Sabbath Thought – Sabbath Rest

(I am repeating this Sabbath Thought from January 2023 as this thought has been on my mind recently.)

What is the point of the Sabbath day? It is clear from Scripture that God set the seventh day aside as holy time, but why? The Jews venerate the Sabbath, but they have taken God’s instruction to not carry a burden on the Sabbath (like in Jeremiah 17:21-27) and have ironically created their own burdens of what cannot be done. Nominal Christianity has forsaken the seventh-day Sabbath. For centuries they substituted Sunday (the first day of the week) for the seventh, but for the most part they at least saw it as holy time. Now Christianity is in such decline that most don’t even attend church, let alone see it as holy time. So, what is the point of the Sabbath day? Is it just to have a physical break from the week? Is it just because God needs our worship of Him? Is it a requirement for salvation? 

What most miss regarding the Sabbath day is the deeper aspect of the relationship we can have with God through the Sabbath. We have six days each week to take care of the physical needs of this life, but the Sabbath is for us to have uninterrupted time with God. We have no obligations of life to take care of on the Sabbath, so we can have focused and quality time to come before our great God! The interesting thing to consider in this regard, is that God Himself rested in creating the Sabbath day (Genesis 2:2) – He didn’t need physical rest, but rather “rested” to live on that day making it holy time.

We see this understanding of the Sabbath in Hebrews 4. In verse one we are reminded that we have a promise from God that we can enter into His rest. The word “rest” there can also mean to live in a state of rest. That promise transcends this life, because we cannot have this type of rest fully in this life. The “rest” that Israel didn’t have that is referenced in verses three and five referred to Israel’s refusal and inability to ultimately “rest” (live) in God. This is the challenge with carnal human nature. We want our way instead of trusting in, and living in, God’s ways.

So, we read in verse nine, “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God,” (NKJV). The word “rest” in this verse specifically references the Sabbath (sabbatismos) – that is a Sabbath keeping. It is interesting that most commentaries recognize that the writer of Hebrews is referencing a rest in God, and yet fail to see the need of the weekly Sabbath (“There remains…”) in order to help facilitate that rest.

We see in verse 10 God desires that we “rest” as He did when He created the Sabbath. We will cease from our “work” of overcoming once we have true rest in God – once we show Him that our desire, our thoughts and actions down to the uttermost part of our being, are to be like Him so He can change us from mortal to immortal (1 Corinthians 15:50-53).

With God’s spirit dwelling in us, we can enter into the rest Israel couldn’t. As we overcome and draw near to God (Psalm 73:28, James 4:8) we can even now begin to rest as God did. May we rest with God in His ways and in His Sabbath.

I wish you a God-filled restful Sabbath,

Dan Dowd

6 June, 2026