“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8, KJ21).
The
Commandment regarding the Sabbath is clear and concise in its tone,
content and purpose, yet it yields numerous debates as to its
application and its day of relevance in the present time. The Sabbath
is first mentioned in the creation of the world as the Creator completed
His creation as He rested in His delight in its goodness. The Creator
God did not need to rest from His labors as He does not tire or become
faint (Isaiah 40:28) but rather He delighted in all that He gave in
creation. Later the Creator would have to become the Savior to redeem
the fallen previously created from their intentional sinning.His intention in giving the commandment regarding the Sabbath involved both the stopping of human toiling and working routines to be thankful to the Creator and Savior of those that would follow Him. This is evidenced in the two distinct versions of the Sabbath Commandment found in Exodus and Deuteronomy.
As Jesus came to complete the Law: we see Him doing good, healing and eating on the Sabbath as He desperately tried to reclaim the purpose of delighting in the goodness of the Creator, the blessing in life and the peace found in the salvation giving God. His words often failed to penetrate the hearts hardened by tradition which failed to be thankful or delighted in the God they claimed to know. Eventually He offered Himself as the completed redemption for all time as the rest and peace for all souls from the toil and strain of work and days as the Lord of the Sabbath.
The point of the Sabbath was never about the Sabbath Day and what work should or shouldn’t be done on the day. The point and purpose of the Sabbath was about the stopping of the normal and being abundantly thankful in our delight of knowing the Creator God, the Savior of all people and in the sanctifying Holy Spirit. Remembering the Sabbath is to let the “Lord of the Sabbath” be the Lord of all things and of all the days of our life.
“Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28, KJ21).
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