In the Old Testament, the Sabbath, or a day of rest, was as important as all the other commandments. In fact, out of the ten commandments found in Exodus 20, eight of them tell us what to stay away from and only two tell us what to run towards. Those two would be: honor your father and mother, and honor the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This is the only day that the Bible actually says the Lord blessed.
Six days to work, one day to completely rest.
But God takes it a step further when He gives Moses instructions on Mount Sinai to have each seventh year be a year of complete rest for the land. Instead of a day of rest, God institutes a season of rest.
Now, this might not drastically impact your life if you were a goat herder, shepherd, or blacksmith—but if you were a farmer, you better believe your world would be rocked. Listen to the instruction God gives Moses in Leviticus 25.
God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give you, the land will observe a Sabbath to God. Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years. But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to God; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Don’t reap what grows of itself; don’t harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest. But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath year—you and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country, and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten.’” -Leviticus 25: 1-7
Imagine taking an entire year off from doing what you were trained and skilled to do. No sowing seed. No pruning branches. No harvesting or selling their produce for profit. The only thing they could do was eat the fruit of the land that was naturally produced and use it for their family and their livestock. The rest was left for the wild animals—roaming ravenously throughout their grounds, searching for luscious berries and ripe fruit to fill their rumbling
tummies.
Yes, God instilled a Sabbath day of rest into the weekly rhythm of life. This was a day for His people to publicly and privately observe, in reverence to Him.
But every so often a season would come where all normalcy was thrown off the table and something unheard of was required. A season of rest.
A season of rest meant full alignment with God. It meant cutting off everything extra and simply and honestly doing only what God had specifically asked them to do.
This was a season that wouldn’t last forever, but for right there, right then, God was asking them to radically rest in ways that collided with all they had ever known. In ways that didn’t make sense to the productivity side of their brains. In ways that would challenge them to choose obedience and trust over process and reason.
"Every seven years, God instilled a year-long rest, an inactive fallow period for the land. And let me tell you, this was divinely radical, created with prestigious foresight by a God who always has the big picture in mind."
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Photo Credit: Tim Mossholder, pexels.com | Design: Milan Klusacek, milanklusacek.com
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