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Encouragement for the journey from God’s Word. Today's Scripture: Isaiah 57:14-59:21/ Proverbs 24:9-10
Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. Here we are in the middle of the week already, the middle of the last week of the month of June, just a few days away before July 1st. Man, it's incredible how quickly this year is going by.
We're almost halfway done with 2022. Well, on this particular day, we are in the book of Isaiah again, and this time in chapter 58 is a passage I want to focus on. And it's really kind of a challenging couple of verses that I want us to look at for a few minutes this morning.
Isaiah 58, verses 13 and 14. And this is what the Lord says to his people. He says, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord.
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. Well, I know that there's, in the Christian circles, there's a lot of discussion and debate as to whether or not the Lord's day, Sunday, is a Christian Sabbath.
I happen to believe it is, and I'm not going to go to all the reasons for that and why and so forth, that argumentation. I don't have time in this brief time together. There is plenty of good works that you could read and study to come to that conclusion.
But where this challenges us is even in our New Testament setting aside Sunday as the Lord's day, let's ask ourselves the question, do I delight in it? Is this day, the day, the whole day, is this a delight?
Am I delighting in the Lord in this day? Or do I just kind of tip my hat toward him? Give him maybe an hour and a half to come to Sunday morning service, and that's about it. I get up in the morning leisurely and have a leisurely breakfast, and then get ourselves ready and rush to church, and then get done with that, and then we do what we want to do for the rest of the day.
Watch ball games, do this, do that. I just basically spend the rest of the day doing it the way I want to, doing what I want to do in the day. Well, I certainly believe that the Sabbath is a day of rest.
It absolutely is. That's the whole idea of the Sabbath. It's a day to set, a day to cease, and that's what the word Sabbath means, to cease from doing all of the stuff that we have to do Monday through Saturday in the course of our everyday life.
All the work of our career responsibilities and our home responsibilities. Sabbath, cease, set that aside, and it's a day for rest and refreshment, but primarily for spiritual refreshment, and if we delight in that, if we delight in the spiritual refreshment that is available to us on the Lord's day, the Christian Sabbath, then what the Lord says is if you will delight in that, you'll end up delighting in the Lord.
If you turn away from all the things, the cares and the anxieties and the pleasures of everyday life, to turn your attention on the pleasures that are found in hearing from God, in worshiping God, in talking about God and so forth, then he says you'll find that you will delight in the Lord.
The Lord says, I will then cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth. I'll cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth. That's a figurative expression for saying, like we use the idea of living on a mountaintop.
We don't like the valleys, we like the mountaintop experiences, and the Lord is essentially saying, you'll enjoy some mountaintop experiences if you delight in the Lord, and to delight in the Lord, delight in the Sabbath, delight in the Lord's day.
So how do we handle that day? Is it the day where we engage in all kinds of idle banter? We engage in personal fun and recreation with no thought whatsoever of the Lord? Do we tip our hat to the Lord in worship and that's about it?
Do we really set the day aside? Do we really set the day aside? I think the Lord would have us to ask ourselves, I've given you a gift, the Lord says. The Sabbath is a gift. It was made for us. The Lord tells us that.
Am I really getting the full benefit of that gift, the full spiritual benefit of that gift, or am I selling myself short by not really delighting in the day? Something to think about, and to ponder. So our Father and our God today, we do thank you for the gift of the Sabbath.
This is a generous expression of your love and your care for mankind, and especially for your people. I pray that we would appreciate that gift and we would utilize it to the full. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
All right, have a good rest of your Wednesday, and God bless you in it.
