Living on Sabbath Time: Day 10/30
Weekend Devotional Study
In my experience, trying to recalibrating my life around a Sabbath week vs. a Work week is akin to fasting coffee (or your favorite caffeine source). When you get through the headaches things start to settle down and fasting becomes a blessing. That is how taking the leap of faith to practice Sabbath living can be. It is like a shock to the system! However, any honest student of the Bible will begin to see that the Sabbath is more than something that they did way back in Bible times.
Practicing Sabbath is God’s gift to us and it is also God’s command to us. Sabbath living is just as relevant in the 21st as it was to Adam and Eve and the people that lived before the flood and as it was for Moses and all the citizens of Israel that followed after him.
Bottom line, God’s laws are the “rules of engagement.” They are the architectural drawings from which we build life. If we will embrace them live will work the way it is supposed to; if we ignore them we will build our life on sinking sand that will end up bringing us great sorrow.
Last week’s devotional dealt with the Genesis account of when God introduced the Sabbath by sanctifying the seventh day as holy and weaving Sabbath into the very fabric of life on earth. This week we will examine the Fourth Commandment and what it reveals to us about the nature of Sabbath living.
The Fourth Commandment is stated twice in the Bible; first in Exodus and then later in Deuteronomy. While the command itself is the same – “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy” – in each account, God gives additional revelation as to why keeping the Sabbath is beneficial. A careful study of both these accounts will help you to understand why obeying the Fourth Commandment not only honors God but also how it also vastly improves your life. So let us jump into this week’s study and learn more about living Sabbath lives…
Resting in Him, dlk
SCRIPTURES: Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15
As you read these two accounts of the Fourth Command notice the two different things were are to “remember”.
- Exodus – “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy…”
- Deuteronomy – “Remember that you were slaves in slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out…”
Exodus grounds Sabbath in creation. In other words, the weekly Sabbath is a part of the fabric of creation; it is how life
is supposed to work.
Deuteronomy grounds the Sabbath in liberation. By the time of Moses, the world had forgotten the Sabbath week and was living according to the slavery of the Work week.
- QUESTION: Why do you think it is so easy for society to completely erase concept of a Sabbath day and gravitate to a Work week model?
- QUESTION: What is the difference between “living for the weekend” and “living in anticipation of the Sabbath”
- QUESTION: In what ways are you in bondage to the slavery of work and what is at least one thing you will do this week to celebrate God’s Sabbath freedom from that bondage?
