Our Sabbath Rest is only in Jesus Christ

Hello,

My name is Robert, I'm a Baptist from the UK. Here is a post which I posted in another chat room forum about keeping the Sabbath. if anyone can add to it or improve it, or refute it, I'd like to know.

thanks

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;


“28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, KJV).


The fourth commandment however, was completely unique because its only function was to firstly remind Israel about God’s rest (Exodus 20:11) and then secondly to also remember Israel’s deliverance from bondage in Egypt (Deuteronomy 5:15), from which God alone was their deliverer. This bondage represents our sins, and so this second aspect of the Sabbath teaches us that just as God alone delivered the Jews from Egypt, so too, it’s only God who alone can deliver us from our sins.

Therefore the whole point of the Sabbath isn’t to teach us that we can attempt to keep it by our doing various things, or by adhering to a long list of do’s and don’ts. The intention of the Sabbath was to get us to rest in the coming Messiah (Jesus Christ), for only in Christ can a human ever keep the Sabbath. Secondly, just as Israel’s bondage represented their sins, so too does our Sabbath rest (in Christ) signify his propitiatory work on the cross, which has redeemed us from our sins when we come to him in faith at the moment of salvation. This is the point of salvation by grace through faith, we can’t add to our own salvation or even contribute to it (Ephesians 2:9), for it’s only though our faith in Christ, which echoes the Sabbath rest that we are saved.

So in the light of this, when Christ said: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28), he was directly applying the Sabbath rest, which is the entire principle of the fourth commandment, to believing and trusting in himself alone for salvation. And so when we do trust in Christ, at the very moment of our conversion, this repentance which is itself a gift from God (2nd Timothy 2:25), becomes the New Testament fulfilment of the Sabbath rest. For out of every man who has ever lived only Christ has fully kept the fourth commandment. And as we can’t keep the Sabbath ourselves by doing various things, for the principle of rest is the very antithesis of doing good works or of doing anything, therefore the only way in which we today can keep the Sabbath today is by trusting in Christ, that is by resting in him, at the very moment of our conversion.