What About The Sabbath?

When looking at the 10 commandments given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20, 9 out of the 10 of them sound pretty good to us. You may have even heard general references to obeying all 10 of the 10 commandments as a benchmark for sound Biblical living; and yet, one of them states:

“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” (vss. 8-11).

This may cause us to ask, “what do I do with the Sabbath day?” “Am I allowed to work?” “What is meant by ‘work’?” “The other 9 I keep, but what about the Sabbath?” Let’s take a moment to understand the history of the Sabbath, the New Testament fulfillment of the Sabbath, and what it means to us today.

You may think that the aforementioned passage from Mt. Sinai is the first time we see the seventh day of the week treated as holy, but as you can see in the quote from Exodus 20, the idea of the Sabbath originally comes from creation week, recorded in Genesis 1 and 2. The Bible teaches that God created the world in 6 days, and rested on the 7th. To be clear, this is not to say God was resting as in recuperating from exhaustion, but rather He “stopped” or “ceased” from His work, as the word shabat can also be translated, and gloried in all that He had created. Then, if we fast-forward to Mt. Sinai, God commanded the nation of Israel to maintain the holiness of the Sabbath as established on the seventh day of creation week. Dishonoring this commandment was evidently one of the many reasons given for the people going into captivity, as indicated in Isaiah 58:13-14: “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” It is clear that God took the 10 commandments seriously—He has always taken ALL of His commandments seriously—but this still leaves the question: what about today?

There are several passages that indicate that we are “no longer” under the Old Law (Galatians 3:24-25). In fact, the books of Hebrews and Galatians for example, are dedicated entirely to showing the superiority of Jesus to the Old Law, and how His death burial, and resurrection have made certain Levitical laws like observation of the Sabbath, animal sacrifices, and circumcision, “obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13). The apostle Paul also makes clear in the book of Romans that “Christ is the culmination of the law,” meaning that in Him, as He said Himself, the Law of Moses is “fulfilled,” not “abolished” (i.e. Romans 10:4, Matthew 5:17-20). While many rules fundamental to Mosaic law—the other 9 commandments, for example—are mentioned in and part of the New Law, Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses and established a new one with His blood. Also, by being raised on the first day of the week, He shifted the focus from the completion of creation on Saturday to the completion of Jesus’ mission on Sunday. That is why we see the saints throughout the New Testament gathering together on Sundays, which we still observe today. So does the Sabbath have any relevance at all now? If we do not have to rest on Saturdays now, is there anything we should be doing in modern times that is similar to the observance of the Sabbath seen in the Old Testament? Consider the following:

Spend one-on-one time with God. Part of the focus of the Sabbath was to rest from work, but another part was to focus on God. Now, any time of any day of the week can be dedicated to Bible reading, prayer, and meditation on God’s Word. This certainly does not need to be limited to Saturday, or even Sunday. In fact, as I have heard some say, “you should hear from God and He should hear from you every single day.” That is a great rule to live by!

Gather with the saints on Sunday. There seems to be a cultural push these days away from assembling in a church service setting or with a local body of believers and towards individualized religion and a personal relationship with God. “Church is just too full of hypocrites” or “judgmental people” some may say. I talked to a man recently who said he went fishing on Sunday mornings and sitting on a quiet lake was the closest to God he ever felt. How sad! Hebrews 10:25 tells us to “not neglect the meeting of yourselves together” and the New Testament continually outlines the benefits of spending time with the saints. Sunday is called the Lord’s Day for a reason. Make the effort to get to services! It is beyond worth it.

“Strive to enter that rest.” Hebrews 4:1-13 talks extensively about a Sabbath rest that is available to us and waiting for us when we die, assuming we have lived faithfully. The author of Hebrews talks extensively about the multitude of ways the Old Testament was fulfilled in Jesus, and exactly how Jesus supersedes all of the Old Law. In part, the Holy Spirit tells us: “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it…For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest,”’ although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works…”Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience…So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience” (vss. 1, 3-4, 6, 9-11).

Just as the people of Israel failed to obey the Sabbath laws and completely conquer/inherit the Promised Land in the Old Testament, it is possible for us too to “fail to enter” the promised rest God has in store for us in Heaven. We can all understand the desire for peace, rest, and joy when this life is over. In order to achieve that, “let use fear” God and obey His commands, using the failures of the Israelites as a negative example and the glorious promises of God as our motivation. While we do not observe the Sabbath on Saturdays anymore, we are observed to worship the Lord on Sundays and eagerly expect to be with Him forever one day…one Eternal, restful, perfect day.