Different Life: 3rd CommandmentSample

Christians get pretty confused about the Old Testament laws. Some seem fitting, but there are lots of other strange things there that we really don’t seem too intent on following. In an attempt to make sense of it, some will say we really just need to follow the 10 Commandments. But that doesn’t work either. Because except for a very few branches of Christianity, most don’t keep the Sabbath.

“Wait,” you might say. “I go to church on Sunday.” But Sunday is not the Sabbath. Saturday is. Sunday is the first day of the week, not the seventh. Can we just change it?

The 10 Commandments show us something. We are not under the Old Testament law. None of it. Not even the 10 Commandments. The New Testament makes that much clear. This even includes the commands in the Old Testament that God said would be lasting. Why? Because the death and resurrection of Jesus is nothing short of God ushering in his promised future eternity. So, in Jesus, the first “eternity” is passing. The new “eternity” is breaking in. The Bible describes these two “eternities” as “this age” and “the age to come.” If you are in Christ, you share in the age to come, God’s new reality. The old commands are no longer over you.

Does that mean there’s nothing of value in the Old Testament laws anymore? Hardly! Because even though the prescriptions laid down to ancient Israel are no longer binding, behind them are ageless and lasting principles. And here is the key one. God is our rest.

So, Christians shifted the weekly practice of commemorating the holy God from the seventh day to the first day. The day of the resurrection. The first day of a new age. Jesus’s day. Rest from work does not compare to rest in him.