Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

(Exodus 20:8)

The Lord said to Moses in Exodus 31:13-17,  “Tell the Israelites: You must observe My Sabbaths, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, so that you will know that I am Yahweh who sets you apart. Observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Whoever profanes it must be put to death. If anyone does work on it, that person must be cut off from his people.

“Work may be done for six days, but on the seventh day there must be a Sabbath of complete rest, dedicated to the Lord. Anyone who does work on the Sabbath day must be put to death. The Israelites must observe the Sabbath, celebrating it throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign forever between Me and the Israelites, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed” (HCSB).

The Sabbath is a sign between the Lord and His people. It was given as a sign so that the Lord’s people would know that He is the Lord who sanctifies them. They are not to do any work on the Sabbath. To work on the Sabbath is to defile it. Anyone who works on the Sabbath will be cut off from his people. The Sabbath must be observed as a day of complete rest. The Lord made the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. The Lord’s people are likewise expected to rest on the seventh day.

Man is allotted by God six days in which to do his work. Then on the seventh day he must observe a day of complete rest. By observing a day of complete rest, he is honoring that day as a remembrance that it is the Lord who sanctifies them. When they sanctify the Sabbath as a day of complete rest, they are reminded that the Lord sanctifies them. They observe the day in remembrance of the Lord and His sanctifying work of setting them apart as holy unto Himself.

The Lord declares in Isaiah 58:13, “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord” (NIV).

Remembering the Sabbath and honoring it by not going our own way and doing as we please should be a delight to the Lord’s people. If we regard the Sabbath as delightful, then we will find our joy in the Lord.

Jesus told the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28).

The Sabbath was intended to be a blessing for God’s people. It was to be a delight to them. It was to be refreshing as it turned their thoughts to remember that the Lord is the one that sanctifies them. They were to be honored to set the Sabbath apart as holy because God had set them apart as holy.

God sent Moses to deliver the children of Israel out of bondage and oppression in Egypt and bring them into the promised land of Canaan. The promised land was to be a Sabbath to them where they would find rest from oppression and the attacks of their enemies, where God would protect them, provide for them, and fight their battles.

However, the children of Israel rebelled and hardened their hearts. Their hearts turned away from God in unbelief and longed to return to Egypt. Therefore, God became angry with them and swore that they would not enter into His rest.

Hebrews 3:7-4:3 admonishes us, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared an oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’

“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’

“Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness?

 “And to whom did he swear they would never enter into his rest, except those who were disobedient?  So we see that they could not enter because of unbelief. 

“Therefore we must be wary that, while the promise of entering his rest remains open, none of you may seem to have come short of it. For we had good news proclaimed to us just as they did. But the message they heard did them no good, since they did not join in with those who heard it in faith.  For we who have believed enter that rest” (NIV).

The children of Israel rebelled in the wilderness and failed to enter into the rest that God had prepared for them. They failed to enter into God’s rest because of a heart of unbelief. A hardened, sinful heart does not believe God’s promise. It does not believe that God loves us and wants the best for us. A sinful, unbelieving heart does not trust that God’s provision for us is adequate to satisfy all of our needs. It is not confident that God’s provision is enough.

The good news is that God has prepared a rest for us today. He has prepared a rest for anyone who will believe His promise that He made to Abraham. God promised Abraham thousands of years ago that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abraham’s seed. That seed has arrived. That seed is Christ.

Christ, through perfect obedience to God, lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial death, shedding His blood to atone for our sins, that we might have peace with God. Through the power of the resurrection, the way has been opened for us to enter, by the blood of Jesus, into God’s presence and into His rest.

Hebrews 4:9-11 says, “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.”

In order to enter into God’s rest, we must believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, demonstrating His total satisfaction and approval of Christ’s sinless life and sacrificial death as sufficient to atone for our sins. By the resurrection from the dead, God made this Jesus both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:32-36). He has given all authority onto Him. (Matthew 28:18) It is through faith in Jesus that we have peace with God.

By faith in Jesus, we are placed by God into Christ; and Christ, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is placed into us (I Corinthians 1:30, Romans 8:9-11). By this Spirit of the glorified Christ being deposited into us by God, we are born again. Upon being born again, the Holy Spirit dwells within our spirit to teach us all that is ours in Christ. Christ, as the indwelling Holy Spirit, enables us to live holy lives pleasing to the Lord. He equips us and strengthens us to do everything that God requires from us. We can, through the empowering and leading of the Holy Spirit, do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13).

Ezekiel 44:18 says that God’s servants are not to sweat in His presence. God does not want us to serve Him out of our natural effort. He only wants us to serve Him trusting in the power of the Spirit working within us to enable us to obey Him. We must realize that in ourselves we have no ability to please God. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing (John 15:5). We must abide in Christ and trust Him to provide us with everything we need by His Spirit that dwells within us.

Our faith in Jesus is demonstrated by our willingness to accept the completed work of Christ as sufficient for our justification. Our faith in Jesus is also demonstrated by our willingness to cease from our own works. A believing heart does not attempt to perform any works of the law in order to enhance our justification before God. A believer’s confidence in coming to God is in Jesus Christ alone, and His blood shed for our justification. Faith in Jesus is enough. That faith will produce works that are done fully trusting in Christ and His rich provision for our every need.

Paul writes in Galatians 3:1-18, “You foolish Galatians! Who has hypnotized you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified? I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh? Did you suffer so much for nothing—if in fact it was for nothing? So then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

^“Just as Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness, then understand that those who have faith are Abraham’s sons. Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and told the good news ahead of time to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.

^“For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written: Everyone who does not continue doing everything written in the book of the law is cursed. Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.  But the law is not based on faith; instead, the one who does these things will live by them. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: ‘Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed.’ The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith.

“Brothers, I’m using a human illustration. No one sets aside or makes additions to even a human covenant that has been ratified. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say ‘and to seeds’, as though referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed, who is Christ. And I say this: The law, which came 430 years later, does not revoke a covenant that was previously ratified by God and cancel the promise. For if the inheritance is from the law, it is no longer from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise” (HCSB).

Galatians 3:21-29 asks, “Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.  But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.   

^“But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.  Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” 

The purpose of the law was to bring us to Christ, that believing in Christ, we might be justified by faith.  But now, having been justified by faith, we are no longer under the law. Colossians 2:16-17 warns us, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (NIV).

The reality is Christ! The feasts, the new moon, the Sabbath days, these are only shadows of that which was to come.  They are shadows of Christ.  They are shadows of the real thing.  That real thing that cast these shadows is Christ Jesus our Lord!  Why would we continue to cling to the shadows when we have the reality, the Christ that cast the shadows?

Jesus is the real rest.  Jesus is the real Sabbath. It is Jesus that we need to remember and set apart as holy.  It is only as we remember and honor Him, who sanctified us by His blood, and rest from our own works, that we can have real rest.

Paul reminds us in Galatians 2:16 “that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” 

As believers we must be continually reminded that Christ is our Sabbath.  We must be reminded that His sinless life and His sacrificial death are sufficient to satisfy God’s righteous and holy requirements for our atonement and justification.

Paul admonishes us again in Galatians 5:4, “You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace” (HCSB). We must learn to rest completely in Christ’s finished work of redemption, and not continue to strive to be justified by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10, NIV).

What does it mean for a believer to “Remember the Sabbath?” It means to cease from our own works and totally rest in the completed redemption work of Christ. It means to honor Christ by believing in Him and setting Him apart as holy, believing that His blood is sufficient for our justification.

Being set free from the dominion of sin and empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit to live a holy life in full obedience to God is the essence of the Sabbath rest. It is here, abiding in Christ, our Sabbath, that we truly have rest because He is our peace.

When we come to know Jesus as the indwelling Spirit that is always with us to teach us, to comfort us, and to guide,  equip, and strengthen us in all that God would have us do, then we truly have entered into His rest and have ceased from our own works. It is here that we truly find joy unspeakable, full of glory, “Remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy.”

When we walk by the Spirit, we are keeping the Sabbath! When we walk by the Spirit, every day is an observance of the Sabbath and an enjoyment of the Sabbath rest.

Writings By Jon von Ernst

The Lord of All Things Series - A Trilogy of Truth 
Books in this series:
Book 1 - The Gospel of the Kingdom
Book 2- The Victorious Christian
Book 3 - Walking in the Light  -  Following in His Steps

*- Audio of these books are available free of charge at thepureword.net.