Sabbath Rest Series

This morning we are going to take a look at “Sabbath Rest,” and try to understand what it is. The word “sabbath” seems so foreign to us today, and whenever we hear the word we tend to think of Sundays or going to church; however, that’s not entirely what sabbath is about. In the Bible the sabbath is an important spiritual principle; but it’s also possibly one of the least taught in the Christian life today. We are going to take a close look at this word as we get into our message, but I will tell you now that it relates to “rest.”

How many of us feel that we need a little rest? Or how about a lot of rest? Like the word “sabbath,” the word “rest” has become lost in American society. It has gotten lost in the hustle and bustle. “Rest” is a word that tends to be avoided, because rest is something that only wimps need or want.

We live in a working society that is always on the go to produce more and earn more, and it is the strong and aggressive who get ahead in life. Success and productivity determine our self-worth in America, and we can’t show our weakness by saying we need some rest. We feel that we must always be doing something or we are not worth anything. So, we work and work until we become burnt out and have a nervous breakdown, or wind up in the hospital with a stress related illness.

It is my hope that this morning’s message will bring us an awareness of a lost and very important spiritual principle, and that we will begin to reacquire the concept of “Sabbath Rest” for our own physical and spiritual well-being. Let us begin by looking at Genesis 2:1-3:

The Definition of “Sabbath” (Genesis 2:1-3)

1 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

In these verses we read that God rested “from all His work, which He had done” (v. 2). The rest that God observed on the seventh day is not equivalent to the rest that we observe on the Lord’s Day. The infinite God who spoke the universe into existence by the word of His power did not grow weary as a man would. Isaiah 40:28 says, “The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary.” Verse 2 “does not say God ceased all activity on the seventh day; instead, He only ‘rested from all His work that he had done in creation.’ On His Sabbath, God no longer performs the labor of the preceding six days in which He created all things by His word. However, He continues to uphold all things.”(1) Yet, we still need to consider how rest is an important spiritual principle.

I would like to point out that many of us find ourselves working seven days a week. We apparently think that we are Super Man or Wonder Woman without having any need for rest. Author Leonard Sweet points out that we take “working vacations,” “working breakfasts,” “working lunches,” and “working dinners.” He says we can never get away from our work, and he tells us, “Ask around: Who doesn’t check voice messages and e-mail while on vacation . . . [or] before going to bed just in case a client or someone needs us?”(2) I think we fail to recognize that if the Lord of the universe needed a day off, then we do too!

The word “rested” in these verses is the Hebrew word shabbat(3) from which we derive our English word “sabbath.” The word sabbath doesn’t just mean the seventh day of the week, or a traditional day of worship. In Hebrew, Sabbath means, “to desist from exertion,” “to cease,” and “to rest.”(4) In an article entitled “Guidelines for Sabbath Rest,” it shares the following insight:

“God ‘rested on the seventh day from all His work,’ implying that those whom He created in His image should do the same . . . The sabbath is a time to abstain completely from everyday work. It is a time to relax the mind, body, and soul in order to be filled and nourished . . . Sabbath rest is not running away from life and its problems; it is an opportunity to receive grace to face them. It is a time to rely on God [and] a time to let God be God in one’s living.”(5)