Sabbath

My husband and I have made a big decision concerning our business. As I have often mentioned, we own a take-away cum diner. The economy hasn’t been great and I have been praying about a business strategy for a while and really hadn’t received an answer. One Saturday morning I received the following scripture:
Jeremiah 17:24-25, But if you listen to me, declares the Lord, and bring in no burden by the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but keep the Sabbath day holy and do no work on it, then there shall enter by the gates of this city kings and princes who sit of the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their officials, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And this city shall be inhabited forever.
This was the beginning of our journey towards learning about why we need to keep the Sabbath. I’m not going to get into arguments about where the Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday. For us, it is Sunday, as we get together with other believers for worship.
There are many teachings about keeping the Sabbath and one of the main points that stand out to me is that God made the Sabbath for man.
Mark 2:27, And He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
Every person needs to rest for one day a week. That is not just in the bible, it is a law of nature. If we work for seven days a week we aren’t getting decent rest and we are going to reap the consequences. We will get sick and we could even die. In the Bible the consequence of working on the Sabbath was death; the same applies today.
Genesis 2:3, So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Exodus 20:8-11, Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labour, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Deuteronomy 5:15, You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty had and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
In the desert God gave the people manna to eat. Every morning they gathered it. It was fresh and they could make bread from it. If they kept any over until the next day it went bad and was filled with worms. On the sixth day, however, they had to gather twice as much and it stayed fresh for the Sabbath.
This says to me that if we see God as our source we do not have to be chasing after money. Closing our shop on Sundays doesn’t make financial sense. We do actually make a profit on Sundays. We aren’t closing it because it doesn’t pay us to keep it open. We are closing it because God said so and because we want to honour Him. When we bought the business close to 6 years ago we took out the Lotto Machine. In fact we never sold one Lotto ticket. We do not believe in gambling or in encouraging people to gamble. There were people who told us that we would be losing customers, but this was not the case. I think that we have to realize that if we honour God’s statutes, He is going to honour us.
Is making money that important? Is it worth compromising your health and your family life for work? When you’re dead you can’t take the money with you. We need to be living according to Kingdom principles and not worldly principles. Our lives will change for the better and we will be able to enjoy the beauty of creation.