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When you think of the word, “Sabbath,” what comes to mind? For many believers, Sunday is the day in which they give service to God as a day of worship and rest. Today, many families may still run errands, get housework done, see friends or family, or do some other thing. But why is the Sabbath day a day of rest?
It goes back to what God had commanded the Israelites in the Old Testament.
Keeping the Sabbath in the Old Testament
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 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. 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.”
Exodus 20:8-11
This was one of the commandments God gave to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai after they had come out of Egypt. He told His chosen people at that time to rest on the seventh day. This goes back to what we read in Genesis when God created the heavens and the earth.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. 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.
Genesis 2:1-3
Why did God tell the Israelites to rest on the seventh day? God didn’t give them a day of rest just to be kind. He showed them an example of how to be like Him. God made a covenant with the Israelites (Exodus 19:5-6) and said if they obeyed everything God commanded them, He would make them into a holy nation and royal priesthood. God originally created man (humans) in His own image (Genesis 1:26-28), but was it the physical image or a spiritual one? We can see that God is spirit (John 4:24) and He created our spirits in His image (Zechariah 12:1). But due to Adam’s sin by the serpent’s deception, that image was changed from God’s image to the serpent’s. So God has to recreate His people into His image again, and He does it by giving His Law for His people to live by.
God told His people to keep His commandments, and if they did, they were blessed. But if they broke God’s Law, there would be judgment. Just like when we break the laws of our respective countries and face consequences, God also has consequences for when His people break His law. The laws God gave the Israelites weren’t for a day or a year but were to be kept from generation to generation.
And the LORD said to Moses, “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. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. 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. 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. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever.”
Exodus 31:12-16
If the Israelites didn’t keep God’s Law at that time, they would be put to death. That seems pretty harsh, right? Well, remember that God had just brought the Israelites out of Egypt – a place with many gods and idols. The people had been enslaved for 430 years. No doubt the Egyptians’ practices and thoughts would have influenced the people. God had to teach them like young children how to be like Himself. Yet, as the generations passed, the Israelites added their own laws and traditions to God’s Laws, thus changing it, and Jesus called the Pharisees, who were the Jewish religious leaders, out on this at the time of the first coming.
in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!”Mark 7:7-9
As the Israelites, God’s chosen people at that time, changed and added to God’s Law, they strayed further away from what God had said, yet they thought they were still worshiping God rightly and keeping His commands.
Do you think God continued to be with them and accept their Sabbath prayers and sacrifices?
Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath at the First Coming
When Jesus came and started preaching, he was a bit of a maverick for the Jewish people. He said some things that ruffled a lot of people’s feathers. Jesus performed miracles such as turning water into wine, raising a dead man, and healing blind and deaf people. He claimed to be the son of God and preached in parables about the kingdom of heaven. He also worked on the Sabbath a lot. Let’s look at Scripture.
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”
Matthew 12:1-2
According to the Jewish law passed down by Moses, people weren’t supposed to work, or do much of anything, on the Sabbath – in keeping with that law. Yet, here was Jesus, who didn’t follow those traditions. The Pharisees said what Jesus and his disciples were doing wasn’t “lawful.” That seems ridiculous, right? The Pharisees added their own traditions and interpretations to what Moses had passed down and made a very legalistic life of faith for Jewish people at that time. Let’s see how Jesus responded.
He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.”
Matthew 12:3-6
Jesus responds by giving them a history lesson. There was one time when David and some men with him were given the holy bread from the temple to eat (see 1 Samuel 21:1-16). Jesus also talks about how the priests perform circumcision on the sabbath (doing work) (John 7:22-23), and yet are guiltless. Jesus said something greater than the temple was here. What did he mean by that? Well, a temple is a holy place. In the Old Testament, the Tabernacle Moses built was the place God’s spirit dwelt. When Jesus came at the first coming, God came to be with and dwell in Jesus (Matthew 3:16, John 10:30). Jesus was the reality of the temple Moses built. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, and the Jewish people and leaders persecuted him for it, but Jesus said this in response.
And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
John 5:17
He said that his Father, meaning God, was working until now. If God was working even at the time of the first coming, then did He really rest after creating Heaven and Earth? And Jesus, the son of God, was doing as his Father showed him (John 5:19). So, what does that mean? Did Jesus keep the Sabbath?
If obeying God’s law was keeping it, then Jesus doing as God showed him would be keeping God’s law, correct? Jesus understood what God truly wanted from His people.
“And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
Matthew 12:7-8
The Jewish leaders were so concerned with the legalistic, literal interpretation of the Law, that they didn’t understand the true purpose behind it. In Galatians 3, we read that the Law was a guarding leading us to Christ.
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
Galatians 3:23-26
If the Pharisees and Jewish people truly understood their Law, then they should have recognized that Jesus was the fulfillment of their Old Testament scriptures (John 5:39-40, Matthew 5:17). But since they didn’t understand, they rejected Jesus. What does that mean for us today?
The True Sabbath Rest
For Christians today, what must we do? How do we keep the Sabbath day holy? In Hebrews 10 it says,
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.
Hebrews 10:1
God resting on the seventh day, making it a holy day for His people, was pointing towards something greater to come. We have to remember that God’s will and objective is to come back to earth and be with His people, but like Jesus said at the first coming, God has been working to achieve His objective. We must know God’s Law for us today, which is not the Law of Moses, but the words of Christ Jesus – especially the prophecies in the four gospels and Revelation. Jesus told us what would happen beforehand, so when we see it, we can believe (John 14:29), but what do you think will happen if we don’t believe? Do you know what happened to the Israelites who didn’t believe in God’s promises while wandering in the desert?
So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
Hebrews 3:19
Those who didn’t believe in God’s promise or obeyed His chosen messenger, Moses, died. The passage above tells us those who didn’t believe couldn’t enter into the promised land. We have a better promise than the Israelites of the Old Testament. We have the promise of heaven and eternal life. That greater thing is the true Sabbath rest, when God reigns and eternal life is fulfilled.
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”Hebrews 3:12-15
We must not be like the Israelites of old who didn’t believe in God’s promise or accept God’s promised pastor, Jesus. When those prophecies are fulfilled, Jesus promised to send his messenger, who saw and heard the fulfillment, to preach that testimony to the churches (Revelation 22:8, 16). If we want to enter into the true Sabbath rest, we must not have an unbelieving heart.
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:11
When all of God’s prophecies are fulfilled, the true Sabbath rest will come. Let us keep the true Sabbath by knowing God’s word for us today, believing in it, and then putting it into action by coming to the one whom God and Jesus send.
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Written by Kenny
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