Rest - Pt 2

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep 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 it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11 ESV).

In continuing to think about rest, our second thought is that God established a Sabbath principle. However you relate the Old Testament law to the present, the Sabbath remains a gift with wisdom in it. Doing a little research for today’s devotional, I read C.S. Lewis’s wife’s book on the Ten Commandments and saw her point out the wonder and the incredible gift of telling an ancient, agricultural people whose lives depended on working the land not only you don’t have to go to work today, but you may not go to work today. It was God giving them a mandatory weekly vacation. And it was stunning. I mean I just had never seen it in that light. Remember yesterday I wrote that God made sleep as a continual reminder that we should not be anxious, but should rest in him like a little baby. That is exactly the way it would have landed on people, at least at the beginning. You may not work seven days a week. I won’t let you. You must rest. And then he consecrated it to himself as a sign of his own creative power and holiness, but the underlying issue of its gift nature to us. It was first given to a worn out, finite, tired, and agricultural people; and, it remains for us, a worn-out, finite, tired, technologically driven people. The rhythm of work six, rest one, work six, rest one, work six, rest one would probably spare a lot of heart attacks and give longevity to many lives prematurely taken because they never unwind the spring. They’re always working. They are working at home and they are working at work and they are working in their play and they can’t stop working. And I don’t think that is what one in seven means. This spring that we live by, especially for some of us, needs to be unwound not just two weeks a year, but one day a week. A vacation simply is not the answer. As much as I love going to the Smoky Mountains, that’s not what God intended as a “rest.” Last week I preached both morning services at Gospel City Church in Arlington, Texas. I was exhausted. I know most of that was the health condition I have developed recently; however, it was a stark reminder that for most of my life I have never really rested on Saturday or Sunday. Maybe it’s time! One thing is sure. God intended us to rest one day, to really rest. That is the created rhythm we are designed for. So, REST!