why I began celebrating the seventh day sabbath

In April of 2007, I knew of one person in my life, a Christian, my maid of honor at my wedding, my friend who was instrumental in leading me to the Lord over 30 years ago, who celebrated a day of rest on the seventh day, as Scriptures command for the Sabbath day. We had already been celebrating the feasts of the Lord; we had for several years. We attended a church which holds a big feast of Tabernacles celebration every year. This previous year, the pastor was saying that one year, a conflict came up in the schedule (this must have been before we were going there) and they decided to have the Tabernacles on a different day than the actual day, thinking it would make no difference to the Lord (being ignorant Gentiles -- his words) and the presence of the Lord, which is so strong among us during this celebration, was absent that year. He said it mattered to God that we celebrate His feasts according to His calendar.

So I was thinking about that on a Friday in April of 2007, when I looked up in Leviticus 23 to remind myself of the command concerning the feasts. I knew this, but had forgotten it -- the weekly feast of Sabbath is the first feast listed. I asked myself, “Why do we celebrate all the feasts but this one?” I spoke with my husband, who believes that Sabbath- keeping is no longer required, and I asked him, “Would you mind if I kept the Sabbath on Saturday? I am curious to discover what will happen.” He had no objection, so I prepared dinner for that evening, and extra food for the next day, and cleared up all my work.

Then when the sun began to set, I excused myself from the family, went into my “prayer closet,” and prayed to the Lord, “I am not exactly sure what to do, but the Scriptures say that in six days You made the heavens and the earth, and rested on the seventh day, and hallowed it; and we are to keep the seventh day holy -- the seventh day is beginning, so here I am to honor You.” These words were barely out of my mouth when the presence of the Lord descended so powerfully upon me that I could not speak any longer. I ended up worshiping the Lord for several hours, but it seemed like only a few minutes had passed. I slept like a baby that night, and had the most peaceful day the next day, filled with joy. We attend church Saturday evenings anyway, and as we were coming out of the assembly of the believers that night, the sun was setting. I told the Lord, “That was the most beautiful seventh day I have ever experienced -- thank You for making the Sabbath for man.”

My next task was to study all that the Scriptures say concerning the Sabbath, and why the Church does not celebrate this day. From my experiment on that Friday evening in April of 2007, it seemed to me that the Lord was pleased and blessed my Sabbath day of rest.

mark 3, what is lawful on the sabbath

Read Mark 3 at Bible Gateway.

“And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man who had the withered hand, “Step forward.” Then He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they kept silent. And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.” Mar 3:1-6

The Torah is specific about what may and may not be not be done on the Sabbath:

“Six days you shall labor (abad) and do all your work (melakah), but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work (melakah), you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.” Exo 20:9-10, see also Exo 23:12, 34:21, 35:2, Deu 5:13-14, Lev 23:3, Jer 17:22.

The Hebrew word for work is melakah (Strong's H4399) meaning “deputyship; employment (never servile) or abstract or concrete work; property as a result of labor; business, occupation, workmanship.”

In Exo 23:12, the Hebrew word for work is ma'aseh (Strong's H4639) meaning “an action or transaction; activity; product; property; act, art, business, labor, thing made, occupation, operation, workmanship, thing wrought.”

The Hebrew word for labor is abad (Strong's H5647) meaning “to work in any sense; to serve; to till; to enslave; to be or keep in bondage; to husband; to be wrought.”

From the definitions of work and labor, we can see that what is meant is one's employment by which one provides an income, whether it is as a laborer, a landowner, a businessman or merchant, or a craftsman. The work can be physical labor or mental labor (concrete or abstract work). Work includes commerce: for even if you are buying, your transaction requires someone to labor to provide you with that good or service (see also Neh 10:31, 13:15-22, Amo 8:4-6). Work also includes workmanship: so even doing what might be considered a hobby, and thus restful, such as building models or sewing, if a thing is wrought by effort, then that falls under the biblical definition of work.

Work includes bearing burdens (Jer 17:21-27), because if something is a burden, then it requires effort, exertion, to bear it. If something is not a burden, then bearing it is not work. Not everything is a burden. If we consider that God specifically banned bearing burdens on His day of Sabbath rest, which foreshadows the millennial reign of our Messiah, it gives a whole new meaning to 1 Pet 5:7, doesn't it?

Work includes preparing food, a laborious task in the old days (Exo 16:22-26). I do the food preparation on Fridays. I think it is alright to combine previously prepared ingredients together to make a dish on Sabbath (like combining veggies and dressing to make a salad), or to place a previously prepared meal in the oven to cook or reheat on Sabbath. While monitoring something that was cooking was a laborious task in the old days, today it is not work to just set the oven temp and forget about your dish.

In Torah, work also includes kindling a fire (Exo 35:3). Kindling a fire was a laborious task in the old days. Is flipping a light switch or turning on an oven kindling a fire? Because of the nature of our appliances these days, I don't think so - but that is my opinion. What about striking a match? Well, striking a match does kindle a fire, it just does so in a very non- laborious way. So while it probably isn't work as it was in the old days, I avoid striking matches on Sabbath just because my heart wants to obey the Spirit of the Torah as well as its letter. :)

So if we take all the commands on the Sabbath together, we can see that the intent of the command was to provide a day of cessation of labor, and working to provide an income or to provide for needs, so that a person could rest. Even all the extra details, such as not kindling a fire or preparing food, were included because those daily tasks were often laborious.

Now over time, the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah had built up an elaborate system of dos and don'ts for the Sabbath, which amounted to if a person did anything at all, he was breaking the Sabbath. God did not prohibit every activity, just work. But the Pharisees, because they did not understand the spirit of compassion that was behind the command to rest, prohibited almost all activity, even doing good on the Sabbath. Jesus, in healing on the Sabbath, was showing Israel that it was lawful on the Sabbath to do good and to save life. He was showing us that the true spirit behind the letter of Torah is a soft heart of compassion for our neighbors, not a hard heart which hides from self- sacrificing love in self- righteousness and religious obligation.

sabbath

lord of the sabbath, mark 2
what is lawful on the sabbath, mark 3

mark 2, lord of the sabbath

“Now it happened that He went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to Him, "Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" But He said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?" And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.” Mar 2:23-28

Although an excellent case can be made that the Pharisees' first premise was wrong, that in fact the disciples were not violating the Sabbath by plucking the heads of grain to eat, Jesus did not refute their complaint with that argument. Instead, He used an example from Scripture, when David seemed to violate Torah by eating the showbread in the Temple (Lev 24:5-9, 1 Sam 21:1-6), to show that something greater was being shown since no judgment fell upon David for this act.

Now it was not that David, as king, was immune from violations of Torah. God judged David more than once when he truly broke Torah, as he did in the matter with Uriah and Bathsheba (2 Sam 11-12), and also the census taking (1 Chr 21). But He refrained from judging him in the instance Jesus refers to. Why? It must be because Torah was not truly broken.

It is prophesied of Messiah that He will serve as king (Psa 2), prophet (Deu 18:15-19), and priest (Psa 110). He will fulfill in one person, all roles of authority designated by Torah (Deu 16:18-18:22). Some scholars believe this is why Saul was rejected from being king over Israel, because he was king, and prophet (1 Sam 10:1-13), but when he took the role of priest upon himself, he was rejected (1 Sam 13:8-14), for by that act he was assuming the mantle of Messiah.

But David is a type of Messiah. He was a shepherd who was called to shepherd God's people Israel. He delivered them from giants and the Philistines, and all their enemies. He established righteous rule from one end of the kingdom to the other. He served as king, and as prophet, for his psalms are Thus saith the Lord, and many are prophetic of the Messiah. But then when David ate the showbread, reserved only for the priests, he was not rejected. I believe Jesus brought out this point to show to the Pharisees that it was because David was foreshadowing Messiah (I.e. it is lawful for Messiah to act as priest), that he was not rejected.

Combined with the dispute over whether Sabbath was really being broken or not, Jesus paints a powerful truth. And that is, that Messiah, who is the Living Torah (the Word of God made flesh, Joh 1:14), knows how to rightly apply Torah in every situation and not be in violation of it, because His heart is right before God. Thus the Son of Man, His own Messianic title for Himself, is the Lord of the Sabbath.

We who have been raised with an anti- Torah bias, read that Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and think automatically that by that phrase He must mean that He can now disregard Sabbath at will, since He is Lord of it. But does being Lord of something mean that you can now disregard it?

The biblical principle of rulership, is to care for, protect, and bless what is under your authority. To uphold what is under your authority! It is man's way of thinking that says that a ruler disregards what is under him; in God's way of thinking, a ruler upholds what is under him. We see this is the case, in that God Himself obeys His own Torah! His Torah is His Word, and His Word is Himself, breathed from His Spirit, and He cannot be faithless to Himself (Rom 3:4).

Jesus lived this understanding that to be Lord of something means to uphold it. For He fulfilled Torah perfectly, not transgressing it in any point, while He lived on earth. He did not break Torah cavalierly because He was Lord of it, showing that the sense of being Lord of it could not be to disregard it.

Jesus also taught us something important about Sabbath observance here: Sabbath is was made to serve man. Man was not made to be enslaved by Sabbath. So let's be clear: this understanding is not license to disregard Sabbath. Sabbath is God's holiest of moedim (appointed times or feast days), and He commanded us not to pursue our livings on this day, so that we could rest and have a day to worship and serve Him. Obviously, plucking a few heads of grain because you are hungry, on Sabbath, is not the same as harvesting your grain for your livelihood on Sabbath. So let us honor the Sabbath day, because we honor the Lord whose day it is, without being wrongly enslaved to it as the Pharisees were.