When God had completed the creation, He rested. It was the seventh day, and on account of God having rested, it is called the “day of rest,” or the Sabbath. Such was His delight in viewing the completeness of His work, and in His resting, that He blessed and hallowed the seventh day.
Soon, however, the entrance of sin so marred the fair creation of God that He could rest no longer. Hence the words of the Lord Jesus in defense of the work He did on the Sabbath: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (Jn. 5:17). We read nothing more of the Sabbath until Israel was brought out of Egypt. Being a redeemed and separate people, God then gave them this day of rest as a sign between Him and them (Ezek. 20:12), making known to them, and to no other nation, “His holy rest” (Neh. 9:14).
Note that the Sabbath, though having its place among the Ten Commandments, was really instituted as a matter of grace and privilege previously in connection with giving manna from heaven. The judgment of God on man when he first sinned was: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” But here is a foreshadowing of Christ and His glorious redemption work. The bread from heaven is given, a table is furnished in the wilderness, and the people of God’s choice are called to rest and not to labor (see Ex. 16:29-30). Such exactly is the provision that God has made for man in Christ. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever” (Jn. 6:51). Nor is this bread received by working. When asked as to this–the Jews laying hold of the word “labor”–the reply at once is given, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (Jn. 6:29).
God has worked once more; not now the creation of a world by His word–but a mightier and costlier work, the work of redemption. As it is written, “Behold…I work a work in your days, a work which ye will in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you” (Acts 13:41). The Lord cried, “It is finished,” and in that finished work, or rather in the person of Him who accomplished it, God found His rest once more.
Thus, as the first creation shared the rest of God, so now the sinner is called to share the rest of God in Christ. The bread of life is freely given, and the conditions are plain: “To him that worketh not, but believeth” (Rom. 4:5).
But, as Israel was slow to understand God, and would go forth to gather when God commanded them to rest, so man refuses still to cease from his works and rest in Christ. Laboring and heavy laden, he yet refuses the offered Sabbath, and clings to His fruitless efforts to work out a righteousness of his own. Vain is every attempt to mingle works with grace. The works must be perfect works, or the grace must be perfect grace. So it is written, “If by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work” (Rom. 11:6).
And in illustration of this, most solemn is the verdict of God on the breaker of the Sabbath. “While the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day.” Upon inquiry, “the Lord said unto Moses, ‘the man shall be surely put to death'” (Num. 15:32-35).
The offense might seem trivial, but it was fatal. It was introducing works into God’s rest. Such is the offense of those who, in even so small a degree, cling to their own doings as commending them to God. Where grace has wrought a perfect work and provided a perfect rest, it is presumption of the most daring kind to attempt to add to that work, or refuse to enter into that rest.
In addition to the weekly Sabbath which, as we see, is thus specially associated with the bread from heaven, there were other two great sabbatic occasions. These are enumerated in Nehemiah 10:31–the “Sabbath,” “the holy day,” and the “seventh year.” The “holy day,” doubtless, refers to the “tenth day of the seventh month,” “the day of atonement” (see Lev. 16). “And this shall be a statute forever unto you, that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict (literally ‘humble’) your souls, and do no work at all…for in that day shall the priest make atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord, it shall be a Sabbath of rest unto you” (Lev. 16:29-31).
Here it is atonement for sin that is associated with the day of rest, bringing before us another aspect of the work of Christ. On this day the priest was to be the restorer. Israel was to rest. Thus, for us, Christ has done the work of atonement once and forever. When on the cross, “He who knew no sin was made sin for us,” the blood of atonement was shed that cleanseth from all sin, and, believing in Him, we cease from our own works, and know, on the Word of God, that we are “clean every whit.”
The seventh year was “the year of release.” “Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbor shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother; because it is called the Lord’s release” (Deut. 15:2).
It was a sabbatic year–a year of rest from the labor of tilling the land–a year in which the sentence of toil in Eden on man was to be set aside. The land was to rest, and man and beast were to rest in measure, too. The heavy burden of a debt that could not be discharged was to be lifted off the shoulder of the debtor. Does it not speak to us again of the Lord Jesus and the grace that gave His life a ransom for us–that has forgiven us all trespasses, and given our weary, burdened souls a perfect, eternal rest?
Still more blessedly was this shown at the expiry of seven-times-seven years. The forty-ninth year having ended, the fiftieth year, the jubilee, was ushered in by the joyful sounding of the trumpet on the day of atonement.
During the previous forty-nine years, many had grown poor, and sold their possessions. For a time, it passed into other hands, but the moment the jubilee trumpet sounded its welcome blast, the forfeited inheritance returned, by the sovereign decree of God, to its original possessor.
And here is another aspect of the salvation that is ours in Christ. We do not get back our forfeited paradise on earth; but “in Him we have an inheritance.” Our inheritance is secured for us and we for it by the same blood that has made atonement for our sins.
Thus, whether it be bread from heaven, or atonement, or release from debt, or obtaining an inheritance, all are connected with rest, and works are excluded.
All these Sabbaths are but so many shadows of the true rest that the soul finds in Christ. He is the Sabbath for us. We cease from all our vain struggles and rest in the knowledge that the true bread from heaven is given to us; that the true release is come, and debts, whether fifty or five hundred pence, are frankly forgiven; an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, is reserved for us in heaven. If this be our true Sabbath, what, then, is the real sin of Sabbath-breaking? Much, is made by some of the shadow, while the blessed reality is unknown or ignored. Is it not to carry burdens on this our day of rest?–to carry a guilty conscience on this day of atonement?–to refuse to go free when release is proclaimed?
But while the believer in Jesus is called to a blessed present rest in Him, yet this rest is not idleness. God never associates idleness with rest. There are works suited to the Sabbath. “To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke…to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house. When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh” (Isa. 58:6-7). Such are the works that the Lord Jesus delighted to do on the Sabbath. The blind religious zeal of the Pharisee was roused as grace was patiently undoing the heavy burdens, and letting those oppressed by the devil go free. But He who was Lord of the Sabbath understood that, while works of law were excluded, works of grace and redemption were fitting accompaniments of the rest of God.
Reprinted from Shadows of Christ, published by Pickering & Inglis, out of print.