The Sabbath
I recently received a revelation on keeping the Sabbath when reading a chapter in Exodus on which I doubted I was going to receive any revelation at all. It surprised me and it also set me free.
There is no debate that Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday is the seventh, which the Bible calls the Sabbath. God commanded us to rest on the Sabbath, to keep it holy, to do no work. It was a time to gather with other believers to worship Him.
Keeping the Sabbath day holy is part of the Ten Commandments and the Catholic church skips over it, as it designates the “venerable day of the sun” as its principal day of corporate worship. Many Protestant churches also gather on Sunday for church out of centuries’ old tradition.
There has been much contention in churches about which day is the correct day of rest and worship. The churches that celebrate Hebrew roots and most Messianic Jews gather on Friday or Saturday to hold church. They contend that all the Ten Commandments need to be followed to the letter, including the one about the Sabbath, and they rightly point out that Exodus 31:16 says, "Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant."
It is the only one of the Ten Commandments that says it must be a perpetual covenant. Common sense tells us, though, that the other nine commandments will always apply. Was this because there was a danger of people taking the other nine seriously, and considering the keeping of the Sabbath of less importance? This would SEEM so, considering the tradition of Catholics and many Protestants holding their main church service on Sunday, instead of Saturday.
Most born–again Christians know that the Sabbath was a shadow and a type of the Messiah, of Jesus Christ, who is our Sabbath rest. Pastors have preached on the passages in Psalms and in the New Testament that rebuke the Israelites for not entering into the Lord’s rest, and therefore perishing in the wilderness during their forty years trek. They have pointed out that Jesus is our rest and we must abide in Him. That is correct and it is a very valuable teaching.
For years, I felt like my brain was a tennis ball, batted around by various arguments that favour keeping Saturday as the Sabbath, or Sunday. Sunday has been endorsed because the Bible mentions the first day of the week being the day that Jesus rose from the dead, Paul gathering with other Christians on the first day of the week to ‘break bread,” and another time when Paul exhorted the disciples to take up an offering on the first day of the week, to be kept in store for him to deliver to the needy.
Why did Jesus rise from the dead on the first day of the week? Was there something special about the first day? No. It was the Sabbath that was special.
Jesus spent three days and nights in Hell, and it was on the Sabbath that He rose up against satan, stripped him of his anointings and beauty, took from him the keys of Hell and Death, and freed the prisoners of Paradise. He did these marvellous things on the Sabbath, not on the first day of the week. In Him, all the works of God are completed. He is the Sabbath in the flesh.
The Jews traditionally hail the Sabbath as a queen. No, the Sabbath is a King. The King of kings. Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament compares the Sabbath day to a queen.
The New Testament records that Jesus called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath, when His disciples were criticized for gathering grains of wheat as they walked through a field, and rubbing them in their hands to remove the chaff, in order to feed themselves because they were hungry.
In the Old Testament, God was furious when some of the Israelites went out on the Sabbath to gather manna, contrary to His rules. He made a provision for it to not rot on the Sabbath, so that they could gather twice as much as usual the day before.
It was not necessary to gather it on the Sabbath, though it fell that day, as on the other days. Their animals could graze on it that day, as they did every day. They never gathered it for their animals, just for their own food, and animals were never prevented by God’s laws from grazing on the Sabbath.
Jesus allowed His disciples to gather food on the Sabbath, and also defended David and his men for eating the showbread of the Tabernacle when they were on the run from Saul, though it was lawful only for the priests. This demonstrates that Jesus is God, and He who makes the rules can also amend the rules.
First century Christians sometimes meeting for a church service on the first day of the week is only incidental, not meaningful.
The little grey cells of my brain were also exercised by the fact that some Christians live in China, where only every tenth day is a day off from work, and many Christians have been put in prison where they were given NO DAY OFF from work. They were forced to break the commandment to keep the Sabbath as a day of rest.
Was this a sin on their part? Did God expect them to make an issue of resting on the Sabbath and being beaten or shot for refusing to work that day? Was working on this day, even under the threat of torture and death, a sin that they had to repent of and place under the Blood of Jesus? A sin that they committed every week and had to repent of perpetually?
The Bible says that keeping the Sabbath is a commandment that God expects us to keep perpetually. What other commandments were given that came with instructions to keep them perpetually?
A few days ago, I was reading Exodus 27, about the layout of the Tabernacle and its furnishings and ceremonies. I wasn’t expecting to get much out of the reading, as I am not very good at visualizing descriptions of buildings or topography. I need to see pictures of such to get them straight in my mind. But at the end of the chapter, I came to this verse and a light went on in my head:
"In the tabernacle of the congregation without the vail, which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before the LORD: it shall be a statute FOR EVER unto their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel."
The Israelites were commanded to ALWAYS keep the lamp in the Tabernacle burning. Do the Jews have a Temple where they keep that lamp burning? No, they do not. Most of them do not even know where the lamp is now that was placed in the Temple and hidden by Jeremiah when Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians.
They don’t have any principal menorah that is kept burning, nor do they keep any of the ordinances given in the book of Exodus that pertain to the furniture of the Tabernacle and its ceremonies that they were commanded to keep FOREVER.
More to the point, Christians do not keep any of those ceremonies that were given to the Jews. They do not slaughter animals for sacrifice because they recognize that the sacrifices were a shadow of Jesus’ death on the cross, which He fulfilled and, therefore, the animal sacrifices are no longer necessary. Nor are any of the ceremonies that were performed in the Tabernacle, and later in the Temple, necessary, for they also were just shadows of what was fulfilled in Jesus.
The Bible also says in Exodus 12:17 that the Israelites were to celebrate the day of Passover forever. Leviticus 16:29 commands Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to be kept forever. Leviticus 23:21 commands the Feast of Trumpets to be kept forever. Do Christians keep these feasts or fasts? Most don't even know the real date of the Passover year by year. They go by the Catholic days of Easter. If they want to keep the Biblical feasts, there is no law against it, as long as they don't think it makes them holier than Christians who, without a twinge of guilt, regard every day as the same.
IT'S ALL ABOUT JESUS, including the Sabbath. He is THE SABBATH. We are commanded to keep the Sabbath, which means that we are always to keep Jesus in our hearts, to always reverence Him as holy, and never turn our back on Him.
He is the rest that the New Testament tells us to enter into. When we rest in Him, we are strengthened for every work that He directs us to undertake, whether it is on the seventh day of the week, or the first day, or any day of the week.
Pastors have pointed out that Sunday is not a day of rest for them. They are busy all day, preaching sometimes two services, often counselling or encouraging people that day, as well. If they were to hold their services on Friday or Saturday, the same would hold true.
Most Christians do work on Saturday, as it is often the only day they have for doing heavier chores, such as mowing their lawn, weeding their flowerbeds or vegetable garden, washing the car, shopping for groceries. It doesn’t bother their conscience at all.
The Messianic Jews, Hebrew roots Christians, and Seventh Day Adventists keep the Sabbath on Saturday, and they are conscientious about the Old Testament dietary laws, but the women do not live separately from their family when they menstruate. All of the men don’t grow bushy beards. They don’t wear only pure cotton, linen, or woollen clothes. These people don’t keep the whole Law.
There is nothing wrong with choosing to eat healthier varieties of meat, as long as one does not think it makes them holier than other people to do so. If a person wants to do nothing but lay around on Saturday, or to go to a church service, it can be a great benefit, but it does not make them holier than other Christians.
There is nothing wrong with Christians having church on either Saturday or Sunday, but neither day makes them holier than other Christians. Christians can have church any day of the week that suits them. In the book of Acts, it says that Christians gathered to eat a meal together (break bread) every day of the week. That doesn’t mean that a lot of people gathered in one place and there was always a pastor who preached a sermon.
It means that two or three or more got together to enjoy fellowship and encourage each other, some sharing their insights from the Lord, praying for each others needs, sometimes getting a word or words of prophecy to build each other up. Sometimes they sang praise and worship songs together. It was informal. They may have also talked about their hobbies, or their kids’ accomplishments, as friends do when they get together.
It showed a pattern of fellowshipping with other Christians. When I visit with my Christian friends, we pray for each other’s concerns. We share about what the Lord has been showing us. Sometimes we do this in person, sometimes on the phone, sometimes online.
When I am talking with people who aren’t Christians and they tell me their troubles, I usually offer to pray for them, and most of the time, they let me. Service to God is supposed to happen everywhere at any time, as the Lord leads or makes opportunity.
There are a lot of Christians who don’t attend church in the traditional way. They don’t trust what the modern church in North America has become.
Many churches are just social clubs, with cliques. People can go to church feeling lonely, seeking meaningful fellowship, and leave feeling even lonelier for human interaction than when they arrived because disappointment has been added to it.
Pastors are often compromised with the world. Many of them are controllers who are interested in building their ministry and obtaining or maintaining prestige, rather than devoted to building the Kingdom of God. Some pastors have been involved in affairs, and some have even been involved in crime.
Some Christians have lost confidence in the pastors, but they still love Jesus. They still read the Bible, they still pray, and they have fellowship with other Christians, though maybe not every day. Whether one goes to church services once a week or just gets together with a few Christian friends, the important thing is to regard every day as holy to the Lord because Jesus is their Lord.
When Jesus starts His millennial reign, after the Antichrist is revealed and then defeated at the end of his seven year rule, the whole world will be ruled by His theocracy. The seventh day will be a day off for everybody, so there will be no hindrance to keeping it as a day of rest from work. Nobody will be sent to prison for loving and serving Jesus. There will be no hindrance to coming together in larger groups to celebrate Jesus in a special way on a special day every week. I suspect that those celebrations will be a time of physical exertion, with dancing and shouting and jumping for joy.
If Christians are going to be mindful of how we regard days, then maybe among ourselves, at least, we should call them 1st day, 2nd day, 3rd day, 4th day, 5th day, 6th day, and 7th day, instead of Sunday, the day of the sun, Monday, the day of the moon, Tuesday, the day of Tyr (the Norse god of war and law), Wednesday, the day of Woden, or for the Latins, the god Mercury, Thursday, the day of the Norse god Thor, Friday, the day of Frigga, (the German goddess of married love), or Saturday, the day of Saturn, a Roman god. We have been DELIBERATELY groomed, through language, to have regard for false gods, which breaks the very first of the Ten Commandments.
We are not going to have a pure language until the Millennium, a language that draws us further into the love of God, rather than languages that are engineered to manipulate the masses to submit to satan.
In the meantime, we can cope with this corrupt world by resting in the Lord Jesus and His work on the cross, wherein He permanently fulfilled all the Old Testament types and shadows that were part of the laws given to the Israelites in their furnishings and ceremonies of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Keeping the Sabbath in the manner of the Israelites was a ceremonial law.
Under the new covenant, the only ceremonies given to us are baptism (total immersion in water) after conversion, and keeping the Lord’s supper. Both of these relate to receiving Jesus as our Saviour. We can take communion by ourselves, as many times a day as we feel led, to meditate on what Jesus did for us and cultivate our gratitude, or with friends, as many times as we feel led, or in church services, though the latter often do not do so more than once a month. Smaller groups can do it more frequently.
If we rest in Jesus every day, if we honour Him every day, if we obey Him every day, we won’t have to worry about whether we are breaking the Sabbath, for we will be keeping it every day.
If Jesus impresses us to keep the Sabbath after the Israelite law, we should, but we are told to not judge others for their liberty regarding the keeping or not keeping of Old Testament holy days. [Galatians 4:10 & Colossians 2:16]
Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
[Psalm 119:11]
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