Six and one

DEVOTION

EXODUS

SIX AND ONE

Ex 20:8-11

8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

NIV

How is it that we just do not keep this commandment at all? Heck we don’t even work six days, much less not work on the seventh day. Do we think we are doing alright just because we go to church on Sunday morning, thinking that is keeping the Sabbath holy? What about going out for breakfast after church? Are we making some people breaking this command, expecting them to be working so we can eat? Well, they may not Christians, so it doesn’t matter, but then why do some of us leave a tract, or witness to the waitress? Bad witness. We just blew this commandment all to heck. How do we keep it holy? It surely seems it would be pretty straight forward. Do nothing on the seventh day, but that also means do something, do all our work on six days. Perhaps we could make a case that we should occupy our jobs Monday through Friday, do all the chores around the house on Saturday and then Sunday do nothing. But then we live in a 7 day week, 24 hour a day society. Some of us have jobs that work on Saturdays and Sundays, so how do we justify that? Do we make some seventh day a personal Sabbath? It would seem God did not specify which six days of the week we should work and which day should be the seventh. That looks very much like a man made idea about Sunday being the Sabbath. The Jews used Saturday as the Seventh, counting the beginning of the week on Sunday. Well actually it was sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, mainly because they did not have watches to let them know when it was midnight and the beginning of the next day. So for them the Sabbath was sort of a rolling time thing because of the seasons and the length of daylight. But for us, we people chose to use the day the Lord rose from the grave, Sunday as our Sabbath. Still this is a man chosen day, not necessarily a God chosen day. So we are left with the simple fact, we are to work six, rest from all our work on the seventh. Thinking on that seventh as the day God rested from all his work. He may not have just sat down and done nothing at all, but he rested, or settled down from his work of creating all he created. Our best effort should be to first work six then rest one. The question is, how does that look like in our lives?  Then we have to deal with the age thing. Do we stop doing this when we reach a certain age? Somehow, it doesn't seem this have any basis in the scripture. So then what do we do? How do we do this six and one?