The Living Example of Rest
"My Father is working until now, and I myself am working... Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for what the Father does, these things the Son does in like manner." (John 5:17, 19)
The context of this is that Jesus had just healed a crippled man on the Sabbath Day and was being persecuted by religious Jews because of it. He was showing these Jews the reality of the Sabbath Rest of God, but because they were blinded by the zeal for their traditions and angered by their jealousy, these men completely missed out on what Jesus was teaching.
Jesus was trying to show these men that the reality of the Sabbath Rest of God is when men cease from doing the works of man and do only that which the Father directs by His Spirit. This reality is not defined by what one does or doesn't do externally and on a particular day of the week, but it is defined by a state of perfect harmony and agreement with God Himself, a walk in which one no longer seeks his own will or way, but rather, lives in a state of death to all self initiative no longer guided by his own intellect or carnal thoughts (as reasonable and rational as those might seem).
In the healing of the crippled man and with the words that followed, Jesus demonstrated the substance of the Sabbath Rest perfectly. He made it clear that He could do absolutely nothing of Himself, but that He would do everything that the Father directed Him to do and do THAT every moment of every day! The Jewish laws which pertained to the Sabbath Rest were mere sample representations of what Jesus was now showing in reality. This is saying that all of the religious ordinances which related to the Sabbath were only shadows of the REAL thing and were not supposed to be recognized and kept once God brought the REAL into focus.
Beloved, Jesus is our Living Example of the Sabbath Rest of God and is a Pattern for what we are to become in Him. This is a people who do not keep religious rules and carnal ordinances in regard to a holy day of the week, but a people who let the Spirit have His way in their life to the extent that they can walk in God's holy Sabbath every moment of every day! This, beloved ones, is that holy realm of rest for which the Lord went before us to prepare for us. Let's not harden our hearts to this wonderful and profound truth but let's enter into it! Shall we? There is a promise for us of entering into this rest! There really is! This promise is one of those conditional ones though ... (please read Hebrews chapters 3 and 4).
Many blessings to you. -- D