God completed the creation of all things in six days and rested from all His work on the seventh day. Twenty-five hundred years later, He gave the Ten Commandments (Exo. 20:1-17). The fourth commandment reminds man to remember the Sabbath. In other words, it reminds man to remember God’s work. This remembrance reminds man that God spent six days to restore the earth and then rested on the seventh day. The seventh day was originally God’s day of rest. Twenty-five hundred years later, God gave the seventh day to man as the Sabbath day and told man to rest on this day.
Everything in the Old Testament is a shadow of the coming good things (Heb. 10:1). Like all other types in the Old Testament, the Sabbath which God gave man has its spiritual significance. God created man on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day. As soon as man was created, he did not enter into work but into God’s rest. God worked six days and then rested one day. But when man came, there were not six days followed by one day, but one day followed by six days. Man rested first and then worked. This is the principle of the gospel. The Sabbath is a type of the gospel. Salvation comes first; work comes later. First we have life; then we have the walk. Rest comes before the work and the walk. This is the gospel. God shows us that He has already prepared the rest of redemption. After we enter into it, we work. Thank God, we work because we first have rested.
The significance of the Sabbath is that man stops his work and enters into God’s rest. For man to enter God’s rest means that man does not do his own work but instead accepts God’s work. Therefore, it is a great sin to break the Sabbath. If you work when God asks you not to work, you have rejected God’s rest.
Breaking the Sabbath is like Moses smiting the rock with the rod. God commanded Moses to “speak to the rock before their eyes that it may yield its water” (Num. 20:8). God did not ask him to smite the rock with the rod. The rock should not have been smitten a second time; it had already been smitten once (Exo. 17:1-6). The work had already been done, and he should not have tried to do it again. Doing anything again means to overthrow the accomplished work. Moses should have obeyed God’s word and commanded the rock to yield the water. Smiting the rock a second time meant that he was denying God’s first work. Moses disobeyed God’s command. As a result, he could not enter the land of Canaan (Num. 20:7-12).
To man, breaking the Sabbath does not seem to be a great matter. But in God’s truth, it is a great matter. Man should enjoy God’s rest first and then work. He should receive the gospel first and then have the walk. Man should only do God’s work after he has enjoyed God’s rest. If he breaks the Sabbath, he is violating the divinely ordained principle. This is why the Sabbath occupies such an important place in the Old Testament. The Old Testament records the story of a person who collected firewood on the Sabbath. When this was discovered, the whole congregation took him outside the camp and stoned him to death. This person had broken God’s Sabbath (Num. 15:32-36). A man who does not rest is one who thinks that he can work and act by himself; he thinks that he does not need God’s work. God, however, is satisfied with His work. Keeping the Sabbath means that man is also satisfied with God’s work. Keeping the Sabbath means that man rests in God’s rest and accepts His work. This is why God commanded in the Old Testament that no work be done on the Sabbath. This is what the Old Testament shows us.
However, the situation is different in the New Testament. On the Sabbath the Lord Jesus went to the synagogue and read the Scripture (Luke 4:16); He went to the synagogue and taught people (Mark 1:21). The apostles also went to the synagogue to reason about the Scriptures on the Sabbath (Acts 17:1-3; 18:4). This shows us that there was not only a passive rest on the Sabbath but also an active work on this day. Originally it was a day of physical rest, but in the New Testament it becomes a day of spiritual pursuit. This is an improvement from the Old Testament.
If we read the Bible carefully, we will see that God’s revelation in the Bible is progressive. In the message on “Reading the Bible” in chapter nine, we said that we need to learn the facts when we read the Bible because there is light in the facts. Once the facts change, it means there is new light. This is what happens in the case of the Sabbath. Initially the Scripture said, “God blessed the seventh day” (Gen. 2:3), but the Scripture calls the day the Lord Jesus resurrected from the dead “the first day of the week” (Matt. 28:1). It does not say that the Lord Jesus resurrected on the seventh day but that He resurrected on the first day of the week. All the four Gospels show us that the Lord Jesus resurrected on the first day of the week. At least five of Jesus’ appearances after His resurrection were on the first day of the week (John 20:1, 11-19; Matt. 28:1-9; Luke 24:1, 13-15, 34, 36). In Acts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place on the day of Pentecost, which was the day following the Sabbath (Lev. 23:15-16), the first day of the week. The first day of the week is the Lord’s Day. We will speak more about it later. Of course, this does not mean that God wants to replace the Sabbath with the Lord’s Day. But the Bible clearly shows us that God is turning our attention to the first day of the week.
We mentioned earlier that the Sabbath is a type of the gospel. The type of the gospel goes away when the reality of the gospel comes. The gospel is the principle behind the Sabbath, just as the cross is the principle behind the sacrifice. In the Old Testament the sacrificial bull and lamb are types of the Lamb of God—the Lord Jesus. The bull and the lamb are not needed now that the Lord Jesus has come. Today if a man still brings a bull or a lamb to sacrifice to God, he is ignorant of the cross. How can a man offer up a bull or a lamb when the Lord has already become the offering? Likewise, the gospel has already come. Man can now rest in God through the gospel. God has accomplished all His work through His Son’s redemption on the cross. Therefore, He does not charge us to work first but to rest. We should rest in the work of His Son. We do not come to God to do any work; we come to Him to rest. The gospel ushers us into rest in God. We serve only after we rest. After the gospel, rest is brought in, and the Sabbath is spontaneously annulled for the believers just as the sacrifice of bulls and lambs was annulled. The Sabbath is over for us just as the sacrifice of bulls and lambs is over. The Sabbath is a type in the Old Testament; this type has already been fulfilled in the New Testament.