July 6, 2018 Brethren Letter
Dear Brethren,
As a teenager, my first job was working in a cafeteria. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour while haircuts were only a dollar. When I first started working there, I would sometimes dream about my day’s work and continue with the job right through the night. I would wake up exhausted in the morning.
I’m sure that we have all been exhausted at some time in our lives. But no matter how difficult a week is, the one thing to be thankful for is the seventh-day of rest, God’s Holy Sabbath!
Exodus 20:8-11
(8) “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. (9) Six days you shall labor and do all your work, (10) but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. (11) For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
Mark 2:27-28
(27) And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. (28) Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”
Hebrews 4:9 (RSV) 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God;
Isaiah 58:13
(13) “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words,
The Sabbath day is a real delight. God intended it to be a day to rest from our normal labor and a time to worship the Great God.
Tonight, for the rest of this letter, I’ll quote a small section of the Good News magazine, from the October-November, 1985 issue. The article is entitled “Rejoice in God’s Sabbath,” by Dexter Faulkner.
What does it mean to “rest”?
God is concerned with two overall aspects of your life on the Sabbath. First, he wants your time to be free from responsibilities and activities. Secondly, He wants your mind free from thinking about those daily responsibilities and activities. This makes you free to properly worship God on this day.
Certainly we can physically rest more on the Sabbath. But the main emphasis is to rest from your normal toil and activities on this day. You should serve God with your mind on the Sabbath.
Those who can’t or don’t control their minds call the Sabbath “bondage.” They eagerly wait for the end of the Sabbath so they can be about their ways and pleasures, which they have been thinking about all day anyway.
Once you are able, on the Sabbath, to get your mind and thoughts on God’s purpose and God’s ways, you will find out what a real delight and joy the Sabbath is. “Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord” (Isaiah 58:14).
How do you accomplish this? Devote the additional free Sabbath time you have to extra Bible study, extra prayer and extra meditation. This is the one day of the week when you don’t have to worry about getting to the job, making payments, building fences, working out schedules, cleaning house.
Remember, we are to take care of all our responsibilities during the rest of the week. But the Sabbath is free time – free from all your daily cares and worries – free to be completely absorbed in God and His Word.
Yes, the Sabbath day of rest is a day for which to be thankful! Please have a good Sabbath!
Your Brother in Christ,
Gary Liebold