~ The following article is written by Brandon Carmichael, Pastor of Victory Baptist Church of Albion, NY.

An Important Consideration

Is there a Christian Sabbath? If so, is it to be observed on Sunday? If there is no Christian Sabbath, how is it that nine of the other Ten Commandments continue in the present age unaltered?

Hebrews 4:9-10 ought to play an important role in the discussion of the Christian Sabbath, and it does play an important role in the ordinary life of the Christian. After briefly tracing the theme of “rest” from creation to Joshua, the Author of Hebrews boldly declares,

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Consider with me the importance of these words to your Christian life.

Faithful Perseverance

The Author of Hebrews has been urging his readers to faithful perseverance. The wilderness generation is a testimony to the consequences of spiritual failure and unbelief. God swore in His wrath, “They shall not enter my rest” (Heb. 3:11).

Yet these very words hold out the hope of a promised rest. If God is forbidding some people from entering His rest, then there must be a rest”for some people to enter into. Indeed, the reality of this rest has been woven into the fabric of the measuring of time since the week of creation:

“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” (Gen. 2:2)

God’s Sabbath Rest

God’s Sabbath rest on the seventh day was not merely God sitting back and not doing anything. The very fact that God “rested” represents the creation of a state called “rest.” Up until this seventh day God had been working. There had been six days of creation, six days of forming and filling the universe. In a sense all that existed up until the first Sabbath day was work. It was when God stopped from His work on the Seventh Day that a new state of existence formed, called “Sabbath rest.” And “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:3).

But God never intended to celebrate the Sabbath alone. As God led Israel to the border of the Promised Land He gave the nation laws. The nation was governed not only by the Ten Commandments, but by hundreds of other civil, ceremonial, and legal codes. Among these codes were the laws concerning Sabbath. The Fourth Commandment required,

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. … For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Ex. 20:8-11).

There Remains a Sabbath Rest

But God’s law contained not only Sabbath laws pertaining to the seventh day, but also the seventh year, a “Sabbath to the LORD” (Lev. 25:4). Not only that, but Israel was also to count seven weeks of years, after which Israel was to celebrate a whole year of Sabbath, a year of “jubilee” (Lev. 25:11). One gets the distinct impression that if Israel had walked by obedient faith to the Sabbath commands in the Promised Land, the promise of Sabbath rest of the LORD would have overtaken her!

Yet that was not reality. Though the LORD gave Israel rest during the days of Joshua (Josh. 21:44-45), it was not the fulfillment of the promised rest, “for if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on” (Heb. 4:8). Israel did not persevere in her conquest of the promised inheritance by faith, and anecdotal evidence of this fact abounds in the book of Joshua. And it was her failure to persevere in the faithful work of life in the land that kept her from the experience of the LORD’s rest.

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” ~ Heb. 4:9

God holds this promise of rest out to us today. Just as it was for Israel, this rest is for us a future promise. It is a promise we must grasp by faith. And to grasp it by faith is to grasp it by persevering faith. This is not a promise we grasp by praying a prayer, no matter how sincere that prayer may be. This is not a promise we grasp by “asking Jesus into my heart” (whatever that means). It is a promise we grasp by believing in Jesus as the only one who can forgive our sinful offenses against God, and the only one who can restore our relationship with God. It is a promise we grasp by fixing our eyes firmly on “Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him” (Heb. 3:1-2). It is a promise we grasp by persevering by faith in the works of faithfulness which the LORD gives for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10).

The Christian Sabbath

But we cannot grasp this promise by ourselves. Grasping the promise of a future Sabbath rest at the end of our life-long week of persevering faith can only happen in the company of the church, for the same reason that it can only happen as we feed our souls on the Word of God (Matt 4:4). The means of the LORD’s persevering grace in our lives is our church family. The Author of Hebrews calls us to “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’” (Heb. 3:13). This “today” is a reminder of Psalm 95:7 – “today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

We hear the voice of God not merely through our personal reading of God’s Word; we hear the voice of God calling us to fix our eyes on Jesus as our brothers and sisters exhort us “every day, as long as it is called ‘today.’” We don’t exhort one another with our good ideas. We don’t exhort one another with our suggestions. We exhort one another to persevering faith with God’s Word.

Conclusion

The Sabbath rest is not a rest we can observe during our life-long week of faithful work. The Sabbath rest is a promise for us to hold onto by faith. It is the promise God has been making to His People since the beginning of time, and it stands before us as the promise of God for our faithful perseverance in holiness. Brothers and sisters, as the writer of Hebrews admonishes us, let us “strive to enter that rest.”

Note: All Scriptural quotes are taken from the ESV Bible.