The Surprising Truth

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I sometimes have unconscious questions. I recently realized mine include the question, "Why did Satan hate the, ‘observe the Sabbath command’, more so than the other ones?"

 

He focused hundreds of years of effort to eliminate it from Christianity.

 

It’s just a harmless command. You do nothing because of it, it just adds balance to your life, equalizes everyone, and its a simple way to be accountable to God.

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That made it clear to me – the weekly Sabbath is a revelation of the nature of grace. You stop your efforts and Rest, acknowledge God as Creator of what works best, and the ground is level for everyone in humble observance. Community is established through humility.

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This must have infuriated Satan. Imagine tens of thousands of people get a weekly reminder and practical lesson in how to live full of grace! And he had a master plan to get the Church focused on works-based salvation.

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So he worked within the organized church to stamp out the grace-based Sabbath. It took him over 500 years to decimate the large contingent of Sabbath keepers, but he did it. The Sabbath truth was stamped out.

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And the world soon entered the Dark Ages, as other truth corruptions mounted. Martin Luther challenged the church to reexamine 95 thesis and thus the Protestant wing of the church was born. That led to the effective end of the ‘Sunday Sabbath’ facsimile as the Sabbath became just a thought, as the Law of God 'graduated' to the 'cursed' level in the Evangelical Church. Destroying the Sabbath was merely a ruse to get people trapped in multitudes of chaos as they lost the core, the heart of Christianity. Grace lost the perspective of 'laboring to enter Sabbath Rest", as clearly described in Hebrews 4:

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Hebrews 4:11-12 - 

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Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

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The Saturday Sabbath was just pure grace– clean, righteous, God’s love, deeply exposed grace. Just celebrating what God has done -  creation and His desire for us to enjoy liberty. It was designed to separate the thoughts and attitudes of the heart, to see if we really want what God offers.

 

The Church misunderstands it and says it is just a ceremonial law, while the other nine commandments are the moral law. But the Sabbath commandment is the most moral part of the law. It is its heart and center. Without a proper, ongoing experience of the dynamics of grace's foundation and its growth patterns we do not have the ability to fully keep the other nine commandments. You have a broken relationship with the Laws of God's love without the Sabbath. The church misunderstands the heart of Resting in grace without the full day of Sabbath as the culmination of God's weekly grace-building work. Like God breathed life into Adam's lungs, keeping God's Sabbath breathes the Spirit's life into the Ten Commandments.

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A life without coordinated body, soul and spirit Rest leaves our faith struggling. Then people fall into a misguided faith struggle and wrestle with their ‘doubts’. Some even wonder if they are real Christians. A compass that does not align with true north gets you way off course as you travel thousands of miles. The same is true of traveling a lifetime in crippled faith. People limp away, disillusioned.

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We see this is the conclusion of the Hebrews 4 Sabbath exposition. In Hebrews 4:16:

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Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

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It’s my hope that this web site opens peoples' eyes to how rich the Sabbath is. How it’s the core of the moral law. It's why we entrust all aspects of our lives to God’s wisdom, so we can live Restfully. The creation week cycle crescendos in Sabbath liberty, the crown of Christian morality. And this is only one of the four reasons of weekly Sabbath observance. The Sabbath experience crystallizes salvation’s nature and is the heart of the gracious Ten Commandments. 

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The next 14 pages show why the Sabbath is a moral commandment.

Then the balance of the site explores Sabbath theology and practice.

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