Note 1 at Jn. 5:16: The Sabbath was first mentioned in scripture in Exodus 16, when the Lord started miraculously providing the children of Israel with manna in the wilderness. The Israelites were commanded to gather twice as much manna on the sixth day because God would not provide any on the seventh day (Ex. 16:5,22-30). Shortly after this, the Lord commanded the observance of the Sabbath day in the ten commandments that were communicated to Moses on Mt. Sinai on the two tablets of stone (Ex. 20:8-11). In this command (v. 11), God connected this Sabbath day with the rest that He took on the seventh day of creation. Throughout the Old Testament, the keeping of the Sabbath was to be strictly enforced, as can be seen in Numbers 15:32-36 where a man was stoned to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day.

As revealed in Colossians 2:16-17, the Sabbath was symbolic. According to Exodus 23:12, one of the purposes of the Sabbath was to give man and his animals one day of physical rest each week. Today's medical science has proven that our bodies need at least one day of rest each week to function at our peak. Deuteronomy 5:15 also clearly states that the Sabbath was to serve as a reminder to the Jews that they had been slaves in Egypt and were delivered from bondage, not by their own efforts, but by the supernatural power of God. However, in the New Testament, there is an even clearer purpose of the Sabbath stated. In Colossians 2:16-17, Paul reveals that the Sabbath was only a shadow of things to come and is now fulfilled in Christ. Hebrews 4:1-11 talks about a Sabbath rest that is available to all New Testament believers but not necessarily functional in all New Testament believers (vv. 9-11). This New Testament Sabbath rest is simply a relationship with God in which we have ceased from doing things by our own efforts and are letting God work through us (Gal. 2:20; Heb. 4:10).

The Old Testament Sabbath was a perfect picture of this New Testament relationship. While all the other nations of the world were working seven days a week, God's people worked only six and dedicated the seventh day to worshipping their God. The natural mind would say they wouldn't fare as well, and yet they were blessed above all nations of the earth. The Jews were also commanded to let their fields lie idle every seventh year and call the whole year a Sabbath unto the Lord (Lev. 25:1-22). No crops could be sown, no vineyards could be pruned, and no fruit could be gathered (v. 4). The Lord blessed the Jews with three times the normal harvest in the sixth year to sustain them through the sixth, seventh, and then the eighth year while their crops were growing (vv. 20-22). This was an undeniable witness that it was the blessing of their covenant God and not their own efforts that produced this prosperity. And thus, God illustrated to all people who lived under the old covenant that salvation was the work of God and not of their own efforts.

The religious leaders of Jesus' day had missed the true meaning of the Sabbath and had become obsessed with the legalistic keeping of the Sabbath laws and their own volume of interpretations of these laws (see note 4 at Lk. 6:7, p. 105). They were more concerned with their traditions than they were with people, and they received some of Jesus' most stinging rebukes (Mt. 23; Mk. 3:4-5).

The Sabbath was a covenant between God and the nation of Israel (Ex. 31:12-17). The New Testament church is not mentioned observing the Sabbath. The Sabbath is only mentioned in the book of Acts in connection with the Jews and then only twice more in the New Testament (Col. 2:16; Heb. 4:4), explaining this relationship to which we now have access. We've described this new relationship in the second paragraph of this footnote. There were even admonitions given to the New Testament church not to esteem one day above another (Gal. 4:9-10; Col. 2:16-17), but warnings not to condemn those who do (Rom. 14:5-6).

The present-day church does designate the first day of the week as a day of rest and worship. This fulfills one of the stated purposes of the Sabbath as listed in Exodus 23:12 and is good. But when these truths about the Sabbath that we've expounded aren't clearly understood, our Sunday observance becomes ritualistic and displeasing to God (Isa. 1:13). The Sabbath is not a day, but rather a relationship with God through Jesus.