That seventh day . . . ............. Parables 708

March 20, 2001

My grandfather said, “I’ve never harvested any crops that I planted on a Sunday.” He was not a religious man but Grandpa noticed the positive results of his commitment to take one rest day in his busy work week.

The original idea of taking one day a week as a day of rest comes from the Bible. It was called the Sabbath and was an important part of Jewish life. In the Old Testament, the people were commanded to keep holy the sevenths day of the week (holy = set aside for God) but their Sabbath activities often became ritual.

In the New Testament, the early Christians interpreted the Old Testament Sabbath as a ‘type’ or shadow of their relationship to Christ and their ‘rest’ in His finished work of salvation. They changed that special day to the first day of the week, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Instead of ritual, it became a lively expression of corporate worship and celebration.

Today, the traditional ‘rest’ days are not what they used to be. For those doing shift work, weekend days are the same as any other days. Changed hours for businesses add to the difficulty of consistently making one day a special day.

Besides the above logistics, many people may take a day or two off work to rest; however, they often fill those days of rest with activities that are just as strenuous as work.

To add to the complication of a modern Sabbath, several traditions and beliefs stress which day it should be. Some religious groups argue the day must be Saturday; others insist that it must be Sunday.

In an effort to solve this, others feel that the day of the week is not as important as the principle behind the Sabbath: God worked six days when He formed the world and everything in it, then after declaring it “good,” He rested. (This is not to say God was tired but that He ceased from working for a day.) This principle of work and rest is included in the Ten Commandments and repeated throughout the Old Testament.

Since our calendar was not yet invented, it is folly to argue which day of the week compares exactly to that seventh day. Instead, we need to look at God’s example and activities and apply them to our Sabbath rest. God worked six days doing something significant; He created a world and established its operational principles. After He was finished, He looked at it and said it was good.

I don’t know about everyone, but for me, it is a wonderful (and rare) week when I can look back and say all that I did was significant and good, but when I can, it seems easier to take a day off and rest.

This makes me wonder if our human drive for significance gets carried away and pushes us into a sense that we must work harder and longer to accomplish something good? And from what do we get our sense of significance? Does that fit with God’s plan for our lives?

Another part of this issue is that God never stopped working after He rested. That is, He continues to be active in His world. Simply put, a rest at the end of our week of work is also prior to the beginning of another work week. The Sabbath rest is practical; we can go refreshed and rested into the next part of our work cycle. This points to the principle behind the Sabbath. While it was initiated as a day set aside for God, Jesus pointed out that “man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for man.”

This time of rest is also for our good. While we can spend it in many ways, some of it should include time to reflect on the good of the past week. We can rest in the significance we have as children of God, and as we rest our bodies, we prepare for the week ahead.

Most important of all, if we include time apart from the normal distractions of life to focus our attention on the glory and grace of our God, He will renew our spirit and give us peace.