Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of LifeSample

We worship and serve a God who knows our limits and, because he does, he has called us to a Sabbath of rest.

The institution of the Sabbath is not so much a duty to be obeyed but rather a gracious provision from a God who made us and knows us. God created us with limits. If you remember back to the account of creation, the only being in that account that is without limits of any kind is the Creator. We have limits of time, energy, gifts, and wisdom. Think with me about the limits of time, which, by God’s plan, structure your life. You will never get thirty hours in a day. You will never be given ten days in a week. You will never experience a forty-day month. And you will never be blessed with a 450-day year. In his infinite wisdom, God has established boundaries of time for us. There is nothing beyond those boundaries. There is no more time to be had. This side of eternity, we all live within the time boundaries that the Creator has set for us.

We also have significant physical limits. You and I are simply not in possession of unlimited physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual energy. Getting tired is a universal human experience. We all know what it’s like to feel physically exhausted. We all know what it’s like to be mentally and emotionally spent. We all have had moments when we would like to keep going, but we just don’t have the strength. So God, in the glory of his wisdom and love, ordained the Sabbath. “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed” (Ex. 23:12).

The call to Sabbath is meant to humble us by reminding us of our limits. The call to Sabbath is a gift to us, reminding us that our Lord understands us and does not call us to live beyond the limits he has set for us. The Sabbath is a freedom, reminding us that rest is different from the sin of laziness. But the call to Sabbath is deeper and more profound than physical rest. It is a call to spiritual rest. Sabbath reminds us that we were not created to be independent. We were designed to be dependent on our Creator. We were made to find our strength and completion in him. The Sabbath was given by God not just so that we would rest, but so that we would rest in him. Human independence and self-sufficiency is a delusion. It is never a pathway to life. It is rather a road to destruction and death.

Admitting your need, owning your limits, and running to the one who is an endless fountain of new life and renewed strength is where life is to be found. Sabbath is God’s gift to us. It welcomes us to step away from our labors and remember who we are and who he is, so that in submission and rest we may once again find life and strength in him.

For further study and encouragement: Mark 2:23–28