Smoodock's Blog

When I was a young man, I left the faith of my youth in order to embrace the doctrine or teaching of a man who seemed to be opening up the meaning of the scriptures for me. The words or phrase, “for me” is the operative phrase of that statement, in so far as this study is concerned. In other words, I left off laboring in the scriptures to uncover the truth of God, in order to embrace another man’s point of view, because he seemed to be telling the truth. Put yet another way, I rested in his words and stopped my labor, to find out who God is and what he desires of me personally. Why would I want to reinvent the wheel? The truth was obviously set before me by this man; why continue in my search to uncover God’s will for my life? I was at rest!

The word Sabbath is the Hebrew word for rest (H7676; shabbath; literally “intermission”). The word, itself, is found in the Bible first at Exodus 16:23, And he said to them, “This is that which the LORD has said, ‘Tomorrow is the rest (H7677; shabbaton) to the Lord: bake that which you will bake today, and boil that which you will boil, and what remains lay up for yourselves until morning.’” The idea was God would rain down bread from heaven in a form, which they called manna. It was like the dew on the ground, and the Israelites gathered it up to bake or boil every day, and that was their food for the whole day.

The next day was a repeat of the day before, and this occurred throughout the week until the 6th day. On that day, they were to gather up twice as much as they normally did (Exodus 16:5), bake or boil it, and what remained was to be their food for the following day, the Sabbath. On that day they would not labor in the field, gathering manna. In fact, the Lord didn’t rain down manna on the seventh day (Exodus 16:23-25). Their labor on the sixth days would have been enough to eat also on the seventh day, or the Sabbath, for this was a test to see if Israel would obey the Lord or not (Exodus 16:4).

In Exodus 16 we have acted out in the history of Israel what occurred in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2 and 3. God rested on the 7th day (Genesis 2:3), not because he was tired, but he ceased his creative labor showing it was “enough,” and nothing more needed to be done. God had created mankind and placed him in this world he had created. What man would find in creation would be enough, but would he believe God? Would he rest in that understanding? God told man that he could eat freely of what God had created, but of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil he may not eat. But, what was that all about, really? The idea is: would man rest in God? This is also what the Sabbath is all about. It isn’t about man needing to rest from his daily work as much as it is about resting in the idea that God would lead him in the way he should go. That is, man’s righteousness is not dependent upon his own labor, but upon God leading him to do and practice the right thing.

From the beginning of my understanding of resting on the 7th day, I wondered what that was all about. What meaning did it have as far as righteousness was concerned? I could see that killing was wrong, stealing was wrong, being obsessed with what belonged to another was wrong and dishonoring my parents, those who gave me everything I have, was wrong. These things were obviously wrong. However, when it came to resting on the Sabbath, although I sought to obey it as perfectly as I understood that to mean, I was troubled about it, because I had to obey every other command of God every day, but I could be disobedient or obedient to God concerning the Sabbath only on one day of the week. So, what was that all about? Why did I need to be concerned about 9 of God’s commandments every day, but this one day, the Sabbath, I needed to concern myself with it only on the 7th day? It didn’t make sense to me, but I still sought to obey the Lord, my God.

It really wasn’t until I learned that Jesus was Lord of the Sabbath, vis-à-vis the Lord of my rest, that I began to understand that it wasn’t a day, per se, that I needed to rest in. Rather, it was God, his labor, the labor or works of Christ, that I needed to find my rest! This is where Adam failed. He thought that the only way to be like God was to know what good and evil was and choose the good (Genesis 3:5), but in doing this, vis-à-vis in trying to discover good and evil for himself and make it work for his good was actually disbelieving what God told him (Genesis 2:16-17). To seek to make oneself righteous is to not resting in God, vis-à-vis by seeking to know and decide for ourselves what good is and what evil is, we don’t trust in what Christ did for us. He is Lord of our rest. If we believe him, we rest in him, trusting he will lead us in his paths which are for our own good.