The Sabbath Was Fulfilled in Christ – The Tabernacle Through the Eyes of Christ #16
Jesus says, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” Remember it’s a Sabbath day. “Immediately the man was made whole, took up his bed, and walked. On the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews, therefore, said unto him that was cured, ‘It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.'” Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me? You just got healed and you guys are going to criticize me for dragging my bed.
What, you want me to leave my bed here so that I’m going to have to come back? Maybe I’ll be crippled in the journey back again, getting back here to get my bed. I would have told them to go pound some sand. ♪ ♪ Leviticus 23, “And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations. And these are my feasts. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation ye shall do no work therein; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.” And then goes on to talk about Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, and so on. But I want to start with the Sabbath. For most people, they just, who are not in the know, think Sabbath Saturday.
But actually, Sabbath traditionally would start Friday at sundown, and go through Saturday until Saturday sundown. So that would be the full Sabbath. That’s how time also was reckoned for the Sabbath like that. So it’s important to understand that the Sabbath and Sunday are two different things. But I want to kind of explore this a little bit more because there’s a lot more to the Sabbath. Sabbath, when I say that, it’s not like Sabbath, it’s exciting. Right? No, it’s not exciting at all. Okay, let’s just be clear. I’m even aware it’s not an exciting subject. However, when you study it and you’re looking through the lenses, you put on those glasses and you see Christ, it does get exciting because it’s no longer an old dispensation. So we know that God created the heavens and the earth and everything that’s in it, including and on it, including man. And it says that God declared the seventh day to be the day of rest.
And the observance of the Sabbath was, in essence, a confession or an acknowledgment to the God of all earth. See, we have this wrong. Even modern Jewry tends to err on this side that thinks it’s a rest from our labors, but it is not. The original implementation of this day intended to get us to stop, one day to really stop everything we are doing that would be for self and self-purposes and to solely and strictly focus on God’s completed and finished acts and work that He did. So we tend to make this mistake of forgetting essentially what the Sabbath is. And when God says He declared that day a Sabbath, it is because, listen carefully, because this is in this statement, much is revealed.
God ceased His work. So He created, He did all this, He makes Adam, He ceases from His work and He declares this day to be special to Him. First and foremost, it’s not special to man, although when it gets implemented in the law, it becomes somewhat of a mandate. But there’s a good reason when you begin to pick this apart to look a little bit deeper as to why God would designate this particular day. God had a plan from the beginning. Now the way that plan was expressed, changed over time and for various reasons and purposes, which are laid out for any person who will read it abundantly clear. Think about this. The people were in Egypt’s bondage. They were in Egypt for over 430 years, not 430 years of bondage, but they were in Egypt from the time that Jacob and his children arrived and started living in Goshen to the time that they were in bondage, to the time that they were set free, 430 years had passed.
Now you tell me if we don’t read about Jacob’s father Jacob, Israel. We don’t read that. He understands where the Sabbath is. Now he may have, God may have told him, but there’s no implementation of it. So think of it this way, much of what we learn when the children of Israel come out of Egypt’s bondage will be new to them. We tend to just think, oh yeah, well they must have been celebrating or they knew that in Egypt, but how could they have known that in Egypt when so much time had ela…, sorry, just take a look at our country okay, from the founding of our country until now, has this country changed radically, almost like turned on its head upside down? And that’s not 430 years.
So imagine what another 200 years of this country in existence could be, right? Never mind. So what I’m saying to you is that’s what you have to remember when they were in Egypt. We automatically assumed that when they came out, they had a frame of reference. They did not. Much of what God said and did had not been seen before. The instructions had not been heard before. Think about this. If you spell certain things out in a law-like manner for people who do not know, who have complete ignorance, you have just given them something to live by.
So we look at the Sabbath and there are things that we can glean and understand about the Sabbath. For example, as I said, you’ve got to go back to the Genesis account. But the thing that’s kind of crazy if you think about this is that when we look at the Sabbath, there is almost in some places a covenant attachment, much like circumcision, but different.
Remember God gives the order to Abraham, which was before the law, that they will become refined in the law to circumcise every male child on the eighth day. But before the giving of the law, there was no law per se to circumcise. That was a sign of a pact between mankind, whom God had chosen, and God. So the Sabbath almost becomes a covenant differently. If you think about it that way, the covenant is almost by design, forcing the individual every single day of the week to stop if they didn’t do it in the week, which I would find it very hard to believe living around this tent and being confronted with much slaughter and worship all day long. I don’t know how you would not think of God, but the Sabbath was implemented as another way to get a man to say, “Stop what you’re doing” and focus.
Focus on worship, on praise for what God has done in creation, for what God has done in deliverance, and so on. We don’t tend to think of the Sabbath that way. Now, whoever broke keeping the Sabbath broke the covenant with God, and that’s why you’ll read that in certain places it says that for someone who did not adhere and follow the Sabbath, they could be punished by death. Now that’s pretty severe if Sabbath is only intended to be a day of cessation from work. That’s pretty severe. Why would you impose such a harsh penalty, but if it’s to get the individual to look Godward, then I can see it. It makes complete sense. It was at Mount Sinai that the observance of the Sabbath would be instituted after God made a covenant with the people.
Now, if you turn in your Bible to the book of Exodus. I want you to check something out. Again, it’s a thing we’ve all read commonly and we’ve seen it many times, but there’s something very unique about the fourth commandment in the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20, remember Christ said, “I did not come to destroy but fulfill the law,” right? So everything must be fulfilled in Him, and some of these things by the way end up getting nailed to the tree, which Paul aptly puts out there. But this is interesting. Of all the things that are reiterated in the Decalogue, you begin at verse 8, Exodus 20, verse 8, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” Now the first mistake is English readers reading that and thinking somehow, purification, ritualization, ceremony.
How about, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it set apart,” for Him, right? That’s first. “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath” Of who? “Of the Lord thy God. In it, thOf shalt not do any work thou or thy son, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger, that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them,” that is in them is and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” So it’s interesting that that takes up 1, 2, 3, and 4 verses, and the rest of them are just, you know, “Honor thy mother and thy father, thou shall not kill.” So this is expanded upon. That tells you there’s something more there we need to, we need to figure out.
If you will, turn with me just a few pages to Exodus 31. And Exodus 31 beginning at verse 12. “And the Lord speak unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths,” plural, “you shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.” Now, remember what I said about when God says a memorial or in perpetuity, when He uses those words, there is, there’s always going to be a deeper double or even triple meaning to what’s there.
So when God says, “for generations,” usually that’s where you’re going to look for the underneath part that’s going to take you into the New Testament somewhere, because when God says forever it usually means forever. All right, verse 14 says, “You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy unto you. Every one that defileth shall surely be put to death.” Again, isn’t that harsh if it’s just simply a day of rest? “For whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among the people.” Oops. Six days may work be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest.
Holy to the Lord, whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Now, let me help you out here a little bit because the Sabbath obviously as we’ll see is in Christ. The writer of Hebrews explains that to us clearly, and I’m going to show you some other places where we get great clarity. But let me reread this and make a commentary. Six days may be done, work may be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest. Holy to the Lord, whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. We in the New Testament, I’m just going to cut to the chase really quickly, because I’m going to be refueling to this throughout the message. We in the New Testament are Sabbathing daily in Christ, not one day Sabbath every day.
So to stop and be recognizing Him in all things, we are Sabbathing daily. So whoever works on the thSabbathingI want you to make that more modern application to whoever’s trying to work their way in versus looking at Christ’s finished work and resting in it. He says, “Here shall be surely put to death.” In other words, this is what Paul highlights about the works of the flesh versus the works of the Spirit. So if you’re trying to sort this out, we begin by saying that there are sub-texts right here in the text that we should be mindful of.
“Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant.” So the writer of the Hebrews says, “These things are about to decay, to pass away, or they have served their purpose and their time.” That’s right. There’s your key that there must be some secondary or tertiary meaning to the Sabbath,” perpetual covenant. God doesn’t make a covenant and then break it. Now, the same verbiage is used in the New Testament when they’re sitting down. He says, “This blood,” basically, the cup of the new covenant. So there’s never a time when God says, “I’m, I gave a covenant and then I destroyed it.” No, this is the unfolding of the fullness of what God promised back there. Don’t think it’s some… God ripped this up and he started anew. It doesn’t work like that.
So what we have here is also a problem of interpretation. As I said earlier, the problem we encounter with interpreting it from English is, “A Sabbath does not mean rest because of exhaustion or fatigue, but rather to cease.” And in fact, there are other meanings to this word, which I will get to in a minute, but a celebration of God’s work being completed in creation. But at Sinai, it’s more than just ceasing. What we’re going to see is a reminder, of the first Sabbath given to a people who had been brought into a covenant by God’s salvific action. And I say that for one purpose because if you turn to Deuteronomy 5, this is your time to do a little bit of work.
I know it’s painful, to turn the pages, but bear with me. Alright, so in Deuteronomy 5:12, “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.” So not personal preference. God said, “That’s that. You’re going to do it for six days. Thou shalt, thou labor and do all thy work.” But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. Again, it doesn’t say it’s the Sabbath of the children of Israel.
It’s the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, not your Sabbath. You don’t get the Sabbath, it’s Him, and you get to participate in it. That’s a novel idea, right? The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, of the Lord thy God. In it, thou shall not do any work, thou nor thy son, thy daughter, thy manservant, thy maidservant. I don’t knomanservantontrolmaidservanty of your animals from not working. And by the way, they considered the act of reproduction work. So I don’t know when your animals got frisky on the Sabbath. What did you do? Holy cow! Wait it’s going to get worse. Nor thine ox, nor thine ass. Don’t know what to tell you if the shoe fits where it, nor any of thy cattle.
So you know, God goes to great lengths to tell you that He doesn’t want anybody doing anything, and you better get your animals under control, right? I don’t know, I still don’t know how you do that. Sit Nellie. All right. Nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as manservant. So everybody, no exceptions. But here’s the key to what I want to point out to you, which is in addition to something we just read. Verse 15, it’s almost as though God attaches the Sabbath in connection to this. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day. It’s almost as though in reading that 15th verse attached everything, it’s as though God is saying, because of my, God speaking, not me, because of my efforts, because of my work, because of my endeavor, because of all that I’ve done for you, including bringing you out of Egypt, you are to keep this day.
So he adds to it a salvation component, and that becomes important for us in the New Testament. I’m not there yet, so give me a chance to catch up, but you can begin to see that God is attaching some concepts to the Sabbath. Deliverance is one of them. The children of Israel identified with God, with Yahweh, by sharing in the Sabbath, which was to be a time of refreshment, if you will, but refreshment in the Lord, worship. But the instructions to keep the day holy or set apart, reveal the greater purpose simply than just ceasing from the labor temporarily. The day was set aside for worship, and devotion to God, not for self-serving purposes. And I’m going to repeat a lot of things, but they need to be repeated. One more point to all this, which I just said, but you can’t, I can’t say this enough, it shall be a Sabbath to the Lord.
So the preposition there implies possession. Whose Sabbath was it? The Lord’s, exactly. This is what makes me go batty, is when I hear people talking about the Sabbath, and they don’t even include the fact that God said it was His, not theirs. Just saying, okay. So this is kind of at the core. If we understand it’s the Lord’s Sabbath, at the core of why people were not to pursue personal care or take care of their issues, but rather to take time and opportunity. I hate when people do this because I’ve heard people say a divine appointment. It’s a very cheap televangelist-type lingo. But if, if that’s what resonates with you, an appointment with God, I hate to say that.
But in matters about God, God, you know, if you read through what God says, He’s a jealous God, well He wants, He wants the recognition. You might say, well, you’re, you’re humanizing God, you’re anthropomorphizing Him. But think of it, that’s why He said, I’m a jealous God, you’ll have no other gods before me, and I want you to acknowledge Me. Just stop for a second and think about this. God knew that these people, although He rained down the plagues and He brought them out of Egypt with a deliverer and He gave them a structure and a system and a society and purpose. He still wanted them to acknowledge Him. Now you might think, well that sounds kind of like, eh, but if you think about it, God risked a lot by just trying to deliver these people, even though they essentially went into Egypt’s bondage by a prophetic word, which was foretold to Abraham, which was made good in, obviously in Jacob and his children.
But the point here is this and simply put, failure to acknowledge God. So God says, “I’m not going to wait for you to do it spontaneously, that may never happen. I’m going to orchestrate a day where you will be forced. I command you,” imagine that, “to recognize Me in all that I’ve done.” And that kind of gives you a nutshell of why the Sabbath would have been instituted at this point. Okay? We’re not into the New Testament yet. So the Sabbath prefigured something greater than a day declared. And unfortunately, the children of Israel, if you know their history, and I’ve taught on this enough, did not receive the fulfillment of the anticipated rest. They did not. And the reason why is that many of those, the vast majority of those that came out of Egypt rebelled. And what did God do? It says, “God saw their bones in the wilderness.” So many of them did not enter into, we’ll call that their promised rest.
At Massah and Maribah, if you remember, the children of Israel tested God and there He swore. That’s kind of interesting that they would not enter into his rest. Think about that. I mean, again, if we’re so familiar with the book, it could be like, you know, I just said like, how’s the weather? But if you’re reading it and you go back and you read the chapter where God says, “You will not enter into my rest.” That’s almost like that.
If I was one of those wandering in the wilderness, I’d be a little bit taken back that God just declared that I’m not entering into His rest. That’s a big problem. Based on, of course, their disobedience and their rebellious nature. Turn with me to Matthew 11, so we can start putting some New Testament flesh and blood on this. Matthew 11, and then we’ll be in Matthew 12, but Matthew 11, something really important here, and I’m going to show you the beginning of obtaining the rest that God was prefigured in the Sabbath actually, begins to be realized here in the words of Christ. Matthew 11, 28 says, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you who learn of me, I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest in your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That word, Strong’s 373, is a word called anaphase ana, “up”, and patio, you’ll recognize menopause. Pauo, to pause, to cease. All right? And this word occurs in different places, but this is the first time that we begin to unfold a little bit of what this means, and don’t think that you know exactly what it means, because it’s, it’s actually kind of complex. Let me look at the 12th chapter with you. So just a few verses later, the 12th chapter of Matthew begins, and this might help us to start gleaning some info here. “At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn, and his disciples were hungered and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold thy disciples, do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.
But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he hungered, and they that were with him? How he entered into the house of God and did eat the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priest.” Did you not know about that? Or have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priest in the temple profaned the Sabbath and is blameless? “But I say unto you that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if he had known what this meaneth I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would have you, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.” In those words something is said that we could read right by and not take into account, which is Jesus is saying, I am the Lord of the Sabbath.
I can do what I want. I, I establish the rules. I make the rules. I say, and my say is, this whole passage, think of it, the Pharisees saw it and they began to say, look what they’re doing. Now that tells you a couple of things. It does tell you, and people tend, again, I love this, people tend to forget that Jesus was born into a life of Jewry, that he would have been part of the ceremonialism and all the things that His parents did, including the Sabbath.
So it’s interesting that in front of these religious people he says, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. And what is even more interesting than that is we’re constantly discussing this. It’s a constant discussion. I hear people discuss this all the time about Saturday versus Sunday. The discussion is not about the day of the week. That’s the problem. So the Sabbath didn’t move to Sunday. I’ll just spell that out. We have something different that’s happening here and we’ll need to get to the book of Hebrews for me to explain this, but Sunday was set aside to commemorate a new event. Sunday was set aside to commemorate the Lord’s rising, from the grave. And if you look at what Paul says in much of his writings, you can kind of see that that is the implication.
We have something brand new that happened here. No one ever was celebrated for coming out of the grave, living, preaching, being around the disciples, and then ascending. So something new set the tone for Sunday. But do not make the mistake again, which most people do, which is Sunday is the Lord’s day. It is indeed the Lord’s day, but so is every other day the Lord’s day. And then people say, well, I couldn’t keep up with a God who demands my attention for every day of the week. Wow.
Okay, it seems to me you may not be that interested in knowing about God then because someone interested becomes an integral part of your life, not just a Sunday type thing. So let’s park that though we’ll, we’ll come back to it. So something that Jesus says, in one of the Scriptures. He says, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.” Again, what does the church world for the most part do? They claim the Sabbath as their own. Again, it’s this warped, you’ve even got groups. And again, I’m going to take flak for this, but I’ll say it because I must speak the truth unpopular as it is in these days. Seventh-day Adventist, Seventh-day Baptist, and there are many Sabbatarians within Christendom.
They follow Christ, but they also impose the keeping of the Sabbath. And if you read the 1689 Baptist Confession, there is an article on the Sabbath or following the Sabbath. And this is the question that has come up honestly in my mail, in letters to me more often than I can count. So here’s the problem. The first introduction, as I said, is until the giving of the law.
So the introduction, if you will, of the Sabbath, which is in creation, until the giving of the law. The Sabbath’s about God’s finished work and His ceasing from His labors. I’ve already said that, so that’s one. But then with the coming of Christ, something radical does not, it’s not that it changes. It’s the embodiment. The Gospels record, for example, if you’ll turn with me to Luke 14. So again, similar passages of things, but with nuances. “Came to pass as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day, and they watched him.” They were just waiting for him to do something that they could comment on and disagree with, right? Which still goes on to this day.
“Behold, there was a certain man before him who had the dropsy. Jesus answering, spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?'” And I love this because he knows the answer. And remember, he is Lord of the Sabbath. So this is kind of like a trick question. It says, “They held their peace.” Yeah, it’s interesting how to shut people up, right? “He held their peace and he took him, healed him, and let him go, and answered them, saying, ‘Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen in a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?’ And they could not answer him again to these things.” Then he puts forth a parable and the passage goes on.
But the point is here, I think, I want you to think long and hard about this because he just heals a man, sends him away. Later on, they’re going to condemn him for this act. But instead of talking about healing, he says, “If your animal falls in the ditch on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you get it out of the ditch?” And this telegraphs your part of the problem within Judaism. Still to this day, it’s called box-checking, okay? So God said, God gave this order. So here’s a poor animal suffering in the ditch. Oh, it’s the Sabbath. I got to wait, until sundown. Well, that poor thing will probably struggle and die in the ditch. What’s better, to rescue and save that which is dying and risk the ramifications from God or leave it there and be cruel to that thing, which is basically what Jesus is showing in healing the man?
But that also he is Lord of the Sabbath. Bet you never heard a message like this. It’s going to go in every direction to bust most people’s ideologies of the Sabbath. Now, as I said with the coming of Christ, we read this passage and we see, they go silent. What do you do with this? And I guess they couldn’t reply to any of what he said, because the reality is it would make you callous against God’s creation and care for God’s creation.
It would also make you, if you weren’t willing to help your fellow man, think about this, because there’s all these, “Love thy neighbor,” right? Well then, “I’m conflicted. Which law do I adhere to, the Sabbath or the loving the neighbor,” right? Jesus says, “Put an end to that.” And he did, and that’s why they were silent. This was also a way to begin ending the ceremonialism. I want you to also think of that. See, Jesus for His short lifetime incarnate would have most definitely participated in many of these holy days and set times. And out of His mouth, He utters these things as if to say, “This is coming to an end. It’s coming to a close.” And it would, the closure would be realized at His resurrection.
So you’ve got to put all this together. Now, you’ve got to do something else that happens. It’s a similar passage in John 5, but now you get the full impact of Jesus’ healing. John 5, “And these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water, for an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, troubled the water: whosoever then first, after the troubling of the water, went and stepped in, was made whole of what’s over disease he had.” So it’s kind of like musical chairs for healing, right? “And a certain man was there which had an infirmity thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him lie, knew that he had been now a long time in that case, and said unto him, ‘Will thou be made whole?’ The impotent man answered, ‘Sir, I have no man when the water is troubled to put me into the pool, but while I am coming to another steppeth down before me.'” So in essence I’m too messed up to get down to where I need to be, so it’s a vicious circle and I can never get well.
Jesus says, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” Remember it’s a Sabbath day. “Immediately the man was made whole, took up his bed, and walked. On the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews, therefore, said unto him that was cured, ‘It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to take up thy bed.'” Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me? You just got healed and you guys are going to criticize me for dragging my bed. What, you want me to leave my bed here so that I’m going to have to come back? Maybe I’ll be crippled in the journey back again, getting back here to get my bed. I would have told them to go pound some sand.
He answered them and said, “He that made me whole, the same said unto me, ‘Take up thy bed and walk.’ Then ask them him, ‘What man is that which said unto thee, ‘Take up thy bed and walk?’ And he that was healed wist not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward, Jesus findeth him in the temple and said unto him, ‘Behold thou art made whole, sin no more lest a worse thing comes unto thee.’ The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole. And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus sought to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day.” Let me just pause and say one thing.
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See, it wasn’t that they cared more about God and God’s Word. They cared more about their ceremonialism and their box-checking. They did not care for love thy neighbor, love thy brother, their brethren, but just box-checking. Therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay him because he had done these things on the sabbath day.” And as a sidebar, if God, the Father disapproved of what the Son was doing, I’m sure this would have been laid out plain, but there’s, there’s good reason in here. Jesus answers them, “My Father knoweth worketh, my Father worketh hitherto and I work.” In other words, this is of God. “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him because he had not only broken the Sabbath but said also that God was his father making himself equal with God.” Now listen, you know, if I met somebody and they did something miraculous like that, and then they said that they were equal with God, I might just have to pay a little bit of attention because miraculously they did what no one else could do.
But no, their thing is to kill him, right? So I don’t know. It just, it’s, it almost appears at face value kind of nutty that they couldn’t see this. The other thing that I think is, is kind of tragic here is people do not understand the Sabbath laws were, as I said, a shadow, a type, that there could be rest from trying to enter into the kingdom. And by that, I mean how many tried to work their way in to try and do good, to try and perform, whatever it is. But in the new covenant we are taught, Christ did all the work. We rest in Him and His finished work. So not a Sabbath to be performed in the ceremony, but one that clearly shows what we need. For that, you turn to Hebrews 3.
And I’m going to start at verse 7, and I want to show you a couple of things here. Of course, in this passage, the writer of Hebrews is saying how Jesus is superior to Moses. And starting in the seventh verse, I’m just jumping in the middle of things, so don’t fault me for that, because there’s, I’ve got to show you some things here. “Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith,” verse 7, “today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness.
When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said, ‘They do always err in their heart, and they have not known my ways.'” And that, read the Old Testament, it’s plain as day. “So I swear in my wrath, here it is, they shall not enter into my rest.” And I want you to see that that word right there, 2663, is katabasis, pauses, and katabasis, anaplasmosis, they’re all derivatives of pauses to cease or to pause, from the same word I originally described. “They shall not enter into my rest.” “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God.
But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold to the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. While it is said today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke, howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swear that they would, should not enter him into his rest,” there’s the word again, katabasis, “but to them that believe not.” So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. And if you read into the fourth chapter, it talks about this, “Let us fear lest a promise being left of entering into his rest,” there it is again, “and if you should seem to come short of it. For unto us, the gospel was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them.” It didn’t do anything. It made no change, made no difference, did nothing, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest.” Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, and God did rest the seventh day from all his work.
And in this place again, “if they shall enter into my rest,” seeing, therefore, it remaineth, that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief.” Again, he limited a certain day saying in David, “Today, after so long a time, as it is said today if you will hear his voice,” third time, “harden not your hearts.
For if,” not Jesus, but Joshua had given them rest, that’s what it is, reads in Hebrew, I mean the Greek rather, “then would he not afterward have spoken of another day, there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” And if you read in your margin, it says, “a keeping of a Sabbath.” But read on and it tells you it’s not a day like we understand the Old Testament was.
“Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest,” to enter into that rest, “lest any man falls after the example of unbelief. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” So if you read that passage, what is essentially saying is as we faith, we trust Christ for our salvation, for his finished work, for eternity, for entering in and it could keep going.
We are entering into that rest. It was a promise given at the beginning. It is a perpetual covenant if you will. That covenant, the shadow was introduced in a day. The substance was introduced in the person and the reality after the resurrection becomes a daily, if you will, recognition of God’s acts, activity, creation, his finished work that we never had either in the law or after the law anything to do with except to be focused on him. Remember I said to you, Jesus takes the law, thou shall not kill, but I say unto you, or it is written, thou shall not kill, but behold I say unto you, if you hate in your heart, your as guilty as a murderer.
He took the law and put it on a much higher level, but then says it’s all fulfilled in me. You know, you no longer have to perform rituals. So the Mosaic Sabbath, what Moses issued to the people, a shadow, prefiguring what could not yet be understood in a person. How would you explain this? See this is what I’m saying to you, God had a sound reason for introducing himself, his ways, and his words to these people who, as I said, for all the time in bondage would have had no frame of reference. And then out of bondage wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and then for those who did indeed enter into the land, whatever time there that passed again, God was chronic, if you will, re-educating people over and over and over and over again.
Hence, having the tabernacle in the middle of the community was a good way to keep reminding people to stay focused. This is why if you look at America, most cities, most major cities in America always had a church in the center of town, patterned after what? The Old Testament. If you had this religious entity that invited people, we’ll call it an institution in the middle of town, it would remind people of their comings and goings of God. Good luck with that now. But anyway, all right, more on this. In Romans, and I think it’s Romans 14, but let me turn there and I will tell you if I am right.
Yes, Romans 14, Paul says, “Let him that eateth despise, let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and let him, let not him which eateth not judge him with eateth, for God hath received him.” And then he goes on to say. “one esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his mind.” And why is that important? Because he’s talking about observances, whether we should adhere to a day or not.
And it seems obvious to me here that if you look at the early church, you’ve got a collection of people. You’ve got a ton of people who were formally following Judaism. You’ve got the Gentiles, the pagans. So it’s very clear to me that Paul would use this type of language to address both Jew and Gentile or Jew and pagan. For the Jew would have been confused, “Well now what do I do now? Do I follow this?” Or do, really if you want to think about it this way, the confusion has gone on for 2,000 years, and people are still confused.
And by that, it’s self-evident when I say Seventh-day Adventist, Sabbatarians, they’re still confused because that one, setting aside of one day for a Sabbath came to an end. And we who are of the New Testament disposition, we are Sabbathing daily in Christ. And Sunday is the Lord’s Day only for this reason. Paul explains this and he says, “On the first day of the week,” blah, blah, blah, “it’s gathering together what was newly formed, which was the church which didn’t exist until Christ rose and ascended.” The church did not exist technically until the day of Pentecost if you will. But Paul wrote in a way where both Jew and Gentile could understand that these days became irrelevant actually because there was something more on the horizon for us to process.
And if you want to add to that, don’t just think, “Well, I just read something and it’s not clear.” Turn to Colossians, because there Paul does not hold back and I think he spells it out even clearer there. So in Colossians 2, first in verse 7, where he says, “Rooted and built up,” boy, this is so scribbled up, I can barely read it, “Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving, beware,” here it is, “Beware lest any man spoils you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not fBewareist.” You keep reading verse 16, “Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat or a drink or respect of a holiday, holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days which are a shadow of things to come but the body is of Christ.” A shadow of things, he spells it out right there.
How could we miss this? How could people miss these days, these set times, shadows of things to come, and the thing to come was Christ, and when we begin to understand how He fulfills them? So I just explained to you, Christ replaces that singular day. Now I can see why some people would go for this angle. I’m just going to tell you because I tell you everything, all the different dimensions of this. If God created in six days and on the seventh day He took rest, there was something new that did happen with the last Adam coming out of the grave. So you could say, in fact, in Christ was a new creation made and the creation essentially has begun anew in Christ in that we have eternal life through him. We’re no longer stuck in the mold of fallen Adam for the rest of our lives.
So the argument being, well, if He’s the Lord of that new creation, then we should honor that day by, and then they go to a Sabbath. But that contradicts what Paul is saying, what the writer of Hebrews is saying, it contradicts everything. Because if He is a new and living way and He is put on display in the flesh who He was, not in the flesh previously, then creation hasn’t been reinvented. It has been rescued and reconciled back to God. So if we talk about Sabbath-ing in Christ daily, the Christian does not have a Sabbath day. Sorry to burst your bubble. All right, follow this one. Just to, I just, I want you to leave here and be crystal clear on this, and that’s why we’re going to she burst couple more minutes. In Acts 15, they had a council decide what would be required of the Gentile believers. If you read this 15th chapter, they’re talking about circumcision. What should be required of those that come into the church who are not part of the old dispensation? And it says here, in verse 5, “There rose a certain sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses, and the apostles and the elders came together to consider this matter.” So this was being discussed.
Everything that I’m talking about, believe it or not, was being discussed. What they came away with is this in verse 19. And then there’s one more, in verse 29. Verse 19, says, “Wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God, but that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols from fornication and things strangled and from blood.” And then if you read on, it, there’s a reiteration in verse 29, “that ye abstain from meats offered to idols and from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves, you shall do well, fare ye well,” and they were dismissed.
If you read this absolutely, unequivocally no Sabbath is mentioned, no Sabbath is imposed on the church. They were talking about should the men coming into the church be circumcised or not. And that, they made a decision. This is what they came up with and that was it, that they abstain from meats, offered to idols, from blood, and things strangled and fornication. That’s it. That’s what they walked away with.
Tell me where you read, you need to keep the Sabbath as a Christian. Do you read it anywhere? (no ma’am) All right. My sound effects are gratis for you. All right. So, when we discuss these set times, as I said, it’s important to see how Christ fulfilled these in a diversity of ways. And the argument of Saturday or Sunday I think that’s going to be clarified. So, it’s almost like this, and you’ll forgive me for this analogy, but people who are ardent Sabbatarians, who are dogmatic about the Sabbath to keep the Sabbath, they’re like people who are dressing up and putting on their uniforms to go and slay saber-toothed tigers that are extinct. Go do it if you want, but it serves no purpose. And in fact, it falls under the category of empty ritualism, which has no purpose, especially if you’re doing it with an old dispensation mindset and not Sabbath-ing daily in Christ because that is the interpretation. Don’t take, again, don’t take my word for it.
One more place for us, and then I will try to be done. Turn to Galatians. Galatians, Paul kind of, I think there might put the nail in the coffin, proverbially, so to speak. Chapter 4 and verse 9, Galatians, “But now, after you’ve known God, or rather are known of God, how to turn therein to the weak and beggarly elements, whereon to ye desire again to be in bondage?” Does that not sum it up for you? “You observe days, and months, and times, and years.
I’m afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.” And then he says, “Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am, for I am as ye are, you have not injured me at all.” So he’s saying there, “Hello, be as I am, is not act like me, look like me, be like me, but I don’t,” Paul, Jew of Jew, a tribe of Benjamin, Pharisee of Pharisee, “I do not do these things.
You should not do them either.” Essentially, they do not have any place in our worship in the old mindset, in the old dispensation. Now, when I go back to Leviticus 23 because I’m going to bring this to a close, what leaps out at me so abundantly clear is something that God says to Moses at the close of verse 2. He says, “These are my feasts.” He doesn’t say, “These are yours.” He says, “They’re mine.” And if they’re Him, He has the right to ratify them.
He has the right to whatever He wants to do with it. So it’s not as though He canceled the Sabbath. He showed you this is the shadow, but this is something you must look at because the thing that is the substance will come in the future. Christ is over here, and He puts on full display the meaning of everything that I said to you regarding My feasts. Now, God starts with the Sabbath, moves to the Passover, unleavened bread, and so on, and we’ll be looking at these set times in the coming weeks.
The thing that I want to reiterate here is people sometimes think that the most crucial thing that they can do in their faith is to check the boxes. I leave you with this one thought. These are the words of Christ. And I’ve repeated them so often, you should know them by heart. What’s the one singular thing that Christ will be looking for when He comes? He says, “Will the Son of Man find faith?” Not Sabbatarians, not people practicing the old dispensation for a time. And just to kind of close this on a really kind positive note, things even in our lifetime serve a time, serve a specific thing.
So, for example, n we first, people came to this country, horse and buggy was the method of transport, right? Now, if you saw horse and buggy going right here on Glendale Avenue, you might think, “Oh, there might be some festival going on somewhere, but that would be out of the normal. We don’t use horse and buggy anymore.” And, you know, everybody’s trying to push for driverless cars and technology and blah, blah, blah, right? Now imagine, this is a poor and this is what it’s like.
Imagine that you’ve got a whole swath of Christians, and I’m not talking about the Amish, that’s a different story, but you’ve got a whole swath of Christians that want to use the horse and buggy because they think that’s the most effective means of transport when here we are and we’ve got vehicles you can get in, you don’t have to pick up the poop, there’s not the need to carry, you know, amounts of hay or whatever you get in your car live yourself, but there are still people that want the horse and buggy.
Now, I’m not saying the horse and buggy are bad, but it served its time. Guess what? Methinks that God somewhere back in, you know, we tend to think man’s innovations and man’s creations and man’s doing this, but how about God, maybe God had the mind of all of this that would come to fruition, which man takes credit for, that God just saw a better way. And the writer of Hebrews analogizes that to say Jesus is superior to all these things, a better way. So when we look at the Sabbath, hopefully, I’ve clarified, if I haven’t, I would like you to do something. If you still have questions on the Sabbath, because you know how much I love questions, I love to ask them. So if have questions about the Sabbath, please take the time to write me so I can figure out what I missed and whatever I’ve missed, I’ll come back if you can get them in the mail quickly. I can answer them in the next message or two if I’ve missed anything that doesn’t clear this up, because this one along with some others, when I see the confusion, it drives me crazy.
If you know that this is no longer part of our faith and it was just a stepping stone to get to where we are, and that’s understood, we’re in a good place. But if you keep saying, “Must have the old. Must keep celebrating the old. I must tell you the old,” you’ve got a problem in not knowing exactly what Christ did for you and what exactly, when He said, “It is finished,” what He finished. So hopefully if that’s not clear, you’ll write me, you’ll let me know.
I’m looking forward to a few questions. Alright, with that being said, that’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday at 11 am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is https://www.PastorMelissaScott.com. 😎
