The Holiness of the Sabbath

I started a series of sermons back in December and gave them through December and January, but I never finished the series here in Nashville. And it was on holiness. Talked about how the transcendence of God and what it means to be holy, what the Scripture means. God says He is holy, and it literally means He is separate. He is not like anything else. He is different than anything else. And when God says something is holy, what He says is, I have separated this person or this thing or this object. You know, the temple was holy, the tabernacle was holy. He said this is holy. This is separated from the mundane. It is separated from the corrupted things. It is separated from the rest of creation, and I separate it from this, and I separate it to me, God says. So it is separated from and it is separated to. And it is very important to understand when He talks about what it is to be holy. So we talked about what it is to have a holy life. And this whole concept that you find throughout, especially the New Testament, that says we must be sanctified. In other words, we must become holy. That when God calls us, it isn't to stay just the way you are. It is to literally become separated from society, to be separated from the world, become separated from all the mundane, corrupted things, and to be separated for His purpose. And He says we are to be a holy people.

And then I talked about marriage. And how important it is to understand that marriage is called a holy institution or the institution that God loves, as it says in Malachi. And that marriage and family is central to what God does. And when we as Christians divorce, it is an unholy thing. When we as Christians destroy our marriages, it is an unholy thing. We are doing something unholy. And how important that is. Even who we marry. You know, and that's why there's instructions that we are to marry only those in the faith. Because if you're a holy person, you're to marry another holy person. The purposes that God has.

Now, there's one other issue of holiness that I want to talk about and wrap up these sermons, although there was lots of things we can talk about. I'm going to talk about holy time. You know, I can remember years ago, being in a certain church that I was in, in which the ministers changed their minds and said, there is no such thing as holy time. And they actually made fun of the concept of holy time. And there were all kinds of arguments about the international date line and what is it like in...

you know, how can you have holy time in the Arctic where you can have six months of sun and six months of night? So see, there's no holy time in the way the Bible says. Just bizarre arguments. The rejection of the idea that God can say, this place, this person, this object, I pull out and say, I separate it from me, I separate it from the mundane, the corrupt, and I separate it from me to become like me.

And when God declares something holy, it begins to take on some of the attributes of God. And God takes time and He says, this is mine. I separate this time from other time and it is now holy. And of course, you know what I'm talking about. Specifically, we're going to talk about the Sabbath. We are here today in this holy convocation. That's what it's called, a holy assembly. And how we understand this day has a lot to do with our understanding of holiness.

And we can go from one extreme to the other. We can make the Sabbath a burden like the Pharisees did, where it was an absolute burden. And they argued over things like, if we send out a letter on Wednesday and it's still on the mail by Saturday, then it's a sin. Because I don't know what the problem is. Back in those days, when you send out a letter, it could take months to get where it's going to go. So it's being moved on Sabbath the whole time. So, you know, even should you mail a letter was a question.

Can you throw food in the air and catch it with the other hand? No, because that's work. But if you throw it in the air and catch it in your mouth, it's okay because you're eating. And these were rabbinical arguments all the time. Could a woman look into a mirror on the Sabbath? No. Because she may see a gray hair and want to pull it out and that would be work. Now, not all Jews all lived by the arguments of the rabbis.

You have to understand. But these were written down arguments that we still have today. And some of them go clear back to the first century with the school of Shami'ai and the school of Hillel. And when I talked about divorce, they argued over what divorce was. Remember I mentioned the school of Shami'ai and the school of Hillel, which were at the time of Jesus.

And those two rabbinical schools had arguments over what divorce was and what was allowed and what wasn't allowed. And one of the schools said it could only be for sexual reasons or if the person turned against God.

And the other was, no, if she's a bad cook. Because that means she's not pleasing to you if she's a bad cook. So you can divorce her. And they argued back and forth. And they argued back and forth. And we laugh at that, but isn't that the world we live in? Christians argue all the time.

Why can we divorce? And we come up with all kinds of reasons why it's okay to divorce that are not scripturally supported. We don't understand the holiness of this relationship. The holiness of time, Exodus, chapter 20. Let's go back and look at the commandment. Very simple today, but we're going to break this down into not a set of rules, by the way.

I'm not going to give you a Talmud on here's the 100 things you can do in the Sabbath and the 100 things you can't. What we are going to talk about is how for you to determine whether you should or shouldn't do certain things on the Sabbath and how we always can't judge each other on what one person may do and what another person may not.

I mean, some things are obvious that you shouldn't do on the Sabbath. Others are left up to our conscience and we will be judged by God. You know what's amazing to me? It's how few instructions are about the Sabbath in the Bible.

I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of passages in the Old Testament concerning idolatry. There's only a handful really when you add them all up on the Sabbath. There's more mentioned about the Sabbath in the New Testament because Jesus was being accused all the time of being a Sabbath breaker. So there's probably more verses, or I never added them up, but you know, there's a lot of verses in the New Testament in the Gospels about the Sabbath. And of course, then the Sabbath is almost not discussed at all in the writings of James, or 1 and 2 Peter, or even the writings of Paul. It's only mentioned a couple of times.

And yet here is this important commandment. It's one of the Ten Commandments. So let's look at what is said here. Exodus 20, verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to what? To keep it holy, to keep it separate. It can't be like all the other days.

It is separated from the mundane, from the corrupt, from the everyday into something different and separated to God. This day is about, you know, like the song that we just heard, it's not about our feelings because we praise God. It's about who we are praising. This day is about who made it holy and our response to Him, to God.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. You know your son, know your daughter, know your male servant, know your female servant, know your cattle, know your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. That's what hallowed it means if you have a King James. He made it different. He made it separate for Him, for His relationship with us.

And when we look at this, there's a number of interesting things here. It commemorates God as Creator. It's one of the reasons for the Sabbath day.

If you keep the Sabbath day, and I have to say I've never met, no, I'm not saying they don't exist. I've never met a Sabbath keeper. And a lot of different, I've met a lot of Sabbath keepers, a lot of different churches, a lot of different organizations. You know, I've never met one that believes in evolution. Because you keep this day to commemorate a Creator, and that this Creator has a relationship with us. And He creates this period of time as unique in our relationship with Him. This is about loving God. The Sabbath is about loving God, and there is a benefit that we get from observing it. It contains instructions about not doing your regular work. So we don't go to work today. We don't get paid to go do our normal jobs. We're not supposed to mow our grass. You don't paint our house. That's not what we do on this day. It is a day of rest. Now, there is some work, we'll talk about that. There's some work that's done this day, but it's for very specific reason. We have to think about those reasons when we do it. So this is a day of rest, but not just for us. And this commandment, the majority of this commandment, when you look at the amount of words, is about you, nor your children. You're not to have your children work today. This is a day to free your children from their work. And He was very specific about it. You know, okay, well, you know, as the dad, I'm not going to work, but you kids are. Get out there and work in the yard. No, your children. Not only that, your servants, the people you hire. If you own a company, you are not to hire people to work on this day. Or, you're not to hire people to come mow your grass on this day. Well, I can't do it, but I'll hire somebody else to do it. I'll hire somebody else to do it.

And your cattle. In other words, you can't go out and plow a field this day. So, I'm not really working. I'm just, you know, having the oxen pull the plow. No, your cattle can't do work this day. Even your animals are to rest this day.

So, there's supposed to be this peaceful rest on everybody. Now, you and I have never experienced what the real Sabbath is about, or very few times. You know why? There's no peaceful rest. We live in this world that everything's moving all the time.

There's activity all the time. It's hard for us to actually rest.

But this is supposed to be a day of rest and to see God as Creator. Now, what's really amazing is that the Ten Commandments were given twice. And in the second of the giving of the Ten Commandments, the commandment about the Sabbath is a little different the second time. It's a little different the second time because there's another point made about this day. So, let's go to Deuteronomy 5. Verse 15. So, we'll start reading through this and we'll see it's very similar, but I want you to notice there's a major, major difference. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you should do no work. You know your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your ox, or your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor the stranger who's within your gates. Now, that's very interesting. You know, there's a whole concept in the Old Testament about what they call the resident alien. Now, there was someone who moved into Israel to live there. And it was very clear what God told them. If someone moves into your land, they have to live by these walls. If not, you are to drive them out. And one of the things is that, you know, if you were a resident alien, and that's the term that's used in the Old Testament, and you lived in Israel, you couldn't open your blacksmith's shop on the Sabbath. You couldn't.

The elders would come, shut it down, because you had to live by those walls. So it says, even the stranger that comes here. Now, the stranger here isn't someone, okay, that's an on Israelite that comes in and becomes a worshipper of Yahweh, because a worshipper of Yahweh would not work on the Sabbath. He's talking about these strangers that didn't become part of Israel, but they're living in the land. And he says, but they have to live by the laws.

He says that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave. Wait a minute, that's not in the first one. The first one is all about, the first commandment tells us that he's the creator and he rested on that day. But there's something added to this one. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand, by an outstressed arm before the Lord your God. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. You are to keep the Sabbath, he tells them. And remember, you used to be slaves and God brought you out. God liberated you from slavery and he redeemed you from Pharaoh. In other words, some of the very core concepts that are in the Days of Unleavened Bread, the Passover Days of Unleavened Bread, are actually part of the Sabbath. This not only pictures God as creator, we are to observe this day because we came out of spiritual Egypt. This was mentioned in the Sermonet. We think about what was mentioned in the Sermonet. We have come out of spiritual Egypt, we have been redeemed, and we are liberated. Now the problem is, and I can remember being eight, nine years old, I liked the Sabbath day. I really enjoyed Friday nights because we always had a big family dinner. And it was just, I don't know, the fact that there was no television allowed. It was just, I don't know, there was something sacred about it. And I loved going to church. I loved coming home and taking a nap, eating lunch and taking a nap. But then at four o'clock in the afternoon, and you realize the sun doesn't go down for four more hours, and it's the summer time. And oh, wow, I didn't feel liberated at that point. Okay? Part of the Sabbath was liberating, and part of it was, what am I going to do for the next four and a half hours? Go read your Bible. Okay. 15 minutes later, what am I going to do for the next four hours and 15 minutes? Go do this. Okay, come back. What am I going to do for the next four hours? I mean, this would go on, right? This is a time of liberation and redemption. And this theme, Creator, Liberation, and Redemption is all part of the Sabbath. And at the end, I'm going to tie it into something that most people never think about.

It's very important to understanding our theology of the Sabbath. Our theology of the Sabbath in this one point is the same of the Seventh-day Adventists, but we use a different way to get there. It's very interesting because they talk a lot about this as being a day of redemption and liberation. But I'm going to show you how we get there in a little different way, a little different route that we don't think about sometimes. So here we have the Sabbath commands. So here's some questions. I'm going to give you a number of questions. You say, okay.

Well, before I get to the questions, let me just recap this, and then I want to read another scripture, and I got some questions for you. Let's recap this first. The Sabbath is observed as a commemoration of God as Creator. The Sabbath command tells us to stop performing our regular work, to be separate and unique because it is a holy time. The Sabbath is a time to free our children and our employees of their burdens. The Sabbath is observed as a commemoration of God as liberator and redeemer. So now let's jump to the New Testament. So there's the basis. That's the command. And there are numerous places in the Bible where people are rewarded for keeping this commandment, and there are people that are punished for not keeping it. So let's go to Luke 4. We're going to be looking at a number of scriptures today. Luke 4. So we've gone through the commandment. Now let's look at Jesus's first sermon. Okay, this is how He launched His ministry, and it was on a Sabbath day. So Jesus gets up on a Sabbath day speaking to Jews. He's speaking to people who already believe in the God of the Bible. He's speaking to people who already keep the Holy Days. He's speaking to people who have rejected idolatry. Okay, understand who He's talking to. So what's He going to say to launch this is my ministry as the Messiah? This is how I start. This is the core of my message. Verse 16, so He, speaking of Jesus, came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. When He had opened the book, He found the place where it is written. So this is what Jesus reads in it. This launches His ministry. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me. This is from Isaiah. To preach the gospel to the poor, He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, and to send at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And all the eyes of those who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. He began to say to them, today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. The response was they wanted to kill Him.

I have come to tell you, He said, I have come to tell you I am here to set you free. I am here to bring you liberty. Now, He's talking about spiritual liberty.

This isn't freedom from taxation, what we think is liberty. This is spiritual liberty. I'm here to free you, liberty and redemption. And that's how He starts His ministry on a Sabbath day, is to declare on that day, I am here to bring you liberty and redemption. Any good rabbi at the time would have said, huh, that's the Deuteronomy version of the Fourth Commandment. It's a Deuteronomy version of this. It's about redemption, and it's about liberty. And this is what He said He came to do.

So, now let's think about the Sabbath, and let's think about how we approach the Sabbath as a holy day, and ask yourself these questions. Do I understand the gospel? Because that's what He says this is, the gospel. Do I understand the gospel and the holy relationship God has offered me?

Because the Sabbath is about a relationship with God. So, when we approach the Sabbath, do we ask ourselves, do I understand the gospel? Let's go and start right here. Given on a Sabbath day, do I understand the gospel and how this is part of my relationship with God? Second question, am I responding by submitting to God's sanctification? Remember I talked about how we must become sanctified people. That's everything about us, our actions, our thoughts, our emotions, our to become holy. This is a process of sanctification. We read passages in the New Testament where it shows it's a process that begins at repentance and receiving God's Spirit and continues all through life. Even the word sanctification means a process. It's not an event.

Do I understand the Sabbath as part of my sanctification process? And then another question, do I observe the Sabbath in love and response then to God's holiness, to God's uniqueness? Do I observe the Sabbath in response to God's holiness?

Now, interesting enough, Jesus, of course, would be accused of profaning the Sabbath over and over again by people who had political reasons for doing that in many cases. But let's go to Mark 3. Mark 3, look at a place here, verse 1. So let's look at another place where Jesus talks about the Sabbath. And when we look at this, He's giving important instructions here that help us to begin to understand what we should do on the Sabbath. It's just not a matter of don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other. What are we supposed to do on the Sabbath? And we'll break that down a little bit more here in just a minute. And He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. So they watched Him closely whether He would heal Him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse Him. And He said to the man who had the withered hand, stepped forward, and He said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or do evil, to save life, or to kill? Now that is a question, of course, they could not answer. Because if they answered it, oh no, you should do evil on the Sabbath. Everybody's going to look at them and say, you guys aren't religious leaders anymore. Oh, so we should kill on the Sabbath. All through history, the enemies of ancient Israel, even the Jewish world today and over in Israel, a good time to attack them is doing the Sabbath because they tend to be all keeping the Sabbath. Although in Israel today, they keep their military on alert during the Sabbath, because they know that that's when someone's going to probably try to launch an attack on them. He says, is it lawful to do these things? But they kept silent. Of course they did. Anyway they answered that, they were convicting themselves. And when he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched out his hand and restored it as the other. And then they went out and decided to kill him.

Jesus said, we should do good on the Sabbath. In fact, there's other places where he literally says, we should do good. He just asked him the question here. Other places he just flat out says it. We are to do good on the Sabbath. So we come, what should we do on the Sabbath? Should I go to, you know, there's a really nice country western band playing down here in Nashville at three o'clock in the afternoon. Is that how I should go spend my Sabbath? What should I do on the Sabbath? Well, he says to do good. He talks about liberation. So let's start asking another couple of questions then.

Does this activity, okay, we're talking about activities now, building on what we've already talked about, does this activity help me and my family glorify God as creator, liberator, and redeemer? Does this help me do that?

Does this activity fulfill the two great commandments?

I mean, if your neighbor's house was burning down on the Sabbath, would you not go help them? Yes. It's Jesus' argument about the ox and the ditch. If I love my neighbor and his house is burning down, then I must do good on the Sabbath. The Pharisees couldn't answer because, oh, the moment we say you have to do good on the Sabbath, he's going to heal the guy because it's doing good on the Sabbath. I mean, if their neighbor's house was on fire, all the Jewish people in the neighborhood would go help put the guy's house out. That was understood you would do that. So, we are to do good. Is this fulfilling the two great commandments? Am I showing love towards God, and am I showing love towards my neighbor?

And then here's another thing to think about. Does this activity help lead people to the spiritual healing power of the gospel? Does this lead people to Jesus' first sermon on the Sabbath?

So, interacting with other people on the Sabbath, that's a question to ask. Is this interaction, and especially if you deal with people outside the church? So, people will come up with, I don't know what to do. I'm going to miss services this week because my sister died, but I feel like I should go to church.

Or, do you have an opportunity to go and be with those people in that time of grief and give them this hope? That is doing good on the Sabbath. Now, you're not doing it every Sabbath, are you? So, I get that question all the time. My uncle died, and I was close to him. Should I go to the funeral on the Sabbath? Good. Now, miss services. Well, the question is, are you doing good on the Sabbath? And there is a time to do good on the Sabbath. Because you are now representing this message to the people that are there. You're representing this message.

We could go through many examples of how Jesus Christ dealt with the Sabbath because He was constantly being accused of being a Sabbath breaker because He was doing good on the Sabbath. Many times, He was in the synagogue worshiping. He was doing the holy convocation when He would be accused of breaking the Sabbath because He was doing good. So, we had to look at the Sabbath as a time to do God's good. Here's what's amazing about the Sabbath. Well, we keep the Sabbath correctly. We receive a rest. We receive a rest. And in that rest, it changes the rest of the six days. It changes the rest of the six days. You don't keep the Sabbath correctly, and the rest of your week is going to be a mess because there's something we have here in this relationship with God that rejuvenates us for the next six days. So, how do we make this experience more holy? Let me go through a few points on how to make this experience more holy. We looked at the two commandments. We looked at two places where Jesus talks about this. And once again, I tied into other places where you know the stories of how Jesus was constantly accused. And His answer is, I'm not breaking the Sabbath. I'm doing good on the Sabbath. Is it better to do good or evil? Is it better to give life or take life?

So, what can we do? The first thing is something that we have forgotten many times. And that is, when you look in the Bible, and you'll see especially in the book of John, in the Gospel John, it talks about the preparation day. Friday is the preparation day for the Sabbath. It is a time to prepare for what the Sabbath is.

You know, we can get so busy rushing towards the Sabbath that you rush into the Sabbath a nervous wreck. You know, I remember one radio station I worked at. I mean, I would not work on the Sabbath. And they knew that. They would frustrate them. But I stuck to it. And I'd been there a couple years and it was a Friday, and I'm sitting there writing commercials, and I'm working hard. And the owner walked in and said, hey, Gary, it's only like 10 minutes before sundown. Oh, thank you. You know, I left. But it's funny. It's like he's lost track of time because this is what he normally does. It's, hey, aren't you supposed to be out of here? You know, imagine the owner saying, please leave my business. It's because, hey, you got to go. It's the Sabbath. Right? And you rush into it. You know, so you're rushing home, and the whole man is, the Sabbath's about to start. And I've got to think, what am I doing? And you get home and you just sort of collapse. Right? The Sabbath day, we should be preparing for it emotionally all day long. We should be preparing for it mentally. You should be praying about the Sabbath day all day long. Help the Sabbath day to come and help us to be able to get away from this mess. Help us to come into this relationship with Creator and Redeemer and Liberator and to come into this relationship with God our Father, with Jesus Christ. Because when we do that right, Friday night is a huge sort of like release of stress. Because I am now allowed to set aside all the stuff. I'm allowed to set aside all the arguments and the problems and the work and all the stuff I go through. Because God says, just stop all that. This is much more important, so stop it and we have to prepare for it. You know, one of the most important things you can do for children, and I include teenagers in this, is that you have a special meal on Friday night. And everybody sits down and there's no phones and there's no radio and there's no, I mean, there might be some soft music or some kind of spiritual music, okay? My wife doesn't want me playing jazz on Friday nights. It makes her nervous, okay?

I say, you just gotta go with it. Now she won't do that, okay? You know what she does like about jazz is they improvise so much.

I say, what? Oh, she improvises. They improvise so much. She likes music that she knows where it's going. I say, oh, listen to this trombone. You know. So I understand we don't play jazz on Friday nights.

But we do things that settle us down. And you know, that was with our children, that's so important that this is special. It's the time of a special dessert. But you know, you have to prepare for that. That's what I remember a lot about being a little kid on Friday night. We didn't have much money. And we didn't get much desserts. But we had a dessert every Friday night. If nothing else, dad brought home, you know, a half gallon of that cheap ice cream that was like 39 cents a, you know, a half gallon. Or big tubs of it because it was cheap, you know. And that's what we had. But we had something. My mom would make something or that because that was a celebration night. And we had to talk or just an out of stare at each other because, you know, that's what we did that night. And we weren't allowed to turn on the TV. Now I'm not saying turn on the television as a sin. But we're going to go through starting to question when and how we should do that. So this preparation day is so important. So some questions. Do I use the preparation day to get ready for the holy time that is separated by God? Do we use that time to do that? And once again, it just may be that you take a couple times during the day on Friday in your busy schedule to just take a few seconds and pray for God to prepare you emotionally and spiritually and mentally for what's about to happen. You actually ask for it and you prepare for it.

And do I help my children anticipate and celebrate the Sabbath? Or do they look at the Sabbath as just another night like every other night? Friday nights just like every other night? Or do they look at it as, oh no, the bad time's coming. When I'm, I can't do anything and I can't play, I can't do anything. Because that's not what it's supposed to be either.

I will say this. I firmly believe the more we can wean our children off of video games on the Sabbath, the better off they are. Now, I'm not saying all video games on the Sabbath are wrong. I'm saying restricted time. Restricted time.

I've had to, I have done it a long time because I just haven't been involved in it for a long time. But I remember, you know, 20 years ago, I had to start to restrict my time as a grown man, where I'd be up half the night playing video games, right? Age of empires? Anybody remember Age of Empires? Somebody's going to remember. Okay, oh good. There's people that remember. Oh, man, I love playing Age of Empires. And then it's like, it's two o'clock in the morning.

Oh, no, I got to restrict what I'm going to do, you know, how much I'm going to play. I guess it's a lot more complicated today. I think I would actually like it more today. But anyways, I'm not going to get into it right now because I don't have the time to get into it, right? So I'm going to stay away from it. Maybe when I retire. Second thing, okay, so we got to use that preparation day, is that we have to participate in a Holy Convocation. And Leviticus, the Sabbath is called a Holy Convocation. You convoke, you come together. Now we have something very special they did not have. And that is, there are a lot of people right now that can't participate in a Holy Convocation. Others, they can't be there, but they can participate electronically. And that's wonderful. And they're watching, and they're listening to it, they're able to participate. That is wonderful because that allows people to participate who cannot. But let me tell you the danger of that. That when you're just too tired, or just don't want to, you don't come to church and you decide just to watch it. Not because it's a service to you because you can't make it, but because it's a way not to come. There's a great danger in it. Because the convocation is to come and worship God, to learn about God, and to fellowship with others. And you can't fellowship with others if you don't come. There's a great danger in just not coming because you don't want to. Now once again, if you're sick, if you're, you know, there's a reason, there's shut-ins, there's people in nursing homes. They need this service. And there's times when you can't come, we understand that. But remember, it's a holy convocation. There's a coming together of people. It's an assembly. And to physically come to church. And you know, a lot of churches who have started in the Protestant world to have electronic services have found that their attendance has just dropped to practically nothing. Now that hasn't happened here, but it has happened there. And when we lived in Wisconsin, this was, wow, 25 years ago, the local Lutheran church down the street, they would broadcast their services on a carrier current so that you could sit in the parking lot and pick it up on your radio. And so you could come dressed for golf. That's how they advertise it. So you would go by Sunday morning, and there would be dozens of cars of people sitting out there in their t-shirts. And they wouldn't go into worship God, but they were getting their service so they can rush off and do what they wanted to as soon as the Amen happened. That's not a holy convocation. That's not understanding a holy convocation is. It's not separate. It's mundane. It's not unique. It's just like everything else designed to please the person involved, not designed to please God.

It's self-centered, not God-centered. Hebrews 10, 24, and 25 says, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. It's a New Testament command not to forsake that. In fact, he says, as we get closer to the end times, we are to convoke even more. That should be even more important to be with others, to spend time with others. So, some questions about the holy convocation. How serious are we about coming together to worship God, to praise God? Now, remember in one of the sermons I gave on holiness, I talked about praise and worship, and how there are two different things, and how both of those things we're supposed to be doing, and there are two things we are commanded to do on the holy Sabbath day.

You can do them alone. You can worship God alone. You can praise God alone. But the whole thing about the assembly was it was supposed to also be done together.

The holy convocation isn't just getting together with some people that you hardly know once a week on Saturday and saying, I've kept the Sabbath.

No, we haven't, if that's all this is. It is praise and worship of God. It is listing and taking in what we're taught as we go through the Scripture, and it is convoking with one another as the holy people. How serious are we about the holiness of the Sabbath meeting?

And remember, it's a holy convocation. Remember I talked about how only God can make something holy?

That means you are here because God invited you to be here.

You are here because God invited you to be here. If He makes something holy, and He says, this is my holy day, and okay, I want you to be holy, so you come to my holy day and my holy assembly, you are here because God invited you. You know, if you got a written invite from God, remember the old series on television called The Librarians? Now that's probably known. How many have seen The Librarians? Okay, one, two, three, okay. Four, okay. Rod, you've seen every television show ever done. It's amazing. Okay. They would get a letter from the library, and it would be blank, and then all of a sudden these words would appear, right? It was a silly show, okay. I don't know if it's still on. I doubt it. It's old. But you know, what if you got a letter from God and suddenly appeared, you know, personal invitation from God? Come meet me in a holy convocation. Would you rush in, not having taken a shower, just a t-shirt on and some flip-flops eating a donut? Is that how you would show up? Well, of course not. But you know what? This is a holy convocation. You are here by the personal invitation of God. Are you spending time on the Sabbath in relationship with other people, other holy people? You see, well, that's not what it says. It just says to assemble. I want you to turn to 1 John 1. I want you to read this because this is very, very important. This is why we, if we really understand what this day is all about, it breaks down barriers. It breaks down divides between groups of people. It breaks down, you know, divides between ages. You know, we say, oh, there's these generational gaps. Those things should be broken down. Here's why. Verse 9. This is 1 John chapter 1. Verse, I'm sorry, let's go to verse 5. This is the message which we have heard from Him who declared and declared to you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, with God, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Well, that makes sense. Darkness here means sin. You know, if we say, oh yes, we follow God, but we lie and cheat and steal, He says, you're lying. Because if we follow God, we don't lie and cheat and steal. We don't walk in darkness. Verse 7. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, if we do have a right relationship with God, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we are right with God, we fellowship one with another. Now, I mean, we all have different personalities and some people are introverted, more extroverted. I'm not talking about we all have to become extroverts. What I'm saying is we have to care for one another if our relationship with God is right, because He's talking to the church here. He's just talking about our neighbor. I might go help my neighbor, who I really don't know very well, but if his house is burning down or a dog gets out, I'll go help him get his dog on the Sabbath, because yeah, he's my neighbor. I'm loving my neighbor. This is talking about fellowship with those who have fellowship with God. And if we have fellowship with God, He says we will have fellowship with one another. It is expected. It is expected. So we have to question if we don't have fellowship with one another. Maybe there's something wrong in our relationship with God. As he just flat out says, if you have that with God, you will do this with each other.

So this holy convocation is very important. Another question, are we approaching the Sabbath convocation as a time of learning and worship and praise and joyful fellowship? How are we approaching this day? Another point to consider about our activities. What should I do on this day? I mean, it's not a day of doing nothing, although some extra rest is good. But we went over to someone's house last night, and there were four couples of us all in the church. And we stayed up way too late because we just got talking. We're talking about the Bible. We're talking about the church. We're talking about this. We're talking about that. And you know, we stayed up way too late, but you know what was good?

It was good. We need to do that. We need to do that. So what activities do we do? Isaiah 58. Now this is going to be funny. It seems strange. We're going to go to an Old Testament passage to find the spirit of the law. Now we talked about the... Jesus talked about the spirit of the law. He talked about how, okay, you say you shouldn't murder. And he says, I'm saying you can't even hate. Okay. The spirit of the law goes beyond the letter of the law. So let's go to Isaiah 58. And let's look at the spirit of the law concerning the Sabbath. Verse 13. And here's the questions you have to ask yourself. A lot of times people will come and say, can I do this on the Sabbath? I have them read this. And sometimes they'll come back and say, you know, I've decided I can do this because of this reason. And then I've had people come back and say, you know what? I'm not going to do that because of this reason. And it all comes from this.

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, you know, in other words, you're tramping on it. You're just tramping on the Sabbath. You're not upholding it. Now we don't worship the Sabbath. It's very important. I mean, we don't worship the Sabbath. It's not the Sabbath who gives us salvation. It's not the Sabbath that redeems us. It's not the Sabbath that created us. And it's not the Sabbath who liberates us. The Sabbath is a tool by God, made by God.

You know, I mean, God doesn't need the Sabbath. We do.

So Jesus, when He said the Sabbath was made for man, okay, not man for the Sabbath. We don't serve the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for us because we need it. We need it physically. We need it spiritually. We need it emotionally. We need it mentally. Our whole being needs this time, this holy time. It changes who we are. It changes our marriages. It changes the way we treat other people. It changes in forces in this relationship we have with God. In other words, it's part of our sanctification. The Sabbath is made to help us become sanctified. It's to help us become sanctified. We sure don't earn our salvation. You know, if we could just keep the Sabbath more perfectly, more exactly, we'd get salvation. No! But if we throw out the Sabbath, we will not be growing in sanctification and we could lose our salvation. There's the funny thing about it. I can't earn it for the Sabbath, but I sure could lose my relationship with God by rejecting it.

Because it's part of this relationship we have with Him. He says, if you turn your way, your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day. He says, just put aside a lot of stuff that's really important to you on this day. He does it all well. We've got to be sad this day. We can never have any fun this day. We can't have any pleasure in this day. That's what He's talking about. He says, your pleasure. In other words, a self-centered viewpoint of this day. Set that aside and look at God. Set aside what we love doing. And say, okay, do that later.

Take right now to be with God. He says, and call the Sabbath a delight. In other words, find joy in this. Well, if you try to make the Sabbath just a list of do and don'ts, you'll hate it. You'll hate it. I can remember when my girls were teenagers. One day they said, dad, you know, we're really discouraged about the teen Bible studies. I said, why? I hadn't been giving them. And I said, why? Because I didn't know what they're talking about because they hadn't been there. And they said, every one we've had for years is about don't have sex before marriage and keep the Sabbath day. And we just feel beat up. I mean, we're keeping the Sabbath day and we're not having sex before marriage. So I mean, is there something else in this Christian life than that?

And I mean, the people doing it didn't realize what they were doing, but, you know, it had led to a rather negative viewpoint of it. That's what this is all about. You know, so if I keep the Sabbath more correctly, what? I'm getting brownie points in heaven. No, it's part of a relationship. It's part of how we respond to the Holy God in holy time as holy people.

And he says, learn to find happiness in this. You know, I don't know about you, and I work on the Sabbath. I mean, there's times I work 12 hours on a Sabbath day or more. But you know what? I always look forward to this day. There's something special about it. It feels different because God is involved in it. It is a delight.

He says, the Holy Day of the Lord honorable. In other words, you, wow, I can honor this by doing certain things on this day and not doing certain things. You know, a lot of the things that we don't do on the Sabbath, they're not sin. We can do them the other six days of the week. You go work 12 hours a day if you want to out in your job. I wouldn't recommend it, but you can do that. You just can't work on the Sabbath. If you want to be a workaholic, God says, that's a hard way to live life, but go ahead. Just don't work on this day.

Be centered on what's more important on this day. And shall honor Him, see, it's Him. It's the center of this day is Him. And honor Him, not doing your own ways. They're finding your own pleasures. They're speaking your own words. Then you shall delight in the Lord. Then you shall delight in the Lord. So we have to ask ourselves, is what am I doing just to pursue my own fun? Is that what I'm trying to do today? Well, then maybe I should do that activity. If this is just my own words, it's just my own words. I wouldn't watch a football game on the Sabbath.

They ruined my Sundays anyways.

I'm always yelling at the television. There's times when I refuse to watch football for a couple of weeks because I just got mad. I say, well, this is fun. What is this? I don't know, just making me mad. I wouldn't watch that on the Sabbath because it distracts me into something else that isn't what the Sabbath's all about. It's not what the Sabbath's all about. It's pretty carnal to watch baseball and football and basketball on the Sabbath. Those are carnal things. Now, to watch it another day, there's nothing wrong with it. Well, there is when you get mad as I do. A couple years ago, I literally got up on a football game and said, I'm not watching the rest of this. I walked out because there were fights and stuff going on and I wanted to watch a football game. But then my wife stayed and watched it. So I had to sneak down and look around the corner because I didn't want her to know because I'm not watching this. All these fights and stuff. I just wanted to watch a football game. I had to go upstairs, you know, my office, but I had to see what was happening. So she said that we're watching it, you know, and it's like, I know you're there. I'm looking around the corner watching.

Yes, our house is rather weird at times, but, you know, we have to get away from all this selfishness on this day and it'll change us. We won't be as selfish the other days. That's the point. As we draw close to God on this day, we're closer to God on the other days. So it's not doing our own ways or find your own pleasures or even speak your own words. We should limit the amount of time we talk about certain things. You know, you can sit and talk about, well, what happened at work this week? But, you know, if it's 20 minutes later and all you're talking about is what happened at work this week, it's probably not good for you because you know what you're feeling at that point? All the stress of being at work that week. You haven't let it go. Now, it's okay to say, oh, I had a bad week at work and this happened and that happened. Oh, man, I'm sure glad it's the Sabbath. It's funny when you do that. I had a bad week this week. This happened and that happened, and five minutes later, you see, but I'm glad it's the Sabbath because I just let it go. It's like, oh, yeah, I did let it go. But if you keep talking about it, talking about it, talking about it, you never become liberated.

This is about liberation. We never become liberated on this day.

Another point is, don't profane the Sabbath by making this a day of buy-in selling. You can put in your notes there in Nehemiah 13, 14 through 19. In fact, the story even goes beyond that somewhere. Nehemiah, the Jews were having... It was the Sabbath had become the big market day. Everybody came in from the country. People came from other tribes. You know, non-Jewish tribes came in surrounding Arab tribes and so forth, and it was just a big market day. And that's all it was.

And Nehemiah said, we can't do this, and they kept doing it. So we got our amenities shut down the gates, and then people kept showing up. It's market day. You can't come in here, but it's market day.

We can't keep the... You know, if we're... If you're going to Walmart this day to do your shopping, you're not having a very holy time. You say, okay, I'm not going to go out and buy my clothes and do my grocery shopping on this day. I'm just going to do it on Amazon.

You're missing the point, right? Yeah, Friday night's my big eBay day night, because I can buy things on eBay on Friday night. I've had to make sure I don't even look at eBay on Friday night, or Saturday, or Amazon. Not because I buy things, but because it's like, oh, it's the Sabbath. I can't buy that. Boy, I wish I could buy that. Oh, now I'm envying, okay? Now I'm really breaking the Sabbath, so I just don't even look at them on the Sabbath, because you just sort of get sucked into this marketing, right? This is a day to let all that go. When Jesus Christ sets up the kingdom on this earth, there'll be no businesses open on Sabbath.

By the rule of the king of the world, the king of kings, there'll be no businesses open on the Sabbath. Now we do live in a time that gives us peculiar problems that they didn't have in the New Testament. And I've had people bring these things like, okay, I don't want to pay for my electricity on the Sabbath, because I'm paying for it. Okay, so don't turn on anything on the Sabbath, but that meter's still running. So you're going to get a bill for Saturday, whether you used it or not. So I know people that have tried to shut down all their electricity on the Sabbath, so they don't have to pay for it. Of course, I tell them, if you're going to do that, you can't turn on the water either. So your refrigerator is going to thaw out, and you won't be able to drink water. I mean, bottom line is, there's somebody working some place to put electricity and water into your house. It's a modern problem. It won't be a problem when Christ comes up, because electricity and water, whatever energy we're using, will be able to be produced without people having to do that kind of labor and being paid to do it on the Sabbath. It won't be a problem. But right now, I don't know how you get out of that. I won't drink any water. I won't take a bath. And every single Saturday, all my food dries, you know, thaws out in my freezer. But I'm going to pay them anyways. They're going to give you a bill for that day, no matter what. So these are the kinds of modern problems we're faced with. We can't always judge each other on everything. I know people who won't watch any television on the Sabbath. I know people who watch nature shows on the Sabbath, or special programs that they've selected that are just maybe for their children that are biblical in nature, spiritual in nature. You have to make those decisions, each person, and we can't judge each other on that. We have to be very careful that we don't create our own Talmud and judge everybody else by that Talmud. So you have to be very careful about that. Another issue always comes up is going out to restaurants on the Sabbath. Some people won't do it at all. Some people do it, you know, when they feel there's a need. I will say this about that, about going out to eat on the Sabbath. The problem we're faced with is that in the Bible, they couldn't travel as far as we do. Driving, in fact, for most Jews today, driving on a car like you did to get here today is considered a sin because of distance and because they're starting a fire. If you have an internal combustion engine, there's a fire starting. So they will not drive in a car on this day. Which was the, there was a Jewish congressman here a couple years ago. They said, we may have a special vote on the Sabbath. Can you come? He said, yes, but I'll have to walk.

I thought, man, I understand, but it's like he lived like 10 miles. He was going to walk all the way to the congress building, but he couldn't drive his car because it started a fire. See, these are the issues that Sabbath neighbors come up with, but you and I drive cars to get here. That could have never even been dreamed of. That's why in the New Testament, all the churches are in cities because people walk to the church. There weren't a lot of people out in the countryside that were Christians for a long time.

They couldn't get the message out to them. They came to cities and then towns and then spread out. But you and I drive our cars on the Sabbath. You know, if we do the preparation right, we make sure we have gas in our cars before the Sabbath.

As far as going out to eat, we've got a travel issue that we've never had before.

We need to be very careful about going out to eat on the Sabbath. If someone feels totally uncomfortable about that, I honor that. I understand that. In the radio church of God, back when I was a child, we did not go out to eat on the Sabbath. Then they changed it. You know why? Because everybody lived so far away. We were traveling over two hours to get to church and over two hours back. There were lots of little children in the church. People would take food. I mean, we had our cooler school of food and everything. But sometimes you'd have...Sabbaths were big. We had Sabbath services and we had a potluck and we had choir practice and we had a Bible study. And all that in one day, Sabbaths were like eight hours. And you're driving home and the sun doesn't go down to 830 at night. And what do you do?

And it's a two-hour drive home. And so what was decided was that's a personal decision and nobody should judge each other on that.

I think it's important to understand where that came from in our culture. It came from that issue. And of course, we travel, don't we? We travel all the time. I have to admit there's occasions when I go over to Jackson and I'm coming home. For the safety and love of my neighbor, I stop and get a cup of coffee. Because my wife is saying, wake up! Wake up! She's punching me. And because I don't want her to lose her salvation by beating up on me. I get a cup of... Now she makes coffee for me sometimes. You know, we drink it in the morning. But sometimes we've been over there all day.

So yes. Or I... You know, when I'm over there sometimes and they have to leave that hall and those people only see each other once a week. Those 15 people are scattered all over. They're... Most of them are elderly and they get together once a week and they have to leave the hall and someone says, can't we all go get lunch? Now we go to Diane's house and have lunch sometimes, but they can't do that all the time. And we can have lunch with them. Now I'm just explaining how we work it out. I'm not saying you should work it out that way. You have to work it out between you and God. We go to lunch with them sometimes. They have no other choice. The Holy Day is supposed to be a feast day. And those 15 people who live scattered all over the place, and most of them are in their late 70s and early 80s, they can't feast otherwise.

So yes, we do... Occasionally she and I go out to eat on the set. We're very careful about it. We pick our reasons, and they all have to do with trying to answer the same questions we just asked.

We don't frivolously just go out to eat on the set.

Now, all of you, like I said, you're all traveling. You all have different viewpoints of that. Everybody in this room has a different viewpoint of that. We can't judge each other on that issue.

We can't. We're not supposed to. Just like we can't judge each other on exactly how much television, or exactly what kind of music you listen to on the Sabbath, but we should be very careful. The question we shouldn't ask somebody else is ourselves, is this bringing holiness into my life? That's the question, not determining whether, oh, you're not holy. You're not holy. You listen to jazz on the Sabbath. No, you can't use that argument. Okay, so you understand the dilemma that we deal with here, and why we can't judge each other on it. And that's why the Church will always have different opinions on that. We'll always have people with different opinions.

The last point I want to make real quickly. I said at the beginning, this is a day of redemption, right? It is a day of redemption and liberation. What is the greatest act of redemption and liberation in the history of mankind?

What is it? Christ crucifixion. Christ crucifixion. Now, Christ's crucifixion is this redemption act, but what completes it is resurrection, right? We believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected when?

Which was when? Sabbath. Sabbath. You and I come together on a day where we are told to commemorate the liberation and the redemption work of God on the very day—this wasn't by accident. This day wasn't picked by accident—on the very day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead that late Saturday evening before the sundown. He rose from the dead. This is the greatest day of redemption and liberation in history.

That's remarkable. It's remarkable. It's part of the whole plan of God. This day we commemorate that, just like Deuteronomy tells us to, but not out of physical Egypt, but out of spirituality. This day means a whole lot more than just, oh, I get to sleep in and I have to go to church. It's so much more. This day is part of the whole plan of God and bringing people to Him out of the mundane, out of the corrupt, to Him to sanctify them so that He can have holy children.