The Sabbath

Read the verse study · He Rested From All →

I decided not to go around the corner. Verse 2 speaks of God ceasing on the seventh day, and that seventh day becomes the foundation Scripture later gives for the sabbath, so I am going to call it what it is. Rather than tuck it into the verse study and dance past it, I am giving the sabbath its own study, a companion to verse 2, room to breathe, so we can deal with it plainly and fully.

What Rest Meant to God

When the Scripture says God rested, it does not mean what we think. The lexicons give the word as shabath, to cease, to stop, to lay the work down. This is the word your Sabbath comes from. God does not grow weary.

The Creator faints not, neither is weary. His rest was the ceasing of a finished God. Not the end of weariness, but the end of the work.

What the Rest Is, and What It Is Not

Under the Old Testament, the rest, though it was never meant to be, seemed to become a dreaded day. So many got in hot water over violating the sabbath, and it carried judgment, and it carried death. Now Scripture does not stop and tell me how Israel felt about that day, so when I say the day given for their good became a day to be dreaded, that is my reading of what it would do to a man. But under the New Covenant, which God Himself calls a better covenant, established on better promises, it is not so.

That was the ordinance, and further down I will show you why I read it as nailed to the cross, and I will show you the part Paul does not say. And the rest is not something we earn by our own works, for it is entered by faith.

What the rest is, is this. It is ceasing from our own striving because the work is finished, and leaning wholly on the One who finished it. It is communion, a soul at peace with God, no longer laboring to be right with Him, but resting in what He has done. That is the rest, and it is a gift, not a wage.

Why Israel Was the First

God worked this lesson out first in one people, Israel, in the wilderness. And it was not because the rest was only for them. It was for us afar off. They became the model, the pattern, and their wilderness was written down for us.

Why He Began to Teach Them

Why did God begin here, with this people? He had spoken to Abraham of a nation, and here is what He said.

All families of the earth. And when I say chosen to lead the world to Him, that is my wording for what that blessing was to do. So with this people He began to teach them how to come into His presence. That was largely the wilderness, one long lesson in drawing near to a holy God, the manna, the cloud, the sabbath, the laws, the ordinances, all of it teaching them to approach Him, and all of it leading us to Jesus.

And to come into His presence is to know Him, and that knowing is life itself.

But all of it, the sabbath, the wilderness teaching, was pointing to Christ, the One who would finally teach us the Father and bring us all the way in.

I have declared unto them Thy name. So Christ made the Father known, and brings us into the love, He in us and we in Him. The wilderness taught them to draw near, Christ is the drawing near.

See it in the manna. He told them, gather bread every day, but on the sixth day gather twice, enough for two days, because the seventh is a rest.

The same act had two opposite outcomes. On an ordinary day, when they kept some over, it bred worms and stank. Exodus does not tell me what was in their heads, so the not trusting there would be more tomorrow is my reading of it. But on the sixth day, the surplus gathered in faith for the sabbath was preserved, it did not rot. Unbelief rot, belief kept, hold this thought.

And when some went out anyway and found none, hear what God calls it Himself.

He calls it refusing His commandments. And that word in Exodus is a noun, His commandments, where the word in the garden is the verb, He commanded. Same root, not the same word. What He commanded both times was this. Which trees you may eat. Gather twice on the sixth day. Both of them are Him saying how His people would be fed. So here is what I hear underneath the refusing, and it is mine. They were not quarrelling with a rule about work. They were denying His authority over how they are fed. And that is the garden again. And questioning His right is one thing, and a man can carry that quietly a long time. The dishonor is in carrying it out. They did not only wonder whether He would provide. They got up on the seventh day and went out to look. And all of it was written down for us.

So this is how I read Israel’s place in the lesson. Their wilderness carries the proof for us afar off, written so we do not have to wonder. It was already proven in them, the day is His, His word provides, He is after honor, and the rest is entered by faith. And hear which way the day faces, because Jesus said it plainly.

The Day Was Made to Serve

The sabbath was made for man, and it is not a master over us, crushing us. It is a gift, made for our good, given to serve us. The seventh day is the first place in Scripture where this holy word family appears, and it was set to serve man. And that is the very heart of God as I have come to know Him.

Dependence Is Not a Bad Thing

There was a time God met me when I was real low, when to me everything was lost, and I was told this, dependence is not a bad thing. And I say to me everything was lost, because everything wasn’t lost, I stand here whole today.

Now where I come from, that is a hard word. We always want to be independent, need nobody. You depend on somebody, they call you a leech, a blood sucker, a vampire. They say you are lazy, you did not want nothing good for yourself, and when folks see a dependent person coming, they cannot hide fast enough. That is how the world does you over dependence.

But there, when I was down, God said the opposite, depend on Me. And I started to learn, the very thing the world cannot stand is the thing God is asking for. What they call a leech, God calls His child. He was not ashamed of my need. He said lean on Me, and that leaning is not weakness, it is the rest.

How It Stands Now, and By Faith

Now the seventh day became a commandment to Israel, and it was heavy, a man could die for breaking it.

And here is where I stand, and let me say first what the verse gives me. Paul says the handwriting of ordinances was nailed to the cross, and then he says let no man judge you in respect of the sabbath days, for they are a shadow. He does not say the sabbath ordinance was the handwriting. I am the one putting those two together, and men who love this Book have disagreed over it for a long time.

Hear this carefully, because it is the whole matter. So here is what I take from it. The blotting out did away with the method, not the purpose. The method was the one heavy day, the rule with death behind it. The purpose, rest and communion with God, still stands. The scaffolding came down. The building it was built for still stands. And hear what He calls Himself.

Lord of the sabbath. So through His blood we enter the rest the day was only pointing to.

So how does it stand now, and this is my answer and not a verse. Not one dreaded day kept by law, but a rest we have entered, in Him, by faith. And Hebrews does not settle every question in it. Men read that chapter as a rest we are in now, and as a rest still coming, and as both. And it is the very same faith. They ceased from gathering because they trusted the manna was enough. We cease from our own striving because we trust His finished work is enough. And Hebrews says both halves of that.

Could not enter in because of unbelief. And now hear the other half.

We which have believed do enter into rest. So we serve God by faith in Jesus, resting in His finished work, and because we live in that rest, I hold every day as His. God blessed one day, not seven, and I am not going to hand that word to all of them. And Hebrews does not say every day either. What I am saying is what I have come to, that the rest is no longer kept in one day, it is lived in all of them. And we keep it in love, because we want to, not because we must. The must became a want, the law became love. This does not mean we forsake gathering with God’s people.

It means the weight of the ordinance is gone, and the joy of the fellowship remains.

God Was Speaking of Us

And there is something God was showing even back then, in the priests. On the sabbath, when all work was forbidden, the priests still served in the temple, still offered the sacrifices, still did the work of God on the holy day, and they were blameless.

They worked on the day of rest and carried no guilt, because their work was God’s work, His service, His worship. Matthew gives me the priests doing it and being blameless, and it does not say nobody else could. But watch what God was saying ahead of time, because now, in Christ, we are the priests.

Now here is what I see in that, and none of those verses says it. Matthew tells me the priests served and were blameless. Peter tells me we are a royal priesthood. Nobody joins the two but me. And when I do, I see the priests serving God on the holy day, blameless, as a shadow of us. For we are the royal priesthood, and our service is not one day in a temple, it is every day.

A living sacrifice. Our whole life unto Him. And when I put that beside Peter calling us a royal priesthood, I see a people whose service to God is no longer confined to one day or one temple. This is what I am calling the seventh-day life by faith, all our days His. And it is a thing I see in those priests, not a thing Matthew or Peter tells me God was doing.

Come Unto Me, All Ye That Are Weary

And to the soul that is weary, not the tired body only, but the soul worn down by striving, heavy laden, worn out trying to carry what it cannot carry, Jesus gives the invitation.

Come unto Me, drop your weariness, and rest in the knowledge of Me. Matthew does not say He is what the sabbath was for. He says come unto Me and I will give you rest. And when I hear that, I hear the day pointing at a Person, and the hearing is mine. So the weary soul does not keep a day to find rest, it comes to Him and finds it. And He gives more than the stilling of the weariness. He puts a song in the mouth that was too weary to sing.

He lifts the soul out of the pit, sets it on the rock, and then, out of the rest, a new song rises. So the fulfilled rest is not a silent, empty rest. It is a rest that sings. He gives the rest, and the song is His gift on top of it.

How’s That Working for Us

We live in a real world with real needs. The bills are real, the work is real, the pressing is real. But here is what I am learning. When we do not trust God to meet those needs, the needs become an obsession. We work the seven days, all of them, and we render an excuse for it, I have to, look at my needs. But how’s that working for us? All that striving, and still it presses, still it is not enough.

A bag with holes. Now Haggai is speaking to Judah about a house left unbuilt while they saw to their own, so that is his subject and not mine. But that picture is the striving that leaves God out, and I am the one bringing it here. It earns and earns and it all runs out the holes, never enough, never filled.

And Haggai did not think that picture up. Moses had it four hundred years before him, in the chapter where God lays out what happens when His people will not hearken.

Much seed out, little in. The vineyard planted and dressed and never drunk from. Carry the seed, do the work, and watch it go somewhere else.

Now Deuteronomy 28 never names the sabbath, and I am not going to say it does. It says all his commandments, and the sabbath sits inside that with the rest. But the picture is the same picture, and Haggai is holding up a thing God had already described.

And hear how Hosea says it, because he is not talking about strangers. He is talking about people who had made a covenant with God.

She did not know that I gave her. She had the corn in her hand and she did not know Whose hand it came out of. And what a man does not know he was given, he will call the work of his own hands.

And now put that beside the manna, because it is the same lesson twice. They went out and gathered it, every morning, with their own hands. And not one grain of it came up out of their work. He gave it, and He gave it daily, and the ones who knew that could lie down on the seventh day and not go looking.

So the rest was never about doing less. It is about knowing where the corn comes from. A man who knows Who gave him the grain can stop, and a man who thinks he made it cannot.

And there is a word for doing that knowing out loud, every day, and Solomon uses it.

Acknowledge. That is the very thing Hosea says she did not do. She had the corn and never said Whose it was. And read where Solomon puts it, in all thy ways. Not on one day. In all of them. And Jesus said what follows when a man lives like that.

All these things. Read back a few verses and He names them.

The corn and the wine and the oil, said another way.

And added. Not earned. Not gathered. Added. The bag with holes is a man doing the getting himself. This is a man seeking first, and the things coming after him. And hear how Jesus put it.

So render to Caesar, do your work, meet your responsibilities. But do not give Caesar what belongs to God. Render to God your trust, your dependence, your rest.

And let me be plain about how I live this, because we are in a real world. Things happen and a shift falls where it falls and I am not going to lay a load on anybody over that. But in my right mind I am not going to take a job at the onset that takes my day of worship from me. Not because a rule says so. Because I have decided where that day goes.

And I am not undermining the seventh day or the people who keep it. Paul had something to say about that and he would not settle it for anybody.

Fully persuaded in his own mind. So I will tell you what I am persuaded of and I will not tell you what to be persuaded of. In these times most of us set aside a Sunday, or whichever day we can, and we go and we worship. That is mine, and yours is yours.

Our peace was never going to come from out-working the world. It comes from entering into the rest of the Lord.

The Walk He Began With Adam

And now we come to what I believe the whole sabbath was pointing to. Colossians points the shadow forward, to Christ, and that is the only direction Paul gives it. So what follows is what I see when I put these passages together, and it is mine. The purpose was never really the day. It was a walk. God began it with Adam, in the garden, before there was ever a law or an ordinance.

Now Genesis records that one walk and no other, and it does not say daily and it does not say unbroken. So when I say He walked with man in that garden, that is how I read it, and I am telling you it is a reading. What the verse gives me is a man who heard Him coming and knew what he was hearing. Then Adam hid. Then the law came, and the sabbath, one day set apart. Colossians calls the sabbath days a shadow of things to come, and that is the only direction Scripture gives me for it. So when I say it also points back to a walk that was lost, that is my picture and not Paul’s. Then Christ, His blood opening the way, and in the picture I am drawing, the walk is given back, and more than given back, for now He does not walk beside us in a garden.

He dwells within us.

So the sabbath was a day, and God said so and set it apart Himself. And the rest of this is my seeing and not a verse. The day was never the point of it to me. It was always about a walk, and what I see God after from the beginning is to walk with man. Every day is my wording, and I have already told you Genesis gives me one walk and does not say daily. He built it with Adam, and it was lost to sin, and I read the holy day as a shadow of it, and Israel as the proving of it for us afar off, and the blood as the restoring of it. So do not give Him one day and keep the rest for yourself. Give Him your days, all of them, willingly, in love. Come to Him weary, and rest, and let Him put a new song in your mouth.

This is the day the LORD hath made. Walk it with Him.