Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour,
and do all thy work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God
in it thou shalt not do any work . . . (Exodus 20:8-10)
This is a commandment not only to rest, but a commandment to use six days to labor. Seriously. It's easy to overlook this aspect of the fourth commandment when we are studying it because we tend to focus on the resting aspect of the day. But if we really examine it, this IS a commandment to WORK for six days prior to the one day of REST.
People have six days to work, six days to labor, not one, not two, not three, four, or five but six days to work. A lot of people have five days of what they call work but in truth when we are not focused upon our Creator we are usually focused where? Upon ourselves, upon the things that we want or need to do. On the seventh day we are to focus upon our Creator and that entails EVERY SINGLE facet of our Creator from beginning to end and by end I mean the end of our ability to know our Creator. There is infinite knowledge of our Creator in truth, and because He is a living being, a being without beginning and without end we can never, ever reach an end of knowing Him. Unlike so much in life that has a beginning and an end where we can discover all we can about things, God is a being that transcends all that. So no one can ever get to a point in their relationship with God where they can say they know everything there is to know about Him.
Six days of work. Six days of the secular. Six days to eke out a living for ourselves.
One day of rest. One day of the spiritual. One day to focus on solely living for God, as God would have us live.
We have one day in seven to store up a spiritual blessing enough to last us the next six days.
The Sabbath was created for us, for our spiritual existence.
Satan would have mankind believe they have no need of a spiritual existence, that a carnal existence is more than enough. Satan convinced Eve that she had no need to listen to God's command, that she needed to indulge HERSELF, she needed to focus on self, not God. Her flesh desires mattered more than God's spiritual desire. The fruit was *pleasing* to the sight. The fruit would give her a knowledge of *good and evil like God*. Yet the bottom line was it was God who told her NOT to eat of that fruit, not to indulge that flesh desire, but rather trust Him to know that it was best for them NOT to know good and evil, but to know rather only good. To gain a knowledge of evil is to open the door to evil.
Today in our sad, sick world we call those raised without exposure to a lot of worldly evils- naïve, as if that is a really bad thing. Our children are missing out on something good if we don't allow them to be exposed to worldly evil. Our children are missing out on vital mental and emotional building blocks when we keep them from evil. It's better people say to let them be exposed to evil at its worse then that way they are prepared to face life armed with necessary knowledge to get them far in our world. LIES!
It is Satan that does NOT want our children protected, any more than He wanted God's children protected. Rather than allowing our children to grow up without be exposed to the intense evil mankind exists in we try to protect them and THEN when they are mature enough is time enough to allow them the full knowledge of the evils out there. Why do we insist they grow up abused by life, just to teach them to develop a tough outer shell?
Satan wanted mankind exposed to evil, God did not. God wanted His children to trust Him and that trust protected them from evil. Satan did not want God's children protected, he wanted them exposed to evil and therefore become unworthy of God and partakers of the same evil he'd become a partaker of.
God wanted mankind to feed spiritually for a full day with Him- this was before sin entered the world. Adam and Eve were tending the beautiful garden and the creatures of the world- this was their six days of labor, just as God had labored in creating their world and bringing them into existence in six days, the seventh Day God rested, the seventh day God set aside as holy, the day after He'd completed His creation of mankind, for mankind. From nothingness into existence and this was worthy of great reflection.
From the beginning until now we have had a seven day week without any astronomic reasoning for it- unlike the month and the year.
Seven days.
Symbolic of creation no matter how the devil has tried to twist even that to become perverted through paganism and pagan titles.
Seven days.
Six days for man to do all they need to do for their flesh existence.
One day for man to do all they need to do for their spiritual existence.
One day out of every seven days we are to be reminded of God in all His glory, we are to be reminded of how we came to exist, why we exist. And Satan would have us forget how and why, rather desiring that we focus on our flesh self, our carnal self. As long as we are focusing on self we are NOT focusing on God and this pleases Satan.
Satan doesn't want us to believe we need to work six days. Satan would much rather have us believe that we deserve two days of rest or more. Satan is equally pleased if we want to work seven days a week. Satan wants us to do anything and everything that will defy God.
Told to work six days we are in essence being told that we need to use six days a week to prepare for the one day of rest. Get all the things we absolutely need to get done in order to provide for ourselves and those under our care and then give ourselves the blessing of devoting the seventh day to God, a spiritual blessing allowing us to set aside everything concerned with our providing for ourselves and allow God to provide for us a spiritual feast. Does this mean we are to shut ourselves up in a closet for a full day? Absolutely NOT! We are to live our lives as our Savior gave us an example to live them and He preached, He taught, He healed, He allowed provisions for eating all on the Sabbath day. He didn't want this day of spiritual renewal, this day of spiritual reminding of our Creator to be a day we abhorred. He didn't want the Sabbath day to be more important than the creature He'd created and MADE the Sabbath for. There would be absolutely NO need for a Sabbath if man hadn't been created. The Sabbath was made FOR US as a GIFT, a special gift and it is Satan who wants it to be seen as a burdensome, restrictive commandment of God's, something to limit us, to take away our time, to take away our carnal desire, something that is bad, not wonderful. It was Satan who allowed the Sabbath to become something seemingly more important than the mankind it was created for. Satan and his deception hard at work.
Six days we are to labor.
One day we are to rest.
This isn't to say we aren't supposed to rest at all during those six days. We are made to need sleep daily, to need the rest of sleep daily. It's been proven that those who undergo severe sleep depravation can actually die- after going through all sorts of horrible things- hallucinations, etc.
We rest during the six days but that entire day is not to be set aside to rest, and it is NOT a spiritually focused rest that we undertake during those six days. The Sabbath day is a day of full rest- flesh and spirit rest, a day we are to actually focus on spiritual resting in our God without anything to distract us from that renewing rest in our Creator. As we cease from labor we are acknowledging our need for spiritual renewal in God. It is a necessity, it is a chance for a BLESSING from God! The Sabbath was blessed and made holy so that we who entered into that Sabbath rest are given a special blessing and are sanctified- we are being made holy by our obedience to our Creator, our God, our King, our Savior!
We are to work six days as commanded by our God- and this isn't necessarily work as we know it today but rather work as God meant it- toiling towards providing for ourselves and those under our care. Your job could be working at home as a support to your family- not necessarily a job outside of the home working nine to five. Also, those who work nine to five - their obligation to work, to toil six days a week does not end with the work time clock. They too are commanded to work six days a week following God's plan which isn't Satan's plan. We need to really contemplate this aspect of the commandment of God as well as the RESTING one day, the Sabbath day.
By the grace and mercy of our Savior we will be blessed with understanding through the Holy Spirit so that we may truly follow our God in all ways, not just the ways we assume are right.
In the everlasting love of our God, of our Savior, of the Spirit may we live now and always.
In His love! May His will be done now and forever, may His kingdom come!
In Christ!
Amen.
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