Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “Covenant Sign”. A great title here. The Sabbath is a “sign”… a symbol. What a great concept! It is a symbol of something more. Something huge. Like all the Ten Commandments which are highly symbolic (I hope this doesn’t trouble you), the Sabbath day commandment is highly symbolic, too. Now this does not mean that the firm reality of each commandment does not exist. Does not mean that the Ten Commandments are somehow merely philosophical or ethereal having no basis in life. Oh no! They are real, part of our lives and how to live. But they are also so, much, much more. They are all “signs”. Signs point the way to something. Something really, really important and really, really huge. And something that the literal commandments are but a shadow of.
This is truly one of the problems we sinful humans have. We want to take the symbol for the substance. We want to take the shadow for the reality. For example, we want the communion service be a meaningful experience. A ritual to be deeply felt. Something to contemplate and meditate upon as we partake. And then, when we walk out the church doors, we have had a great spiritual feast. We eat the “bread” and drink the juice and we think we’ve completed the ritual that Christ instituted (much like the Jews of old who killed the lamb and thought they had done all God required). But the communion service is so much, much more. It is a sign or a symbol of Christ’s life, death and resurrection being your life, death (to self) and resurrection (to a life unlike your past life of sin… a life of love, goodness and truth). The symbol of communion must become a real vital, living part of you… every day. It isn’t just something you do during the communion service that creates a warm feeling in you about what the life, death and resurrection of Christ did for you and mankind. If the life, death and resurrection of Christ is not personally yours by faith, the ritual act is a mockery. And so with all the commandments… and the Sabbath, too. You can participate and practice the letter of the Law. But if the deeper significance is not part of your life… every waking moment… then all your punctilious practice is nothing… actually worse than nothing. It is a disingenuous show, a sham, a deception.
Christ talked about this when he linked anger to murder and linked the lustful-look to adultery. We can abstain from the act-of-murder and the act-of-adultery and still be the greatest murderer and adulterer even as we adhere to the letter of the Commandments (i.e. the symbol) but miss the substance of those Commandments (the inner motivation of the heart). And so with the Sabbath Commandment. We can abstain from work for the 24 hours of the Sabbath, go to church, pay our tithe, have a great spiritual experience, and then go home for some blessed rest from our labors of the week … and yet be the greatest Sabbath breaker, even as we adhere to the letter of that Commandment.
Like murder. If you truly see the vitriolic nature of anger, if you want never to allow anger to rise in your own heart again, if you never want to stir your own anger tendencies, never want to fester and stew over wrongs done to you, then restraining yourself from actually contemplating murder becomes … well… not murdering becomes a non-issue, really. Not murdering will not even need to be thought-of.
Or like adultery. If you truly strive to see the opposite sex as your brother or sister, if you never want to prey upon any weakness in the opposite sex for your own scurrilous advantage, if you truly want the best for every person of the opposite sex, then restraining yourself from the act of adultery becomes… well… not committing the act of adultery becomes a non-issue, really. Not committing adultery will not even need to be thought-of.
What about the Sabbath commandment, then? What is the principle behind the “day of rest”? If the Sabbath Commandment is a “sign” or a “symbol”, what is the substance? We have a Bible text to tell us. “Moreover I also gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them… that I am the Lord your God” (Ezekiel 20:12, 20). There it is. This is the substance of the Sabbath Commandment. God is the One who sanctifies you… and me. I do not do it myself. I do not need to stress and strive and worry and fret about making myself holy. To “sanctify” means “to free from sin” or free from self-centeredness… free to love. So the Sabbath day of rest is but to “remember” that it is God alone who can bring your heart to “rest” from the turmoil of sin EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY! And if I “remember”, then every day… every moment of every day… I will have the true intent of the Sabbath-day rest all the time. And this rest from our “works” is connected inextricably to the Seventh-day creation. So it is God’s rest, a rest He achieved by a completed work, that we secure. The completed rest from sin and self that only God can provide… and which is ours by trusting Him (faith).
Please read Hebrews 4: 1-10 to see what the true Sabbath rest really is. It is a ceasing from your own “works”. Ceasing from all the striving, ceasing from working to eliminate sin from your own heart. And this makes perfect sense. For removing sin from your heart is not the goal. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25 And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” (Luke 11: 24-26). Man was not made to be empty. We are not made to stand clean and empty… like white-washed tombs. We are to be full to overflowing with the “water of life”… with love for God and love for our fellow-man. The best we can do of ourselves is to not allow our anger to become murder, not allow our lusting to become adultery, and cease from work for 1 day per week. But all of these are so far from God’s goal for us. If we would but follow Him, the substance of the commandments would be ours… and not just their shadow… not just the husks but the kernel. We would be full of God’s love.
So what would this true principle of Sabbath-day rest be like? It would not be a mere cessation of work so that we can rest-up for another 6 days of work. This is a perversion of the true intent, the true principle of the command… the true “sign” of what the Sabbath day rest is really all about. The literal 24-hours is but a symbol of the rest. And like all other “signs” is a fraud if the thing signified is not present. The true Sabbath rest consists of complete and continuous recognition of God as Creator and Upholder of all things. The One in Whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The One in Whom our very life is sustained. It is the absolute rest that comes from perfect faith in the power of God to create a “new man” and to keep you and me from falling back into the “old man”. He is the One by whose power we live. But this literal, symbolic 24-hour rest is but a farce if we do not really and wholly recognize Him as such. The Sabbath day is “kept” only by those who rest in the Lord all the time.
Thus, rest in the Lord is found only by faith in Him. But faith is what saves us from sin. This faith is not just a statement. It is living faith that is as continuous as your breath every second of every day, because the “just shall live by faith”. If you or I distrust the Lord during the week, if you or I are doubting and fearing as to how we will get along, if you or I are impatient or harsh to another or unjust to any person… then you or I are not resting in the Lord. You or I are not remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Because if we really remembered the Sabbath day, we would know God’s power to provide for us and we would commit the keeping of ourselves to Him by well-doing and by following Him in all things. Sabbath “keeping” is but the beginning here on earth, of the rest that comes from a completed work of righteousness that God provided our first parents in Eden. A work that He only asked them (and us) to “keep”. Meaning, “to guard”, “to protect”, and “to wait for”. To treasure that completed work… in you and in me. A completed work. And when we trust Him, have faith in Him, then there is true “rest”.
With brotherly love,
Jim