Question: Schedule a day of complete rest: What does it help you realize about your life and heart?
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Transcript of Video:
When God gives the Fourth Commandment – the Commandment to observe the Sabbath day and to keep it holy – there’s quite a bit of explanation given. In fact, it’s the lengthiest of the Commandments, of the ten that are listed. The others are pretty straightforward: don’t steal, don’t covet, and so on. But the Fourth Commandment has some elaboration to it. And one of the interesting elaborations is that not only are you, the people of Israel, to rest, but also your servants, your male and female servants, any foreigners that are in the land with you and your animals, your donkeys and camels, are to rest on that Sabbath day, just as you are. For one, it shows the kind of equality of people in this new coveted people that God is bringing about; they are not to oppress their slaves as they were oppressed in Egypt, but they are to treat their slaves and give them the dignity of the day of rest of as well. But it also mentions the animals. Even the animals are to stop their work and rest.
The author, Marva Dawn tells a story about a nineteenth century wagon train that was heading from the mid-west out to the west coast – and the people on this wagon train were Christians. And they found that at a certain point in the journey they weren’t making fast enough progress. So they were worried about reaching the mountains and getting through the mountains before the winter snows came. So half the group – up to that point, they had observed a day of rest on every seventh day – but half of the group felt that they should plunge forward and travel seven days a week in order to beat the coming weather and to make sure they got to their goal.
So they couldn’t come to an agreement. So one group decided to press on seven days a week, and one decided to continue to observe the Sabbath day. And the interesting part of the story is that the group that observed the Sabbath day got there first. The point is that these animals and people needed to stop and rest one day. It was important. It’s almost as if the Sabbath day is written into our DNA.
-Br. David Vryhof