Taking Time
Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about the Sabbath and what it can still mean to us today. This practice is something that we are not under command of anymore, but is still something that posses a lot of lessons for us in my opinion.
Deuteronomy 5:12 “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 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 or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that 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 commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”
The Israelites had been in slavery, and God brought them out of it. He gave them the Sabbath for the sole purpose of remembering this. I think a lot of the time when we think of the Sabbath, we think laziness. We think that the Israelites were given this day to do nothing, to just give them a break; but that is not the case at all. God gave the Israelites the Sabbath because He wanted them to realize what kind of God He was, He wanted them to realize how awesome He was, and He wanted them to remember that it was Him who brought them to the point they were at.
It was a all about Him.
Once they were under the gods of Egypt, who required their sweat and labor; but now they are under THE God who with his mighty hand and outstretched arm gives rest to his people. God wanted them to know that he was radically different from anything they were once familiar with.
Romans 6:17: “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
Israel was once a slave to Egypt, but God, with his mighty hand and outstretched arm brought the Israelites out of their bondage to the Promised Land. We were once enslaved to sin, we had no way out, but the merciful God with his mighty hand reached out to us through his Son, through the cross, and set us free. He gave us rest. God loosened our bonds from sin, just as he did for Israel.
It was all Him.
And just as Israel took time to think about God, how awesome He was, and how much He did for them, we need to do the same for Him today. We might not need to make it a whole day, but we do need to be willing to devote some time to God everyday to where we just pause and think about what he has done for us, and what we can do for HIm in return. The same God that led the Israelites out of Egypt has led us out of sin, without him we would still be lost. Without him we wouldn’t have the joy of the redeemed. Without Him we would have no rest.
It’s all about Him.
