Observing the Sabbath...

"I tell you, Something greater and more exalted and more majestic than the temple is here! And if you had only known what this saying means, 'I desire mercy rather than sacrifice', you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." Matthew 12:6-8.

For those of us who have grown up in Christianity, we know that one of the ten commandments is to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Only two generations ago it was accepted that on the Sabbath (whether a Sunday or Saturday) no respectable person worked, children could not play outdoors, the only book you were allowed to read was the Bible and everyone must go to church on that day. My great uncle told me that when he was a child they had to stay indoors on Sundays and were only allowed to play with "Biblical" toys like Noah's ark and were allowed to read only the Bible. Not surprisingly, he grew up not wanting anything to do with Christ or Christianity.

Today we may pat ourselves on the back for recognizing our freedom from such legality and strictness. We know that we live under grace and not the law and believe ourselves to be living in real freedom since we may believe we are free to even play (or watch) sports on Sundays, go shopping on Sundays, work on Sundays and, of course, go to church on Sundays. However, in the process of patting ourselves on the back, our burgeoning pride may blind us to the Truth that Jesus so clearly gave to the Pharisees in Matthew 12 when they accused His followers of working on the Sabbath: "I tell you, Something greater and more exalted and more majestic than the temple is here! And if you had only known what this saying means, 'I desire mercy rather than sacrifice', you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." In both the strictest keeping of the law and even in our "freedom" we may still completely miss the meaning and intentions of God and be like the Israelites in the wilderness who knew the acts of God but did not know the ways of God as Moses did.

Observing the Stop Signs

Knowing that God would not give the commandment about the Sabbath if it were not necessary and did not have meaning today, He led me to look more deeply into it. The Hebrew word for Sabbath is "shabbathown" and is usually translated as "cease" or "rest". The root word "shabath" means:

to cease (or STOP!), desist, rest; to cause to cease, put an end to; to exterminate, destroy; to remove; to cause to fail.

This is so simple and basic that it is hard for us to accept it: in order to rest in Christ we have to stop doing things ourselves. So often what we think God would want us to do (or "What Would Jesus Do") leads us into bondage instead of freedom because it is instigated and implemented by our flesh (through our reasoning and what we think is best) instead of by the Spirit. Jesus Christ brings us FREEDOM and not bondage. When we work with Him, in Him and by Him, then there is an abundance of death-defying Life in operation:

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you'll recover your Life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matt 12:28-30 The Message).

One of the meanings of 'shabath' is to destroy or to cause to fail. Yes, God certainly does this with us! So often our discouragement and trials are because HE is working to cause all that is of our flesh to fail and be destroyed so that we may enter more fully into Him as our Rest! We do not like to fail or be destroyed and we will readily blame everything and everyone rather than accepting God's verdict upon our flesh and letting it die so that we may enter into His Rest. It is only when we truly Rest In Peace that the Spirit can come forth and be released from our body to live in and from the heavenlies where our true Life is. Sometimes what we go through in despair or discouragement arises simply from not believing and resting in Christ as our All. We must not forget our Resting Place: "My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray on mountains that seduce. They have gone from one sin to another, mountain to hill; they have forgotten their Resting Place. All who found them devoured them; and their adversaries said, We are not guilty, because they have sinned against the Lord, their true Dwelling Place of justice, even the Lord, the hope of their fathers." (Jeremiah 50:6,7).

Observing the Temple

The temple or dwelling place of God in the Old Testament is another picture of Christ as our Sabbath. The Sabbath was a holy day and the Temple was a holy place. The outer court was a busy and noisy place where animals were tethered, slaughtered and sacrificed on the altar. However, the temple building (or Sanctuary) consisted of the holy place and the Holy of Holies. The holy place had very little activity compared with the outer courts; it was where the lampstand, table of showbread and altar of incense were. The Holy of Holies was only entered into once a year and the priest did very little in it. He did not say anything, he was there in quiet solitude; all he did was take with him a pan of hot coals which he poured incense over so that fragrant smoke filled the room.

We know that in John 2:13-21 Jesus said He would destroy that temple and rebuild it, meaning Himself resurrected with us as part of His Body. However, I believe it is significant that Jesus did not say that the whole temple system would be destroyed and resurrected; only the Sanctuary itself. John used two different words for "temple" in that passage. The first two instances of the word "temple" in those verses are the word "hieron" which means all of the temple enclosure including its courts. But the word used three times at the end of that passage (including the one Jesus Christ used in reference to Himself) was the word "naos" which means ONLY the Sanctuary itself: the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. Matthew and Mark bear this out as they used exactly the same word for what Jesus had said (Matt 26:61, 27:40; Mark 14:58, 15:29) and other writers in the New Testament used the same word "naos" in reference to the Body of Christ instead of "hieron" (Acts 7:48, 17:24; 1 Cor 3:16,17, 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16, Eph 2:21, Rev 3:12, 21:22 to name a few).

One of the secular Greek uses of "naos" was "inmost part of a temple, containing the image of the god" and interestingly, "a portable shrine". This word is also used in Revelation 11:1,2: "Then I was given a measuring stick, and I was told, Go and measure the Temple (Sanctuary) of God and the altar, and count the number of worshipers. But do not measure the outer courtyard (outside the Sanctuary), for it has been turned over to the nations."

Instead of the foundation and measurement of Christ and the Law of the Spirit of Life in us being the One Thing and the one Measurement which unites us, we often judge and measure people by whether they fulfil the unspoken laws of our own expectations and beliefs of the outer courts. These judgments and discernments (which are fruit from the tree of the knowledge/discernment of good and evil) are based on OUR life and what affects us instead of being based solely on Christ's Life and what affects Him - in other words they are subjective rather than objective. Satan delights in tempting us to believe in our own discernment because those judgments not only have the potential to divide the Body of Christ, but they also succeed in getting our focus off of Christ and onto people. Our discernments and judgments are invalid because there is only One Who judges and discerns correctly and righteously and His ways and thoughts are so often the opposite to our ways, thoughts and feelings! HE is the Discerner and Revealer of hearts, going right to the inner sanctuary of our hearts instead of taking note or measurement of the outward observances and activities of the outer courts.

Observing the Eternal

Regardless of whether some "break the Sabbath" as the disciples of Jesus did or "observe the Sabbath" as the Pharisees did, we may sincerely believe that they are doing something unlawful and not permitted which then prevents us from sharing Life with one another. But all that is merely temporal, outward, external observances and judgments or 'measuring the outer courtyard' of the temple and as such is comparatively unimportant to the eternal, internal Truth of Christ and His Life dwelling in us! (Gal 2:16, 3:2,3) What is vital is the eternal. God is always concerned with the internal - the sanctuary of our heart - for the heart is where worship of either Self or God originates.

The shift from the external, symbolic observances of the law of the Old Testament to the internal experience of the New Testament has to take place within us - God With Us, dwelling, resting in us and us in Him. His Word is written in our hearts as we in turn rest and live in Him in our daily experience. Paul wrote much about this to the Galatians, encouraging them not to be bound by the law again:

"Now that you have found God (or should I say, now that God has found you), why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual powers of this world? You are trying to find favor with God by what you do or don’t do on certain days or months or seasons or years. I fear for you. I am afraid that all my hard work for you was worth nothing. Dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to live as I do in freedom from these things, for I have become like you Gentiles were - free from the law. So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law. For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace. But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith... What is important is faith expressing itself in love." (Galatians 4:9-11, 5:1,4-6).

The Old Testament is full of real life pictures and examples which we can learn from - Abraham, Jacob, Saul, David and Moses - were all tested on this issue of not going ahead themselves but resting and waiting for GOD. We have their mistakes recorded as not only important examples to teach us, but also to encourage us when we fail. Even though Abraham failed to believe God by producing Ishmael (with consequences which continue to this very day) yet he is known as a man of faith, for God proved him through Isaac. The challenge and test for us is to trust and have confidence in God even when we do not see any evidence suggesting that we should do so; to simply trust and rest in Him and to not move ahead and do things ourselves even when it appears as though God is not doing as He promised or is too slow according to our timetable. "For he who has once entered God's rest also has ceased from the weariness and pain of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own. Let us therefore be zealous to enter that Rest of God, to know and experience it for ourselves, that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience into which those in the wilderness fell." Hebrews 4:10,11.

Failing to wait patiently and steadfastly is failing to believe. Failing to believe is failing to trust. Failing to trust God is to have Self on the throne as lord and king and believe Self instead of God. Belief is not something we just acknowledge in our heads, it is something that must be in our hearts. If we simply believe from the head, our own emotions will easily control us and we will be tossed about by the winds of different teachings and the games of men (Eph 4:14). The bottom line is do I REALLY totally believe and trust God from my heart, no matter what? This was the test of the children of Israel in the wilderness, they wanted to enter the Promised Land but could not do so because of their unbelief. This is exactly the same issue for each of us as His children today:

"God’s promise of entering his place of rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to get there. For this Good News - that God has prepared a place of rest - has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t BELIEVE what God told them. For only we who believe can enter his place of rest. As for those who didn’t believe, God said, “In my anger I made a vow: They will never enter my place of rest," even though his place of rest has been ready since he made the world. We know it is ready because the Scriptures mention the seventh day, saying, “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.” So God’s rest is there for people to enter. But those who formerly heard the Good News failed to enter because they disobeyed God. So God set another time for entering his place of rest, and that time is TODAY. God announced this through David a long time later in the words already quoted: “Today you must listen to his voice. Don’t harden your hearts against him.” This new place of rest was not the land of Canaan, where Joshua led them. If it had been, God would not have spoken later about another day of rest. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who enter into God’s rest will find rest from their labors, just as God rested after creating the world." (Hebrews 4:6-10 NLT).

Our Father is grieved when we do not cease from our own work or activity and simply REST in Him and His accomplished Work, knowing the Word of Christ as our Home or Resting Place. He LONGS for His children to enter into His Rest... the Rest that He has freely provided to all at such cost: His Son Jesus Christ as Lord of the Sabbath.

Observing the Rest

In order to prevent us from fully apprehending Truth, our enemy will often try to push us to one extreme or the other and so twist things to his advantage. With this issue of rest, when God has opened our eyes to see and know Christ as our Sabbath Rest, Satan may then try to deceive us into so-called "resting" which means doing nothing (perhaps better described as sleep or spiritual death) and so bring to a halt what God does want us to be doing. The truth is that resting in Christ is a place of real Life, activity and growth; but not as we have ever known it because it is largely unseen by man! If we know that there is no Life and no internal growth then it may be the sleep of death we are in rather than Rest. If that is so, we need Christ to breathe His resurrection Life into us. The other extreme in reaction to that is to be deceived into fighting God's true rest by viewing it as 'the enemy trying to shut me down' and so we encourage ourselves to courageously battle on in the strength of our flesh even while zealously and sincerely believing we are doing the work of God... We fail to recognize that it is the Holy Spirit trying to shut down our flesh and that we are in fact fighting against God. Only those who KNOW their God will be strong and confident in Him and do His works (Daniel 11:32).

In any kingdom there can be only one king. In the kingdom of our individual lives, if Christ is not King and in control of us, then we are still the lord and king of our own lives and we will be kept busy actively defending and maintaining our position and territory at all costs instead of just resting and letting THE King defend that which is His. Either we know God IS God and we relinquish all control of our lives to Him and rest and grow in the knowledge of Christ, or we retain control of ourselves and live in anxiety and unrest. Resting in Peace is an amazing thing, it is letting go all control to God - allowing Christ to be Lord of ALL - the Lord of our Rest, our Sabbath. It ought to be the most obvious and easy thing to do since He IS God - and yet we find it so hard to do because we have to first give up on ourselves, stop trusting ourselves and really start trusting and believing God!

The encouraging thing about knowing Him as our Rest is that we can DO nothing to bring it about except submit to Him and rest; we simply have to know Him, yield and rest in Him and allow Him to do it all! One of the Greek words for rest is also translated as Liberty - we are free to rest, He is free to work! This is HIS work, and His choice and His desire for us and we simply must yield to Him: "For the Lord has chosen Zion, He has desired it for His habitation; This is My Resting Place forever, says the Lord, here will I dwell, for I have desired it. I will surely and abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread. Her priests also will I clothe with salvation, and her saints shall shout aloud for joy." (Psalm 132:13-15). He provides all we need - bread, clothing, joy - all is found in His Provision of Christ!

Oh, the wisdom of keeping and observing our Sabbath... of not working or doing our own works, but instead resting and knowing the Liberty and Holiness of Christ and keeping our eyes fixed on Him as our Sabbath... May He exterminate and destroy the restless flesh within each of us and always cause it to fail; for then we will come to truly "observe the Sabbath/Rest" Who is Christ!

"I heard a mighty voice from the throne and I perceived its distinct words, saying, See! The abode of God is with men, and He will live among them; and they shall be His people, and God shall personally be with them and be their God. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more, neither shall there be anguish nor grief, nor pain any more, for the old conditions and the former order of things have passed away. And He Who is seated on the throne said, See! I make all things new... Record this, for these sayings are faithful and true." (Revelation 21:3-5).