And the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations -- [it is] an everlasting covenant.
God finishes the plans for the tabernacle, then turns back to the sabbath. Israel must keep it in every generation, and He calls it a covenant forever. Two questions follow. Why does the sabbath keep reappearing at every new stage of God's dealings? And what does "forever" mean for a sign given to one nation?
The command comes just as the people are about to start building for God. One writer sees that order as deliberate.
The stir of daily work stopped on each sabbath day. The spinning wheels rested, and saws and planes stayed idle on that one day in seven — the sabbath of rest to the LORD. Is this not why the reminder to keep the sabbath comes before the instructions for building the tabernacle? It was work for God to prepare the tabernacle, but that was to be no excuse for breaking the sabbath.
The same pattern runs through the whole book.
Another writer has remarked, and it is perfectly true, that in this book the sabbath day always comes in. Whenever we meet with any dealing of God, of whatever kind, it is there… God therefore makes much of the sign. The reason is that He would impress one thing on His people. All His dealings, varied as they may be, are meant to keep His rest before their minds. He was steadily working towards that rest, and He means to bring His own into it in due time.
The verse names who must keep the day: the people of Israel. That limit is the point of a sign.
The sabbath was never given to the Gentile as such, whatever the reasonings of men may be. If a Gentile came and put himself under the shelter of Israel, of course he kept the sabbath. But as a Gentile he had nothing to do with it. The sabbath was the LORD's sign to Israel… How could it be a sign to one people if it was the common duty of all?
A sign carries a message, and this one told Israel who their God was.
The sabbath was therefore a special witness to the relationship between God and Israel. They were to keep it throughout all their generations. It kept Israel reminded of the greatness of the living God, who sanctified them, or set them apart for Himself.
The sign marked out a people God was sanctifying. So it stood or fell with that relationship.
Under Moses, God never set up any form of relationship with His people without bringing the sabbath in again. That is a very remarkable fact. In Ezekiel 20:12 we read, "Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them." So these sabbaths could not continue as a Jewish sabbath under the commandments. Once Christ was crucified, God no longer sanctified the Jewish people. The Lord showed this beforehand, again and again during His ministry, by the way He acted and spoke on the sabbath days.
Commentators guard both sides here. They carry no law over, and they despise no day.
This was not given to Gentiles, and it is not given to the church in the present age (compare Colossians 2:16-17). The Lord Jesus was in the grave on the sabbath day, and was raised "the first day of the week"… Yet no law is made of this at all, for we are not under law, but under grace. We should regard the first day of the week as "the Lord's Day." So we can be glad for the privilege of using it entirely for the Lord's pleasure, without attaching any legal bondage to it.
Israel never entered what the sabbath stood for. That failure did not cancel God's purpose.
He knew what His people were, and how they would always fail under responsibility… On the other hand, He attached the sabbath to every relationship between Himself and the people. That shows how earnestly He longed for His people to enter the completion of His purposes for them… We know they never entered it, and Hebrews 4 states it fully. But His purposes never fail. So what is lost under responsibility, He will establish according to His own counsels of grace.
One writer puts that rest beyond any passing age:
The seventh day is not, then, a type of a millennium at all, but of final and eternal rest.
- Rest first. Even building God's house did not cancel the day of rest. Service never outranks the rest God gives.
- Rest signed. The day marked out Israel as the people the LORD had set apart for Himself. It never bound the nations in the same way.
- Rest repeated. Every fresh dealing of God with Israel carried the sabbath with it. It held His own rest before their eyes as the goal.
- Rest unbound. At the cross the sign lost its ground. Christians keep the first day gladly as the Lord's Day, not as a law.
- Rest ahead. Israel never entered it, but God's purposes never fail. Hebrews 4 traces the rest still ahead — final and eternal.
It shall be a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever; for [in] six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
God has just given Moses the plans for the tabernacle. Before handing over the two stone tablets, He comes back to the sabbath: it is a sign between Him and Israel, and it rests on His own rest at the end of creation.
The sabbath keeps coming back in Exodus. It appears with the manna, with the ten commandments, and now with the tabernacle. One writer traces the pattern and gives the reason for it:
Someone else has noted, and it is quite true, that in this book every dealing of God, of whatever kind, brings in the Sabbath day… So God makes much of the sign. He wants to impress on His people that all His dealings, however varied, keep one thing before their minds: the rest He was working toward. He means to bring His own into that rest at the right time.
A sign only works if it marks one people off from everyone else. This command did that in a way none of the other nine could:
If any one of the ten commandments rests on God's claim alone, it is the sabbath… For this reason the sabbath tested His people more than the other nine did. So it was the special sign between the LORD and Israel. No other commandment could have been such a sign, and none ever was. It was the badge, easy to recognise, that marked the Jewish people off from everyone else.
Someone could read those words as though God had grown tired. Genesis shows what His rest was:
What a moving testimony to God's delight in the creation, still unspoiled! He rested on the seventh day. This was not rest as we use the word, the opposite of being tired. It was rest as the opposite of the six days' work. "The heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them"; "So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy" — the day on which He could look over the completed work with delight. What a beautiful picture of that eternal rest He is yet to have in the redeemed creation! (Revelation 21:5-6)
One writer reads "refreshed" as pointing further forward still:
Notice the unusual wording in verse 17: the Lord rested on the seventh day and was refreshed. He must have been looking ahead to His own work on the cross and the wonderful results of that work.
So what became of that rest once sin entered the world?
This is the only Sabbath God ever celebrated, as far as the inspired record tells us. After this we read of God commanding man to keep the Sabbath, and man failing completely to do it. But we never read the words "God rested" again. Instead the word is, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." (John 5:17) A Sabbath in the strict sense of the word could only be kept when there was truly nothing left to do… Could God rest among the sighs and tears, the groans and sorrows, the sickness and death, the degradation and guilt of a ruined world?
Israel never entered the rest the sign pointed to. Yet the word "forever" still stands, because it rests on God's purpose and not on their obedience:
The sabbath stands for the rest of God, and this was the goal God set before His people. We know they never entered it, and Hebrews 4 states this fully. But His purposes never fail. So what is lost under responsibility will be established according to His own counsels of grace. There remains, then, a rest — a sabbath keeping — for the people of God, and all who believe will enter that rest.
For Christians, one writer points to a different day that now carries this hope:
The first day of the week, the day of Christ's resurrection, became the sign and witness of rest for us. We begin our work with it — that is, with redemption in Christ — instead of ending with it… Under the law the seventh day was the symbolic rest, because God had rested from the works of the first creation. For us the first day of the week is the witness of a better redemption and a better rest.
- Rest first. God's seventh day was delight in finished work, not recovery from tiredness. That rest is the pattern behind the command.
- Rest signed. God gave that rest to Israel as a badge no other nation carried — the one command that rested on His claim alone.
- Rest repeated. Whenever God set up a new relationship with His people, the sabbath came in again, keeping the goal in view.
- Rest broken. Sin made a Sabbath in creation impossible. Since then the word is not "God rested" but "My Father is working until now."
- Rest kept. "Forever" holds, because the promise rests on God's purpose. A rest still remains for the people of God, and the first day of the week now witnesses to it.