Sabbath Devotional :: A Delightful Sabbath

*The Gathering of the Manna* by James Jacques Joseph Tissot

In Exodus 20:8-11, Moses gives the sabbath day commandment to the children of Israel:

“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, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day; and hallowed it.”

In Ezekiel 20:19-20, we learn that it’s not just about rest: “I am the Lord your God; walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.”

Then in Colossians 2:17, we learn that the sabbath is a shadow of things to come or in other words a type or symbol of the Savior’s atonement.

So how does the sabbath relate to the atonement?

The sabbath is a reoccurring opportunity to give it our best and then fall on our faces. To fail. To rest. To give up. To draw upon the Atonement of Jesus Christ and then get up and try again.

Maybe it is not so much about not working as it is about resting from ourselves — forgetting our ambitions, our pleasures, even our responsibilities and turning it all over to the Lord. It’s as if we approach the Lord on the sabbath and say, “This is the best I’ve been able to come up with after six days on my own. Now, instead of continuing to push forward on the seventh day, I’ll turn it over to you and watch to see how you will sanctify and magnify my inadequate efforts.”

Remember the story of the manna given to the children of Israel in Exodus 16 (and Numbers 15:32)? I think the message to the children of Israel was not so much “you deserve to die if you break the sabbath,” but instead “YOU WILL DIE if you don’t learn to rely on the Lord.” In other words, “Go ahead and try to gather as much manna as you can, but you’ll never have enough. If you admit that and rely on me, I’ll give unto you abundantly.”

D&C 59: 9, 10, 12 — “And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day; For verily this is a day appointed unto you to rest from your labors, and to pay thy devotions unto the Most High. . . . But remember that on this, the Lord’s day, thou shalt offer thine oblations and thy sacraments unto the Most High, confessing thy sins unto thy brethren, and before the Lord.”

Worldliness is defined by its refusal to acknowledge God and its insistence upon personal ambition and achievement. Therefore, we remain unspotted from the world by taking time each week to go to the house of the Lord and offer up our (1) sacraments — a broken heart and contrite spirit — and (2) oblations (fn. offerings, whether of time, talents, or means, in service of God and fellowman). The whole point is to remind us that we are nothing without Him.

In Moses 3:3, we read: “And I, God, blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it I had rested from all my work which I, God, had created and made.”

It seems to me that after the six periods of creation, God left the garden to observe this sacred day of rest specifically SO THAT humankind could fall and then ultimately be lifted up again through Jesus Christ.

In all of our efforts to rely upon our own moral authority and be proactive in working toward making this world better, let’s not forget that part of our observance of the sabbath is to just let go — of our own plans, ideas, priorities, timelines — and delight in the ways and wisdom of the Lord.

Isaiah 58:13- 14: “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”