04-29-12 What Ever Happened To the Sabbath Day?

We are in the middle of a study on prophecy,

and we stopped last week literally

between two verses.

But we are not going to pick up that study again until next week

because of one additional question

that I think it would be helpful for us to answer

before we move ahead with the prophecy series.

The question actually comes out of a statement our Lord made

to the nation of Israel in Matt. 24:20

as He prepared them for some of the events that will take place

during the last 7 years just prior to the return of Christ.

In that verse He talked about a certain point at which

the people living in Judea

should flee to the mountains,

and He told them to pray that their flight would not take place on a Sabbath.

And that statement then brings up the question, “Why don’t we still observe the Sabbath the way the Nation of Israel has throughout its history?”

The more I thought about it

the more convinced I became

that this whole area

is far too crucial for us to just rush through.

You see, its not just the issue of the Sabbath.

It’s that the concepts that govern

our relationship to the Sabbath

are the same concepts

that will ultimately determine

how we relate to our God

in every other area of life.

In other words,

if we are confused about the Sabbath

and how we relate to it,

we will very likely also be confused

about what it really means

to live with God

on the basis of the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

I hope that will make more sense

by the time we finish.

And of course,

before we can look directly at this Sabbath issue,

we are going to need some background.

I’m going to be giving you some key statements along the way this morning,

and I’ll do my best to alert you to them

when we come to them.

And here’s the first one:

#1. The Old Testament Law

and the New Testament moral structure

were given by God

for completely different reasons,

to serve completely different purposes.

If we understand that one principle

it will clear up a multitude of confusion

and foggy thinking for us as God’s people.

And we’ll begin by looking at the purpose for the Old Testament Law,

and especially the 10 Commandments.

I know that most of the world

throughout most of human history

has believed that God gave the 10 Commandments

to help people to be good,

and to show them a better way of life.

But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Two statements in the New Testament

explain exactly why the Commandments were given,

and what God was seeking to accomplish through them.

Rom. 5:20 And the Law came in that the transgression might increase;...

Gal. 3:24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith.

The Old Testament law was never given

for the purpose of making the world

more moral,

or helping people to live better lives.

It was given for exactly the opposite reason.

It was given to INCREASE our transgressions -

it was given to force us to sin MORE.

Those of you who have been around here for a while have heard

one of my favorite illustrations.

I have some extremely important instructions for you right now.

Under NO circumstances

do I want you to touch the chair in front of you.

I don’t want you to touch it with your hand.

I don’t want you to touch it with your foot.

I don’t want you

to even THINK about touching it!!!

That is exactly what God was doing

with the 10 Commandments.

He worded them in such a way

that it was crystal clear that these were

absolute,

nonnegotiable demands from God Himself that MUST be obeyed.

THOU SHALT NOT!!!!!!!

And the result - it caused us to sin.

Paul says in Rom. 7

that the law aroused our sinful passions

and drove us into sin.

God gave the law to draw out our sin

and to force us to face our own inner rebellious heart.

Why?

Why would God want to make us sin more?

Because God wanted the Law

to become our tutor

to lead us to Christ.

Through the Law

we are forced to face

our own rebellious nature,

and to see our inability

ever to please God

through our performance.

If we allow the Law to accomplish its work in us

it will ultimately bring us to God

and cause us to cry out, “Please, God! There must be some other way.”

And God then responds,

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is...may I introduce you to My Son?

Through His death

the debt for your disobedience

can be removed forever,

and through His life in you

you will find Him changing you

from the inside out.”

So the Old Testament Law serves two purposes:

1. It causes us to sin more.

2. It points us to Christ.

The New Testament moral structure,

on the other hand,

is given for a very different purpose.

It is shared exclusively with Christians,

and it is God’s way of saying to us,

“Now that the battle is over

between you and Me,

and now that My Son

has made you secure forever in My love,

I can share some things with you

that I could not share before.

You do not earn My acceptance

be observing these things,

because you already have My eternal acceptance and love in Christ.

Nor do you need to fear My wrath and rejection when you fail,

because My wrath for your sins

has already been poured out on My own Son -

and your debt is paid,

and your sins - all of your sins -

are already removed from your account forever and nailed to the cross of Christ.

But I share these things with you because I love you,

and I know that anytime you choose to live outside of this moral framework

it will be destructive for you,

and it will cause you pain.

My child, I love you far too much

not to share with you how this life you’re living

was really designed to operate.”

Listen to the difference:

In the Old Testament

God takes the stance of a righteous God demanding performance

from His rebellious creation and says,

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS...

In the New Testament He speaks to us

as a loving Father addressing His child:

Col. 3:9-10 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him...

He is not two different Gods,

He is the same God seeking to accomplish two different purposes.

In the Old Testament He is seeking to goad us into sin

so that we will see our need for Christ.

In the New Testament He is seeking to help us face

some areas of behavior

that are completely out of character

with who we have already become at the heart level through Christ.

OK, now I’ve gone into all of this

because it is the 1^st step in understanding what happened

to the Sabbath Day in the New Testament.

The question about the Sabbath

is impossible to answer

until we recognize that the purpose of the Old Testament law was to LEAD US TO CHRIST.

And that includes the Old Testament commandment

concerning the Sabbath.

Its purpose, just like all the rest of the law,

was to serve as our tutor

to lead us to Christ.

The human race has gotten itself into trouble and confusion over this one Commandment

because, to our intensely religious minds,

it appears to be different than the rest.

The other commandments

all seem to be rooted in practical reasoning.

We can see the logic in:

“Thou shalt not lie!

Thou shalt not steal!

Thou shalt not commit adultery!

Thou shalt not murder!”

But when we come to “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy”

suddenly little religious bells

go off within us,

and we think, “Aha! Here is something

God wants us to do

just to please Him.

This is the one day a week

that he wants us to set aside

to worship Him, to go to church,

to do churchy things.”

You see,

we look at this commandment

and tend to assume

that God included it

not so much for logical reasons,

as for RELIGIOUS or DEVOTIONAL reasons.

It’s probably included as a sort of weekly test

of our commitment to Him -

all the truly committed will spend one day a week with Him,

and, of course, the reason He’s so big

on this “not working” thing

is so that we can free up the time

to get together with Him.

WRONG!!!!!

Now, to begin clearing up all this confusion

I want us to begin with the commandment itself.

It’s found in Ex. 20:8-11, right in the center of the Big 10.

Ex. 20:8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Ex. 20:9 "Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

Ex. 20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

Ex. 20:11 "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 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.

OK, 3 things to note...

1. Look how long it is...

How would you like to etch that onto a stone tablet?

There is more space given to this one commandment

than there is to the last 5 commandments put together.

2. Look at what we are commanded to do- HOW do we keep the day holy?

...by ceasing our work.

By not working.

Now look - there is not a word in there

about God’s people gathering together,

or worshiping Him,

or using the freed-up time to study His Word together,

or for prayer,

or for sacrifices,

or for any other worship or religious activity.

The whole central issue of the command

has nothing to do with worshiping God.

It has everything to do with our

ceasing our Work.

WORK is the big issue...the ONLY issue.

In fact,

its not just us,

its our families,

and our servants,

and our visitors,

and even our COWS.

Throughout history we have assumed

that God wanted us to stop working

so that we could then do the church thing,

but remarkably there is not one word about that in the commandment itself.

Maybe God forgot...or ran out of stone.

3. And the third thing I want to point out about the commandment itself

is that the thing that made the day holy

was our ceasing from our labors,

our efforts, our work.

All the commandment tells us

is that for some, as yet unknown reason,

it was very, very important to God

that once a week

everyone in their world STOP WORKING.

The why of the commandment

was a complete mystery,

but the what was very, very clear.

Once a week, every week,

everyone and everything was to stop working.

Now, lets move on to the New Testament

and see if we can make some sense out of all of this.

And incase you dozed off for just a few minutes, let me catch you up by telling you

we’ve seen 2 things so far:

1. The purpose of the Old Testament Commandments

was to serve as our tutor to lead us to Christ.

2. The 4^th commandment tells us that

once a week, every week the entire nation of Israel was to stop working.

Now, there are just two references to the Sabbath

in all of the New Testament Epistles

from Romans through Revelation.

But two are all we need,

because together they perfectly clear up

the mystery of what the Sabbath was for

and how it relates to us in Christ.

The first is found in Col. 2:16-17

Col. 2:16 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day--

Col. 2:17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

We’ve seen in our past studies of Colossians

that this church was under attack

from some men who were attempting to cram a list of religious duties

down the throats of God’s people

telling them that, if they followed this list,

it would prove they were good Christians.

Paul wrote this letter

to say basically, “What in the world do you think you’re doing? You have Christ Himself living in you,

expressing Himself through you.

Are you going to attempt to exchange Him, and His life within you,

for some list?”

And in the context of that discussion

he brings up this Sabbath thing.

And specifically he says,

don’t let anyone act as your judge in regard to the Sabbath,

because the Sabbath was a mere shadow of Christ Himself.

This day of rest from our work once a week

was simply a shadow of the REAL

eternal rest from our frantic works

to try to please God

that we now have in Christ.

The Sabbath was given simply to serve as a shadow of the Person of Christ Himself.

Ever been out in the hot sun gardening,

down on your hands and knees,

and suddenly had a shadow fall across you?

What do you do?

You turn around and look at the source of the shadow.

Paul says that is exactly what the Sabbath

was designed to do,

and he wanted us to know that for us to sit and continue to stare at the shadow

once the substance has come on the scene is crazy.

And the second reference

that completes the picture for us

is found in Hebrews 4:9-10:

Heb. 4:9 There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

Heb. 4:10 For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

Here we have the author telling us clearly

that the TRUE Sabbath rest

is the rest from our works,

our striving to please God,

that rest that we now have in Christ.

Colossians tells us that the Sabbath was a shadow of Christ,

Hebrews tells us the true Sabbath rest

is the rest the people of God know in their spirits

when they enter Christ.

So, this is what we end up with:

1. Galatians tells us that the real purpose of the 10 commandments was to act as our tutor to lead us to Christ.

2. Then, when we look at the big 10

we find 9 commandments we cannot keep apart from the life of Christ within us,

and a 10^th commandment

that pictures the rest from our efforts to keep those 9

that we would one day know in Christ.

3. Without that Sabbath Commandment

pointing us to our rest in Christ

the picture would have been incomplete.

4. But taken as a whole

the 10 commandments are the perfect tutor

because they present the whole picture.

They show us our need for Christ,

and then beautifully picture our rest in Christ.

So why was the Sabbath discontinued by the early church?

Because once the shadow has caused us

to turn around and look at the living reality,

the shadow has served its purpose

and is no longer needed,

in exactly the same way

that we no longer offer blood sacrifices for our sins

because those blood sacrifices were merely a picture

of the eternal, perfect blood sacrifice of Christ Himself.

Once we have entered

the true, eternal rest in Christ Himself

we do not need to continue to cling

to the picture

because we literally fulfill the 4^th commandment when we rest in Christ.

It’s a little bit like this...

Picture a GI who was forced to leave his wife behind

when he was posted to the Middle East.

When he left

he took with him a picture of the woman he loves,

and each night that he’s gone

before he goes to sleep he takes out that photo and looks at it.

Then, at last he returns home.

But imagine what would happen

if, the first night after he and his wife were reunited,

he was to crawl into bed and then take out that photo and look at it,

and then go to sleep.

Why would he ever continue to cling to the photo

when he has his wife right there next to him?

The Sabbath commandment was removed

from the New Testament Moral Structure

because it was only a picture of Christ and we now have the living reality.

And let me close with just one more observation.

The Sabbath, with its powerful emphasis on rest

was a superb picture of our life in Christ,

but one that I fear we sometimes fail to understand.

You see, we really can REST in Christ.

Too often I have seen God’s people

still so fearful,

still working so hard to try to please God.

Our God requires only one thing from us -

that we rest in His Son.

If you have placed your life into His hands,

and trusted His Son’s death

as payment for your sins,

I want you to know that the battle is over

and you now have peace with God forever.

He’s not now standing

with arms folded,

a scowl on His face, demanding a little more

or a little better.

You have already entered the true, eternal Sabbath rest,

and you need not be afraid of Him ever again.