Food for Thought - Time
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"Creation seven sunrise, we stand before the burning bush of time." – Michael Card’s Sabbath song, Creation Seven Sunrise
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Time is a burning bush: always passing, but always coming; none of it disappearing. Never consumed - it manifests eternity. Time is timeless: always the same, never ending, never decaying, each second exactly like the rest. Time, like eternity, never changes. All the Sabbath times have this in common: God is timeless, never ending, never decaying in His love for us, each moment with Him is exactly like the rest: blessed. God's heart and desire and availability to you never changes. Just the things of space, our lives, moving through His Presence change. Time expresses the eternity of God's way with us. This is why we need to fully observe Sabbath and not in token ways Pharaoh told Israel, this partial obedience is is okay for today. We need this time in His Presence to imprint us with these truths and the truth He is always present, timelessly, eternally transforming the space we pass through in oneness with Him, at rest in Him, present to Him.
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While this is always happening, it is occurring more so on the Sabbath: the events the Sabbath represent (Creation, Exodus, Resurrection, and Millennial Kingdom) are also burning bushes. They are historical Salvation events which are personally appropriated, constant, recurring eternally.
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The Sabbath is a double portion burning bush of everyday time. It takes the ordinary nature of time and turns it into a double portion, making it holy time. In the OT the Sabbath sacrifice is a double portion of the daily sacrifice: Israel did two daily sacrifices on the Sabbath instead of one.
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In Scripture double portions are about the blessings, rights, and responsibilities of the firstborn. God identifies Israel as His firstborn. As a NT believer you are grafted into spiritual Israel. You are part of God’s firstborn, a born-again believer who is part of the Body of Christ. As a firstborn of God you receive the firstborn portion of time. You get to observe the Sabbath, designed as the firstborn portion of time by God.
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Genesis 49:1-3
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Then Jacob called for his sons and said: “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.
2 “Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob; listen to your father Israel.
3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, the first sign of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power.
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Deuteronomy 21:15-17 The Right of the Firstborn
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15 If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love,
16 when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love.
17 He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.
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The firstborn in Biblical Israel was in a covenant relationship position, taking on the father's clan leadership position when he dies. This is the prototype for the suzerain covenant structure of the 'superior' leader/king providing protection and assistance for the 'inferior' leader/king. (see our website TheGraciousTenCommandments.com, the Suzerain Treaty for more detail) This is the covenant God created with each individual Israeli at Mount Sinai, not a representative King. He treated each as a king, like He does us - the Kingdom nation of kings and priests! (1 Peter 2:4-10)
There is room for a lot of fruitful meditation and application in relationship to us being living, walking, talking Sabbath people of God. Being the Sabbath in the flesh enables the firstborn nature. You are partaking of the Sabbath holy double portions in the Creation, Exodus, Resurrection, Millennial Kingdom. Each week of the month is one of these. How does the Creation impact our Rest? The Exodus? The Resurrection? The Millennial Kingdom? There is much to grow into by observing the Sabbath!
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Consider this. The burning bush was the launch of the Exodus: God called and commissioned Moses to perform the Exodus with Him. This could be 4-5 months before the Exodus: Moses’ journey back to Egypt took about 3 months and the plagues may have run up to 2 months long. So, the elements of the burning bush is long-term revelation, foresight, planning and vision.
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Other elements of the burning bush experience (Exodus 3) include: holy ground, removing one’s shoes, God’s desire for our full freedom, restoration, co-laboring with God; and objections dissolved. Questions were answered, assistance provided, signs given, instructions taught.
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As you look at God’s encounters with people, they often are done in a way that reveals long-term instructions on how to carry out the mission. If the burning bush is a ‘picture worth 1,000 words’, what would it mean for Moses to live as a burning bush prophet in this Exodus mission?
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Which of the above elements speak to you now? Which ones do you feel an itch to study out more? Do you see how to explore the other three types of monthly Sabbaths?
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The Greek NT used Sabbaton for the word Week
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When Scripture says, ‘the first day of the week’, it does not use that expression. The word translated ‘week’ in the New Testament is the Greek word ‘sabbaton’. It is everywhere else translated ‘Sabbath’. Pure and simple. The same Greek word is translated ‘week’.
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The use of Sabbaton for week is a Hebrew expression and we find it in the Greek New Testament because all of these men who are writing are out of the Hebrew culture. These days were Hebrew days, they are the festivals of the Old Testament. They were given to Israel, the Sabbath Day, and were still observed among the New Testament church. This is why they continued to use the Greek word ‘sabbaton’ for ‘week’.
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What the translators called ‘week’ they were still calling it ‘sabbaton’ or ‘Sabbath’. Now ‘sabbaton’ for ‘week’ is essentially a New Testament peculiarity. In the Old Testament the word ‘sevened’ is translated ‘week’ (Genesis 29:27-28).
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Now I would like for you to go to the first instance in the New Testament where we find the usage of the expression ‘the first day of the week’. You should know that this expression is only used in the New Testament eight times (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Mark 16:9, Luke 24:1, John 20:1, John 20:19, Acts 20:7, and 1 Corinthians 16:2).
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On the Morrow After the Sabbath
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Let’s look at Matthew 28:1 "In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher."
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Now normally a Hebrew person writing Greek, a Jew writing Greek, would normally say: "on the morrow after the Sabbath", as the Sabbath was ending, as it began to dawn toward the morrow after the Sabbath. He would never say: ‘the first day of the week’. He would say: ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ or two days after the Sabbath or three days after the Sabbath, because in the Jewish mind everything revolved around the Sabbath Day.
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What’s going on here in Matthew 28:1? Out of this passage comes the idea that the resurrection took place on Sunday morning, and hence the justification for Sunday worship, as opposed to Sabbath observance. But what the passage really says is: "After the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the Sabbaths." The word is Sabbath again and it is plural.
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Now there is a curious thing in the lexicons, that I did a study on some years ago, I did a comprehensive word study of this in the New Testament because the lexicons tell you that the disciples were a rather indiscriminate in their use of the plural for the term ‘Sabbaths’, that often times they just referred to the Sabbath Day and sometimes it referred to a week and generally the use of the term in the plural, you could translate it as ‘week’.
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The problem is that it really isn’t done that way anywhere else other than this event that we are talking about here. Whenever they would talk about it and as the disciples used the term ‘Sabbath’ throughout all four gospel accounts and throughout the entirety of the New Testament I saw a very clear delineation in their use of the word, that whenever they spoke of the Sabbath, as we did this three Sabbaths in a row, they would use the plural, naturally, three Sabbaths in a row.
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When they were speaking of something that took place in a single given Sabbath Day, they would say it was the Sabbath Day, singular. When they said that Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, that one was plural. The reason simply being is, that when they spoke of the Sabbath Day as being an institution they used the plural and they said "when Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath Days as His custom was", they are now speaking of a custom He had of going in on the Sabbath Days, so what I concluded as a result of my study, I believe, that there is a distinct and purposeful use of the singular and the plural of the word ‘Sabbath Day’ throughout the gospel accounts and throughout the book of Acts and so consequently when we come to this expression, and it is in the plural, it ought to be in the plural, and the word in question is not ‘week’, the word in question is ‘Sabbaths’.
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Understanding Hebrews 4:3-4
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Another explicit reference to the creation Sabbath is found in the Book of Hebrews. In the fourth chapter of the book, the author establishes the universal and spiritual nature of the Sabbath rest by welding together two Old Testament texts, namely Genesis 2:2 and Psalm 95:11. Through the former, he traces the origin of the Sabbath rest back to creation when "God rested on the seventh day from all his works" (Hebrews 4:4; cf. Genesis 2:2-3). By the latter (Psalm 95:11), he explains that the scope of this divine rest includes the blessings of salvation to be found by entering personally into God's rest (Hebrews 4:3, 5, 10). The value of this statement is heightened by the fact that the author is not arguing for the creation origin of the Sabbath; rather he takes it for granted in explaining God's ultimate purpose for His people. Thus, in Hebrews 4, the creation origin of the Sabbath is not only accepted but is also presented as the basis for understanding God's ultimate purpose for His people.
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The attempt to negate Sabbath keeping by reducing it to the salvation rest we experience in Christ fails to recognize that the recipients of the Epistle that it was unnecessary for the author to discuss or to encourage its actual observance. What those Christian "Hebrews" needed, tempted as they were to turn back to Judaism, was to understand the deeper meaning of its observance in the light of Christ's coming.
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The deeper meaning of the Sabbath can be seen in the antithesis the author makes between those who failed to enter God's rest because of "unbelief-apeitheias" (4:6, 11)-that is, faithlessness which results in disobedience - and those who enter it by "faith-pistei" (4:2, 3), that is, faithfulness that results in obedience. For the author of Hebrews, the act of resting on the Sabbath is not merely a routine ritual (cf. "sacrifice"-Matthew 12:7), but rather a faith-response to God. Such a response entails not the hardening of one's heart (4:7) but the making of oneself available to "hear his voice" (4:7). It means experiencing God's salvation rest not by works but by faith, not by doing but by being saved through faith (4:2, 3, 11).
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On the Sabbath, as John Calvin aptly expresses it, believers are "to cease from their work to allow God to work in them" (Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids, 1972), vol. 2, p. 337). The Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God (4:9) is not a mere day of idleness for the author of Hebrews, but rather an opportunity renewed every week to enter God's rest, that is, to free oneself from the cares of work to experience freely by faith God's creation and redemption rest.
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The Semitic Totality Concept
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Behind much of the thought in the Bible lies a "peculiarly Semitic" idea of a "unitive notion of human personality." [Dahl, Resurrection of the Body, 59] This notion combined aspects of the human person that we, in modern times, often speak of as separate entities: Nausea is thought of as a condition of the soul and not the stomach (Num. 21:5); companionship is said to be refreshing to the bowels (Philemon 7); and the fear of God is health to the navel (Prov. 3:8).
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This line of thinking can be traced through the Old Testament and into the New Testament (in particular, the concept of the "body of Christ") and rabbinic literature.
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Applied to the individual, the Semitic Totality Concept means that "a man's thoughts form one totality with their results in action so that 'thoughts' that result in no action are 'vain'." [ibid, 60] To put it another way, man does not have a body; man is a body, and what we regard as constituent elements of spirit and body were looked upon by the Hebrews as a fundamental unity. Man was not made from dust, but is dust that has, "by the in-breathing of God, acquired the characteristics of self-conscious being."
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Thus, Paul regards being an unbodied spirit as a form of nakedness (2 Cor. 5). Man is not whole without a body. A man is a totality which embraces "all that a man is and ever shall be."
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Applied to the role of works following faith, this means that there can be no decision without corresponding action, for the total person will inevitably reflect a choice that is made. Thought and action are so linked under the Semitic Totality paradigm that Clark warns us [An Approach to the Theology of the Sacraments, 10]:
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The Hebraic view of man as an animated body and its refusal to make any clear-cut division into soul and body militates against the making of so radical a distinction between material and spiritual, ceremonial, and ethical effects.
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Thus, what we would consider separate actions of conversion, confession, and obedience in the form of works would be considered by the Hebrews to be an act in totality. "Both the act and the meaning of the act mattered -- the two formed for the first Christians an indivisible unity." [Flemington, New Testament Doctrine of Baptism, 111]
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The Sabbath as a Sanctuary in Time
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Sanctuary: a place of refuge, immunity from arrest, a sacred space - a place where heaven and earth meet.
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A sanctuary is a building. Based on the above description, a place built with spiritual vision. So, this isn't made of clock time, but the other time - the Hebraic concept of pregnant time; the unfolding of a plan time, until the fullness is developed and birthed. The reaching of the 'fullness of time'.
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The Sabbath had to be constructed, birthed. Out of the abundance of God's heart He spoke. Each strand of the Logos' DNA activated by His heart's desire to see the step-by-step completion of the construction of the Sanctuary Sabbath.
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Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
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What did God want in His Sanctuary Sabbath? Light. Wide open space between heaven and earth. Solid land. Outer space to mirror the interior space He was designing. A rich assortment of plants and animals able to inhabit every configuration of variables available in His creation. Teaming with LIFE! A wide variety of food is easily accessible. And humans, interior space creatures, bigger on the inside than the outside; able to enjoy it all and explore all its possibilities. In His image creatures, exploring with Him.
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Each day He found what needed to be differentiated from what was already there, to get to where His vision was taking Him. Finally, with the bridge built from the invisible to the visible, with all in place, He knelt and created an interior space creature, without a word. Then He walked him through the barren landscape to the rich oasis He birthed. And together they lived the first Sabbath day, a sanctuary in fulfilled time.
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How much is this supposed to be a type for us? We get to go through the new creation process, constructed, until our lives as a Sanctuary Sabbath is birthed. We must let Him create the light we live by. We must let Him clarify the distinctions – the boundaries that create space between the life from below and the life from above. We must allow Him to remove the chaos so we have a foundation of solid land, where all aspects of life can flourish, in all creation configurations. We must allow Him to shape us and transform us from a life resembling dirt to one clearly in His image. We must let Him walk us from the broken barren land to the birthed Promise Land. Together we will live God's designed Sabbath, a sanctuary in time fulfilled.
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This is true sanctuary. Choose this day to be open to God turning you into His one-of-a-kind Sanctuary Sabbath.
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