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CHOOSING TO TRUST GOD TO MEET OUR NEEDS!

In his day Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) was famed as the world’s finest pianist – number one in his class.
Well behind him in reputation (as well as in talent), many lesser pianists attempted to scratch out careers, sometimes stooping to unscrupulous methods to capture attention. One young woman in this group concocted a notorious whopper to attract a large audience. For a recital in Berlin, she advertised extensively that she was a “pupil of Liszt” (whom she had never met!).
She assumed she could get away with this. Who would know her secret? And surely Liszt would never find out.
There is more to this story, but for now stop and consider what you know about this woman. How would you describe her? I would say: She is undoubtedly talented but insecure. She is anxious. She is worried about the necessities of life. She believes that if she doesn’t make something good happen, it won’t happen. Hence, she promotes herself, believing that no one else really cares about her. She deceives others, with no intent to hurt them, but to survive in a tough world.
The Israelites, as seen in the Old Testament, were also insecure. They had spent so much of their life looking out for themselves, it was hard for them to believe that someone else really cared about them. So, despite everything God had done for them in Egypt, they were bent toward always watching out for themselves.
One of the places where we see this compulsive bent toward activity is in Exodus 16 where manna rained down on them each day. But on the sixth day they collected twice as much as they needed for any one day as per instructions. They were to eat half of what they gathered on the sixth day and the other half on the Sabbath. But guess what, some people couldn’t handle not doing something on the seventh day. In vv. 27 - 30 we read:
Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on the seventh day; no one is to go out.” So the people rested on the seventh day.
The people rested, some of them didn’t like it but they did it. They sensed, through Moses, that it wasn’t a good idea to push the envelope on this matter. For whatever reasons, the Sabbath was important to God.
This idea of resting on the Sabbath was so important to God that he included it as one of the 10 commandments. In Exodus 20:8 - 11 we read:
“ Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
You don’t have to be very smart to see that this must be important to God. Nevertheless, it wasn’t too long before Moses had to remind them again that this day was something close to God’s heart. In Exodus 35: 1 - 3 we read:
Moses assembled the whole Israelite community and said to them, “These are the things the Lord has commanded you to do: For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord. Whoever does any work must be put to death. Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”
You see, work can kill you! But the Israelites weren’t thinking about that, they were thinking that at long last they had a major construction project in front of them. For Moses had landed a contract to build the tabernacle. So the Israelites were busy signing up with various trade unions and looking forward to making some real money - perhaps even working overtime at time-and-a-half, on Saturday. Moses squelched that idea before it got off the ground!
The other thing to notice here, however, is that for the first time work is being well-defined. There was to be no cooking on the Sabbath. Whatever you planned on eating had to be prepared the day before this day. As a corollary to this, there was no reason to be gathering wood on the Sabbath either. Yet, some people just had to touch the fence. For in Numbers 15:32 - 36 we read:
While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.
In context, this case study demonstrates what is meant by defiant sin and what is meant by the phrase “cut off” as used in the preceding verses. Clearly, to be “cut off” is legalese for “put to death.”
In addition to the Sabbath day, there was the Sabbath year which the Israelites were commanded to obey. It is mentioned in Exodus 23:10 but is spelled out more fully in Leviticus 25:1 - 7. We read:
The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you – for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident (snowbird) who live among you, as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten (but not sold).
Guess what, they never obeyed this commandment. They entered the land, plowed the fields, sowed the seed, reaped the harvest, and ignored the fact that the seventh year was supposed to be holy - a time of rest for the land. Hence, when we finally read II Chronicles 36:20 - 21 we’re reminded once again of how serious God takes the Sabbath. We read:
He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped the sword, and they became servants to him(Nebuchadnezzar) and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah (25:11).
Clearly, the Sabbath is important to God. Why? Three reasons, first it was instituted as a day to honor God. By observing it you demonstrated that you trusted him as your shepherd. On a day that could be used to earn a living, you were trusting God to provide for you and your family. So it was a day given to God as a day to worship him undisturbed by the inevitable distractions of everyday life. It took guts to observe the Sabbath and not everyone liked it!
Second, it was a day to be restored, to enjoy rest. Properly observed, it was meant to be a joy. But, as seen in the New Testament, the Pharisees had put in so much overtime defining what it meant to “cease from work” that they had turned it into a burden to bear; so much so that they took all the joy out of it.
Third, the Sabbath was a day to declare truth. A day to give unspoken witness to God’s supremacy. However well an Israelite business was doing, one day a week its owner closed shop or ceased work on his farm. On this day, all their watching neighbors knew that they had an allegiance to God which transcended their need to earn a living. Their actions proclaimed that God was first and foremost in their lives.
So what does this have to do with Nehemiah? Well, keeping the Sabbath was one of the commitments they made to the Lord. In Nehemiah 10:31 we read:
“ When the neighboring peoples bring merchandise or grain to sell on the Sabbath, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on any holy day. Every seventh year we will forgo working the land and will cancel all debts.”
In short, they committed themselves to trusting God to take care of them. Wow! Unfortunately, their resolve didn’t last. It wasn’t too many years later that we discover they once again had let the world squeeze them into its mold. For in Nehemiah 13:15 -22 we read:
In those days I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day. Men from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the people of Judah. I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this wicked thing you are doing – desecrating the Sabbath day? Didn’t your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity upon us and upon this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.”
When evening shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men (men whom I could trust) at the gates so that no load (of stuff) could be brought in on the Sabbath day. Once or twice the merchants and sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside of Jerusalem. But I warned them and said, “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will lay hands on you.” From that time on they no longer came on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath holy.
Remember me for this also, O my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.
Concerned more about making money than declaring the goodness and supremacy of God, the Israelites again fell into a pattern of disobedience. It reminds us that commitments are like shingles or tiles on our roof - they need to be put back in place, nailed down, periodically.
But what about the woman who said she was a “pupil of Liszt”? What does this have to do with the Sabbath-rest? Well, for starters she was not a woman at rest. She was anxious about everything and her deceitfulness, as she learned the hard way, added to her unrest. The story continues as follows:
Imagine her horror when, on the very morning of her publicized performance, the newspapers announced that Liszt himself had just arrived in Berlin. What could she do now? Her duplicity would be publicly exposed, and she would be disgraced. After wrestling with remorse, she decided to go to Liszt and confess her misdeed.
Begging for an interview at his hotel, the woman entered his suite in trepidation, fearing the master’s wrath for such a disrespectful offense. With many tears she confessed – and waited, expecting to be banished from his presence.
Far from showing fury, the great Liszt attended her thoughtfully as he worked through an idea in his head.
The woman listened incredulously as Liszt quietly asked her the name of each piece in her program. Selecting one, he asked her to sit at his piano and play it for him.
She began. Liszt listened and eventually interrupted with several hints about how to perform the composition. Then he smiled, and with a pat on the cheek, he dismissed her: “Now, my dear, you may call yourself a pupil of Liszt.”
By his actions he went beyond forgiveness. He helped her save face.
That wiser and humbler woman left the hotel, graced with a Christlike gesture of clemency.
In Franz Liszt, this woman found herself at rest. For here was someone who genuinely cared about her, someone who delighted in meeting her greatest need at that juncture in her life.
Obviously, this is a picture of God’s grace. As Franz Liszt cared about this anxious woman, God genuinely cares about us. Indeed, he delights in blessing us again and again. He tells us that he will meet all of our needs and in that knowledge we, at long last, find our sabbath-rest, in Him.
IS THE SABBATH STILL IMPORTANT TO GOD?
MORE THAN EVER!
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested (literally ‘ceased’; from sabat, the root of ‘sabbath’) from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
There are four things to be noted about the seventh day. First, this is the rest of achievement. It is the rest that comes from knowing that a special task has been completed in a manner that was well-pleasing to God. Second, God didn’t rest for long because soon after creation Satan rebelled, which in turn led to the fall of man. So when Jesus was being persecuted for working on the Sabbath he replied with the words:
“ My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”
Third, you will note that God never looked back on the seventh day, a day that he created as a day of rest, and declared it good. Why? Because, it is up to man to declare the sabbath as good. It was made for man and he alone is free to decide whether it is good or not.
Fourth, the sabbath as seen in the Old Testament was but a shadow of the real thing. It encouraged, challenged, the Israelites to trust in God’s goodness. It reminded them that he is the God who provides for all their needs and they were to rest in his goodness.
Today, the shadow has been eclipsed by the Son of God. Christ Jesus came to redeem us, to pay the price for our transgressions by his work on the cross. When his work was finished he sat down at the right hand of God. He rested in the achievement of his special task and through Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit, he invites us, TODAY, to find our sabbath-rest in Him (see Matthew 11:28 - 30 & Hebrews 3:12 - 4:11).

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