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Everyday Saints Devotional 8

by David Joynt on January 09, 2022


DEUTERONOMY 5:12-15 | 12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the
resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the
sabbath day.

People are not robots. Robots can work 24/7. They don’t need shifts, breaks, or holidays. Plug them in and off they go. You and I are
complex integrated creatures made in God’s image. Our bodies, minds, emotions, and souls intertwine in mysterious and beautiful ways. Our well being requires rest, a divine cease and desist order.

The Deuteronomy Sabbath command is the first labor law and the great anti-slavery principle. Unceasing labor is against God’s
intention for human life, and so is forced labor. Israel was founded by an act of liberation, ending an Egyptian forced labor regime,
turning slaves into free agents. Sabbath is rooted in the struggle for freedom and the recognition that this freedom is rooted in God’s design and our natures.

When have you experienced coercion?

How did it feel?

 

 

Tags: experienced, coercion

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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