We all know the
story. An old Hebrew man named Moshe (Moses) was tending his flock when he
happened to meet upon something that most certainly surprised him: a bush that
was on fire, but it wasn’t being burnt up. It remained completely intact as the
blaze flickered, beckoning to him, appealing to his curiosity. Moses moved
towards the bush. But, something else unexpected happened. A voice started
calling his name. A voice from in the burning bush.
Moshe answered,
“Here I am.” Imagine his fear. Given his Egyptian upbringing, he probably
thought, What sort of enchantment is this?
The voice
answered, “Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where
you are standing is holy ground.” The owner of the voice introduced Himself: “I
am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of
Jacob.” Moses was frightened, scared to look at this being, this God; so he hid
his face. (The account of Moses and the bush can be found in Exodus chapter 3.)
A short
digression
The point of the
above introduction will be revealed. But first, I must deviate a bit. There is
a common teaching in Christendom. It declares that because there is a “rest”
now, there is no more need for a literal, 24-hour Sabbath rest. This is based
on such Bible passages as Hebrews 4. The argument is that since by accepting
Christ, we enter into a (Sabbath) rest, the seventh-day Sabbath is no longer
obligatory for people of God; that is, for His new covenant people. Let us
briefly analyze this.
They are correct
in saying that by accepting Christ, we are given rest:
Hebrews 4:3 Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,
“So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”
Hebrews 4:6 It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who
formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their
disobedience.
But
that is not all. Being the last day of the week, the Sabbath day
pictures the eternal rest that God’s people will receive at the end of
the age. The rest we receive now can be lost by turning away from the Lord
(Hebrews 6:4-6). Christians who divert from the Lord Yahweh lose this present
rest and never get to partake of the future rest. Let’s go on:
KJV Hebrews 4:1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of
entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
Hebrews
The epistle was
written to believers, converted Christians (Hebrews 3:1), and yet he is saying
they should attempt to enter the rest of which he speaks; and that the
promise to enter that rest was still not fulfilled. Were he just referring to
the rest of this life, he would say they’d already entered it. But no; he is
speaking of the later rest here; the rest that is reserved for those who accept
the Messiah.
Hebrews 4:9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;
The word bolded here is translated from the Greek word sabbatismos.
Thayer’s Greek Definitions explains it thusly:
1) a keeping sabbath
2) the blessed rest from toils and troubles looked for in the age to
come by the true worshippers of God and true Christians
This
is the only time that the word sabbatismos is used in the
Bible. If the intended meaning was the same as the other Greek words used to
mean rest in this and chapter (katapausis and katapauō, which are related words) as referring to the rest
that a Christian receives from God, then wouldn’t it be used more often? Interchangeably with these other
words?
Couldn’t it be
that the reason sabbatismos is for the meaning Thayer gives in sense 1?
Used here to show that in light of the rest of Christ, the Christian keeps the
Sabbath in light of the meaning and context of the rest we have received in
Christ (just as we keep the Lord’s Supper in light of the time Jesus will eat
it with us; Matthew 26:27-29) and the rest that He will give in the future,
when some will have to be faced with the rude awakening that they come short of
receiving the promised rest?
The heart of the
matter
Since the
Sabbath speaks to not only the rest of this life in Christ, but the ultimate
rest of the future of God, the Sabbath has not seen its true fulfilment as yet.
Those who say the Sabbath is not necessary for Christians argue based on its
fulfilment; their claim is that by accepting Christ, we “keep the Sabbath”
every day by living the Christian life and resting in Him. But honestly, all of
this is truly not even the heart of the matter.
Why was the
Sabbath to be kept in the first place?
Exodus
20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it
holy.
Exodus 20:9 Six days you
shall labor and do all your work,
Exodus 20:10 but the
seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any
work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or
maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
Exodus 20:11 For in six
days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them,
but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day
and made it holy.
Verse 11 shows why
the Sabbath was to be observed. The reason is that the Lord rested on the
Sabbath day, which led to His blessing it, and making it holy. When people
declare that the Sabbath is no longer part of the moral requirement, they
hardly, if ever, address this, the holiness of the day. The Lord Yahweh blessed
it from the beginning (Genesis 2:2-3); that is why it was to be kept.
So, the natural question to follow this is:
Is the Sabbath
day still holy now?
Can anyone deny
that it is? The apostolic writings of the New Testament never declare that the
day was stripped of its sanctity, whether by the resurrection of Jesus or by
the availability of rest for God’s people. Hebrews 4, so prevalently used to
make the point of this life being an eternal Sabbath-rest, does not say the
Sabbath is no longer holy. So, we have no reason to believe it is not
holy. Whether the Sabbath refers only to the rest of this world as we walk with
the Messiah or the rest of the
Was the day
given to and holy to
Take off your
sandals
Imagine now, that
God came and said to you, “Remove the shoes from your feet because you are
standing on holy ground.” What would you do? Would you walk over to another
piece of land and take off your shoes there? Imagine if you did. Imagine if you
said, “It doesn’t matter where I remove my shoes, as long as do it somewhere.
All ground is equal before God.” Would you expect God to be happy with what you
have done?
The Sabbath day
is holy. There is no way around that fact. We can try to avoid it, but it is
still there, waiting for us to acknowledge it. The ground that the Lord chooses
is holy and to stand on it with your shoes on when He tells you not to is an
insult to Him as well as a sin. We cannot pick another piece of ground and name
it holy. We simply cannot. There is nothing wrong with taking off your shoes
somewhere else; but it simply must be done at the place where God has selected.
The same goes for the Sabbath day.
Have you noticed
the trend in Christendom? Look what has happened. What God has made sacred does
not matter anymore. We now honour what man has named holy. We have
chosen days that we prefer; we have named seasons sacred that He never gave
such sanctification. And yet we totally ignore the things the Lord Yahweh
sanctified Himself. We give Him whatever time we desire, and He has to just
accept it. His sacred times do not matter to us. Does that seem right? Do you
think God is pleased with that?
We are to
live out the meaning of the Sabbath every day of our lives. But the day is still
sacred and thus must be treated as such. We should not treat something set
apart by God just as we treat what is not. God commanded the Sabbath day to be
a day of rest and assembly of the people of God (Leviticus 23:3).
I think it’s
time we “take off our sandals” for “holy ground” that is the Sabbath day. If we
love the Lord Yeshua and His Father, we will do our best to honour what He has
named holy. Come; let us have a weekly taste of the eternal rest He has in
store, a weekly reminder of God’s plan for His people. ש
Note: All Bible
quotations are taken from the New International Version (NIV).
© Copyright 2006, 2008 Keneil Thomas
·
Anthony Coore’s Should Christians Keep the Sabbath?
·
Feasts of God: The
Hidden Design
·
Colossians 2:
Paul’s True Message
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