Remember To Rest

Bottomline: Rest isn’t just something we want, it is something we need.

Exodus

The New International Version (Chapter 20)

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 male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 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.

God doesn’t suggest we rest, He commands us to rest.

Our world continues on, faster and busier, and we are reminded that our souls were not created for the kind of speed to which we have grown accustomed. Thus, we are a people who are out of rhythm, a people with too much to do and not enough time to do it.

-Rich Villodas

As long as we remain enslaved to a culture of speed, superficiality, and distraction, we will not be the people God longs for us to be.

-Rich Villodas

Genesis

The New International Version (Chapter 2)

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

The word rested in Genesis 2 is shabat in Hebrew, where we get the word Sabbath. It essentially means “to stop” or “cease” or “be complete,” but it can also be translated “to celebrate.”

The word bless is barak in Hebrew, pronounced like the president. A barak, or a blessing, in the creation story is a life-giving ability to procreate — to make more life. God baraked three times in Genesis. First, God blessed the “living creatures” (the animal kingdom) and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth.” Then he blessed human and said the exact same thing, “Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth.” And then he “blessed the seventh day.” So he blesses the living creatures. Then he blesses human. Then he blesses, a day? How does that work? The Sabbath has a life-giving ability to procreate — to fill the world up with life.

Rest isn’t just something we want, it is something we need.

Luke

The New International Version (Chapter 5)

16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Mark

The New International Version (Chapter 2)

27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Sabbath rest isn’t about rules or regulation, its about resting and finding restoration in Him.

“It is only when we slow down our lives that we can catch up to God.”

-N. T. Wright

If Jesus wasn’t too busy to rest, why are you?

-Make a plan

-Follow through with it

-Adjust it if need be

-Repeat

Matthew

The New International Version (Chapter 11)

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

We’re not as important as we think. The Sabbath is a day to embrace this reality, to let it sink in, to own it, to celebrate it. To celebrate our weakness, our mortality, our limits. To celebrate our God of strength and immortality and limitless power. To rest with him and to rest in him.

-John Mark Comer