Sunday Mornings

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God (Heb 4:9) This month , we have consistently looked at the topic “ Rest ” It is such an important concept that spans through the scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible (and as well, time) spans from rest to rest. Rest actually existed from the beginning and it spans on to the end. It was mankind that stepped out of it. In our first article , we saw that God was the initiator of rest and right there at the beginning, He brought man to share in it. God rested when He finished His work of creation, examined it and saw that it was good. His work remains good up till today. Man only fell out of that work right there at the beginning. The good news is that even as man fell out and faced the consequences of his actions, God established a way back and he began to reveal it as man advanced and as each generation succeeded the former. This brought us to the idea of the Shabbat where we saw God resounding a reality that had al...

"Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Matt 11:28 Since the fall of man, one question has been looming silently throughout creation: How will man get back to completeness (a theme of how things were in Eden before the fall)? Last week , we saw the relationship between rest [in God's presence] and exile [from God's presence] as the reverse of each other. God gave His people His appointed times ( moedim in Hebrew) which they were to keep for all generations; they were nested in sevens - alluding to the Shabbat and its significance. By the time the Old Testament ends, Israel had broken all of God's laws and provisions to enjoy rest in the land and this led them to exile,  Back to the looming question; to get back to completeness, do we work for it? Do we fight for it? Or do we stop and trust? By the end of last week , we could conclude that if sin brought toiling and labour, the pathway to salvation had to be rest For thus sai...

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession , and ye shall return every man unto his family (Lev 25:10).   When we hear the word jubilee,  we attribute it to mean a special anniversary – usually in fraction and whole number multiples of 50. Jubilee stems from the bible. But it meant more than celebration to the people of God. Jubilee meant rest, release, restoration, redemption and reset . It meant an all-round liberty.   Last week , we studied the weekly feast of shabbat – a theme that is rooted in creation on all of God’s creation and not just for the Jews. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and when the heavens and the earth were finished down to the last detail, on the seventh day God rested (Shabbat) from all his work and sanctified the seventh day. And God’s presence filled ( Nuakh ) all of cr...