Leviticus chapter 26-27

God’s message to me: The Sabbath is important to God. Whether it is the traditional Sabbath(the last day of the week is Saturday)or the New Testament Day of worship(Moved to Sunday by the first century church because Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week). This is an important and holy day which must be respected.

Promises: Follow God’s commands and you will have prosperity, victory against overwhelming odds, peace, health and long life. Ignore God’s commands and He will break your pride. He will allow all manner of trouble to come until your pride is broken and you repent. He will go so far that the surrounding nations will be astonished at the pain you experience. He speaks of having bread from the work of 10 women and still not being satisfied. I have to say I see this in the obesity epidemic. In Somalia, the black hawk down incident had us running when no one was chasing us. How many outbreaks of E. Coli and Salmonella have swept across this nation in the past couple years, tainting our food, and striking fear in our hearts.

Commands: Follow God’s commands. Keep the Sabbath Holy(considering how often this is repeated throughout the bible you would think people could understand. It wasn’t that long ago that most businesses were closed on Sunday. Some still follow the Sabbath as Saturday. These people do still close their businesses and take the day off work. What happened to the rest of us? Do New Testament Christians think they are exempt from one of God’s most important and repeated laws?)

Timeless principles: God blesses those who obey Him and turns His back on those who, unrepentantly disobey Him.

How can I apply what I’ve learned: OK, this should be obvious. Keep the Sabbath Holy. Go to church. At the very least your should take this as a day of worship. This isn’t a day of work either.

Remember that the Israelites were farmers. Even on the Sabbath, the cows need milked and you need to make sure the sheep don’t do anything stupid. Maintenance is expected. God maintained His creation on the 7th day. Beyond those basics, though, this is a day of rest and should be treated as such.

more to learn for in-depth study: The Sabbath is exceedingly important. Not only the 7th day of the week but the 7th year and the Jubilee. You can see in this passage that the land would lay desolate and make up for it’s Sabbaths when the people were removed for their sins. You see this enacted later in the captivities suffered by Israel. Each period of time in which the people ignored the law is followed by a period of captivity during which the Sabbaths were made up for as the land rested with the Israelites in captivity elsewhere.

tomorrow we begin the book of Numbers and cover chapters 1-3