Rest

Rest
Read Exodus 35-36
 
Exodus 35:1-3 Then Moses called together the whole community of Israel and told them, “These are the instructions the Lord has commanded you to follow. 2 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day must be a Sabbath day of complete rest, a holy day dedicated to the Lord. Anyone who works on that day must be put to death. 3 You must not even light a fire in any of your homes on the Sabbath.”
 
WHAT do you do on the Sabbath? Based on this, I doubt many of us would withstand God’s wrath! Take this to a store clerk or business owner who’s working Sundays and see what the person says.
    Likely, he or she will just shrug their shoulders and continue working. God surely wouldn’t kill someone for working on the Sabbath would he? Their very lives prove it. No, he wouldn’t today, but did he then? I believe he did. Why?
    God says why. The LORD God equates the Sabbath – the rest – with himself. He says the Sabbath is holy. Violate the Sabbath, and you violate God’s holiness. That violation has a death penalty. (See Exodus 20.) Drawing his people out of slavery, God used the Sabbath as a sign and mark of his covenant. He says so in the command: Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 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. 11 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 He made it holy.”
    In the Old Covenant, the Sabbath was the seventh day of the week to mark the end of God’s work to create the world. Today the Christian Sabbath is the first day of the week to mark the day God began to offer to the world his new creation in Jesus Christ. These are holy acts of God. We must pause to rest and obey.
    Can you work? Surely you can do essential tasks of farming, housekeeping and well-being. God made the Sabbath for mankind to enjoy rest and remember the blessings of God’s grace. These are good and necessary things to do.
 
God has made many things – even a day to rest.