God's Great Plan!

What people hear in the Third Commandment is:  12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy,…

This Commandment is telling us so much more than to pay attention to God one day a week. It actually has three distinct parts. I will cover the third part first; because it is central to the other two parts, and the one part people tend to hear.  It is to be a time set aside to rest. Like God did!

It is a time to remember, thank, pray and listen to God’s word.  A day to be reserved, intentionally on purpose, to do nothing but be in God’s amazing grace.  And very little else!

That was God’s intention!

However, today it just seems to be a “waste of time!”

An Inconvenience!

The truth of this attitude has been felt in every congregation across our nation.  The proof? Large declines in attendance, shifts in rituals and tradition, styles of worship and changes in what it mean to be a “member” of Christ’s Body.  And gigantic shifts in the understanding of what it really means to follow Jesus.

The truth is the institutional church, since the 1950’s, has taken on an entirely different roll in our nation.  It has gone from the major family focus, as its number one priority, to a simple consideration of scheduling.

In “the good old days” people use to be good at “remembering the sabbath” as a Holy Time.  I can remember,as a little girl, when nothing — nothing — was open on a Sunday.  When Sunday was actually a day of rest!  A day for worship! A day to gather together (not necessarily in a building) to hear God’s word.  A day for family time!  

And everything in town was close to honor the Sabbath!  I can remember when that tradition began to change.  I was appalled at the change.  I was pretty idealistic  then!

Here is how that idealistic person has changed.  Every  year we have a Theological Conference in Green Lake.  It began on a Monday morning.  I liked to go up on Sunday afternoon; so I was there for the first session Monday.

I don’t like getting up early and having to rush to be somewhere.

Now, I quickly learned that Green Lake Conference Center does not serve meals on Sundays.  That was inconvenient for me!  Inconvenient because the Conference Center is not very close to other places to eat.  But I learned that there was a pizza place, about three mile down the road.  So I decided to go there to get a pizza.  

It was closed!  I was not please!  Actually I was annoyed!  I was tired and hungry!  I sat in my car and pouted for a minute.  But then I smiled to myself and thought:  “Good for them!  Good for them for honoring the Sabbath!”

And God’s great plan for a unified people has slowly faded away. Dwindled in large percentages across the centuries.  At least in the majority of the world population!

Oh how we have change our ways of thinking!

I invite you to read the whole Third Commandment on the sabbath and listen to what is not usually heard: 

12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. (Deut. 5)

Did you catch God’s point? 

Did you hear what God was doing in this very long “you shall not?”

He was laying out for us an intended cycle!  A pattern for living well!

God actually laid out, and designed, the original self-care plan.  Something that today’s society eats up like candy.  

So heres actual plan: 

We must “work!”  We were created to produce.  “To be “fruitful!”  To be an active part!  An active participant in God’s creation! Because God worked!    We work! Because, we are made in God’s image!  Which means we also are made to create — to produce.

We are to “rest!” Take “sabbath” time!  The rules for this Commandment are spelled out in detail in Exodus 35 down to how many step one is allowed to take.  It is amazingly specific.  All work!  All labor of any kind! Even one’s movement from spot to spot.  Not allowed!

It is to be a time set apart to restore our bodies and minds.  To re-create our energy, brain cells and nervous systems.  To remain healthy and productive we all need a day — a time — of rest.

God needed it!  So do we!

God is the architect, the designer, the builder of the best way to move through the life God gave us.

However, the human mind through the centuries has radically interrupted and dismantled the great design set in place by God. And replaced it with schedules and to-do-lists.