What About The Sabbath?

To be used with Matthew 11:1-19 Study

To understand the division of Bible into chapters and verses

by Chuck Ness

Throughout His ministry, Jesus never once broke the fourth commandment which required that all Jews observe the Sabbath. He was after all Jew. However, He did give us a clue that a change to the Sabbath was coming. To make my point, you must first understand that the original manuscripts of the Scriptures were not divided into verses and chapters.

The Old Testament manuscripts were written by scribes for the religious leaders to study. The New Testament manuscripts were letters originally written to be dispersed amongst the believers to read. They were like the letters you receive today. Just a document written in sentences and paragraphs with no verse or chapter numbers.

So you really had to know the transcripts well in order find any information you needed. Finally in the mid 16th century a Frenchman named, Robert Estienne (better known as Robertus Stephanus), would divide the Scriptures into chapters and verses. So today we can find passages by memorizing chapters and verses.

Now I must say, that while I do believe every Word of the Bible is the inspired Word of God, I do not believe that Stephanus's choices of where he decided to split some sentences up into different verses or chapters were inspired. I say so, because there are many instances in the Scriptures where a reader can be distracted or even misled as to what the passage is conveying.

Case in point is chapters 11 and 12 of Matthew's Gospel. I personally believe that he made a mistake by ending Matthew chapter 11 at verse 30. It's my belief that chapter 11 should have had 8 more verses for a total of 38. Thus it would end after the following statement by Jesus,

“For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
(Matthew 12:8)

The following information is quite valuable in the apologetical debate on why so many are mistaken in their belief that Christians should observe Saturday as the Sabbath. Continuing on Jesus' statement in Matthew 12:8, I take you back to the end of Matthew chapter 11. Jesus had just finished telling the crowd that no one born of a woman is greater than John the Baptist, when He started telling everyone to come to Him for rest.

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)

By speaking about the concept of rest, the audience He is speaking to would automatically think of the Sabbath rest which God gave them. They were first told about this gift when Moses presented the Ten Commandments God handed to Him for the people to follow. As Moses read the tablets, he said,

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."
(Exodus 20:8-11)

By the time Jesus started His ministry, the Israelites had been observing the Sabbath for almost 1480 years. They understood that it was a day of rest, even for the animals. A day they were to be free from the labors of life that kept them from communing with God. So, when Jesus starts talking about rest at the end of chapter 11, he continues his thought process on through to verse 8 of chapter 12. So when He calls them to come to Him for rest, and then claims He is the Lord of the Sabbath, it goes without saying that this is all one thought process and thus chapter 11 should have ended at verse 38, with chapter 12 actually beginning at verse 9 where Matthew wrote,

Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue.
(Matthew 12:9)

The next 20 verses do continue the matter of a rest, but not until Jesus moved to another site. Thus it then makes sense to split the chapter after Jesus made His statement about Him being the Lord of the Sabbath, and after he had arrived at a different location.

This is important, because when Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled all the requirements of the Law, including the one that calls for us to obey the Sabbath, since as He stated, He is our Sabbath. Just as we are not bound by going through a High Priest by offering a sacrifice, we too do not need to follow the Jewish Law. We can reach God through Christ, on any day at anytime we so desire. Without going through the commandments of the law which Christ abolished.

After 1480 years, the Jews showed they could not follow the Law, and with Christ fulfilling it and the ceremonial ones, we are free from it. So with Jesus, being the Lord of the Sabbath, we are free to chose any day, and anytime to gather for communion and celebration of Him with no more legalistic requirements to follow the old obsolete law.

Any Christian following any portion of the Law, is doing what Paul preached against when he chastised the Judaizers who tried to put the Christians back into bondage to the Law. This is one of the things he wrote to the Colossians about when he said,

Let no one judge you in food or in drink,
or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths
(Colossians 2:16)

Paul also wrote that, if you observe any part of the Old Law, then you must follow it all. Does anyone truly want to be bound by the full weight of a law that God's own people could never follow? The answer is a resounding NO. Praise God, because we are free to worship HIM anywhere, on any day, at anytime by going through the One who fulfilled and abolished the law. Thus setting us free from a Law we could never dream of keeping.

The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
(Galatians 5:17:18)

Thus if you are not under the law, you are not under any obligations to any of the ceremonial requirements either. Nor are you bound by the Jewish Sabbath as I pointed out above from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Anyone who feels obligated to an abolished symbolism of the Old Law is keeping themselves from truly enjoying all the freedom God offers us through His Son's death and Resurrection, which is the true rest we have been given.

Finally, I have two last pieces of evidence I offer you. One from the mouth of Jesus, when the rich young ruler asked, "what must i do to have eternal life?" Jesus replied to him;

You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,' 'Honor your father and your mother,’fn and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
Matthew 19:18-19

Then in Paul's letter to the Jewsih Christians in Rome, we learn, not from what he wrote, but rather what he did not write when he listed the commandments we should obey. Mind you, Paul was once a Pharisee of Pharisees, a man who persecuted Jewish converts to Chrisianity for violating the commandments. So, let us look at what Paul left out when he wrote about the commandments we are to obey in his letter to the Romans.

Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," "YOU SHALL NOT MURDER," "YOU SHALL NOT STEAL," "YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS," "YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
Romans 13:8-11

It should be enough to read what Jesus said on this matter, but we also see Paul then teach that which our LORD HIMSELF said. So I ask you, what is NOT included in this list of commandments from Jesus and then Paul abiut which commandments we should obey to haveveternal life? It is the Sabbath. If Paul himself is not obeying the Sabbath, than why would any born again Christian want to follow a regulation from a law that is obsoloete? Obsolete, because Jesus fulfilled the letter of the law and became our Sabbath rest

So many fail to understand that as a Jew, Jesus had to fulfill both the legal laws and ceremonial laws in order to abolish them, because all the high priests and all the blood they spilled never satisfied the law completely so it was never fulfilled. Yet the nano second he died, the curtain separating the inner and outer room was torn by GOD from top to bottom. Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the Law. Thus the new dispensation began that set us free from the law written on stone and the ceremonial regulations. Today we are justified, "Just As If We Have Not Sinned." We are cleansed by HIS blood and freed by the atoning work on the Cross.

Thank GOD we are free, free at last. Free from observing anything the old law said we had to do. Thus our Sabbath in now in Jesus, Who allows us to come straight through HIM as our mediator to GOD. Jesus is our traveling Tabernacle who resides in us, and thus our Sabbath it eternal. Eternal in that everyday is a Sabbath for us, and at any moment we can worship HIM, because we now worship HIM in Spirit and in Truth. 

Praise God we are free from the bondage of a system that only whitewashed our sin until a new animal was slain for it's blood to be spilled and sprinkled upon the mercy seat inside the inner room behind a curtain. A curtain that was torn asunder by GOD HIMSELF! We can now all enter into the presence of our LORD through our LORD, and commune with our LORD at any time on any day.

I pray those who have ears to hear will hear His voice and call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the price for all our sins.
Amen