Hi Raeneske, This is something I wrote a while ago and it was "personalized" for a specific person. Instead of changing all that I just thought I'd let you know that when the words "you" or "your" are used it is not speaking to you personally.
This whole Sabbath issue was settled long ago at the Jerusalem council as written of in Acts 15. The question at hand is given in vs. 5 - “
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” Then Peter, Paul and Barnabas spoke but it was James who proves gentiles are not under the law (vss.14-20). The result of this council is found in vs. 20 and again in vs.29 - “
You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” Notice that there is absolutely no mention of Sabbath keeping because they knew that it was a Jewish custom, soon to fade away.
All this talk and concern about where and when to celebrate the Sabbath is a complete waste of time and is offensive to God and a problem created by the devil acting as an angel of light to ensnare God’s elect. I’m going to tell it to you straight out! The Holy Spirit isn’t telling anyone when, where and how to celebrate the Sabbath because the Sabbath is obsolete!! You are totally missing the whole point of what God did for us through Christ. Your foundation is based upon the sands of the law and not the rock, that is Christ, the chief cornerstone. Here’s a fact! The spiritual aspects of Christianity are as far removed from the law as the physical earth was vastly changed between the times Noah entered the ark and when Noah left the ark!
There are two points in history where this radical change began. The first was upon the death of Christ when God tore the veil that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the tabernacle
from the top down. The veil being torn from top to bottom is a fact of history. The profound significance of this event is explained in detail in Hebrews. The things of the temple
were shadows of things to come, and they all ultimately point us to Jesus Christ. He was the veil to the Holy of Holies, and through His death the faithful now have free access to God.
“
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (
Matt. 27:50-51a). This has great significance for the believer. It signals the tearing and ending of the contract that was known as the old covenant that signified that man was separated from God by sin. Only the high priest was permitted to pass beyond this veil once each year (
Ex. 30:10;
Heb. 9:7) to enter into God's presence for all of Israel and make atonement for their sins (
Lev. 16).
Secondly, when Jesus cried “
it is finished” as He died, He was referencing two things at once. The first was the job He came to earth to do was finished and the second was He put an end to all aspects of the law and the contract known as the old covenant. The Israelites broke this covenant millennia ago rendering it null and void, but God in His faithfulness kept up His end of the bargain until the appointed time even though His wife (Israel) committed adultery as typified by the wife of Hosea. The law was always for a specific people for a specific duration of time.
So, what do we make of this? What significance does this torn veil have for us today? Above all, the tearing of the veil at the moment of Jesus' death dramatically symbolized that His sacrifice, the shedding of His own blood, was a sufficient atonement for sins. It signified that now the way into the Holy of Holies and to the presence of God was open for all people, for all time, both Jew and Gentile.
When Jesus died, the veil was torn, and God moved out of that place never again to dwell in a temple made with hands (
Acts 17:24). God was through with that temple and its religious system, and the temple and Jerusalem were left “desolate” (destroyed by the Romans) in A.D. 70, just as Jesus prophesied in
Luke 13:35. As long as the temple stood, it signified the continuation of the Old Covenant.
Heb. 9:8-9 refers to the age that was passing away as the new covenant was being established (
Heb. 8:13).
Now Christ is our superior High Priest, and as believers in His finished work, we partake of His better priesthood. We can now enter the Holy of Holies through Him.
Heb. 10:19-20 says that the faithful enter into the sanctuary by the “
blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh.”
The veil in the temple was a constant reminder that sin renders humanity unfit for the presence of God. The fact that the sin offering was offered annually and countless other sacrifices repeated daily showed graphically that sin could not truly be atoned for or erased by mere animal sacrifices. Jesus Christ, through His death, has removed the barriers between God and man, and now we may approach Him with confidence and boldness (
Heb. 4:14-16). We don’t have to wait for the proper Sabbath to do so.
The death of Christ takes us into the presence of the LORD Himself. The shadows and types of the Tabernacle, Temple and Old Covenant were
fulfilled and turned into substance. There is absolutely no part of the law that is yet to be fulfilled.
Heb. 8:13 (NIV) - “
By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.” This is speaking of the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. Without a temple, the law has no purpose, for Christ became our living temple and we are temples of the Holy Spirit in our own right with a 24/7 access to God that the previously was restricted to just the Sabbath and by one man, the high priest.
I’m going to say this plain and simple. Almost every single aspect of the old covenant is obsolete except the unfulfilled prophecies that were promised to the descendants of the children of Israel as part of the covenant. The dietary laws, the sin laws, the civil laws and yes even the ten commandments!! However, in His creation of the New Covenant, God carried forward certain aspects of the old law and sort of grandfathered them into the new covenant. These would be the laws of sin and death and the aspects of the ten commandments that Christ gave us in Matt. 22:37-40 - “
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Notice, He didn’t specify Sabbath keeping.
To do what He had to do, Christ was born, lived and died under the law but don’t confuse the way He had to live His life with the reason for His death. He had to live and die under the law so that the law could be put to death with His sacrifice. We are not saved by His perfect life, we are saved by His perfect death!
The second aspect of history that changed the spiritual world forever was the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost was the literal fulfillment of what the Feast of Weeks typified. *This feast was to occur fifty days after Firstfruits which typified His resurrection. On this occasion, the children of Israel were to bring in their first fruits of their wheat harvest just as on the feast of first fruits they brought in their barley harvest. They also had to bring in two loaves of bread, baked with fine flour and leaven.
Pentecost signifies the birthday of God’s church. He rose from the grave, spent 40 days in His post-resurrection ministry, ascended up to heaven and then 10 days later, the 50[sup]
th[/sup] day, the Holy Spirit came down. Acts 1:3-4. The two loaves represented Jew and Gentile now one in the Messiah with the coming of the Holy Spirit. The leaven signifies that the believers have yet to be glorified. There is still sin within the church. (*
excerpts taken from Marv Rosenthal’s, The Feasts of Israel )
If I were you, I’d spend more time worrying about the Judaizing of Christianity. I don’t know why people feel that christian jews have more insight into the word than we do. Besides, being the nation that brought us Christ, their main claim to fame is screwing up their relationship with God for literally thousands of years. Judaizing affects your personal walk with God, here and now.
I realize that you may have good intentions in trying to keep the Sabbath but y’all know where that road leads. Don’t you realize by trying to keep Sabbath you’re not obeying God, you’re dissing Him. You’re telling Him, “sorry Lord, but a 24/7/365 access isn’t good enough for me. I need to re-establish that veil that you tore asunder. I know I’m your temple and your Holy Spirit resides in me, but that’s not enough. I need to live by your law which your Son died to eliminate. Thanks for grace and freedom and everything but I’d rather live by your law even though your servant Paul plainly showed in Eph. 2:15 -“…
by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace…” and Gal. 4:4-5 - “
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” If we are redeemed from the law we are no longer under the law and this means
the whole law not just part of it.
By trying to keep the Sabbath we are entangling ourselves again with the yoke of bondage that Christ died to set us free from. Gal. 5:1. When we celebrate the Sabbath, “Today” as Heb. 4 teaches, we are “resting” in our right relationship with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ and that’s all God desires of us.
Do you really think God is up in heaven pacing back and forth, wringing His hands and tearing His garments over whether or not His children are keeping the Sabbath correctly or not? He doesn’t care one wit because it was resolved a long time ago, the Sabbath is not for gentile believers and hasn’t been for the Jews since 70 AD. It seems like you’re trying to act like a child of divorced parents. We’re with one parent six days a week but the seventh is reserved for our Father. That’s the day we get visiting rights with Him or He gets visiting rights with us because we offer Him this one day!! Really!!