The Sabbath
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven (Gen 2:1-4).
Because man was created at the end of the sixth day, his first full day was the seventh day of creation, the day God rested. For man to have fellowship with God from the beginning, he had to start by entering God\’s rest, and this is still essential for true fellowship with God. This is why the Promised Land is equated with the rest of God in Heb 3-4. He created man to need rest. However, the rest he needs is more than just sleeping.
In Ps 46:10 the Lord says, “Cease striving and know that I am God.” Striving is a demonstration of the fact that we really do not know God as He is. If we know Him as He is, we know that He is above all authority, power, and dominion. If we know Him as He is, we can trust that He is in control, and that He really will work all things together for our good. This brings rest, peace, and security that is incomprehensible to those who do not know the Lord. Peace and rest in the midst of any situation should be the hallmarks of every believer.
Striving is the result of worry, and worry is the result of not having faith in God. This is sin, as we read in Rom 14:23, “whatever is not from faith is sin.” In 1 Peter 5:6-7 we are exhorted to, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.” The way we humble ourselves before God is to cast our anxiety upon Him. Anxiety is pride. It is pride to think that any problem is too big for God, and we have to straighten it out ourselves!
It took faith to enter the Promised Land. Doubt caused an entire generation to perish in the wilderness. Many Christians, likewise, do not attain to the promises of God in their lives because they allow doubt to control them instead of faith. One of the primary ways we demonstrate faith is to rest in His promises, and in who He is. If we really trust Him, we will have rest and peace, even in the midst of our trials.
- Proclaim Psalm 83 and 89 over Israel and Jerusalem.
- Pray for the Lord\’s protection over the nation in these turbulent times in the Middle East.
- Pray that the Lord will continue to give wisdom to the government of that nation with regard to the pressure to divide up the nation and rescind their right to worship at the Table Mount which has been a center of a lot of violent action in recent times.
- Proclaim Psalm 48 and 122 over Jerusalem.