Signed and Signing – The Kingdom Curriculum VIII (4)

Signed and Signing

“Remember and observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 5:12

And the LORD said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep My Sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death.’” Exodus 31:12-14

What sign does Your Sunday send to God?

God is sending a very important sign to us by establishing one day a week as His Day. He has reserved the Lord’s Day and so arranged for the remembering and observing of it that everything about it will say to us, “You belong to Me! You shall be holy!” God is adamant that we receive this sign over and over again, because we are, well, a little slow on the uptake whenever God is speaking, but we have many distractions and diversions. Very often there are too many of our things to attend to because we consider them to be more important than God and what He wants.

So let us thank God that, in His wisdom, He has set aside one entire day a week to remind us over and over and over again who we are, Who He is, and what’s the deal between us. But every sign given demands a sign in return, acknowledging receipt of the sign by carrying out the action it requires. God signs to us; we sign back to Him. What “sign” does your Lord’s Day send to Him?

I suspect that, for too many of us, the “sign” we return to the Lord each Sunday is a rather weak acknowledgment of and agreement with His purposes. We go to church and maybe keep from pursuing our normal employment. But we open our home to all manner of influences which bring their own “sign” into our midst: “Sunday? Hey, that’s my day for sports, for buying and selling, for getting and spending.” Many of us take the largest part of the Lord’s Day for our own preoccupations–mowing the lawn, going shopping, heading out to the tennis court, golf course, mall, or lake. At such times it’s hard to see how our minds can be resting in the Lord or focusing on Him as Creator and Redeemer. If we, having “observed” our Sunday duty at church, then reclaim the rest of the day for our own interests, how will we ever gain the sanctifying benefit of the Lord’s Day that we will need in order to live as sanctified people throughout the rest of the week?

The ominous warning at the end of our text reminds us how serious God is about remembering and observing His Day. We don’t put people to death for Sabbath-breaking, but we should consider just what we are signing to the Lord and the world when we refuse to set this day apart for Him: “Lord, I know what You’ve said, and I understand what You expect and want to do in and for me. But I’ve got my own agenda, and it doesn’t include You.” If we thus willfully continue to set ourselves apart from the Lord, rather than unto Him, perhaps we will understand if He, in His loving discipline, prevents us from realizing the full benefits of membership in His covenant.

Get your copy of The Law of God today, and begin making meditation in God’s Law part of your daily discipline. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, point your browser to “Publications,” then click on the drop-down option, “Waxed Tablet Publications.”

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore.

T.M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.