Exodus 20:8-11 ( NKJV )
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
(We were blessed to have Pastors Phil and Gina Crandall from Blue Ridge Chapel in Rocky Mount Virginia with us this week. Here are some thoughts on their ministry.)
Pastor Phil had a wonderful message about the 7th day on Sunday morning, but I don’t have space to cover it here. Check back at Livingwordgreene.com or look for the LWCC podcast on itunes. This message should be available shortly. In the mean time let me share a thought about this idea of a Sabbath rest.
The good fight of Faith is just that, a fight. There are times when we get weary. God initiated the idea of the Sabbath, the 7th day, to remind man that there is a necessity that we find rest in God. Under the law the 7th day required that the children of Israel refrain from all manner of work. They were required by law to rest. Jesus changed the emphasis in his teaching. When he was caught healing or picking grain on the Sabbath, both of which were illegal under the mosaic law, he told the Pharisees that he was the Lord of the Sabbath. Relationship with Jesus superseded the law.
He also stated that the Sabbath was for man not man for the Sabbath. God put many things in the Mosaic law as a type of what Jesus would bring to man. Jeremiah 31 makes it clear that God actually had something else in mind. He was eventually going to institute a new covenant where the law would not be a legal code but an inner reality. The ultimate Sabbath was not a day legally set aside it was the rest of relationship with Jesus.
Hebrews 4:11 tells us to labor in order to enter into the rest of God. The word “rest” in this verse means the harmony of spirit, soul and body doing what each is supposed to do. This is our Sabbath. We do not have a day of rest but if we will do the necessary labor we can have a Sabbath in the midst of any faith battle. In Hebrews 4 we find that the labor needed to enter the rest involves the Word of God, knowing the nature of our high priest and coming into the presence of God. If we spend time and energy in these things we will find that we can rest in the middle of any battle.
This rest is not an outward rest. It is an inner rest. It is the rest that Jesus had in front of Pontius Pilot during his trial. All around Jesus there was chaos. In the middle of it Jesus was at peace and in complete control. He was in a faith fight, but he was walking in a perpetual Sabbath right in the midst of it.
Are you a little tired from the battle? You can’t quit because quitting means defeat. You can run to the presence of the Lord, praise Him, worship Him, spend time in his word and in His presence and you will find a rest of faith. You will find a peace and confidence that will enable you to continue on to victory. We don’t have a Sabbath day requirement. We have a Sabbath rest that is available any day in any week in any battle.
Leave a Reply