A Christian's Guide to Sabbath Keeping

Introduction

Where and When Can I Rest?

The Story of Sabbath Rest

In the last two weeks we looked into the majour, biblical theme of God’s Rest. We saw that the Seventh Day of creation, remembered by the Sabbath Day in the Covenant God made through Moses at Mount Sinai (The Mosaic Covenant), represents a time to Rest in God’s presence in a state of order and life as opposed to chaos and vanity. We also saw that the created world before the Fall, as well as the Garden of Eden, the Tabernacle, Temple, and even Heaven itself represent the space of Rest, the place where God’s presence may be enjoyed in peace and security.

These two things are the longing of every human heart, whether they realize it or not. Every persuit of romance, every desire to be rewarded for hard work, every longing for a home where you belong, every pagne of frustration at a life that seems to be going nowhere, every tear shed in a broken family, every prayer for the end of war, every cry for help, every early riser going off to earn an honest living, all of it is linked to a deep spiritual desire every human being has for Sabbath Rest in a Temple of Rest.

Sin is not a rejection of the desire for rest, but rather it is the attempt to acheive Rest apart from God and on our own terms. Idolatry is an attempt to find a different god to provide rest, murder is the attempt to remove someone that you believe is getting in the way of your rest, fornication seeks rest in a sinful relationship, coveting and theft is the belief that if you only have that one thing that someone else has you will find peace, fulfillment, and rest in your life.

At the Fall, humanity rejected God’s Rest and life, freely given to them in the Tree of Life, and instead chose to seek Rest through their own means. They rejected Sabbath and thought that if they became like gods they could find their own Sabbath Rest. Of course, this mean a reversal of Sabbath Rest for them in the curses and a removal of the Garden, God’s Restful space.

And yet, God’s promise for a future Sabbath Rest persisted throughout the OT. The Sabbath Day and the Tabernacle were a promise, a taste of God’s rest that God was going to bring back to his people.

Now, the author of Hebrews has shown us that this promise has fulfilled in Christ. Jesus came to bring Rest to God’s people. He left his heavenly Temple and entered our chaotic world, enduring suffering and death on our behalf on the cross so that he might defeat them just as he did at creation. In his resurrection, Christ offers life, liberty, security, bounty, and all that fits into this Biblical theme of “rest”. This means that a place and time to enjoy the perfect rest of God’s presence is opened to all who hear the good news and follow Christ in faith. The curse is undone, our way into God’s Rest has been opened, and in Christ we have a secured future of Rest and security. That is why we must strive to enter that rest, lest we fail to reach it from a lack of faith.

How Does the Rubber Hit the Road?

Now, this all sounds amazing and I hope it has given you another glorious way to look at the Gospel. The Sabbath Day was never just some random day off work, it was a promise to something back in the old covenant that is realized in the new covenant. This is why we, as a church, do not hold each other to keep Sunday as a Sabbath Day in the same way that Israel kept Saturday as the Sabbath. Redemption history has progressed and come to greater fulfillment. The Sabbath Day was the sign of the Mosaic covenant, a covenant that has been absorbed in the new (something the author of Hebrews will get into more in chapter 8). Circumcision was the sign of the covenant with Abraham, and both of these signs have found their greater fulfillment in the New covenant and so are absorbed.

Now, does this mean that there is no circumcision for Christians? Not exactly, the NT tells us to “circumcise our hearts” with a “circumcision made without hands”. This means that the mark of covenant in the new covenant is internal and spiritual, not external and physical. Likewise, the Sabbath is not abolished in the new covenant in Christ, but rather is fulfilled in Christ. Our Sabbath is experienced in our fellowship with Christ, and that is not a weekly event, but a constant one.

Now, with all that being said, what does that really mean in our lives? Is Sabbath now just this mystical state that really does not make a real difference in our everyday lives? It is important for us to remember that inner reality translates to outward reality. That is why the author warns us against both unbelief and disobedience. That being the case, what should Sabbath keeping look like in our lives? How can we engage with the Sabbath Rest and Temple life that Christ has opened up to us?

Church - Our first answer to this question is to engage with the church. I don’t mean simply going to church, but engaging with the people of God. The church is a “spiritual house” according to the Apostle Peter (1 Peter 2:4-6), a place where a “holy priesthood” offer up “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” The church is also called the New Jerusalem in Revelation and Christ tells us that he is present when his church is together. In other words, the church is our Temple, it is the place where we experience God’s presence most clearly and consistently. If you want to know the presence of Christ, you need to be engaging with a biblical, loving, and Christ-honouring church. This engagement happens in various ways.

Baptism/Membership - First, through baptism and church membership. These go together because in both, the church is taking the role Christ has given them with the keys of the Kingdom to declare who belongs to the Kingdom of Christ and those who do not. Those who show the fruit of a substantial Christian confession are allowed to declare their faith through Baptism and continue in Christ with the church through membership.

Membership is not optional.

1 Corinthians 12:12–14 ESV

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

Membership is an active participation in a local church by entering into covenant with that church. It is wrong to go through your Christian life attending a church but never committing to it, for in your lack of commitment to his church you are holding back on total commitment to Christ. How we might rebuke a young man living with his girlfriend but never asking her to marry him; we would point out that it is wrong to receive the benefits of an intimate relationship without the commitment of the covenant of marriage. Yet, many Christians live with a local church, expecting to be included in her close and loving fellowship, and yet never enter into the covenant of formal membership. This not only defrauds the people of God, it shows a reservation to love Christ in his people.

Attendance - Of course, next is attendance. Even though Sunday is not the Sabbath Day in the same way that Saturday was the Sabbath in the Mosaic covenant, Sunday is our Sabbath in the sense that it is the day Christians traditionally worship together. On Sunday we belong here, with God’s people, resting in the Spiritual temple that is the people of God.

Fellowship - But it is not merely sitting in the pews, but also fellowship. Fellowship is not just talking after the service or getting together for the Jays game, it means actively seeking unity with other church members to encourage the love we have for each other. Remember that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, dwells among his people. If you want to know Christ, you cannot just sit behind him in the church pew; there must be an active participation in fellowship with him through his people.

The Table - There is also the Lord’s Table, our regular ordinance and sacrament that renews for us the promises of Christ and stands as a means of grace for us. It is a way in which we reach out and take what Christ has given us by representation, and also take it together; the one body of Christ taking of the one body of Christ.

Acts of Love and Service - In the church, acts of love and service are necessary for our growth and rest in God’s Temple. In love, we embody the serving heart of Christ and at the same time serve him through our service to one another. Each of you should have something that you do here for you fellow Christians, whether it is helping with the nusery, calling those who are sick, praying with those who are down, or organizing ministry opportinities. Do you come here to serve Christ, or merely to be served by him? Are you content to watch Christ wash your feet without getting down on your knees and washing the feet of others? While this may sound like work, it is the fruitful rest that is only possible in the presence of God. It will not decay or come to nothing; it will bear fruit for eternity. The work you do here, in service to your fellow Christian in the loving Spirit of Christ, is unlike any work you do anywhere else. What you do at work will one day come to nothing; it will fall away with all the other worthless and cursed labour that our fellow man goes about doing till his last breath. But what you do here in a spirit of love will endure for eternity, for it is not done under the curse of Adam, but rather in the Sabbath of Christ.

Giving - The same can be said of the money we give to the work of Christ. Everything we spend money on in this life will fade away and come to nothing, but that which we invest into the Kingdom will last for eternity. How differently our spending habits might look if we believed this with all our hearts.

Prayer - Not surprisingly, prayer is a very important part of our rest as Christians. The puritans saw prayer as the breath of the Christian, and the freer and deeper our prayer lives, the more divine Rest we will experience in our lives. Prayer is communion with God, and since divine Rest is, by definition, being in God’s presence, prayer is an activity of rest that Christians should often go to.

Corporate Prayer -

Private Prayer -

Worship -

Confession -

Petition -

Meditation - God has given us his written Word to show us how to find Rest in Christ. Simply reading it, however, will not give you rest. Meditation may sound mystical, but it simply means to take what Scripture says and turn it over in your mind and heart for the purpose of applying its truth into your life.

Fasting - Fasting is a way of denying our flesh the means by which we normally find sustinance to put our attention towards seeking spiritual nurishment. It is a way of telling ourselves that our need for physical satisfaction is secondary to our spiritual need, and so it trains us to look to Christ for our Rest and prosperity.

Obedience - As we saw before, Rest does not mean idle behaviour or sitting around doing nothing. Rest means security, peace, and fruitfulness in the presence of God. So it shouldn’t be surprising that engaging in obedience to God’s commandments, when done in faith and trust in his goodness, are restful activities. Rejecting sin in our lives is a rejection of the labour of the curse to embrace the fruitful life of following Christ Jesus.

Witness - Our witness to the lost is an activity that is Restful because it reflects humanities original job. In the Garden of Eden, Adam was tasked with caring for and, presumably, spreading it’s borders to the entire world. Mankind is also called to “fill the earth and subdue it”, and in the new covenant this translates to the Great Commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28. Labouring for the souls of the lost is not a useless or vain activity, but rather one that will have eternal consequences and lead to greater glory. Sharing the Sabbath Rest we have recieved in Christ with the world expands the boundaries of our heavenly Temple, and this surely brings a greater Rest in Christ.

semi-Conclusion

These are ways in which we can engage in God’s rest today, but two questions remain. What happens when we are not experiencing rest? There may various reasons and scenarios, but it is clear that at times rest seems to illude us. How to we find rest then? And finally, when will we finally experience the fullness of this rest? If we are in the already-not yet, when will we finally be in the full already? We will finilize this message this afternoon and answer these questions. I encourage you to join us then at 2:30.

Where is the Rest?

Because we continue to live in the already/not yet of God’s eternal, Sabbath Rest we continue to face many of the external and internal realities of the curse. We continue to face the reality of sinful desires and our own moral failures as a result, and we continue to live lives where our effort is often fruitless and God’s presence seems quite distant from us and our everyday reality.

Tragedy - When Christians experience horrible events and tragedies, it can be easy to ask ourselves where God’s promised rest is. After all, Sabbath Rest means security, provision, protection, and peace. But our lives often do not look like this, and the realities of conflict, abuse, disease, and sorrows of various kinds. In these situations, we are painfully reminded that our experience of God’s Sabbath Rest is only partially fulfilled. We will find that much of our experience of this world still tastes like the curse; still lacks the peace and security of Sabbath Rest.

In these tragedies, it is best for us to turn to Christ himself and see how he endured separation from the Father’s rest and experienced the curse on our behalf for a little while, only to be raised from the dead and seated at the Father’s right hand in an eternal reign of Sabbath Rest.

So, while we will experience many tragities and evils in this world, there is a fellowship with Christ that can bring us a taste of our true rest in him even in those painful times. When our lives here are devoid of security and rest, the restful presence of God continues with us through the Holy Spirit if we look to him in faith.

Doubt -

Two types of doubt: settled doubt or doubt in weakness.

Doubt can take our rest because of the fear that what we believe isn’t true or that God isn’t faithful.

Prayer, meditation, and fasting.

Share with other Christians.

Look to Christ for help, as Peter did.

Failure/Sin -

Confession, repentance, prayer, meditation on God’s forgiveness, restoration.

Sin and moral failure is often the result of not living in God’s Rest. We have wandered out of the Temple and Sabbath Rest, and so are falling back into a fallen state of living.

Failure in one area may signal neglect in another.

Fruitlessness - Our works, even for the Kingdom, may seem fruitless. This is where faith is necessary; we need to trust that anything done, believing in God’s promises, will acheive the end God has promised or willed for it to have.

Conclusion - Our Eternal Sabbath

The current age is one of already/not yet.

Much of the fruitfulness and victory of the Kingdom is invisible to human eyes for a time. The end must be persued in faith.

When Christ returns, full rest will be experienced. When we experience spiritually by faith now, we will see with our very eyes.

Until then, Christians must stand firm and hold to God’s promises. In this, we will grow in God’s rest until it is fully perfected for us in glory.