Are My Ways Pleasing to God on the Sabbath Day?

In Isaiah 58:13, the prophet begins the verse with, “If you turn your foot away from the Sabbath. . . .” In speaking of “your foot” and “the Sabbath” he is signaling to his hearers that they were in fact trampling upon the Sabbath in the way that they were observing it. While they may have recognized the Sabbath to a degree, they were showing by their actions and words that they did not take delight in the Sabbath.

Isaiah tells us that the Sabbath is a “holy day” a period of time from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday that God has made holy, through His setting apart the time, for man’s benefit. We are to honor God by the way we approach the Sabbath.

God inspired Isaiah to elaborate on how we honor God on the Sabbath. He says, “You shall honor Him.” God’s expectation on the Sabbath is that we would honor Him by certain things we would do and say.

It is easy for us to adhere to the time frame of the Sabbath. The Sabbath begins and ends at sunset so we are usually aware of when the sun goes below the horizon on Friday night and when it goes below the horizon Saturday night. We also know that we are to go to church services each week. However, God is looking for more from us on the Sabbath than the bare minimum.

He goes on to explain how we can truly honor God on the Sabbath day. We honor Him by not doing our own ways. In the context of “not doing our own ways”, we might consider a well-known Proverb, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

Proverbs 14:12 is a warning to us that our ways can seem right to us from our human perspective. They seem right to us because we are selfish and what we selfishly want to do leads to death because God has been left out of the picture.

As we consider giving honor to God by “not doing our own ways” on the Sabbath, we might consider another passage found in Isaiah 55:8-9,  “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts."

We can only come to understand God’s thoughts and ways as we humble ourselves before God ask a couple of simple questions:

• What are God’s thoughts and God’s ways? They are revealed in the scriptures.
• Are my thoughts and my ways pleasing to God?

As we answer these two questions there is a most positive outcome which is described in the next two verses in Isaiah 55, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (10-11).

God made the Sabbath for man in order that his ways will not only be pleasing to God on the Sabbath, but throughout the rest of the week as well.

Enjoy the upcoming Sabbath day and consider, “Are my ways pleasing to God on the Sabbath day?”

Gary Smith