Go Do

Thank you again, Mr. Bumgardner. I have to say, to start off, I don't know what I'm going to do when Connor finally grows up, because I've learned, as a speaker, I've used examples from him as a little baby and then a toddler growing up. As introductions or illustrations so many times, I think I'm depending on him a bit as a crutch. But having said that, I was struggling for how I wanted to get into the subject that I was planning to cover today. I knew I had the subject and things I wanted to say, and I just turned over this idea and that idea over an introduction. And then finally, it came to me that several examples of what Connor does probably do fit.

For example, to cite some of his behavior, and I'll give some illustrations. For one, when we tend to visit someone's house, his first instinct is to go look for the toys. Regardless of what our hosts are interested in or what they think we should be doing, he's looking for toys. And what's interesting is some places, they don't have to be human toys. He's played with dog toys and cat toys. He tends to presume that whatever he's focused on must be the most important thing going on. So that's what everyone else should focus on. Similarly, like most kids his age, he's ready to say whatever crosses his mind when it crosses his mind. He's not interested in waiting until someone's ready to give him attention or to listen as much to what other people think.

And I found that includes sometimes when we're praying. We, like many parents, wanted to help him learn to pray early on by example. So we pray with him at night before he goes to bed and usually at the beginning of each meal. And I don't know how many times I've had to tell him, Connor, pay attention. Connor, stop playing. Connor, pay attention. Don't eat while we're praying. And then, of course, it's often we've had to remind him, okay, at the end of a prayer, it's proper to say amen. And that brings me to the incident that made me think, okay, there's my introduction. There was a particular time when we did that and we looked at him. And Connor, you have to say amen. And he hesitated and he said in a real strange voice, amen! Well, my first reaction probably wasn't the best because I was standing next to him so I bopped him on the head. I said, Connor, that's not right. I said, we have to show respect to God when we pray. And that's what came to mind, what made me lead to this. It's about showing respect. Because we all need that lesson now and again. We need to show proper respect to God. All of us do. And, of course, we know that. I'm not introducing a new subject here. But I'm bringing up because for almost all of us, there are times when we're a little bit like toddlers, where we get caught up so much in our own perspective, or what we're interested in, that we might not realize how we're affecting others, or how others might perceive us. Including how God perceives us. And that fits. I've got a scripture I'm not going to turn to, but in Galatians 4.19, the Apostle Paul, in writing to the Galatian congregation, referred to them as, He said, And he said that because we're all little children to God. Even the oldest in the congregation. All of us are as little children spiritually. I will turn to 1 Corinthians 14, though, because knowing that, Paul still gave this admonition. 1 Corinthians 14 and verse 20.

I'm still leading up to the main subject I want to speak on. This shows the idea that we might be as little children, but God expects us to grow and mature. And he says, So we need to work at spiritual maturity, but still be as little children and malice. I'm reminded also, I didn't write in my notes, of how Jesus, when He sent the disciples out to preach, told them to be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves. I like that, you know, be in maliciousness, be as little children, but spiritually be mature. And I want to focus today on our being mature in our relationship. Being mature so that we show respect to God, not in prayer. That was an illustration, but I want to talk about something else that we can sometimes take for granted or move off in our perspective, and that's in observing the Sabbath. We want to show respect to God in the way we keep the Sabbath. Now, there might be, well, there not only might be, there is room for confusion on that subject. Partly because we're all aware, or we should be, that Christ clearly said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. It's not meant to be a burden. It shouldn't be a straight jacket. You know, it's not a long list of do's and don'ts. But, it's good for us to realize that while the Sabbath was made for man, it doesn't belong to man. I'm going to turn to Exodus 31, verse 13, to remind us that God Himself says that in a certain way. This is one of the common instructions in Scripture on the Sabbath. God, of course, is speaking to Moses to tell the children of Israel, and He says, Speak also to the children of Israel, saying, Surely, my Sabbath you shall keep. It's a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Eternal who sanctifies you. So, as I said, the Sabbath was made for us, but it doesn't belong to us. And that's all the more reason to treat it carefully with respect. God created it as a special blessing. And many of us remember a time nearly 20 years ago when some of our own leaders started saying, All the Sabbath is this burden or things like that. And some of us reacted and said, Wait a minute, no it's not. The Sabbath is a blessing. I don't want to be freed from the Sabbath. I love the Sabbath. I'm going to turn later to Isaiah 58, but I'll just remind us, though, that God did tell all of us that we should not trample on the Sabbath. He uses the term, keep your feet off of it. Don't walk all over it. I like to think of the Sabbath almost as a special place that God invites us into to meet with Him. That's where that analogy of Connor coming into someone's home and not showing the proper respect because he's a toddler and doesn't know better. I'm not trying to run down my son, but he goes off looking for toys and disregards the host.

We want to make sure that we don't inadvertently do that with the Sabbath when we enter it at God's invitation. I'll remind you, of course, this is a sermon that's review for us. Many of us have been keeping the Sabbath for a long, long time. I'm not going to pretend that I'm teaching you something new, but I was heartened. Actually, I gave this sermon earlier when I was visiting Athens. There was a long time member there who told me afterwards that I've probably heard a hundred sermons on the Sabbath, and I always like hearing more. I said, okay, then I don't feel bad about going over a subject that's well known to us. Now, the specific instructions on keeping the Sabbath are not particularly elaborate. There's not a lot of detailed instruction, and they're pretty clear. We're in Exodus. If you go over to chapter 20, we'll see one of the most basic instructions. Of course, it's part of the listing of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20 and verse 8.

He says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. You might say, well, how do we do that? You could say there's an answer right away. Six days you'll labor and do your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Eternal. Again, it belongs to Him. In it you shall do no work. You nor your son nor your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, or your cattle, or your stranger that's in your gates. Why? For in six days the Eternal made the heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Eternal blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Hallowed it is a word that basically means He made it holy. He put His presence in it.

Now, we could turn to Genesis, but I'm not going to read that account, but this reminds us that He did that as part of what we believe is a recreation of the surface of the earth. He remade the earth. He created all the life that we see on it. And then the seventh day came, and He didn't sit down and go, whoo, I'm beat. I'd like to create some more things, but I'm just too tired. I guess I'll have to rest. No, it was by plan and design. He created everything, every physical thing He wanted to. And some ministers have said He didn't stop creating on the Sabbath. He created the Sabbath. He made something that day. And He set us an example. He didn't just say, don't do as I do, do as I say. He kept the Sabbath Himself, and then instructed man to do so. It reminds me of the way Jesus introduced the foot washing as part of the Passover. While all the disciples were wondering what in the world was going on, when He took off His outer garments and got a towel and a basin of water, He went around and washed their feet, and He said, do you know what I've done to you? And He said, I've set an example. What I just did, you should do. As I said, the Passover, in my mind, doesn't seem like it's been very long since we were doing that very thing. And we could say, God did that with the Sabbath. He said, look what I'm doing. I rest on the Sabbath. I'm setting an example. That's what I want you to do. And in the commandment, as part of the Ten Commandments, we see one of the primary ways that we keep the Sabbath is by not working. That's a way that we maintain its holiness. Now, that leaves open considerable debate. While He says, don't work, He doesn't define work. What does it mean to work? Or what does it mean to not work? I've heard some interesting examples of what some people have thought. I've heard that members of the Orthodox Jewish community will actually, on Friday afternoon, tear off pieces of toilet paper in advance, so that they don't have to do the work of tearing it, should they need it on the Sabbath day. And they have many other things, of course, restrictions, in some cases, against turning on a light switch, or operating an elevator. And they're more than I could recount, and I didn't write them down.

Some of those things might seem laughable, but laughing at them doesn't give us a definition. And I thought, I don't want to give an absolute definition, because there are different ones, but some came to mind. And I know, in physics, they say work is expending the amount of energy that it takes to move matter. And no matter how much or how far, it's just, that's work. It's defined as the exertion of energy. And I believe they also might define it as raising temperature, but that doesn't fit in this case. I've heard some slang definitions. I've heard one fellow say, if you ain't working... No, let me back. I said it wrong. If you ain't sweating, you ain't working. That's one way to look at it. Or if you do it for pay, then it's work. I've heard some people say, what I do on the boss's time is work. And what's on my time? You know, it's not.

Well, none of those are entirely adequate, I think, for the Sabbath. So it might be showing respect to God if we look to His Word to get some ideas. And there's one guideline provided in Jeremiah 17 that I think is useful. Jeremiah 17, beginning in verse 19. As I've been... since I'm teaching the major prophets class at ABC this year, I've been spending a lot of time studying there. And I've been not surprised but reminded of how often God mentions the Sabbath and that that was one of the primary sins of the Israelites that led them to be left by God and put into captivity. But Jeremiah 17, verse 19.

Well, this seems pretty clear, then. You could say, heavy lifting is work. Carrying heavy loads around. Now, that still leaves that definition of what's carrying a heavy load. As I said, the Orthodox Jews, I believe it's more than a certain number of figs, is considering too heavy to carry on the Sabbath. And they've got rules that if it's something you're wearing as clothing, it doesn't count. I wouldn't want to get into that. And as I said, we'll generally know if we feel like we're carrying a burden. And another thing I think is worth thinking back to that wording when God gave the command and the Ten Commandments. He not only said, don't work on the seventh day, he said, six days you shall work and do all your labor. So we should work on the other six days. I know in some religious groups in the past, especially the Puritans that came to America, they saw that as a direct command that you'd better be industrious and you'd better be working. I'm not sure what they would think of us. You know, our five-day workweek in the society today, they might have frowned on that. Of course, then again, a lot of us have other work. I'm mowing the lawn or doing other things on that day off. But I think we couldn't see that that covers our occupation. Whatever our job is, now it might include manual labor like plumbing, laying pipe, loading trucks, assembling machinery, whatever our job might be. If you're digging in a coal mine or working in an auto factory, it's pretty clear that's hard work. But also sedentary activities. Say you're doing accounting or you're a computer programmer answering telephones. If that's your occupation, that's work. I think it sort of fits with one of those casual definitions of what you do on the boss's time. That must be work. That's something you shouldn't be doing on the Sabbath day.

But what about if you don't draw a paycheck? What if you're a stay-at-home mom or a full-time student? I had those both in my notes and it occurred to me. What if you're retired, which fits several members of our congregation? You still have day-to-day activities. And whatever your occupation is, I think that still falls within the purview of the fourth commandment. Six days a week, you might be working at the duties of your occupation. So on the Sabbath day, you don't.

And their questions can arise. I thought I'd explore or at least address the fact that there are questions and that there's different ways to look at them. My thought was, as I ask the questions, I want to bear in mind our thoughts should be, how can we best show respect to God on a Sabbath day and how we address them.

Stay-at-home moms have a lot of job duties. That includes feeding kids, keeping them properly groomed and dressed. It often involves a lot of housework. Sue and I have tried to share the housework, but I think in our house, she still does more. And that's partly, I read a comedian say once that women do more housework because men cannot see dirt. And sometimes I thought, because Sue will say, well, that needs clean. I'll look at it and say, what do you mean it needs clean?

Well, it's fine to me. So she sees something I don't see. But, you know, well, that also brings to mind just after I was working on the sermon, Friday evening we were sitting down and something, I can't remember what spurred it, but Connor said something about, you know, something being moved and he said, that's for daddy. And he basically said, daddy's lift heavy things. I was happy with that. I said, okay, that's the definition of a dad.

You move the heavy things. So Sue asked, well, what does mommy do? And Connor thought about it and he said, well, mommy fixes lunch and mommy gets things at the store. Okay. Mommies do a lot of other things, too, though. And one of the things is, you know, they teach their kids everything. They teach them how to comb their hair, how to brush their teeth, tie their shoes. Would a mom who has all those duties, when the Sabbath comes, say, well, sorry, kids, you're on your own.

I'm not doing that stuff I have to do every other day. Well, I don't think you can do that. So how do you answer it? And I thought part of the answer might include that idea of showing respect. Think if you had some guests in your home, and I don't mean like your best friend who you could do anything with, but, you know, special guests that you wanted to show respect, there might be some activities that you wouldn't do while they're there.

You had those guests in, you wouldn't get out the vacuum cleaner and start running it while they're there. You probably wouldn't go out to mow the lawn or, you know, say, I've got to go to the kitchen, I'm making a cake for the Sunday. You know, those things you'd say, well, it's not disrespectful. I've got guests. But if you had guests in and your two-year-old started to, well, let's just say you noticed a smell that made you think that you needed to change a diaper, you know, you'd excuse yourself for the guests, but you'd say, I'm not going to put this off till they're gone.

You need to take care of it right away. Now, nobody thinks ill of that. Or, you know, when you have very young children, they need to eat when they need to eat. So I think that's one, perhaps, a gauge to help us to educate our consciousness. As I said, there's not a list of do's and don'ts in the Bible.

But it does remind me of another guideline that I've heard in the church about as long as I can remember. I'm sure many of you have. And that's, we often say that if there are tasks that you can do in advance of the Sabbath, many times you should do them. I think in my family's experience, we try to give Connor a bath on Friday afternoons. It's not the only day of the week we give him a bath, but, you know, usually two or three times a week.

But we try to do it on Friday so he'll be nice and clean for the Sabbath. Now, and similarly, Sue tries to have something made for dinner so that on after services on the Sabbath we get home, it's just a quick heat up or pull something out rather than have to cook a meal. You know, I could go on with a lot of examples of my personal thoughts.

But as I said, I shouldn't need to. God didn't list a whole list of things and check off yes or no. Matter of fact, I think Jesus took the Pharisees to task because they were doing that. So it's not a... as I said, there's not a long list. But I think it's good there. I wanted to give my experience and say that they're not requirements. They're examples of what I try to do to respect the Sabbath. But when I say try to, it leaves room for the fact sometimes it doesn't go the way you expect. I've had times where I plan to give Connor a bath and I got a phone call with someone I had to talk to, and Sue was already occupied.

Now in a case like that, do we say, sorry Connor, you got to go to church dirty tomorrow? No, we've given him a bath on Saturday morning sometimes, or Friday evening. Oh, I know another case of... Sorry, I lost... I wasn't looking at my notes. That's what happened. I left my reading glasses in the car, so I'm sort of guessing at what it says on the page anyways. I want to draw an example of sometimes what your daily occupation, or your normal occupation, changes.

Or you might be occupied in something that for most people would seem normal to do on the Sabbath. And I apologize, I think I've probably used this example I know I have in personal conversation. I don't remember how often I've used it in a sermon. But when I was attending graduate school, my occupation included a lot of study. I had to read about three history books every week. And besides sitting in lectures and having discussions and writing papers... So you might say, well, reading is a good activity for the Sabbath.

I mean, most of us think that's one of the best things you can do on the Sabbath. Of course, you might read the Bible. Are there some things you don't read? No, I generally wouldn't pull out comic books or things like that. And I've got a big pile of them. Of course, they're really old. I'm saving them for Connor.

But most of us would think, well, reading a history or a biography... Reading a biography of George Washington, that wouldn't break the Sabbath. And I would agree. But when it was my job to read history books all week long... Boy, come Sabbath time, that's the last thing I wanted to do. And not only was I tired of it and didn't want to, but it didn't feel right. I felt like, well, that's my occupation. I shouldn't be engaging on the Sabbath in what I do six other days of the week. But, you know, it's not my job now. As a matter of fact, now I rarely get a chance to read history books, even though I really enjoy them. But I do study the Bible an awful lot. So I've got a strange inversion. I don't do as much extra Bible study on the Sabbath as probably many of you. Now, I still have my routine. I don't think I could start a day without having a cup of coffee and reading a few chapters of the Bible. I just do that like I breathe. But I don't do a lot of other Bible study on the Sabbath. But, you know, on Friday evenings, I like to pull out a history book just to unwind and take a rest. As a matter of fact, I don't know how many times I've mentioned this. I'm still, I think, two and a half years in working my way through Winston Churchill's history of World War II. I'm about halfway through the fifth volume. I was thinking I would get it done before we moved houses, but that's not going to happen. So, as I said, what is your normal occupation could affect what you don't do on the Sabbath. But I don't want to go so far as to say, well, it's all relative. You know, it's all just a personal thing because there are some black and white things. But when God doesn't give that definition of work, we have to educate our consciousness and think about showing respect to God. Let's move on to another subject, though. If you'll turn with me to Nehemiah 13. There's another area that's not addressed in the Ten Commandments, but this is a pretty... Well, it's clear-cut, but I want to present it and then put a little fog around it to discuss it after that. Nehemiah 13 and verse 15. Here, of course, you'll remember the story. Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the king in the Persian Empire, but he was Jewish. And he'd learned about the terrible state of the city of Jerusalem. It made him sad, and he presented it to the king. And the king actually gave him permission to go and oversee the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. And then Nehemiah served as governor for at least a couple of terms. So all that happened earlier in the book. Towards the end of the book, he's the governor, and he comes and he finds some things going on that he doesn't think are proper. And this is chapter 13 and verse 15. He says, I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions. Men of Tyre dwelt there also, who brought in fish and all kinds of goods, and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah and in Jerusalem. And I condemned the nobles of Judah and said to them, What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath? Did not your fathers do this? And did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city?

Yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.

Okay, so this brings up the idea that doing business, buying and selling, is outside the realm of what God wants us to do on the Sabbath.

Now, I could just stop there and say no more, but it might bring some questions to mind. As I said, I want to say that it's kind of clear-cut, but then if we look at his example and think, what was going on that he was observing?

Well, because doing business in that era was in some ways different than we have today in most experiences. If you've ever shopped in an open-air market, which we don't have much of nowadays, I noticed on Route 23 there's a flea market. That reminded me of the days I was a student in Pasadena. A couple of times, a group of us traveled down to the Mexico border and walked across into Tijuana. There they have these what look like huts and shacks and people calling you over.

Buying something there is a lot different than if you go into the mall and you see a price tag, and that's what they expect. You go into a place like that, there's going to be what they call haggling. Arguing often involves insulting each other and yelling at each other and a lot of stress and tension negotiating some price.

Then, of course, in that day, payment involved getting out metal coins, which you could discuss whether that was even bearing a burden on the Sabbath, because gold and silver could be heavy. You'd have to put it on the scales and weigh it. We often don't realize that there was a limited number of sizes of coins, so merchants had to have special tools.

If, say, something cost three quarters of a shekel and they just had a shekel, they would literally cut the coin and say, here's your quarter back. That's where you get that, you know, what, two bits, three bits, six bits a dollar. You know, they used to cut coins into bits in the older days. And, of course, you also had to have security precautions to keep this metallic currency safe.

So, with that in mind, it makes us think, well, how much different is it? What if I received an item or I agreed for a service before the Sabbath, and then when I happened to see someone on Sabbath, I pulled an envelope out, and I said, well, here, put this away, and it has a piece of paper in it. You know, that piece of paper could be a signed check, it could be a ten dollar bill. And I'm using that example because that's been a practice in the church for about as far back as I can remember. And as far back as I can remember, some people have been very uncomfortable with that practice.

I could argue both ways and say, well, it's not a burden. I could say, you know, that the agreement, the negotiating or the transaction happened another time. The transfer of goods happened another time. But you could also say, you're still doing business. So, which is it? Well, there's not, as I said, a pharisaical list that says, no, you can't do that. I would be uncomfortable with going to the flea market, and as I said, haggling and negotiating and then loading the car with whatever.

I'm not as uncomfortable with doing this, but my practice generally is that I don't. I'll spend the 45 cents to put a stamp on it and mail it to someone, just because it feels a little more respectful to me. But that's me. As I said, I would leave it to her if it doesn't violate someone's conscience.

Certainly, there's nothing in Scripture that addresses that specifically. There's a similar case for if you need gasoline on this habit. Many of us drive a long ways to get here. And how much work is it to put gas in your car? I slip a nozzle in, a mechanical pump moves the fluid, I pull out a piece of plastic and do this. Okay, you could say, well, that's no big deal. But then again, I usually try to make a point of Friday afternoon stopping at a gas station before the Sabbath.

So, I feel it's more respectful if I can do it in advance to do it in advance. And I think it's partly because it's my practice, I normally do that, that if for some reason I can't, I might, I've had times where I'm still driving when the sun goes down on the Sabbath and I'm going to have to buy gas. I got a call yesterday to visit the hospital in Ashland, Kentucky.

Fortunately, I was home before dark, but I've had times where I might have been on my way back home and there wouldn't have been much choice about it. I thought it'd be more disrespectful to God and to His people for me to, if I were to call down here and say, sorry, I can't come to services because I don't have enough gas. Or to actually run out on the way down. That'd be an uncomfortable situation.

It reminds me, I think, was it the last Pentecost that the Smiths were here? I think he said that he got a flat tire on his way down. Of course, that's a whole different story. As a matter of fact, it does bring to mind, if you want to turn to Luke 14, I'm not going to explore this, but I'll just bring it up because it's something we often question. Luke 14 and verse 5.

Of course, the Pharisees were chiding Christ for doing something that they thought was breaking the Sabbath, and He answered them, saying, Well, which of you, having a donkey or an ox that's fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? And they couldn't answer him regarding those things. Basically, that's where we get that phrase, ox in a ditch. Basically, He was telling them, if your ox falls in a ditch, even if it's a Sabbath, you go pull it out so that the ox doesn't die.

But I've also heard many ministers say, How many of us push our ox into the ditch so we can pull it out? Or we don't bother to put a fence around it? So, my thought was, I'd leave it at that. We all have this idea where we need to learn what an ox in a ditch is, or what has to be done on the Sabbath. But there's not a long list of definitions.

I guess if you have a literal ox or a sheep in a pit in your yard, then you do have a scripture that addresses that one.

I'd just say, we want to strive to respect God on the Sabbath. And we want to take care of things in advance. It's not very respectful to God if I only, if I pay attention to all my own things first, and then with whatever time is left, I pay attention to Him. So, I want to pay respect to Him by putting preparation and foresight first.

Now, all this has been a lot of focus on what to not do on the Sabbath. As I said, I'm trying not to give a list of do's and don'ts, but you get into some minutia. Even though there's a very clear command, don't work. Scripture also provides a definite command on what to do on the Sabbath. And that's likewise simple, but vague enough to leave some questions. I want to go to Leviticus 23 for this one. Leviticus 23 and verse 3, I want to get to this by way of a definition that God gives for the Sabbath, of what it is, and that shows us something that we do need to do on the Sabbath. Of course, we know Leviticus 23 as the chapter that lists all of the annual Holy Days. And of course it does, but it starts with the weekly Holy Day of the Sabbath.

Leviticus 23 and verse 3, Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest and a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it, it's the Sabbath of the Eternal in all your dwellings. But notice, he said, you do no rest, but then he says there is something else. It's a holy convocation. I checked my Unger's Bible dictionary and it says, Convocation means an assembly, a gathering together of people. And when it's a holy assembly, it's that gathering of people for the purpose of worshipping God. So God said the Sabbath is a holy convocation. It's the day of each week where we assemble together.

And we could congratulate ourselves, we've done exactly that. We're here for that purpose. And of course, we could say, well, that's Old Testament, that's in the book of Leviticus. But there's nothing anywhere in the Bible to contradict that. Jesus Christ didn't say, well, you don't have to do that anymore. Rather, he did it himself. He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom.

And there are examples of the disciples continuing to do that after Christ's crucifixion. I won't turn to those. I'll turn instead to Hebrews 10 and verse 25, which is a scripture we often cite. And you might know it well enough that you don't need to turn there.

You can let me just read it. Hebrews 10 and verse 25. I'm breaking into a thought here, but it says, Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some. So, not forsaking the assembling, you could say, not stopping to come together for a convocation. Now, as Christians, we might come together at other occasions that are not holy convocations. And some occasions we'll have a social on a day other than the Sabbath. We might have work parties.

But the Sabbath is the day when it's a holy convocation. That's the one that we must do. We're commanded to continue meeting together. Well, again, that seems pretty clear and easy enough. You might think, well, there's no other questions. But questions still do arise. What if I'm sick? What if I've got car troubles? What if the distance to get to Sabbath services is far, far away? And some more modern ones.

What about watching services via a webcast? What about listening to a recording of a sermon? Well, the Bible doesn't answer these questions. Especially the ones about the car or the webcast. I imagine the Apostle Paul would have been astounded at some of these things. But I think we can come up with some reasonable answers if we use common sense. And keep in mind showing respect to God. And I'll start off by saying we should realize that there are times when we should refrain from coming together.

With meeting with other people. If you have some type of contagious disease, a common cold or Ebola, the whole gamut, you should keep it to yourself. And of course we've all been taught that. And probably all of us have come to church when we probably shouldn't have.

I know I've been guilty of it. Actually, because I know Sue's staying home today because she came down with the cold. I've been watching myself the last couple of days and been impressed. I didn't have to convince myself that I didn't have any symptoms. I just haven't had any symptoms. And I'm thrilled at that. I don't have time to get sick. But there are times when, for the sake of showing love to God's people, that's what we need to do.

And the book of Leviticus has several chapters demonstrating the principle of quarantine. Separating someone who's sick so that it doesn't spread. And what I find interesting, without going in there and reading it, it tends to demonstrate a principle of being, if you're going to err, err on the side, of being more cautious. Don't push the limit to go and be among people, but wait and make sure that the disease is gone.

And I'll add to that something I didn't realize when I first wrote the notes, but I said, Frank, you've got to say this. There are some people who are infirm. They don't have a contagious disease, but they're just, you know, they're weak or just tired or they've got a disability that doesn't let them come to services very often or in some cases ever.

And I don't mean any of this to be critical of someone like that. And I said, someone might be listening to a recording of this sermon or see it on, or listen to it online. You know, I don't want anybody to think I'm being critical because you weren't in live services.

Sometimes people just aren't able to. But I could say, what if you have a headache one morning? And I said, well, you know, nobody's going to catch your headache. So that's not a reason to stay home. But then I thought, you know, there are some members who suffer from migraines. And I've never had one, so I don't know how to put it into words.

But from what I've heard, that's a whole different category of something. And they say it can get to the point where it could be pointless to go anywhere because you can't think, you can't focus. And it could even be dangerous to get behind the wheel of a car when suffering one of those. But how do you know when you're that bad? Well, I don't know. I would say it's important to ask the question, what is showing respect to God? In a case like that where someone's suffering like that, that person knows how they're suffering and God knows. And perhaps no one else does.

But you have to ask yourself, if you're that person, how will I show respect to God? What can I do? And ask God to help you. I would say talk to God. He's the only other person that does know. But it's good for us to keep in mind if there's someone in our congregation that we're thinking, well, how come she's not coming to church?

Or how come he's not coming? He can't be that bad. Well, we don't know for sure. As I said, it needs to be between that person and God in heaven. And we want to encourage them to respect God and be with us, but they know what they can do and what they can't.

And what about that car breakdown? Sometimes it just breaks down on the Sabbath. Actually, that's not much of an issue anymore. There used to be a time where you'd think about getting your tools out and raise the hood, and now you raise the hood and you go, what's that? You need a computer engineer to come over. So it's usually not a matter if it breaks down on the Sabbath unless it's a flat tire or something like that.

But there you could pray for a miracle. Please, God, let my car start. I think I got home from Canada once on one of those. Because when I got home, I parked the car in front of the driveway and came out, and there's a puddle of oil under it. And I said, I don't know how I got here. Well, I knew how I got there, but when I realized how bad the car was, I was amazed that it had made the trip.

But you can ask if it breaks down on Wednesday or Thursday, and you're not going to be able to fix it.

How much urgency, how much money do you have to spend? Some mechanics can say, I could fix it overnight, but it's going to cost you ten times what it would normally cost.

Well, you have other obligations. God says, if you don't provide for your family, you're worse than an infidel. So there's a balance, and of course, showing respect to God. Sometimes, it's not a matter of, I just don't have the money, but I wanted to spend it on a fishing trip coming up or something.

Show respect to God. He wants us to make sure we can do certain things. And I'll add this. I'm pointing at myself, because I've been known to not ask people for favors, but I'd have to say, Frank, showing respect to God, if you're too proud to ask someone to come and give you a ride. And, okay, Frank, admit that you can't do everything on your own and accept help. Sometimes, you have to do that.

I'm taking a drink. I wanted to pause there and shift to another subject, or related. How many times have you perhaps heard someone say, Well, I didn't go to SAVA services, but I listened to a tape. Now, we don't say tape anymore, because we don't do tapes. We have CDs or DVDs. And now, we can watch a recorded sermon off the computer. I've heard it a lot of times. And, you know, if you can't make it to services for some reason, listening to a recorded sermon is a good way to spend time on the SAVA. It's certainly valuable to have that teaching. But I would say, if you're doing it by choice, it's worth asking the question, Is that assembling together? And generally, most of the time, it's not.

It's not assembling if you're sitting at home. And there are some gray areas. Now, I guess I'm past that point. But when I was a single college student, sometimes some of my friends would say, Oh, we're going to go off and have a camp out in the woods. Well, we won't go to church that SAVA, because we'll be camping. But we'll bring a sermon tape and listen, too. Now, I'm kind of iffy on that, because it's a group of brethren gathering. But, you know, most times I've been invited to something like that. And I decided not to. I thought, I want to go meet, you know, go to SAVA services. You know, that's more the Holy Convocation. But I couldn't tell them, well, you're not keeping the SAVA, they were gathered. But, as I said, but if you're on your own, you say, Well, I'm just going to, I want to go on a fishing trip, and I'll skip services, and I'll listen to a tape. When I could be meeting with people, with brethren, to me, that's more preferable.

As I said, the Holy Convocation is about gathering, a gathering of God's people to worship. Now, that doesn't say what you do by way of worship. Now, we've got a set practice and a tradition for how we do SAVA services that really stresses the educational side. We have ministers stand up and talk for, you know, sometimes an hour and a half. And that's, you know, and we also have song services, and we have prayer. Some people said, well, maybe we should have more worship together. And you might feel that way. That's something that the Bible doesn't tell us exactly how to have SAVA services. So I'm happy with the tradition we have. If it changes, you know, the Scripture would allow for room of different ways to do it. But it should be a gathering of brethren. It should be in order, you know, let all things be decent and in order. And, you know, it should be something we do together and worship God.

In recent years, we've developed an alternative that, as I said, would have just been mind-boggling to ancient Israelites. And it's something that happens here on a regular basis. Now, if I understand correctly, when we do the webcast, you're facing the other direction? No, you're still facing... Well, that's good, because I had trouble picturing that. But you can be gathered here and see and hear a holy convocation that's happening 100-some miles away, or even further.

Well, does that qualify for gathering together to worship God? Well, you could say, well, we do it, so obviously we think so. It's a different kind of way to do it. I should point out, of course, you're still gathered together, and you're still worshiping. And, you know, with the times I've done it with other groups, you join in the song service. As a matter of fact, I think it's rare... Oh, now I remember. I was trying to think, when we did this, when we got snowed out once, you know, we couldn't get the services because of snow and ice. Sue and I logged on to the Home Office services, and we sang along with the hymns, and we bowed our heads in prayer. We were participating. Now, I would say that's preferable to doing it all by yourself. But, you know, better to do that all by yourself than not at all.

It makes me wonder, you know, could we make a ranking? And here, I'm just speculating. There's nothing in the Bible that says, this is best, this is second best. But with our, you know, using our senses and what the Bible tells us, perhaps we could sort of look at, you know, I'll present my way of preference. And what I think is the absolute best is if brethren meet together, and they have live services, you know, live music and live speakers, As a matter of fact, I've told the men at the home office a number of times that the brethren out there would prefer a mediocre speaker live in the room than watching the best speaker ever on a screen. Well, I haven't usually said the best speaker ever, but that's the sense I've gotten from all of you. You'd rather have, you know, me down here in person than whoever, you know, Gary Petty on the screen. I'm saying Gary Petty, he's one of our better speakers. I think everybody likes him.

Now, so that's the best, but I'd say joining a live service is second best. It's still gathering together and keeping services.

Now, joining the live service electronically all by yourself probably ranks a little below that if you want to gather with brethren.

And that, in my mind, raised the question, what if you have a choice of going and being with brethren or logging onto a webcast of services?

That would be kind of a tough one. I'd wonder, well, shouldn't you be able to do both? Maybe you can do one and then the other, or you might ask, why aren't these this group of brethren logging on for services? You know, I'm not sure different circumstances can come up, but, you know, you want to try to make sure that you're participating in Sabbath services.

But if you can't log on and do it live, a recording seems to me to be the next step down.

And, of course, then, personal Bible study and prayer should be part of the Sabbath, regardless of what else you do.

I thought, if you could do nothing, sitting and not working to keep the Sabbath is the next step. Of course, that should be the case everywhere.

And the worst thing, of course, is to go out and work and treat the Sabbath like it's any other day. Then you're not keeping the Sabbath at all. But, again, I'm sort of... I gotta watch out. I'm starting to ramble on. But you can see how you can sort of see, well, I want to do the best thing I can, the most respectful thing to God and to His Sabbath.

And if I can't do the best thing, I'll try to do the next best thing and try to strive for the highest mark.

I can say, all this is dealt... so far, it's just dealt with the two basic requirements for the Sabbath. I always say the Bible says two things very clearly. Don't work and do go to church. And that covers an awful lot.

But the Bible does tell us more. It tells us a bit more about... and I think this more deals even more with showing respect to God on the Sabbath.

So that the place where it discusses more, I think, is in Isaiah 58. So let's turn there.

Isaiah 58, beginning in verse 13.

Here, God is saying, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath...

That's figurative language, but it can mean like, don't trample on the Sabbath. Don't just walk all over it as though it's nothing.

So turn away your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day.

Once again, it's a reminder that it belongs to God.

And call the Sabbath a delight, a holy day of the Eternal, honorable, and shall honor Him.

Now, I can make the point...

This doesn't mean that we should not do anything that we enjoy or find pleasurable, because otherwise it wouldn't be very delightful.

But there are some things that we enjoy and find pleasurable that might be included in what comes next.

He says, you shall honor Him in not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, or speaking your own words.

Then you'll delight yourself in the Eternal, and I'll cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father.

That heritage of Jacob is a lot.

With the ABC students, I was viewing the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and how they've been fulfilled in modern times in the descendants of Abraham. And boy, that heritage of Jacob is a tremendous blessing.

So we want to honor God. We want to... Matter of fact, we're nearby, if you go to Ezekiel chapter 20.

It struck me that this is another... This goes along with saying, keep your feet off of the Sabbath. Maybe I thought it would be because I've heard of livestock that would, with muddy feet, walk right into the water that they're supposed to drink, and it clouds up the water. That's sort of what I got from Ezekiel 20 in verse 19.

Where he says, I'm the eternal your God, walk in my statutes, keep my judgments, and do them. How will my Sabbath, and there'll be a sign between me and you that you may know that I'm the eternal your God? Notwithstanding, the children of Israel rebelled against me, and they did not walk in my statutes. We're not careful to observe my judgments, which is, if a man does, he'll live by them. But they profaned my Sabbath. The original King James uses the word polluted. They polluted my Sabbath. And I said, I'd pour out my fury on them. So there I thought, when you trample on the Sabbath, put your feet on it, it's polluting or profaning. Now, I think in an earlier sermon, I don't remember how long ago it's been, I analyzed how you could just define not doing your own ways or speaking your own words. So rather than go into that today, I thought, if we apply that principle of respecting God, using that to help us think whether something is appropriate or not. And that led me to Malachi, the first chapter of Malachi, if you'll turn there. There's a passage where God is not speaking specifically about the Sabbath, but he is speaking about proper respect towards him. And these two passages, I think, might help us if we get that in our mind, is when we think about something on the Sabbath, and if we're questioning. Sometimes we don't have a question, we just know, oh, I don't want to do that, or yes, I should do that. But if we're not sure, as I said, is this showing respect could help us? In Malachi 1, verse 6, God says, As I said, this is not about the Sabbath, it's about physical sacrifices and a physical temple. But that principle is important. The priests were taking God for granted. They were offering him their leftovers, so to speak, keeping the best for themselves. And I thought, well, we don't offer. And of course, if we would look back at the Old Testament, the instructions for sacrifices said, You don't offer an animal that has any blemish. They have to be perfect, whole and healthy, the best of your flock. You give a sacrifice. Well, we don't have to give those sacrifices, but when we devote our time to God, our time, our energy, our priorities, we should give the best to God. And that's where I have to admit, there are times I can't think of lately, but when I was younger, I sometimes didn't do that, especially as a teenager. That's when you go through that phase where you might not really be putting God first. And I have to admit, the Sabbath comes every week. And with something that comes every week, sometimes you take it a little more for granted than you should, and treat it as common rather than holy time. Here, in this passage, a scripture God makes reference to their governor. He said they were respecting their governor.

And I think, you know, the priests were in the temple every day. God was there every day, in a sense. They might have got a little too familiar, but I'll bet they didn't deal with the governor every day. And as a human being, he was face to face. So they didn't want to disrespect him to his face. Well, but that shouldn't be our attitude. We shouldn't get accustomed to God or the Sabbath to where we don't treat it with respect. If we go over to verse 13, still in chapter 1, he describes the attitude they were starting to have. He says, Now, that can be a challenge because while we want to look at God as a great king, we're also told in Romans 8 that he is our Abba father, or that we believe that phrase could be translated as daddy. I wonder sometimes what it's like, you know, in Britain, there's a royal family where the queen is, you know, the sovereign of the country, and yet the little kids probably think of her as, you know, Mimal.

You know, and you want to get the right balance. You know, God doesn't want us to see the Sabbath as a burden like the Pharisees treated it with all these restrictions and, you know, things they weren't allowed to do. But God wants us to respect the Sabbath as something that belongs to a great king. Our time with him should rank as more important than that with any other person.

So I thought if we're contemplating whether or not something seems proper on the Sabbath, maybe we should ask, would I think it was proper if it were related to a person that I really respected? You know, if that person could be a governor, a boss, you know, a favorite grandparent, you know. Well, I thought, you know, if, well, I thought of the example of if a person were in their 20s and still single to a certain young lady or a certain young man that they really wanted to impress and look favorably on. If that person were going to be a visitor at Sabbath services, how would you dress? Someone you really wanted to show respect to? Would you arrive late?

Would you consider just staying home because it had been a rough week? Maybe go to a family activity instead? For some reason, I think, as I said, a special visitor that I wanted to show respect to might affect me differently than the fact that God is there every week.

Now, I should temper this line of reasoning with the realization that the Sabbath does come every week, and we're in contact with God every day.

We should never take those things for granted, but there are some once-in-a-lifetime things that come up that we might give special respect to because they happen once in a lifetime. The thing I'm thinking of, when my nieces graduated high school, they were each only going to graduate high school once in a lifetime, and the graduation ceremony was on the Sabbath. And I said, oh boy, I'd like to be there for you. I want to keep the Sabbath.

Now, in this case, it was a little easier because I was living in Columbus at the time, and they had AM and PM services. So I went to Sabbath services in the morning, and then went to the auditorium and sat through the boring graduation speech and got to watch them go across the stage.

And, you know, I don't feel watching a ceremony like that is violating the Sabbath. But I didn't want to just skip Sabbath services altogether.

But as I said, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity can make us look at things a little more differently. More differently, yeah. And I'll mention, of course, my sister's family, which are not in the church, they've invited me to come and join family campouts over weekends. And I've always said, oh, you guys do that all the time. That's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I'm not going to miss going to Sabbath services for that. I think once I did go join them on a Sunday because they were staying a couple of extra days.

But, you know, I wanted to mention it because these things come up, and people have asked me questions. And it's hard to say there's a yes or a no. You know, weddings, graduations, family reunions, funerals, they're all special things that can come up, and often are held on the Sabbath.

And as I said, I can't turn to Exodus 20 and say it says, thou shalt not attend a family reunion.

But I would say we do want to show respect to God in making that decision.

He gave us a Sabbath as holy time, a time that we meet with Him and meet with His people.

And that's a way we show respect to God.

Now, I made a note that I didn't want to say this at the end.

I hope that I come across as showing respect to all of you, because I certainly intend to. I realize we're a diverse group, and many of us have been keeping the Sabbath for decades.

So I didn't want to come in and say, I'm going to teach you how to keep the Sabbath. That wouldn't be appropriate at all.

I just think that it's important for us all to review and be reminded now and then, and just bring back in our minds the importance of it.

And we can continually learn and grow in our understanding.

It's beneficial for us now and then to think of why we do certain things, and to remember what a blessing the Sabbath is.

It's a blessing, a gift.

He commands us to keep it holy, but He does give us a lot of latitude in how to do that.

The basic instruction is simple. Don't work. Do assemble for worship.

And the only thing I would add to that is that simple phrase, let's show respect to God.