Exodus 20:8-11
Exodus 20:8–11 (ESV):
8 “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.
It is really pretty amazing that one of the primary commandments the LORD gave His people was to rest. He could have just as easily given them the command to never stop working. But in His love and grace He gave them a specific day to cease from work. The goal of the Sabbath day was not only rest, but also worship. That’s implied when it says “keep it holy”... and that it is to be done “to the LORD your God”.
Like all the other commandments, this commandment was designed to be a blessing, not a burden.
But you know how people are… we tend to take what God designed for good and get it all twisted up.
The Sabbath has been one of the most contentious and polarizing topics in Christian history, beginning with Jesus Himself all the way into present day.
The gospel accounts are full of Sabbath controversies. It seems like whenever Jesus did anything on the Sabbath, the religious authorities were right on top of Him… and ironically, it almost feels like He purposely did a LOT on the Sabbath, perhaps to prove a point.
Healings (Luke 13, John 5)
Picking grain (Mark 2)
The Pharisees often accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath, which of course He never did (Jesus always kept God’s law perfectly; that’s part of what qualified Him to be our perfect substitute on the cross)… but while Jesus didn’t break the law, He definitely broke plenty of man-made traditions, which really ticked off the religious leaders.
As you move into the early church era, you find disputes within the Church between Jewish and Gentile believers over the ongoing function of the Sabbath. In many of Paul’s letters, he writes to correct their faulty thinking.
In Church history, there have been many disputes about whether Christians are to keep the Sabbath, and if so, what that should look like. We still have groups today, such as Seventh Day Adventist, Seventh Day Baptists, and followers of The Hebrew Roots Movement, who have chosen the Old-testament style observance of the Sabbath on Saturday as the proverbial hill they’re willing to die on. There are pop level books out on how to recover the lost art of Sabbath keeping.
When you open up the Old Testament, the warnings against breaking the Sabbath are severe (it was literally a capital offense for the biblical nation of Israel), but then you get to the New Testament and you find no direct command to keep the Sabbath, and instead you find Christians shifting their day of worship and rest from Saturday to Sunday…
How does God want us to think about the Sabbath as Christians?
Is the Sabbath a binding command that will be punished by God if broken?
Is it a long lost principle for healthy weekly rhythms that we are missing out on?
Is it just a suggestion––and we can take it or leave it? Is it obsolete and to be disregarded altogether?
Where on this spectrum are we to land?
In his letter to the Romans, Paul said this:
Romans 14:5–6 (ESV): 5 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…
It’s significant that we don’t see Paul taking sides on this issue. Rather, we see him encouraging each believer to live by their personal convictions. It’s a matter of conscience, just like eating or abstaining from certain foods.
So…
For the remainder of our time, my aim is to help you make up your own mind. I want to help you understand the Sabbath and apply the Sabbath to your life in a way that honors the LORD.
To do that, I’m going to walk you through six stages:
Sabbath and Creation
Sabbath and Israel
Sabbath and Jesus
Sabbath and The Apostles
Sabbath and The Church Fathers
Sabbath and You
What is the Sabbath?
Simply put (and this is my thesis statement for today)...
The Sabbath is the divinely instituted rhythm of weekly rest and worship that began with God in Creation, turned into a sign of the Old Covenant, and is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who offers true, spiritual, eternal rest for God’s people.
Sabbath and Creation
The first mention of the Sabbath principle is in the creation account…
Genesis 2:2-3 “And on the seventh day God finished His work... and He rested... So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy...”
There’s no command yet, just an example set by God Himself to work six days and intentionally rest on the seventh.
This is not because God got tired and needed to rest. We know that God is omnipotent. The reason He ceased from His work has more to do with completion than rest. His work was done. Complete.
As we move on, it will become clear that God was setting a pattern for us as beings made in His image through His cadence of work and rest.
Sabbath and Israel
The next time the concept of Sabbath is presented is in relation to the nation of Israel, after the Lord had brought them out of slavery. In fact, this is technically the first mention of the term Sabbath in scripture.
In Exodus 16:23, after the Lord brings Israel out of Egypt, and they complain that they don’t have food, and He provides manna from heaven… then Moses tells them…
This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning’. (Exodus 16:23)
That is the first ever instituted Sabbath. And if you keep reading, you see that the point is that God provides everything they need in order to rest on the seventh day, and not have to go out and collect their food like they did on the other six days.
So there’s a theme of provision in addition to the themes of rest and worship.
The next mention of Sabbath is here in the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 20 shows the Sabbath purposes of rest and worship:
“On it you shall not do any work…” (rest)
It was “a Sabbath to the LORD your God” and they were commanded to “keep it holy” (worship)
After that, the next time Sabbath shows up in scripture is in Exodus 31:13-17. It is essentially a re-statement of the original command, but with a twist: in addition to being for the purposes of rest and worship, it’s also said to be… A sign of the covenant the Lord made with Israel…
Exodus 31:13–17 (ESV): 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… It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel…
In Deuteronomy 5, we have a re-statement of the Ten Commandments to the next generation of Israelites in which Moses expands on the fourth commandment (verse 15) and says it is also for the purpose of remembering their salvation from slavery:
Deuteronomy 5:15 “You shall 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.
The biggest salvific moment in the Old Testament is when God delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery in the Exodus. That event becomes a powerful foreshadow for the way Christ delivers us from spiritual slavery to sin.
And here you have the Sabbath functioning as a reminder of that salvific event.
You also have a few more Sabbath passages that mainly pertain to the promised blessings for those who keep it, and the penalties for those who fail to keep it (Ex. 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36; Isaiah 58:13-14).
The failure to keep the Sabbath is tied to Israel’s exile:
Ezekiel 20:23–24 (ESV): 23 Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, 24 because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers’ idols.
So, when you put all that together, we see that…
The Sabbath was a covenantal sign that uniquely set apart Israel as God’s people, and when they observed it they were to be worshipful, restful, trusting in God’s provision, and remembering God’s deliverance from their slavery in Egypt.
It was a ceremonial observance to keep the salvation of the Lord ever before them.
Unfortunately, as with many of God’s original designs, the corrupt heart of man had its way with the Sabbath and it was often either forgotten or perverted into a burdensome religious ritual instead of a blessing.
And that’s the scene Jesus drops into…
Jesus and the Sabbath
Some of you may remember in our study through the gospel of Mark last year, how we talked about all of the silly rules and regulations the religious leaders had invented to make sure nobody accidentally broke the Sabbath…
You couldn’t take more than 999 steps on the Sabbath
You couldn’t carry any burden that weighed more than a dried fig
If you reached out for food right when the Sabbath happened to begin, you couldn’t put it into your mouth because that would be carrying the food on the Sabbath.
You couldn’t check your clothing out to see if it was clean because you might accidentally kill the lice that were on it.
You couldn’t bathe because if the water fell off you it might accidentally wash the floor
You couldn’t leave certain vegetables in salt because you might inadvertently pickle it and that would be doing something.
And then the laws get more troubling. You could only help someone if they were in danger of their life. So for example, if someone had a dislocated joint, you’d have to wait until the Sabbath was over to put it back into place.
In order for the remainder of this to make sense, I need to pause and remind you why Jesus came.
Jesus didn’t just come to reorient people to a right understanding of God’s Law (which He did); He came to fulfill God’s law on our behalf, and bring it to completion in His own life, death and resurrection.
As we go through each commandment, we are reminded of God’s impossibly high moral standard, which reminds us of our inability to keep that standard, which drives us to our need for the Savior.
And in the case of the Sabbath, we see that we don’t just need to be better at working and resting… we need to attach ourselves to the Savior who worked and rested for us (through His sinless life and finished work on the cross), so that in Him our souls can find eternal rest.
With that in mind, let’s look at a couple passages that illustrate the way Jesus handled the Sabbath controversies.
In Mark chapter 2, when Jesus was taking His disciples through the grain field plucking heads of grain to eat, and the Pharisees criticized them saying, “why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath”... to which Jesus responded, ‘haven’t you heard what David and his men did when they were hungry, how they ate the sacred bread of the Presence?’
In other words, the Sabbath was not meant to hinder people but to help them…
Then He drops his famous line: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)
Then, in the very next sentence (Mark 3), it says Jesus entered the synagogue and found a man with a withered hand, and the Pharisees were closely watching Him to see whether He would heal this man on the Sabbath, which He DOES.
In a similar instance…
If you get rid of the chapter break between Matthew 11 and 12, you see the clear connection between Jesus as our rest and Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath.
Matthew 11:28–12:8 (ESV):
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
12:1 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. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 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? 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
The point of this, besides illustrating that the Sabbath was not intended to limit good works, is that Jesus has authority over the Sabbath. He can do with it whatever He wants. He alone has the right to define it in His terms.
And beyond that, it begins to illustrate the fact that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Sabbath. All previous Sabbath observances were pointing forward to Him. The New Testament makes it clear that with Jesus, a new era has dawned: an era in which Jesus is our Sabbath Rest.
In the New Testament, the Sabbath is shown to be a symbol of Jesus Himself.
Jesus promises true rest for God’s true people (those who have faith in Him).
Rest from religious legalism.
Rest from striving to gain righteousness through obedience.
This rest is to be found nowhere but in Himself.
So what does that mean for us…
Sabbath and The Apostles
The clearest way to know how Jesus meant for us to apply His teachings on the Sabbath is to look at how the apostles understood them and applied them. They are the ones who had direct revelation from Jesus Himself. If anyone should know how the Sabbath relates to the Christian, it would be the God-ordained leaders of the very first Christian church.
When we look at what the Apostles did with the Sabbath, what do we find?
Most of the apostles were Jewish, and would have grown up observing the Sabbath each Saturday. But after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and His establishment of His Church, their focus was shifted:
They would still enter the synagogues on the Sabbath, but mainly to preach the gospel to the Jews.
Acts 17:1–3 (ESV): 1 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2 And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”
They began meeting on Sundays instead of Saturdays, not to observe the Old Testament Sabbath, but to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus (since Jesus rose on the first day of the week).
Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread…
Revelation 1:10 On the LORD’s Day I was in the Spirit… (Speaking about Sunday)
In the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), they met to answer the big question: should Gentile Christians follow the Law of Moses? The answer was a resounding NO. And significantly, the Sabbath was not restated as something the Church needed to keep doing.
Paul began to explicitly teach freedom from the need to observe the Sabbath:
Romans 14:5–6 (ESV): 5 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…
He was even distraught when Christians under the New Covenant were still trying to hold onto ritual observances (likely including the Sabbath) instead of holding onto Christ:
Galatians 4:10-11 “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
Most notably, the language of the Apostles regarding the Sabbath makes it clear that the former Sabbath observance was meant to foreshadow a greater spiritual reality in Christ:
Colossians 2:16–17 (ESV): 16 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.
Hebrews 10:1 The law [is a] shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities…
All of that should be a decisive blow to any notion that Christians are mandated to keep an Old Testament style Sabbath… but let me give you one more layer…
Sabbath and Church Fathers
In trying to understand how the Sabbath is to relate to Christians, it is helpful to look back on how the early church fathers viewed the Sabbath. The early church fathers were the first Christian leaders and writers after the apostles. They helped explain the Bible, defend the faith, and pass on key teachings when the church was still very young.
Here are some things they had to say about Sabbath:
Ignatius of Antioch, 110 AD. “...those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him...”
Justin Martyr 150 AD “We too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths, and in a word all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you... The new law requires you to keep perpetual Sabbath...” (referring to our rest in Christ)
Irenaeus 180 AD “The mystery of the Lord’s resurrection may not be celebrated on any other day than the Lord’s Day and on this alone should we observe the breaking of the Paschal feast.”
Tertullian 200 AD“We solemnize the day after Saturday in contradiction to those who call this day their Sabbath.”
Origen 250 AD “On the day of the Lord’s resurrection, the Lord’s day, we meet in assembly... It is not that we are commanded to observe the Sabbath, but to rest in God.”
When you put all of their sentiments together, it is clear that the prevailing view of Sabbath in the early church was that it had been replaced by a Lord’s Day worship gathering, and that true Sabbath rest was viewed as being found in Christ spiritually, not in the observance of a Jewish ritual.
Again, this is totally congruent with the teachings of the apostles, the teachings of Jesus, and the symbolism of the Sabbath in the Old Testament.
Jesus is our rest.
Sabbath and YOU
So, if Christ Himself is our Sabbath Rest, how do we take hold of that rest? Or, to use biblical language, how do we enter that rest?
Simply put, by believing in Christ.
In Hebrews 3:7–4:13, in a section titled in my Bible as A Rest for The People of God, the author of Hebrews uses the example of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness as an illustration and a warning for the danger of unbelief in Christ.
He says because of their unbelief they were not able to enter his rest (which is analogous of salvation)… For only we who believe can enter his rest. Then it says, 7 So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today.
In other words, you and I can escape the wrath of God and enter into His true rest today by our belief in Christ.
When we gather on the Lord’s Day to celebrate our resurrected Savior, we are doing a few things:
We are looking back on how our God worked and rested in Creation.
We are remembering how He was faithful to send our working, resting Savior… who worked perfect righteousness for us in His sinless life, and who finished the work of paying for our sins on the cross.
We glory in the fact that in Him our souls have true rest––no more striving in vain. Our salvation is by grace, through faith, not a result of works (Ephesians 2:8-9)
We are looking forward to the consummation of His Kingdom when our rest will be total and complete.
So, the bottom line is, Sabbath observance is in one sense optional for Christians… It was a sign of the Old Covenant, and that covenant has passed.
Is it wise to pattern our lives after God’s rhythm of work and rest? Absolutely.
Can we benefit from taking a day off each week to cease from our work and re–fuel? Absolutely.
But, is it an ongoing biblical mandate that Christians do so? I don’t think so.
In another sense, the true Sabbath is mandatory: we must rest in Christ by faith and gather with God’s people regularly to worship Him and commemorate all He’s done (Hebrews 10:25).
So let me ask you: are you resting in Christ today? Is your peace and hope found in Him, or are still trying to work and strive and trust in your own religious effort?
Hebrews 4:10 “For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.”
The ones who enter His rest are ones who are trusting in Christ alone.