Exodus 20:8-11 - “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
set-apart. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day
is a Sabbath unto YHWH your Elohim, in it you shall not do any manner of work,
you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your
maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; for
in six days YHWH made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and
rested on the seventh day; wherefore YHWH blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed
it.”
First
of all, calling Sunday the Sabbath violates scripture in and of itself. The physical Sabbath day that YHWH
established at the time He first spoke those words to Moshe/Moses and the
Israelites was equivalent to our Friday night at sunset to Saturday night at
sunset, and since YHWH commanded us not to add to or subtract from the scriptures in any way, Sunday as the Sabbath is a violation of this commandment. The Sabbath is not Sunday, and it’s not
even Saturday. It was changed by the
Pope, but it was never changed by God. And
those who have tried to change it “back” to Saturday are closer, but also
incorrect. In fact, I have not
personally verified this, but according to some reports the hierarchy of the
Catholic church considers most Protestants to be under their authority for this
reason. They know that they changed the
Sabbath day to Sunday and not God, and so, when Protestants worship on Sunday, they
know that Protestants are obeying their rules and not God’s and thereby acknowledging
the Pope’s ultimate authority.
BUT, this is all ancillary information added to help reveal that we have a tendency to change what God gives us for new rules created for selfish reasons.
I am not worried about the actual physical day because it's irrelevant. Because
the physical rules God set up in the Old Testament were representatives of
spiritual truths, we need to understand that the physical day was a
representation of a greater spiritual truth.
On a physical level, yes it’s
true that your physical body benefits from a day of rest, but your spirit-man
is unaffected. Yes, you can use that day
of rest to train and strengthen your spirit, but the physical day of rest in
and of itself accomplishes nothing spiritually.
The physical Sabbath represents a spiritual truth. So what is that truth?
The first four commandments deal
with our relationship/marriage with God directly while the last six deal with our
relationship/marriage with His body. The
first four commandments follow this pattern:
Do not, do not, do not, and do.
The fourth commandment is the only one of the first four commandments
that is an action and not an avoidance.
In this marriage with God, we can’t be considered loving spouses if we
never betray, never turn, never avoid our duty, and yet never care. Imagine if I never committed adultery on my
wife, if I never kept any good thing from her, and I never physically or
mentally abused her, but I also never actively loved her. What if I never cared to be with her? What if I always avoided contact with
her? What if I never told her how
special she was in any way? Would that
be a healthy, loving marriage? No.
The Sabbath was designed to give
us a time to be in His presence. It was,
in essence, a scheduled date night. It
is to us now a picture of telling the world to get lost because we love Him and
we want to spend some intimate, quality time with Him. That is something we can do any time of any
day. We are not limited to Saturday,
Sunday, Wednesday night bible study, or whatever. In fact, you’re breaking the Sabbath if you
are going to church every single Sunday/Saturday/whatever-day of your life, but
you’re not doing it out of love for Him and a desire to be with Him, but merely
out of a sense of duty.
And, as a side note, it’s worth
pointing out that the Sabbath is a prophetic picture of the seventh millennium
when we will rest from our labors and He will rule on the earth. We're not going to get into that in any detail right now, but I mention it because it is another important aspect of YHWH that the Sabbath was meant to reveal.
Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com
Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com
