According to the Old Testament, God's manna provision and test for Israel in post-exodus wilderness pointed to a command that foreshadowed one of those of the Decalogue at Sinai (Ex 20) and subsequently, became a recurrent theme in Scripture - i.e. keeping Sabbath.
Israel was to anticipate, in its daily gathering of manna, the seventh day of the week and to prepare for it. It was to be a day of solemn rest, holy to the LORD (cf. Ex 16:23) - a way to participate, unmistakably, in God's planned rhythm of Creation (cf. Gen 2:2-3). Sabbath interrupted Israel's labours, so gracious they were compared to those which they were accustomed to back in Pharaoh's Egypt; I imagine that it would have been both a testimony of their deliverance and spiritual formation while Israel's faith in the LORD found concrete expression in their act of resting. In observing Sabbath even after its wilderness days, Israel both remembered and trusted the LORD. Sabbath was about His mercy and grace. It also affirmed Israel's identity as a people whom God had chosen and redeemed, a people whose needs He would provide as a Father even as they rested from commercial pursuits.
The weekly Sabbath anticipated as well as commemorated. It anticipated the eternal cessation of time, the consummation of God's promise that the forefathers "saw and greeted from afar" - Christ and thus, the eternal seventh day. The weekly Sabbath was a foreshadow of what man needed ultimately - what man had been made for. And the Word became flesh - and dwelt among us. Eternity had come to kiss us in the present - and its overlap with linear time continues to affirm man of the glorious future that is to come when the weekly Sabbath would no longer be relevant.
However in Matthew 12, we glimpse how the intimacy and spirit of Sabbath had been quenched in the religious leaders' legalistic execution of Shabbat traditions in Jesus' time. The well-intentioned parameters of such traditions had been carved out by ancient Jewish rabbis, who reformulated exegetically what "work" (and thus "rest") in the Hebrew Bible encompassed. Human need and compassion for the needy (even animals, cf. 12:12) were good reasons to break the traditions. However, the Pharisees were adamant that no exceptions should be made, and so, they condemned Jesus' hungry disciples for snacking on gleaned grain and Jesus Himself for healing on the Sabbath.
Jesus made a radical statement: "the Son of Man is the lord of the Sabbath." (Matt 12:8). Another assault of the Pharisees' prescriptions and pride.
Among some of the things that this statement would mean (by no means an exhaustive list) are as follows:
1. Jesus is the lord of the Sabbath. In this passage, Jesus did not mention explicitly that He was the Son of Man, but Matthew's gospel does refer to Him as the Son of Man, a messianic title (cf. Daniel 7:13). Jesus is sovereign over Sabbath, and thus....
2. ...Jesus is the one who has authority over all Sabbath traditions. He has the right to extend hospitality to whoever He wishes on the Sabbath.
3. Jesus is God - because God who delivered Israel from Egypt, was the lord of the Sabbath which He ordained as sacred time and ruled. He was greater than the temple (Matt 12:6), where God was worshiped and priests were justified to "profane" Sabbath (12:5) by the nature of their work. (The Sabbath was the busiest day of the week for priests.)
What does it mean for Jesus to be the Lord of Sabbath for us today?
First, I don't think that this passage tells us much about whether Christians should still practise Sabbath like the Jews or not; after all, the Apostle Paul declared that the laws (and rituals) that separated the Jews from Gentiles had been done away by the cross of Christ (cf. Eph 2:11-18). Resting to remember and trust God may still be required of His people. However, the New Testament does not specify how and certainly does not impose the obligation on believers to "consider one day more sacred than another" (cf. Rom 14:5). Perhaps, this is so that we would be free to make Bible-informed, Spirit-guided choices for our unique circumstances in the spirit of honouring Christ, being fully convinced in our minds.
Secondly, Jesus said in Matthew 11:28 - "Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." I think that this was and is an amazing invitation. What was He saying there? Did He mean back then that the Lord of the Sabbath would become our Sabbath in the already-but-not-yet? In participating in God's ordained rhythm of Creation (He rested on the seventh day), we must not assume that God rested from creating the world because He was exhausted - and I am not even sure if He was really setting us a pattern to follow because He foresaw that we would be exhausted after six days of labour. Rather, He rested because it was finished, for the time being (Gen 2:3). Something else about Genesis 2:3 caught my attention too: "God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation." He rested from His creational work, but He did not rest from bestowing mercy, grace and provision upon His creation - blessing it so that it might be fruitful and multiply.
We know that Jesus on the cross cried, "It is finished!" He finished the work that He had come to do so that we could rest in Him, in anticipation of the unimaginable eschaton. In this rest, His believers are bestowed mercy, grace and provisions, so that we may enjoy easier yokes and lighter burdens while we hope and seek His Kingdom. We rest from self-reliance and human enterprises devoid of God because we can; it is an act of remembering and trusting God. Entering this rest is not only a gift we receive by grace through faith; like that pertaining to Israel, entering this rest is expected of those who claim to Christ's disciples. It is to be a test of our faith and obedience, and it forms us as God's adopted sons (and daughters).
Finally, having Jesus as the Lord of Sabbath - and ultimately, our Sabbath - liberates us to join God in bringing His mercy, grace and provisions to the world we live and work in.
In doing so, we partner with God in His divine project of redeeming the world as we await the coming of His eternal seventh day.
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