Summer 2011 Bible Study: Week 3 Day 5

Wow! Time sure does go by quickly! My husband and I returned from a family vacation and I cannot tell you how much I missed my little fella. So today, was the first day we all woke up at home and we slept in forever! My little fella has been very attached to me since we got back, he wouldn't even hang out at his Papa and Nana's house. He just wanted his mama. And today, I just needed him, and Him. We spent most of the day resting, we baked a cake, ate fabulous fridge food and watched lots of his favorite shows. It was a precious day.

I feel like, every once and a while, we need these kinds of days. We need days to just be, nothing to do, no chores get done, no homework to worry about, no shower, no make up, just us, simply us. And, I have found that in the midst of these days, I feel the presence of my Sweet Jesus even more. There is something about Him that lingers around, it kind of reminds me of perfume. You know, when a loved one has a particular perfume that she wears, every time you see it or smell it, you are reminded of them, or even feel close to them. Well, on days of peaceful rest and simplistity, I find my Sweet Jesus so near, I could also reach out and touch Him.

Lord, I praise You for the blessing of rest. I praise You for the freedom to rest when we need to. I praise You for the gift of guilt free peaceful and pure rest. Teach me today, what Your word says about it, so I might learn more and be able to welcome it with open arms rather than guilt. Amen

I grew up with lots of things to do. I was a competitive gymnast who spent hours in the gym, I took music lessons and I did a little bit of singing and dancing, I participated in sports at school, I did the church thing with my family, I was enrolled in etiquette classes at the Country Club, add in there school, friends and summers at the pool and things were busy!

I like busy. I feel at home with busy. I enjoy the excitement. I get things done when I have a deadline. I don't rest well, yet, to be honest, I am learning to rest well. And so far, I am loving it!

Turn with me to Genesis 2:1-3 and take a minute to read over these verses.

It is no secret that we live in a fast paced world, banks use to only be open 5 days a week. The weekends use to be set aside for family time and now, 7 days a week are book solid. Sometimes they are even booked solid with "Godly things", like ministry work, church activities, and more. One thing that I have had to learn the hard way, is busyness does not equal Godliness.

You see, the Creator of the Universe, took time out of His week to rest. An entire day actually. He wanted it. He embraced it. And it gave us permission to do the same. We read in Psalm 23 a few days ago that He will lead us beside the still waters and He will make us lie down in green pastures. He gives us rest.

Our Sweet Jesus is the Prince of Peace. He is our source of rest. He is our "Sabbath Rest".

The key to understanding how Jesus is our Sabbath rest is the Hebrew word sabat, which means “to rest or stop or cease from work.” The origin of the Sabbath goes back to Creation. As we just read, after creating the heavens and the earth in six days, God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made” This doesn’t mean that God was tired and needed a rest. We know that God is omnipotent, which literally means “all-powerful.” He has all the power in the universe, He never tires, and His most arduous expenditure of energy does not diminish His power one bit. So, what does it mean that God rested on the seventh day? Simply that He stopped what He was doing. He ceased from His labors. This is important in understanding the establishment of the Sabbath day and the role of Christ as our Sabbath rest.

God used the example of His resting on the seventh day of Creation to establish the principle of the Sabbath day rest for His people.

Turn with me to Exodus 20:8-11 and spend some time reading over these verses carefully.

You see, the Sabbath was a day set aside for rest and worship. The Creator, the Father of our Sweet Jesus commanded a Sabbath because He knew that we would need to spend time unhurried, resting, not working. Think about it, how wonderful is it that His Son has asked us not to worry about the necessities of life and promised to be there no matter what our days might bring and His Father, has given us rest because we need it. I love how the Lord has placed the scriptures we have been mediating on in the past few days before us. I adore Sweet Jesus for teaching us not to worry about where our food, clothing or shelter will come from, and now, we get to study the gift of rest!

Turn with me to Deuteronomy 5:12-15 and take a few moments to read over it.

God gave the Israelites the fourth of His Ten Commandments. They were to “remember” the Sabbath day and “keep it holy.” One day out of every seven, they were to rest from their labors and give the same day of rest to their servants and animals. This was not just a physical rest, but a cessation of laboring. Whatever work they were engaged in was to stop for a full day each week. The Sabbath day was established so the people would rest from their labors, only to begin again after a one-day rest.

I don’t want to get tied down to the thought that our Sabbath has to come only on the 7^th day, and we must schedule it in and add it to our to do list, because then, we will miss the blessings of days like today. We will miss the grace that comes with His rest.

The various elements of the Sabbath symbolized the coming of the Messiah, who would provide a permanent rest for His people. Once again the example of resting from our labors comes into play. With the establishment of the Old Testament Law, the Jews were constantly “laboring” to make themselves acceptable to God. Their labors included trying to obey a myriad of do’s and don’ts of the ceremonial law, the Temple law, the civil law, etc. Of course they couldn’t possibly keep all those laws, so God provided an array of sin offerings and sacrifices so they could come to Him for forgiveness and restore fellowship with Him, but only temporarily. Just as they began their physical labors after a one-day rest, so, too, did they have to continue to offer sacrifices. Hebrews 10:1 tells us that the law “can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.” But these sacrifices were offered in anticipation of the ultimate sacrifice of Christ on the cross, who, according to Hebrews 10:12 ”after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right of God”.

Just as He rested after performing the ultimate sacrifice, He sat down and rested—ceased from His labor of atonement because there was nothing more to be done, ever. Because of what He did, we no longer have to “labor” in law-keeping in order to be justified in the sight of God. Jesus was sent so that we might rest in God and in what He has provided.

Another element of the Sabbath day rest which God instituted as a foreshadowing of our complete rest in Christ is that He blessed it, sanctified it, and made it holy. Here again we see the symbol of Christ as our Sabbath rest—the holy, perfect Son of God who sanctifies and makes holy all who believe in Him. God sanctified Christ, just as He sanctified the Sabbath day, and according to John 10:36, sent Him into the world to be our sacrifice for sin. In Him we find complete rest from the labors of our self-effort, because He alone is holy and righteous.

Turn with me to 2^nd Corinthians 5:21 “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” We can now cease from our spiritual labors and rest in Him, not just one day a week, but always. For when we trust in our Sweet Jesus, we make an exchange, we trade in our sin for His righteousness. This is what it means when people say “Christ’s atonement for our sin”, they are referring to the trade that happens when He becomes our Sweet Savior.

Turn with me to Matthew 12:1-14: Read it carefully.

We see here that our Sweet Jesus can be our Sabbath rest in part because as verse 8 tells us, He is “Lord of the Sabbath”. As God incarnate, He decides the true meaning of the Sabbath because He created it, and He is our Sabbath rest in the flesh. When the Pharisees criticized Him for healing on the Sabbath, Jesus reminded them that even they, sinful as they were, would not hesitate to pull a sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath. Because He came to seek and save His sheep who would hear His voice (John 10:3,27) and enter into the Sabbath rest He provided by paying for their sins, He could break the Sabbath rules. He told the Pharisees that people are more important than sheep and the salvation He provided was more important than rules. By saying, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), Jesus was restating the principle that the Sabbath rest was instituted to relieve man of his labors, just as He came to relieve us of our attempting to achieve salvation by our works. We no longer rest for only one day, but forever cease our laboring to attain God’s favor. Jesus is our rest from works now, just as He is the door to heaven, where we will rest in Him forever.

We will continue this conversation tomorrow. I want us to soak in what we have learned about Rest and rely on the Rest Maker.

Feel free to comment about what you have learned today. I am interested to see if I am the only one who loves that He has given us rest!

Lord, Thank You for rest. Thank you for Your Son, in whom we rest. Teach us again tomorrow. Amen.