Our sabbath rest in Jesus

In the last post I said I would make a post about how my Mom taught me the truth of how Jesus is our sabbath rest.

 To understand how Jesus is our rest, we have to understand how he is the Christ the anointed one which I mentioned in my last blogs and to understand this we also need to understand the book of Hebrews and how Hebrews points to the tabernacle/ sanctuary in the Old Testament and what it means.

 Right now I will give a summary for the sake of staying on topic and will develop more on the fullness of the sanctuary in a future post. 

At its most basic level, the tabernacle which was a sanctuary was a teaching tool for ancient Israel and us to understand the plan of salvation and how healthy relational family dynamics function. What the language of true mature love and wholeness looks like. ” Thy way oh God is in thy sanctuary” psalm 77:13 God’s ways have always been and will always be selfless love which is cruciform theology is. 1 John chapter 4)

The tabernacle was an object lesson patterned after the original tabernacle (household of God) in heaven and the Tabernacle/sanctuary theme is seen all throughout the bible from Genesis to Revelation. In  Leviticus in the tabernacle there is imagery of the garden of Eden because Eden was the original temple home of Adam and Eve. 

Read the Lord’s prayer, psalms 23 and John chapter 10 to see if you can see tabernacle/sanctuary language and imagery for a start. This will help you see the bible through a completely different lens, one that’s relational vs just legal and ritual.

The family of God in heaven is healthy and functional whereas on earth most families have at least a small degree of dysfunction in them because we live in a fallen world. Satan, humanity’s spiritual father who does not have love has educated humanity from the tree of knowledge of good and evil which is dysfunction. 

 God picked John the Apostle to write the book of Revelation which is heavy in sanctuary imagery because John’s gospel did not write about what Jesus did but who he was, which is love!  John lived from the identity of beloved!

Satan and his kingdom offers humanity counterfeit sanctuary in creature comforts that are destructive and bring more spiritual death. A true sanctuary is a place of solace, restoration, comfort, peace, rest, spiritual nourishment, illumination, guidance, etc. Basically what you see in Psalm 23. In Hebrews it talks about how Jesus is our sabbath rest and how he is our great high priest.

 The tabernacle was a place for the high priest to do daily ministry work in the sanctuary which is what Jesus, our good shepherd high priest, does in our daily lives. He shepherds our soul, cleansing our hearts and sanctifying us, atoning keeping our relationship with God the father at-one-ment. 

 When we abide in Jesus letting him spiritually nourish and cleanse our souls (John 15) and let him shepherd our soul, this brings fruit of the spirit in our lives. Jesus’ sanctifying ministry work of sacrificial love recreates in us the image of God where we are born again of love (John 4:8 where we become more spiritually alive continually maturing in the spirit. 

 While the earth is currently quarantined from the universe to prevent the spread of sin, God came to us through Jesus. In John 1 it echoes Genesis 1 language

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” John 1:14

 This word dwelt in Greek is  4637. σκηνόω (skénoó) which in Greek means tabernacled. God through Jesus, became bone of our bone flesh of our flesh, veiling his divinity by becoming human so he could dwell among us and bring us back to the right relationship with him and others. Jesus bore the curse of the fall to reverse the curse of the fall. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us!

 While we are being sanctified in preparation for our family homecoming, God’s presence is with us through Jesus’ priestly shepherding work in our lives. As we behold Jesus and his glory and continually abide in him we become created back into the image of God our father, where his name (character) is written on our foreheads.(Revelation 14:1)

This is why the sabbath is the symbol of creation and sanctification (re-creation). The very word abba which means father is in the word sabbath! 

We all long for a safe place for true connection and being able to take our mask off that we feel we have to wear in the world in order to stay connected to people. We think if we take our mask off then people won’t accept us for who we truly are, flaws and all and this is why legalism blocks true connection with God and others.

 True intimacy comes when we can be seen, heard and understood on a very deep soul level without masking who we think we need to be to be accepted. Somewhere along the way in life we received the message on a deep internal level that’s it’s not ok to be authentically real. It’s only when we are allowed to be fully seen yet fully loved will we feel truly connected to God and others on a soul level. This requires pure vulnerability which can be next to impossible without Christ’s righteousness and wearing the full armor of God which gives us a sense of true clothing and spiritual armor vs our ego defense armor that we can wear to protect from vulnerability but reaching this state of vulnerability disarms Satan’s hold over us. Jesus disarmed the powers that be at the cross through humility and vulnerability which is true power. This is why when we are honest with ourselves vs wearing a mask to God through legal religion, and other defense mechanisms can we see that we are valued and loved for who we truly are 17”In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world we are just like Him. 18There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because He first loved us” 1 John 4:18

God desires for us to come to a true internal understanding that we don’t have to cover our fear and shame from him through ego defense mechanisms, that he loves us just as we are! We come to him just as we are in truth and then him and Jesus will cleanse us and bring sanctuary to our soul, recreating us back into the image of our heavenly father! 

I will write a future blog post on this. So having a safe place to truly rest and restore in God having him as a sanctuary is so spiritually satisfying and relieving to our soul and Satan hates this because he wants people to stay in a place of a work’s-based mindset so he can exploit our vulnerability and fears and people pleasing tendencies.

Satan cannot create, he can only use humans as surrogates to build his kingdom, and he does so by exploiting our insecurities and lack of rest in Jesus. It’s like pharaoh right before the exodus when he said, “And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.” Exodus 5:5

Jesus invites us to rest and so do I and so does my mom. I am my mom’s legacy and I will carry this gospel truth with me wherever I go, sharing it and pointing people to their true source of rest and hope which is Jesus. One of the very last conversations I had with my mom before she went completely downhill and became too weak to converse anymore before she died was on our sabbath rest in Jesus. Quotes below are her words.. She said: “We are declared perfect by trusting in Christ ALONE not anything we do. Even keeping the Sabbath. The Sabbath is an outward sign that Christ alone is our RIGHTEOUSNESS” “We can keep the day but it adds nothing to our righteousness” “ALL Christians keep Sabbath in their heart if they are resting in CHRIST ALONE” ” “A careful study of Hebrews backs this up. I’ve believed this for some time now.” “The Today spoken of in verse 7 is talking about the GOSPEL” (Now is the day of salvation)” 2 Cor 6:2) Hebrews 10:14)

These quotes may ruffle some feathers if they have a legal, works based mindset on salvation. It ruffled my feathers when my mom was initially trying to get me to understand the gospel! It took humility and soul searching and God really reaching my heart and him revealing pride in me before I could understand and see the truth!

“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. / Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. / For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

“There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. 10For whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. 11Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following the same pattern of disobedience” Hebrews 4:10 

Pharaoh who is a symbol of satan needed Israel to build his kingdom but Moses who is a symbol of Jesus brought spiritual liberation and thus the exodus to the promised land of rest.

 I don’t know about you but people pleasing and feeling the need to wear a mask and hide my true self and trying to earn salvation and love and acceptance is draining! God has really been working on me to show up more authentically and this can be very hard at times and can bring about loss from superficial relationships, etc. but when you show up authentically which is only possible when we have rest in Jesus for this allows us to lay down our ego defenses, so we can live the life God desires for us to live. I want to let God write my story trusting him if I show up authentically then the right people will stay and come into my life and the ones who only benefited from my insecurities will fall out of my life. This is the exodus journey from spiritual Egypt to the promised land of rest back home to our spiritual roots to our spiritual father’s house of wholeness and to that I say Amen!

In the next post I’m going to write about a divine appointment that I had in Eureka springs after the death of my mother and how it relates to the tabernacle/sanctuary and the cross! Let’s just say God is amazing and he’s the God who SEES us!!