Bible Study: Commonly Used Scriptures to Question Sabbath Observance

Let's just go... I said there's one thing I want to cover that I was going to go through the interactive part. Let's go to Isaiah 58. Because Isaiah 58 gives us a framework for discussing. Even during lunch, I had a couple of conversations with each of you, a different of you, about, okay, is this okay on the Sabbath? Is that not okay on the Sabbath? And we are supposed to ask those questions, and those questions are based on... We don't have a tummid. We don't have this list. We're supposed to actually discuss it. We're supposed to actually wrestle with it. And we're going to come to some slightly different answers sometimes. And then we're supposed to say, okay, we can live with each other. We're not living with, should you keep the Sabbath, we're living with all that area in here. And I'll read this, and then someone asked me a question. I'll give you an answer to here. Isaiah 58 and verse 13. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, and that's a very... Hebrew is so filled with imagery. I mean, I was looking something in Isaiah the other day, and the trees were talking to each other. You know, and it wasn't meant to be taken literal. This is poetry. And so it's set up in these images. So it's like you just get your foot stomping on it. You're just grinding it into the ground. From doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight. Now, it's interesting doing your pleasure, but you're supposed to find delight in it. So we're supposed to find something good and delightful, and there's supposed to be some... There's supposed to be joy in this day.

The holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways. They're finding your own pleasure. They're speaking your own words. Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord. And then he makes this province here that fits into the people of ancient Israel. But that principle right there can take study, and study, and study, an application to so many situations. Okay, is this honoring God? Is this something that... And in that, it's even, you know, physically, because honoring God means we meditate all day long. No, not necessarily. You know, I think one of the best things you could do in the Sabbath is take your kids to an arboretum and let them study the trees, and the flowers, and the different plants, and whatever. I mean, there's things you can do physically. What is the limit? And here was the question. What should I do my normal exercise on the Sabbath? And I'll answer this the way... We were in France a few years ago at the feast, and they didn't have any kind of full-time minister in France. So I ended up... It was sort of odd. Almost after every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I ended up sitting with some French people, and they were asking questions. A lot of them practical questions. And one day, this group of... I think it was about five. Do you remember five widows came up to me, and they were talking in French, and they had brought somebody with them as an interpreter. And the interpreter said, they have something very, very serious to talk to you about. So, okay. And they said, well, there's a young man here in the church who jogs on the Sabbath. He goes jogging on the Sabbath. Now, we've been trying to explain to him that he shouldn't go jogging on the Sabbath, and he won't listen to us. And he said, well, I said, okay, I'll talk to him. So, I met the guy. He spoke perfect English. He had actually lived in the United States for a short period of time. And we sat down, and I said, you know, the ladies are upset with you. He says, yeah. He said, they get upset with me. He was a professional photographer. He said, I would go and shoot photography on the Sabbath, because I just love it so much. And they got us all upset because that's my work. So, he said, I stopped taking pictures on the Sabbath. But he says, I jog every day for miles. He says, on the Sabbath, I take a short jog, not just for the exercise of it. He says, because it clears my mind. You know, there are certain people that it clears my mind. And I'm able now, because I'm running five miles, I run a mile. And I just run this mile, and it clears my mind, and it actually enhances my Sabbath. He says, is that wrong? I said, nope, that's not wrong with me. He smiled. I said, now I want you to go to explain to the six, the five widows in the church, that they shouldn't be offended because it helps you clear your mind.

I said, I mean, if you love them, you should go explain it to them. Not me, you. He just sat there for a minute, and he said, you just ruined my life. I said, what did I do? He says, I can't do that to them because I have to love them. The Bible says, and that means I've got to give up jogging. I said, no, I didn't say I have to give up jogging the one mile and the Sabbath. I don't think you're writing the Sabbath. No, but I'm not loving my older sisters. I said, okay, that's a little different principle, isn't it? All during the feast every time you'd see me, he'd say, I talked to them, and you ruined my life. I mean, it became a big joke. You know, I talked to them, you ruined my life. He said what I mean. He looked, you have to look at the principle of things. For him to run that one mile and the Sabbath, since he was this jogged every day, it wasn't huge exercise. He said, it's not even work for me. He says, but it clears my mind. I mean, I've gone for a walk for a mile on the Sabbath. Not anymore, because I'm too busy on the Sabbath. But you know, you'd walk, I'd go for a walk, and it wasn't work because it would clear my mind. So I understood exactly what he was talking about. If he was going out and running five to ten miles a day, which was normal for him, that's a workout. That's different. That's an actual workout. But there was a different principle here, and he caught it right away. Yeah, I'm offending them, aren't I? Yeah, but you're not doing wrong, but you are offending your older sisters. I mean, he caught it. He understood it immediately. We have to think sometimes in terms of principle. All laws are based on principles.

Do not steal is based on the principles. God gives you the right to own something, and nobody else can take it. See, there's a principle behind that wall. Do not kill is that human life is sacred to God. We're made in the image of God. We might be messed up images of God, but we're still made in the image of God. You're not allowed to just kill somebody arbitrarily unless he gives you permission. You're not allowed to. So it's the same thing. And he understood that not offending those older women was more important. He said, well, just tell them you decided you're going to go for a walk.

Oh, that's okay. That's not work. Well, in their mind, okay, it's not work. So he worked it out. It was fine. So that's the thing. You know, we all know there's a certain point where exercise is work. You know, when you're soaking wet, you can't really breathe. Okay, you're past the point. You're into work. But there's a point where a walk can, and I suppose somebody who jogs, could jog a little bit, and it doesn't necessarily work. For most of us, any kind of jogging is work. So for 90% of us, that's not even a question. Getting out of bed in the morning sometimes is work. But you get into it anyways. So I thought that was a good question because there's no pat answer. And yet when you apply the principle, once again, there's lots, most people would not be doing exercise at all in Sabbath. Somebody who walked a mile.

I used to walk when I was younger because it would help me pray. It would just help me pray. So I just walk, and walk, and walk, and walk, so I could sort of get my mindset to pray.

So I used to do that, you know, I mean 40 years ago, I used to do that quite a bit. And I'd do that on Friday nights. In fact, I can remember being a teenager and telling my parents, so I'm going to go for a little bit of walk, and it'd be after sundown. They'd say, okay, I'd just go out and walk, and walk, and walk, and just try to pray. I mean, I'm trying to learn how to pray. I'm a teenager, you know, and it was by walking. So I wasn't breaking the Sabbath because I wouldn't walk for 45 minutes. Now if I was lifting weights, and running, and you know what I mean? That's a different thing. So, principle. We're always looking for principle.

Because principle doesn't do away with law. It explains it and makes it applicable. That's what it does. You know, it's like what Solomon says, and I'm paraphrasing, he says, everyone knows there's a difference between a man who steals because he wants to be rich, and a man who steals because he's hungry, but both have to appear before the law. So the law has to judge that, but everybody knows those are two different offenses. So any good judge may punish both, but there'll be two different punishments. You say, well, thou shalt not steal means everybody gets the same punishment. No, it's not. That's his point. The principle behind it. You're both wrong, you both get punished. But yours, I mean, stealing someone's sheep, he had to pay back four or seven, depending on how severity the crime. Remember when Nathan told David the story of the man who was very rich and stole some poor man's only sheep? What was David's response? That man should die! How could a rich man do that in my kingdom? That's horrible. That man should die. And God knew what he would say because that was justice. And that's when Nathan said, yep, then you're him. That had to be hard when you just pronounce the death penalty on yourself. You know, that's tough. That's you. You stole some man's little lamb, and it was his wife. Once again, the law's the law, but you have to look at each case to figure out how do I apply it here to this particular case. That's what makes the study of God's law so fascinating. The book of Deuteronomy, half of it is all cases. You look at it, it's a case. And so what do you do in this case? Well, you do this. They were trying to decide how to apply God's law throughout cases. And a lot of that is done by Moses. God says, and I went to God, and God said, do this, and that's how I applied this. And they're doing that all through it. The book would do it on. How do I apply the law to everyday behavior? And that's where the Sabbath gets to be an issue, too. How do we apply the Sabbath to everyday behavior? And where is it? Making it so strict that we don't delight in it is not right either. But, boy, we can infringe on this very easily when we're spending our time and our effort taking away from the Sabbath, or being in environments that aren't Sabbath, really for Sabbath.

Anybody have a scripture that someone's tried to nail you with, showing you that you don't have to keep the Sabbath? What is it? Yeah, verses five and six. Romans 14.

Okay, Leon, how would you explain it?

You don't know? Okay, you're asking me. That's a wise man.

You do know, but you're gonna make me... so Romans 14.5.

One person esteems one day above another. Another esteems every day alike. Let H1 be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it to the Lord, and he who does not observe the day to the Lord, he does not observe it. There you go. You can keep the Sabbath if you want, and keep Sunday, or I can keep Monday, or I can keep every day in my heart. It doesn't matter to God. I just have to do what I think I should do. So how do you answer that? That's the first thing. Did you hear what she said? It didn't say the word Sabbath. You have to read into Isagesus. Isagesus is the Greek word that says you read into the scripture. Exegesis says you read out of the scripture, right? So we're exegetics. We try to take out of it what's there, but we still fight our tendency, all of us do, to read into it what we want to say. That's just human beings. So you're reading something into there that's just not there. It doesn't say Sabbath. Now, there are very good Protestant—I don't find too many good Catholic commentaries—that will look at this and say, this is dealing with the Sabbath, and then say, but there is a possible explanation based on the passage, and they'll say exactly what we say.

So we're not the only ones. People look at this, and they come in with the preconceived idea, but when they're honest, they say, well, we think it means this, but you know, it could mean this. And then at the end, they'll explain why they take the first meaning over the second, but they have to give the second because it's a legitimate discussion. So I have two volumes set on by Canfield on Romans. I have a hard time using it because literally, probably a third of it's in Greek. He'll be writing in English, and he'll say, well, as you know, Paul also said, and the next two liked Greek. Where is that from? They even talk about it because he's not writing it in English. He wrote it in Greek. So then I have to look up where it is so I can go find out what he's actually saying and read it in English. There's a couple of things to think about the scripture that's very important. One is, we always talk about this, the context, the context of the book, the context of the passage, the context of the words themselves. We don't always have to know the Greek in Hebrew. Sometimes it helps. A lot of times it's not that big an issue. It adds color, it adds power, but just the English Bible will give us enough to look at it and say, wait a minute, there's a problem with that argument. Let's go back to verse 1.

Receive what it was weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things. So what he's talking about here, there's arguments going on in the church over something. They say, look, some people are very weak on this issue, some are very strong on this issue. Paul was very...

he wanted... the idea of it's not a faith, it's sin. I mean, he's not the only one who said that in the Bible, but he was very powerful with that. As he dealt with people coming into the church from all different backgrounds, he said sometimes, you know, if it's a person who comes into the church and says, I was taught all my life that drinking alcohol is a sin. So the only time I'm going to take alcohol is at Passover, because otherwise I just believe it's wrong. And I've heard people say, well, you have an alcohol problem. You should be able to drink alcohol. What's your problem? You know, the Bible doesn't say it's a sin. No, the Bible doesn't say you have to drink it either. It doesn't. So that's where in a case where a person feels that strong about it, you see, well, that's... it's a sin for them. So except for Passover, they don't drink. And when they come over to your house, you just don't offer them. Okay, all of a sudden, so it's coming over. We're not going to have wine tonight. You know, you would do that with an alcoholic, but you're like, yeah, but this is different. This person has a weak, weak understanding. Well, he says, okay, so what? And that's where we have to cut each other some slack. And sometimes something doesn't make sense to us as being strong, important to one person, but some people make something so important to them. And you try to work with that to give them a chance to maybe grow, or maybe you just, okay, as long as they know this person, I'm not... I'm going to ever drink alcohol on Trump over whatever it is. He says, but here now we start to... so this is the issue. Now let's look at the specifics of it. For one believes that they may eat all things, but he was eat weeks-only vegetables. So what's this first issue? What is it?

Somebody who is an omnivore versus somebody who believes he can't eat meat. It's wrong. It's vegetarian. Why would there be vegetarians?

Once again, this is really broken down by people who know Greek. And it's so fascinating to see them break this down and try to figure out what it means because they're asking the same questions we are. And one of the more common conclusions is this is dealing with people, pagans, who have come into the church because Rome did have a lot of pagans that had come in. And they had actually participated in...

Meat offered to idols was a big thing because it was actually offered to idols. And therefore, they'd become vegetarians rather than eat meat because it may have been offered to an idol. Now it doesn't say that. I'm not saying it's exactly what it means. But you could start to see where you could cover this from a lot of different directions. I mean, there were Jews who would not eat meat offered to idols, obviously, so they wouldn't eat it out of the marketplace. And there may be people saying, you know what? I'm not going to eat meat at all. You can't even get meat that hasn't been offered to an idol. You know, you ever pick up... You can find meat, you know, that was blessed by a rabbi or there's certain meat you can get that's blessed by a Muslim cleric. You know, some people say, I can't eat that. It was blessed by a Muslim cleric. It doesn't bother me. I'm not going to go to his services and watching Blessed. But if someone said I can't eat that, I would serve to them. And it wouldn't bother me a bit not to serve to them because I understand where they're coming from. And we have to honor that in each other because we're not talking about eating pork. You see what I mean? We're talking about these things where, okay, we're in here where what is the answer to it? The only other way we could do this is as a church have our council make a decision all this and say everybody lives by the same decision. Well, we don't want to go down that route. It's easier in some ways, you know, but it's not always fair and it's not even always wise. Okay, people that have to make the decisions can make the decisions. And especially in the United, our approach has always been, unless we have to, our council's not going to make a decision in doubtful issues.

We're going to try to work that through individually. And I've always found that I've appreciated that. But there's times I wish they would make my job easier. But that's not the point. They don't care how easy my job is. They care about trying to do this right. And so Paul says, let not him who eats despise him who does not eat. Let him not who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has received him. Now this is about pork. No, it's not. It's not about vegetarianism. It's very specific what it's talking about. Who are you to judge another servant? To his own mastery stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand for God is able to make him stand. Who are you to judge another man's servant? Every once in a while, I'll be going to say something to somebody about something and that'll pop into my head. Who are you to judge another man's servant? That's God's servant. This is God's person. Is this something you're supposed to bring a judgment to? Because there are times as a pastor I'm supposed to go tell somebody, you can't do that. I'm supposed to do that. And I have to. But there's times I'm going to do it. And I think, wait a minute, is that within the realm of my responsibility? If it isn't, who am I to judge another man's servant?

You know? And okay, I'll take a step back.

So, I mean, you know, if I see someone who's a vegetarian, I've met vegetarians in the church, and they say, well, I'm doing it for health reasons, then I want to say, okay, but that's not biblical. But I don't say, okay, but that's not biblical. I step back and say, okay, well, but you're not going to find too many people here that don't even meet you. Oh, I know. You'll hear that. I know. It's okay. I'm just a vegetarian because I think it's healthier. Okay. He says one person, now it's in this context, one person seems one day above another, another seems every day alike, but he needs to be fully convinced in his own mind. Now, he goes through the rest of this and says, every one of us has to give account to God for our decisions. That's where he ends up. But if he's talking about the steaming one day over another, we have a real biblical problem. One, the Sabbath isn't mentioned, as it was said. Two, that means God esteemed a day, and some people agree with God, and some people don't. We have a real problem since God hallowed that day. God made that day holy. So, do we have the right to make a decision on which day we esteem over another if it's the Sabbath?

I mean, would you apply that to any... you couldn't apply that to any other of God's commandments. You decide. You decide whether you want to lie or not. Some people lie, some people don't. Let nobody judge each other over it. We better be judging somebody who's lying. So you can't take any of the major commandments, you know, love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I decide to love my neighbor by slapping him around. Well, that's okay. Just don't judge each other. You can't go there on anything, but they'll go there on the Sabbath when the Sabbath isn't even mentioned. So what could it mean? And here's what is brought out, like I said, even in the many of the Protestant commentaries.

At this time period, and you will find it... one reason we know this is it's written a lot in the second century. It is written... all through the second century, this is an issue that came out of the first century. And that is the Jews fasted twice a week. Now, we don't know if it was a full-day fast, but there was a fast they did, maybe skip a meal or whatever. There was part of their worship, and Christians imitated that. Because what we find in the second century is bishops telling their congregations and writing it, you know, in part of the records that we have. You shouldn't fast on the days that the Jews fast on, because you're being like them. So, like, I don't know, theirs was Tuesdays and Thursdays, yours would be Mondays and Wednesdays. So you see these fast days that were really important. In fact, what's very interesting, you see Sunday-keeping churches in the second century. The leaders telling their people, don't fast on the Sabbath, because the Sabbath was supposed to be a joyful day. Even though they were going to church on Sunday, they still saw the Sabbath as something biblically important. So don't fast on that day, because that should be a festival day. That should be a good day. So, we know from the second century, there was a big issue over who esteemed what day that you fasted on. That's makes a whole lot more sense. I mean, if we're going to have to read something in there, because it doesn't tell us, right? The Sabbath doesn't fit. You're forcing something in there. God says this is holy. And some people don't agree with God, some people don't agree with God, but it's okay. That makes no sense. And it's sure not how Paul fought. So it probably had to do with fast days, which would make sense with vegetarianism, these kinds of issues that were really big in the church in the first, second century. Yeah. So the first few verses, the way I always thought of it was, this is talking about the vagaries, the gray areas of the law. Sabbath is not a gray area of the law, so I can't be talking about that. And, or, can't be done in clean meats, because that's not, that's not a gray area of the law either. But the main thing is like, don't go against your conscience in the gray areas of the law, and don't judge others in the gray areas of the law. Which is really simple. Do you hear what she said? The whole, the whole message of the passage is, don't judge each other on the gray areas of the law. Clean and unclean meats in the Sabbath are not gray areas. So they're not even, and they're not even mentioned here. So it's, it's fairly simple. Yet, like Leon said, this is one of the, this is one of the hammers. This is one of the hammers. But just a little common sense, and practical exegesis, and you come up with, oh wait a minute, those two subjects are never mentioned. So we're reading it into the verses, which is, uh, isaacis. We're reading it into the passage. So yeah, once you get down to it, that's such a simple, logical answer. But they'll, they'll just stare at you sometimes, like, no, that's not what it means. It means the Sabbath.

So that one doesn't work so well. Any, any other comments or questions on that one? Because that one took the part pretty easy. I'm surprised, Tal, that seems to have so much weight, when it shouldn't. I mean, there's other verses that you could argue much more stronger than that one. I have that, uh, Mark 16 verse 1 and 2. Oh, about the Sabbath? Yeah. Let's see, Mark 16.

Mark 16 is about Jesus being resurrected. Now when the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices that they might come and anoint him.

Oh yeah. They came to to him when he had risen. Okay. So he, he actually rises here. So that's why you should keep Sunday. Okay. I've had that for a reason. They keep Sunday. Right. So, and they saw, they went themselves and they said, uh, verse 3, and they said among them, says, who will roll away the stone from the door for the tomb for us? Because I mean, there's a big heavy stone in the end of it. But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away for was very large and entering the tomb, they saw a young man close along the white robe, sitting on the right side and saying that they were alarmed. They said them, do not be alarmed for you see Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here for the place where they have laid him, but go tell his disciples and Peter. Now see, he was resurrected here on Sunday morning. They arrived early Sunday morning, very early in the morning before the sun had risen. He wasn't there. He was gone. And the angel has to tell them, oh, he's gone. He's not here. So to say this proves he was risen then, well, why would he have to tell them that? So you have to come in once again. We're looking at about 18 to 1900 years of teaching. So it's been so embedded into the mindset of people. They really don't analyze what they're saying. They show up. It's before sun up. Well, they have this Easter sunrise service because Jesus rose at the sunrise. No, they show up before sunrise and he's gone. He's not even there to talk to them. He's gone. Now he talks to them later. But the point being made, he was already resurrected. So the question is when was it done at one o'clock in the morning or midnight? I mean, what time during the night was he resurrected? That's when you can go back through the three days and three nights and you come up with three days and three nights. If he dies at just before sundown here, he has to be resurrected just before sundown three days and three nights later, which is on the Sabbath. I don't think I've ever corrected anybody on that because I'm just just, I'm going to be fighting and arguing. I just say, you know if you want to believe that, go ahead. I find that a lot of times it's not worth the argument. It's not worth it to me. You're not going to accomplish anything. It's like I said when I told you, well you don't think you earned salvation through Sabbath keeping? No more than you think you earned salvation through Sunday keeping? Well, all of a sudden there was nothing to argue about. It's yeah, it's not worth it. I was going to argue with you. You should be, you should be keeping the Sabbath. There's part of me wanting to. No, you know, it's just come on. There's, there's no need doing this here. He knows I'm a Sabbath keeper. He knows why I do it because I told him why I do it. And we ended up, you know, having shaking hands, you know. So if someone's mind isn't open, why beat them? Yeah, I've got his other mind. Why beat them? Yeah.

So yeah, that's, that one is an interesting one because once again, just like what it seems one day, oh, that's the Sabbath, which is not there. Well, Jesus was risen here at this specific time. No, he wasn't because he's already risen. Yeah. Yeah.

Here's the thing that my answer to that would be. That does prove something very important. It proves that Pentecost should be kept by Christians. So my question to you is, if Passover symbolizes the resurrection of Jesus Christ, why don't you do that one?

In other words, if you, if this proves actually keep a holy day, why don't you keep all the holy days? Because if you try to argue the Sunday thing, what was on a Sunday? You know, so no, no, I agree with you. I think we should keep a particular Sunday. That's right. And you see no command for them to honor Christ's resurrection on a Sunday. There's nothing there. Some of the churches do realize when Pentecost is more than they do the others.

Yes. Most churches keep a Sunday or keep a Pentecost service. Yeah. Yeah. Most churches keep... That's why we had a holy day that fell on a Sunday and we couldn't use... I'm sorry. What am I thinking of here? Oh, Pentecost. I'm sorry. We can't use Pentecost here or Holland, Brentwood, because they have services on that day. Yeah. And Pentecost, not just Sunday, but Pentecost services. So yeah. Yeah, I find that's an argument that just loops you around all over the place. I agree. We should be keeping Pentecost. We keep Pentecost. How come you don't keep the rest of the holy days? They all have Christian implications. I mean, Christ is the Passover. Christ is coming back. The Day of Atonement, when the redemption through the sacrifice that we become atone to God, you believe that, don't you? Well, they'd say, yes. Well, why don't you celebrate the holy day that celebrated that? This is kind of a different story, but I've got a Jewish friend that only keeps Atonement. That's the only one. They believe that's the most holy of all of them, because that's when the high priest went into the Holy of Holies, and that's when Israel was accepted or rejected, because if he went in and didn't come out, they were rejected. So that is considered the most holy of all days, because that's when God accepts you as a Jew. So yeah, I can understand that. It's a semi-secular Jew. He's very sick. Is he? Yeah, yeah. He's still the bare minimal. It's like the person that goes to church on Eastern Christmas. You know, that's all that is. I gotta go on. I have to go on a toad. I didn't want to take too long here. I know everybody gets sort of tired here. The other two big ones are Colossians 2, 16, and 17, and Galatians 4, 9, and 10. And I won't go through them. I'm just going to touch on them. There's a pretty good explanation in our booklet. Pretty good explanation on why these don't work. Just like the Romans. The Romans went pretty easy to tear apart, I think. These two get a little bit more complicated. Okay, so let's go to Galatians 4. Just look at that one real quick. Once again, I'm not going to go through all the details. You can look this up, but we just need to be aware of these. As everyone else, well, someone's going to come and blindside you with it. Verse 9, he says, But now, after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you desire to be again in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I'm afraid of you, lest I have labored for you in vain. See, you want to observe days where Sunday is not a holy day. That's where they'll argue this. Sunday is just the day we honor Jesus' resurrection. You want to observe days and months and seasons and years, and that's wrong. Can't you see? You're trying to observe these things. Anybody have a comment just on that? A weak and beggarly. I wouldn't call things of God to be weak and beggarly. Once again, so you're saying that when God instituted the Sabbath at creation, and when Jesus said, I am the Lord of the Sabbath, he's the Lord of the weak and beggarly things. Sounds more like big and holidays to me than God's holy days. What you have here is, yes, this is written to Gentiles who are in two different directions in this book. Part of them are trying to be Jewish, part of them are trying to be pagan. You're just going to mess in this church. So, yeah, you wouldn't call.

Jesus, I'm the Lord of the weak and beggarly things. I mean, it's just bizarre to think through it. I understand where they're coming. They're not dumb people, by the way. Well, they've been taught to despise. Yes. Yes.

It's almost anti-Christ. And the second part says, wherein you desire to end up being bondage. But as we saw in the sermon, specifically said the Sabbath is representative of us, me taking you out of each of our bondage. So it's the exact opposite. The bondage is referring to what they came from. I know, but I'm saying some people will say, following the law is bondage. In this case, he's specifically saying, I'm taking you out of bondage.

And he previously said, the Sabbath is picturing the fact that I took you out of bondage. Yes. So what was he contradicting himself? The bottom is, light is they weren't in bondage to the Sabbath at the beginning. So they had to be in a different bondage. But I've heard people say, they'll use the fact that keeping the law, putting yourself in bondage by keeping the law.

But that's not the intention of that. Yes. Yeah. Like you said, I have a day for you to keep to remind you. I brought you out of bondage. Now I'm telling you to stop keeping that day because it's bondage.

Well, part of what it's referring to there, too, is that's totally right. But the previous verses talk about bondage as slaves. So that's all that's continued. It's so hard to pick these things out and just analyze them by themselves. It's always in context. It's always in context. Mr. Fedy in the verse 8, it actually mentions, he did service to them by which nature art no god. That's right. He mentions paganism right there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So... I never noticed that before. Oh, really? Yeah, that's real important because the bondage he's talking about here, there's other places he does... he can refer to law as bondage if you think it... because what it does is it can't save you. You know what I mean? All it does is put me in jail. And he'll play with words like that. But this was pretty obvious because he's talking specifically to pagans. You used to worship these false gods, and that was a bondage you were in.

And now you want to go back to keep days and seasons and years. It has to do with their paganism. Or he's actually saying what God gave... and I've seen that people say this... No, what God gave ancient Israel was a form of bondage. It was a slavery he gave them, and we're free from it. Now, we're talking about paganism. The passage is talking about paganism. So, once again, that one comes apart pretty easy, too. We have to watch about paganism ourselves. I've seen people in the church knock on the wood. Oh, we do all kinds of things.

We do all kinds of things. We didn't even think about them. Yeah, we do. And I'll tell you, some of these pagans are really sincere. My wife and I were in Mexico City one time, went into a Catholic church just to look at it, you know. And I noticed before we got in there, way out there, there was a man crawling to the church. He didn't have any legs. And he was crawling to the church. And we went in and looked at the church and spent a good while. And by the time we come out, he was at the doorstep, crying like a baby.

And human beings are designed to have a relationship with God. And when it's not there, we will try to find, we'll maybe factor, we'll do anything to try to film that. That sincerity is real because we're designed that way. If God hasn't revealed himself to you, you're still trying. You're still trying. So that's why you look at all the desire people have, and you know God hasn't thrown them away. Until he reveals himself, what do they know? I did not even want to believe that. It was a plane to make it.

I don't talk anybody able to see it. I've got a brother that's 11 precious, he's not even a Sunday in Methodist church. He can't see it in his wife's hand either. If we go visit, we do not talk about the Bible. And yet, you know they want to please God? Yes. I think he's probably a better Christian than I am. Well, and that's why we're so, we believe in the lake of fire, but we're not looking at every person saying, oh, you're going to hell, you're going to hell.

We're saying you get your chance. Everybody gets their chance because God, we're just designed to want that relationship with God.

In fact, I have, you feel compassion sometimes. You just want them to know.

You just want them to be able to, and they will get that chance. They will get that chance. Some people still were rejected. That's beyond me. Can you imagine the surprise that's going to be on their face when they go through that?

I can't imagine what it's like to die and wake up. Yeah. And you're, you're looking and I don't know, there's how many billions of people all woke up at the same time. I often wondered, will they have clothes on?

Because I think, well, it would break, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're dying on a battlefield and the guy that killed you, and you're both resurrected next to each other, you're going to start trying to kill each other again. But if everybody's naked, maybe you won't.

It'll calm things down. But it'll be a spiritual body. No, no, no, not in that second resurrection. So yeah, the first resurrection is okay, because we're all going to change the nature. But that second resurrection, those are all through physical people. If they were crippled in the first year, they might not have, not by our cripple. No, in the second resurrection, you'll be healed. You'll come back with ready to be, to be God. So you, you know, you're crippled, and you wake up, and you're whole, and you have no idea what's happened. You know, anybody that's been knocked out in an operation knows what it's like to die. I had cataract surgery here a couple months ago, and they, you know, I'm sort of fascinated by all this stuff going on. I said, look, the anesthesiologist, I said, what's this stuff supposed to kick in? And he goes, about now. And I woke up.

And I said, wow, does that stuff work? And the doctor goes, uh, Gary, I'm in your eye. You're going to have to not talk now. Oh, yeah.

Because it's like, boom, man, you know, because they have to wake you up in the middle of the operation to talk to you. And it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot, you know, because it worked. But I don't know how much time went past. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I don't know what it was. It wasn't very long, but you're there. You're not there. And that's the way death is. So you can imagine dying. I mean, I wonder how many people are going to be waking up screaming.

You're resurrected. You're screaming. You look at everybody else around you screaming. I mean, you won't know where you are. They're spiritual. That's great. Getting up and going. Yeah. I think about that a lot. So, yeah, it's well, we won't go through collages to 16, 17. That's actually the most difficult of them, but it's in here because I don't want to go too long. But those are the main ones. Now, there's other ones they'll say, well, he did away with the law. But you've got to say, wait a minute. Do you believe all the Ten Commandments were done away with? Well, no. Which ones weren't? Well, the ones, only the ones that aren't restated in the New Testament. Okay. Well, which ones are restated in the New Testament? Nine of them.

I find the Sabbath restated in the New Testament over and over again, not as a command. Um, yeah, okay. It's, it's, I mean, I understand it. I, there's a whole, like I said, there's centuries of, of learning it, of passing it down. It's not stupid. To me, like you said, though, it seems so obvious. But I do understand the complexity of it because it's like anything else. Yet, you know, if you have a camera and you put a blue lens on and everything's blue, right, or a star lens and every light looks like a star, I mean, you can put a lens on a camera. If you have a blue lens on, everything looks blue. Only by taking the lens off can you actually see the real colors. And they have a lens on. Their, their mind's eye has a lens on. Till God takes the lens off, the kid's head. So anyways, that gets us through. I, you know, I just want to touch the service. There's really, in fact, in Nashville, I gave a whole another Bible study on the Sabbath. Just from questions that came up. But we'll continue now to go through, like I said, I want to go through the kingdom of God. I want to go through what is the gospel. You know, I'll probably go through as many of the basic doctrines as people want to go through. And if some of you have one you want to go through again, let me know. We'll go through it. Like I said, it's been six years since I've gone through all the basic doctrines. And we'll keep doing that. So any other questions or? Today was a good day. Today was a good day. We weren't hungry while we sat. We don't know. We were, yeah, that's it was a good