The Sabbath, part 2, explores how God's institution of the Sabbath points to redemptive rest for the believer through faith in Jesus Christ and apart from works. Paul in Hebrews contrasts those who have an evil heart of unbelief, in apostatizing from the living God (Hebrews 3:12), and who are not partakers of Christ (Hebrews 3:14), with those who by saving faith enter into God’s rest: “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest … There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” (Hebrews 4:3-4, 9-11). Hebrews' teaching is legitimately unpacked from the teaching of Genesis 2:1-3, Exodus 20 & Deuteronomy, 5 and the rest theme that appears in the later books of the Old Testament, such as in Psalm 95. Israel was to keep the Ten Commandments, not in order to earn salvation, but because they had already been redeemed by grace alone (Exodus 20:1-2). Israel was to rest on the Sabbath because they had been delivered by free mercy apart from their works through the almighty power of God (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).

By creating man on the sixth day and resting on and sanctifying the seventh day, God indicated that He created mankind, and His “very good” creation which He placed under man, for the purpose of entering into His rest, a rest of joyful fellowship with Him. This rest was lost for Adam and His posterity through the Fall, but is restored in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, for all those who are in union with Him, and thus participate in the second birth and the new creation. God placed the gospel, He placed His salvation-rest, in the creation account itself, and in the middle of the Ten Commandments, so that Israel might understand and receive salvation through resting in the coming Messiah. Every Sabbath when they ceased from their own works they were to think about how God had redeemed them from Egypt through the shed blood of the Passover lamb and about the greater redemption through restful faith in the coming through the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.

Israel is to obey because they have been saved, redeemed from slavery in Egypt to become Jehovah’s special people: “remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm.” (Deut 5). Obeying because of redemption is also in the first giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, but there it prefaces not the Fourth Commandment only, but the entire series of the Ten: “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. [After this,] Thou shalt have no other gods before me [and the rest of the list]” (Exodus 20:1-3).

Israel was to obey the Fourth Commandment, Deuteronomy 5, and obey all the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, not in order to be redeemed, but because they were redeemed. If they missed Exodus 20:1-2 as a preface to Exodus 20:3ff., they were missing something absolutely crucial. If they missed Deuteronomy 5:15 and sought to keep the Sabbath in order to merit salvation, instead of in gratitude because Jehovah had already redeemed them through His grace alone through sacrificial death and blood, they were highly displeasing God, rejecting His rest through unbelief, instead of by faith in the coming Messiah embracing the salvation pictured in their deliverance from Egypt and promised by God even in the creation week on the seventh day.

By faith alone enter into God’s salvation rest, that rest He purposed for man from before the creation of the world, and accomplished in Jesus Christ through His sacrificial death, shed blood, and resurrection. Then obey God out of gratitude, as one already cleansed through sacrificial blood. God’s plan, taught from the creation account in Genesis through the last chapter of Revelation, is to first make unworthy sinners live, by grace alone, through Christ alone, and then enable them to obey out of loving gratitude because they have been redeemed. Jehovah reminded Israel of His free redemptive grace every single day with every single animal sacrifice offered in the Tabernacle and on every single Sabbath when they physically rested in the land He gave them because of His promise to Abraham and his Seed. In the creation account itself we see Jehovah’s purpose to redeem by grace His people, those who would by faith enter into His rest through Jesus Christ. He blasts this truth from cover to cover in His Word and in His ordained worship. Cease from your own works and enter into His rest by faith!

Every Sabbath Israel celebrated God's free and unmerited love.