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Podcast: Is the Sabbath Still Relevant for Christians? (Guy Waters)

November 07, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Sabbath Rest in the Bible and Today

In today's episode, Guy Waters discusses God's original purpose for the Sabbath, how the idea of Sabbath rest recurs throughout the Old and New Testaments, and whether the Sabbath is relevant for Christians today.

The Sabbath as Rest and Hope for the People of God

The Sabbath as Rest and Hope for the People of God

Guy Prentiss Waters

In this addition to the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series, Guy Prentiss Waters provides a study of the Sabbath, from creation to consummation. 

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:57 - Isn’t the Sabbath an Old Testament Concept?

Matt Tully
Guy, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Guy Waters
Thank you for having me, Matt. Good to be here.

Matt Tully
It’s our second time getting to chat. Today we’re going to talk about the Sabbath—this really important idea and concept in the Bible. And yet it’s also one that I think is mysterious for a lot of Christians. We don’t always know what to do with it fully. Just a big picture question to start us off: Isn’t a Sabbath just an Old Testament concept that Jesus sort of fulfilled, in a sense, and therefore it’s not really relevant for us? How would you respond to a question like that from a Christian?

Guy Waters
I think a lot of people, if we were to play a word association game and I were to throw out Sabbath, probably Israel would come to mind straight away.

Matt Tully
Jewish people.

Guy Waters
Exactly, because we know even today how conscientiously Jewish people observe the Sabbath in many parts of the world. We know, of course, the Sabbath is explicit in the Old Testament laws, and factored into the ministry of Jesus in the first century. His enemies would use the Sabbath as an opportunity to try to trick him or trap him or oppose him.

Matt Tully
In the ministry of Jesus, the Sabbath is almost always something that’s brought up by the religious leaders of the day who were against him.

Guy Waters
That’s right. And that, I think, has contributed to forming a certain impression of the Sabbath. Absolutely, the Sabbath is in the Old Testament, and we certainly meet the Sabbath in the ministry of Jesus. We’ll say more about that in a minute, but I think two things we need to keep in view. In the first place, the Sabbath is in the law of God, the Torah, that God gave through Moses to Israel. But that’s not where it first shows up. We first meet it all the way back in the opening chapters of Genesis. God creates the world in six days, he rests the seventh, and that’s given to humanity as a pattern for the way we’re to order our lives week to week. And God is telling us something important. He has made us as his image bearers—to work—but God didn’t make us merely to work. Work has as its goal that we lay down the labors of the six days and that we worship God and have fellowship with God. That’s why God made us, that we would worship him and enjoy fellowship with him. And so at the creation, the weekly Sabbath was given as a reminder and a help to keep us focused on this is what God made me for—preeminently, chiefly, God has made me for fellowship with him and to worship him.

Matt Tully
Someone might respond to that by saying that the word “Sabbath” isn’t actually used in that creation account. Is that correct? And if so, how would you respond to that?

Guy Waters
The noun “Sabbath” does not appear in Genesis 2:1–3. But the verb that’s translated “God resting” is cognate—that is, it’s formed from the same root as the noun “Sabbath”—and when we get to Exodus 20, when God tells Israel in the fourth command, I want you to rest, he points back to his pattern: “For God works six days and rested the seventh. You, therefore, do the same.”

Matt Tully
So in the giving of the Sabbath law to Israel, there’s an explicit mentioning of the creation days.

Guy Waters
Exactly. And before God gives Israel the commandments of the law in Exodus 20 and following, we had a really telling glimpse a few chapters earlier. They’re in the wilderness (Exodus 16), they’re between Egypt and Sinai, and we’re told that Israel refrained from working on the Sabbath day. They gathered food for six days and rested on the seventh.

Matt Tully
Should we understand that was an informal practice that Israel was observing before they actually received the Decalogue?

Guy Waters
The question is a good one. I take that to mean, given what comes afterwards just a few chapters, that the Sabbath was already something that was ingrained in the practice and life of God’s people.

Matt Tully
Interesting.

Guy Waters
And in light of what we’ve seen in Genesis 2, and we connect that with Exodus 20, it’s something that’s not unique to Israel, but it’s something that is intended for all human being.

Matt Tully
So do you think that suggests that the fact that there is this idea of Sabbath baked into the creation account itself, is that part of the reason that you would then say that Christians today need to be then thinking about the Sabbath—that there are implications for us as believers in the New Testament?

Guy Waters
Absolutely. I think we go a couple different directions with that. One is to look at the way the New Testament reflects back on the creation in light of Christ. We see in particular, looking at Genesis to begin with, after Genesis 2:1–3—God resting the seventh day and blessing it, rendering it holy—God calls Adam in the garden and he tells him, “You are not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. On the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” And Adam was enjoying fellowship, communion with God in the garden, and that arrangement was a test—a temporary test. If Adam had remained faithful to God, then he would’ve entered into permanent and unbroken fellowship. And not just Adam, but the New Testament tells us in places like Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, Adam was the representative of humanity. And so he would’ve brought us with him into that confirmed and permanent fellowship and communion with God. But, of course, we know that didn’t happen. He sinned and we sinned in him. And that arrangement later in Genesis 2 is connected with the principle in Genesis 2:1–3 where God is saying, Human beings, I have made you for fellowship and worship. And what he does with Adam is to say, This is how we’re going to get there permanently, and in a way that you’re not gonna lose it. Now, the whole thing could have ended there, but it didn’t because it’s not going to be Adam who brings us to that place. It’s going to be the last Adam. It’s going to be Jesus Christ who brings us to that place. And so what Christ does, the New Testament tells us, is that he wins for us eternal life, and he deals with all the consequences of our sin through his death on the cross. And we learn that he brings his people to the very place that Adam should have brought human beings in the first place. And as Hebrews is thinking about this in the fourth chapter, the writer says something very telling. He says, in thinking about the work of Christ and bringing people to rest, he says, “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”

Matt Tully
He pulls up that idea of Sabbath.

Guy Waters
Exactly. The writer is comparing the people of God now under the new covenant to Israel in the wilderness. They’re between Egypt and Canaan. And we’re a people on the way—we’re Pilgrims—and Christ has won for us that everlasting rest, and we continue to enjoy the weekly Sabbath rest as a reminder and refreshment of that rest that lies ahead of us. So the work of Christ does bring to fulfillment all that the Sabbath was pointing to from the very beginning. And so what our weekly experience of the Sabbath is we gather with God’s people in fellowship and worship. What that reminds us is this is what God made me for, and this is where I’m going. We don’t get that message in the world. And so God, in his mercy, gives us a weekly reset: This is who I am and this is where I’m going in Jesus Christ.

Matt Tully
Would you say that the Sabbath itself—that six days of work and one day of rest, and that trajectory we see even at in the creation account—does that, in a certain sense, prefigure this broader idea of rest that we need redemption, we need an eternal rest from the culmination of our own bondage and slavery and sin? Is there a certain kind of prefiguring of salvation history that we see in the seven days of creation in your mind?

Guy Waters
Well, it’s telling that in the parallel to Exodus 20—Deuteronomy 5—in Exodus 20, when God tells his people to work six days and rest the seventh, he points all the way back to his own example at the creation. In Deuteronomy, he says, The reason I want you to work six days and rest the seventh is because I redeemed you out of bondage in Egypt. So creation (Exodus 20), redemption (Deuteronomy 5). And the rest and the life that Christ has won for us is the rest and life of our salvation. And that’s what we’re waiting for is the full experience of the redemption that Christ has purchased for us—the rest that we have begun to enjoy, but we will only fully enjoy when Christ returns and brings all things to completion.

12:17 - The Sabbath in the Ten Commandments

Matt Tully
That’s so beautiful. Let’s jump ahead to the Ten Commandments, the giving of the Decalogue. It’s one of the most important references to the Sabbath in the Bible. And something I never realized before preparing your talk with you today is that of all the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment to honor the Sabbath is, I believe, the longest commandment, at least in English. There’s a lot of time that is spent explaining the why of the commandment. The only other commandment that comes even close to that in terms of length is the second, which is about not making any grave images. Why do you think there’s such an emphasis on the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments? Should we read any significance into the fact that there’s so much space given to that?

Guy Waters
It’s telling the way the commandment comes to us: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” That command to remember, I think, is all important. God doesn’t want us to be, in some rote or mechanical fashion, to be going about particular duties and fill a 24-hour period.
He wants us to remember. What does he want us to remember? He wants us to think back to creation. He wants us to look to redemption, accomplish being applied, and consummated in Christ. And that's really the whole scope of human history, and that’s getting at the very core of who we are as image bears and what God is destined us to be. So when you think about the Sabbath from that light, it’s bringing everything together in one place. And it’s a a weekly way for God to say, Let’s go back to first things so that you can go out into the world the other six days and live for me and be productive, remembering that this is not what it’s all about.

Matt Tully
We can sometimes boil down the Sabbath, even in our understanding of what it was intended for for Israel, as just a very pragmatic and and understandable and helpful thing of, You guys need to rest. You can’t just work all the time. You are limited, finite creatures, and you need physical rest from your labors. But it seems like you’re saying there’s a lot more to it than just that. There’s a theological significance to why Israel was commanded to observe this day.

Guy Waters
Absolutely. And I want to affirm what you’ve said. We do need physical, bodily rest. We live in an exhausted culture, and part of that is we have ramped up into a 24/7 mode and there’s no exit ramp. And that’s one of the beauties of this day is here’s one day where I get physical rest for my body. We don’t want to take that away in the slightest.

Matt Tully
Would you say that’s part of God’s intentions for the Sabbath?

Guy Waters
I would say so. It is to be a day of rest and refreshment. But then I would want to say in the same breath that that rest and refreshment is inevitably spiritual, because the reason God wants us to set some things down is so that we can take other things up, particularly fellowship, worship—not as burdens, but as matters of delight. And those things should bring refreshment to the soul, even as we are enjoying and experiencing the rest that comes in our bodies when we lay down the labors of the other six days.

16:02 - Is the Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday?

Matt Tully
This segues into this other question that we’ve sort of been dancing around, in terms of how the Sabbath is relevant, how we should apply this idea of Sabbath as Christians today. Obviously, the Sabbath in the Old Testament was on Saturday, and yet Christians celebrate the Lord’s Day on Sundays. Is the celebration and corporate worship that we do on Sundays, is that a direct extension of this idea of Sabbath, or are they two distinct ideas that are overlapping? How should we think about those two things?

Guy Waters
It’s a great question. You made an accurate, astute observation. The Sabbath fell, from the creation of the world through the Old Testament, on Saturday. Christians have set apart the first day of the week, Sunday, as our day of worship and rest. And the reason is, if you read the New Testament and comb through the New Testament, you get these indicators in places like Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians 16 where the church, under the direction of the apostles, is meeting together on the first day of the week. It’s what the apostle John calls the “Lord’s Day.” Every day is the Lord’s day, but there’s one day that’s particularly his. It’s this first day.

Matt Tully
Is that connected to the resurrection in any sense?

Guy Waters
Absolutely. You asked the question, Why this day? Why is this day so important? You go particularly to John’s Gospel and you read John 20, there’s a phrase that keeps coming up again and again. You can see it clearly in English: “On the first day of the wee . . . on the first day of the week.” That’s when Christ rose from the dead, that’s when the risen Christ appears to his apostles. So it is the resurrection that marks this day and stamps this day. Now step back a little bit. When we think about the Sabbath from the creation up until the resurrection, we are remembering God’s work of creation. What is the resurrection of Jesus Christ? It is new creation. It is the way in which God brought creation to its intended consummation, through the person and work of Jesus Christ. So what at first glance seems to be a very jarring change—we were observing the Sabbath on this day and now we’re observing it on this day—really reflects where we are in redemptive history. It reflects what God has done in Christ. So yes, we are continuing to remember God’s work of creation. We especially remember the work of new creation in the resurrection, and with it the death of Jesus Christ.

Matt Tully
Are there specific passages in the New Testament that make that connection between the Lord’s Day—this day of corporate worship for the church—with the Sabbath? Or is that more of a theological kind of connection that we make as we look at the whole picture?

Guy Waters
Well, I think when you come into the New Testament, we presume that God’s people continue to gather weekly to worship him.

Matt Tully
Which was an established practice in Judaism. People were gathering in synagogues on Saturdays.

Guy Waters
Absolutely. That’s right. And so this goes deep back into the Old Testament itself. So we’re not starting something new; we’re really carrying over something that had been done from the beginning. And we don’t see the church gathering on the sixth day of the week. We consistently see them gathering on the first day of the week. You get a little snapshot in Acts 20 with the church in Troas. Paul is in a hurry to get to Jerusalem. He delays his travels so that he can meet with the church on the first day of the week. What do they do when they come together? He preaches the word and they observe the Lord’s Supper together as God’s people. And so whenever you see those references to the first day of the week, like 1 Corinthians 16, Paul says, “On the first day of the week when you come together, have that collection ready.” He’s just assuming, Oh yes, you’re going to gather on the first day of the week.

Matt Tully
It definitely seems like it’s already happening at that point.

Guy Waters
That’s right. We don’t expect there to be a long, formal argument for Christians gathering on the first day of the week. What you’re witnessing is the people of God, under the apostles, who are worshiping God as they have always done, now in light of the finished work of Christ, crucified and raised from the dead.

Matt Tully
Let’s dig into a little bit of the question that I’m sure many have wondered before. Okay, I believe and I accept what you’re saying about how the Sabbath continues on for the Christian on Sundays, and part of that is gathering together corporately to worship. I think a question could be, Why don’t we observe other facets of the Sabbath, like observing the full law and all of the things it says about what not to do and what you are allowed to do? I wonder if you could start by summarizing what Israel was commanded with regard to the Sabbath, because it’s not just this vague, spiritual encouragement to reflect on God. There’s actually specific things. And then how and why does that change for Christians today?

Guy Waters
Great question. We go back to first things. God gave the Sabbath at the creation. It’s not unique to Israel. However, when God reveals more about the Sabbath to Israel, it takes on some added features that reflect what God was doing in that period of redemptive history. And in some, he was preparing his people and he was preparing the world for the coming of Christ. So there are things that come to be attached to the Sabbath that we no longer observe now in light of the finished work of Christ. That would be true of many things in the Old Testament laws. For example, the civil punishments. Executing someone for violating the command to work. That’s not something that is done, period, in the new covenant church. Or think of the whole calendar that is built around the Sabbath in sequences of sevens. All the feasts and festivals—that was designed to teach Israel about God’s work of salvation, and his work of salvation particularly centered in the work of Christ.

23:17 - Did Jesus Break the Sabbath?

Matt Tully
How would you summarize Jesus’s teaching on the Sabbath? As we’ve already discussed, some of his most bitter opponents often pointed to the Sabbath and his violation of the Sabbath as a charge against him. So what was Jesus actually teaching? Was he, in any sense, breaking the Sabbath as laid out in the Old Testament law?

Guy Waters
What Jesus does is so insightful and pastoral because the only way that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath was he was breaking the Sabbath as it had been misinterpreted by the teachers and leaders of his people. And in reality, Jesus never broke the Sabbath. He never granted them that point. In fact, he stressed, I am the one who is truly honoring this day. And you are the ones, by your rules that God never gave you, are showing the hardness of your hearts and that you don’t understand and embrace this day.

Matt Tully
Because they had added lots of rules to, at least outwardly, to protect the Sabbath?

Guy Waters
That’s right. God says don’t work on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees ran to town with that. And so the prohibition on work includes the man Jesus heals picking up his palette and walking. Or Jesus—

Matt Tully
So you would say that was not what the old Testament prohibitions of work would have entailed?

Guy Waters
No.

Matt Tully
Being healed and picking up your bed.

Guy Waters
No. Jesus couldn’t be clearer that what he is doing is in keeping with (entirely) both the letter and spirit of the Sabbath. And he calls himself, in Matthew 12, the Lord of the Sabbath. So he’s not abolishing the Sabbath. It’d be a strange thing for a Lord to do. He is asserting his authority to say, This is what we do and don’t do on the Sabbath. And so his teaching to the Pharisees is a way of saying, You have really misunderstood—profoundly misunderstood—what this day is about. When you accuse me of breaking this day, all I’m breaking is your rules. I’m not breaking the command as God gave it. And as in many other places and as he sums up in another place, he says, You just don’t understand the Scriptures or the power of God.

Matt Tully
As you said, when we connect the Sabbath, going back to creation and just the broader picture that emerges in the New Testament, with the Sabbath being this sign of God’s coming redemption, it makes all the more the charge that Jesus healing people who were blind or lame on the Sabbath was, in a sense, also really fitting with this idea of Sabbath.

Guy Waters
That’s right. And just what you’ve said illustrates, I think, the difference between the way the Pharisees were treating the Sabbath and the way Jesus treats the Sabbath. Jesus says in Matthew 23, You Pharisees lay burdens on people, and you do not help them. And that’s their teaching about the Sabbath to a T.

Matt Tully
And that might be, to be honest, the way that many of us have come to view the Sabbath. It feels almost like it’s doing the opposite of what you’re explaining here. It’s this burdensome day full of rules, whether that’s how we as Christians were brought up to think about Sundays or how we view the way the Sabbath worked out in terms of Judaism.

Guy Waters
When we criticize the Pharisees, we have to be very careful that we’re not standing on a pedestal, wagging our finger at them, because what they slipped into is exactly what we are capable of. And we ought to be asking ourselves, Is there a lingering pharisaical spirit in my heart, as I think about this day? I can’t say, Well, that’s just the Pharisees and I’m immune from this. What’s going on in their heart and lives is something that can go on in my heart and life. It’s telling what Jesus does often on the Sabbath, and this enrages the Pharisees, is he heals people. And when Jesus heals people on any day of the week, these are signs and pointers to the great work of redemption, body and soul, that he’s come to accomplish in his life, death, and resurrection. That’s what the Sabbath is really about. It’s drawing our attention and our focus on Christ so that we would delight in him, that we would worship him, and that we would serve him.

28:27 - Honoring the Sabbath in a Meaningful Way

Matt Tully
Maybe as a last question, and at the risk of laying down extrabiblical rules as the Pharisees had done, what encouragement can you offer for the Christian listening right now who says, I want to maybe be more thoughtful and intentional about Sundays and this day of rest that God has given to us as new covenant believers. A day to focus our attention, perhaps more, on the redemption that God is working. What practical advice or ideas or thoughts would you give to someone who’s asks, How can I honor the Sabbath on Sundays in a meaningful way?

Guy Waters
Well, I think the first thing that we do—it’s not the only thing, but it’s the most important thing—is that we say, I’m going to prioritize this day as the day God has given me for rest and worship. When you look at it that way, planning for that day starts not on Saturday night;
it starts on Monday morning. I’m going to arrange my week, because God has given me six days to do what I need to do. He says that’s enough. I’m going to take him at his word. I’m going to take this day and I’m going to devote that day to worship and rest. That’s going to start very simply with, *I’m going to join with God’s people—the congregation I’m part of—weekly, to worship with them. There are lots of distractions and lots of things that could take me away, but I’m going to commit. My family and I are going to be there. We’re going to be worshiping and we’re going to be enjoying fellowship. And then we work our work out from there to find ways to use the rest of the day in a way that would honor the Lord.

Matt Tully
I think that’s helpful to start there because some of it is just that whole week—thinking strategically and intentionally about the whole week—in order to meaningfully set aside one day, Sunday, as a day to be intentional about worship and rest.

Guy Waters
And that’s exactly God’s point. He is Lord over everything, and that includes our time. So if we’re thinking about the subject of the Sabbath, All right, I’ll give God this day, but the rest belongs to me—that misses the point. Every hour of the day belongs to God, and so the way that I’m spending my Monday morning or my Thursday afternoon or my Sunday morning is a pointer to, an expression of, my love for Jesus Christ. And so it really casts the way that we think about our time—our commitments, how we spend our time, what we’re doing—across the week in a way that God wants. He wants us to live under his lordship consciously.

Matt Tully
As a parent, how have you sought to inculcate that sense for Sundays in your children? I think the emphasis can be so rightly on corporate worship and gathering together. How do you make the idea of Sabbath bigger than just that, just going to church, as important as that is?

Guy Waters
Well, I think one thing parents can do, and I wish I had done this more. My children are older, and I wish I had done this more when they were [00:32:00] younger. That is to pause and explain, This is why we do what we do. So often, life just moves on at a pace. It’s all you can do just to live it second to second, much less to stop and pause and think about it. But that’s a great opportunity mom and dad have with their kids, particularly when, as a family, our life may look a little different from our neighbors or from what’s going on in the community. Why do we do this? There aren’t many people who do this—going to church on Sunday, every Sunday. And that’s a wonderful teaching moment. And it’s a good way for mom and dad to be reminding themselves, Yeah, this is what we’re about, and this is what God wants us to do.

Matt Tully
Guy, thank you so much for taking the time to help us understand this really central biblical theme that, as you pointed out, we see all the way back at the very beginning of our Bibles, that still is relevant for us today.

Guy Waters
Thank you so much, Matt.

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