The Sabbath Commandment

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

Circumcision

Exodus 20:8-11 The Message

8-11 Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.

For Reflection:

I think that the picture above was taken on a Sunday morning after attending church in Annapolis Maryland. The town was filled with tourists and commerce was flourishing. The old American blue laws that forbid most commerce on Sundays was struck down so long ago that many people don't remember those days.

Because so many American Christians work on Sundays the meaning and observance of the Sabbath is questioned.  How do we now define work? Is the Sabbath a strict 7th-day event or is God's intent that we just set aside time to contemplate God's favor and rest from the constraints and pressure of our material lives?

Pray 
Pray for those whose lives are so hurried that they take little time to examine their relationship to God and don't set aside time for the recreation of their souls.

Jesus, Mediator of a Better Covenant

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

Circumcision

Hebrews 8:1-8 The Message 

A New Plan with Israel

8 1-2 In essence, we have just such a high priest: authoritative right alongside God, conducting worship in the one true sanctuary built by God.
3-5 The assigned task of a high priest is to offer both gifts and sacrifices, and it’s no different with the priesthood of Jesus. If he were limited to earth, he wouldn’t even be a priest. We wouldn’t need him since there are plenty of priests who offer the gifts designated in the law. These priests provide only a hint of what goes on in the true sanctuary of heaven, which Moses caught a glimpse of as he was about to set up the tent-shrine. It was then that God said, “Be careful to do it exactly as you saw it on the Mountain.”
6-13 But Jesus’ priestly work far surpasses what these other priests do, since he’s working from a far better plan. If the first plan—the old covenant—had worked out, a second wouldn’t have been needed. But we know the first was found wanting because God said,
Heads up! The days are coming
    when I’ll set up a new plan
    for dealing with Israel and Judah.
I’ll throw out the old plan
    I set up with their ancestors
    when I led them by the hand out of Egypt.
They didn’t keep their part of the bargain,
    so I looked away and let it go.
This new plan I’m making with Israel
    isn’t going to be written on paper,
    isn’t going to be chiseled in stone;
This time I’m writing out the plan in them,
    carving it on the lining of their hearts.
I’ll be their God,
    they’ll be my people.
They won’t go to school to learn about me,
    or buy a book called God in Five Easy Lessons.
They’ll all get to know me firsthand,
    the little and the big, the small and the great.
They’ll get to know me by being kindly forgiven,
    with the slate of their sins forever wiped clean.

By coming up with a new plan, a new covenant between God and his people, God put the old plan on the shelf and there it stays, gathering dust.

For Reflection

Whom else would, could, or should be your high-status friend before the judgment throne of God? Christ is not only your advocate but also your friend. The old covenant is superseded, and you have a direct line to the Lord.  So, pick up the phone, lay your joys and your troubles at the feet of Christ be attentive and rest in the knowledge that God will provide a solution.

Pray
Pray prayers of praise and thanksgiving for the living God.  Pray so that you can trust more deeply in God.

God's Promise Realized Through Faith

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

Circumcision

Romans 4:13-25 The Message

13-15 That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract was drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it.
16 This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is the father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.
17-18 We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as the father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made the father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”
19-25 Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

For Reflection

The promise of God is not a contract.  It is a one-way covenant which God has promised never to break. It a covenant of grace which has also been extended beyond Isreal to us by Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection.  All that is necessary is that we trust in God and strive to grow into the human beings God has intended us to be.

Pray
Pray often about everything.  Trust God to lead you 

Circumcision Event Remembered

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

Circumcision

Acts 7:1-8 The Message

Stephen, Full of the Holy Spirit

7 Then the Chief Priest said, “What do you have to say for yourself?”
2-3 Stephen replied, “Friends, fathers, and brothers, the God of glory
appeared to our father Abraham when he was still in Mesopotamia, before the move to Haran, and told him, ‘Leave your country and family and go to the land I’ll show you.’
4-7 “So he left the country of the Chaldees and moved to Haran. After the death of his father, he immigrated to this country where you now live, but God gave him nothing, not so much as a foothold. He did promise to give the country to him and his son later on, even though Abraham had no son at the time. God let him know that his offspring would move to an alien country where they would be enslaved and brutalized for four hundred years. ‘But,’ God said, ‘I will step in and take care of those slaveholders and bring my people out so they can worship me in this place.’
8 “Then he made a covenant with him and signed it in Abraham’s flesh by circumcision. When Abraham had his son, Isaac, within eight days, he reproduced the sign of circumcision in him. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob father of twelve ‘fathers,’ each faithfully passing on the covenant sign.

For Reflection

Stephan is under attack from those who accuse him of blasphemy.  He defends himself by invoking Abraham's name.  Stephan uses the sign of his Jewish heritage to indicate his allegiance to God.  What argument could you use that would convince others of your love for God and your commitment to the "Way?"

Pray
Pray for all those whose faith have placed their lives in jeopardy. Pray that you will have the courage to stand on the side of your God and fight for the victory of truth, kindness, forgiveness, and justice. 

Abraham's Household Circumcised

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

Circumcision

Genesis 17:23-27 The Message

23 Then Abraham took his son Ishmael and all his servants, whether house-born or purchased—every male in his household—and circumcised them, cutting off their foreskins that very day, just as God had told him.
24-27 Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised. His son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised. Abraham and Ishmael were circumcised the same day together with all the servants of his household, those born there and those purchased from outsiders—all were circumcised with him.

For Reflection

Circumcision is a token of the covenant.  It is a sign that even in the physical absence of God, one abides in God and one is living in the grace and promise of God. All in the household of Abraham were received into the covenant. There was no distinction as to whether one was born into the house of Abraham or was a purchased slave.  The sign of the chosen was open to all in the sacred lineage of Abraham. Ishmael was also circumcised in his thirteenth year.

The visible church did not descend from Ishmael, but Ishmael reaped the benefits of God's blessing. Perhaps God's intention for all humankind is cloaked in God's answer to Abraham's prayer.

Pray
Pray that you will be as obedient to God as Abraham.  Pray that the sign of your abiding in the promise of God is visible in your kindness, humility, forgiveness, and justice.  Praise God for the wisdom of God's gift signified by the cross.  Pray that you will remember and have confidence and trust in God's promise.

Sarah, Mother of Many Nations and Ishmael Father of a Nation

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

Circumcision

Genesis 17:15-17, 20-22 Message

15-16 God continued speaking to Abraham, “And Sarai your wife: Don’t call her Sarai any longer; call her Sarah. I’ll bless her—yes! I’ll give you a son by her! Oh, how I’ll bless her! Nations will come from her; kings of nations will come from her.”
17 Abraham fell flat on his face. And then he laughed, thinking, “Can a hundred-year-old man father a son? And can Sarah, at ninety years, have a baby?”
20-21 “And Ishmael? Yes, I heard your prayer for him. I’ll also bless him; I’ll make sure he has plenty of children—a huge family. He’ll father twelve princes; I’ll make him a great nation. But I’ll establish my covenant with Isaac whom Sarah will give you about this time next year.”
22 God finished speaking with Abraham and left.

For Reflection

We, humankind, are so impatient.  As Queen sings "I want it all, and I want it now." We are as eager as Abraham to meet our Lord and Savior.  And also as Abraham, we sometimes become doubtful that the promise of God will ever be realized.  We forget that God's time is not our time. We abandon the mystery of God and we are skeptical when God promises that which we find unrealistic or impossible. Our spiritual insight is limited by the rationality of human perception and our faith is defined by our impatience.  With misapprehension, our tenacity wanes.

The procreation sanctified by God and re-established with Noah is now passed on to Isaac.  God grants Abraham's prayer for Ishmael but builds on the promise of Isaac.

Pray
Pray for the patience to wait for the attainment of the promise of God.  Pray for the wisdom to accept the sacred mystery of irrationality in a world that prefers rationality.  Pray that when your soul yearns for the unbelievable, the impossible, and the doubtful, you accept the mysterious truth.

Under the Rainbow The Angel Speaks

Covenant with God

Signs of God's Covenant

The Rainbow

Revelation 10:1-7 The Message

10 ^1-4 I saw another powerful Angel coming down out of Heaven wrapped in a cloud. There was a rainbow over his head, his face was sun-radiant, his legs pillars of fire. He had a small book open in his hand. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left foot on land, then called out thunderously, a lion roar. When he called out, the Seven Thunders called back. When the Seven Thunders spoke, I started to write it all down, but a voice out of Heaven stopped me, saying, “Seal with silence the Seven Thunders; don’t write a word.”

^5-7 Then the Angel I saw astride sea and land lifted his right hand to Heaven and swore by the One Living Forever and Ever, who created Heaven and everything in it, earth and everything in it, sea and everything in it, that time was up—that when the seventh Angel blew his trumpet, which he was about to do, the Mystery of God, all the plans he had revealed to his servants, the prophets, would be completed.

For Reflection

So, is this a description of a threat or celebration? God's sovereignty is placed between the God's people and the idolatry of the nonbelievers. The angel messenger descends in the rainbow halo of God's covenant of mercy, a sign of a peaceful mission. This vision is the hope of salvation; the triumph of the Kingdom of God.

Pray
Pray prayers of praise, adoration, and thanksgiving for the living God whose mercy abounds and whose will for human kind can not be thwarted.