September 1, 2013

Leviticus 19:3 — Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.

Let me say at the start that in this devotion I do something I generally shy away from. I am taking something that was clearly given to the Jews and applying it to today’s church, and what is more, reinterpreting an ordinance for the Jews into one for us. If you feel that applying many of the commands commonly applied to the Lord’s Sabbath to the day we now observe as the Lord’s Day, perhaps we must part company for today, and I will hope to see you back tomorrow!

The command to keep the Sabbath Day holy is often repeated, and Sabbath-breaking severely punished. The man who left the camp to gather sticks on the Sabbath was stoned to death — you can see the story in Numbers 15:32-36. But The Lord’s Day is not some fearful day of obligation, but a day to be loved and cherished — Jesus Himself said “The Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”. Here are some other things to know about it.
Keeping the Lord’s Day is a mark of God’s people. We are often reminded of the instruction recorded by the writer of Hebrews not to “forsake the assembling of ourselves together” but we also find in Hebrews 4:9 that “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.”
The Lord’s Day is a blessing to His people. We find it so described throughout the Bible, from Genesis to the Revelation. Isaiah 58:13-14 makes the promise glorious:
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, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord;
There is a special reason to love the Lord’s Day. It’s the Lord’s Day! Robert Murray M’Cheyne put it this way …

All days of the year are Christ’s, but He hath marked out one in seven as peculiarly his own. “He hath made it,” or marked it out. Just as He planted a garden in Eden, so He hath fenced about this day and made it his own. This is the reason why we love it, and would keep it entire. We love everything that is Christ’s.

There was time Myra and I didn’t take care of the Lord’s Day the way we should. Over time we became convinced that is was our duty to obey the Bible’s teaching. As we obeyed, so we fell in love with with what we were obeying. Do you love the Lord’s Day? If you’re not taking proper care of the Lord’s property, maybe now’s the time to start. I promise you’ll fall in love as well.