Honoring the Sabbath (Ex. 20:8-11)

6/13/2008 8:16 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time           Focus:  Honoring the Sabbath

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Exodus 20:8-11

            Message of the verses:  “8 ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9  ‘Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10  but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.  11  ‘For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.’”

            As stated in verse eleven the Sabbath goes back all the way to when God created the heavens and the earth and so the principle of the Sabbath had been there a long time.  God did not need to rest when He finished creating the heavens and the earth, but for one thing this would be something that people and animals would need to do and so this was a principle from the Lord which He would later on make a part of the Jewish Law as seen here in the third commandment.  Another reason for this Law was so that the neighbors of Israel would be able to observe the nation of Israel and this would be an opportunity to be a wittiness to them, but this Law was for the nation of Israel and not for the Gentile nations.  “19  He declares His words to Jacob, His statutes and His ordinances to Israel.  20  He has not dealt thus with any nation; And as for His ordinances, they have not known them. Praise the LORD!”  This quote is from Psalm 147 verses 19 & 20. 

            If I can understand there is a principle that has been passed on to the people in the Church age concerning the Sabbath, which is not a Law, for nine of the Ten Commandments are written in the NT, but this third commandment is not written there.  Believers in Jesus Christ began to have their time of corporate worship on the first day of the week in observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave.

In Revelations 1:10A John has this to say, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”  If John would have been speaking of the Sabbath he would not have said the Lord’s Day, and this was Sunday, the first day of the week. However as stated above the principle of the Sabbath day, in my opinion has been passed on to the Lord’s Day, in that it has become a day of corporate worship for the Church age and it is good to take one day out of the week to rest. 

            I am at the beginning of reading a book by Alistair Begg that is about the Law and how it applies to the believer today and so I am sure that I will get more information on this from that book.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I can relate to the principle of resting one day a week from my days at Ford when I worked many, many days in a row and the effects of that were hard on both my family and me.  I have a desire to learn more about the Law of God and how it should affect my life and that is why I am reading the book now.

My Steps of Faith for Today:

1. To be yoke with the Lord Jesus Christ.
2. To begin having a better prayer life.
3. To trust the Lord with the difficult financial problems we face.
4. To give myself to the Lord for service and worship today.

Memory verse for the week:                       Colossians 4:12-13

12.    Epaphras, who is one of you number, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God.

13.    For I testify for him that he has a deep concern for you and for those in Laodicea and Hierapolis.

6/13/2008 9:03 AM