Sabbath
Purpose of Sabbath
God sanctifies places and things to communicate
to His people. He set apart the ark of the covenant
and tabernacle. He set apart His holy book—the
Bible. He set apart His Holy Son—Jesus, and
He set apart a holy day—the Sabbath. God blessed
the seventh day, and sanctified it… (Gen. 2:3).
The Sabbath is the celebration of God’s complete
and perfect creation. As Judah Halevi explains,
“The observance of the Sabbath is in itself
an acknowledgment of His omnipotence, and at the
same time an acknowledgment of the creation in His
divine word.”
The fourth commandment instructing us to keep
the Sabbath day holy is thirty percent of the
Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments contain
322 words. 98 of those words are are about the
Sabbath.
The Sabbath was held in high esteem in both in
Jewish circles and in early Christianity. The
Sabbath was made at creation, two thousand years
before there were any Jews. After Abraham’s
time the Sabbath applied to all people, aliens,
and animals within the gates of the Israelites.
(An alien is someone who is not a native of the
land. This is the Hebrew “ger,” a righteous
non-Hebrew who has been grafted into Israel. See
Romans 11:13-21.)
God intends that the Sabbath be regarded as something
honorable, something significant, not for its
own sake, but because of what it represents. Keeping
the Sabbath is the only one of the holy days to
be ordained in the Ten Commandments. It is tied
to two specific and highly significant acts in
history: 1.) God’s “resting” after
six days of creation (Gen. 2:2) and 2.) Israel’s
deliverance from Egypt (Deut. 5:15).
God’s model of work and rest demonstrates
how much of our lives is to be spent in labor and how much is to be spent in
worship. In both the Old and New Testaments, the Sabbath calls to mind God’s
sovereign rule and His merciful redemption.
The Sabbath is not a yoke of bondage. It’s a day of joy, rest, eating, and enjoying
Scriptures, fellowship, etc. The Sabbath was never
intended to be a restraining time of punishment.
What would your reaction be if your boss came
to you and said, “I want you to take tomorrow
off to rest. Enjoy yourself, eat, rest, read,
just don’t even think about work.” Would
you feel burdened?
The Sabbath is a holy time of resting from our
weekly work in order to come into a joyous worship
of God. It is a time of release from the stress
and pressure of making a living. It is a time
to rest from our normal pursuit of physical gain
and to remember our Creator.
Keeping the Sabbath honors God, our Creator,
who also rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:3).
It also unifies our families and sets priorities
for them. This day of rest refreshes us spiritually
and physically—providing time when we can
gather together and when we can reflect on God
without the stress of our everyday activities.
History
The study of when the Sabbath was changed to
Sunday is very interesting. The New Testament
is totally silent with regard to any change of
the Sabbath day or any sacredness for Sunday.
The adoption of Sunday observance in place of
the Sabbath did not occur in the early Church
of Jerusalem by virtue of the authority of Christ
or of the Apostles, but rather took place several
decades later.
In 132 A.D. Bar-Kokhba led a revolt against the
Romans. When he was done, 50 percent of the population
of Judea was dead and tens of thousands of men
and women who remained alive were sold into slavery.
Jews were forbidden to set foot in Jerusalem,
and the province was renamed Palestine. It was
a dangerous time to be identified with the Jews.
During this period, the predominate day of worship
among Christians gradually began to change from
the Sabbath to Sunday. The day changed, in part,
because of the need to disassociate the Christian
movement from the Jewish nation.
Years later, the Church of Rome: Canon 29, Council
of Laodicea, 364 C.E., worried about Judaizing
and gave the following statement: “Christians
shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday, the
Sabbath, but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s
day (Sunday) they shall honor, and as being Christians,
shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If,
however, they are found Judaizing, they shall
be shut out from Christ.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia states that it was
the Catholics who changed the day of worship from
Sabbath to Sunday and claims this as a mark of
its authority. Converts Catechism of Catholic
Doctrine said, “Sunday observance is from
when the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity
from Saturday to Sunday.”
The Sabbath should be enjoyed as a day of rest, family worship
and strengthening relationships and focusing on Christ. Let it bring
unity and focus to your home.
More About Sabbath
| Sabbath
in Bible Times | Messiah
in Sabbath | Jewish
Customs |
| Celebrating
Sabbath | Crafts
& Activities | Challah
| Sabbath
Links |
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