Wednesday's Word...TEN: Do Nothing (Part 4 of 5)

This is part 4 of 5. Find part 1 here and part 2 here and part 3 here.

So we are 4 weeks into the 10 Commandments and we're only going to hit one more of them today. So far, we have discovered that the 10 Commandments were not given as a condition for a relationship, but they were given as a confirmation of a relationship with God. Did you catch that? Relationship always precedes rules with God. He calls us His first, then gives us the rules. 

Let’s look at Exodus 20:8-9: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work” (NIV). Okay, let’s back up a little here. The word “Sabbath” is actually a noun that came from a verb meaning rest, or don't work. Now, at this point you may hear that and think that this idea of rest and not working might have been great for Israel thousands of years ago, but that isn't going to fly with your schedule in the 21^st century.

as long ago as this was, their culture was not all that different from ours now. This was a group of people who had come out of slavery where they spent all of their time, I mean literally all of their time, serving Egyptians. This was a group of people who had a very strong work ethic, and they lived in a world where if you didn't work all the time, your family may not eat. People’s lives depended on working hard and working often. So for God to tell them to take an entire 24-hour period off and do no work—in other words, provide nothing for yourself—probably came across not only as unrealistic, but insensitive too. Didn’t God care that they get food in their stomachs? But fortunately for this group of people, they had just had an experience with God that put this commandment in context.

When the Israelites left Egypt, they numbered about one or two million. The whole nation left Egypt, and while they took some food with them, there was only so much they could pack and it would only last for so long. They were literally an entire culture moving through the desert, and it didn’t take long at all before they ran out of food. So they began to complain and take their complaints to Moses, their leader, saying they were going to starve to death. But then one morning something strange happens. They woke up and looked outside their tents, and scattered all over the ground were these little, crusty pieces of something they had never seen before. Well, somebody was just hungry enough to put this crusty piece of something in his mouth and eat it, and when he did he realized it was food! When they needed it the most, God actually provided food for them by having it rain down from heaven. They called this food manna.

So from then on out, every single morning of the week except for one—the Sabbath—the Israelites woke up and found fresh manna on the ground. Essentially God told Moses, “Look, I want you to tell the people that I'm going to provide for them what they need to eat every single day. They need to trust me on this. Tell them not to try to store up food from one day for the next. I only want them to get just enough manna for the day.” It sounded simple enough, but some people didn't believe it. They thought God might cut off the supply, that maybe He wouldn’t be good to His word, so just in case, they got two days' worth of food. But the next morning when they woke up, the manna they saved was rotten and full of worms. They may have thought they were being smart, but what they were doing was choosing not to trust God. 

God created a situation where Israel was forced to be dependent on Him—daily. For 40 years their daily bread was waiting for them every morning outside their tent. And the night before the Sabbath, they gathered twice as much so they would have enough for two days—the one time a week when two days’ worth of provision is allowed. They learned to take the Sabbath off. They learned that God could be trusted when they chose to rest—and when they rested, they acknowledged all God had done to allow them the time to stop. Listen to how extreme God’s instructions were in Exodus 20:10: "On [the Sabbath] 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" (NIV).

                                                                                                   

Obviously, this mattered to God. He’s saying, “I don't want you to do this halfway. I don’t even want your animals doing work. I don't want anybody doing any work—not even those you expect to work. I want there to be 24 hours where you realize more than any other time My provision for you. I want you to realize that I am looking out for you, I notice your needs and I have you under my care. The Sabbath is to be a day that you commemorate and remember all I have already done to get you where you are.” And Israel taking the time to look back and see what God had already done gave them a confidence to look forward in confidence of what God would do in the future.

The day of rest is a day of remembrance. The day of rest is a period of time when the nation of Israel had to remember as important as progress was, as important as prosperity was, and as important as eating and living indoors was, there was something else that was more important. It was having a constant physical trust in God our Provider. It was taking the time to remember that when they stopped working, when they paused long enough to acknowledge God they just might find that far fewer things depended on them than they realized. In fact, their stillness would instead serve as a reminder that God had things under far greater control than they ever could. And taking the time to be still confirmed that God was bigger—bigger than their need, bigger than their progress, and bigger than their drive.

Ultimately the issue comes down to this—can you trust God? That is the point of the Sabbath. And that is why we are so reluctant to take it—because we are afraid. We truly think that if we stopped, if we rested, everything would fall apart. We trust more in our own ability than we do God’s provision. But the Sabbath is a tangible way to choose trust when everything inside of us may want to fight it. It’s learning to count on God with that very, very practical part of life. It’s learning that it’s not all up to you. That it’s not all in your hands. It’s stopping from the frantic pace of life, and remembering not only how God provided, but about who He is.

So here is my challenge to you—would you be willing to institute the principle of the Sabbath in your life? Would you try for just one month, to make time every week where you force yourself to remember what God has done and is doing in your life—and in the lives of those around you?

                                                                 

You’re going to feel like you’re missing out, or maybe falling behind. You’re going to feel like you need that little bit extra to keep up, or stay ahead. But what if, for one day, you let God consume your time instead of everything and everyone else?

This isn't an excuse to get out of work. No. It’s about getting your work done before the Sabbath hits. It’s about prioritizing your schedule and your time to make room for the Sabbath. It doesn't even have to be the same time period each week. There are no rules about this part of it. God just cares that the rest and the focus happens. Period.