“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” (Exodus 20:8)
God commanded us to rest on the seventh day, while working the other six, yet He also proclaimed, “So I declared an oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ (Psalm 95:11)” He commanded us to rest, and then deemed it impossible, that is, before Jesus. Since God is always the same God, His perspective on this has not changed—we are still to respect His Sabbath day of rest. What does that mean? That we go to church on Sunday morning? Not go to work on Sunday? Nap in the afternoon? I don’t think Jesus experienced every possible temptation and the most excruciating death for us to go to church on Sunday mornings and sing along to our preferential form of Christian music. Paul didn’t either.
Paul writes in Hebrews that those who heard the message before Jesus could not humanly understand because “those who heard did not combine it with faith. (Hebrews 4:2)” After Jesus returned to heaven, He sent His spirit into each of us. The spirit of God resides in each of us who have faith and “now we who have believed enter that rest. (Hebrews 4:3)” Hold on. So the rest named previously impossible is now achievable through faith in Christ, through the knowledge that God is in complete control.
But what is this rest exactly? It can’t just be Sundays. Can you imagine dating someone and them being cool with you only giving them one morning out of the week? This is exponentially more important than that. Maybe you’re thinking now, “So I’m better because I do a devotional every night, church every Sunday morning/night, and church every Wednesday night.” You’re missing the point if you’re in that mindset. Can you imagine being in a marriage where your partner only spoke to you during designated times and didn’t even acknowledge your presence if it wasn’t during that designated time? That sounds like an unhealthy marriage to me.
“Ok, Sarah, you’re starting to sound like you agree with the promise of old that God said rest with Him is impossible.” Well the cool thing about God is that He didn’t just present us with life and its options; He also gives us the answers for those who truly seek it. In Hebrews 4:9, Paul declares that there is such a thing as a Sabbath rest. Well what exactly is this rest? Paul says it is for the people of God who “rest from his own work.” This means that you rest, or step away from your plans, your “bad habits,” your “guilty pleasures,” your comforts and your way of life. You enter God’s rest when you put to rest your idea of what living is.
So what is this Sabbath? “God again set a certain day, calling it Today. (Hebrews 4:7)” That “Today” is capitalized in the Bible because English lacks the original linguistic emphasis; that “ Today” is right now, the present moment, the here and now. This “Today” is NOT the past secrets you refuse to unchain, NOT the future, which doesn’t exist, and not even five minutes ago. Today is this exact moment in which you exist, and you are called to lay down everything that is not Today to rest in God’s rest, in God’s contentment, in God’s love.
The Sabbath is the constant worship of God and everything that He is. Have you ever wondered why it took you so long to “get into” worship during a service? You stood there not really feeling the music, absentmindedly reciting the words in front of you, or not really desiring to dance or raise your hands or do whatever it is that you do for worship, but once you start going, you’re infectious. You just love loving Jesus, but you just wish it didn’t take so long to get to that place. It’s because you weren’t made to have a “worship on/off switch.” You were made to explode your old life and step into a life of worship, meaning every second of every day for the rest of your existence is programmed to be in a constant state of worshiping God. It’s a mindset that takes practice, but an absolutely necessary and worthwhile one. You slept last night? Praise be to God! You got sick? To God be the glory! You saw something beautiful? Bless his perfect name! Stubbed your toe? BLESS YOU JESUS!
When you put your faith in Jesus, you are called to this mindset of boundless joy and constant worship and never-ending love! God tells us this is how we are to live because He created this life and knows how it works—PRAISE BE TO GOD!
