The seventh-day Sabbath serves as a profound sign, identifying God's people with a unique mark of distinction. As outlined in Exodus 31:12-17 and Isaiah 56:1-7, this covenant, established after the Old Covenant, binds the Sabbath as a perpetual covenant upon those who follow Him. It stands as a clear identifier, much like a sign marks a business or a street, setting apart those who honor this holy time in devotion to God.

God identifies the keeping of the Sabbaths as a specific sign between Him and His people, as seen in Exodus 31:13, 17, where He declares that the Sabbaths are a sign throughout generations, reminding them that He is the LORD who sanctifies them. This sign underscores that in six days He made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. Keeping the fourth commandment serves as a sign to the individual, to those around, and to God Himself, highlighting the sanctification tied directly to observing the Sabbaths holy. If the Sabbaths cease to be a sign by being treated as any other day, God's sanctification also ceases. The Sabbaths further signify who God is as Creator and Redeemer, and who is being created and redeemed among His faithful. This sign is not limited to Israel alone, as the Sabbath was made for all mankind, established at Creation long before the Israelites existed, and taught to them even prior to the giving of the Ten Commandments. The seriousness of this sign is evident in the history of ancient Israel, where despising the Sabbaths, a key element of sanctification, contributed to their captivity and scattering, leading to a loss of identity among some tribes, while others retained recognition of their heritage through adherence to this sign.

God has designated the Sabbath as the sign between Him and His people, serving as evidence that He, the Creator, is our God, and those who keep it are His children. It is not merely the observance of the Sabbath that constitutes this sign, but also the manner in which it is observed. The Sabbath is not only a sign that He is the Creator, but also a sign that He is our Savior, a day appointed to memorialize that He sets us free and maintains our liberty. As long as we look to it, the relationship with Him is preserved.

The Sabbath serves as a profound sign between God and His people, carrying deep significance in the covenant relationship. It acts as a reminder of who we are and that our God is the Creator, marking the Sabbath as a memorial to creation. This sign identifies and distinguishes us from others, setting us apart in a way that is easily recognized by those outside the fellowship. Keeping the Sabbath draws attention to us, and when observed as God desires, it provides evidence of the state of our relationship with Him. Properly kept, the Sabbath compresses into a single concept—a recurring appointment with the Deity. Each Sabbath is a unique opportunity to engage in this divine appointment, encapsulating the entirety of the covenant relationship with God. No other religion, except Judaism to some extent, possesses anything quite like this sacred time set apart for communion with Him.

God commanded His people Israel to remember the Sabbath day. A while after He issued this, the fourth commandment, He told the Israelites why the Sabbath was such an important institution. It is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever. The Hebrew word translated sign means mark or evidence. The Sabbath day is the mark God gave His people to identify them as His own. By it, the folk of Israel would know the Source of their sanctification. To sanctify is to set apart for holy service, or more basically, to make holy. God's purpose for Israel from the start was to set it apart from other peoples by giving it His laws and His statutes. God has a special relationship with Israel. God revealed His law only to Israel. When He did so, He made it clear that Israel would be a special treasure to Me above all people, a holy sanctified, set apart nation, if the people obey My voice and keep My covenant. God prefaces the Holiness Code of Leviticus 18 and 19 by commanding Israel to be separate from other nations. This meant acting in a way different from that of the Gentiles, not walking in their ordinances. Verses 23-24 go on to indicate the consequence of Israel's refusal to become sanctified by obeying God's laws. God says He lifted His hand in an oath, that I would scatter them among the Gentiles and disperse them throughout the countries, because they had not executed My judgments, but had despised My statutes, profaned My Sabbaths. If Israel insisted on acting like the nations of the world, God says He would physically place them among those nations. Israel would become separated from God and the land He promised them. They would become sifted among the Gentile nations. The land vomits out its inhabitants. This is the national consequence of breaking the commandments. God states the result to individuals in verse 29. Whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Vomiting and cutting-off are both metaphors for separation. Nationally and individually, commandment-breaking always yields the same ultimate punishment: separation from God. That separation may come slowly, as Ecclesiastes 8:11 points out, but always surely. The history of the children of Israel proves the point. God wanted Israel to be a special, sanctified nation, a holy one. He promised to bestow incredible blessings on it if it acted to separate itself from the social and religious practices of other nations. Israel failed as a nation because it failed to be holy. I Kings 12:25-33 records the beginning of the Kingdom of Israel's apostasy. Jeroboam I instituted a state religion designed to meet his peoples' needs for convenience and his own need for power. Finally, he moved the fall holy day season from the seventh month to the eighth, thereby effectively setting aside the Sabbath commandment, since the holy days are God's Sabbaths. All this became a sin for Israel. Jeroboam's apostasy, his movement to false religious practices, took deep root. In fact, the house of Israel never departed from the practices he established. Both Ezra and Nehemiah worked assiduously to teach the people to keep holy God's Sabbath. It was during this time that the people of Judah took a different path than those of Israel. For, while Israel never returned to the practice of Sabbath-keeping, the descendants of the tribe of Judah with Levi came to keep it albeit not perfectly. They kept it throughout the hideous Maccabean period and throughout the long Roman occupation later. They kept it after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. They kept it in the Diaspora during the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. They kept it whether they dwelt in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, or later, America. Many keep it to this day. Because they do, they know who they are. They know who their patriarchs are. Li