This is the fourth in a 5-part series on the spirit of the sabbath. Through this journey we press beyond the shallow ideas of sabbath that are commonly taught today, and go deeper to discover the real meaning and power that we’ve been missing.
Catch up on parts 1-3:
4 - The Gift of Freedom
Occasionally there were people in Israel who found themselves in dire circumstances, desperate for money, and with no choice but to sell off their ancestral lands in order to survive. In some particularly drastic cases, they would sell themselves as indentured servants to other landowners.
This desperate survival instinct did not end with Israel—it lives on with us.
While most of us do not resort to selling our belongings or our bodies, we are all susceptible to bargaining away parts of ourselves in order to make it through life. We may compromise our convictions to win standing with people we want to impress. We may trade our health and wellbeing to spend more and more hours grinding away at work, hoping to earn a promotion. We may forsake our peace and our integrity to indulge addictions that numb our pain.
We are all vulnerable to becoming captive to something. Thankfully, God cannot stand to see his people in bondage. He has a long track record of breaking chains. And one of the glorious gifts that God wraps inside of sabbath rest is freedom.
