Exodus 20:8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
Throughout the Bible in the Old Testament, God called a rest for man on the seventh day of every week; and a rest for the earth every seven years. God commands everything that He made to rest at a specific time – the earth will rest, animals will rest, and we will rest – or He will lay us all down. God’s command to rest is for our renewal. It is our ticket to be lazy one day of every week out of obedience.
Deuteronomy 5: 14 “But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou”.
We can’t just pick a day for our personal Sabbath. God’s Sabbath is a specific day – Saturday. He sanctified Saturday and made it Holy; therefore, no matter what’s going on, how gloomy it looks, even with all the negative things that might happen that day, Saturday is still Holy.
obvioulsy, If God rested, we should rest
I didn’t know anything about keeping the Sabbath while I was growing up, so whenever I heard someone mention the Sabbath, I always thought, “Oh they must be in that religion!” Then one day after I had finished reading the entire Bible, God convicted me about not keeping the Sabbath. At that time, I was working a full-time job, but I decided that I wanted a part-time job for a short time to be a good steward and pay off some bills (to look more like Jesus). The part-time job I selected required me to work one day on the weekend, but it was up to the company to choose which day. I prayed that they would schedule me on Saturday because in my mind, I was reared thinking Sunday was the Sabbath (church day).
When I was handed the schedule, I was assigned to work on Sundays. My first thought was, Lord, after all that praying and you convicting me about keeping the Sabbath, why didn’t you change that schedule? He said, “Because Saturday is the Sabbath!” I asked that as a rhetorical question – I didn’t expect Him to answer it. So, I researched a little about the Sabbath enough to know that the Sabbath is actually Saturday, but that’s as far as I went. God was talking so much during that time it was hard to keep up; so, whatever He said, I just accepted it saying, “Lord, I believe you” and then just moved on.
When I first began to keep the Sabbath, it felt strange. I could think of a hundred other things I could be doing and felt that I was wasting good time doing nothing. I felt like a bum – sort of embarrassed because people would ask what I was doing. I would say “Nothing”. But as I learned to rest each Sabbath, my mind, body, and spirit began to anticipate that day of doing nothing (on purpose). I learned to prepare on Friday so I can relax on Saturday. I do most of the cleaning and laundry through the week and cook on Friday in preparation for the Sabbath. The Bible even calls Friday the “day of preparation”. Then on Saturday, I can duly and obediently rest.
God gives us a whole day (from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday) to just enjoy His goodness, praise Him, and catch up on sleep.
keep it Holy
Genesis 8:4 “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.”
After about a year of doing nothing on Saturdays except reading the Bible and relaxing, I began to test the boundaries. About this time, I sold my home, and my daughter and I moved back to Florida. Some of the things that God had convicted me of like fornication, drinking, smoking, etc. were straight forward. But some things I had to ask, “Surely you don’t mean that?!!!”
A couple of months after I got settled in Florida, I wanted to buy another house, therefore, my daughter and I started house hunting. I decided that since we didn’t have anything to do one Saturday, we might as well house hunt. I thought, “Surely there’s no harm in that!” We started out early that morning and ended when all the model homes were closed. It was a very long exhausting day because I didn’t find anything. When I got back to the apartment I plopped on the bed and said, “Whew, I am exhausted!!” God said, “That’s called work!!” That rang and echoed in my spirit for what seemed like 30 minutes as I lay there staring at the ceiling rehashing how I got to that point to make God speak to me that way. My boundaries about the Sabbath became much clearer that day. I went back to my old Saturday routine of… doing nothing.
“The Sabbath was made for man”
God already knows that households with small children and other dependents make it extra difficult to just stop everything and sit down on Saturday; there will always be a surprise, or something important will go undone. But this is what God said:
“Mark 2:25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him? 26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? 27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:”
God looks at our hearts before our deeds. He matures us, but also takes our specific situation into account. He wouldn’t command a married person to live in celibacy or command a person with a family to give all their time to Him. He is a God of order. But He does expect us to be obedient to His specific commands in our situation. He will give us wisdom to resolve earthly problems that stand in the way of our obedience. God has the answer to everything He commands and has the power to explain it. If you want to live for Him, He gives you the plan and power to do so as He teaches you along the way.
covid – the involuntary rest ~Terri
When we were Sabbath keepers, God kept us from destruction. Even though we weren’t even keeping the correct day, we were keeping ‘a’ day and we closed everything on Sunday. God saw our hearts. Now, everything (except for a handful of businesses which are deliberate Sabbath keepers) is open almost 24 hours a day. There is no downtime for this earth or us. God commands downtime and when we don’t adhere to his commands, He will send us into an involuntary rest – like COVID. COVID gave us a mirror into our lives and forced a rest onto the entire earth.
Leviticus 25;4 “But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.”
During COVID, we began to see a drastic drop in air pollution and the spreading of other contagions because we “rested”. Many who weren’t accustomed to quiet time didn’t know what to do with themselves. There are still those who refuse to rest because it goes against what they were taught – that if they’re resting, they’re wasting valuable time. They feel they have to “do” something for their lives to continue; hence, they are self-made and must keep themselves – from falling. When we attempt to control our own lives, we grow in pride. When we obey God’s commandments, we grow in His Spirit.
Keeping the Sabbath develops all the fruit of the Spirit by teaching us love (for God), joy (because we have a father watching over us), peace (because we don’t need to do anything), faithfulness (in knowing He is keeping us as we obey Him), and self-control (to become like Christ, which is much easier than acting like Him).
it’s one of the commandments – and He made it Holy ~Terri
I’ve learned to just relax, read the Word a little and sleep a lot. There is a time for everything that God commands and a reason for it all. The reasons can sometimes be obvious – but sometimes we don’t see them until we begin to do what He says (and sometimes not at all). Learning to rest on a specific day teaches us to prioritize, organize and make the most of the other 6 days of the week. It teaches us how to appreciate God’s simple peace and beauty as we rest in His arms – because He said so.
