Thur.’s Devo - The Sabbath

Read: Leviticus 24:1-25:46; Mark 10:13-31; Psalm 44:9-26; Proverbs 10:20-21
The Israelites were to keep their light burning just as Jesus told us to let our light so shine before men, that they would see our good works and glorify God.
A boy who had an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father blasphemed the name of God. God commanded that he be stoned. This story is a picture of a person who has not made God his father. If that was to happen today it would mean that we would not allow him to blaspheme God within our fellowship but we would disciple him and let the truth kill his old man. Then we can bring the “new man” into our fellowship.
God is all about teaching responsibility for our own actions. If you mess up, then you clean up your mess or you pay for it voluntarily or involuntarily.
God was very jealous over the Sabbath. Every seven days you were to rest from work and every seven years the earth was to rest from its work. This was so that people and the earth could replenish and renew. Our bodies refuel when we rest and so does the soil. On the fiftieth year, all land debt is over. It is the year of Jubilee and all property that had to be sold during the years went back to the original owner because that was their inheritance. Land was valued according to this law.
The Sabbaths taught the people the concept of self-control and trusting in the Lord. On the sixth year, the land would yield enough for three years. I imagine the temptation would be to want to get more and more and more instead of letting the land rest after working so hard. They wouldn’t harvest again until the eighth year. A harvest would come again in the ninth year.
We are in the sixth millennium and we are busy harvesting souls. We are about to have the biggest revival of souls the world has never seen because we are so close to the seventh millennium where no one will work or harvest souls. We won’t be harvesting souls again until the ninth millennium. It will be interesting to see what that looks like!
We have some great promises: we always have the right to redeem our inheritance and we can never be sold as slaves.
Jesus met a rich man who lived the law but was tied to this world and his possessions. Jesus didn’t say it was impossible for him to be set free he just said that with Him, all things were possible. Whatever we have to give up in this life will be given to us a hundred times over in the age to come.
Lord, give us eyes to see into eternity and live for the things that the world cannot take from us.