Jer 75 3/18/71; Heb 24 10/15/72

DOCTRINE OF THE SABBATH (or DOCTRINE OF REST)

A. Introduction.

1. Freedom demands rest. Rest demands freedom. You can never have freedom when you stop thinking. The Sabbath was a thinking day when you didn’t work physically but sat somewhere, rested, and thought. So there are two kinds of Sabbath:

2. The temporal Sabbath is the faith-rest technique of the believer in Heb 3:11, and the moment-by-moment Sabbath of Heb 4:1-7. It was the basis of spirituality in the Old Testament dispensations; i.e., believing, claiming, and resting on verses, principles, and doctrines.

3. The eternal Sabbath is eternal life. Mt 11:28, “Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest [eternal life].”

B. Salvation Rest, Mt 11:28. Salvation is described in terms of rest, the rest of eternal life. Eternal life is not characterized by resting, but by tranquility and blessing.

C. Supergrace Rest.

1. The land of Canaan is a type of the supergrace life, and in the context of Heb 3:11, supergrace is manifest by faith-rest; i.e., the maximum use of faith-rest with doctrine and the maximum application of doctrine from the launching pad of the right lobe.

2. Heb 4:1-3 (in Heb 4:3 the elliptical oath is repeated) says that this rest was provided for the Jews in eternity past, yet their disobedience of unbelief will keep them out of it.

D. Sabbath Rest, Gen 2:2,3.

1. The Hebrew verb SHABATH means to rest, to relax, and to have tranquility.

2. On the seventh day of the earth’s restoration, everything was provided for man, and God rested in the sense that nothing else could possibly be provided for man in grace. God was not tired. Everything man needed at that point was provided. (But God had to go to work again, as it were, when man sinned.)

3. So the Sabbath is a memorial to the grace of God: He has provided everything and there is nothing left to provide. Since there was nothing God could add, obviously there was nothing man could add either.

E. Sabbath of Israel, Ex 20:8-11; Deut 5:12-15; Lev 23:3; Isa 58:11-14.

1. This was instituted as the fourth commandment in the Decalogue. This occurred every Saturday as 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.

2. The very change of pace was not only beneficial to them physically and mentally, but it had ultimate benefit to them in the spiritual realm because it was a reminder of grace.

3. The fact that you had to cool your heels at the end of every week was a reminder that you could do nothing for salvation and nothing for blessing. It is all the provision of God.

4. Even if they knew no doctrine, this day of rest caused them to think (“remember” of Ex 20:8) and realize that they could do nothing for salvation or blessing. In effect, this was a training aid during this pre-Canon period.

5. The Jews were specifically commanded to think and not work. (Of course, some work is thinking, and thinking is work.) But this was in the time of an agricultural economy requiring manual labor. So to “remember” means to draw upon the resources of your right lobe. It demands that the right lobe controls the soul (not emotions) as the basis of freedom.

6. When you find yourself doing nothing, then you suddenly realize you can do nothing for salvation and nothing for blessing under God’s plan. For under God’s plan, God does all the work and you are the beneficiary.

7. Also, by maintaining good health with periodic rest, this contributed to the full, free function of the mind. With loss of health, your mind becomes a slave to certain preoccupations, like pain. So this command under the laws of divine establishment was for the protection of believers and unbelievers alike.

F. The Sabbatical Year of Israel, Ex 23:10-11; Lev 25:3-4, 26:33-37.

1. This was the big test of supergrace. Every seven years, the Jews were supposed to stop work. If they had been functioning properly under supergrace, then this was really a year’s vacation in which they didn’t have to work.

2. Having followed so well the laws of divine establishment, and having functioned under GAP, they now took a break on the seventh year to exercise their capacity for life. So they did not work for a full year without any detriment to them.

3. This was a great test to see if they had entered supergrace or not: could they trust God to provide everything for them? If so, it was no problem. If not, they were like squirrels who hadn’t gathered nuts for the winter. The Jews were to depend on God’s provision for one year.

4. 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.

a. From the Exodus until the first administration of the fifth cycle of discipline to the Southern Kingdom, they had accumulated 490 years in which they had not observed even one Sabbatical year as a nation.

b. Over a period of 490 years they had accumulated seventy lost Sabbatical years.

c. God, in His great sense of humor, told the Southern Kingdom in 586 B.C. that since they had missed seventy Sabbatical years, He would give them those seventy years in slavery.

d. Therefore, the first administration of the fifth cycle of discipline lasted for seventy years. Lev 26:33-36; 2 Chron 36:20-21 cf. Dan 9:2 and Jer 25:11-12, 29:10.

G. The Year of Jubilee, Lev 25:8ff.

1. This could be called a super Sabbatical year. After forty-nine years (in which there were seven Sabbatical years), the fiftieth year was called the Year of Jubilee; it was a Sabbath year also.

2. During the Year of Jubilee, all the real estate in the land went back to its original owners, all the businesses went back to their original owners; everything reverted back to how it was in year one

. a. All slaves were to be freed, and whatever was their portion of land allotted to them by tribe and by the system was given back to them.

b. So no matter what you ever owned, it was always on a lease basis, and you were never to keep any of it past the Year of Jubilee.

3. Of course, the Jews violated this also.

4. So every fifty years you started all over fresh, and again the smart ones would acquire more than the others. This just proves the point of history, that no matter what you have in equal distribution, the smart ones will gain most of the pie, and the dumb ones will again fall into slavery; it’s all just a matter of time.

5. This was a cycle of cleansing for the nation. It was a complete shuffle; no one really got hurt by it. The smart ones always came out ahead every time anyway.

6. The purpose was again to remind everyone of grace. For after you’ve been a successful businessman for 49 years, it’s very difficult to orient to grace. So on the fiftieth year it was all taken away, and you started all over again. This Year taught that, under grace, you can’t earn, deserve, or work for it.

H. Profaning the Sabbath was associated with idolatry and the apostasy of the Jews, Ezek 23:37-39.

I. Sabbath violation occurred after the restoration, Neh 13:15-21.

J. The Sabbath is set aside in the Church Age, Col 2:16-17, Galatians. The memorial to grace in the Church Age is not Saturday but Sunday, the first day of the week, 1 Cor 16:2; Act 20:7.

K. Moment-by-Moment Sabbath for the Church Age.

1. We in the Church Age do not have a Saturday Sabbath. It didn’t work too well for the Jews, so for the Church Age, God beefed it up and gave us a moment-by-moment Sabbath.

2. This is the faith-rest technique, Heb 4:1-3. This is the principle by which the believer enters into the supergrace life. So your moment-by- moment Sabbath means your spiritual advance, and your annual Sabbatical is comparable to the supergrace life.

3. Illustrations of this moment-by-moment Sabbath, or the dynamics of faith-rest.

a. Abraham, Rom 4:17-21.

b. Moses at the Red Sea, Ex 14:10-14.

c. The bones of Joseph, Heb 11:22.

d. Caleb and the Giants, Num 13 and 14 cf. Josh 14:6-14, 15:14; Judges 1:20.

4. So it is inevitable that the daily function of GAP and the daily function of the faith-rest technique will eventuate in the supergrace life which is your spiritual Sabbatical year.

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