The importance of rest
Published: Mon, 09/28/20
|
Sessions Include:Lesson #1 Lesson #2 Lesson #3 Lesson #4 Lesson #5 Lesson #6 |
One of the pitfalls of having 100 channels on our TV, internet access and cell phones is that we’re always tempted to engaged in some form of activity. We’re tempted to always be on the go, always pursuing our own agenda. Perhaps we worry that if we don’t work seven days a week, we won’t have enough money to meet our needs. Or maybe we’ve just become so accustomed to being active all the time that we can’t picture any other way of life. Or maybe our parents taught us that we should be working all the time, and now that thought process is deeply ingrained within us. Silence before God seems awkward and uncomfortable, so we refuse to just rest in God’s presence. Why is it important to rest? For that matter, why did God include a day of rest in the Ten Commandments that He gave to the Israelites when He took them out of Egypt? Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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 (Exod. 20:8–10). Obviously, God intended for every Israelite to obey this command to rest—even their cattle had to rest! But why is it important to rest? Perhaps the next few verses from Exodus explain the reason: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (v. 11). We rest because God first rested. Genesis 2:2 states, “On the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day.” God rested on the seventh day, which is the last day of the week. We call this day the “Sabbath” because the Hebrew word for rest is Shabbath. But why would God need to rest? God wasn’t physically tired after creating the world. He is omnipotent, which means that He has the power to do all things that are possible. He has the energy to accomplish anything that is imaginable. God certainly didn’t need physical rest. He also wasn’t emotionally stressed out after Creation, because creating the universe wasn’t too much for God, nor did it contain more details than He could handle. God didn’t need emotional rest. And God didn’t need a vacation to revitalize His focus. Sometimes we go away for the weekend because we need a change of pace. Because we are finite, we need a change of vision and new goals to keep us going. But God isn’t a finite being. He didn’t need to rest to get a new perspective after creating the world. God rested because He had finished all that He had intended to do. He had spoken all things into existence, His Word had breathed life into a lifeless clay man, and that man had become a living soul. God rested because Creation was complete. And just as God rested after He was finished, He wants us to enjoy that same experience. Elmer L. Towns, How to Pray: When You Don’t Know What to Say (Ventura, CA: Regal; Gospel Light, 2006), 192–194. We have just released a new Bible study on The 10 Commandments. These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year. |
