THE SABBATH AND WORSHIP
The Sabbath proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ. The seventh-day Sabbath means rest—God’s rest. Jesus is God’s rest. Since God is agape the Sabbath is the seal of God. The Sabbath represents the rest Christ gives to sinners. Christ’s righteousness is just what restless sinners need. God has given a full pardon from sin to every sinner purchased by “the Saviour of the world”. When sinners thankfully receive this marvelous grace they are justified by faith. Formerly alienated hearts are converted and they experience being at-one with God. The Sabbath rest of Christ is the essence of the atonement.
We have come to a time in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist movement that we need to grow out of an old covenant way of thinking about the Sabbath. Undoubtedly there are some who still view Sabbath-keeping as a means meriting salvation with God. Such a crass legalism is not how most would view their observance of the seventh day.
However, there is a more subtle form of old covenant motivation for Sabbath-keeping that has gone on unrecognized. Any Sabbath worship that arises out of self-interest, though it be the seventh-day, is against the law. It falls far short of “love [which] is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10). Self-interest is an “under the law” motivation (Gal. 3:23). Hence, it is driven by an eros kind of love with which we are all born. It is generated by old covenant promises that we will obey. Such obedience while it may be better than what pagan worldlings can produce, is wildly off-target from the bull’s eye of the fourth commandment. It comes from a mind that is unreconciled to God. He who makes the promise must produce the righteousness of the Sabbath commandment and righteousness cannot come from an unrighteous heart.
The Sabbath and the message of Christ’s cross are inseparably tied together by God’s love in creation and redemption. On “the seventh day” God “rested from all his work which God created and made” (Gen. 2:3). God “sanctified” or set it apart by making it “holy” with His presence. God gave the Sabbath to man. The blessing of Sabbath rest is for the whole world. No one is left out. God is speaking to you and to me, not just to the Jews. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). “Man” means everyone.
God has given his holy Sabbath to everyone. In His mercy God asks us to “remember” it, to keep it holy (that’s all, to keep holy what He has already made holy!) In an objective sense, the Sabbath is already holy, even if you don’t keep it holy; but in a subjective sense, your keeping the Sabbath holy expresses your faith in the objective truth that it is holy. Thus, your heart appreciation of the objective truth that God so loved you that He gave His only Son for you becomes for you the thrilling subjective experience of justification by faith.
It’s not a “works” remembering, but faith-remembering. When you begin to understand the Gospel as Good News, the Sabbath becomes a “delight” (Isa. 58). And anything that’s a “delight,” you think of again and again. If I am planning on a symphony concert Thursday night, all week I enjoy the anticipation of it. So the next Sabbath coming hope becomes an attraction every day of the new week. So when the sun goes down Friday evening, the Sabbath is no stranger unexpected. The time comes that you actually live from one Sabbath to the next. And that “remembering” makes the other six days happy, because the Sabbath becomes the glue that holds the week together. The effect on your physical health? I cannot say for a scientific surety, but I deeply suspect that the sense of calmness and rest in the Lord that remembering the Sabbath yet to come every day will impart health and life-giving zest to your whole being.
When Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” He was inviting the world to enjoy His Sabbath-rest. After creating the world and us in six days, He rested on that first seventh-day in Eden. But “we” were created on the sixth day of that first week, so for “us” the sabbath was a celebration of all the work that God had done and had “finished.” “We had done nothing!
The Sabbath is still a “sign” of our resting “in Christ” and thanking Him for what He has done, not glorying in anything we have done in saving ourselves. It follows that true Sabbath-keeping is possible only when we understand and appreciate what it cost the Son of God to save us by His great sacrifice. Only when we permit that agape to “constrain” us can our Sabbath-keeping be devoid of the polluting love of self in some way.
To appreciate “the width and length and depth and height” of that love (agape) of Christ will make keeping the Sabbath day holy the greatest joy of your life. And children will learn to love the Sabbath also. If Christ’s “yoke” is thus set before them as “easy” and His burden as “light,” they will get so they can’t wait for another Sabbath day to come. They will enjoy being “guests” in the “house of the Lord.”
As the most precious gift of repentance is received by His people, they will be endowed with the ability to proclaim the Sabbath more fully, so that many dear ones now scattered in what Revelation calls “Babylon” will be able to hear the “voice” from heaven that says, “Come out of her, My people.”
Just now the Holy Spirit is calling people worldwide to keep holy His Sabbath day; for that’s the special day when He meets with them to teach them. And His great fourth commandment assures all who will believe, they will know the joy of Sabbath-keeping rest “in Christ.”
All around the world this weekend, people will be giving special study to the truth of the Sabbath. It’s a new view of the Sabbath which lifts it far above the legalistic idea in which it has been viewed for so long.
The new idea is that the Sabbath is closely related to the idea of justification by faith. It’s the experience of realizing that you can’t save yourself by any good work you can do, not even one per cent; it’s the realization of heart that your salvation is totally a gift of the Saviour of the world (Jn. 4:42), “not of works, lest any one should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9). Sabbath-keeping is almost infinitely beyond the idea of “Keep-the-Sabbath-or-God-will-zap you.” There is not a trace of legalism in the Sabbath truth. It’s John 3:16 repeated every day, reminding you that God so loved you that He already gave His only begotten Son, already redeemed you, already died your second death (Heb. 2:9), has already given you the gift of a verdict of acquittal “in Christ” (Rom. 5:15-18), reversing the condemnation that came upon you in Adam; the “rest” which the holy Sabbath brings you is rest from all your anxiety and fear.
True, the Sabbath comes only on the true seventh day (Ex. 20:8-11) but the Holy Spirit brings to you the remembrance of it every day throughout the week, for the word says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” In an objective sense, the Sabbath is already holy, even if you don’t keep it holy; but in a subjective sense, your keeping the Sabbath holy expresses your faith in the objective truth that it is holy. Thus, your heart appreciation of the objective truth that God so loved you that He gave His only Son for you becomes for you the thrilling subjective experience of justification by faith.
At the commencement of the time of trouble, we read that God’s people will proclaim the Sabbath “more fully.” This lesson this week-end indicates that that time is near! The time is near when God’s people around the world, delivered from the last vestige of legalism, will “delight themselves in the Lord” by that kind of Sabbath-keeping. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-11).
There is no end of blessings wrapped up in this commandment! Here only a few:
1. The blessing of Sabbath rest is for the whole world. No one is left out. God is speaking to you and to me, not just to the Jews. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27; “woman” also was “made for man,” but marriage is not only for the Jews!). “Man” means everyone.
The “rest” that is in Sabbath-keeping is what our human hearts have always yearned for. It is far more than merely taking a nap to achieve physical rest from labor. It is peace of heart. Billionaires would give everything for genuine Sabbath-rest!
2. God rested on the Sabbath day to bless it and hallow it for us.
Because He has given the Sabbath as a gift to the world, it’s for us to enjoy. You never keep the Sabbath alone; you have fellowship with Him. “I am with you,” He says (Isaiah 41:10), and Jesus promised, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. … If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:18, 23). Jesus and the Father will move in with you! (And that means joy!)
Jesus promised, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), but the Sabbath day brings us into a specially intimate closeness with Him. It’s like He makes an appointment with us for a date; and if He is the object of our loving worship, then we will keep the date with Him. And it’s not once in a great while; the Sabbath is the special seventh day of every week.
The Sabbath is the glue that holds all the days of the week together. It gives the reason for the week. No human being invented the week; it is what God gave the world in the beginning when He created the heavens and the earth in six literal days, as Genesis 1 tells us. The Sabbath is the memorial of His work of creation; evolution could never have come into the world to deceive so many people if the world had “remember[ed] the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Keeping the Sabbath is therefore the “sign” or “mark” of God’s true people, for He says, “I gave them My Sabbaths to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them” (Ezekiel 20:12). His “sign” is like His signature; it’s like He says, “I have been looking for them, and here they are—My true people; they keep My holy Sabbath. That marks them as especially Mine!”
3. Jesus Himself especially enjoys having fellowship with His people every Sabbath day.
We seldom think of the joy that our Sabbath-keeping brings to Him! Isaiah says that “He shall see of the labor of His soul, and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). The Sabbath day is like a grand party of celebration; He invites us every week for this special time to meet with Him and with His people, and if you are not there, He is sad because He misses you.
There are no distractions on this “celebration” day. “In it you shall do no work,” He promises us. Ezekiel describes the other days of the week as “the six working days” (Ezekiel 46:1). There are all kinds of intrusions on those worldly days—heavy burdens, business, making a living, buying and selling, TV and radio, cares and labor that weigh us down, news of disasters and crime. There is no “peace” in the world.
But on the Sabbath day all those distractions are laid aside; it’s like we spend the day with Jesus in His house, as it were as guests; a day of peace of heart, freedom from worry, a harbor of refuge from the angry ocean storms, “a garden intersected with streams from Paradise, a cooling fountain in life’s dry, dreary sand.”
4. We are delivered even from our bills that come due.
We lay them aside on the Sabbath day; we don’t let them intrude on our peace with God because we trust that He will take care of us, He will bless the labors of our “six working days” so that we shall have enough to pay our bills without worrying. The Bible tells us to leave our financial planning and accounts until after the Sabbath, and do all that work “on the first day of the week” (see 1 Corinthians 16:2). So this beautiful fourth commandment shows us how to enjoy the Sabbath with God, free from those tiresome, worldly intrusions.
The Sabbath becomes like a day of heaven on earth. Children especially love the Sabbath in a home where it is reverenced; they can’t wait until “next Sabbath comes.” When Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14), He meant: let them come on the Sabbath day. But if we don’t keep the Sabbath holy, they can’t.
5. The true seventh-day Sabbath becomes the happiest day of the week.
On most calendars that are used worldwide, the seventh day is called Saturday. To make it doubly sure, we can check by reading Luke 23:54, which tells of the crucifixion of Jesus: “That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near.” Millions observe Good Friday in honor of the death of Jesus; that pinpoints the true Sabbath, for the next day of the week is the regular weekly seventh-day Sabbath. (Incidentally, God has never asked us in the Bible to observe Good Friday in honor of Christ’s crucifixion—the Lord’s Supper is the memorial Christ appointed.)
And again we can pinpoint the true Sabbath day by reading the next verses in Luke: “The women who had come with Him … observed the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (verses 55, 56). The next verses tell of His resurrection on Sunday: “Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they … came to the tomb, … But they found the stone rolled away” (Luke 24:1, 2). Christ had risen!
It is so clear a little child sees it immediately: “the Sabbath day according to the commandment” comes between Friday and Sunday. (“the Lord’s Day” of Revelation 1:10 is the Sabbath, for God calls the Sabbath “My holy day,” Isaiah 58:13).
That’s the reason why the seventh-day Sabbath is the happiest day of the week: it’s the day the Lord calls “My holy day.” His presence is in the Sabbath. To the extent that we love Him, we also love His holy day.
There are many sincere people who do not see this truth.
Has God changed His holy Sabbath day? We must pause to examine some of the reasons why they are perplexed.
No, God says, He has not changed His law regarding the Sabbath. “I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6). There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that He made any change in His holy law. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul” (Psalm 19:7). Why should He change anything that is “perfect”? He loves us too much to change such a blessed gift!
Jesus regularly kept the seventh-day Sabbath, for we read in Luke 4:16 that “He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.” Yes, when He said to the Jews, “I have kept My Father’s commandments,” He told the truth (John 15:10).
