Previously: The Sabbath, part seven
I was talking with a friend today, and the conversation turned toward keeping the Sabbath day holy. She asked me if I thought that resting on Sunday, the first day, was good enough.
“If you are resting on Sunday already, why not just make a few adjustments and rest on Saturday instead?”
“Well, it says in Hebrews that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, so I do agree that we should rest one day a week; but nowhere does it say it has to be on the seventh day.”
“It says all over the Bible that the Sabbath day is the seventh day, and also, that the seventh day is the day of rest! It says that the Sabbath day is the seventh day MORE times than it says we should rest or do no work on the Sabbath day!”
“Yes, but Sabbath just means ‘rest,’ As long as I am resting, it doesn’t matter the day.”
“I just read this actually!” In Genesis 2:2-3:
And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
This is the first appearance of the word “rest” in the Bible. It is the Hebrew primary root word, shabath, to cease, desist, rest. In the same verse, “seventh day” is yom shebiith, the day of the ordinal number for seven. And the Sabbath, the name of the seventh day holiday, is in Hebrew Shabbat. All of these words are related and come from the same root! So you actually can say that Sabbath means “rest,” but if you adhere to that, you must also adhere to the fact that Sabbath means “seventh,” because “Sabbath” and “seventh” come from the root word which means ‘rest!”
That opened up a whole fascinating conversation on what sola scriptura means, but that is for another post …
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Update: continued in The Sabbath, part nine
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