Sabbath

A Song of the Sabbath

‘Tis the Sabbath this day,

The day of Your kindness…

The morning, the night, the sound of our singing,

O LORD of the Sabbath,

LORD of the battle,

LORD of the victory!

‘Tis the Sabbath this day,

The place of Your Presence and

we sing the gladness of Your Work,

O LORD of the Sabbath;

for the enemy perishes before us!

The plots of iniquity are destroyed!

The enemy is caused to cease!

In Your Presence, Your Presence,

O LORD of the Sabbath,

stand the ones who bear Your horn, Your Name,

Adrip in the Oil of Your Spirit.

‘Tis the Sabbath this day, O LORD our Rest,

Flourishing in Your courts this day,

as the enemy is restrained and his war is ceased

to the song we sing, to the song we sing! 

                                 Contributed by Fran B.

 

The Sabbath is an issue of debate among Christians, and a subject of Law and tradition in Jewish doctrine.

Psalm 92 is a "Song of the Sabbath". In part, this Psalm reads:

"When the wicked spring up like grass,

And when all the workers of iniquity flourish,

It is that they may be destroyed forever. 

But You, LORD, are on high forevermore.

For behold, Your enemies, O LORD,

For behold, Your enemies shall perish;

All the workers of iniquity shall be scattered."

It may be a surprise to find that the Sabbath, the day of rest, is associated with warfare. The root meaning of Sabbath is the word shavath, which means: to cease, desist, rest, put an end to, exterminate, destroy, to remove, to cause to fail, to restrain an enemy, to put an end to, sit down, sit still.

So, the meaning of Sabbath, is surrounded by warfare.

The first mention of the origins of the Sabbath is in Gen. 2:2:

"And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done,

and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done."

The word, rested, used in this scripture, is the word "shavath", as defined above. What warfare had our Father been involved with? What enemies had He just restrained? In Genesis Chapter 1, the earth is described as without form, empty, void, and shrouded in darkness. Chaos ruled over earth.

In a form of warfare against this darkness and emptiness, Father created light, and filled the earth with life. He subdued the enemy, which had tried to subject the earth to darkness.

When we remember His "rest", we remember His victory. We keep it holy, because it is holy. It is a great and mighty work of the hands of our Father.

Our Father is Sabbath.

"Whom Shall I Fear"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOkImV2cJDg

Forgiveness

Our Father in heaven is forgiveness.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar,
and His word is not in us"
                         1 John 1:8-10

also

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
                         Romans 3:23

These scriptures were written to the Church.
Sometimes we sit and look at the world and we lament the sinfulness we see in man. We want to tell man how sinful he is, and make him recognize his condition, in order to repent before God, and be forgiven. Most humans don't want to hear us tell them how sinful they are. Some, perhaps, already know they sin, and don't care. Perhaps some do care, anda receive the message of repentence gladly and humbly. Some are offended by that message, and harden their hearts against it - even some in the Church.
Even while Jesus was on the cross, many of those standing at the foot of the cross, with His blood dripping upon them, mocked Him while He suffered and atoned for the sins of the world. Even one hanging beside Him, mocked Him. But the other thief beside Him, hanging on a cross for his crimes, asked Jesus to remember him. Jesus assured him that he would be with Him in Paradise.
While Jesus was mocked, while He suffered, He asked His Father to forgive, in Luke 23:34:

"Then Jesus said, Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do."

While He said this, they were gambling at the foot of the cross for the clothes they took off of Him.

All of us in the Church sin as well. Some of us repent for the sins, ask forgiveness, and sin again. John says above, that we are liars if we claim that we don't sin. Jesus continually healed and cleansed, and then told the individual "go and sin no more."
And yet, our Father looks for every opportunity to forgive us and restore us.
Some sins seem minor. Other sins are vile, murderous, twisted, horrifying. Some sins are clearly seen, other sins are hidden in the hearts and minds of mankind, and never seen by another living soul, but God sees them. Some sins are done in secret and in darkness. Some sin proudly, others feel shame. Scripture says that all sin, seemingly minor or major, leads to, contributes to, causes our death.
So what is the answer?
Those who have the knowledge of Christ, and His atonement, are continually told to forgive.
 In Mt. 18:21-22, Peter asks Christ how many times in a day should one forgive someone who has sinned against him. Peter suggests seven times. Jesus corrects him and says " I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven." Saying this, Jesus was implying an infinite number.
In Luke 6:37, Jesus teaches: "Judge not and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
In Mat. 6:14-15, a similar command is given: For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
I am suggesting that for our own sakes, as well as for others, we need to forgive as our Father forgives.

Jesus said, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
                             John 20:23

What authority has been given to us! How can we exercise this great grace gift to impact, to change the condition of man?
I am suggesting that if we want to see a change in the hearts of men, both those who know Christ, and those who don't, we need to forgive, as our Father forgives, not forgiving grudgingly, nor religiously, nor self-righteously, but forgiving out of the same kind of heart that the Father forgives. This is the kind of heart that sent His Son to be the atonement for our sins, to be the death for our sins, to be the forgiveness for our sins.
Does this mean that we do not stand for righteousness,that we do not call for holiness and obedience to God and His Word? No, we still stand for the Truth, but we can do that by walking it out in our own lives, by speaking it out of our own mouths, by examining our own souls in the mirror of His Word..
We may say, How can I ask our Father to forgive those who provide abortion? How can I ask Father to forgive those who abuse and defile children for their own pleasure? How can I ask Father to forgive those who murder? Especially if these do not have any desire to repent? If we are willing to say as Jesus said "Father forgive, Father forgive", perhaps we will see a change that only our Father in heaven can make in the hearts of men. Perhaps, through forgiveness, we can open a door of grace that will see human kind turn from a path of death onto a path of Life.
As much as our Father is a consuming fire, and a judge of the wicked, our Father is also forgiveness.

Passover

In order to deliver His people out of oppression, fear and slavery, our Father had to break the will of a great power, Pharaoh of Egypt, the most powerful, richest, absolute monarch on earth at that time. There was no earthly power that could compel Pharoah to do anything he did not want to do. But the LORD had made a promise to Abraham centuries earlier, and He would keep His promise.
The LORD began to apply pressure on Pharaoh, finally using a plague of death in order to break Pharaoh's will. To protect His own people during this terrifying night of death, the LORD instructed His people to mark their doorposts and lintels with lamb's blood. Seeing the blood, the death angel would pass over those Hebrew homes. That night, He delivered hundreds of thousands, perhaps the numbers were even greater, of the Hebrews from bondage into freedom without losing even one. Death did not touch them.
On another Passover evening, another Lamb would be sacrificed for the freedom of God's people. Because of this Lamb, again, death would have no power over those covered by His blood. This Lamb's blood was very special. In scripture, our Father tells us in several places that the life of any creature, human or animal, is in the blood (Gen. 9:4, Lev. 17:11,14, Deut. 12:23). God very emphatically wants us to associate blood with life.
 John 1:4 reveals to us that in Jesus, the Word of God, was life. This form of life also contains light, and is the light in each one of us. 

"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men."

So if blood=life, according to scripture, then we can take this verse to mean:
In Him was blood, and the blood was the light of men. We might even be able to say that He was born from the divinity of God into human form for His blood.
This precious man, God's Son, who was divinely purposed and sent by our Father, who did nothing and said nothing except what He saw His Father doing, and what He heard His Father saying, came to be our Passover Lamb.
And on the night He was betrayed by one of His own, on Passover evening, knowing that He would be returning to His Father, He removed His clothes, wrapped Himself in a towel, and washed His disciples feet. He dried their feet with the towel He had wrapped around Himself. He told His disciples that as He had done to them, they should also be willing to follow His example, and wash each other's feet.
By washing each other's feet, either by actual washing, or by the washing power of the Word of God, of our prayers and love, we cleanse each other from the cares and ways of the dirt of the world that wants to cling to our walk through life.
Later that same evening, Jesus took the Passover unleavened bread and broke it, and gave it to His disciples and told them it was His body. He took one of the cups of Passover wine, and told His disciples it was His blood. He told them to eat and drink, to receive the sacrifice He was making.
Because our Father keeps His promises, another Passover Lamb gave Himself, all of Himself as a sacrifice, humbled Himself to wash the feet of others,even the one who would betray Him. Yet, in so doing became, and is, King of kings and Lord of Lords. And like the Passover lamb before, the power of His blood delivers us from the power of sin, which is death. We have been delivered from the bondage, fear, and oppression of death. Like Pharaoh, it rules no more!

"He will swallow up death forever,
And the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces;
The rebuke of His people
He will take away from all the earth;
For the LORD has spoken"
                                      Isa. 25:8

and

"Death is swallowed up in victory
O death, where is your sting?
O Hades (grave), where is your victory?"
                                   1 Cor. 15:54-55

"Lamb of God"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLVtp_b_SIU

Constancy

 

If there is one constancy to be found in the world, it is inconstancy.
We have grown used to the idea that we can change anything and everything.
We change our jobs. We change our spouses, if we are unhappy. We change homes. We change cars, schools, and friends. We change our appearance. We change churches as if they had revolving doors on the front of the buildings.
This is the way of things in the world, and we have conformed to it.
But this is not the way of our Father.

"I am the LORD, I change not..."
Malachi 3:6

In Malachi, the LORD assures us that if He has made a promise, He will keep it. He is constant, though the world systems encourage inconstancy. He knows that because He has created us in His image, that we crave constancy also.
The world has made us restless, and that state of being without rest has caused us to become inconstant, running to and fro, always seeking what we think will satisfy us, if we just keep trying to change everything around us. But our Father encourages us to be constant. Rest and satisfaction are not found in our circumstances. They are found in our Father.

"Now He (the LORD) said to me (David),
"It is your son, Solomon who shall build My house and My courts;
for I have chosen him to be My son,
and I will be his Father.
Moreover I will establish his kingdom forever, "if he is constant
to observe My commandments and My judgments,
as it is this day."
1 Chron. 28:6-7

The LORD establishes a Father/son relationship with Solomon, and Solomon's kingdom will be established forever, if he is constant. He must be constant in following the precepts of God.
Our Father desires constancy in us, even as He can be depended upon to be constant in all that He says and does.

Our Father is constant.


"It is Well With My Soul"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vaar6Ij55ig

"Now We are Free"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdVLi235gZQ

Covering

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
the one who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her!
How often I wanted to gather your children together,
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
but you were not willing!"
                                             Luke 13:34

Jesus expresses the heart of our Father to bring us close to Him, to cover us, to keep us close to His side. We can hear the desire in His voice as He speaks these words.
Throughout scripture, the Father calls out to His people, and how often that call falls on deaf, or unwilling ears.
We might be surprised and ask "When did I ever ignore the LORD? When did I disregard His call to come under His wings?"
Jesus tells us in the verse above that our Father sends people into our lives specifically to draw us to Himself: Prophets, and representatives sent to shepherd His people, awaken His people, speak to His people, lead us to His place of covering, but we often reject these anointed messengers, and ignore the words spoken out of their mouths. Jesus says even He was refused by God's people.
Certainly if we refuse these obvious representatives, how many times have we missed those special ones who have quietly crossed our paths in our everyday lives- those whom we may not even know, but the Father has commissioned them to draw us closer to Him in some way.
Our Father has a deep love and desire to cover us. It costs Him to cover us, but He pays the price willingly.
Adam and Eve rejected their Father's glory covering and exchanged it for the fleeting, mortal glory of man. Even in the face of their distrust and disregard, the LORD covered Adam and Eve with skins, because He knows how vulnerable we are without a covering.
Even when His prophet, Jonah, was angry with God, the LORD caused a plant to grow out of the ground to cover His prophet from the heat of the day.The LORD used the plant to teach Jonah about pity. In this case He was teaching Jonah about showing pity to those who have been uncovered by sin.
When we show pity on others and cover them with our prayers, our love, and our nurture, we are reflecting the character of our Father.
The covering of our Father is a secret place, known only to Him and the one He covers:

"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD,
"He is my refuge and my fortress;
my God, in Him I will trust."
                               Psalm 91:1-2

What is this secret place of the Most High, this mystery that was hidden, but now revealed to each individual who yields his trust to the LORD? It is the covering created when Jesus spread out His arms on the cross, and covered us beneath them with His own blood. This is the covering created out of pity for those uncovered by sin. This is the same pity the LORD feels as He tried to teach Jonah. He sees us uncovered, and our Father's desire is to provide the covering, as He expressed in the first scripture above. And it costs Him dearly.

It requires from us trust to submit to the covering of the LORD, but once there, we can abide there forever.


"Cover Me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pzvZ2geWt4

Mercy

From Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, 1596.

PORTIA: The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

This play written by William Shakespeare is about, in part, a man who owes a debt, and he cannot repay it. He has now been brought before the court. His agreement with the lender had been that if he did not repay the debt, he would give a pound of flesh from his body as a penalty. We get the expression "a pound of flesh" from this drama.

His advocate or attorney before the court, launches into this speech above, asking that mercy be extended to the accused. It is beautifully written and eloquently expresses the power, majesty and divinity of mercy. Shakespeare's character points out:

1.  Mercy cannot be strained- by its very nature, it cannot be overused, it can never run out, or be used up, no matter how many times it is extended. It has an infinite quality built into it.

2.  It is like gentle rain. Gentle rain will soften the hardest ground. Mercy shown will soften the hardest heart.

3.  Its quality is such that it blesses both those who show it to others, and those who receive it. Do you need a blessing? Show mercy.

4.  Mercy is most powerful when the most powerful use it. It is generally the poor and weak who depend upon mercy in life on this earth, so the powerful don't think they have need of it. So when they show mercy, it makes a powerful statement to humanity.

5.  Mercy is even greater than all of the power and authority of kings. Kings sit on thorones to show their power, but mercy sits on a throne within them to show its power.

6. When mercy is shown by earthly powers, that is when those powers most reflect the nature of God, Himself. And when we extend mercy, that is when we are most like our Father.

In scripture, our Father identifies Himself to Moses by His quality of mercy:

"The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands...

Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped."

                                                     Exodus 34:6-8

When Moses experiences the LORD's merciful character, it overwhelms him, and he falls to the ground in worship.

The word "mercy" comes from a root meaning "deep love, compassion, pity". The Father's love for man is so great, that He feels deep compassion towards us. Though He is slow to pass judgment against any man, He will do it out of the compassion He feels for those suffering under the oppression of someone who is wicked in heart.

Even as Shakespeare strongly argues on behalf of man extending the mercy quality of God towards other men, the scriptures also teach this:

"Be ye merciful, as your Father also is merciful."

                                         Luke 6:36

And as Shakespeare spoke of the reciprocal blessing of mercy, so do the scriptures:

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

                                        Mat. 5:7

Isn't it interesting to see that Shakespeare recognized and spoke a principle of truth from the Word and Character of God?

How great is the power of mercy in our Father towards us, that when we receive that truth, it makes man fall down in worship, as Moses. 

Appearances

"Appearances are deceiving."
"Don't judge a book by its cover."

We have heard these wise sayings many times, and they are true. But how often we go against that sage advice and judge things and people by their appearance. We prefer to join ourselves to what looks successful. We judge whether something or someone has God's blessing, based upon the circumstances we see with our eyes. But appearances are not the measure of the blessing, anointing, or presence of our Father.

A dream:
I was traveling in the car with my spouse. We were on the main street through a good-sized city. We came to an unusual building. I liked its design very much. It had rounded edges, rather than the standard 90 degree corners. But all of the windows had been broken, by thrown rocks. The building looked dark, empty, deserted.
We turned down a narrow alley that went along the side of the building to the back. When we reached the rear of the building, the alleyway opened up into a court. There were other buildings around this court, as well as the first building we had seen. But I could now see, from the rear area of the first seemingly deserted building that is was a church. The rear of the building was actually the front. There was light in every window on this end of the building. People, and robed clergy came pouring out of this church, as well as the other buildings around this rear court. They were all singing the hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy". It was wonderful to see.
Something that had seemed to be an empty shell from one perspective, had really turned out to be full of life and glory.*

In 1 Samuel 16, the prophet Samuel has been sent by the LORD to anoint a new king over Israel. The LORD sent Samuel to the family of Jesse, in the town of Bethlehem. Samuel looked over Jesse's sons, and saw one in particular whom he assumed must be the one the LORD had chosen, because of his impressive appearance. But this was not the one, nor was it any of the other six sons of Jesse who were present at that time. The chosen king of Israel turned out to be the youngest whom was out watching over the flock, whom no one would have chosen based upon his appearance. The youngest son was David.
The LORD made clear to the prophet in verse 7, how He judges man:
"But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature (referring to the impressive oldest son); because I have refused him:
for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart."

Do not be discouraged if it seems that people have looked upon your outward appearance and misjudged your life. Your Father, your Creator knows the gifts, and purpose He has placed in your life. He sees the integrity and faithfulness of your soul, and He is not swayed by the partialities of men. The LORD looks on the heart.

It it seems that ruin has touched your life, or you feel that you will never recover from a loss, nothing is impossible with your Father, and in Him is life and restoration. Not even death could hold His Son, Jesus, in the grave. There comes a resurrection morning in the Father of Hope and Life.




*special thanks to "F" and "G" for their help with the dream.