Shabbat Shalom

One of the most overlooked commandment in the Scriptures is

Exodus 20:8-11

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Believers will quickly point to do Not Murder, do not Steal, do not commit adultery, honor your father and mother; nonetheless, they skip over the eternal commandment of Shabbat and thus skip over the Lord of the Sabbath Himself.

As a follower of Yeshua living in the New Covenant that Elohim spoke of through the Prophet Jeremiah I believe we are to keep the Sabbath or a Sabbath. The Sabbath commandment was given at Creation and again at Sinai and again in Revelation's. So I think it is very important to keep the Sabbath. Now the question is what is the Sabbath or better yet in who is this ultimate rest that the Sabbath points too?

Jewish customs in the Talmud there are 39 prohibited things a Jew can't do on the Sabbath. Now some of these things are based on what Exodus 20:8-11 says about the Sabbath; however, some are just of Rabbis adding things, just like many gentiles have added things to the Scriptures that were never there, i.e. Easter. I think the best answer for the Sabbath is given by our Lord and Savior Yeshua, when he said in Matthew 12:1-8

"12 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Now a lot of people take this way out of context, saying, see Jesus said there is no Sabbath; however, that is a grave error that replacement theologies always try to push that Jesus, the same Jesus that said I AM the I AM, the one that obeyed and observed the Sabbath, said there is no Sabbath. Jesus actually proclaimed the He is the Lord of the Sabbath. Meaning He is the only one that can give us true unadulterated, unfathomable rest. See Messiah came to show us the deeper meaning of the Law, not just the outward appearance of the law.

So the Sabbath can be any day, any time and anywhere as long as you are in Messiah and He is in You. The entire law was to set apart believers from the rest. This is what Emissary Shaul says to the gentiles living in Galatia:

16 What I am saying is this: run your lives by the Spirit. Then you will not do what your old nature wants. 17 For the old nature wants what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit wants what is contrary to the old nature. These oppose each other, so that you find yourselves unable to carry out your good intentions. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, then you are not in subjection to the system that results from perverting the Torah into legalism.
19 And it is perfectly evident what the old nature does. It expresses itself in sexual immorality, impurity and indecency; 20 involvement with the occult and with drugs; in feuding, fighting, becoming jealous and getting angry; in selfish ambition, factionalism, intrigue 21 and envy; in drunkenness, orgies and things like these. I warn you now as I have warned you before: those who do such things will have no share in the Kingdom of God!
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 humility, self control. Nothing in the Torah stands against such things.
24 Moreover, those who belong to the Messiah Yeshua have put their old nature to death on the stake, along with its passions and desires. 25 Since it is through the Spirit that we have Life, let it also be through the Spirit that we order our lives day by day.
26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

On Sabbath we should reflect are we living in the Spirit and if we are, are we producing the fruit. See we can't live in the Spirit and be fruitless. Please don't confuse the Gifts of the Spirit with the Fruit of the Spirit. See fruit can't be bad or no one will eat it. But if you recall what Messiah said

"On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

It's interesting that Messiah uses the word lawlessness, lawlessness "a state of disorder due to a disregard of the law." Messiah is clearly showing that those people had complete disregard to the law and did not run their lives in the Spirit. For if they did they would have fruit. Many people miss this extremely clear distinction between gifts and fruits.

So on this Shabbat let us all reflect if we are producing Fruit of the Spirit.

Shabbat Shalom and may the Lord of the Sabbath, Yeshua Ha Messiah be with you all.