The Sabbath is always such a delight to us. We will look to the Word concerning the Sabbath. The Lord continually speaks to us about keeping the Sabbath, and in the books of the prophets of God we find the prophetic picture of what the Sabbath is to be to us in these days of the Kingdom, and what it will be when the Kingdom is established.
Many would just as soon let the Sabbath issue lay. They accept it, but wonder, “What are we going to do about it?” The Word tells us that the Sabbath is to be our joy and delight (Isaiah 58:13). We delight in the Sabbath, but it is also going to be a problem.
The Ark of the Covenant was always a problem too. When David decided he would bring the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem, he had a problem. Uzzah reached out and touched the Ark, and he dropped dead.
There is such a fine line drawn between the death of legalism and the jeopardy we are put in when we are trying to do something that God wants, yet we are doing it out of divine order. We die either way, but we have to do things according to divine order.
They put the Ark aside at the house of Obed-edom, and David said, “How shall the Ark of God come to me? I can’t handle something like this. I was expecting blessings; we were going to have a great festival. Instead, we have a funeral.”
It was reported to him a few months later that the house of Obed-edom was being blessed. God was blessing everything that he did, everything that he touched (II Samuel 6:6–11).
Our keeping of the Sabbath service is the same way. The anointing of the Lord and the revelation of the Word has been so consistent on the Sabbath messages that they are the most blessed, most anointed, and have the deepest revelation of any of those that are coming now.
Let’s be wise and say, “The Ark will come to us, and if there is a price to be paid, we will pay it.” To us it will be a matter of faith, a matter of doing the will of the Lord with all of our heart, joyfully in anticipation of what the Sabbath is supposed to be.
We do this because it is a revelation from the Lord, not because someone converted us to be Sabbath worshipers. It was the Lord who spoke the Word, and it has been confirmed to our hearts. It is not a matter of legalism, but a word that God has given about what He wants and what is coming forth in these days of restoration.
The Sabbath services could be conducted everywhere. Churches that do not have a Friday evening service, or a Saturday morning service, should specify a certain hour when people could come and do nothing but kneel and worship the Lord, or whatever else they might do, and go home. That would be enough.
In some way we must keep faith with what God has given us, or we will have only a token blessing if we only have a token fulfillment. We must remember that if we are halfhearted about obeying the Lord, He will be halfhearted about fulfilling His promises over us. The one thing I do not want is a halfhearted God. It is bad enough that His children are halfhearted, but I would not want Him to be halfhearted.
There are prophecies of Jeremiah and Isaiah, and also Hebrews 4, dealing with the Sabbath rest of the Lord. I am most concerned about its spiritual significance.
To say, “Fine, now we’re keeping the seventh day,” means very little. That is not the issue. We are keeping it with faith in what is coming.
We are dealing with the Sabbath rest, that seventh thousand years of God’s dealings with man. We are at the close of the sixth, which means that God is ready to bring forth the great Sabbath rest to the earth and to all creation.
There is groaning and travail to bring rest to us (Romans 8:22, 23).
For six days He created the heavens and the earth; on the seventh day He rested. In His heart the works were finished from the foundation of the world (Hebrews 4:3).
Things have run their course for six thousand years. Coming into the seventh thousand year, we begin to see executed in the earth the things that were provided at the dawn of creation.
You must have an experience of the Sabbath. It must be more than Saturday to you. The Sabbath should be a revelation from the Lord of how He has completed all that is necessary for your salvation, and you should labor to enter into His, rest. Give full diligence to come into His rest. The Sabbath rest is a state of heart.
For many years I did not keep the Sabbath because I read in the Word that one man keeps one day above another, and another man keeps every day alike (Romans 14:5).
To me every day was alike; every day was the Sabbath. I tried to keep this. It may seem strange to you, but it was what I felt God was doing. I saw the fulfillment of the Old Testament Sabbath—I saw the fulfillment of it in Jesus Christ.
But then I saw in the Word that there remains therefore a Sabbath rest to the people of God. Hebrews 4:9. No one had entered into it, but now it must be; it is ordained that some will enter into it.
I sought for it. This Sabbath rest became very real to me, when I came into a walk with God. God kept promising me rest, and I knew it was a real thing, so I embraced the promise, but still I was in much labor.
But when I fully surrendered my life to the Lord Jesus Christ, I entered into a rest. It was so real to me. In the months that followed I seemed to lose a great measure of it, and I struggled to come back into it. I think what happened was that God gave a promise of something that was to come, and I entered into a token of it, not really realizing what it was.
I believe that on the Sabbath we should begin to contend to enter into this spiritual rest. It is not important to just keep a day, a Sabbath service alone.
God is honoring it, only because He wants to reveal something and become something to your heart. He wants to give you Sabbath rest. He wants you to enter into rest.
He does not want you to go through the travail and the labor that will be upon all creation. He wants you to leapfrog over the distress and tribulation that will be upon the earth and reach into the rest: the age to come when the Lord is going to give rest. This is to be our portion.
Are you finding this real to your heart and asking, “Lord, let me enter into that rest”? In turmoil, distress, conflict, or troubling of spirit, look to the Lord very carefully, because this rest will be as valid and real an experience as anything you have ever known. The Sabbath is more than a day. It is something that was in the heart of God. He said, “I will give them rest.”
I am always stumbling on things in the Word that bother me. It bothered me that after the children of Israel had made the golden calf and sinned so against the Lord, that the Lord began to deal with them.
When Moses was repenting for them he said, “Lord, if You will forgive them, well and good. If not, just blot my name out of the book.”
The Lord said, “I will blot out the name of the man who hath sinned against me. That is the one whom I will blot out.” He went on saying, “I will let My angel go before you” (Exodus 32:31–34).
Oh Lord, blot out my sin, create in me a new heart, put your spirit within me and cause me to walk in your ways!
Then the Lord made another promise, and Moses had to move the tent of meeting outside the camp where he went out to meet with God.
If anyone wanted to meet with God he had to go outside the camp, because God did not want to fool with them any longer. He said, “I will send my angel before you to lead you,” but He did not promise His presence.
Then Moses confronted God and laid the responsibility on Him. Moses said, “This is Your people. You lead them on.” He came before God in intercession, saying “Consider that these are Your people. We do not want just an angel. We want Your presence.
If Your presence does not go with us, then do not take us one step further. It is all or nothing.” Then God said, “I have granted you favor, Moses. My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:11–17). From that time on it was a different kind of story.
The book of Hebrews, referring to this story, says, “If they had entered into rest, God would not have been promising the rest in and after the days of Joshua, highlighting the fact that God intended for His presence and rest to be upon the people, but they never entered into it (Hebrews 4:8–11).
The Sabbath is going to be something beautiful for us. It will enable us to possess our inheritance, because our struggle should only be a reaching out in faith to appropriate His provision.
We do not struggle to win the victory; we reach out in faith to appropriate the victory provided.
Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in (or “to”) those who heard. Hebrews 4:1–2.
The best way to receive it would be to hear it and have faith, and it would be united to our hearts. That is what we are doing.
When we hear the Word and receive it in faith, it is written on our hearts. It becomes a living thing within our lives. But it did not profit them, because faith was the necessary thing to bond it to them, to unite it to them.
You must have something to bond things together to make them one. You can wire two pieces of iron together, or bolt them together, but if you want them to really be one, you must apply fire to weld them together with a torch.
The weld is stronger than the pieces of metal, This is what God desires to do: “I’ll give you a word, and it will become a living part of you if the weld of faith is there.” That bonds it; then the word and you are one.
For we who have believed enter that rest; just as He said, “As I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest,” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. Hebrews 4:3. For six days He labored; the seventh day He rested. You say, “Well, I thought, in all these things God is working.” He is only executing what He already set in motion. He set it in motion, He provided it, and it is working because He finished the whole thing.
For He has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; and again in this passage, “They shall not enter My rest.” Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again fixes a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before. “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. Hebrews 4:4–8.
The promise was always repeated because the Israelites blew it. They did not enter into it. They missed it.
There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Hebrews 4:9. Take a look at that great big promise-of-blessing cloud up there. How do we make it rain? How do we get into it? People have looked at it and missed it.
For the one who had entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Hebrews 4:10.
Have you felt frustration and turmoil in much of what you do? Would you like your life to be an execution and fulfillment of things, rather than the laboring to create? I think that is in our hearts. Let us therefore be diligent (the King James version says, “labor”) to enter that rest.… I think you get a wrong slant if you begin to labor to receive something. That is going in the wrong direction.
This is not a matter of labor as much as diligence. We are going to keep the Sabbath, not with the labor of old legalism, but with a diligence of faith, a full claim continually upon the grace of God.
We will be diligent to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. Hebrews 4:11.
We must enter into that rest. Now what does it mean? You are failing to enter into the rest whenever you labor in yourself to be, or to do.
A man can preach a sermon and labor in it, or God can give Him a word and he delivers it. You say, “Well, it is all work.” No, there is a difference.
If you have ever preached, you know there is a difference between laboring and preaching a word and entering into a full, finished, complete word that flows out from you. There is struggle, and there is rest.
This does not mean we will be lazybones. God did not intend for us to be idle. But we are saved by grace. By grace are ye saved through faith … not of works, lest any man should boast. So the works are out. For we are His workmanship. Ephesians 2:8–10.
You must understand that it is not what we are producing; it is what God is producing. We are not saved by our works, but we are His workmanship. It is His work that counts. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works—you say, “We are still going to end up working.” No, only that which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10.
He says, “Here are the works that I before ordained. I provided them before the foundation of the world.” God has a perfect plan for you. All you have to do is get out of this struggling and wandering around, and just jump right over into the perfect will of God. Submit to Him. You become His workmanship; then you start walking in what He planned way back before the worlds were made.
This is what I want to do. I believe I am touching it. I am aware that mine is not a life that could be lived through any wisdom, planning, diligence, or ability of my own.
Day by day I am depending upon the Lord. Every day I am called upon for wisdom that I do not have. I look to the Lord for it, because I know there is a flow of wisdom and anointing.
If I am diligent about it, this will remove that awful frustration, that unbearable gnawing that works way down inside. I am inadequate for everything God is saying, but there is a way that the adequacy I need comes from the Lord. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The Sabbath day will start to stir your heart. “Lord, let me enter into Your rest. Let me enter into that Sabbath rest.”
The Sabbath is not a day; it is a relationship to God. That must be the entire picture in our mind. We could be so confused when we read the Scriptures because we do not understand the Sabbath principle.
The Scriptures say that Jesus, after He had made one sacrifice for sin, sat down at the right hand of the Father, henceforth expecting until His enemies be made the footstool for His feet (Hebrews 10:12–13).
When He had completed what the Father had ordained Him to complete, He entered into a rest.
And you who labor (and the margin reads, “labor to a point of exhaustion”), all ye that labor and are heavy laden, come to Me and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).
Jesus said, “The works that you see Me do are the Father’s works. Once you have seen Me, you have seen the Father (John 14:9–10). That was because He was in the Sabbath rest of the Father.
“Well, didn’t He go through it? Didn’t He labor?” Yes, He wearied, but this is not talking about physical exhaustion which comes from work. This is saying that your whole line of accomplishment is either a human endeavor or it is wrought in God as His plan unfolds for you.
The Sabbath is a relationship to God, so that you become in Him, You flow in Him, you move in Him, and you give diligence to enter into His rest so that you cease from your labors as God also did from His (Hebrews 4:10). It is beautiful to see.
I trust that God will give you a new revelation of what the Sabbath is to mean. The Lord is not bringing this knowledge of the Sabbath to be an issue; He is bringing it to be an experience. If you grasp the concept of it which God has, you will be delivered forever from any legalism or the contention that has arisen concerning the Sabbath.
“This word on the Sabbath is another one of the keys of what God wants to bring forth in the restoration. Old order is indicative of self-endeavor, a setting out to prove “What I can do for the Lord.”
And in the Sabbath rest is where we finally wake up to the fact that He is the Lord, that we are His bond servants. If we are linked to His purpose and have a revelation of His will, we begin to enter in and execute by faith the things that God has preordained that a remnant is to walk in, in this hour.” It is a fabulous destiny.
“This revelation on the Sabbath is such a key to the creativity we are seeking in everything we do, a key to the greater works God has promised. It is an area God has placed before us to enter in. It will unlock so many prophecies that have come over us concerning what we are going to accomplish in God. It is foundational.”
The prophecies that come over you are simply reaching back and tapping on the works which God before ordained that you should walk in.
That is what the prophecies are all about. When some one prophesies, he reaches back into the memories God had for your life from the very beginning.
If you strive to fulfill that in yourself, you will utterly fail. But if you reach into God to fulfill it, because it is the ordained plan for His manifestation of Himself through you, both what He is and what He is to do, His perfect will being wrought, then you say, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.”
The anointing of the Lord will return to the house of God and the occult and the false will be sitting on an empty hill with no life whatever. The rest of the Lord and the day of the Lord are holy unto the Lord. That has to be with faith and looking unto the Lord. He is the Day. He is the Rest.
Has the Lord spoken to you of a position: as a prophet, or as an apostle? If so, you are that—you just meet the conditions. I never try to meet a man’s needs in myself, but in the office there is the wisdom of God of the ages, and I have a rest in it. God gave it to me.
I struggled for years and that was myself doing it. But the Christ in me meets the need, and that is only a token of the day of the Lord that is to rest upon the Church in the midst of nothing but fear all around.
No rest? Why? They have missed the One who gives rest—the Lord Himself. Because of the rejection throughout all the world of the Lord Himself, God is raising up a remnant that will not only bow the knee unto the Lord, but they shall have a rest upon them. The fruitfulness of the Lord shall truly be in them, and the Lord’s anointing shall increase upon His people.”
We talk about the works that God has before ordained that we walk in them. There is almost a fatalistic sense of predestination in that. But, if you get into a work that God has before ordained that you walk in, then both the beginning and the conclusion of that work has already been planned by God in His wisdom, and there can be no failure in it.
The only works that Satan can contest are works that originate in our initiative, or at least partially so. The work may have originated in a thought from God, but sometimes we take a prophecy and run with it, in our way.
We set about to fulfill it in our wisdom and strength, and the outset and the conclusion of that is not determined, for it was not in the predestined plan of God.
Much of what Satan battles us on are things that are not in the perfect will of God. Satan may battle, but it will be victory all the way if you are doing what God willed, what God before ordained for you to walk in, what he ordained for you to be.
You say, “Well yes, I’m going to be a prophet, but right now I’m going to do this.”
Maybe that is your idea. Sarah said, “Abraham, it has been a long time, and still no baby. What are we going to do? Let’s bring Hagar into the picture.” The result was an Ishmael.
There was contention because Ishmael was not produced in the will of God, and his descendants are still fighting about it. Because it was something that was not in the will of God, Satan has been able to bring contention and strife.
God is able to give us perfect victory. I desire to see more of our lives come into His perfect will and stay there, to just walk in what God has ordained.
In our struggles, conflict is opened up for Satan to battle us, and so we are constantly drawing upon the Lord, praying, and looking for God to bless something that perhaps God will show us after awhile should be abandoned—all the good things that we should abandon for the best.
Lord, help us to so present ourselves unto Him, that we will be able to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, to have our minds transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1–2).
I am persuaded that many of you are right on the verge of the next step of that which God has for you. We should go into some fasting and prayer, so that we are more right on to what God wants, not deviating from it even a little. The areas of conflict that often result in defeat are where we are just a little off the perfect will of God.
Let’s be diligent to enter into His rest, which means being diligent also to enter into what was provided from before the foundation of the world.
The works were finished from the foundation of the world. You say, “But I’m working and struggling.” Your works were not finished from the foundation of the world; His works and His plan and His program were finished from the foundation of the world.
He can give you His rest. That is what we labor and are diligent about in this. This does not make obsolete any of the struggle, or songs of warfare and conflict in intercession, because this is really what it is all about. It is a total diligence to enter into the next stage. Travail is not a permanent affair; it is just a temporary process that brings forth life. God is going to help you. God is bringing forth the workers to help us
I am impressed with the Passover in Exodus 12; the Lord delivered them out, after so many years, right to the day. It looked as if they were way behind schedule. Pharaoh hardened his heart, and there was one delay after another, but when they finally went out, they were delivered after four hundred and thirty years to the very day which had been spoken. God knew exactly how to bring them out on time. So I believe, that in spite of all you might think have been delays in your life, God is still on schedule.
By faith we are moved to believe and to accept things as though they were our possession now. Faith is the substance of the thing hoped for. It is the evidence of the thing not seen (Hebrews 11:1).
We are persistent in the expression of our faith, but we are not expressing frustration and calling it faith. “Lord! Lord! Lord! Lord! Lord!” That may be frustration and not faith. Be sure that it is a persistent expression of faith that is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not seen.
Lord Jesus, how we diligently apply our hearts to the wisdom of the Lord, that this will not be just a revelation. The Sabbath is going to be an experience. It is going to be a relationship to our God.
We are going to enter into it as we enter into Thee, O Lord. We come to Thee as we labor and are heavy ladened, and we are going to find rest for our souls.
Your yoke is easy and Your burden is light. Thank you, Lord. We claim it. We seal it to our hearts. We seal it to our minds. We believe we will not be forgetful hearers of the Word of God, but we will move in it, in the name of the Lord. Amen.