The New Testament is very clear. In Christ, the law of the Sabbath (the fourth commandment) has found its fulfillment. With that fulfillment, the principle of the Sabbath takes on a deeper and more dynamic meaning to the believer. Our way of finding rest is very different. It does not involve setting aside one day a week to cease from our own works.
Jesus said: “I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28-30 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Christ did not abolish rest; He ushered in a deeper kind of rest than taking a Sabbath could ever offer. In Jesus, something far greater than the Sabbath is here. The physical rest offered weekly in the Old Testament is now transformed and being offered daily in Christ.
Even in the Old Testament, we see that His rest was available to Israel. However, they never enjoyed it. Their unbelief prevented them from doing so.
Hebrews 3:17-19 Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? 19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
Only believers enter His true rest.
Hebrews 4:1-10 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. 2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. 3 For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said: “So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest,” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; 5 and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 7 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts.” 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.
And how do we enter this amazing rest? We do not enter His rest by putting aside our physical labors for one day in seven. We enter by believing: “We who have believed enter that rest.”
Faith in Jesus Christ brings a daily rest for the soul so we can live supernaturally before Him and others. Without this abiding rest, we will never be equipped to accomplish all He has for us to do.
Jesus said, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)
Look at what Paul said to the Church at Colossi.
Colossians 2:16-23 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. 18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God. 20 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— 21 “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” 22 which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
What Paul says here is interesting, he lumps the Sabbath together with food laws, festivals, and new moons. All of these constitute types and shadows that point to the coming of Christ. Since Christ has come, observing the Sabbath is no longer a matter of obedience or disobedience. Rather, Paul says, “Let no one pass judgment on you.”
Romans 14:5 One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.
For the sake of Christian liberty and mutual love, Paul says simply, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind”
If an Old Testament Israelite esteemed “all days alike,” he could be stoned to death (Numbers 15:32–36). Yet Paul evidently felt no need to impose the Sabbath command in his New Testament writings.
So, should Christians keep the Sabbath as laid out in Old Testament Law? Emphatically, NO! However, we must labor to enter into the rest He has described to us in Hebrews 4
Under the new covenant, no Christian is bound to keep the fourth commandment. We may still decide to rest one day in seven, and there is no condemnation for those that do.
However, without regularly experiencing the type of rest laid out in Matthew 11 and Hebrews 4, it matters very little how much rest we give our bodies. Our rest will be fraught with restlessness. Our work will become a desperate attempt to secure the rest we have not yet found in Christ for ourselves.
“The devil would have us work even while we rest. But Jesus would have us rest even while we work.”
Neither the workaholic nor the lazy person has yet learned to enjoy the rest of the true New Testament Sabbath. Not so with those who have heard and heeded Jesus’s invitation to “Take my yoke upon you . . . and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29). In Christ, we live out the Sabbath every day. We cease from our own plans and agendas. We put on His yoke and carry His burdens. His yoke is easy. His burden is light.
So, here is the trap.
When we teach other believers that we must take a Sabbath, whether it be Sunday, Saturday, or any other day, we teach Old Testament Law and we become a stumbling block to those we teach. Teaching others to live by the Law in any capacity promotes legalism. It hinders them from fully embracing New Testament grace.
Legalism is the opposite of grace.
Romans 7:4-10Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
Sin has the Advantage over us when we live by the Law.
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. 9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.
Apart from the Law, sin is dead. When we try to keep even one letter of the Law, we keep sin alive. It is called the Law of Sin and Death for a reason.
Romans 8:1-4 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Bottom line: If you choose to practice a weekly Sabbath as part of your worship to the Lord, I believe He honors it. Let no man judge you otherwise. But understand that in Christ there is a far greater and more important rest that you must pursue so don’t stop there. If you have been taught wrong, which is most people’s case, then make the adjustment, and labor to enter Christ’s rest. God Bless you!
JESUS IS COMING!
Thank you for visiting Truth Pressure Ministries. Please share and help reach more people with the truth.
Truth Pressure Ministries 