Last week we began a short series to help us rediscover a rhythm of God’s grace called the Sabbath. We first considered how the Sabbath was a command given to God’s people in the Old Testament. This week we’ll look at how the Sabbath was understood in the New Testament and early church.
Let’s dig in by starting with Genesis 2:1-3:
1Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
After God had created all things in six days, he ceased his creation work on the seventh day. He was pleased with what he had made and knit into creation space and time for holy and perfect blessedness. The end of God’s creative work brought about a new type of time, blessed and set aside so that his creation could be perfectly present with God. The seventh day was a day for fruitfulness, dominion, and relationship.
But sin severed the perfect rest humanity was made to enjoy with God (see Genesis 3). And God, in his great love and grace, set out on a mission to rescue humanity and all creation from the tragic effects of sin and to renew his perfect shalom among all his creation. It was a mission of redemption — a rescue from sin into life.
Jump ahead to Exodus, where God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20:8-11 (and continued in Deuteronomy 5:12-15), we hear the fourth commandment, which helps to explain Genesis 2:1-3:
8“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 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 male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 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.
Here in the fourth commandment, we see the comparison between the Israelite Sabbath to the seventh day of God’s creation to show that God’s action of blessing and holiness applies to both. In Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Moses explains the Law to a new generation of Israel. This passage describes Exodus 20:8-11, which explains Genesis 2:1-3.
What can we learn from this? The Sabbath pointed to God’s creative pattern and purposes and his redemptive activity in delivering Israel from Egypt.
God gave Israel the Sabbath, so they could refocus, rest & remember. God gave the Sabbath to his people as a constant, regular source of blessing for both spiritual and physical renewal; it was also to express social concern and compassion. The Sabbath was a reminder that God controlled man’s time.
The Sabbath was a feature of God’s Law for Israel throughout the Old Testament. Yet Israel as a whole was not faithful in keeping the Sabbath as God commanded, and this was one of the reasons that led to God sending Israel into exile (Ezekiel 20:10-26).
After the exile, Israel’s leaders worked diligently to ensure that Israel kept the Sabbath commandment. Their zeal to keep the fourth commandment, and the ever-changing situations that confronted Israel among the nations, led to the development of the Halakah (Mishnah). The Halakah was Israel’s guidelines for ethics — regulations, and rules on how to obey God’s word. For example, we are told not to work on the Sabbath. But what, in this context, does “work” mean? The written Law gives us no help, but in the Halakah, an interpretation of the written Law, we learn what “work” means. The Jewish rabbis defined 39 major classes of “work” forbidden on the Sabbath! By the end of the 2nd century, the oral Law (Halakah) had become as authoritative as the written Torah.
So by the time of Jesus, the parts of the Mosaic Law that dealt with the Sabbath observance had become such a tightly drawn legal system that people were forgetting their purpose, which was to help them by giving them rest, not to add burdens to them. And Jesus had to break through all of that. However, nowhere does the New Testament deny the principle in Genesis 1: a day of rest once a week, corresponding to God’s day of rest.
A few key passages from the New Testament can help us understand Jesus’ view of Sabbath rest. We’ll consider three from the gospels and then a few additional texts. Please read through each one, and I’ll summarize the key components.
We see Jesus begin his ministry by going into the synagogue on the Sabbath and reading from the prophet Isaiah. Jesus reads from Isaiah 61, which speaks of the year of Jubilee; the 50th year, which came every seven Sabbath years when all citizens would be released from servitude and the restitution of property was to be given. Now in Luke, the salvation of the end time depicted in the year of Jubilee is seen to be inaugurated in the coming of Jesus: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (v.21). The great year of Jubilee is now a reality for all who come to find salvation in Jesus.
The passage Jesus quotes (Isaiah 61) is about the Messiah. Throughout Isaiah, there are pictures of an ‘anointed’ figure who will perform the Lord’s will. But, though this text speaks of vengeance on evildoers, Jesus doesn’t quote that bit. Instead, he has drawn on the larger picture in Isaiah and elsewhere, which speaks of Israel being called to be the light of the nations, a theme Luke has already highlighted in chapter 2. The servant- Messiah has not come to inflict punishment on the nations but to bring God’s love and mercy to them. And that will fulfill a central theme in Israel’s scriptures.
In this passage, Jesus is not suggesting that man can use or abuse the Sabbath as he sees fit, but that the Sabbath in the Old Testament was a gracious gift for man; to rest from his everyday work and to enjoy God and his creation. The fact that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath becomes significant, for the very concept of the Sabbath begins to transform. The fact that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath is not only a messianic claim but also raises the possibility of a future change/reinterpretation of the Sabbath.
Jesus’ claim to authority is not only a claim to equal authority with the Law given by God but a claim of divinity itself! Jesus is claiming to be God! This passage is right on the heels of Jesus declaring to be able to forgive sins and to bring “new wine in fresh wineskins,” bringing a complete renewal of Israel’s dogmatic religious practices.
This passage precedes the account of Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees for their condemnation of Jesus and his disciples plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath (alongside Mark 2). Jesus puts himself in place of the Law, which had become burdensome, and calls humanity to learn from him and to experience true gospel rest. Jesus is the fulfillment of what the Old Testament Sabbath was pointing to — eternal rest with God!
In his attitude to the Sabbath, especially in his rejection of the Halakah, Jesus is concerned with showing the day’s true purpose. Jesus calls his hearers to interpret the Sabbath to his person and work.
In Hebrews, the concept of rest transforms, as seen in the light of Jesus’ completed work at the cross and the resurrection. In chapter 3, the writer to the Hebrews explained that Psalm 95 (read this psalm!) was talking about the “rest” that the Israelites had been promised once they reached the Promised land (i.e., Joshua). Now it is linked with God’s “rest” at the end of creation.
In Psalm 95, we read of God’s word that says, “They shall never enter my rest.” The phrase “My rest” is pregnant with more than one meaning, as Hebrews 3 and 4 make clear. The Exodus meant God’s land to settle in and peace to enjoy (consider Genesis 49:15; Psalm 132:14; 1 Kings 8:56).
But Hebrews 4:1–13 argues that the psalm still offers us, by its emphatic “Today,” a rest beyond anything that Joshua won, namely a share in God’s Sabbath rest: the enjoyment of his finished work not merely of creation but of redemption.
What does God’s redemption provide? Paul says it wonderfully in Romans 6:14:
14For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the Law, but under grace.
Why is this true? Because “Christ is the end of the law” (Romans 10:4). Now, followers of Jesus walk by the Spirit, and though no longer under the Law, they find the requirements of the Law are fulfilled through the Spirit in their life — by loving God and loving others (see Romans 8:4). In light of this, Paul also makes it clear in both Romans 14:5 and Colossians 2:16–17 that the Sabbath has passed away now that Christ has come and fulfilled the Law.
The prophets of the Old Testament had stressed faithfulness as the heart of Sabbath observance, which was taken up in the New Testament, but there it was viewed in the light of what Jesus had done. Jesus lived the Sabbath day for God as God’s perfect human, releasing his fellow humans from bondage, bringing them into blessing, and finally entering himself into God’s rest.
As Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus made it possible for others to follow him into that rest. This means that the Christian’s task is no longer to keep the Sabbath (Jesus has done that already) but to believe in him. In its final setting, the fourth commandment is no longer a commandment for God’s people, but its intent remains. The ‘law of Christ’ anticipates rest by prescribing belief, but rest has been realized.
So, how does one enter into God’s rest today? God’s rest has already become a reality for those who believe in Christ. The rest that Jesus gives is both now and not yet; we enter that rest now but still strive to enter it (see Philippians 1:6).
Next week we’ll dig further into what the Sabbath means for us today and how we can live out the implications of the rest we find in Christ alone.