Jesus obliterated the sacrificial system, because He brought an end to Judaism - with all its ceremonies, all its rituals, all its sacrifices, all of its external trappings, the temple, the holy of holies, all of it, including the Sabbath.. The Sabbath observance went away with all the rest that belonged to Judaism. How did Jesus treat the Sabbath? Any way He wanted; absolutely any way He wanted.
He is the mediator, we know, of a new covenant, a better covenant. It’s important to notice that just as He obliterated the sacrificial system, He obliterated the Sabbath system.
“The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” He can do anything He wants with the Sabbath. He can institute it. He can make commands for restrictions. He can require death for violation of those commands, as in the Mosaic law. Or He can set it aside, totally. He can abrogate it. He can nullify it.
And there is the transition that is taking place in the New Testament. As Jesus arrives, everything that is part of the system of Judaism is coming to its end.
John 5 verse 15 says, “The man went away, told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
“For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.” Jesus would never violate the Ten Commandments. Jesus would never violate the law of God. He is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. But Jesus did anything He wanted on the Sabbath, and in sight of the leaders in the doing of it, because it was part of bringing down that whole system. In verse 17, He goes even beyond that, and defends what He did by saying this: “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”
This is a claim to be deity. “My Father and I are doing our work before your eyes. We are working.” “For this reason therefore” - verse 18 - “the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” He was calling Himself - He was calling, I should say, God - His Father, and continually involved in activities that violated Sabbath law.
The Pharisees charged Jesus with breaking the Sabbath law, making Himself equal with God, and this led them to kill Him eventually. Jesus never attempted to fit His activities into the Sabbath law of the old covenant. He established His own authority as one with God and as Lord over the Sabbath. The Pharisees were strict Sabbath-keepers. They followed the old covenant and embellishments to the letter; and yet they missed the whole point of the Sabbath.
They found no rest from their endless works-efforts at salvation. They found no real honest repentance. The Sabbath laws were mere shadows of hope, a weekly reminder that there was a paradise to be regained and it was through the means of righteousness. There could be rest from the endless struggle and the horrible burden of trying to earn your salvation. When Jesus came, He brought the rest, the true rest. The child of God is now a new person.
Under the new covenant, we are healed, and washed, and found, and accepted. We have entered into rest with none other than the Creator Himself. We have been given righteousness, and we rejoice in that gift. We cease all effort to earn our salvation. Jesus literally did away with the Sabbath. What about the rest of the New Testament? What does the New Testament say to the church regarding the Sabbath?
Hebrews 3 verse 7, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for 40 years.
“‘Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart, and they do not know My ways;” and I swore in My wrath, “They shall not enter into My rest.”’” God’s true rest didn’t come through Joshua. God’s true rest didn’t come through Moses. God’s true rest comes only through Jesus Christ. Joshua led the nation of Israel into the land of their promised rest, and it was nothing more than a temporary earthly rest - merely a shadow of the final ultimate heavenly rest - my rest.
This is the promise of salvation that God gives to those who put their trust in Him. Verse 12: “Take care, brethren, that there be not in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.’
“For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses?” The whole generation died in the wilderness. “And with whom was He angry for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.” The kind of rest that is important for us is the salvation rest that comes by faith - by faith in God.
Unbelief forfeits rest. The rest that the New Testament writers are concerned about - even the emphasis in the book of Hebrews, which is a very Jewish epistle - is not upon a Sabbath observance, but upon a spiritual salvation rest. Look at chapter 4 verse 1: “Let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any of you might seem to have come short of it.” The rest that the New Testament concerns itself with is not a day of the week, it is salvation.
“For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed have entered that rest.” There is never a command in the New Testament to keep the Sabbath. All Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament - some numerous times - except the fourth command. It is never repeated in the New Testament, not one single time.
It was, in the midst of the moral law, a sign and a symbol to lead the people to rest and repentance. But when you come to the New Testament, there’s never a repeat of that command. The rest that the New Testament is concerned about is the rest that comes to the soul from hearing and believing the good news preached. That’s the rest the New Testament offers. Verse 9 says, “There is a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself rested also from his works, as God did from His.”
That’s so remarkable. What does that mean? There’s only two possible concepts about getting to heaven. You work your way in, or it’s a gift, right? For the Jews, they were working. But when you enter the rest of grace and the rest of faith, works cease. The day you came to Jesus Christ, you ceased trying to earn your salvation, right? You entered into permanent rest. This is just a magnificent New Testament emphasis. The Mosaic Sabbath - the symbol, the sign - was a dim reflection of the true rest.
Listen to
Romans 14:5: “One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person is fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord.” There were Jews who had come to faith in Christ and had a hard time letting go of the Sabbath.
It was pretty much ingrained in them. They thought they were still obeying the Lord by maintaining old covenant Sabbath law. They observed it for the Lord. “He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, he who eats” - following the dietary laws - “does it for the Lord, he who gives thanks to God; he who eats not, for the Lord he doesn’t eat, and gives thanks to God.” In other words, as verse 5 says, each person, fully convinced in his own mind, does what he thinks is right. It really doesn’t matter.
Verse 8 says, “If we live, we live for the Lord, if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” Don't make an issue out of the Sabbath. As he says back in verse 2, some people are concerned about dietary laws. Some people are concerned about Sabbath observance. Those things are part of a passing scheme. And there’s instruction in the New Testament elsewhere to let these people develop their understanding of their freedom from these prescriptions; don’t force them against their conscience.
Jewish believers still felt compelled to observe Sabbath law, dietary law; let them do that, until they’ve come to the fullness of their freedom. What is remarkable about this is there’s no command here to do that. This would be a perfect place to say, “And those of you who aren’t doing it, shape up.” It doesn’t happen. In Galatians chapter 4 and verse 9: “But now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?
“You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, perhaps I have labored over you for nothing.” You have no obligation to go back to the calendar prescriptions of the festivals and the Sabbaths of the Mosaic economy. Turn to Colossians chapter 2. This is perhaps the most definitive, because it pulls two signs together: the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant, circumcision, and the sign of the Mosaic Covenant, Sabbath.
And in Colossians chapter 2 - of course, we know that circumcision has been completely abolished in the new covenant, totally abolished.
Galatians 5:2 says, “If you receive circumcision, Christ is of no benefit to you. If you receive circumcision, Christ is no benefit to you.” - it doesn’t matter. “In Christ neither circumcision or uncircumcision means anything, it’s faith working through love.”
And so here, in Colossians chapter 2 verse 11: “In Christ you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;” - you had a far more dramatic surgery, and it was internal. You were “buried with Him in baptism, and you were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. You who were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.”
Set aside circumcision; if you hang onto circumcision, you make Christ of no effect. The sign of the Abrahamic covenant is gone, and that covenant passes away, because that covenant cannot save. And then in verse 16: “Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day – things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”
Don’t let anybody hold you to a Sabbath. And that’s referring to the weekly Sabbath, because the other festival Sabbaths are covered under the term “festival and new moon.” Don’t let anybody hold you to the Sabbath. It was part of the system that included the temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices. It’s gone. It was only the shadow, not the substance. It only pointed to the fact that God was the Creator, that paradise had been lost, that you had come under the terrifying judgment of the law and needed to repent and come to God and seek righteousness and mercy and grace at His hand.
But it didn’t provide that; that is provided in Jesus Christ. Paul is saying, you no longer need the shadow, you have the substance. You have the rest, the true rest.
There are no prescriptions or Sabbath rules anywhere in the new covenant. There is no instruction about behavior on the Sabbath anywhere in the New Testament. In Acts 15, when the Jerusalem council decided what would be required of Gentile believers in the church, they did not require them to observe the Sabbath. The apostles never commanded anybody to observe the Sabbath. They never chastise anybody for not observing the Sabbath. They never warned believers about Sabbath violations.
