A Sabbath to the Lord
Most of us don't need anyone to tell us we're busy. We feel it. Work runs into the evening, the kids' schedules run into the weekend, and the calendar on our phones fills up weeks ahead. Somewhere in the middle of it, life starts to feel like a rat wheel. You run hard, you never get anywhere, and you're afraid that if you step off, everything will break.
This Sunday we come to Leviticus 23, and Leviticus 23 is a calendar. God walks Israel through their year. There is a weekly Sabbath, then Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the spring, the first sheaf of the barley harvest, and the Feast of Weeks fifty days later. Then come three holy times in the seventh month: a day of trumpet blasts, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths. If your attention drifted the last time you read it, you're not alone. Part of the problem is distance. We are so far from these days of remembrance in our culture that it's hard to picture what they meant to the people who first heard them.
The calendar belongs to God, and He says so first. "These are the appointed feasts of the LORD that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts" (23:2). These were not Israel's holidays, to be fit in wherever the schedule allowed. They belonged to Him. And the first holy time on the list isn't a festival at all. It's a weekly stop: "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the LORD in all your dwelling places" (23:3).
The first half of that verse commands work too. God isn't against your job or your family's full week, and He gave six days to work. But He drew a line around the seventh and made it holy, not because it is convenient, but because it belongs to Him.
The Hebrew verb behind "Sabbath" doesn't describe resting because you're worn out. It means to stop, to cease. When God rested on the seventh day of creation, He wasn't tired. Isaiah says of Him, "He does not faint or grow weary" (Isaiah 40:28). He stopped because the work was finished and good, and He blessed the day (Genesis 2:2-3). So the Sabbath was never mainly a day to catch up on sleep. It was a day to stop what we're doing long enough to take in what God has done.
Israel would have felt that more than we do. They had just come out of Egypt, where Pharaoh's answer to tired slaves was more bricks. When Moses asked for time to go and worship, Pharaoh raised the quota and gave his reason: "they are idle. Therefore they cry, 'Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God'" (Exodus 5:8). In Egypt, stopping to worship was called laziness. Deuteronomy ties the Sabbath to that memory: "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt... Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day" (Deuteronomy 5:15). The voice that tells you that you can't afford to stop is an old one, and it isn't God's.
What does rest even look like? If I stop, how can I be sure things won't fall apart? God answered the second question before Israel ever reached Sinai. The first time He gave them a Sabbath, in the wilderness, He was feeding them manna, and on the sixth day He sent twice as much. "See! The LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days" (Exodus 16:29). The thing they were afraid would fall apart was never resting on them.
This isn't a message about legalistic Sabbath keeping. Jesus healed on the Sabbath and said plainly, "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:12). He also said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). No one earns God's love by keeping a day. But the God who made the Sabbath for us still means for us to stop.
For me, that day is usually Saturday. Sunday is my heaviest workday, so I rarely work on my sermon on Saturdays. I let what I've prepared seep even deeper into my mind and my heart, and the day is set aside for my family. Sometimes it still gets busy. And Sunday, even though I'm working, is my day of going to church too, a day to remember with my heart and mind what the Lord has done and to sing His praise for who He is.
The rest of the chapter turns the stop into remembering. "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD's Passover" (23:5). God didn't leave the memory of the exodus to Israel's feelings. He gave it a date and an hour. When their children asked, "What do you mean by this service?" the parents were to tell them about the night the Lord "passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt" (Exodus 12:26-27). At the barley harvest, nobody ate bread from the new crop until the first sheaf had been brought to the Lord (23:14). Jay Sklar, a commentator on Leviticus, says it simply: "Thankfulness is one of the first emotions to evaporate." So God put thanks first, before anyone tasted the harvest.
Most of us only think about the Sabbath and Passover, but every day on this calendar ends up pointing to Jesus. Paul writes, "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). He calls the risen Christ "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). And the Holy Spirit came on the church "when the day of Pentecost arrived" (Acts 2:1), which is the Feast of Weeks by its Greek name. Israel's calendar was rehearsing the story of Jesus for centuries before He came.
In the seventh month, on the tenth day, is the Day of Atonement, the one day in the year Israel is told to "afflict yourselves" (23:27), the day the people were cleansed. Five days later the Feast of Booths begins, and with it the only command in the chapter to rejoice: "you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days" (23:40). God asks for the joy of people He has just forgiven.
A command to rejoice sounds strange at first. I think it's always appropriate to rejoice. What these commands show is that rejoicing has to be built into the rhythms and customs of a people. A full life doesn't stop to celebrate by accident. That's why we have Thanksgiving tables and Christmas mornings, and why God gave Israel a week of feasting at harvest, "before the LORD your God."
And He tells them why. For seven days every Israelite was to live in a booth made of branches, "that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (23:43). The calendar was built for children. God wanted the next generation to grow up inside the memory of what He had done. What I want my own kids to know, and the generations after them, is the joy of following the Lord. It is a good thing, though a difficult one, and it leads to an abundant life, an abundance that is more than the riches of this world.
Before Sunday, read Leviticus 23, the whole chapter, and look at your own calendar beside it. Where does your week actually stop? What on it reminds you, and the people you love, of what God has done?
Our reading in the service covers 23:1-8, 23-25, and 33-36, so read 23:39-43 on your own, where the command to rejoice and the word about the generations are found. And if you've been carrying the other question, the one that asks what happens if things really do fall apart, bring it with you.
This Sunday we come to Leviticus 23, and Leviticus 23 is a calendar. God walks Israel through their year. There is a weekly Sabbath, then Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the spring, the first sheaf of the barley harvest, and the Feast of Weeks fifty days later. Then come three holy times in the seventh month: a day of trumpet blasts, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths. If your attention drifted the last time you read it, you're not alone. Part of the problem is distance. We are so far from these days of remembrance in our culture that it's hard to picture what they meant to the people who first heard them.
The calendar belongs to God, and He says so first. "These are the appointed feasts of the LORD that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts" (23:2). These were not Israel's holidays, to be fit in wherever the schedule allowed. They belonged to Him. And the first holy time on the list isn't a festival at all. It's a weekly stop: "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the LORD in all your dwelling places" (23:3).
The first half of that verse commands work too. God isn't against your job or your family's full week, and He gave six days to work. But He drew a line around the seventh and made it holy, not because it is convenient, but because it belongs to Him.
The Hebrew verb behind "Sabbath" doesn't describe resting because you're worn out. It means to stop, to cease. When God rested on the seventh day of creation, He wasn't tired. Isaiah says of Him, "He does not faint or grow weary" (Isaiah 40:28). He stopped because the work was finished and good, and He blessed the day (Genesis 2:2-3). So the Sabbath was never mainly a day to catch up on sleep. It was a day to stop what we're doing long enough to take in what God has done.
Israel would have felt that more than we do. They had just come out of Egypt, where Pharaoh's answer to tired slaves was more bricks. When Moses asked for time to go and worship, Pharaoh raised the quota and gave his reason: "they are idle. Therefore they cry, 'Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God'" (Exodus 5:8). In Egypt, stopping to worship was called laziness. Deuteronomy ties the Sabbath to that memory: "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt... Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day" (Deuteronomy 5:15). The voice that tells you that you can't afford to stop is an old one, and it isn't God's.
What does rest even look like? If I stop, how can I be sure things won't fall apart? God answered the second question before Israel ever reached Sinai. The first time He gave them a Sabbath, in the wilderness, He was feeding them manna, and on the sixth day He sent twice as much. "See! The LORD has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days" (Exodus 16:29). The thing they were afraid would fall apart was never resting on them.
This isn't a message about legalistic Sabbath keeping. Jesus healed on the Sabbath and said plainly, "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:12). He also said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). No one earns God's love by keeping a day. But the God who made the Sabbath for us still means for us to stop.
For me, that day is usually Saturday. Sunday is my heaviest workday, so I rarely work on my sermon on Saturdays. I let what I've prepared seep even deeper into my mind and my heart, and the day is set aside for my family. Sometimes it still gets busy. And Sunday, even though I'm working, is my day of going to church too, a day to remember with my heart and mind what the Lord has done and to sing His praise for who He is.
The rest of the chapter turns the stop into remembering. "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD's Passover" (23:5). God didn't leave the memory of the exodus to Israel's feelings. He gave it a date and an hour. When their children asked, "What do you mean by this service?" the parents were to tell them about the night the Lord "passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt" (Exodus 12:26-27). At the barley harvest, nobody ate bread from the new crop until the first sheaf had been brought to the Lord (23:14). Jay Sklar, a commentator on Leviticus, says it simply: "Thankfulness is one of the first emotions to evaporate." So God put thanks first, before anyone tasted the harvest.
Most of us only think about the Sabbath and Passover, but every day on this calendar ends up pointing to Jesus. Paul writes, "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). He calls the risen Christ "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). And the Holy Spirit came on the church "when the day of Pentecost arrived" (Acts 2:1), which is the Feast of Weeks by its Greek name. Israel's calendar was rehearsing the story of Jesus for centuries before He came.
In the seventh month, on the tenth day, is the Day of Atonement, the one day in the year Israel is told to "afflict yourselves" (23:27), the day the people were cleansed. Five days later the Feast of Booths begins, and with it the only command in the chapter to rejoice: "you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days" (23:40). God asks for the joy of people He has just forgiven.
A command to rejoice sounds strange at first. I think it's always appropriate to rejoice. What these commands show is that rejoicing has to be built into the rhythms and customs of a people. A full life doesn't stop to celebrate by accident. That's why we have Thanksgiving tables and Christmas mornings, and why God gave Israel a week of feasting at harvest, "before the LORD your God."
And He tells them why. For seven days every Israelite was to live in a booth made of branches, "that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (23:43). The calendar was built for children. God wanted the next generation to grow up inside the memory of what He had done. What I want my own kids to know, and the generations after them, is the joy of following the Lord. It is a good thing, though a difficult one, and it leads to an abundant life, an abundance that is more than the riches of this world.
Before Sunday, read Leviticus 23, the whole chapter, and look at your own calendar beside it. Where does your week actually stop? What on it reminds you, and the people you love, of what God has done?
Our reading in the service covers 23:1-8, 23-25, and 33-36, so read 23:39-43 on your own, where the command to rejoice and the word about the generations are found. And if you've been carrying the other question, the one that asks what happens if things really do fall apart, bring it with you.
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