3.014 God...Made it Holy

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as savory salt.

Hello, my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. Choose this day whom you will serve. Man, I've been working all week.

I'm just trying to figure out where I can get some rest. Perhaps what we look at today will help us all get a little bit better rest. We're reading this week Genesis chapters 1 and 2, Moses chapters 2 and 3, and Abraham chapters 4 and 5.

As I mentioned yesterday as we took a look at that or maybe it was the day before, these chapters are all very similar. They've got just a little bit of a different spin to each one. And so a lot of the verses we're going to be picking here, you could really find the same or similar verses inside of each of the books based on kind of your preference or kind of the angle that each story tells its version of the creation.

Today we're going to do something new that we have not done before in Savory Salt, and that is we're going to use a different translation today in our verse for today. I mentioned with the Old Testament that we're going to bounce around in some of the other versions. I told you a reference that I use.

I use the YouVersion Bible app because you can pretty much download all sorts of different versions of the Bible and see them side by side. But there's a reason here, and I just want to share the verse and then kind of share it with you. Let's dive into its reasoning as we take a look at it.

We're going to look at Genesis chapter 2 today, verse 3. This is the tail end of the creative period where the seventh day comes, right? And God observes everything and sees that it's good and then rests.

But there's more to it than just resting on the seventh day. Verse 3. This is, by the way, the NIV version, which is the New International Version, in this translation.

Feel free to follow along. You're going to notice it's only a couple of words difference here. It says, Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.

Now, do you remember our earlier conversation about God being a creator? He creates, and He creates good things. And then He created man.

And since we are in His image, we too have the ability to create and to create good things. But did you check out what happened here on the seventh day? Typically, you know, in most of the Christian world, it would be considered the Sabbath day, right?

This day that is a symbolic day for God resting from the creative period. But did you notice what He did on that day? He blessed the day and He made it holy.

And I chose the NIV version here because sometimes the word sanctify, which is used in the other versions, can have kind of different mixed ideas and definitions. And so I wanted to keep it really simple for this. He made it holy.

My friends, as we get done creating through the week, what can we do on the tail end of our week to make it holy? I started to think about that in my own life for our family. There's a few things that we do that make it holy from our creative period.

One thing we do as a family is obviously we go and spend time worshiping, right, in a chapel. We take time to take the bread and the water and remember Jesus Christ and His Atonement. So that's one way that we make our day holy and bless the day.

Another activity that we do as a family is we gather in family council. And you might say, I don't know if family council really has some holiness to it. But what we do inside of there is we plan out our scripture study for the week.

We plan out our meals for the week. We plan out any arrangements we need to make. We're basically taking time to look at the week ahead and see what we have inside of our own creative processes to help each other, to uplift each other, and to support each other throughout the week.

So I wanted to have you take some time and think into what it is you do in your own life or what it is you would like to do going forward in your own life to bless the seventh day and to make it holy for you. The Lord has shown us an example here, that He worked and He was creating, and He loved all the creation that He had done. And then He blessed the day and made it holy and rested from those labors.

I think it's an opportunity for you and for me, not just to have a day off from our work, but instead to have a day where we can bless the day and make it holy. Just as the example that the Lord has done for us. That's all for today, my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We'll be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.