A Day of Rest

[dave c]

simpletruth #138ae Revisited 31JUL10 salicart@msn.com

HOSEA 10:12—Part Thirty One: A Day Of Rest

by rev. dave c

Hosea 10:12, Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you (NKJV).

Our God is not a God who is far away. As Francis Schaefer told us in 1968, He is the God who is near. For each moment, each breath, for each thought and deed for every day—and for every one of us—God is now and He is here. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is personally concerned and actively involved with every aspect of our existence. This is seldom more evident than during the Mount Sinai occasion of the Lord presenting to Moses in great detail His law and commandments for the people of Israel. Regarding this study from Hosea, Exodus 23 provides a particularly pertinent example: 10 "For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. 12 "Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed (NIV).

Six years of working the soil, and then allowing it to “rest” for the seventh has its theological and practicable roots in Genesis 2:1-3, Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done (NIV). We must not take the phrase, [God] rested from all His work, to mean that God was tired—that He had become exhausted from His creative efforts and that He had to take a break. God is almighty, omnipotent, and He does not become tired from His exertions as do we. In these passages the word “rested” is translated from the Hebrew word we transliterate as “shabath” (Strongs #7673), which means “to desist from exertion,” and, in this instance, it carries the connotation of “to celebrate”. Effectively, we can read Genesis 2:3 as, “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He celebrated all the work of creating that he had done”. That is to say, God “sat back and enjoyed” His creation because [He] saw all that he had made, and it was very good (Gn 1:31; NIV). The English word “Sabbath” (“the Lord’s Day”) is derived from shabath. Our Sundays, spent in fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ, are to be joyful celebrations in praise and worship for our Creator, our Sustainer, our Lord, and our Savior—not a mechanical re-enactment of perfunctory liturgy—nor a weekly fulfillment of obligatory familial and social commitments.

Too much of our Western culture (including the Church) has forgotten the history of why we are to “have Sundays off”. As a consequential irony, while part of our workforce enjoys an expanded Sabbath by also having Saturdays off, another part works right on through the weekend to perhaps take Monday or Tuesday as a day away from work. Sundays were never intended to be an opportunity to sleep until noon (especially as a result of having stayed up all Saturday night partying). Nor were Sunday’s intended to be days filled with football, pizza, and beer. Beginning with the First Century Church, the first day of the week was set aside to commemorate the bodily resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit on the third day of His entombment. Sundays are to be a time of rest away from our daily routines so that we might celebrate the mercy and grace, the divine nature and eternal power of our God who loves us beyond anything that we can express or imagine.

Jeremiah 4:3&4 tell us: This is what the LORD says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: "Break up your unplowed ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done--burn with no one to quench it (NIV). Within the overall context of Scripture, Sundays can be thought of as representing the unplowed ground of our seven day week; it is a day set aside (that is, made holy, or sanctified, to the Lord) for fellowship with God and with our family, friends, and neighbors. If we are spending that day either altogether ignoring its true purpose and meaning, or if we are merely going through the routine of “church” in order to get to “the good stuff”—food, a nap, sports on TV, and/or some time to shop, hunt, or fish—then we are sowing among thorns, we are doing evil, and we are inviting God’s unquenchable wrath.

Week after week, month after month, we claim the name of Christ in our declaration of being Christians, yet we do not claim membership in His Church—or we are nominal members who seldom attend—or Sunday after Sunday we are physically present, but we are continually elsewhere in our heads and hearts. Just as Jeremiah told the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Paul told his constituents in Romans 2:28&29, A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God (NIV). As were the Jews of Jeremiah’s time, and then Paul’s, so have we become as Christians in this, the post-modern era of the 21st Century. If I claim citizenship within the Kingdom of God and yet the habits of my hands, my head, and my heart do not bear witness to that claim; then I am in danger of fulfilling the admonition of Proverbs 20:4—A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing (NIV). I pray that when it is time for the final harvest, neither you nor I are subject to any eternally painful surprises.