Hallelujah, Christ is our Sabbath rest, and before we could do anything for God and with God, we need to enjoy Christ, be satisfied with Him, and enjoy rest and satisfaction with Him!
In Exo. 31:12-17 we see that, after a long record concerning the building up of God’s dwelling place, there is a repetition of the commandment to keep the Sabbath.
One may wonder why is there the Sabbath mentioned while there is such a long speaking concerning the building up of God’s dwelling place.
According to Col. 2:16-17, Christ is the reality of the Sabbath rest – He is our completion, rest, quietness, and full satisfaction (see also Heb. 4:7-9; Isa. 30:15).
We need to pray and tell the Lord, Lord, be my completion, my rest, my quietness, and my full satisfaction!
Sabbath is a sign between God and His people, for He is a God who sanctifies His people. When we enjoy the Lord as our Sabbath rest, that is a sign that we belong to God and we enjoy God, a sign that we live out God.
Spontaneously, He sanctifies us – He separates us unto Himself and He saturates us with Himself.
But if we don’t enjoy Christ as our completion, rest, quietness, and full satisfaction, we will suffer spiritual death.
We don’t want that to happen to us, so we give ourselves to enjoy the Lord every day as our rest and satisfaction, our real spiritual Sabbath rest.
God’s eternal covenant with us is that we would enjoy Christ as our Sabbath rest; He has made a covenant with us, and on His end He has done everything, but on our end we need to cooperate with Him by enjoying all that He has accomplished!
Our experience should be that we daily enter into God’s rest and satisfaction, that we daily enter into the Sabbath rest.
God first worked and then He rested and was refreshed; we, however, take Christ as our rest and refreshment, and out of that comes our service to Christ, our labor to Christ, and our labor to dispense Christ into others.
Hallelujah, there now remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God – we now can enter into the real Sabbath rest by enjoying Christ as our real rest and satisfaction!
May we learn to stop from our doing and our working and enjoy God first!
May we realize that only by enjoying Christ can we actually do something with God and for God, and only after we are filled and saturated with Christ can we work together with God!
Learning to Enjoy God and take Him as our Joy to Enter the Sabbath Rest to be Satisfied with God
It is indeed very striking to see that, in the midst of God’s extended speaking and ordination concerning the building up of His dwelling place, we have the repetition of the commandment to keep the Sabbath.
The fact that the insertion concerning the Sabbath follows the charge for the building work of the tabernacle indicates that the Lord was telling the builders, the workers, to learn how to rest with Him as they worked for Him.
God tells us, the building members of the Body of Christ, that we need to learn to rest with Him as we work for Him.
We need to enter into the Sabbath rest first, first resting and being satisfied with God, and then we can work for God and with God.
If we only know how to work for the Lord but we don’t know how to rest with Him, we are acting contrary to the divine principle.
We need to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and live Him out, thus magnifying Christ; first we enjoy Him, and then we can work with Him (Rom. 13:14).
On His side, God rested on the seventh day because He had finished His work and was satisfied (see Gen. 1:26, 31; 2:1-2); His glory was manifested because man was there bearing His image, and His authority was about to be exercised for the subduing of His enemy, Satan.
As long as man expresses God and deals with God’s enemy, thus fulfilling God’s original intention in creating man, God is satisfied and can rest. Later, the seventh day was commemorated as the Sabbath (Exo. 20:8-11).
God’s seventh day was man’s first day; God created all things on earth and in heaven, and on the last day He created man – and after that, He rested.
God prepared everything for man’s enjoyment; after man was created, he didn’t join God in His work but rather, he entered into God’s rest.
Man’s first day was God’s seventh day; our first day is a day of rest and satisfaction with God.
We need to begin every day by being refreshed with Christ, by enjoying Him as our rest, and then He will have a way to overflow from us; this overflow of His life in us is work, and as He flows out through us, we work for Him and with Him.
Man was created not to work first but to be satisfied with God and rest with God; this is the reason the Lord tells us to come to Him with all our toils and burdens, and He will give us rest – He will be the real Sabbath rest to us.
As the Lord said in Mark 2:27, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. We need to take Christ as our rest and refreshment; He needs to be our joy, enjoyment, amusement, and entertainment.
In the world people have worldly pleasures, enjoyment, and entertainment; but when we turned to the Lord and received the gift of repentance unto life from the Lord, and when we come into the church life, we find out that Christ is our enjoyment, entertainment, and amusement.
As we spend time with the Lord in His word, as we fellowship with Him, and as we meet with the saints to enjoy the Lord, we take Christ and enjoy Him as our amusement, entertainment, and joy.
God made us of three parts: spirit, soul, and body; our spirit was made to take in God, our soul was made to express God, and our body was made to magnify God.
As we take God in and express Him, we are filled with joy, we are happy, and we fulfill our meaning on earth.
In Exo. 31:17 we see that in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.
The Sabbath was not only a rest to God but also a refreshment to Him. God rested after His work of creation was completed; He looked upon His handiwork – the heavens, the earth, and all the living things, especially at man – and said, Very Good! (Gen. 1:31).
When we by the Lord’s mercy glorify God in our body and magnify Him (Phil. 1:20), God says, Very good!
God was refreshed with man; He created man in His own image with a spirit so that man could have fellowship with Him, and man was God’s refreshment.
In John 4:31-34 we see this with the Lord Jesus, who was thirsty physically but was refreshed and nourished spiritually as He gave the sinful Samaritan woman to drink of the living water – He was refreshed!
Lord Jesus, we want to learn to stop and enjoy You, be filled with You, rest with You, and be satisfied with You, so that You may fill us and saturate us with Yourself. Amen, Lord, You are our joy, our enjoyment, our refreshment, our entertainment, and our amusement. We love being with You in Your word, and we want to enter into the Sabbath rest by taking Christ as our rest and satisfaction. May all our work for You and with You be out of our enjoyment of You and rest with You. Amen, Lord, You refresh us, You are our joy and enjoyment, and we want to be filled with You so that we may express You and represent You to be Your refreshment, rest, and satisfaction!
We first Rest and are Satisfied with God to enjoy Sabbath Rest and then we Work for God
Before God created man, we could say that He was a “bachelor” (Gen. 2:18, 22); He created man in His image so that man would receive Him, love Him, be filled with Him, and express Him, and eventually man becomes His wife (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:25).
In eternity future God will have a wife – the New Jerusalem, which is called the Lamb’s wife (Rev. 21:9-10).
So man was like a refreshing drink to quench God’s thirst and satisfy Him; when God ended His work and began His rest, He had man as His companion.
To God, the seventh day was a day of rest and refreshment; to man, however, the day of rest and refreshment was the first day, for man’s first day was a day of enjoyment.
It is a divine principle that God doesn’t ask us to work for Him or with Him until we have had enjoyment; after a full enjoyment of Him and with Him, we may work together with Him.
But if we don’t know how to have enjoyment with God, how to enjoy God Himself, and how to be filled with God, we will not know how to work with Him and be one with Him in His divine work.
Man enjoys what God has accomplished in His work. As we work for God and operate in the measure that God has allotted us, we need to learn to first rest and be satisfied with God – enter into the Sabbath rest – and then we can work for God and with God.
If we don’t know how to do this, we can’t work together with Him. We need to have a consistent enjoyment of God Himself, and this will solve all our problems in the church life.
When we come into the Lord’s presence, we find fullness of joy (Psa. 16:11); when we’re identified with Christ, one with Him, we enjoy fullness of joy.
As we take the Lord’s words and eat them, His word becomes to us the joy and gladness of our heart (Jer. 15:16).
The top reward in the millennial kingdom is that the Lord would say to us, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master (Matt. 25:21, 23).
A practical example of first enjoying the Lord and then working with Him is in Acts 2; on the day of Pentecost the disciples were filled with the Spirit, which means that they were filled with the enjoyment of the Lord (Acts 2:4, 12-13).
Because they were filled with the Spirit, others thought that they were drunk with wine; actually, they were drunk with the heavenly wine.
They were filled with the enjoyment of the heavenly wine; only after they were filled with this enjoyment did they begin to work with God in oneness with Him.
Pentecost was the first day of the eighth week; therefore, concerning the day of Pentecost, we see the principle of the first day.
With God it is a matter of working and then resting, while with man it is a matter of resting and then working.
When Peter stood up with the apostles to preach the gospel and thereby work for God, they all were one with God in His work, for they first entered into the Sabbath rest, and then they could work together with God and one with God.
It is not sufficient for us to merely work for God and with God; first we need to enjoy God, be filled with God, and be in rest and satisfaction with God, entering into the Sabbath rest, and then we can work in oneness with Him.
May we learn to stop and enjoy God, enter into the Sabbath rest, and take Him as our rest and satisfaction, and then work together with Him, in Him, by Him, and with Him, keeping the principle of first resting with God and then working together with God.
Thank You Lord for not asking us to work for You until we first had the enjoyment of God! Amen, may we first enter into the full enjoyment of God, being at rest and in satisfaction with Him, so that we may be able to work together with Him in oneness with Him. Save us, Lord, from first doing things for You without enjoying You. Fill us, Lord, and saturate us with Your enjoyment; may we enter into the real Sabbath in the enjoyment and rest with God, and then work together with God in oneness with God!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus, msg. 172 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 7, Taking the Lord’s Yoke (the Father’s Will) upon Us and Learning from Him to Find Rest for Our Souls.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Christ is my trust and my desire, / In comeliness replete, / My satisfaction and delight, / Who all my need doth meet. (Hymns #510)
– Lord, I believe a rest remains / To all Thy people known; / A rest where pure enjoyment reigns, / And Thou art loved alone. (Hymns #424)
– The Bible shows that man was made / To simply enter into rest. / The Sabbath was man’s first full day, / God had prepared for him the best. / All had been done, there was no need / For man to work but rest with God. / This is our life today, right now! / How wonderful, He’s done it all! (Song on, It’s a Life of Enjoying God!)
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