Exodus 20:8 – 11 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God, on which you must not do any work—neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant or livestock, nor the foreigner within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”
At first this might seem to be the weirdest commandment of them all! This commandment speaks of God resting, but God is immortal and all – powerful, so surely He doesn’t need to rest! And yet, God lists this commandment right after the one regarding the misuse of His Name. Why?
Throughout all of nature, there are cycles of activity and rest – day and night, summer and winter, times of growth and times of inactivity. When God created the world, He established these patterns, and as part of those patterns, he established Sabbath rest. Does God need to rest? NO! Do WE need to rest? ABSOLUTELY!
God knows us better than we know ourselves! God knows that many people, given the chance, would simply keep working and working and working, giving themselves little time to rest and no time for worship. So God established a seven day cycle in which the seventh day was to be a day of complete rest for everybody in the household, including the servants and the animals. As God continued to teach Moses and the Israelites, the Sabbath also became a day of worship.
How much importance did God attach to the Sabbaths? God ordered the Israelites to remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. God wanted to make sure that at least one day a week, the Israelites would stop their normal activities and focus on Him instead.
How serious was God about the failure of His people to observe the Sabbath? Repeatedly, when God was admonishing the Jews for their failures to follow Him properly, He rebuked them for refusing to observe the Sabbath. In Isaiah 58:13 – 14 God says, “If you turn your foot from breaking the Sabbath, from doing as you please on My holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight, and the LORD’s holy day honorable, if you honor it by not going your own way or seeking your own pleasure or speaking idle words, then you will delight yourself in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the land and feed you with the heritage of your father Jacob.” For the mouth of the LORD has spoken. One of the reasons that both Israel and Judah were overrun by invaders was their refusal to observe the Sabbath and their insistence on treating it as just one more day on which to make money.
APPLICATION: How do we observe the Sabbath or do we observe it at all? In recent years, there has been a great deal written about the destructive effects of continued stress on health and emotional well – being. Those who are under perpetual stress may develop all kinds of problems, including depression, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and even cancer. Frankly speaking. our bodies were created to need regular Sabbaths. When we refuse to rest regularly, we are only hurting ourselves.
For years I manned a bush hospital in a remote rural area in Ghana as the only doctor. As much as possible, I tried to keep Sundays as days of some rest, even if it was just sliding into a church service late and getting a long afternoon nap. It was an incredible relief when I gained colleagues and was able to schedule regular times out, including being off some Sundays so that I could truly enjoy worship and rest. Those times when I was forced to operate seven days a week due to emergencies frequently led to my falling sick with typhoid or malaria and being forced to take time off anyway.
How can you keep the Sabbath holy? You need to ask God to show you what He wants you to do. When we are in the U.S., we try not to buy things on Sunday if at all possible and we try to attend church and to rest. Some people must work on Sundays due to scheduling; perhaps God would have you take some other day off as your Sabbath. The biggest thing is to pray and ask God how you can best honor Him. Rest assured that God will open ways and means for you when you ask.
PRAYER: Father God, thank you for your Sabbaths! Thank you for the chance to be quiet, to rest and to restore ourselves. Thank you for the opportunities for worship. Lord, show everyone who reads this the ways you want them to honor you. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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