Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep It Holy

God sanctified the Sabbath at creation.

“Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested (שָׁבַת֙ (šā·ḇaṯ)-Sabbath) from all His work which God had created and made.” Genesis 2:3

God sanctified the Sabbath at creation and kept it, and he cannot unsanctify it. He continues to keep the Sabbath rest since he never changes.

Jesus kept the Sabbath.

Jesus is God, and so he has kept the Sabbath since creation. Jesus as man also kept the Sabbath rest perfectly without the religious burdens of the Pharisees. The Sabbath is God’s Sabbath, and Jesus said he made it for man (not Jews) (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath is a delight and not a burden (Isaiah 58:13).

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath since he is the creator. The Sabbath is a memorial of creation and shall endure forever because God’s creation shall abide forever!

“For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:8

Adam and Eve kept the Sabbath.

Adam and Eve were definitely Sabbath keepers. God must have informed them of his sanctification of the 7th day after he created them on the 6th day. They began their life on earth with a Sabbath day of rest.

Adam and Eve were not Jews; they are the parents of all mankind. No tribe of Israel existed then. The Sabbath was for all mankind universally and for all time.

Sabbath was a memorial to creation and God’s handiwork. By resting we honor God and remember his work and cease from our labors.

Moses, who wrote the Book of Genesis, must have had the accounts of creation and the Book of Genesis revealed to him by oral tradition or records kept from the time of Adam and Eve and their descendants hundreds of years before Moses. And since Moses was a descendant of Abraham, it is not a stretch to deduce that Abraham must have kept the Sabbath too.

Sabbath was before the law and in the 10 commandments.

Sabbath was before the law (Exodus 16:26) and was included in the law (Exodus 20:8), written in the tablets of testimony by God’s own finger. In Revelation 11:19, John mentions seeing the ark of God’s covenant in his temple in heaven. And in Revelation 15:5, John sees the tabernacle of the testimony (the decalogue; 10 commandments) in God’s temple in heaven.

The 10 commandments are recorded and kept in heaven; they have not been abolished. God wrote them with his own finger, and no man can abolish them.

“After these things I looked, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened.” Revelation 15:5

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” Exodus 20:8-11

All the prophets and apostles kept the Sabbath.

All the prophets beginning with Moses kept the Sabbath.

The apostles of Jesus kept the Sabbath after Jesus’ resurrection, including Paul. Paul never taught anyone to break the Sabbath because of “grace.”

The Sabbath shall be kept in the New Jerusalem for eternity.

In eternity, in the new Jerusalem, we will keep the Sabbath. It is perpetual because God’s creation is perpetual. God’s creation will never cease, and so as in the beginning before the fall, the Sabbath will be a holy day of rest forever after God restores the earth and heavens.

The 4th commandment was not abolished by Jesus, who established it at creation as God long before the fall of man.

“For just as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, will ENDURE before Me,” declares the LORD, “so your descendants and your name will endure. From one New Moon to another and from one SABBATH to another, all mankind will come to worship before Me,” says the LORD. As they go forth, they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never be quenched, and they will be a horror to all mankind.” Isaiah 66:22-24

The Sabbath is a delight and not a burden.

“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath,
From doing your pleasure on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the Lord honorable,
And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord;
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Isaiah 58:13-14

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On Colossians 2:16: “Therefore let no one judge you in regard to food, or in regard to drink, or in regard to a feast, or a New Moon, or Sabbaths.” (Some translations have wrongly translated this verse and write “Sabbath” instead of “sabbaths” or “Sabbath days,” no doubt a bias of the translators, but Paul wrote it in the plural as “sabbaths,” and the original Greek text renders it so).

See commentary below from Albert Barnes (1872-1951):

“Or of the Sabbath days – Greek, “of the Sabbaths.” The word Sabbath in the Old Testament is applied not only to the seventh day, but to all the days of holy rest that were observed by the Hebrews, and particularly to the beginning and close of their great festivals. There is, doubtless, reference to those days in this place, since the word is used in the plural number, and the apostle does not refer particularly to the Sabbath properly so called. There is no evidence from this passage that he would teach that there was no obligation to observe any holy time, for there is not the slightest reason to believe that he meant to teach that one of the ten commandments had ceased to be binding on mankind. If he had used the word in the singular number – “the Sabbath,” it would then, of course, have been clear that he meant to teach that that commandment had ceased to be binding, and that a Sabbath was no longer to be observed. But the use of the term in the plural number, and the connection, show that he had his eye on the great number of days which were observed by the Hebrews as festivals, as a part of their ceremonial and typical law, and not to the moral law, or the Ten Commandments. No part of the moral law – no one of the ten commandments could be spoken of as “a shadow of good things to come.” These commandments are, from the nature of moral law, of perpetual and universal obligation.”

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