YESHUA IS THE LORD OF THE SABBATH

• Weekly Holy Convocation

In Leviticus 23 the Lord sets dates for us to meet Him and worship His presence. There are 7 Appointed Times ( מועדיםmoadim), or Holy Convocations ( מקראי קודש mikrae kodesh):

• Shabbat
• Pesach
• Bikurim
• Shavuot
• Yom Teruah
• Yom Kippur
• Sukkot

Let’s look at the words given by God through Moses regarding the Sabbath:

‘‘Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.’ Leviticus 23:3

“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

Yeshua is our Shabbat. We must learn to enter into Him in full rest.

Holy Convocation = Shabbat

Whenever we read in the Bible that a day is called Holy Convocation, that day is a Shabbat, because we have the weekly Shabbat and the Shabbat of the Feasts of the Lord, or Appointed Times and these Shabbatot can fall on any day of the week. It will be Holy Convocation and a Shabbat.

We can and should worship and pray to the Lord every day, but on Shabbat He wants to have an encounter with us. This is an ETERNAL commandment, and if it is ETERNAL, it cannot be changed.

• God or Mammon?

At the end of the sixth day, God created man. Genesis 1:27 ‘So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ‘

God created and blessed man and woman, and He did so at the end of the sixth day so that man cannot glory in anything, for all creation belongs to God, all honor and glory.

Then the Lord blessed the seventh day. Genesis 2:3 ‘Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.’

The importance of setting aside Shabbat to worship the Lord comes from the beginning of this era.

We must discern from “regular work” and “serve the Lord” on Shabbat. Religious people place a weight that is not biblical on Shabbat rest, because it is one thing to serve Mammon (work for money) and quite another to serve God (work for love, without expecting any reward). Those who work for the Kingdom of God are not disrespecting the commandment to keep Shabbat for the Lord. For it is for Him and through Him that we do all things.

• A Sign to Israel

The Sabbath was set apart, long before He chose the Jewish people. At the same time, He says He sanctifies Israel through the Sabbath. He says that the Sabbath would be a sign between Him and us. It would be a way for Him to reveal Himself to our people and consequently to the Gentiles, since Israel is and always will be a priestly people and nation.

“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak also to the children of Israel, saying: ‘Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’ ”And when He had made an end of speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. Exodus 31:12-18

The commandment to keep the Sabbath was written with the Finger of God!

• Pikuach Nefesh’s Moral Principle

Pikuach Nefesh (Hebrew: (פיקוח נפש means: “to save a soul” or “to save a life”.

Because of Pikuach Nefesh, every Jew has a duty to save a person’s life, if possible, even if it means that another mitzvah (commandment or law of Judaism) will be broken.

For example, a doctor, army official, policeman, priest, among others, can break the Sabbath, following the principle of Pikuach Nefesh.

• The Year of the Shmitah

The rest is so important that God establishes a rest for the land, the year of the Shmitah שמיטה, described in Leviticus 25:1-7

“And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather its fruit; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine, for it is a year of rest for the land. And the sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you: for you, your male and female servants, your hired man, and the stranger who dwells with you, for your livestock and the beasts that are in your land—all its produce shall be for food.”

• The Desecration of the Sabbath

In the Tanach (First Scriptures), there are 116 verses about keeping the Sabbath in 19 books. In the B’rit Chadasha (New Covenant), there are 55 verses about keeping the Sabbath and none about keeping Sunday.

The so-called Edict of Constantine was a law of the Roman Emperor Constantine, proclaimed on March 7, 321 AD:

“ All judges and city people and the craftsmen shall rest upon the venerable day of the sun. Country people, however, may freely attend to the cultivation of the fields, because it frequently happens that no other days are better adapted for planting the grain in the furrows or the vines in trenches. So that the advantage given by heavenly providence may not for the occasion of a short time perish.”

 Although some Christians have used the decree in support of Sunday observance, to try to solve the controversy of keeping the Sabbath or Sunday in the Christian Church, in reality, the decree does not apply to Christians or Jews, exclusively, but to everyone to whom the edict refers.

As a result of his anti-Semitic biography, and also linked, most likely, to the Arianism of the fourth and fifth centuries, Eusebius (referred to as the father of Church History) states:  “Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd, for we have received from our Savior a different way”.

In practice, the Edict of Constantine created problems for Jews to keep the Sabbath and, for Christians, from then on, officially, Saturday would be replaced by Sunday as a day to be kept for God.

• Yeshua – Lord of the Shabbat

“At that time Yeshua went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!” But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:1-8

On the Sabbaths, Yeshua fellowshipped with His brethren, contemplated God’s creation, taught in the synagogues, and was used with healings and other miracles as the Spirit led Him. He is our example of how to keep the Shabat!

• Restoration of God’s Appointed Times

In His Word, the Lord has appointed times and seasons. There are times in the Bible that are mysteries, for example: the date of Yeshua’s birth. Through Bible studies we can determine that it was probably between Yom Teruah and Sukkot, but we are not told the exact date. As for the sacrifice (death) of the LAMB, we are informed of the exact date as we can read in:

Leviticus 23:5 ‘On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord ’s Passover. ‘

Exodus 12:6 ‘Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. ‘

We believe that when the Lord determines a date, it is because He wants to have an encounter with us, so we cannot celebrate or postpone it to the day that best suits us. By doing so, we will be like the foolish virgins:

Matthew 25:7-13 Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.

We are in times of restoration, according to Acts 3:19-21:

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Yeshua, the Messiah, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.

Only the truth will set us free, that is, return to the Word. He is the way to truth and life, we have to be like the wise virgins, be attentive to the appointed times by the Lord and not by men. We cannot choose what to follow or how to serve, because there is only one way and that way is Yeshua.

• Shabbat for the Gentiles

The Lord has a promise to the Gentiles who do not bow to the Roman tradition, in Isaiah 56.1-7:

Thus says the Lord: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come, And My righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who lays hold on it; Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.” Do not let the son of the foreigner Who has joined himself to the Lord Speak, saying, “The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”; Nor let the eunuch say, “Here I am, a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, even to them I will give in My house and within My walls a place and a name Better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name That shall not be cut off. “Also, the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast My covenant—Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations Tomorrow will be as today,

• The prophecy of the Seventh Millennium

The seventh day, the Sabbath, points to the seventh millennium in which Yeshua will reign.

‘And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. ‘Revelation 20:4

We must seek to be holy, because He is HOLY. the Lord sanctified Yeshua above everything and everyone. He is the one who sanctifies us.

“There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” Hebrews 4:9-11

Shabbat does not belong to the week; Shabbat belongs to the Lord. Yeshua haMashiach is the Shabbat. Let’s take off the old, Roman garments, and clothe ourselves with the white garments of Yeshua, the Jew, Israelite, Lord of Shabbat!

In the sublime love of Yeshua haMashiach.