God’s Laws as the Way to Blessing

God’s Laws as the Way to Blessing
Psalm 119: 1-24

After church today, a friend asked me a question that had arisen out of a conversation he’d had with a co-worker. My friend was surprised that the co-worker was willing to work seven days a week—what about the commandment concerning a Sabbath day’s rest? The co-worker’s reply was that all such Old Testament laws had been abolished by Jesus. At first I was bemused, because the co-worker is a Jehovah’s Witness, and one hears that Witnesses have some pretty strict rules (such as refusing blood transfusions), but I guess these are rules for Gentiles and Christians. The co-worker was right that observing Sabbaths had not been required of Gentiles and had ceased to be an obligation for Jews who came to believe in Jesus (as Paul notes in Colossians 2). Yet we assume that the other commandments still have something to teach us, and it seems likely that this is the case with the Sabbath commandment, something about time for God and time for rest. The rules in the Old Testament were not merely random taboos or prohibitions designed to keep you from enjoying your life. They were given to help you live a truly human life...