Sabbath: A Bases for Life

Introduction

This coming year we are going to be looking at different Jewish Holidays. And their biblical Bases for them. Many of these you will see in the scriptures and there for will be familiar with some of the teachings. Some you may never heard of depending on your exposure to the Hebrew world, and some of them you will know but not by the Hebrew name. So through out the year at various times we will be taking a brake from what we are talking about and discussing these holy days. There are 7 Major festivals that you as readers of the scriptures may be familiar with, the 7 festivals are the truly important ones, the rest have developed over time. The Seven Plus Sabbath is found in Leviticus 23

Let us look at Sabbath first. It is First in Leviticus for a reason as it is the bases for all the main, if not all, the Holy Days.

Leviticus 23:1–3 CSB

1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 2 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: These are my appointed times, the times of the Lord that you will proclaim as sacred assemblies. 3 “Work may be done for six days, but on the seventh day there is to be a Sabbath of complete rest, a sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; it is a Sabbath to the Lord wherever you live.

"These are the appointed times of Hashem which you shall proclaim them as holy assemblies; these are My appointed times." Clearly this section is speaking of the festivals (i.e."the appointed times"), why then is the Sabbath mentioned?

This a question that is asked through out the commentaries.

What is Sabbath?

Exodus 31:15–17 CSB

15 Work may be done for six days, but on the seventh day there must be a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord. Anyone who does work on the Sabbath day must be put to death. 16 The Israelites must observe the Sabbath, celebrating it throughout their generations as a permanent covenant. 17 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.”

Sabbath is a celebration of completeness. Seven (Sheba שֶׁבַע) is a base for the word Sabbath as well as the word rest (Sabbat שַׁבָּת)

According to the Assyrian-Babilonian conception, the particular stress lay necessarily on the number seven...The whole week pointed prominently towards the seventh day, the feast day, the rest day, in this day it collected, in this day it also consummated. 'SABBATH' IS DERIVED FROM BOTH 'REST' and 'SEVEN'

Shabbat is not a day of prayer

Christians like to think of Sunday as a day of prayer. This is to be known as a house of prayer after all, even though that is not true the temple is a house of prayer and where is the temple of God? We are his temple the body of believers not a building so you and I are to be a house of prayer but never the less Sabbath is not a day of prayer, Sabbath is a day of prayer because everyday is day of prayer.

Day

The Shabbat starts Friday night and went to Saturday evening.

Christians have changed to Sunday for various reasons ( I’m not so sure we were right)

Easter was on a Sunday.

Paul in Acts, said that the Jewish Christians would meet on Sunday after work to discuss Jesus

Anti-Semitisms (anti Jew)

Syncretism

The worship of the Sun - sun day

Sabbath is a gift

Shabbat is a gift, a precious gift of God. A great eagerly awaited gift It is a day to set aside all of our weekday concerns and struggles and devote ourselves to higher pursuits.

Sabbath is a day of completeness when Creation is filled with God’s presence and power, when creation response by generating abundance, and humanity can rest and rule in God’s presence and trust that everything is going to be Okay.

The Sabbath found in Genesis 1 and 2 that Exodus is talking about is never really recognized.

In Genesis and beginning of Exodus we see that the people of God have been put into slavery and therefor get no Sabbath but then God pulls them out and says, "I've got a land for you and it's going to be abundant." And so we're like, "Yes, the seventh-day rest. We're going to get back." Abraham's family's going to be there. He's going to show the world what it's like to rest and reign with God. To get there they have to go through the wilderness. On the way they're provided with manna. That bread from heaven and reminds them how to take sabbath. They are grumbling because like, "We don't have any meat or bread and you brought us out here to kill us in the wilderness - the realm of death." And God instructs them to take this abundant sky bread and pick it up every day (day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six). And on day six to take twice as much so that on day seven, they don't have to work. They can just rely on the overabundance. The seventh day becomes the day where they imitate God's rest. But that imitation is itself a test of loyalty and trust, where they trust that God has packed creation with enough abundance for them that they can just rest and enjoy it even while they're in the wilderness as a band of escaped immigrant slaves.

The seventh-day is the day to trust in God's abundant provision even when my circumstances tell the opposite story.

Moses is called up Mount Sinai. He goes up there. He's told to go up and he wait six days. And then on the seventh day... God comes and rests. The glory cloud rests. And Moses see something. He sees up into the heavenly throne. He sees what it's like for God's presence and reigns to be in it. God gives him instructions...

Moses makes seven trips up the mountain between Exodus 19 and Exodus 24 and on the seventh time he gets instruction about resting on the Sabbath. This pattern repeats after they break the convent with the Golden Idle and they build the Tabernacle.

Which is modeled after Eden.

For the Eden ideal to be realized, God's People have to be transformed, which is what the book of Leviticus is all about.

Come to Leviticus 23, This whole chapter is going to be about the annual (the once a year) appointed time. But it begins with that every seven days because it's like the most basic building block. The rest of the list, which is going to be six more annual appointed times, are all going to be riffing off of the meaning of the Sabbath and the number seven. So it's going to take the Sabbath building block and then building all kinds of new Lego buildings out of them in different ways.

There are six appointed times divided into two groups of three. Which sounds like the days of creation in Genesis.

I am starting late so we wont be talking about them in order through the year

Leviticus the first is Passover and Unleavened Bread. Passover begins on the 14th (2 times 7) and then on the 15th through the 21 (7) you observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Then we have Fist Fruits

Pentecost, which is after Passover and Unleavened Bread, you count seven Sabbaths,you're already going to have a Sabbaths. Seven times seven, the 49th day is going to be Sabbath. But then on the fifth day, you have an extra holy day where you do the same thing you did on the Sabbath, but you just carry it over for an extra day.

Trumpets which happens the fist day of the seventh month

Rosh Hashanah, head of the year happens in the Seventh month (sounds confusing but think of it like a school calendar)

Tabernacles, every day is like a Sabbath. Every day extra special offerings are being made.

We will talk about these individually later

All of these festivals, they're all trying and helping us reconnect with this ideal of resting and reigning with God in a complete and full and abundant way. On all of these, the reason why you set them apart is because they are special days where you bring special offerings. You go to the temple and offer your offerings there. For three of them, Passover, weeks, and tabernacles, once Israel came into the land and had a centralized temple, for those three, all the males were supposed to make a pilgrimage every year. These were moments where you go meet with God at the symbolic Eden at the center of the land, or at the center of the camp. That's what it's all about.

The whole point is you inconvenience yourself to symbolically remind you of your real hope - of your hope that our work a day, grinding it out isn't all there is, but God has a purpose for all of history to culminate in the hope of the seventh-day rest. We are actually meant to get a little foretaste of it in all of these rituals, symbolic days of rest. Which isn't just every seven days.

In the end isn’t that what we are looking for is Rest. The whole year is about returning to Sabbath.

Next Steps

What does a day of Rest look like to you?

How can you use this day to trust in God and Show your loyalty to Him, but rest from your usual routine and put your faith in Christ.

I am retired every day is sabbath. Is it? you may be sitting around and watching tv but is that really what rest is about? May be you need to take a rest from that.

Bibliography

https://jewishunpacked.com/the-jewish-holidays-in-2022/

https://aish.com/48967006/

Daglige Livi Norden, Vol.XIII, pp.54,55, See also Prof. A.H. Sayce's work Higher Criticism and the Monuments, pp.74,75

https://bibleproject.com/podcast/seven-festivals/#:~:text=The%20Lord%20said%20to%20Moses,a%20day%20of%20sacred%20assembly.