Keeping The Sabbath Holy

[[[ keeping the sabbath holy ]]]
I remember what keeping the Sabbath holy used to mean to me.

7 AM: Rise and get ready for Sunday school.
8 AM: Be agitated and disgruntled with family members for their delay in getting ready.
9:15 AM: Arrive in a flurry of lateness for Sunday school.
9:15 – Noon: Time to keep Sabbath Day holy.

Afternoon?
Buffet lunch – Errands – Pay Bills – Mow Grass – You know, the usual.

Keep Sabbath Day Holy

Then in Bible study on the Sounder train one day I met someone who challenged this thought process of mine. They didn’t use Scripture or pressure but rather two words. Two words anyone can use for affective evangelism.

“Show Me”

Show me that Scripture condones my hectic Sunday schedule as what id does mean keep Sabbath Holy.

Guess what I did?

I took the challenge, and I’m glad I did.

I wanted to prove that I too was able to honor Sabbath. Keep holy the day through a few hours at church and a hectic rat race was all that was necessary. After all, we are not under the law any longer, right?

The Fourth Commandment

My first stop was at The Fourth Commandment itself.

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 it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Okay, so there is something about a seventh day here, but this is Old Testament and not binding in today’s world. Jewish customs are just that, right?

Perhaps, but then you would also need to be disqualified from this.

Isaiah 58:13-14
"If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD's holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,
then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob."
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

And if that blessing is available to me, I want it. Don’t you?

The Seventh Day

This brings us to the actual creation of the Sabbath Day. Strangely enough it has everything to do with God and nothing to do with Jewish customs.

Genesis 2:2-3
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

So when you choose to remember the seventh day Sabbath Day. Keep holy this Sabbath day and you are recognizing God as the creator of the entire universe. Keeping the Sabbath Holy when you consider this becomes an entirely different thought process; at least it did for me.