God speaks about giving us rest in various verses, such as Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Or in Exodus 33:14: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
But what is rest according to the Bible, and what does it mean to rest in God?
Welcome to part 2 of the series in which we explore the true meaning of rest and the many questions Christians have about it. This part will delve into the true meaning of Sabbath. Many think they know what the Sabbath is, and what we are supposed to do on a Sabbath day. But is that actually correct? Let’s find out what God says.
Watch the video here, or read the transcript below.
Intuitively, we know that the rest meant in the Scripture verses I just mentioned almost never involves scrolling on YouTube all day or playing mindless games for hours. Our conscience already knows this, and that is part of the reason this type of “rest” can make us feel guilty. Many of us long to be productive (for various reasons), and spending our free time doing nothing productive makes us feel lazy or useless.
If you recognize yourself in this, the conclusion of this series will come as good news:
Godly rest will not only increase productivity- it is productive!
To understand why, it’s important to know the Biblical definition of rest.
Rest in these two verses I just mentioned actually refers to the rest we will have in the Promised Land, when we will be with God forever, and we rest from our works as God did on the Sabbath. We can read about this in Hebrews 4. But this isn’t all.
To understand the Biblical meaning of rest, we need to understand God’s intention with the Sabbath. And I can tell you that the Holy Spirit unveiled some very interesting patterns I had never seen before.
And by the way, the transcript of this video with all the Scripture references is linked in the description.
The hidden meaning of the Sabbath
God introduced the Sabbath when He finished His creation (Genesis 2:3). The Hebrew verb shabath (שָׁבַת) means to rest, to desist, as in ceasing work, and to celebrate. And that is what God did. Not because He was tired, but because on the seventh day He stopped creating and was refreshed (Exodus 31:17).
Interestingly, in the creation account, the seventh day has no specified end, whereas all the other creation days are marked by a sunrise and a sunset. (Or, more precisely, “evening and morning,” as Genesis 1:5 puts it.)
I believe there’s an interesting reason for this.
Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, and that day ended after God blessed them (Genesis 1:27-31). God called all that He created “very good” before the sixth day ended, so Adam and Eve’s sin must have happened after day six (as from that moment, things were no longer very good).
God’s creative work stopped after day six, but then He began His redemptive work.
The Hebrew word for day, ‘yom’ (י֥וֹם) can mean a literal day from sunrise to sunset, but it can also mean age, as in a defined space of time. Knowing this will help us understand why the seventh day is not just a space of twenty-four hours, but also an age: the age of His redemptive, restorative work, which is still ongoing.
In this world’s final age, a lot has happened, and a lot will still happen. In this period of time, all of mankind has a choice. For it started with sin and death, and it can end with judgment and the second death, or with salvation and eternal life (Revelation 21:8; Matthew 25:46). All it takes to cross over from one fate to another is faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection. Because this is how Christ paid the price for our sins and defeated death.
This age will continue until this world ends, and nobody but God Himself knows when that will be (Matthew 24). What we do know is that it will be soon, and that those who accept Christ will be raised on the last day of this season (John 6:40-54). This implies that they will also see the first day, also known as the age to come, when the Lord resumes His creative work to create new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17).
The sun is now setting one last time, as the world is getting darker and darker with evil. But soon, it will rise again: Jesus, the bright Morning Star, will be our Light forever (Isaiah 60:1-3, 19-20; Matthew 24:29-31).
In the meantime, God’s people celebrate the Sabbath as a sign throughout the generations. A sign that was poorly understood then, and it still is now.
The Sabbath was originally kept on the seventh day of the week by resting like God did and by commemorating that His people are set apart and delivered from slavery (Exodus 31:12-17; Deuteronomy 5:15). He rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and similarly, He saved us from slavery to sin. He took us out of the camp of the enemy and adopted us into sonship (Ephesians 1:4-5), and that is truly something to celebrate and remember. But not just on the seventh day of the week. Every day of our lives in Christ should, in essence, be a celebration of our salvation. As soon as we are born again, we fulfill the weekly Sabbath by resting from works and believing in saving grace until we enter our final rest, where we will also have rest from our enemies.
In our current season, we do good works out of love for God and people, any day of the week, following the example of God Himself (Luke 13:10-16, 14:1-5; John 7:22-23).
The Sabbath was always meant as a foreshadowing of things to come (Colossians 2:16-17). If we try to stick to certain Sabbath rules to find favor with God, we are making the Sabbath about works all over again.
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Cessation of labor
Besides the weekly Sabbath, there were other observances on “seventh times,” such as the Sabbath year held every seventh year, the priestly judgment of clean or unclean on the seventh day, the Day of Atonement in the seventh month, and so on (Leviticus 13, 23:27, 25:4-12). All of those observances pointed to being set apart, deliverance, and restoration. They follow a pattern: on the seventh day, God’s children are set apart from the rest of the world; they stop working, and afterward, they are renewed, redeemed, and liberated.
We see this exemplified in the Year of Jubilee, which was celebrated in the year after the forty-ninth year (seven times seven). That fiftieth year was set apart for righteousness, abundant provisions from God, and for freedom from debt, work, and slavery (Leviticus 25:8-22). We enjoy a foretaste of this now until we enter the complete Sabbath rest that awaits us…
Closely related to this, we also see this symbolism in Pentecost. Pentecost, as you know, is celebrated on the fiftieth day after the Passover, when God’s people had escaped death and were delivered. In the Book of Acts, we can read how on Pentecost the Holy Spirit was poured out on the believers for the first time. Through this, He gave them power, so that they didn’t have to witness in their own strength (Acts 1:4-8).
One example I find particularly beautiful is the law that Hebrew slaves had to be set free after they had served for six years (Exodus 21:2-6). What I find so symbolic is that slaves who wanted to stay because they loved their owner and family could do so after receiving a seal. This is talking about us fulfilling the greatest commandments of loving the Lord with all your heart, and loving your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40)! Those who truly love our Master and our family in Christ get the Holy Spirit as a seal and become part of His family (2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Ephesians 1:13-14, 4:30). All the work we do from that point on is an expression of love. And work done out of love feels like no effort at all (Genesis 29:20).
A daily Sabbath in Christ
All of these observances point in the same direction: God’s rest means ceasing from working for our salvation. From working in our own strength, from working as slaves who have no choice. As Christians, we are enjoying a foretaste of the rest that awaits us, as we are already set apart and no longer work for our salvation. We already have the help of the Holy Spirit, and we already work for God out of love. Or are we?
When we are tired from our work, these should be the first questions we ask ourselves: Who is it I work for? What am I trying to achieve with my work? What motivates me?
If the answer is something like money, acknowledgment, status, or to be valued, we are draining ourselves. The only right answer to these questions is God. The Bible teaches that we should work as if for the Lord (Colossians 3:23). Ultimately, He is the one we should please (Galatians 1:10). If we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first, the rest will follow (Matthew 6:33). As long as we are staying in His will, He will provide us with whatever we need.
Because when He rescued His people from slavery and they ceased their work, God brought them into the wilderness on eagle’s wings to be His special, treasured possession (Exodus 19:4-5; Revelation 12:14). They lacked nothing (Deuteronomy 2:7). In the same way, He set us free to be His beloved! So, now we work because of our relationship with God, and because we are (becoming) like Him. And we too will lack nothing we need to walk in His will.
Thanks to what Jesus did on the cross, we now have a new covenant (Hebrews 8). Now it’s through grace that we are saved; working for our salvation does nothing except wear us out and sever us from Christ (Ephesians 2:8; Galatians 5:4). That is why those who trust in the Lord will find new strength, soar high on wings like eagles, run and not grow weary, walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31). Even in their rest, they will be flourishing. They will be fruitful, juicy, and green forever (Psalm 92:12-14).
God’s establishment of the Sabbath was a foreshadowing of this principle, which is why it was so offensive that the Pharisees made the Sabbath about works. The Sabbath became a set of strict, man-made, and hypocritical rules, leaving no room for good fruit (Mark 2:23-28).
Doing “nothing” was and is not the road to becoming holy. Even when relaxing, we always do something: walking, eating, chatting, seeking entertainment or social interaction. So deciding what is and isn’t allowed as cessation of labor can only be measured and judged when you set rules. But that was not God’s point. And doing that today only makes us equally legalistic, missing God’s Good News all over again.
God made the seventh day sacred so that the generations would remember that He gave us freedom with His great power, and that He is sanctifying us for good works (Exodus 31:13; Deuteronomy 5:15; Ephesians 2:10). It’s a day to rest and be refreshed (Exodus 23:12, 31:17). But we are no longer just resting and being refreshed on one day of the week: the Holy Spirit gives us rest and refreshes us each and every day. And we don’t have to be idle for that. In the Sabbath year when the land rested, the land didn’t stop producing food. And God stopping His creative work on the seventh day didn’t mean that He also stopped doing good. He still blesses us, provides for us, restores us, fights for us, and so on. And just like Him, we are allowed to do good on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:12; Mark 3:4).
We rest in the fact that God always takes care of us. During the Sabbath, the people didn’t have to go out and look for manna, since it was already provided for them on the sixth day (Exodus 16:22-26). That manna, Bread from Heaven, was a foreshadowing of Jesus, who calls Himself the Living Bread from Heaven (John 6:48-51). But some of the Israelites still went out on the seventh day to gather, even though they had what they needed (Exodus 16:27-29). They were working for something already given, and God called it a refusal to keep His commandments. Hebrews 4 shows us that this kind of disobedience comes from a lack of faith, and that is what kept them from entering God’s rest.
That is still true for us now: we don’t have to toil for something God has already given. Jesus is enough. He gave us all we need to make it through this final day. We can rest and lean on His provisions and His grace instead of looking for ways to sustain ourselves outside of God’s plan. Let’s not look for what we need where it can’t be found.
I’m not saying that taking a day off every week is a bad thing. It’s actually a very healthy tradition. But it’s not a tradition that gets us into heaven, nor one that comes attached with a bunch of rules on how to rest.
Taking time off from what we normally do gives us room to reflect on what it means to be made free, set apart, holy, and prepared for good works. This may lead to repentance, to seeking guidance, and to thanksgiving, while looking forward to the great joy that is set before us. This gives us the strength, refreshment, and motivation to carry on, no matter the circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18; 1 Corinthians 15:54-58; Hebrews 12:2).
But taking time off doesn’t mean taking time off from God. In fact, the Sabbath requires reflection on what God did for us and humbling ourselves before Him. And that requires sitting at the feet of Jesus like Mary, rather than anxiously serving like Martha (Luke 10:38-42).
Don’t carry a burden
When we dive a little deeper still, we find another important clue in Jeremiah 17:21-22. There it says, “Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers,” (ESV).
The Israelites followed this rule to the letter to demonstrate an important truth most of them didn’t understand: in our rest, we will not bear a burden, because Jesus’s yoke is easy, and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30).
If this is helping you, liking the video helps YouTube show it to other tired Christians who are asking the same questions. And subscribe, because next time we’ll talk about why we feel guilty while resting.
Now, what’s interesting is that Jesus explained this principle precisely by letting a man carry a burden on a Sabbath. You likely remember the story in John 5 about the invalid man who tried to be delivered from his affliction by his own strength. For a very long time, he tried to get into a pool at Bethesda. Bethesda means House of Mercy, by the way, which is not a coincidence. Anyway, the man hopelessly tried to get in, but he was physically unable to do so and found no one to help him. When Jesus arrived at the scene and asked him if he wanted to be healed, he didn’t even answer with ‘yes’ anymore. He had become hopeless and frustrated. Then Jesus said, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” (John 5:8). And the man did as he was told.
Of course the Jews didn’t like that Jesus worked by healing on the Sabbath, and that the man carried a burden by carrying his bed. According to them, both acts were against the Law. What they didn’t understand is that Jesus was equal with God, and so He had made the Sabbath rules Himself (Matthew 12:8). And He made those rules to benefit people, not the other way around (Mark 2:27-28). So, when they persecuted Jesus, His response was: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
Some people see the fact that Jesus let the man carry his bed as an act of rebellion, but it was actually an object lesson that explained that Jesus sets us free from our true burdens. This man’s true burden was not his bed; it was his affliction. And Jesus set him free from the very thing that bound him, without him having to work for it. Jesus simply spoke his command, and the man was instantly healed. His desire to be healed was enough. He didn’t have to pray a specific prayer a specific way, or pay money, or follow some kind of ritual. No, that would still be works. Working didn’t set him free, and it didn’t bring healing. If it weren’t for Jesus’s mercy, he would continue to carry his burden, fight with his own minimal strength, and continue to suffer from all the weariness, hopelessness, and frustration that this brought on top of his already existing physical and mental suffering.
And when he had his newfound freedom and ability to walk wherever he wanted, Jesus gave him just one assignment: “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” (John 5:14b).
Resting in God encourages us to do the same. Stop trying to do the impossible by toiling to find freedom from your burden- in your own strength. “For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me” (Psalm 38:4 ESV).
It doesn’t matter if what bound you caused despair, disease, loneliness, or weariness. The man suffered from all of these, but one word from Jesus, and all his burdens were lifted.
But how do we get burdened in the first place? Why do we feel we need to work harder to gain freedom, joy, and peace? We’ll explore that next.