The Sabbath Being Mode
The Difference Between “Being” and “Doing”
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When we go about our lives, we are constantly in one of two modes: “doing” or “being”. The doing mode is when we are thinking about the present, future, past, making plans, and completing tasks. The being mode is when we are living in the moment, experiencing things directly. It is being in touch with our core values, facing them honestly so we can reorient our doing. Both forms of mental state are necessary, but most of us spend too much time in doing mode and very little time appreciating our core experiences in the being mode.
We can see in the Ten Commandments that God positioned the Sabbath in a critical spot in the journey into the Godly life to nourish our being mode. After we build our faith life by doing the first three Commandments, we launch into the immersion of living in hope by observing the Sabbath. Twenty-four hours of Rest, reviewing the previous week, in touch with God about how He is positioning us to be Kingdom living, touching on how His Fathering will be active in the coming week; is a rich experience. It builds our roots and destiny. It nourishes our invisible being to manifest as visible doing.
A Christian Aspect
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Our being impacts our doing, manifesting our quality of life, what we decide our values are and how we will utilize them in our life’s circle.
In spiritual Israel God set up an integrated method for these two modes to harmonize. God gave us the Sabbath to nourish our being. The Sabbath is weekly, meshed with a weekly doing cycle, to cap it off with an ‘it is finished!’ integration. That is the core of our existence, to see things through to completion. Then we rest, spend time appreciating our completion, consider the implications of its role in our new life growth, and then we launch into a new doing dynamic. This is the pattern of a creator, walking in our Father’s footsteps, exercising dominion over the earth.
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An interesting side bar here. As Western Civilization came from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance stage of our development, it was enhanced by the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther’s focus on personal Scripture reading and understanding, making one’s own decisions about life and destiny, instead of letting a church priesthood do it for you; led to a fresh application in the hearts of budding scientists. Most of the those involved in the formation of the scientific field were Christians who were exploring life by walking in the Creator’s footsteps. They were seeing and exploring the world from a fresh mindset, free from the dogmas that previously kept the world in the dark. They were articulating an aspect of Sabbath living.
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Sabbath rest is a day of Being. It is our opportunity to get in touch with what we have been doing, our responses to the process, the decisions we made and the chance to reconsider how our values were exercised. As a Holy Day we can present this aspect of our life to God and receive the needed input to finalize the development of our values. This often means getting further grounded in the foundational issues of life. Unsurprisingly, they are already built into the Sabbath's context.
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The Monthly Flow
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The Sabbath’s context has an additional level of developing our being, as a monthly cycle. In Spiritual Israel there are four reasons for the weekly Sabbath as a monthly progress-to-completion cycle. These four reasons are based on four of God’s visible involvements with humanity, activities that progressed our spiritual development. When God does something, it informs us of His nature, and then we know how we need to be to be like Him. This then directs our doing activity.
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God’s first progress step for humanity was the creation event. We are first informed we need to observe the Sabbath for this reason. God’s next progress involvement is in the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. In Deuteronomy 5 Moses tells us this is a new reason for Sabbath observance.
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The next progress step in God’s involvement in spiritual Israel’s development is the crucifixion and resurrection of the Christ. Jesus rose from the dead as the Sabbath ended (see below for details).
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God’s next involvement in spiritual Israel’s development is Jesus’ return to establish God’s visible kingdom. Humanity has been alive for about 6,000 years. Each 1,000 years is mentioned as a ‘day’ in God’s prophetic calendar (2 Peter 3:8). God’s seventh ‘day’ brings us to the Kingdom of God, the fullness of rest. The long struggle ends. It is finished!
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So, the monthly Sabbath cycle is a beginning-to-end approach. We go from beginnings to exitings to resurrection to Sabbath kingdom life.
Each of these reasons for observing the Sabbath brings to light a different facet of Rest’s nature. These different facets bring us to a new experience of our Being, who we are created to Be. They provide us with a chance to experience a distinct dynamic of spiritual reality. Our Being mode is put in a different context so we can experience different dimensions of truth. Possibly the full spectrum of grace is wrapped up in this monthly cycle.
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While each of God’s Sabbath involvements has a constellation of events, we can see what we need to experience next as we pay attention to the Spirit’s leading. For discussion purposes, let’s select one core rest facet for each of the four types of Rest.
The creation turns chaos into order, a key aspect of our lives. The exodus turns bondage into liberty, a core component of much of our growth. The resurrection brings to life aspects of ourselves we considered dead, a key dynamic of our new life in Christ. The kingdom brings victory over Satan, the enemy. Jesus showed us this during His ministry, exercising authority over all aspects of life. The apostle Paul tells us the Holy Spirit we receive now is a deposit of what we will receive when the Kingdom comes (2 Corinthians 5:5). How much we grow in the Spirit’s power is an expression of how much Rest we internalize, an expression of how deeply we believe. Jesus pointed this out when He said our unbelief stops us from using the Spirit’s power (Matthew 17:19-20). Exercising the Spirit brings victory over our enemies, which produces Rest.
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Since these four types of Rest are experiences, they need more than a day to come to our awareness. It takes a few days for us to go through conception, gestation, discomfort and then awareness of the new life within us. Maybe it takes a week to prepare for a rich Sabbath rest. And to clarify, the Rest follows our new life experience. God created Adam on the sixth day, and he had Edenic Sabbath Rest on the seventh day. We might experience our transformative Sabbath experience on the sixth day and review the new dimensions experienced by our Being on the Sabbath.
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While each of these Sabbath beings has a whole dynamic history, with various angles of their reality zone to uncover, let’s take a single component as an example.
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In the Creation Sabbath we have a focus of taking chaos and creating order out of it. I recently had a work process that was not functioning for a couple we were serving. They came into the office, explained they tried it 3 days in a row, and it didn’t work. It had to do with our phone customer service feature, and they were on hold for most of the day, for 3 days. The supervisor asked them to try again, in our office. I watched them connect, get put on hold, and nothing happened. I discussed this with the supervisor who insisted we handled it right and they were doing it wrong. They were from another country, didn’t speak English and used a phone translator. We ignored the seriousness of the problem, but it was chaos for them. I had to do something to create an orderly process for them to follow, so they could get this working, and their significant needs would be met. My adrenalin pumped as I searched for people to get involved and worked out the components of the solution. I walked in my Creator’s shoes until an Edenic experience was restored for our clients. We had a Creation Rest.
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I was new to this workload, so this challenged me to a new level of being, so I could do what was needed. I am also a newbie in the office, so I stood in contrast to the status quo. I cared to do the work of creating a new opportunity to make the service fruitful. Otherwise, the need would have drowned in the chaos of indifference. I had to step out of the status quo and into the creative process, by faith.
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I hope you consider the richness of this application, that meaningful being births purposeful doing, honoring God’s nature thriving in you. Walk in His Sabbath footsteps by exercising your Being cycles. He will increase your Doing activities. What do you think your Father wants you to enter into? Let His Spirit guide you into a new dimension!
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Note about Jesus' Resurrection -
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The weekly Saturday Sabbath also commemorates the Resurrection of Christ. We need to clarify that Scripture differs from tradition about this. In Scripture Jesus stated that He would be buried for 3 days and 3 nights. You can’t squeeze that into Friday night through Sunday morning, it doesn’t fit. And, contrary to the good intentions of people who need to maintain a respect for the status quo of the ‘historical’ church, wouldn’t living in the truth be so much better?
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History shows us there is an irreverence for facts when it comes to maintaining church traditions. If we honestly look at the history we see Christianity developed in an antisemitism phase where ‘anything but Judaism’ was approved. This included whitewashing some pagan practices, and eventually the theology that supported it. We can see why the need to devalue the Sabbath was a high priority. Grace must be butchered for a works-based salvation to flourish.
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Simply put: if Jesus was 3 days and 3 nights in the grave, and He was buried just before sundown (Matthew 27), this time period ends at the end of a day, just before sundown. Since we know the grave was empty already early on the first day of the week, Sunday, Jesus resurrected Saturday night, as the Sabbath ended. This is why the Sabbath is also about Jesus’ resurrection.
Matthew 27:55-60
55 And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar,
56 among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's sons.
57 Now when evening had come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who himself had also become a disciple of Jesus.
58 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be given to him.
59 When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,
60 and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed.
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