Weekend Warriors

What did you do last weekend?

Between cooking meals, doing the everyday laundry, and mowing the grass, our family went to the Friday high school football game, had a senior pictures shoot, attended the marching band competition, drove to taekwondo lessons, bought groceries, ran errands, completed the fall garage cleaning, and finished homework.  I couldn't wait until Monday so I could get a little rest. You may have had an even busier weekend if you play travel ball, have a dancer on the team, or were out of town for work. We squeeze so much into the weekend!

We also take the weekend for granted. Did you know that without God and His chosen people, the Jews, we wouldn't have a day of rest from the work of the world at all? Despite all that we have planned for our weekend, the reason we rest from work is for worship; to do the 'work of the people', the liturgy. Of course, we hear in Genesis that God rested on the seventh day. He gazed at all that He had made and called it "Good." He even called mankind, "Very good."

God chose Moses to ask Pharaoh to let His people go for three days into the wilderness so that they could worship the Lord (Exodus 5:3-9) and Pharaoh refused. Then, because Pharaoh would not comply, God told Moses to tell Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go forever. The plagues occurred every seven days; on the day the Hebrews were not allowed to worship the Lord.

Once the Hebrews were in the desert, God fed them with the manna. He told them to collect enough manna on the sixth day so that they could rest from work on the seventh and worship Him. The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses specifically told the people to "Remember the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy." The Israelites kept the Sabbath day for over a thousand years. Until Jesus' public ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, the day of rest from the work of the world was Saturday; the seventh day, the day that God rested in Genesis.

However, the early Christians moved this day of rest from the last day of the week to the first day of the week because with Jesus came the New Covenant, a 'new creation', a New Testament. The day of worship became Sunday and Christians today are still supposed to rest from the work of the world in order to do the work of the people, the liturgy, on Sunday (or Saturday at sunset).

The bottom line is, we are blessed with a weekend in order to worship. If we do all these other things on the weekend, but we don't worship the way God instructed us to, then we are missing the purpose and point of the weekend entirely.