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What the Bible says about Sabbath as Perpetual Covenant
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Exodus 31:13-17

God has designated the Sabbath to be "the sign" between Him and His people. It is evidence that He, the Creator, is our God, and that those who keep it are His children. As a whole, the Bible shows that it is not just that it is observed, but also the manner in which it is observed that makes it the sign.

Except by creation, the Jews are not His children, but they keep the Sabbath. The same applies to Seventh-Day Adventists. The way it is observed makes a huge difference. Only then is it the sign. If this were not so, God would not have shown as much concern about how it is observed—even to the extent of saying that breaking it was a major reason why Israel went into captivity and was divorced by God.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Sabbathkeeping (Part 4)

Exodus 31:13

An interesting and significant term is used in Exodus 31:13, 17: The Sabbath is a sign, not a mark. Bible usage shows that a sign is something voluntarily accepted, whereas a mark is placed on a person against his will. The Sabbath is a special sign of a special covenant between God and His people. In the wilderness, His people were the Israelites; today, it is the Israel of God, the church of God (Galatians 6:16).

A sign can identify a person's occupation or an individual's or group's purpose. Signs can give directions (like traffic signs), or they can bring people together with shared interests and a common purpose (like flags). A sign can be the pledge of mutual fidelity and commitment (as in putting a hand over one's heart). Organizations use signs to designate membership so that members can recognize each other (as with secret handshakes).

In the church's case, the Sabbath serves as an external and visible bond that simultaneously unites and sanctifies us from everyone else. Almost everybody else keeps Sunday or nothing. Through the Sabbath, the Christian knows that God is sanctifying him. Everyone who has kept both Sabbath and Sunday knows this. Sunday sets no one apart from this world because so many in this world observe it.

God has a purpose He is working out. If the only reason He created the Sabbath were because we need physical rest, any old time would do. Ultimately, however, the real sign appears in how and why one keeps the Sabbath. Thus, God made a specific period of time special so that He could meet with His people during that sanctified period to help them become even more different for their benefit.

What is His major goal in doing this? He educates His people in His way of life. In part, He prepares His people to witness for Him by this means. As an analogy, suppose a basketball coach told his players, "Come to the gym at 8 AM Monday, and I will teach you how my team plays ball." Yet, what if some players went to a different gym at a different time with a different coach?

Players on a team who take the game seriously begin to take on the qualities and philosophy of their coach. People who involve themselves deeply in athletics say they can often tell by a player's characteristics that he has trained under a certain coach. They remark that he has the John Wooden or John Thompson "way" about him. What has happened is that the player has taken on the "sign" of his coach, and it has "sanctified" him from other players who were not trained by that particular coach.

The Sabbath was created because it both enhances and protects a Christian's relationship with God. It also provides a witness to God, to the person keeping it, and to the world. It exists to help keep a Christian pointed in the right direction and in a proper frame of mind, and it provides him with the right knowledge and understanding to negotiate the way to God's Kingdom.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fourth Commandment

Exodus 31:16-17

The seventh-day Sabbath is a perpetual sign of identification, something that anybody familiar with the way we live our lives can observe us doing. God had done that on purpose: He made the Sabbath the sign so that anybody can see it. Anybody who knows us can see that we keep the Sabbath.

On the flip side, the world seems to keep every day except the one that God assigns. He made holy a period of constantly recurring time so that anybody familiar with His children—those who show His characteristics—would be able to observe their example and be witnessed to, without a word having to be said. The Sabbath commandment contains the holy days within its scope.

If we respect, fear, and love God, we will believe what He says and submit to it. What does the world do in regard to this commandment? The world's churches argue against keeping it and resolve not to. They denigrate it as being of no value except as ceremonial and easily replaceable. They apply the commandment as an injunction merely to keep one day in seven—and then do not even keep that one day.

However, they profess Christianity, to follow Christ, just as the Jews professed that their spiritual father was God. In John 8:44, Jesus calls them liars. The world does this despite the fact of the clear witness that God left in His Word that Jesus, by His own admission, said He did not come to destroy the law. He obviously kept the Sabbath Himself, and the apostles (that He instructed for three-and-one-half years) continued to keep it as an example to the church. No command anywhere in the Bible does away with the Sabbath command or any other of the Ten Commandments.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Christian and the World (Part Two)

Amos 3:3

Applying this principle to the Sabbath, if we want to be in God's presence in this special way, no other day will do. God has set a weekly appointment with His people to meet with Him for purposes pertaining to His spiritual creation. It is largely on this day that we are blessed, empowered by Him with His Spirit to promote our success in His way. The keeping of the Sabbath also functions to identify the two parties involved in the covenant.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fourth Commandment (Part One) (1997)

Luke 4:16

This basic scripture states what was our Lord and Savior's manner or custom. He habitually kept the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath, holy. The carnal mind will explain that Christ only did this because He was a Jew or because He was still under the Old Covenant. Remember, however, that Exodus 31:15-17 plainly says that the Sabbath covenant, made in addition to the Old Covenant, is to continue as long as there are generations of Israelites. It is a separate covenant from the Old Covenant.

Most generally also overlook the fact that Jesus declared, in Mark 2:27-28, that the Sabbath was made for man. That is, God made it specifically for man. He also declared that He Himself is the Lord—the Boss, as it were—of the Sabbath. He owns it, and thus He is its Master. He can do with it as He pleases, and it pleased Him to instruct us that it was made specifically for us. It pleased Him to keep it, and we are to walk in His steps.

This is very serious because, if one can throw out the example of the Head of the church, it destroys all consistency in following Christ. Every other example of what He did loses its value. One cannot just pick and choose what he will follow. If we are to be true disciples of Christ and truly follow Him, then we are not free to decide what rules or examples we will follow. We follow what the Boss does.

I Peter 2:21 shows how far we are to go in following what He does: "For to this you were you called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps." If we are to follow in His steps in regard to suffering, we should also follow in His steps in regard to the day of worship. As He set it aside for Himself, as His custom was, we, too, are to set it aside as our customary way of living. The apostle Paul adds in I Corinthians 11:1, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ."

There are numerous references following Jesus' death and resurrection, primarily in the book of Acts, of the apostles and the New Testament church keeping the Sabbath and the holy days, food laws, and circumcision (to a point), and some of the other ceremonial laws as well. It is obvious that they were not antagonistic to Old Testament laws, and they did not look on them as an enemy by which they would be defiled if they kept them.

In addition, the entire Bible contains no reference or controversy about whether the Sabbath should be kept, even as it contains nothing of the sort about whether a Christian should keep the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth commandments. The apostles knew they should keep the commandments, including the one to keep the Sabbath holy! The only argument was whether justification came from keeping them.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Covenants, Grace, and Law (Part Twenty-Nine)


 




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