Yesterday I spoke about how we understand and observe the Sabbath, but our approach to the Ten Commandments in this series has been to see what the Commandments teach us about God...
As we saw yesterday the Sabbath is good for us, but it also tells us some important things about God:
1. He is not a "driven" God. He creates and then He rests, not because He is exhausted, but because He is at peace.
2. He is not a slave-driver. He is a Liberator and a Saviour. Remember the Deuteronomy motive for the Sabbath: "Because I brought you out of Bondage."
3. He is a God who calls us to serve Him with excellence (as creation is excellent) but also to rest. In Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
4. The book of Hebrews repeatedly refers to Salvation and Eternal Life as our "Sabbath Rest." So being with God brings us to the place of rest. It was Augustine who said "Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." This restfulness can begin as soon as we come to Salvation in Christ.
So, God is not an "A-Type" personality, He is not driven but full of rest and if the images in Hebrews are taken seriously then every "Sabbath" we have is a prophetic foretaste of heaven!
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
