“You are to labor six days but you must rest on the seventh day; you must even rest during plowing and harvesting times.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The other day, some folks in my church were having a conversation before Bible study about the wonder of modern conveniences and the changes they have brought to our lives. Many of the things we consider among the most basic conveniences were introduced as ways to automate mundane tasks and give us more time for leisure. Instead, not knowing what to do with all our extra time, we filled it with either mindless banalities or else even more work. Rest and genuine, fulfilling recreation have seemed to escape us. And yet, one of the commands God came back to again and again with Israel was a call to rest regularly. And in their rest, they were to learn to trust. Let’s talk again about Sabbath and realizing there’s more to the world than just ourselves.

A number of the modern conveniences we enjoy today were invented by Christian monks in the Middle Ages who looking for ways to automate the mundane parts of their daily routines so they could give themselves more time to worship and study the Scriptures. They believed that work was a God-given gift and directive, but that the futility that resulted from the Fall was something we had to try to overcome. Where one task or another was laden with more futility than most, they sought to automate it so they would have more time for more meaningful pursuits.

We have talked about the Sabbath before in this journey. More than once. That’s because God has mentioned it more than once. The idea was first introduced before the Law was even given when God began providing the people manna for their daily bread. As we talked about then and in at least a couple of the instances after that, while the Sabbath was definitely about worship and definitely about rest, it was even more fundamentally about giving the Israelites an opportunity to trust in God. They were to trust in Him to provide for them more than they trusted in their own efforts to do that.

God didn’t get too extreme on this teaching. He only directed them to rest one day of the week. He wanted them to trust, but He didn’t want them to get lazy. He wanted them to work hard, but to recognize that their work was not the ultimate source of the things they needed to survive and thrive. He was. By building into their foundational rhythms a habit of intentionally placing trust in Him to do what they otherwise imagined they could do all by themselves. As they built and developed this rhythm, the goal was that they would gradually learn to trust in Him more broadly. They would see and experience that even if they didn’t do the things they normally did in order to meet their own needs, those needs were still being met. They could trust in this God who was leading and shaping them.

In this particular restatement of the Sabbath command, God emphasizes this trust directive in a way He hasn’t done before. He tells them to only work six days out of seven which we have seen before. But then He goes one step further and tells them that they should even maintain this work-rest pattern during plowing and harvest times. Now, why would that matter?

I have twice now pastored in rural communities with lots of farmland all around the church. Both churches I have pastored have been blessed with members who are either actively farming or were farmers for extended seasons of their lives. A farmer stays fairly busy all year with a host of different tasks, but the two primary seasons for busyness are when it’s time to plow and when it’s time to harvest. Farmers use all kinds of means to know when it’s time to plant. When that moment arrives, they have to get moving. The same goes with harvest time. There is a narrow window of opportunity to pick the produce when it is at its best. If you miss that, the consequences are potentially devastating to a crop.

For God to command the people to maintain their pattern of work and rest even during plowing and harvesting would have been a really big deal. This was next level trust. This meant trusting Him and taking a day off when every instinct told them they couldn’t possibly miss a day. They had to trust more in Him than in what their senses were telling them. That’s no small feat. God promised in other places to bless such trust by providing more than enough for them, by making their fields extra productive, but this blessing was going to be in response to their trust. Without giving that trust to Him, they were going to be limited to what they could produce on their own. Perhaps that was sufficient, perhaps not. Whichever it wound up being, that was all they were going to be able to get. His promise was to go above and beyond merely what they could do on their own. The question they had to answer for themselves was whether they wanted to experience that or not.

As followers of Jesus, this pattern of work and rest is not something we are beholden to obey. I know that’s a radical idea for believers who have been raised to think that Sunday is the Sabbath, and that Sabbath-keeping is required of Christians because the Ten Commandments say so, but that’s not thinking that finds any traction in the New Testament. It’s not thinking that is part of the new covenant Jesus created between us and God through Him. That kind of thinking is part of the old covenant He fulfilled and replaced. Insisting that Christians observe the Sabbath in the same way that old covenant Jews did is just like insisting that Christians must be circumcised in order to be followers of Jesus. The apostle Paul was abundantly clear that such a mindset is anathema to the Gospel and that it should find no traction in the minds of new covenant followers of Jesus.

Okay, but then does this mean anything for us? In practical terms, no, but in spiritual terms, God absolutely still invites us to trust in Him more than in what we can assess merely with our senses. He invites us beyond mere empiricism to live a life that is far more abundant than that. He invites us to demonstrate this trust by loving our neighbors, by showing kindness to strangers, by working diligently for justice for the oppressed, by practicing sacrificial generosity with the under-resourced, by showing compassion to the hurting, by visiting the prisoners, by giving hope to the despondent, by being merciful with the meek, by exercising healthy self-control, by embracing joy in the face of trials, and so on and so forth. He invites us to live like we are members of His kingdom regardless of which kingdom of this world we happen to call home. This is new covenant Sabbath living.

It’s easy to trust in what our eyes can see. It’s easy to respond to insults with insults. It’s easy to respond to power grabs by our opponents with power grabs of our own. It’s easy to seek vengeance and revenge when we have been hurt. It’s easy to ignore the suffering of others. It’s easy to indulge our desires whatever they may happen to be. It’s easy to be cynical and hopeless. Those things all make sense to do in a given moment. What Jesus invites us into is something more. More life. Real life. This takes trust. It takes a commitment to living in and with the eternal Sabbath that Jesus made available by His death and resurrection. When we pursue this, the God who desires nothing more than a relationship with us with meet and reward our efforts with blessings that we cannot even imagine. The choice is yours.