POSTED 24 NOVEMBER, 2005

How Do We Properly Keep Shabbat?

by J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net

How the Messianic community is to properly keep Shabbat, or any Biblical commandment for that matter, is a mystery for many. There are many issues and questions that have to be weighed and taken into consideration when establishing a proper halachic orthopraxy for oneself, one’s congregation, and the movement as a whole. In the Jewish community, whether you are Orthodox or Conservative, keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is an important sign of who you are as a Jew. It is the sign that God gave the people of Israel from Mount Sinai to distinguish them from the world. When one goes to Israel today, stores close, public transportation stops, and the Old City of Jerusalem comes to a virtual standstill for a full twenty-four hours. When some in the emerging Messianic movement see how our Jewish brothers and sisters keep the Sabbath, it can seem almost foreboding and something that needs to be minimized. When our Christian brethren see how Orthodox Jews keep the Sabbath, they often run away, believing it to be a time of forced “unwork,” legalism, and anything but rest.

But as you can imagine, this is not what God originally intended. The Lord gave us the gift of Shabbat so that we might rest and abstain from our labors, focus exclusively on Him, and be rejuvenated for the week of work ahead. Yeshua the Messiah tells us, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27, NRSV). God gave Shabbat to all people so that it would be a special time for us, not a time that is burdensome or intended to place people into bondage. He asks us to “Sanctify My sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God” (Ezekiel 20:20). Anything surrounding Shabbat is to be focused on this end: the Sabbath is to be a time so that we might “know” the Lord. Yada ([dy) is a common verb in Biblical Hebrew not only used to describe knowledge, but most importantly is “used for the most intimate acquaintance” (TWOT).[1] On Shabbat, we are to be intimate with our Heavenly Father, and with other Believers in the community of faith.

While those of us who have salvation in Yeshua, and have the gift of the Holy Spirit present inside us, should leap inside when we realize that the Sabbath is to be a time when we commune with our Father—how we keep Shabbat is another story. It begs many difficult questions. When we are convicted that Sunday Church is not what God originally intended, and that we need to keep Shabbat, changes in our lives begin to take place. The transition to Shabbat is difficult for many, given the many Christian misconceptions about what the seventh-day Sabbath is, and why God gave it to His people. While on paper many Messianic Believers say they keep the Biblical Sabbath—keeping Shabbat is not just transferring a Sunday Church experience to Saturday. While the Sabbath has elements of worshipping God involved with it, Shabbat is not about “worshipping on Saturday.” It is, rather, one of the appointed times or moedim of Leviticus 23. It is to be “a sacred occasion” (NJPS) or “a sacred assembly” (NIV). But being these things involves much more than just worship:

“For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work; it is a sabbath to the LORD in all your dwellings” (Leviticus 23:3).

The question of why we need to keep the Sabbath is fairly easy to answer. Our Heavenly Father wants us to abstain from our labors. Exodus 20:11 attests, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the 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.” The verb nuach (xWn), appearing here in the Qal stem (simple action, active voice), means to “rest, settle down and remain” (BDB).[2] Every week, we need to just stop what we are doing, and “settle down” for a while. We need to abstain from our labors and stop working. However, there is a great amount of discussion concerning what it actually means to stop working. Keeping the Sabbath is a wonderful thing—but how are we to keep it properly? How do we not forget the essence and joy of Shabbat, but at the same time not eliminating its primary aims?

J.K. McKee (B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Asbury Theological Seminary) is the editor of TNN Online (www.tnnonline.net) and is a Messianic apologist. He is a 2009 recipient of the Zondervan Biblical Languages Award for Greek. He is author of numerous books, dealing with a wide range of topics that are important for today’s Messianic Believers. He has also written many articles on theological issues, and is presently focusing his attention on Messianic commentaries of various books of the Bible.

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