God’s Holy Day

If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; Then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. Isaiah 58:13,14

The Sabbath is of vital importance to God; He calls it, My Holy Day, which goes back to the very beginning of creation. In chapter 2 of Genesis we read:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy’.

In chapter 20, the importance of keeping the Sabbath is even more evident when it becomes a commandment. When something is this important to God, we need to respect it.

Traditionally for a lot of us, the Sabbath is celebrated on Sunday, but if you work for one of the Emergency Services, for example, then resting on Sunday is not always possible. Personally, I don’t we should get too hung up about actually pinning it down to a particular named day. Rather, we should recognise the significance of setting one day apart from the other six. Sabbath is about time offered back to God; a time of reflection through uninterrupted fellowship. A day free from the distraction of things that clamour for our attention. A day to rest in God; putting all other pleasures aside and delighting in Him alone.

God is asking us to honour Him in this way, to acknowledge His sovereignty and His holiness. And when we do, He says, ‘I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.’I’ll be honest, I don’t know exactly what that means but it definitely sounds like something that I don’t want to miss! I’m guessing that you don’t want to miss it either.