Understanding the Sabbath

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Understanding the Sabbath

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 7 October 2018

Mark 2:27-28 says, “And Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” The Sabbath was not to be a burden which men had to conform to, but the Sabbath was to be a delight which men could enjoy. The Jews had turned it in to an almost unbearable burden. The second thing was even more shocking was, Jesus declared His sovereignty over the Sabbath.

Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

There is no question about the other nine commandments being permanent and binding. We are to have no other gods. We are never to make an idol. We are to worship only the true and living God. We are never to take the name of the Lord in vain. We are not to dishonor our father or mother, but rather give them honor. We are not to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet.

Those are all moral commands, with the exception of verses 8 through 11, the fourth command regarding the Sabbath. There are people who believe they all are permanent. One would be the Seventh Day Adventists. We can consider them a cult because they believe that the writings of Ellen G. White are inspired by God and are equal to the Bible. We know that only the Bible is the Word of God.

Should we be observing Saturday or perhaps Sunday as a replacement Sabbath as a holy day? Genesis 2:1-3, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

Notice in verse 3 the word “holy.” This is the first time the word “holy” is used in the Bible. The root means “to separate,” it is a separation that elevates or exalts. God designates this seventh day as an exalted day, a day lifted above all other days. And God makes it holy, and declares it to be so for three reasons. The three reasons are connected to the three verbs that make up the text.

First of all, it is a day that is unique because the heavens and the earth and all their hosts were completed. This work of creation was done in six 24-hour days by God, and since that close of the sixth day, there has never been any further creation with the exception of those divine miracles in the Old Testament, and the miracles through the Lord Jesus Christ, in which He creates wellness within this fallen creation.

Secondly is the verb “rested.” It says in verse 2 that “by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested.” And then in verse 3 again, “He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” This is a unique day because after the creation being completed, God stops and rests. He rested only in the sense that He stopped work, not that He had to replenish His energy.

He rested means really that He was satisfied. And that takes you back to Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” God didn’t go to work again until the Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve fell and God did something. Genesis 3:21, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” And then He drove them out of the Garden of Eden.

Now God had to preserve, as Hebrews 1:3 says, He had to “uphold the universe by His power” because it was now subject to decay because of sin. And so, God went to work to preserve the universe that He had made, and He also went to work to fulfill all aspects necessary in the plan for redemption of that creation. There is nothing here about man needing to rest because it was God doing all the creating.

There certainly is no rational reason for picking the number seven, then designating weeks, and months, and years to be in sets of sevens. It’s actually kind of an awkward way to use seven. It might be simpler to do them in tens. And yet it is universally adopted across the world, and it is designed to be unique because every seventh day is a reminder of the power and the glory of God expressed in the magnificence of six-day creation.

To reject God as Creator of the universe in six days is to curse the seventh day. To believe that somehow God used billions of years is to not sanctify the seventh day. There’s a specific reason why we live in seven-day units, and man has always done so, and it is because every seventh day provides for us a reminder that God is the Creator who created in six days the whole entire universe.

So, when you go back to Genesis 2, there’s no mention of the Sabbath being a law, no mention of it being a day of worship. The next time you run into that word is in Exodus 16. Hundreds of years have passed. Patriarchs have come and gone. None of them worshiped on the Sabbath. It was not prescribed for them. It was not mandated for them, not for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the rest of the people of God.

The first time the Sabbath is mentioned in a significant way is in Exodus 16 when God feeds the people manna from heaven as they wander in the wilderness, and the manna comes every day except the Sabbath day, and the day before they get enough for that day so that they don’t have to work on the Sabbath. And that gives them a little preview of what’s coming because in Exodus 20 they learn the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 31:12-17, “And the Lord said to Moses, 13 “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.”

“15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. 16 Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath, as a covenant forever. 17 It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’”

When God made a covenant with Noah, He promised Noah that He would never destroy the world again and God identified a sign. A rainbow. When God made a covenant with Abraham, He designated a sign of the Abrahamic Covenant, participation among the people Israel was the sign of circumcision. And here we have in the Mosaic Covenant another sign, and the sign this time is the Sabbath.

The first view of the Sabbath was to produce gratitude for the wonder of creation. The second, to produce repentance for losing paradise. And so, the Sabbath took on a new meaning. Yes, it still is a reminder that God created, but it’s a reminder that the creation of God which was originally perfect is now marred, and the realm of His creation is stained by sin, and the universe is groaning, and we are groaning as well.

Obviously they couldn’t keep the law, but the people of Israel were to be driven in penitence to plead with God to be merciful to them as sinners. When Jesus came, everything changed. He not only cleansed the temple, He also abolished the temple. He didn’t just want to eliminate the bad priests and keep the good priests. He actually eliminated the priesthood.

Jesus obliterated the sacrificial system because He brought an end to Judaism with all its ceremonies, all its rituals, all its sacrifices, all of its external trappings, the temple, the holy of holies, all of it, including the Sabbath. The Sabbath observance went away with all the rest that belonged to Judaism. How did Jesus treat the Sabbath? Any way He wanted. He is the mediator of a new covenant, a much better New Testament.

There is that transition in the New Testament. As Jesus arrives, everything that is part of the system of Judaism is coming to its end. Look in Luke 14:1-3, “One Sabbath, when He went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. 2 And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. 3 And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”

Verse 4-6, “But they remained silent. Then He took him and healed him and sent him away. 5 And He said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” 6 And they could not reply to these things.” Jesus appears to have chosen the Sabbath day for His healing purposely because it struck a blow at this symbol. Jesus is announcing the end of the Sabbath.

Look at John 5:5-7, “One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

Verse 8-9, “Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” Jesus didn’t have to heal the man to do something that violated their Sabbath, but He did it purposely.

Verse 15-16 says, “The man went away, told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.” Jesus never did violate the Ten Commandments, the law of God. But Jesus did anything He wanted on the Sabbath, in the sight of the leaders. And in the doing so, He brought down that whole system.

In verse 17, Jesus goes even beyond that and defends what He did by saying this, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This is a claim that He is God. Verse 18 says, “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

And yet the Pharisees missed the whole point of the Sabbath. They found no rest from their endless works efforts at salvation. They had no real honest repentance. The Sabbath laws were mere shadows of hope, a weekly reminder that there was a paradise to be regained and it was through the means of righteousness. When Jesus came, He brought true rest. The child of God is now a new person.

Under the new covenant we are healed, washed, found and accepted. We have entered into rest with the Creator Himself. We have been given His righteousness. We cease all effort to earn our salvation. Jesus literally did away with the Sabbath. God’s true rest didn’t come through Joshua. God’s true rest didn’t come through Moses. God’s true rest comes only through Jesus Christ.

The rest that the New Testament is concerned about is the rest that comes to our soul from hearing and believing the good news preached. Hebrews 4: 9-10 says, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.” There are only two concepts to get to heaven. You work your way in or it is a gift from God because you believe.

To the Jews, they were working. But when you enter the rest of grace and faith, works cease. Romans 14:5-6, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.” There were Jews who had come to faith in Christ but had a hard time letting go of the Sabbath.

In other words, if each person is fully convinced in his own mind and does what he thinks is right, it really doesn’t matter. Verse 8 says, “If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” Don't make an issue out of the Sabbath. Some people are concerned about dietary laws. Those things are just part of a passing scheme.

Galatians 4:9-11, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” You do not have to go back to the prescribed festivals, laws and the Sabbaths of the Mosaic Law.

Colossians 2:16-17, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” Don’t let anybody hold you to a Sabbath. And that’s referring to the weekly Sabbath, because the other festival Sabbaths are covered under the term “festival and new moon.”

In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council decided that Gentile believers in the church were not required to observe the Sabbath. The apostles never commanded anybody to observe the Sabbath. It is gone, with one exception. In Genesis 2, we are reminded that every seventh day that goes by is an opportunity for us to acknowledge the greatness of our Creator. And on the first day of the week, Sunday, we celebrate God as our Redeemer. Let us pray.



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