The doctrine of rest or Sabbaths

1. Salvation is described in terms of rest — Matthew 11:28, the rest of eternal life.

2. The land of Canaan is a type of the supergrace life and in this context supergrace is manifest by faith-rest. The rest of Canaan in Hebrews 3:11 is the supergrace life characterised by maximum use of faith-rest with doctrine.

3. We have a third kind of rest, the Sabbath rest of Genesis 2:2,3. The Hebrew verb for this Sabbath rest is shabath, which means to rest, to relax, to have tranquillity. On the seventh day of the earth’s restoration we have everything provided for man and God rested. God rested in the sense that there was absolutely nothing else to be provided for man, rest in the sense of the total provision of grace. That is the concept of the Sabbath rest of God in Genesis 2:2,3 — it is a memorial to the grace of God. Under grace God always provides everything.

4. The fourth Sabbath is the Sabbath of Israel — Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15. This was every Saturday. It came around once a week and it was the last day of the week. The Jews were permitted to work for six days but on the seventh day they had to stop all work. The very change of pace was not only beneficial to them physically and even mentally but it had ultimate benefit in the spiritual realm because it was a reminder of grace. The fact that they had to stop work at the end of every week was a reminder that they could do nothing for salvation, they could do nothing for blessing. It is the provision of God.

5. The Sabbatical year of Israel. This was the big test of supergrace — Exodus 23:10,11; Leviticus 25:3,4; 26:33-37. Every seven years the Jews were supposed to stop work, and if they had been functioning properly under supergrace then this was really a year’s vacation, they didn’t have to work. They lived without work and without it being detrimental to them. This was a great test of whether they had entered into supergrace or not. They had to depend for one year on God’s provision. The failure of the Jews to observe the Sabbatical year was the basis for determining how long they would stay out under the fifth cycle of discipline. From the Exodus down to the first administration of the fifth cycle of discipline to the southern kingdom was 490 years. In that time they had not observed one Sabbatical year. In 490 years they had accumulated seven Sabbatical years, so God in His great sense of humour said to them in 586 BC, “You missed your Sabbatical years, I’ll give them all to you now in slavery.” That is why the first administration of the fifth cycle of discipline was seventy years. This is all taught in the sequence of verses in 2 Chronicles 36:20,21 cf. Daniel 9:2; Jeremiah 25:11,12; 29:10.

6. There is a moment-by-moment Sabbath for the Church Age. In the Church Age we do not have a Saturday Sabbath. That didn’t work too well, the Jews didn’t learn anything from it. So in the Church Age, since every believer is a priest, God beefed it up. He gave us a moment-by-moment Sabbath, the faith-rest technique. This is also a principle by which the believer enters into the supergrace life. So the moment-by-moment Sabbath or the faith-rest technique is the growing stage, and then the annual Sabbath - taking a Sabbatical year — is supergrace.

7. Illustrations of the moment-by-moment Sabbath or the dynamics of faith-rest. a) Abraham in Romans 4:17-21; b) Moses at the Red Sea — Exodus 14:10-14; c) The bones of Joseph in Hebrews 11:22; d) Caleb and the giants - Numbers 13 and 14 cf. Joshua 14:6-14; 15:14; Judges 1:20.