The Sabbath is a place of refuge in a weary world. Each week we leave the cares of this world and enter God’s retreat center — the Sabbath. The famed Jewish author, Abraham Heschel, calls the Sabbath “a palace in time.” — The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005), p. 12. Each seventh day, God’s heavenly palace descends from heaven to earth, and the Lord invites us into the glory of His presence for this 24-hour period to spend a time of intimate fellowship with Him.

Image © Pacific Press

In the introduction to Heschel’s book on the beauty and solemnity of the Sabbath, Susannah Heschel, his daughter, writes of the significance of the Sabbath in these words: “The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” — Page XV.

At Creation, Jesus built a special dwelling for us. We can find refuge there. We can be safe there. His work is complete. It is finished. When we rest on the Sabbath, we are resting in His loving care. We are resting in anticipation of our eternal rest in the new heavens and the new earth that is soon to come.

Read Isaiah 65:17, Isaiah 66:22, 2 Peter 3:13, and Revelation 21:1. How does keeping the Sabbath point us forward to eternity?

The same God who created the earth the first time will create it again, and the Sabbath remains an eternal symbol of Him as the Creator (see Isaiah 66:23). In fact, the Jews had seen the Sabbath as a symbol, a foretaste of what was called in Hebrew the olam haba, the world to come.

The message of three angels flying through the heavens appealing for us to worship the Creator is heaven’s answer to the hopeless despair of many in the twenty-first century. It points us to our Creator, the one who first made all things, and to our Redeemer, the one who will, after the judgment, after sin is eradicated, make all things new. “Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are true and faithful’” (Revelation 21:5, NKJV).

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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