Sabbatum Sanctum

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.  Matthew 12:8

The church I grew up in believed in keeping the Seventh day Sabbath, or Saturday, holy.  I have many treasured Sabbath memories, but there was also a great deal of legalism associated with the day.  Recently I have spent time examining the concept of Sabbath in scripture, in the light of Grace, and because this is Easter Week, I thought it might be an appropriate time to share my thoughts with you.

When God finished the creation process, his relationship with Adam and Eve was perfect. They were in total harmony. There were no unmet expectations on either side. They had nothing to prove to God, and felt no need for him to prove anything to them. They didn’t know good, and they didn’t know evil, they just experienced the perfect rest that was their existence. All the work had been done for them, and everything was there for them to enjoy. I believe that, at the conclusion of creation, on the 7th day, they entered that “rest”, and it continued for them until Adam and Eve left that place of perfect rest by doing the one thing which broke the harmony, which was, of course, eating the fruit. At that point the curses given to them had to do with laboring, for both male and female; but, the promise was given that one day a savior would come to restore what was lost.

When the Law was given, the heart of the law was the Sabbath. The Sabbath in the law wasn’t so much “a memorial of creation”, as I was taught, it was a memorial of that blessed rest that had once existed, and a promise that it would one day be restored. All of the other commandments were true laws, but, to me, the Sabbath commandment was the only one that was pure grace. “In it thou shalt not do any work...” instead of being a suffocating rule, it was meant to be a promise of the true rest that can only be found in accepting Jesus’ completed work for us in his death and resurrection.

When Jesus was on earth, the only commandment he made a point of “breaking” was the Sabbath. He didn’t go around taking God’s name in vain, or stealing, killing or committing adultery, and then saying it was because he was above the law; but, he did go around doing what was forbidden on the Sabbath and saying he was Lord of the Sabbath. That is because he was the one and only Lord who, through his death and resurrection, could reinstate the original rest that existed at the completion of creation. He was the fulfillment of the Sabbath. In his death, he rested on the Sabbath, fulfilling once and for all the Sabbath commandment, and when he rose on Easter Sunday, He was the Sabbath rest.

Hebrews 4 speaks of the story where the Israelites were right on the border of the Promised Land, but looked to themselves and assessed their own abilities to conquor the land and found themselves lacking; so, based on their own inadequacies, they talked themselves out of entering God’s rest, even though God had told them he would do all the work for them. In Hebrews, the writer asks his readers not to make the same mistake. In other words, he warns them, us, against looking to ourselves and our own inadequacies and unworthiness to enter “the promised land”, but urges us to look to the One who has already done for us all that is necessary to enter, and asks us to enter, by faith in him.

Verse 10 of Hebrews 4 says, “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.” In other words, by accepting Jesus’ work on our behalf, by faith alone we enter His rest, and we rest from all of our vain efforts to earn our salvation by our behavior. Verse 3 says God finished his works at the foundation of the world, so “His rest” that we are entering, is the original rest which began on the 7th day. The journey from the original rest and back is completed in Christ. That rest is ours to enjoy, beginning here and now.