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Part 3

the congregation

 

Your Congregation is your Sabbath Community. As a Sabbath Community there are things we do, and things we don’t do.

We worship, pray, remember the Lord’s table, we baptize,
and we devote ourselves to scripture.

We don’t put anything ahead of Sabbath.
We keep it holy, set apart.

The church is meant to live in the perpetual rhythms of gathering for one day of sabbath rest, and six days of work. All of the work we do in our vocation comes to rest on the Sabbath.

 

Exodus 20:8-11

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

 

Sometimes we confuse “the weekend” with “sabbath” because both are a break from work.  But keeping sabbath is more than having a day off from work.  Exodus 20:10 says, the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God.  In other words, while on the one hand it is a resting from work, it is also a devotion to the Lord.

REST ALONE IS NOT SABBATH

Keeping the sabbath means devoting ourselves to the Lord.

  • It means trusting that the Lord will watch over our work while we rest while we turn our attention to something more important

  • It means devoting ourselves to the scripture during this day of rest

  • It means meeting as a congregation to celebrate the gift of sabbath 

Jesus made a point of gathering for sabbath. He modelled the sabbath congregation.

“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.”
— Luke 4:16

 But gathering each week was not done out of any sense of legalism.  He understood that sabbath gatherings are a gift to the church. He said to them,

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
— Mark 2:27,28
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For Your Spiritual Formation

 

  1. What has been your experience of keeping the sabbath:

    a.  Share a time when it felt like an obligation, something required of you?

    b.  Share a time when it felt like a limitation, something denied to you?

    c. Share a time when it felt like it is a gift, something to bless you?

  2. Sometimes we get confused between having a day off, and remembering the sabbath.  How do you distinguish between the things you do on a day off, and the things you do to keep the sabbath?

  3. What do you thing Jesus meant when he said that He is Lord of the Sabbath?
    Why does Jesus want to be the Lord of our “rest”? (Sabbath means rest)


    Are there any adjustments you need to make in order to “remember the sabbath and keep it holy?”