Care for Creation as Evangelization and WorshipSýnishorn

Day Four: Sabbath Rest

Jeremiah prophesied that if the Israelites didn’t care for the land, they would be taken into bondage (Jeremiah 25). 

This prophecy is fulfilled at the end of 2 Chronicles, in some of the final words that we read before the Babylonian captivity. 

Christianity is both a very simple and an almost impossibly difficult way of living our lives. It is simple as, at the heart of it, we are told to follow the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ. It is difficult for the same reasons. 

One of the teachings that we can let slide in our modern lives is keeping the Sabbath day holy. There is just so much to do in our lives! With work and family and sport and the multitude of other things, it can be hard to find the time or to justify time for the Sabbath. It may be easier for us to fit in small pockets of time for God during the week instead…

God gave the law of the Sabbath year for the land in Exodus 23:10-11. It was quite straightforward: sow and harvest from the fields for six years, and let the land rest for the seventh. You can see here how this relates to the Commandment God gave humans for the seventh day of rest. 

God was asking the Israelites to take care of this great gift that He had given them, this Promised Land, this incredible place. He asked them to let the land rest so that it could recover and recuperate and be restored. 

The Israelites ignored this law from God. They continued to sow and harvest, and ultimately they were exiled from their land for seventy years. Exiled. Forced to leave their homes and be held captive by foreign rulers in a strange land. 

The land got a nice, long rest in the end. But it seems that it would have been better for both the Israelites and the land that they lived if they had listened to God in the first place.  

Questions for Discussion

1. Why might the Israelites have ignored God’s command about the land? 

2. Are the laws that God gave to the Israelites in the book of Exodus still relevant to us today? 

3. How does God find ways of ensuring that His laws are kept?