“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).
Eternal Father, Great God, we enter Your Throne Room with rejoicing in our hearts and on our lips. We join with the angelic host and say Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty! You who love Your children with a “love that will not let [us] go.” Thank You dear Lord, for if You let us go, there would be no hope for us! Please hold us close to You and never let us stray. This is our prayer in the blessed name of Jesus Christ Your Son. Amen.
It is clear to us that the Sabbath day is God’s day! Therefore, He has the right to tell us how He would like us to spend the day. In our last devotional we witnessed how Jesus spent the Sabbath, while He journeyed here on earth. Today we will listen to some declarations from the Lord regarding the manner in which He desires His children to spend His day that He made for our blessing and enjoyment!
- “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 58:13, 14).
“The mouth of the Lord has spoken.” God Himself has spoken. Let us listen carefully to what He has to say, about the way He would have us keep His Sabbath. After all, it is His day. He declared that He is the “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28; Luke 6:5)!
In order to understand what the Lord was saying to His people, I did a word search of the original meaning, according to context, of the words used in this passage. From that search, I humbly submit for your consideration a paraphrase of what I heard.
“If you stop doing on the Sabbath, the things you consider pleasurable, on My holy day, and see in the Sabbath, a joyous day, a day the Lord set aside as sacred; and instead you honor God, by not doing what you would rather do, neither in words or in deeds: Then you will really find joy in the Lord, and I will take you to heights of worship you never knew, and will bless you in ways you never imagined! You will partake of the inheritance of Jacob, Abrahams seed. These things will come to pass, because I, the Lord, have declared it!”
It is not easy to translate for God! He is Infinite, and we are finite! He is Omnipotent and we are but dust! He is infallible, and we are oh, so prone to fail! But His promises fail not!
Believe Him! Obey Him! And be Blessed!
Have a Happy Sabbath!