Sabbath
By: Brad Hyden
I wanted to share with you some personal thoughts on the Sabbath and draw your attention to some of what God’s Word has to say concerning this day. Sabbath is the most beautiful commandment of all the commandments and I would like to demonstrate that for you.
As many of you may know the Sabbath was the main obstacle and the main entering point for me to come into the Seventh-day Adventist church. This was the topic of my three month study that changed my heart toward the church and ultimately changed my life. What I would like to pass on to you is some of the true beauty of this day called Sabbath.
In the book Exodus we have a passage in chapter twenty and verse eight which reads in the King James Version, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” I realize the commandment continues on until verse eleven but what we have in verse eight is the most important aspect of the commandment. “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
Now we have all heard the sermons before where a pastor has exhorted the ideas of what it means to remember and what it means to keep, “the Sabbath”. I do think this is well and good and something that must be done but I also believe we might have inadvertently missed some of the true beauty of this commandment.
There are two words in this commandment we rarely if ever hear preaching on. The words are “Sabbath” and “Holy”. I could do an exhaustive word study and point out all the particulars these two words bring to this commandment but I won’t. What I will do is summarize these two words and place them in their correct thought. I will start with the word, “Holy”
“Holy” in its most simplified meaning means, “God is”. It is a state of being. The opposite of, “Holy” is, “Unholy”, which in its most simplified meaning means, “God is not”. So if you are keeping something “Holy” then you are keeping God in it. If you are keeping something “Unholy” then you are not keeping God in it. This is a very simple concept.
Just as an aside, you cannot keep God where He has not already placed Himself, this is why verse eleven of Exodus twenty tells us that God has placed Himself in the Sabbath. “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Hallowed it is another way of saying made it Holy. This is also why no other day can be kept Holy unto God as Sabbath. God has not placed Himself into any other day.
The reason I think this is important is because whenever we take God out of the Sabbath we cease to keep it Holy. In fact as I alluded to earlier if we choose to not keep Sabbath “Holy” our only other alternative is to keep it “Unholy” which means we choose to deny God His place in His day that He ordained.
So in the simplest of terms to keep Sabbath Holy means to keep God in it. If your Sabbath day excludes God, then you are keeping it “Unholy”. Our activities during the Sabbath should be those activities that showcase God and bring our hearts and minds to bear upon Him, His Son, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
The second word in the commandment that I want to bring your attention to is the word Sabbath.
Sabbath you have heard is the name of the seventh-day in Hebrew. You may know that for the Jew they would number their days, 1,2,3,4,5,6, and Sabbath and etc. Sabbath has a connotation for the idea of seventh-day, hence why some modern languages, such as Spanish, call the seventh-day of the week “Sabado”. You may also know that Sabbath is a day of rest. We also know that we aren’t supposed to work on Sabbath. So we know when Sabbath is, we know we rest on Sabbath, and we aren’t supposed to do labor on the Sabbath. But in all of this we still have not learned what Sabbath means.
The Hebrew word Sabbath does not mean seven, it does not mean rest, nor does it mean to not labor. The word Sabbath means “to cease”. Now note that Sabbath is a verb which indicates action or a state of being. Sabbath isn’t something that just happens to us. We must accept it and enter into it purposely.
So what is it that we cease from? The first four words of the commandment says in plain English, “remember the day to cease”. Cease from what? Note that this text does not tell us. It simply goes into the next phrase, “to keep it Holy.” To find out what we are to cease we read verse nine of Exodus chapter twenty and we find this sentence, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work.” So we are to cease from all work. According to verse nine God has given us six days to labor and do all of our work on and one day to cease from it all upon. So the simplest way to put it is we are “to cease” from work.
Now most people see this ceasing from work to be the work of labor that we do to make money, grow food, or maintain something. God demonstrated this concept in how He rained manna on Israel providing food for them ever day but rained double the amount on Friday so they would have sufficient food for Sabbath. Simply put labor is physical work that provides something for us and God wants us to cease from that. Labor is from what we are to cease. But I want to draw your attention to another aspect of labor or work that is contrary to the Sabbath commandment that many Adventists are not considering. This is the work that many of our Adventist friends do trying to earn their salvation. This commandment exhorts us to cease from our attempting to provide not only for ourselves physically but also for ourselves in a salvation sense. What a contradiction of this commandment happens every Sabbath day when a well meaning Adventist shows up to church because he/she has to. How big of a contradiction to this commandment when an Adventist actually thinks Sabbath keeping can earn them something. Think about it. Whether earning something physical or in a legalistic salvation sense all labor is contrary to this commandment.
If we draw the two ideas together presented by the words Holy and Sabbath in Exodus twenty and verse eight what we discover is God has placed in the midst of His law of Ten Commandments a law of grace. For verse eight of Exodus chapter twenty means, “Don’t forget the day to cease laboring for yourselves and make sure that you keep God in it.”
This is why Sabbath is so beautiful. It is God’s invitation to us to let Him provide not only for us physically but spiritually and above all else to keep Him in it. I want to encourage you to rest in God not only from your physical labors but also from your striving to earn what has already been freely given.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it Holy. |
