TOUGH QUESTIONS PART 4 THE SABBATH

TOUCH QUESTIONS PART 4   The Sabbath.

            I grew up as an Adventist and later attended a Messianic congregation so I am keenly aware of the Sabbath and the issues that surround it.

            Of all the tough questions we will deal with in this series of tough questions, the Sabbath may be the hardest to handle as well as the one to stir up the most ire on one side or the other or both.

            So let us settle one issue that I believe can be agreed upon by everyone. Everyone knows that Saturday is the Sabbath. The Jews know it. The Messianic Jews know it. Christians everywhere know that Saturday is the Sabbath of the Old Covenant.

           

            So the big question we must deal with is what form the Sabbath takes on as it crosses over into the New Covenant. Is the Sabbath of the Law still mandated by God or was it a picture of something that we would find in Christ?

            This is, of course, a loaded question. After all, we find in Hebrews 4 a concept concerning Sabbath that is not consistent with our way of thinking either as Sabbath keepers or as Sunday keepers. The writer starts out by saying:

            “Therefore let us fear lest while a promise remains of entering His rest any one of you should seem to have come short of it… for indeed we have had the good news (The Gospel) preached to us just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” Heb. 4:1-3.

            In other words what the writer is saying here is best explained by what Paul said in Galatians 3:10-13 where Paul says:

            “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them. Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “the righteous man shall live by faith, however the Law is not of faith.”

            So, since the writer of Hebrews 4 is here talking specifically about the Sabbath rest, we can say that the Sabbath Law, as presented to the Jews, was not entered into by faith. That is, they treated it as a law to keep rather an experience to enter into…. and as a law to keep it is not of faith, but of works of the flesh.

            Now Hebrews 4 goes on in verses 3-5 saying that in creation God rested from His work on the seventh day for His work was finished from the foundation of the world, but then the writer quickly adds God’s pronouncement that they (Israel) shall not enter into His rest. V 5

            But now, in contradistinction to those whom God says will not enter His rest, we see in verse 3 that “we who have believed (The Gospel) have entered that rest. In other words, those who treat the Sabbath like a law to keep do not enter into the rest that it points to, but those who enter by faith in Christ do enter the rest to which the Sabbath points.

            But now the writer offers a concept that sort of steps on the toes of both Sabbath and Sunday keepers for in verse 7 he says:

“He again fixes a certain day “Today’ saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before: “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts for if Joshua had given them rest He would not have spoken of another day after that.

            Well…Which day is “today?” Today is ever present. It is not a certain day of the week at all, but a state of being and the writer goes on to prove it by saying: “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from His.”

            And suddenly Jesus words, “Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest” takes on new meaning. Jesus is indeed the Rest to which the Sabbath pointed and while the observance of a day can never bring us that rest, Jesus can and He does.

            Verses 14-16 tell us that Jesus is such a great High Priest who can indeed give us the promised rest and he then says: “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

            Some of our traditions have made the Sabbath into something that it is not. For instance, the Law says nothing about going to church. It only tells us not to work…but why would that be? It is because the Sabbath is a symbol of rest from our own works as we trust in His work.

            So even though Jesus came here to perfectly fulfill the Law, when it came to His attendance at the local synagogue on the Sabbath day, it says, “As His custom was…” Luke 4:16. Why did it say that? It is because attendance at a synagogue was not a part of the Sabbath Law.

            Now all of this may seem like a splitting of hairs and perhaps it is, but we must not beat each other over the head with our beliefs on the matter because Paul said in Romans 14: 5

            “One man regards on day above another, another regards every day alike. Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.” And of course in Col. 2:16 Paul again says:

            “Therefore  let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

            So the substance of all things is always Christ and above all, we need to make sure that we have truly entered into Christ and that we are trusting in His perfect work rather than our flawed works.

            There is so very little said in the New Testament about the Sabbath and in most cases it seems to be in juxtaposition to what Jesus was bringing to us in the New Covenant. Jesus certainly didn’t condone the Pharisee’s legalistic approach to it and when challenged about the Sabbath He replied that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. God did not create man to serve the Sabbath, but He created the Sabbath to serve man. It was intended as a blessing, not a burden.

            In a very real sense, the Sabbath Rest of a perfect creation was shattered the moment Adam and Eve sinned. The Sabbath rest that God had intended for mankind ended when God pronounced the curse that comes with sin:

            “By the sweat of you face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Gen. 3:19

            The man who had been created in God’s image and filled with His Spirit was intended to live forever, but the moment Adam sinned that Spiritual connection was severed and Adam finds himself naked and detached from eternity. Without that spiritual connection with God, man was found to be but dust and so upon his death he would return to the clay from which he was formed.

            Jesus, when He appeared as our new Adam came to restore to us the Spirit, the life and the Rest that Adam had lost in the fall. The Pharisees thought to restore the rest by heaping many laws upon the keeping of the Sabbath, but as Hebrews 4 states emphatically, this is not the way to enter My rest and you shall not enter my rest for it is entered by faith and not by law. Heb. 4:3.

            So the true rest that Adam lost at Eden’s gate is not restored by the Law, but by trusting in Christ for as Hebrews 4:10 says: “For the one who has entered His (Jesus’) rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”

            I believe that we often have the same problem as the Pharisees had. We see a very big Law and a small Christ who cannot offer to us the true rest that was lost at Eden. We continue to think that we can somehow enter that rest by keeping the Laws of Sabbath, but the Laws of the Sabbath point to Jesus, the only One big enough to restore that rest to us. The reason I say that is that inherent with that rest is eternal life. It is a reconnection with the Spirit of God. So Jesus came to bring us the eternal life that Adam lost and He then sent down His Holy Spirit so that our spiritual connection with God could be re-established. In that reconnection with the Spirit of God is our rest. Anything short of eternal life and anything short of being filled and baptized in the Holy Spirit can never restore the rest of Creation to us. Only Jesus can reverse the curse.

            Adventists teach that the Mark of the Beast will involve the enforcement of Sunday over the Sabbath and that everyone will be required to worship on Sunday or be killed… and while I don’t find any scriptural authority for such a contest, we do know that a global government is forming and we know that we are in the middle of an ongoing battle between Christ and Satan.

            As Hong Yang pointed out to us, sever persecution is going on in China right now as Christians are tortured, imprisoned and killed for their faith in Jesus Christ. The same is true in the Sudan or Sri Lanka, in many places in the Middle East and in Africa.

            We have talked about the forces that are coalescing to form the global government right now. Pope Francis is working to bring about a global religion, while others are working to form a global government and strangely enough Satan seems to be focusing His attention on the tiny nation of Israel. It is as though Satan wants to step right into the heart of the true Messiah’s plans and to erect a temple in Jerusalem and to make it into a house of worship for all nations and specifically for the global religion that Pope Francis is now forming. It is Satan’s final act of defiance.

            It should concern us all that Christian leaders, even from fundamental denominations like Evangelicals and Pentecostals are beating a pathway to Rome to become a part of this growing global religion. The reformers broke away from the prostituted church of the Dark Ages simply because it was a mixture of paganism and Christianity. So Protestants, seeing Rome as a part of the antichrist system, came out of it… and yet today, church leaders are flocking back to Rome.

            This cannot be a good thing any way you look at it… and since the Popes throughout time have claimed the authority to change times and laws and to replace the Jewish Sabbath with pagan Sunday and to replace all of the Jewish Feast Days with Pagan holidays, even changing the Calendar in order to remove all evidence of God’s appointed times… can we not expect this coming global religion to wield its pagan authority over the masses?

            We do know this: It is all going to be about worship, for according to Revelation 13 we will either worship the Beast and His image, or we will worship the God of heaven. So we see in China (As I so recently heard from Hong Yang) that people are being killed by the thousands for their faith in Jesus Christ and many go to their deaths because they will not renounce their faith in Jesus.

            So the issues we will face in the global reign of the antichrist have to do with worship and faithfulness to Jesus Christ.  As such, we as Christians should be outraged that our religious leaders are returning to Rome…especially at this critical time in history. The coming global religion and government of the Beast is going to be even worse than the new despotic regime in China.

            Whatever forms of enforcement the global government and religion take on, we will lose our freedom to worship Jesus Christ and every single person on the planet will be required to take the Mark of the Beast so that without it, they will not be able to buy or sell, work or own property, or anything else.

            So we as Christians need to be aware of the forces that are forming in the world today and we need to prepare to be faithful to God and to His Word no matter what the global system throws at us.

            Personally I see the Sabbath as a blessing. God sealed it with His presence and gave it to us as a gift, not a requirement. So Bonnie and I, in our own home set aside Sabbath as a time of rest, refreshment and communion with God. Far from being legalistic about it, we look forward to it as a time for basking in His Word. How else can a person carve out time from our frenzied pace unless we simply make time. It is a relationship thing with Jesus… not an impersonal law.

            Will Satan ever seek to enforce a Sunday Law, in opposition to God’s Sabbath, as the Adventists claim? I truly don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. So Adventists must rely heavily upon Ellen White for that idea. But if a Day of worship is forced upon us by the antichrist, I will come down on the side of that Day which God created to be a blessing for us.

            But in all reality, I believe it will be just as we see it today in many countries. Persecution will come because of our faith in Jesus Christ and our refusal to renounce Him.