Hi Ron,
Here is one of the best SABBATH REST grouping of Scriptures in one chapter.
The highlighted verses are for emphasis on the REST (SABBATH).Heb 3: 5-19 (GNB)5 Moses was faithful in God's house as a servant, and he spoke of the things that God would say in the future.
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But Christ is faithful as the Son in charge of God's house. We are his house if we keep up our courage and our confidence in what we hope for. 7
So then, as the Holy Spirit says, "If you hear God's voice today, 8
do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were when they rebelled against God, as they were that day in the desert when they put him to the test. 9 There they put me to the test and tried me, says God, although they had seen what I did for forty years.
10 And so I was angry with those people and said, 'They are always disloyal and refuse to obey my commands.'
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I was angry and made a solemn promise: 'They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!' " 12 My friends, be careful that none of you have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from the living God.
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Instead, in order that none of you be deceived by sin and become stubborn, you must help one another every day, as long as the word "Today" in the scripture applies to us. 14 For we are all partners with Christ if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at the beginning.
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This is what the scripture says: "If you hear God's voice today, do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were when they rebelled against God." 16 Who were the people who heard God's voice and rebelled against him? All those who were led out of Egypt by Moses.
17 With whom was God angry for forty years? With the people who sinned, who fell down dead in the desert.
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When God made his solemn promise, "They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest"---of whom was he speaking? Of those who rebelled. 19
We see, then, that they were not able to enter the land, because they did not believe. Excerpt from: KEEPING SABBATHhttp://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,6310.msg50887.html#msg50887So “God created the heavens and the earth… all that in them is… for six day” How long were these six days? Were they 24 hour periods?
It was on the seventh day that it said God rested in the King James.
Was that a 24 hour day? If it was, why is He STILL CEASING from His work?
This Scripture says He is. Genesis 2:2 in the Concordant correctly says;
Gen 2:2 And finishing is the Elohim (God), on the sixth day, His work which He does. And ceasing is He on the seventh day from all His work which He does.
So He’s “finishing” it all up in the sixth day and He’s ceasing, that’s the indefinite tense. He was ceasing, is ceasing and will continue to cease. It’s not past tense, like most of the Scripture say. You read those that are aware of this technical difference and you’ll see that it is in the indefinite. It makes all the difference in the world.
Somewhere in Romans I used that indefinite to show in Greek it’s called the aorist tense - past, present, future.
Somebody wrote me an email this week. He said, ‘I’ve checked dozens of Bibles and I can’t find and I can’t substantiate what you are saying.’
Well you go to John 3:16, and you can check all Bibles and I don’t think but one has it “For God thus Loves the world.” The most known Scripture on earth. “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son…” So did God “so loved the world” and now it’s pass, finished and over with? He loved it once and now love is gone? No. It's loves, it’s the aorist tense. He loved then, He loves now and He will continue to love. It’s a big difference, yet you won’t find it in many Bibles.
But neither the Concordant nor the Rotherham gets this verse right in Exodus, where we are given the commandment to rest on the Sabbath day. Here it is in the Young’s Literal translation, he’s the only one that follows this very precisely. “For six days…” notice he takes the ‘in’ out.
Exo 20:11 for six days hath Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and resteth (rests, aorist tense) in the seventh day; therefore hath Jehovah blessed the Sabbath-day, and doth sanctify it.
So we’re talking Exodus, this is sometimes long after the creation, possibly a couple thousand years after the creation and it says “He rests” not rested.
People don’t want to be spiritually converted inside, in their heart. They want to make a show of religion and morality and so on. That to them is what is important.
So all of these things, like keeping the seventh day... keeping the Sabbath day holy... which of course much of the church around the world have changed that to Sunday. They have the Catholic church to thank for that.
A Catholic bishop once said, (I put this in my paper ‘The Origin Of Endless Punishment’) ‘The Protestant church so prides itself on coming out of Catholicism and rejecting all of their heresy and he says, what are the facts? The Bible says remember the Sabbath day - the seventh day - Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, the Sabbath day keep it holy. But the Catholics says no, keep Sunday holy and the whole Protestant world bows in subjection.’
See that is where that comes from. The commandment is for the Sabbath day.
HOW MANY DAYS DO WE ENTER INTO GOD’S REST
So people ask me about everything from circumcision to fasting, Passover, the Lord’s supper, baptism and all these things. They ask me a lot, ‘do you keep the Sabbath day.’ In other words do I stop working and stop doing everything on Friday night until Sat. night, don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, just study and pray or whatever and go to church.
So they say, ‘do you keep the Sabbath?’ I say absolutely, everyday of the week. They don’t know what to make of that. I keep the Sabbath everyday of the week. How do I keep the Sabbath everyday of the week? Because I know what the Sabbath means. If you know what the Sabbath means, you can not possibly keep it on Saturday only, you can’t. If you know what it means and you do it on Saturday only, it’s proof that you don’t know what it means. And I’ll show you that. If you can’t keep the Sabbath on everyday, then you are not keeping the Sabbath in the spirit of truth at all.
Further you can’t do any of these things. We’ll go through these things, the Lord’s supper, communion, what the Catholics call mass and so on.
george.