The Sabbath: A 5-Day DevotionalSample

Unlike the other nine commandments, this one is never reaffirmed for Christians in the New Covenant. The absence of any affirmation of the Sabbath commandment for new covenant Christians apparently indicates that the early apostles, guided by the teaching of Jesus while he was on earth and by the work of the Holy Spirit after that (John 14:26; 16:13), realized that the Sabbath commandment did not express God’s moral standards for all humanity for all time, but established specific requirements for the people of Israel as a nation while they lived under the Mosaic covenant. While the rainbow was the sign of God’s covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:12–15) and circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham (17:11), Bruce Waltke notes that “the Sabbath is the sign of the Mosaic covenant”* (see Ex. 31:13). 

Note:

*Bruce K. Waltke, *An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach* (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 413–14.