Remember

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”  Exodus 20:8

Remember – Paul Meyer teaches that remembering involves spaced repetition.  If you want to remember something, you need to have it repeated at least six times over a specified period.  That’s why you can hear a great sermon or attend a fabulous lecture and a day later not remember a thing.  No repetition.  That’s why training sessions that don’t give you at least six ways to recall the information are ultimately useless.  You just won’t remember.  In fact, research tells us that we forget about 90 percent of the message within 30 days unless we are constantly reminded of it over time.

God knew exactly how our brains work.  He should, don’t you agree?  So, His instruction is tied to routinely spaced repetition:  every seven days.  Every seventh day was a day of remembering.  Zakar is a verb that means, “to recall, to think about, to make known and to acknowledge”.  God commands us to remember.  It’s not optional.  So, what is it that we are supposed to remember?  And why should we remember this?

We are to remember the sabbath day.  What is so special about this day that we need to have a command about it?  The Sabbath Day is the basis of a theology of rest.  It tells us something very important about the way God made the world.  The seventh day theology says that God incorporated a special memorial time into creation just to honor Him.  God wants us to remember Who He is and what He has done by setting aside every seventh day for His honor.  Why?  Because all time belongs to God.  The moments of my life are not mine to do with as I wish.  It’s not my life.  All time belongs to God.  It is His to do with as He wishes.  When I honor Him with a special, sacred time, I honor His lordship and authority over the moments of my life.  I give back to Him what is His. 

The second element in a theology of rest is just as important.  Work belongs to God too.  Remembering the seventh day says that work is God’s gift.  God is not a tyrant of demanding production.  He commands rest.  We are not to be ruled by work.  It is only to be done in service to Him as part of His plan for resting.

Time and work.  Never enough and always too much.  Is that how you feel about your life?  Maybe you have forgotten something important.  Maybe you need to remember the seventh day command.