Seventh Day Baptist
Christian Education Council
PO BOX 1678
Janesville, WI 53547
—Exodus 31:12-18
by: Dale Rood.
It is interesting that this is the Lord God’s concluding statement to Moses and the children of Israel when He “gave Moses two tablets of the testimony…written with the finger of God” (v.18). Does that say something about the importance that God attaches to the Sabbath? Notice also that it is a sign of the covenant “between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you” (v.13). God gave stiff penalties for forsaking the Sabbath (v.15)—why? Not for disobedience, but for forsaking a relationship with Him. Forsaking the Sabbath means one no longer identifies with the God who sanctifies us.