isaiah 58, and we'll read verses 13 and 14. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor him not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord.

I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So what this is talking about, after we go from the negative of do not work, we turn to what is it that we should do on the Sabbath? And what this is pointing out is the fact that we need to use that time to turn towards God. We need to look at and think about what are the activities that we do on the Sabbath?

How do we use the time that we have? You know, if we use this example of going out in the world like being out in the cold at wintertime, if we have the Sabbath as our day of rest from that, and we use that time to go right back out in the world, that same cold environment, we never warm up, do we?

Remember when I was a kid, we would go ice skating, and there was always this warming house next to the ice skating rink. The public parks in Minnesota, they'd come and they'd flood ice skating rinks with water. They'd put up hockey boards on one side, and they have sort of an open skating rink on the other side. Often after school, we'd just clomp up, block and a half away, and go ice skating. You get cold. Your toes start to get cold. And what do you do when that happens? We'd go inside the warming house. There was this big heater in there.

You pull off the gloves, pull off the mittens, pull off the skates, because they were kind of pinching on the toes, and your toes would get cold, and stick our toes in front of that heater and warm up. That's kind of how the Sabbath is for us. You know, we're out there on that skating rink.

We're starting to freeze. The tips are our fingers are getting cold. Get to Friday afternoon. We feel that frostbite coming out in our toes. And we go inside, and we heat up by taking in the things of God, by spending our time doing something other than what we were doing out there in the cold. Now, if instead of going into a warming hut, you go and jump in a snowbank, or you stay outside, you don't warm up physically. That's the same way it is with the Sabbath.

If we spend the Sabbath doing the same things that we're occupying our minds with the other six days of the week, we don't warm up spiritually. We don't get refreshed. We don't have a change in mindset that draws us back towards God. And without getting into particulars of, you should do this, and you shouldn't do that on the Sabbath.

I would encourage everyone to think about, how do we differentiate the Sabbath in how we live our lives on that day? How is it a different experience that turns our minds towards God and makes us think about Him? Let's look at one other thing that we should do on the Sabbath, and that's Leviticus 23.

We'll just spend a moment here. Leviticus 23 and verse 3. Here again, one other thing that the Bible affirmatively says that we should do on the Sabbath. Leviticus 23 verse 3. It says, six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation.

And then it repeats the command, you shall do no work on it. It's the Sabbath of the Lord and all your dwelling. What I want to focus on there is a holy convocation. We're all here, so I guess I'm preaching to the choir, except you're not the choir, you're the congregation. So I don't have to tell everyone here we need to be here, but it is something that is specifically pointed out. If we're physically able, we're supposed to be with God's people at a holy convocation on the Sabbath. It's actually part of the Sabbath command that we see here in Leviticus 23.

And as we're using this day, as a day to warm up, as a day to restore, as a day to be bundled up and ready to go back out into the week, the act of being here together as fellow Christians, encouraging one another, helping one another forward, sharing our burdens, sharing our joys, is part of what helps us live God's way of life. Part of what we should do as we look at a way to continue to warm ourselves up, to be able to deal with that adverse climate, those adverse conditions that we go out into every other day of the week.

So just like hypothermia manifests itself in this sort of deceptive state where people think they're warm, and when in fact they're freezing to death, sometimes we can fool ourselves as well in terms of what our spiritual condition is, if we're convincing ourselves that everything is okay when it's really not. And so as we look at going out into the world and living in that adverse condition from day to day, how are we preparing ourselves?

How are we warming ourselves up on a weekly basis through the Sabbath, as well as on a daily basis by turning to God, in order to make sure that that cold at our fingertips doesn't turn into hypothermia at the very core of our body spiritually, cooling us down to the extent that we can't function anymore. So in conclusion, winter is coming to Northeast Ohio. We can make no mistake about that looking outside today, and unfortunately there's nothing we can do to stop it. In fact, it's the way God created the earth to work. And after winter and all the things that happen, some of it you could all almost call positive destruction, some of the things get broken down during the winter. Springtime comes and it blooms in a way that it wouldn't do if it didn't have pause during the winter.

I encourage us all to think about the lessons that winter can bring to us. Like winter, we have to anticipate realistically the things that we have to deal with in life. We can prepare for spiritual blizzards by turning ourselves to God in humility and asking Him to prepare our hearts. And we can sustain our spiritual body temperature on a weekly basis by using the Sabbath as the tool that was designed to be for our weekly spiritual sustenance. Keep warm, everybody! Winter's coming.