We are in chapter sixteen of Exodus with our word for today, used for the first time in the Bible. שַׁבָּת sabbath, seventh day of the week, time of rest. It is used 111 times in Old Testament. We find our word connected to this idea of sacred or holy. Exodus 16:23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy שַׁבַּת sabbath to the Lord.’” The purpose of the Sabbath is to break from the week of working so you can rest. God sets this example for us from the very beginning. Exodus 20:11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth...but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed הַשַּׁבָּ֖ת the Sabbath day and made it holy. What I find interesting is that the very act of stopping and resting is part of what holiness is all about. This helps us understand what one is to do during their sabbath rest focus on being like God which is what holiness is being separate or different from the corruption in the world all around us. The one who makes us holy is none other than God himself as we see in Exodus 31:13 Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe שַׁבְּתֹתַ֖י my Sabbaths...I am the Lord, who makes you holy. During the sabbath God’s people were also to remember how God saved them from their slavery in Egypt. Deuteronomy 5:15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there...Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe הַשַּׁבָּֽת the Sabbath day. Also during the sabbath we find worship taking place with a psalm stating it was written for the sabbath (Psalm 92:1). And worship in the form of offerings made during the sabbath (Leviticus 24:8). If we ignore God’s teaching on taking a day of rest God will make us take one. Here is where this idea comes from. Leviticus 26:34-35 Then the land will enjoy שַׁבְּתֹתֶ֗יהָ its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land תִּשְׁבַּ֣ת will rest and enjoy שַׁבְּתֹתֶֽיהָ its sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the תִּשְׁבֹּ֑ת rest it did not have during the בְּשַׁבְּתֹתֵיכֶ֖ם sabbaths you lived in it. Because the people sinned against God he allowed them to be taken into captivity by their enemies. One of the ways they sinned was by not keeping the sabbath themselves and not giving the land rest from year after year of growing crops on it. So God gave the land a sabbath by taking the people out of it. This can happen if I push myself and refuse to take a day of rest from my work in that my health can deteriorate and I am no longer able to work. Or my family can suffer or a lot of other things can happen if I’m not honoring God and the way he has set things up in my life. It is really a faith thing. I either trust that God will provide enough for seven days through my work of six days. Or I believe that I have to work every day to have all that I need every day.
Jesus had to correct the religious leaders misunderstanding of the sabbath. The sabbath had become a way for the leaders to control the people. And when Jesus started his public ministries they tried to use it as a way to discredit him instead of what God had originally created it for. Mark 2:23-24, 27-28 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”… Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Jesus flips the current understanding on its head. God’s purpose for his people is to benefit them and their families. Not to create another day of religious work that would keep them distracted from reconnecting with God and their families. Once Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday the church shifted its day of worship and remembrance from Saturday to Sunday.
