Page 89 - Pentateuch - Student Textbook

“The Sabbath Year reminded them that the land was not their land but God’s and that they had the
responsibility to ensure that all people shared in his bounty. It taught the people that they had to trust
the LORD’s provisions during the year in which they could not work the fields…For at least one year out
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of seven the devout relived the experience of their parents in the garden of Eden.”

The Sabbath is an eternal principle. It was never
intended to be a burden, a tool to earn God’s favor.
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the
Sabbath (Mark 2:27).” As with the other laws, the
Sabbath has often been made into a work rather than a
rest. Later Jewish writers, trying to protect the Sabbath,
added numerous boundaries. “On the Sabbath, they
taught, a man may not carry a burden ‘in his right hand
or in his left hand, in his bosom or on his shoulder.’ He
may carry it ‘on the back of his hand, or with his foot or
with his mouth or with his elbow, or in his ear or in his
hair or in his wallet (carried) mouth downwards, or Fig. 60: Woman working
between his wallet and his shirt, or in the hem of his
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shirt, or in his shoe or in his sandal’ (Sabbath 10:3).”

The Sabbath reminds us of our need to rely on God for everything in life. The heart of rest is Jesus. We
cannot earn our way into God’s presence. No amount of work will win him. We are instructed to rest in
him not only for food and clothing and work and health and everything of a practical nature. If even
these daily items come from him, how much more are we to trust in him for forgiveness from sin and
hope of an eternal rest in heaven!

The gospel is woven throughout the law, distinct from the law yet pointed to by the law. The gospel is
rest in God through his Messiah. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God (Heb. 4:9.)”
Strangely enough we are to “make every effort to enter that rest (v. 11).” Yet faith in Christ is the way to
enter God’s rest (3:14, 19; 4:2). In Christ we enter God’s rest and rest from our own works (4:10). The
challenge is never ending in this life. We will always think we must do more. We will constantly think we
are more important than we really are. Such thought patterns are just as burdensome to us today as
were the additions to the law back in the day of Jesus. Even though we are to make every effort, in
Christ every effort is rest.

The preaching of Jesus touched on the Sabbath experience in the Year of Jubilee. In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus
quotes from Isaiah 61:1. “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for
the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The word “freedom” is
based on Leviticus 25:10: “proclaim liberty throughout the land.” The experience of freedom from debt
in the Year of Jubilee is background to salvation in Christ. That same experience is designed to teach
God’s people of the needs of others and the responsibility to offer them mercy, hoping that Christ’s
Jubilee can free them too. Yet even the NT walk in Christ anticipates God’s final jubilee when everything
will be restored (2 Pet. 3:13).

97 Ross, Holiness, p. 454
98 Leon Morris, Luke (Grand Rapids: Erdmann, 1984), pp. 205-206.

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