“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” (Exodus 20:8-11).
Dear Heavenly Father, as I enter Your Throne Room today, I enter it with thanksgiving! Thank You for the Sabbath day! A day to lay all our burdens down, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, and just find rest in You. What would we do without this oasis in time! We give You thanks for it, in the precious name of Jesus Christ! Amen.
I believe that the most obvious way of telling someone how much they mean to us, can be observed, felt, and heard, in the amount of time that we are willing to spend with them.
We have replaced spending time with our loved ones, especially those closest to us (spouses, children), by giving them things instead of giving ourselves, which can be translated into time.
Not so with God. In the beginning, before anyone had experienced tiredness, God gave the first humans the Sabbath. The Bible tells us that God did three things to the Sabbath: He rested on it. He blessed it. And, He sanctified it.
Rested: Hebrew shabath; a primitive root: to repose, as in, desist from exertion. used in many implication relations, (cause to) cease, celebrate. (make) to rest. A verb meaning to repose, to rest, to rid of, to still, to put away, to leave (Old Testament Dictionary).
It goes without saying, that God did not rest because He was tired (Isaiah 40:28)! This was quality and quantity time with His beloved children!
Blessed: Hebrew barak; A primitive root; to kneel; A verb meaning to bless, kneel, salute or greet. Its derived meaning is to bless something or someone (Ibid). When God blesses, no one can reverse it (Numbers 23:20)!
Sanctified: Hebrew qadash; A primitive root; to be clean. A verb meaning to set apart, to be holy, to show oneself holy, to be treated as holy, to consecrate, to treat as holy, to dedicate, to be made holy, to declare holy or consecrated, to behave, to act holy, to dedicate one self. The verb, in the simple stem, declares the act of setting apart, being holy. (Ibid). God sanctifies people to do His will (Isaiah 13:3).
It is quite obvious, that God’s Sabbath day, is not just another day. On no other day of the week, did He rest from His labor. On no other day of the week was a blessing pronounced by God. And no other day of the week has been set apart for holy use, by God. There were other yearly holy days, but only the Sabbath, the seventh day of every week, from creation, has been sanctified, forever!
We will continue this conversation.