Week 5: Rest & Work

DAY 1

Read Exodus 16:23-30

  • What happened with the manna on the Sabbath?

  • What reasons might have prompted people to go out to gather manna on the Sabbath?

  • Can you relate in any way to the people who tried to gather food on the Sabbath?

     

DAY 2

Read Exodus 20:8-11

  • According to the Ten Commandments, what are people supposed to do on the Sabbath?

  • Why do you think God added specific instructions about sabbath rest for children, servants, animals, and foreigners?

  • How do you react to the fact that breaking the Sabbath is on the same list as committing adultery, lying, stealing, and murder?

DAY 3

Read Exodus 31:12-17

  • What is the punishment for someone who works on the sabbath?

  • Why do you think keeping the Sabbath is part of the covenant (promise) between God and his people?

  • Why is resting on the Sabbath a faith issue?

Day 4

Read Leviticus 25:1-28

  • What was supposed to happen every seven years?  What was the purpose?

  • What was supposed to happen every fiftieth year?  What was the purpose?

  • If God’s people had continued to celebrate the year of Jubilee (which they didn’t), how would it have made a more equal and just society than what we are living in today?

Day 5

Read Psalm 23

  • What does this Scripture say about rest?

  • Why do you think God sometimes has to ‘make us lie down?’

  • Have you ever had an experience of forced rest? What was it like?

DAY 6

Read John 18

  • What does Jesus go through physically?

  • Besides the physical torture, what else would have added to Jesus’s agony?

  • Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)  What opportunities do you have to practice sacrificial love on a regular basis? Watch for these opportunities today.

DAY 7

Read John 19

  • Again, what does Jesus go through physically?

  • What else would have added to Jesus’s agony?

  • There is no greater display of love than what Jesus did for us on the cross.  When we look intently at Him and what He endured out of love for us, that love heals and fills us until we pour over into the lives of the people around us.  Once again, consider the people in your life who are in need of your love. Visualize yourself pulling one or more of these people into an embrace that envelopes them in the warmth of God’s love radiating out from your own heart.