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SUBJECT:
Sabbath
QUESTION: How is the Sabbath an analogy of God’s Plan?
ANSWER:
Sabbath Analogy of God's Plan
The Sabbath day has two
great overall purposes according to the Bible:
1) It looks back as a witness to the physical creation;
2) it looks forward as a shadow to the spiritual rest and
creation.
3) A third purpose can be listed as well: the Sabbath was to
be remembrance of the God who brought Israel out of Egypt,
(Deuteronomy 5:15). God does things in type and antitype, in
"shadow" and in "substance."
When God created the earth
in six days and then rested on the seventh, this
completed the physical creation. There is no more physical
creation going on. The works are finished as Genesis 2:2-3
and Hebrews 4:3 attest. So the Sabbath day looks back to
that Creation, the week of the physical creation (Exodus 20:
11; 31:17). It is then a memorial, which helps us to
remember the Creator who made everything. It keeps Him
fully in mind every week.
But God also has a great
spiritual plan—a spiritual creation—which is now in progress
(2 Corinthians 5:17). There is a new Creation, and the
Sabbath also looks forward to that. Hebrews 4:1 refers to a
rest for God's people. It is a yet future rest
that we are to strive to enter—the ultimate rest in the
Kingdom of God. The seven-day week (v.4) is a picture of
this spiritual week God has instituted. God rested—so man
shall too. Therefore, the Sabbath day each week also, looks
forward to that future rest—when the whole earth shall be at
rest—when all shall be taught the way of God. Hebrews 4
shows this clearly and verse 9 is particularly relevant. It
says, "There remaineth therefore a rest [sabbatismos—"sabbatizing"I
to the people of God." So, because of the future rest (katapausis)
spiritual Israel is to enter, there remains for us a
sabbatismos or “sabbatizing." This means that we will
keep that future Sabbath of millennial rest as we now keep
the weekly Sabbath to look forward to it.
In other words, the Sabbath
is both a memorial and a shadow. It is a
memorial of Creation and a shadow of the coming future rest
of God's people following the return of Jesus Christ. The
Sabbath did not originate with the law of' Moses or with the
Sinaitic covenant with physical Israel—so it does not pass
with that covenant; rather it originated with Creation and
looks back as a memorial to it. The Sabbath is also a
shadow, looking forward to the yet future time of the
Millennium. A shadow remains as long as the substance is
still future. So it remains—looking forward
to that time. And when that time comes, the Sabbath shall
still be kept (Isaiah 66:23) although no longer as a shadow
but as a memorial to the then contemporary reality of
Christ's millennial rule.
It was a widespread belief
in both intertestamental Judaism and the early Church that
the seven days of Creation were an analogy of God's plan for
man. This belief held that the first six days represent the
entirety of human history in which man is allowed to go his
own way under the sway of Satan the devil, and the seventh
day on which God rested represents the millennial rest when
God Himself sets up His own rule and Kingdom over the
earth. Such a Kingdom is described in a number of Old
Testament passages (e.g. Isaiah 2:2-4; 11; Micah 4:1-8).
Moreover, two New Testament
passages refer explicitly to this future Kingdom.
Revelation 20:1-10 describes a time when Jesus Christ
Himself returns to the earth and has Satan bound. The
righteous will rule. The time of this rule is specifically
described as "a thousand years" (vv.4, 6). As we have seen,
Hebrews 3:7-14; 11 draws a lengthy analogy with the Sabbath
rest which physical Israel had never entered into.
Christians have a chance to enter into this rest if they do
not harden their hearts as the Israelites did. In Hebrews
4:9 this eschatological rest is explicitly connected with
the seventh-day Sabbath rest.
Sabbath in the Millennium
As already mentioned, the
weekly Sabbath day was taken as a sign of a millennial
"Sabbath" of one thousand years in which God (Jesus
Christ) would rule directly over the whole
earth. The Kingdom of God was already awaited by the Old
Testament prophets. Some of the descriptions of it include
references to worship on the weekly and annual Sabbaths.
For example, Isaiah 66:10ff describes the restoration of
Jerusalem as the capital of the world and the rule of God,
over all nations. The righteous are vindicated and
rebellions punished. Verse 23 states "From one new moon to
another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh
come to worship before me, saith the Lord." Sabbath worship
is envisioned for all peoples, not just for Israelites. (The
new moon was often treated as a semi-holiday because of its
importance for calendrical purposes. However, it is nowhere
explicitly designated a holy day. See further discussion
under "Annual Holy Days.")
Ezekiel 40-48 describes
Israel and the future Temple in prophetic vision. Regular
observance of the weekly Sabbath and other holy days shall
be established alongside a reinstituted priesthood and
temple ritual. The Passover and Feast of Tabernacles are
discussed in 45:21-25. The weekly Sabbath is mentioned in
Ezekiel 44:24; 45:17; 46:1, 3-4, 12. Then, as now, there
shall be physical human beings with the same basic needs
that human beings have always had. The physical and
spiritual needs for the Sabbath then shall be the same as
they are now and as they have been in the past. |