Deuteronomy 5:13-14 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”

In his Ten Commandments the Lord laid his claim on practically every feature of his people’s lives. He claimed their tongues, their families, their possessions, their bodies, their hearts, and their worship and praise. With this commandment he made it clear, “God has also claimed your time, and God’s Claim On Your Time Includes Rest.”

His original plan was for his people to rest on the seventh day, Saturday. There is a certain logic to that, I believe. It follows the week of work. First work, then rest. If a different day had been chosen, say Wednesday, people would likely have begun to see that as a kind of seventh day after six days of work. I find people today who think that the first day of the week is Monday, because that is when work begins for us, and the seventh day is Sunday. Even some calendars are set up that way. But God originally chose Saturday as the day for his people to rest.

Which day wasn’t optional for God’s Old Testament people, but which day of the week was never the main thing. Taking a day of rest was. Even the name God gave the day emphasized the main point. We call it “Saturday,” a holdover from the Latin influence on our language, which named the day in honor of the god Saturn. The Germans called it “Sonnabend,” the evening before Sunday. The Scandinavians named it “lordag,” which means “bath day.” The Polynesians call it “rahoroi” or “washing day.” But God named it “Shabbat,” “Sabbath,” the Hebrew word for rest, because that is what his original plan was all about.

In spelling out the seventh day, God was treating his people like minor children. When I was a child, my parents dictated when I ate my meals, and when I went to bed. When I entered high school, this all became much more free. I might not eat supper with the family, and bed time could be later, so long as I got enough sleep. By the time I entered college, it was pretty much up to me when I ate or slept. My parents expected me to understand I needed them both.

After 1400 years and the sending of Jesus, God stopped worrying about whether his people got their rest on the seventh day. He expected them to get it because they understood they needed it. That was especially true in view of the kind of rest Jesus brought us. His death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, brings us rest for our souls. It lifts the heavy burden of sin and guilt off of our shoulders. It frees us from our fear of death. It relieves us of the tension and anxiety that God is angry at me, that he wants to stick it to me and make me pay, or that he has just decided to abandon me and forget about me because he is disgusted with me.

All of that is replaced with the peace of knowing he forgives me without limits, and he loves me without conditions. Through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice and promise my soul finds rest from thinking I have to earn my way back into God’s good graces. I can rest in Jesus’ finished work. That is why Paul could write in our second lesson this morning from Colossians not to let anyone judge you about keeping a Sabbath day. God’s claim on our time still includes rest, but our real rest isn’t found on a calendar. “The reality, however, is found in Christ.”

That concern for spiritual rest wasn’t missing from God’s original plan, either. It was the main thing. This was more than a day to stop working. “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” Israel set down their tools and closed their shops to pay attention to God. And even then he was the God who delivers his people and forgives their sins.