Daily Devotional Thursday 12th November 2020
by William Moody
Isaiah 58:13–14
13 “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
from doing your pleasure1 on my holy day,
and call the Sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
or seeking your own pleasure,2 or talking idly;3
14 then you shall take delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;4
I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”Footnotes
[1] 58:13
Or business
[2] 58:13Or pursuing your own business
[3] 58:13Hebrew or speaking a word
[4] 58:14Or of the land (ESV)
The Fourth Commandment
(Shorter Catechism 60-62)
“The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.” (A.60). The Sabbath means we stop doing our ordinarily weekly activities in order to give our time to God’s worship. The Sabbath is for worship.
“The fourth commandment forbids the omission or careless performance of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.” (A.61).
The Sabbath is not a day to be idle but rather to be active and put effort in to concentrating on worshipping God at home and among God’s people.
God gives us six days to be busy in our work as God was in creation, in order to have the Sabbath in His presence. It is a special day that God blesses and that blessing will come to those who keep the Sabbath in a right way (A.62).
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