Believers Resting in Christ's Sabbath

God's promise to bring strangers into His temple and accept their sacrifices finds its Gospel fulfillment in the body of the Lord Jesus - for believers are brought into Christ, builded upon that precious cornerstone as lively stones to His praise and glory.

But why does God impose upon the strangers the condition of keeping holy His Sabbath, when Paul informs us that no man can judge us in the keeping of the Sabbath?

The answer is that the old Sabbath is a shadow of things to come, finding its fulfillment in the body of Christ.

The old Sabbath was given as a sign to Israel that the Lord who made all the world and rested when He finished it is the God who sanctified them unto Himself. By joining with Him in His rest from labor, they would be reminded that God is their God, and they were His people. The failure to keep Sabbath resulted in severe judgment.

But Jesus proclaimed Himself the Lord of the Sabbath, which He said was made for man.

Christ's sabbath points to the work He finished and rested from - the finished work of Christ's obedience and blood, by which believers are justified! He has completed the job and sat down in glory, and by that work perfected forever them that are sanctified.

Thus, Christ's Sabbath is a rest for His people, who join with Him in His rest as their only Righteousness, and by which they are sanctified.

So in every particular, the pattern of the type of the Old Testament Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ's promised rest for His people - rest in His finished work by which He sanctifies us.

Hebrews tells us we enter Christ's rest by faith - for the work is done perfectly, if only we will receive it and believe it.