Mark 2:27-28 “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

You have been working 16 hour days, 7 days a week, for several months. You finally collapse in sickness and exhaustion. You go to the doctor. He takes one look at you and says, “My friend, what you need is some rest! Just look at you. And if you are going to sleep properly, you need to get some more exercise. It’s no wonder you haven’t been sleeping. Your body is all out of shape. You need to eat more carefully, too. No more Doritos and Coke for lunch, or pizzas delivered to the office while you are working. While you are at it, take more time to be with your family. A hobby might not hurt, either. It helps reduce your stress. Then you can get some sleep.”

The doctor’s observations may all be good advice. But how much help will they be if the 16-hour work days continue? The doctor has added hours of work to an already overburdened schedule. The result will be less rest, not more.

Even in the perfection of Eden, our Lord never designed us to work without end. We need rest. So he prescribed the Sabbath Day, a day to put work aside, a day for God himself to serve our souls with grace and love.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day tinkered with God’s prescription in ways similar to the doctor’s well-meaning advice. They added long lists of Sabbath rules to make sure people “rested.” But the more people focused on rules, the less rest they got. Even worse, the less they were able to see the Savior to whom the Sabbath points.

God did not create the Sabbath so that we had a rule to keep. He gave this law so that it might keep us. On the Sabbath he led people to hear him speaking in his word. They responded with their prayers and praise. He gave their burdened souls rest from guilt and sin. They found God’s Sabbath Rest not by what they did to keep it, but by what the Lord himself did for them. They stopped all their doing, and all their busyness, and he himself had the opportunity to serve them.

Today we find our Sabbath in the person of Jesus. He supplies us with rest from our sins and rest for our souls. The Sabbath was the long shadow of Jesus cast across centuries of promises (Colossians 2:16-17). It directed God’s people to the full and final rest his life and death would provide. We no longer have to set aside all work on Saturday or consider it our holy day. The Apostle Paul tells us not to let anyone judge you in regard to keeping the Sabbath.

But we still hear echoes of God’s will for us in that law. When we set aside our work to hear about his love, he still keeps us today. He still wants us to gather with other believers, and do so often. We don’t do it to save ourselves by keeping a rule. We encourage and edify each other with the word. The Lord speaks to us and saves us through that word. “Let us not give up meeting together (Greek, literally “going to synagogue”), as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another,” Hebrews 10 urges. Let us find our Sabbath rest gathered with others for worship. There we still find Jesus, and rest for our souls.