A Sabbath rest

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Genesis 2: 2 – 3

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20: 8 – 11

It is very interesting how much attitudes towards Sunday have changed.  Fifty or more years ago in Britain, Sunday was a very quiet day with some Christians not permitting their families to go out or do anything including watching what little television there was, going to the cinema or even reading books.

Attitudes loosened in all areas of society during the sixties and gradually the matter of Sunday trading became more and more prominent in the UK. This led to various battles between government and big stores. In 1994 everything came to a head between mainly the big supermarkets and the Keep Sunday Special campaign. Finally a law was passed enabling big stores to open for six hours on a Sunday and smaller convenience stores opening for much longer. One interesting little addendum is that big stores cannot open at all on Easter Sunday.

This was definitely the opening of Pandora’s box as far as Sunday being a day of rest is concerned. Sunday is now another shopping day and life in Britain has fundamentally shifted. Now it is not just shops open all week but builders and others working every day. Instead of having a day a week to rest and spend time with family and friends, Sunday has become a day to catch up on the chores and do the weekly shopping.

The question is: should this matter to us as Christians?  I think the answer is ‘Yes’.  Many Christians have absolutely no problem with working or shopping on a Sunday. They go to church and then they go shopping. However the Bible is quite clear that God has a definite view about this.  When God created the universe he worked for six days and rested on the seventh.

This was long before the Ten Commandments where God reiterated his desire for his people to rest on the Sabbath (and the word Sabbath has its roots in the word rest) and do no work so that even their servants and the animals could also rest. The reason for keeping the seventh day special, set apart or holy was because God himself rested on the seventh day from his labours. This is the example he set.

Society needs basic and emergency services manned seven days a week but I believe it is vital that everyone gets one rest day a week.  We need one day that is different from the other six to rest and re-charge our batteries.

In Russia some years ago they changed to a ten-day working week to boost productivity. The result was disastrous. People could not cope with it at any level; physical or emotional. Our bodies and minds are programmed to the rhythm of a seven-day week. However I also believe we are programmed to have one day a week of rest because that is what our Creator did and we are made in his image.

Somehow a subtle lie seems to have infiltrated the Church that because we are under grace not law we can pick and choose which commandments we keep. We don’t stone people caught in adultery though the Bible is quite clear that adultery is wrong and some of the health and hygiene laws in Leviticus are no longer appropriate but the Ten Commandments where God gave the instruction about the Sabbath is a basic set of laws appropriate to any society. We need to see them not as shackles but as liberators for good healthy living and relationships - for all.

In our work obsessed societies, the word rest has become almost synonymous with lazy. This is the greatest lie of all. Now it is not just shops and garden centres that are open on Sunday but builders, plumbers, carpet fitters and so on like to fit in an extra day of work. We had an extension recently and our builder wanted to work on Sunday. We declined. This was not from a deep religious conviction but because firstly we don’t want people working in our house when we are resting and secondly we don’t want to be the cause of someone else working on a rest day. If they choose to work elsewhere that is their prerogative.

Personally I think churches and Christians need to look again at the whole issue of Sundays.  Family life is seriously undermined on all sides and I think we should do all we can to protect and promote it. Some people have to work but how much are our lifestyle choices undermining other people’s need for a day of rest with family and friends?

As Christians I believe it is time we stopped fitting into the culture and instead created a culture based on what the Bible teaches. God has a very definite view of the Sabbath day of rest – maybe we should too?

God's training plan

There is no doubt that it was one thing for God to take the Israelites out of the slavery from Egypt but quite another to get the slavery of Egypt out of the Israelites. That first generation of Israelites, with two notable exceptions, never overcame the slavery of their souls. They had been released to walk free, they had seen the mighty miracles of God but inside every one of them was still a slave.

The problem is that slaves have no passion, no purpose, no vision and no personal direction.  They have no rights and there is little pleasure in life because all they are doing is fulfilling other people’s purposes.  They have little or no sense of personal destiny.  They have no freedom of any sort and no ability to choose because their owner provides for them. What they lack most of all is any leadership capability because they rarely if ever lead.

It would have been almost impossible to find someone to take these million slaves out of the slavery of Egypt from amongst the Israelites but God had a wonderful plan. He needed to raise up a Hebrew, one of their own but one not raised in slavery. God hand picked Moses and then trained him up for 80 years.  Moses needed to be comfortable and confident in two different places; a palace and the desert. For 40 years this Hebrew was raised as a prince in the palace and for another 40 years he learned how to shepherd in the desert.

God was working out his plan for both Moses and his people.  When Moses tried to pre-empt the plan by intervening in the lives of the Hebrews and killing an Egyptian who was beating them, God used the event to take Moses from the first part of his training plan (the palace) to the second part (the desert). God uses our mistakes, presumptions and assumptions to work out his plans.

Moses I suspect knew there was a great call on his life. Why else would this Hebrew boy have been brought up in the palace when everyone else was making bricks? However the flame of destiny must have been burning very low by the time God suddenly appeared at the burning bush after 80 years.

Moses’ confidence in his abilities by this time was shot to pieces but that was fine.  God wanted to teach him to be confident in God not in himself. There was no way anyone would be able to bring about the 10 plagues and part the Red Sea if they were looking to their own abilities.  God taught Moses plague by plague, confrontation by confrontation with Pharaoh to trust him. By the time of the tenth plague it says in Exodus 11: 8 Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.

This was the Moses who was so scared of re-visiting the palace and confronting Pharaoh at the beginning that he begged God several times not to send him but to get someone else to do it.  By the time of the 10^th plague he knew who his God was and how Pharaoh was defying the plans and purposes of the Living God. It was the same spirit of holy boldness that David had when he slew Goliath. 

Moses was God’s man for the task and God trained him till he was ready to fulfil his divine calling. God has a destiny and calling for you and, though it may not look like it, he is working it out often in small painful steps. Despite our shortcomings, complaining and grumbling God will bring about his plan and purpose in our lives. He doesn’t give up even when we do.  Keep faithful, keep trusting, God is at work.

Brighter visions beam afar

Sages leave your contemplations

Brighter vision beam afar

Seek the great desire of nations

Ye have seen his natal star

The wise men must have been used to some heavy duty thinking as they studied the heavens and pondered the significance of the course of the stars and other heavenly bodies. However when they saw Jesus’ star, they realised that something or rather someone of great significance had come into the world.

They left their safe world of learning and esteem to journey across a desert to an unknown land and people to find a king born to the Jews. They were not Jewish yet they realised from their studies that someone of great significance for all people had come into the world.

They left everything to find him, travelled across inhospitable landscape, bearded Herod in his palace, which was probably a dangerous thing to do and yet persevered till they found the child.

Years later the disciples too left everything to find and follow Jesus. Peter, Andrew, James and John left their fishing business and Matthew left his lucrative tax collecting business.

Even today many are having to give up so much to follow Jesus. Muslims converting to Christianity are often ostracised by their families and may find it hard to find employment. In some countries Christianity is outlawed and believers are put in prison or even killed for their faith. They suffer much to follow the great desire of nations.’

In the West we may not have to leave family, friends, jobs and careers to follow him but ‘a brighter vision beams afar’ and it may require us to lay down some of our preferences and pastimes to follow him. The one thing that is certain is that it will be worth it.

The wise men may not have known what they had missed if they had stayed at home but I am certain they were so thankful they made that journey and would have considered it of great worth. They would have had no idea that their journey would become an integral part of the story of the birth of Jesus, remembered by millions every year but that would be nothing compared to actually seeing and worshipping the Saviour of the world.

We may never know how our journeys will affect the wider world but it is always worth pursuing what God has placed on our hearts, even if costly, because if nothing else it will shape our lives forever just as I am sure the wise men’s journey shaped them for the rest of their lives. 

Simeon and Anna

When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord Luke 2: 22

Jesus had been born in Bethlehem as prophesied and eight days later Mary and Joseph went the five miles to the temple in Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice in keeping with the Law of Moses.

In the temple they met a pair of elderly, devout people who had been waiting patiently for the Messiah. First of all Simeon came up to them. He had been promised that he would see the Lord’s Messiah before he died. He rejoiced that this day had come and very accurately prophesied to Mary that ‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

Mary and Joseph marvelled at what was said but more was to come. The very elderly Anna, a lady whose life was devoted to prayer and fasting also came up ‘at that moment’ and told anyone who would listen that this child was the Messiah (the redemption of Jerusalem).

I love the patient faithfulness of these two elderly people, devoted to the Lord. They had not given up as the years passed by. They had not settled down to a passive, inactive, elderly lifestyle. They were as fervent in their faith as ever.

In today’s culture, young is beautiful but the Bible is full of the very elderly being significantly used by God; Abraham, Moses, Gideon’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. So often the elderly laid the foundation for the next generation to build on.

As I have written before, the elderly in the back of the church can be a huge fount of wisdom and experience to tap into. Unfortunately they are largely ignored as irrelevant whilst the younger generation like to learn from their own mistakes without tapping into the wisdom that is available from those who have gone before.

I wonder how many others at the temple paid any attention to Simeon and Anna that day. Despite telling anyone who would listen, were they ignored or did anyone take note that the greatest event for the Jews and Gentiles, the Saviour of the world had just been presented at the temple?

Many of today’s elderly have been waiting and praying patiently for years for revival and have lived through previous outpourings and know a thing or two about them. Some of them may well have the promise from God that they will not die till they see revival. They may even have a head’s up on what God is doing for any willing to listen to them.

God loves all generations and wants to use everyone, young and old to reach a lost world. Crossing the generational divide is a wonderful expression of God’s heart. As we come to the end of 2014 let us not give up on the promises of God but by faith take them into 2015, believing that he who has promised is faithful.

Christmas Eve 2014

During Advent this year I have been reading J John’s daily devotional Advent Reflections. I have been struck again how God fulfils his purposes in often quite unexpected ways and uses the most unlikely and sometimes downright ungodly people to achieve his plans.

In particular I marvelled that God would use a Roman emperor who thought he was a god to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and used one of the most evil, wicked rulers, Herod the Great, to get the magi to their destination.

What is incredible though is the reaction of the religious leaders when the magi arrived at Herod’s court and asked, ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’ Herod called them and they correctly told both Herod and the magi that the King of the Jews, the Messiah, would be born in Bethlehem.

The magi then hotfooted off down the road to Bethlehem. So why didn’t the religious leaders go as well?’ It was only 5 miles away.

If an entourage of Middle Eastern magi pitched up on your doorstep, having travelled months to get there to come and worship your Messiah, you might think the religious leaders would want to investigate what was going on. They dismissed it though out of hand. They assumed, quite wrongly, that these magi couldn’t possibly know what they were talking about. The very people that the Messiah came to save couldn’t believe that God would talk to some Gentiles rather than to themselves, the religious leaders of the Jewish faith.

Too often, as Christians we wrongly assume we know how God works in a given situation. But God is God and he will do things his way. He will even use ungodly leaders to fulfil his purposes. Too often our prayers are for God to raise up Christians to places of influence and my goodness don’t we need that? Our societies and leaders need the Josephs and Daniels at the highest levels of government, media, education and so on.  However we also need to be open to see God working and answering our prayers in the most unlikely ways, using the most unlikely people.

The sad thing is that though the Jews have been praying for their Messiah for centuries, only a few recognised him when he came. Despite every indication given both at his birth and then during his ministry that Jesus is the Messiah, only a handful believed it.

My prayer is that our prejudices and short-sighted assumptions do not prevent us from seeing what God is doing in our day and that we do not limit God to working the way we think it should be. May our eyes be open to all he is doing and our hearts ready to receive him however and with whoever he chooses to use.