The Holy, the Profane

We'll see how that goes. Now, we're often reminded as Christians by our different lifestyle that God has called us to be different people. You could say we're special. And I like the original King James in some places says that we're a peculiar people. And within the Church, we've been having laughs about that for years and years.

So I'm not sure how comfortable that makes it for some of us. But there's another term for what we're supposed to be and for how we're supposed to act that might strike us a little strange because it seems like it might be too much. But it's in God's Word. So we need to face up to it. And I'd like you to turn with me to 1 Peter 1. And we'll read 1 Peter 1 and verse 15. 1 Peter 1, 15. He says, But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it's written, Be holy, for I am holy.

Now, that sounds like something. It's quoting from the book of Leviticus, and there are a number of places in Leviticus where it talks about God calling the Israelites in that point a holy people. But we see in studying the New Testament that those who are called into the church of God have taken that place, and God wants us to be holy. I could quote also Deuteronomy 28 and verse 9. I'm not going to turn there, but there it says, The Eternal will establish you as a holy people to himself.

Keep the commandments of the Eternal your God and walk in all his ways. So God is going to make us holy. Now, we could ask, is it a big deal to be holy? What exactly is that? Well, I'll come back to that, but I want to establish that it makes a big difference to God that we treat something that is holy differently than something that's not. We need to make a difference.

Matter of fact, God made that one of the principal jobs of the priesthood to teach people the difference. Let's turn to Ezekiel 44. Ezekiel 44 and verse 23. Now, of course, I'm going to talk about this subject today, but I'm not going to claim to be a priest because we have one high priest, Jesus Christ. But I believe, whereas we don't have sub-priests, Christ wants his ministry to carry on some of those teaching duties that the priesthood had then.

So, if we read in Ezekiel 44 verse 23, one of the things that he expected of his priests, and I believe that God expects of the ministry now, it says, "...they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the unholy." Or, I believe, if you have the original King James, between the holy and the profane. I kind of like the term profane because it seems more religious, but it doesn't mean something evil or bad, but it means something that's not holy.

It's for common use, everyday use. God wants them to teach the difference between the holy and the profane, cause them to discern between the clean and the unclean. How much does it matter? I brought this today. I pulled it off my shelf. I wanted to read a story, and this is a story that's stuck in my head since I first read it when I was probably 10 or 11 years old. It's from the Bible story that the World Wide Church of God printed. As a matter of fact, we started this when it was still the radio church of God, if I remember correctly.

But I'm reading from volume 2, starting on page 8. It's a little bit long, but I hope you'll see because it's such a vivid picture of something that happened that it's easy to read over in the scriptural account.

This is when the tabernacle was first established after the ancient Israelites had come out of Egypt. Moses is talking to Aaron and his sons, who had just been ordained priests. He says, Moses told Aaron and his sons, God will allow you to enter completely into His tabernacle service only after you've spent seven days and nights in your duties at the door. Do exactly as you have been told, or you may have to pay with your lives.

A week later, the elders were told to bring offerings for the first services in the use of the altar. All the people were also told to be present. After the first carcasses were placed on the altar, Moses, Aaron, and his sons went out to stand before the people, while Moses informed the crowd that God was pleased with their offerings. Suddenly, a hissing bolt of fire shot out from the tabernacle, arched upward enough to be seen from outside the curtain fence, and struck the altar.

The offering there was quickly consumed by an energy much more like lightning than ordinary flames. This close display of God's power startled the people so that they fell forward in awe. And I'll mention, if you want to see it later, Basil Woolverton drew a really nice illustration of that, but it's hard to see from your seats. And of course, I'm guessing most of you have seen it in the past. After the offering was burned, Moses told Aaron, This is God's holy fire. Your sons should never allow it to die.

Twice a day, live coal should be taken from the altar and carried in a sensor, that is, a metal serving pan, to the holy place to be sprinkled with incense at the golden altar. From then on, the altar was in constant use. Early each morning, Aaron's sons came to carry out their preparation duties. Then animals were slaughtered and dressed and offered for all of Israel. This was done again in the afternoon, so that an offering was always on the altar.

The unblemished animals used for burnt offerings typified the Messiah, who would later come to die for the sins of the people instead of the people having to die. I'm going to skip a small section where he talks about the animal sacrifice, because I want to get to the story now that we set the stage. One morning, two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, arrived for work to find the altar fire barely alive. And their eagerness to get the flames going, they piled on wood that was still moist from the morning dew, covering up the last of the live coals. Our father Aaron will be here any minute to get live coals for the altar in the Holy Place.

Now they're under this wet wood, Nadab observed worriedly. We'll have to pile some of it off. Why go to that trouble, Abihu asked, snatching a sensor? There's a campfire outside the gate where we can get live coals right away. Knowing that only fire from the large altar was to be used in the Holy Place, Nadab was about to protest, but said nothing when he thought about how much easier it would be to obtain live coals from the campfire.

Silently, he picked up another sensor and hurriedly joined his brother. The two rushed back with the glowing coals, relieved to find that Aaron still hadn't showed up. But after a few minutes, they realized that the campfire coals were becoming ash-covered. If they weren't used right away, those coals would go out and the live coals would have to be dug out from under the fuel on the altar fire, after all. Unwisely, they decided to make the delivery of live coals to the Holy Place, something that only Aaron was to do.

They went in, and after leaving the fire in the Holy Place, a strong uneasiness seized them. They made a frantic rush for the door, but too late. Fingers of fire hissed out from the inner room and struck them lifeless, under the curtains of the tabernacle entrance. A little later, when Aaron arrived, he was concerned to find nobody in sight, although the fire was now beginning to burn vigorously on the altar. Across the court and the doorway of the tabernacle, he then saw his sons lying motionless.

He hurried to reach down to them, but he heard a voice saying, Don't touch them! Aaron glanced up to see Moses approaching and motioning him away from the dead men. They died because they disobeyed God by bringing strange fire. Or, I believe the original King James said, Profane fire before him, and trying to take over duties that were yours, Moses explained. God warned them, and he means his warnings. Aaron stood back in silent misery, gazing at the plain blackened bodies, finally turning away, realizing that disobedience had to bring punishment.

In spite of the shock of his nephew's death, Moses lost no time in arranging for burials and four replacements by Eliezer and Ithamar, Aaron's two other sons. Don't mourn because of Nadab and Abihu. Moses warned Aaron and the two other sons. If you do, it would show that you feel God has dealt unjustly with them. People were sobered when they heard that Nadab and Abihu had died by the direct hand of God. Even a funeral was not to interfere with the tabernacle ceremonies.

Aaron had to carry on with his duties, and Eliezer and Ithamar had to start theirs. Their period of service began with a new ruling that priests on duty would have to abstain from wine and strong drink, the excessive use of which would dull one's best judgment.

It was possible that such had happened with Nadab and Abihu. Basil Woverton wrote this narrative, and it was based on his understanding of a Biblical account that's found. The account is in Leviticus chapter 10, verses 1-7. So you can see the expanded version adds color and description. Those seven verses, though, tell the exact same story. And those are followed by a very strong admonition by God to Aaron and his sons that they must never fail to distinguish between the holy and the profane.

Recognize what is holy and what is not. Now, we are God's people, called out of the world for his purpose, so we also need to distinguish between what is holy and what is not. And there's one particular area of that that I want to focus on. But before I go into that and focus on that one area, I think we should first make clear that we're sure of what exactly it means to be called holy.

So just what is holy? I wrote that in my notes. I thought that could have been a booklet in the church a few years ago. Just what do you mean holy? In Scripture, we can read many times that God is holy, as we read a little while ago in 1 Peter. In Hebrew, the word used is kadash. It means holy.

It can also mean pure or sanctified. The Greek word hajio means pretty much the same thing. What's interesting is, I said the primary definition for those words means holy. I thought, well, what does it mean in English? I looked for sanctify in Hebrew before moving on, and it says to make something holy. The definition that we used in the church for many years to sanctify something is to set it apart for holy use.

That matched very well with what I found in the lexicons and dictionaries. Interestingly, I pulled out my Unger's Bible dictionary, and it doesn't have an entry for the word holy. But it did for some other things. It did for sanctify. That matched with what we've already taught. I kept coming down, so it seems to mean that holy means to have holiness, which can be defining a word by itself.

But if you go through the Bible, you start saying, okay, something is holy if it's God, if God uses it or it's specific to God. That fit very well with the definition that Dr. Don Ward gave some of us in class. He says that something is holy if it has the active presence of God. If God has presence in it, or if he's using it, if it's of God, then by definition it is holy.

God is holy because holiness means it's something pertaining to God. Remember that story I'm not going to turn there, but when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Moses came up to see what was going on and he heard a voice say, Take off your shoes. The ground that you're on is now holy, showing us that God was present in a way that he had not been in other cases where he communicated. The similar thing happened to Joshua. Before the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho, he saw somebody in white with a glittering sword, and he went up and said, Are you friend or foe?

He said, Neither. I'm come as the commander of the army of the Lord. You need to take off your shoes. This is holy ground. That's an indication that this wasn't just an angel. It was the one who became known, or we call later, as the Word, or who became Jesus Christ. There are a lot of other things in the Bible that are called holy. We commonly use the term Holy Spirit for God's Spirit.

God's people are called holy, as we've read. God's law is holy. God's Word is holy. There are references to God's holy name, to holy fire, holy garments for the priests. They use holy anointing oil, holy vessels at a holy place. Israel was a holy nation. We as a church are called to be a holy people. And I'm listening. You can see, it sounds like there are a lot of things that are holy until you look at the broad world and see of all the things that are not. We often, as I said, the two most common terms are the Holy Spirit, and we use the term Holy Days.

Seven individual days of the year are called holy, but those aren't the only times that are holy. We're also here on the seventh day of the week because the Sabbath is holy time. Now, we're not very likely, as God's people, to have to deal with holy fire...fire. I thought that would be easier to say. Holy fire or anointing oil or anything like that. But we do regularly deal with holy time. Those seven days a year and one day out of every week. God sanctified the Sabbath, meaning He made it special. He made it holy.

Now, I've been spending a lot of time building up to this, but I wanted to do so on purpose because I want to talk about how we conduct ourselves on the Sabbath with us knowing that it's the Sabbath. But thinking of it from the terms of the lesson that we could see from Nadab and Abihu, that it does matter that we distinguish between the holy and the unholy.

And of course, we don't get to decide what's holy and what's not. Only God can do that. Now, before I talk about the particulars of what we should do, it is good for us to review the Scriptures, though we know them. We've looked at them many times. Let's look at the Scriptures that tell us that the Sabbath is holy and why. We can start in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2 will begin in verse 1. Of course, this is where it begins. God spent the six days recreating the surface of the earth and making it ready for human habitation. And it says, And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day. It's interesting that word for rest is related to the word for Sabbath, which is also derived from the word for seven. In Hebrew, they're all interrelated. Sabbath means rest, and it also means seven. The Sabbath day can only be the seventh day because God made it that way. And of course, we want to remember God didn't rest because he was worn out from six days of hard work. He rested to set an example and to make the Sabbath day holy. So it says in verse 3, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. So God made the seventh day holy. It's interesting, if you want to turn ahead to Exodus, chapter 20, where of course we find that the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, knowing what we just read makes it easy to understand why the fourth out of the Ten Commandments is worded so differently from the others. Most of the Ten Commandments start with the words, Thou shalt not. And things that obviously we should not do. We shouldn't murder, steal, kill, commit adultery or things like that. But the fourth commandment, beginning in verse 8, says, Remember. There's no, Thou shalt not. It says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That is, to maintain its holiness. Moses, or God was speaking and saying, Remember back thousands of years ago when I recreated the earth and I sanctified this day. So I'm not making it holy now. Remember that I did it all that time ago and keep it holy. Now, we can't make the Sabbath holy. Only God could do that. And unfortunately, we can't stop it from being holy. We might treat it in an improper way, but that will harm us. It won't harm the Sabbath.

Now, I wonder when God spoke to the ancient Israelites, they might have had no idea of how to maintain the day's holiness, so he gave them some basic instruction in verse 9. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Eternal, your God. Notice it's not the Sabbath of Israel or of Moses, but of God. And if in it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant or female servant, your cattle or your stranger that is within your gates, four in six days the Eternal made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Eternal blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. Hallowed is another word for sanctified. He made it holy.

So the Sabbath in many ways is a memorial of God's creation. And we'll see in the New Testament later that He made it for mankind. He made it as something that's a blessing to us.

But it's good for us also to remember that the Sabbath does more than just look back and remember creation. It's a memorial of that, but it's also a time, a day that looks ahead. And we want to remember that, and I believe we do. This world around us is caught up in sin. It's caught up in the results of being cut off from God. And as such, people, even if they don't believe there is a God, they notice there's an emptiness in their life. There's this longing out there. You could say people are looking for a break, a rest from the trials and all the troubles they have. Even if people don't know how to express it, they feel it. It's built into mankind to look for some type of a release, for a rest from the hassles of this life. And that's exactly what Hebrews 4 is all about. If you want to turn there, Hebrews 4 is somewhat of an allegory. It begins building in chapter 3, but it draws a comparison between ancient Israelites who had left Egypt and wanted to go into the Promised Land. And all of mankind who want something, want something that's still ahead and they don't have yet. The authors here, who I believe probably was the Apostle Paul, biblical scholars argue and say it might have been Apollos or Timothy. But it has many hallmarks to say it was Paul. So we'll say it probably was Paul. He carries, let's begin reading in Hebrews 4. Therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. So there's a promise ahead of entering rest. Now earlier he talked about the Promised Land as a type of rest for ancient Israel. But now he's saying there's a promise yet ahead of entering that rest. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, as us now in the modern era as well as to ancient Israel. But the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith with those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest. So we, in a sense, enter the rest, the peace of God's way. But it shows that others didn't. So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Now in ancient Israel, of course, the people who believed the evil report of the ten scouts or spies who went in and said, oh, there's giants there. This land will eat us up. Most people believed them and said, oh, we can't go in there. So God said, fine, none of you are going in. I'll let you wander in the wilderness for 40 years and I'll bring your children in. So, and of course, eventually the descendants of those Israelites did enter the Promised Land.

But of course, that didn't end the allegory. Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he has spoken of a certain place of the seventh day in this way. So we're bringing the Sabbath to this. God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again, in this place, they shall not enter my rest. So that Paul here makes a correlation of the Sabbath day as symbolic of the rest that we want to enter. Since therefore it remains that some must enter it.

So he thinks some still have not entered that rest, and really it's most of mankind have not entered the ultimate rest. And those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience. Again, he designates a certain day, saying in David, today, after such a long time as it has been said, today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua, and if you've got the original King James that says Jesus, but that's because they're the same word in Greek, but referring to Joshua who led the ancient Israelites over the Jordan River into the Promised Land, if he had given them rest, he wouldn't have afterwards spoken of another day. So he's saying the Israelites entering the Promised Land did not fulfill this allegory, because all of mankind is still longing to enter into God's rest. And of course, and here's where the play of words comes in. In verse 9 it says, Throughout this chapter, everywhere else where the word is rest is the Greek kataposos, which means to stop working, literally physically rest. But in verse 9 it says, There remains therefore a keeping of the Sabbath for the people of God.

So the greater rest, one that's symbolized by the Sabbath, is the peace of God's kingdom that has not yet come. And I don't believe that you don't know that, but I wanted us to review that and remember that the Sabbath looks back, but it also looks ahead. It's very much a New Testament teaching of the great blessing that's going to come on mankind when Jesus Christ returns to this world and establishes His kingdom. Human beings currently are laboring under the burden of being cut off from God and deceived by Satan. But God has always planned for a rest to come, and He'll bring it. So the Sabbath is a weekly reminder to us of God's great plan and purpose. And therefore, if anyone is a Christian, there remains a keeping of the Sabbath, because we're looking forward to that time.

Now, of course, there are plenty of other scriptures. If I wanted to make this whole sermon on just proving that the seventh day is a Sabbath, we could turn to those scriptures and we could show, you know, that the Sabbath was not done away, was not nailed to the cross or anything like that, as some people claim. They make those claims, but an honest reading of the Bible shows it doesn't hold up. That's not true. We know that Jesus kept the Sabbath, and He never said anything about it ceasing to be holy time. After Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, His apostles and disciples kept the Sabbath, and they taught new converts that they should keep the Sabbath. So, I don't want to study those scriptures today. We can devote less energy to discussing if we should keep the Sabbath, and talk a little bit more about how we should keep the Sabbath.

That's where it's important to remember God wants us to be careful to distinguish between the holy and the profane.

Nadab and Abi who died because they did not make that distinction. Now, I'll say, I believe, as it says in Corinthians, all those things happen in ancient Israel as an example for us to learn from. So, that was a dramatic example to teach Israelites at that time the importance of the distinction, and it's written so that we can learn. So, I don't think...well, I shouldn't say I don't think. I'm confident God isn't going around striking people dead every time they do something on the Sabbath that they shouldn't. Otherwise, probably most of us would have been struck dead already. I'm certain that I would have. Luckily, as we discussed earlier in the sermonette, God is forgiving and He gives us a chance to turn, but He does want us to learn and make that distinction. So, well, of course, I had a note here, though. God's not striking us dead, but if a person never does repent and change, you know, death is the ultimate reward. But that's not something we're looking forward to or expect. Now, we've read one clear command of how to keep the Sabbath. Don't work. It's not a work day. It's a day of rest. And it goes through and it says, for you and your family and your servants, or nowadays we might say employees. So, we're not to hire someone to go do the work that we're not doing. Everyone's supposed to have a rest.

Now, there's one other very clear instruction of what to do or not do on the Sabbath. If you'll turn with me to Leviticus 23. Leviticus 23 and verse 3. Now, we know Leviticus 23 is a listing of all seven of the Holy Days. It's the one chapter that covers all of them at once, and it gives the detail about what sacrifices the ancient priesthood was to offer.

But before Leviticus 23 starts discussing the seven Holy Days, it starts with the weekly Holy Day. In verse 3 it says, six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest. But it doesn't stop there. There's a comma and then it says, a holy convocation. And of course, you shall do no work on it as it says, it is the Sabbath of the Eternal in all your dwellings. But it's also, if not just a day of rest, it's a holy convocation. I mentioned earlier I had my Unger's Bible dictionary. It's funny, it's a pretty big book. I use it as a doorstop for my office, believe it or not. But I looked up holy convocation to be sure, and holy convocation, it means exactly what we typically say. It's a meeting or assembly for the purpose of worship. It's a coming together to worship God. God said the Sabbath is a holy convocation. It is the day each week when He expects us to assemble together to worship. Now, He could have just said, it's a day to worship Me. You know, everybody takes time while you're at home and worship. But He didn't say that. He said, we're to come together. And Christ never said anything to contradict this command. He followed it Himself. We can read in the Gospel accounts that He would go into the synagogue as was His custom. He was used to gathering together to worship God. And I'll just refer to Hebrews 10 and 25, where we're told to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. In other words, continue meeting together. Continue that holy convocation. Now, there are other times when Christians gather, and we might get together at someone's house for dinner. We might have social activities. And I've been bragging, partly because I thought it was fun. About 14 of us gathered at Kevin and Debbie Call's house to cut firewood for them and split, because Kevin couldn't do that with a broken leg. But, you know, so we gathered together on a Sunday morning, but that wasn't gathering together to worship God. On the seventh day of the week is the holy convocation. But we might ask, is that it? Okay. Don't work. Go to church services. Now, I should say, I've had that discussion with people, because, and we'll get to this later, it's easy to start paring down and being more specific. And we do, to some degree, want to do that, but we also want to be careful to know what the Bible says and what it doesn't say. But if we're looking for something more, we want to remember, as I discussed in the sermon sometime in the last couple of months, I lose track, but we were focusing on the spirit of the law. God's Holy Spirit in us helps us to look at His holy Word and discern. We can look for God's original intent. Is there something beneath just what's written? And I think so. There's a scripture, the scripture is in Isaiah 58, which is where I want to go next. Do discuss those things. Isaiah 58, beginning in verse 13. I think here's where we get a little insight into, if we want to say, well, God, what more is there? We can pray to our Father and say, I know you say, don't work and we're supposed to gather together, but how can I keep the Sabbath more holy? I'm not sure if more holy is a term, but how can I do a better job of keeping it holy?

And here, I think He does give us a better insight. Isaiah 58, verse 13, He says, and by the way, this is after extensive talk about fasting. So, it's funny, I know, especially when I was a teenager, sometimes the Sabbath seemed like really tough to keep it holy. But after a day of fasting, keeping the Sabbath, a piece of cake, even for a teen. So He turns away from talking about fasting, and then He says, discussing the Sabbath, If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, that means don't trample on it, it's figurative speech. Of course, we don't literally put our foot on time. But turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My Holy Day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the Holy Day of the Eternal, honorable, and shall honor Him. So honoring God, that's the spirit of the law. Not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasures, nor speaking your own words. Now, we can look, there's a lot of potential meaning in here. One of the things we do want to notice, though, before we talk about the nots, not doing this or that, is that He does say, call the Sabbath a delight. So, without understanding, it doesn't mean we're prohibited from doing anything that's pleasurable or fun, because it wouldn't be much of a delight in that case. But we're also not to trample the Sabbath. We're to honor God in it. And three areas, He tells us, are ways to do that are by not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasures, and not speaking your own words. And the reward there, in verse 14, "...then you shall delight yourself in the Eternal, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father." That heritage, of course, of the birthright promises, are the many things we enjoy now. We keep the Sabbath, we can enjoy all the blessings and the riches. And I like that, I think it's poetic language, saying, I'll make you to ride on the high places, the high hills. I don't think it means to literally put us on top of Mount Everest. But how many of us have ever been up in a high place and looked around and had that exhilarated feeling? That's one of the things, I don't do it much anymore, but I used to love hiking and going up as high as I could get. And that uplifting feeling was just spectacular. When we honor the Sabbath, God is saying, I'll give you that, but it's not just a feeling. He'll build that into our life.

So let's consider these three things one at a time, on how to keep, I think, the spirit of the law. One is, it says, not doing your ways. Now, we believe this is talking about your normal occupation. The things you normally do on most other days. Now, for most people in the world, that means your job, your occupation. And it doesn't necessarily mean paid employment, but whatever you do to feed and clothe and take care of yourself and your family. And that could include things like housework, homework for a student, gardening, yard work, fixing your car, and all that. And of course, this is an expression, I think, of the original command to not work on the Sabbath. But when we start thinking of the spirit of the law, it broadens the meaning, and we can go a little more in depth. Because the term work can mean different things to different people, as I'm sure we understand. And as far as working a job goes, things are a lot different now in our society and our economy than they were when God spoke to the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. There are a lot of occupations that exist now that even a couple of hundred years ago, when most people did manual labor, they would say, that's work, that's not work. So if we were just trying to follow the letter of the law, we might say, well, typing on a computer, that's not work. Or you might say, well, sitting and answering a phone, how does that work? Right? How much work is it to sit behind the wheel of a car or a truck? And I thought of Jim Call, Sr., and I thought, yeah, a night watchman or a security guard. They're mostly sitting around and watching. That's not breaking the Sabbath, is it? But is that doing your own ways, the things you normally do? And of course, I think it is. Now, looking at it from a different perspective, some people would say, well, I'm not getting paid for it, so it must not be work. But that includes all kinds of basic things that we do, like doing laundry, mowing the lawn, some things that are quite vigorous work. Matter of fact, I think at the time I was preparing this, Sue had gone down to visit her parents for a couple days, and so I was doing some laundry, trying to catch it all up for her. And while I was folding stuff, I started thinking, I wonder how many calories you can burn just folding laundry. It's not like running a mile, but there's a fair bit to it. And I think somebody's done studies of that. But anyways, to really keep the Sabbath, as I said, we need to think of what are our ways, what are the typical work or things we do to occupy ourselves. And we want to distinguish between what's holy and what's not holy.

And recognize the holiness of the day by staying away from those typical things. Now, I mentioned earlier, we focus on your pleasure. Not doing your pleasure, well, it can't mean that you can't do anything that's enjoyable, especially because different people find different things enjoyable. You know, I find eating cookies to be very enjoyable, but I do that at church services fairly often. You know, if the Sabbath were a day of abstinence and absolute boredom, it wouldn't be a delight. But I think not finding your pleasures means that the Sabbath is not a day for the leisure activities that we enjoy freely on other days. And if you think in those terms, it doesn't take a lot of effort. Now, especially for young men, hunting and fishing might fall in that category. Watching our favorite TV shows or movies or finding our pleasures, and I think not necessarily what I'd call holy. And, you know, group sports. I love playing basketball and softball, jogging or swimming. For some people, I thought gardening fits more in this category than it did in your ways or work. And also, I couldn't help thinking, despite what some people were insisting on 20 years ago, I think golfing is still finding our pleasures and not something we should do on the Sabbath. I couldn't help but think of a story from my youth. I had a friend that I grew up with. He lived around the corner from me, and we met when we were in kindergarten, and we were pretty good friends throughout our childhood. But something happened. My family was called into the church, and I started learning and believing these things. And of course, his family wasn't. So I remember once he came over to visit when we were both about 14 years old, and he wanted to go ride minibikes. That was our great pleasure at that time. But it was Saturday. And I said, no, no, I'm not going to go ride the minibike today. Oh, come on! I tried to explain to him it was the Sabbath as a holy day. He wasn't buying any of that. He said, you can't tell me it says in the Bible to not ride a minibike. And we argued back and forth. So finally, I grabbed an ink pen and I wrote in my Bible, do not ride your minibike on Saturday. And he wasn't convinced, but we didn't go ride the minibikes. And I learned that's another thing that comes up. You decide how to allocate your time and who to spend time with on the Sabbath. Now, of course, there's nothing wrong with riding a minibike or a lot of those other things that we enjoy. But many of them are not holy. And so there's something we do on the six other days that we can freely.

Now, that other category about your words, that's one that can be pretty difficult to understand if we don't try to apply God's Holy Spirit. Because does that mean we're to be silent? Well, if so, then I'm obviously already profane the Sabbath and really so of all of us quite a bit. Or you could say, well, if not my words, I should only speak in quotes from the Bible. Or if God's lenient, maybe He'll let me use Shakespeare and some other things. Well, I don't think that's what the Bible means. But there's a principle that can help us. If we're not to speak our own words, what's it really getting at? Let's turn to Matthew 12. Matthew 12 and verse 34.

I think this is a good principle to help us with that.

Now, this is breaking into the middle of a discussion. Jesus was having one of His many disputes with the Pharisees. And I love when we break in here, He's in the middle of calling them a bunch of snakes. So you brood of vipers. How can you speak? How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And that's what I wanted to get to, that spiritual concept. Out of the abundance of the heart, not of course the muscle that pumps the blood, but out of our mind, our inmost being. Out of that, the mouth speaks. And that's what God is getting at when He says, not speaking your own words. But that makes it both easier to understand what means and tougher to do in some ways.

You know, it's not a matter of only reciting words that come out of the Bible. It's a matter of focusing our thoughts, focusing what we do, what we think about. Because when you think about it, I'm using the word think, what we think about and talk about most of the time are the things we just discussed, our ways and our pleasures. We think about and we talk to people about our job, about our hobbies, our activities. And God wants us on the Sabbath to put aside our hobbies and activities and put aside our normal work. And He wants us to also put those things out of our thoughts. He says, I want you to take the day off work. So leave it there, stay in your office, and come home, but don't keep thinking about it. And that's something I caught myself sometimes before I was in the ministry. I worked in a job downtown Saturday afternoon. I'd go get in my car and drive home, and I have to try to force myself to stop thinking. Don't keep thinking about that client you're working with or a project that you're dealing with. Put it out of your mind.

And it could be hobbies also. Not only do you not go out and hoe in your garden, but you don't spend Saturday morning thinking about how you'll arrange your garden next spring. You put the potatoes here and the corn there. Don't have that occupying your thoughts. Or if you're like me, you're a college basketball fan. If your team's playing on Saturday and you know it, you don't have to keep checking the score. I've had friends who do that. They get their smartphones and be looking at the score on the Sabbath.

Put it out of your mind. Don't be thinking about whether or not your defense has had very many turnovers, or could your favorite player start with that injury you got? There'll be time for it later. Now, of course, does God condemn you if that thought ever crosses your mind? I don't think so, because God made our brains and He knows things come in. It's a matter of what do you do with those thoughts? Do you entertain it and start, as I said, formulating plans and dwelling on it?

Or, as an intelligent life form, do we focus our thoughts, take control, and direct our thoughts somewhere else? And, of course, we can go to the analogy I've heard many times. How do you get something out of your mind? It's tough. If I tell you, don't think about this. That's the hardest thing in the world to not think about. It reminds me, when I was a college student, I took a psychology class, and we were starting to talk about memory.

And the teacher wrote a word on the blackboard, and he said, okay, your assignment for the next class is to forget that word. And, of course, he just assigned us to do the impossible. The last thing we could do was forget about it, once he told us that. But the old saying goes, if you want to get air out of a glass, if you have an empty glass and you want to get the air out, you could think about how to seal it and get a vacuum pump and all that.

Or, you could just pour water in, and now it's full of water, and it pushes the air right out. That's the greatest way for us not to be speaking our own words or our own thoughts on the Sabbath. Put our minds on something else. Of course, it's a time when we can pray. We can study the Bible. We can meditate. And meditation is often that one that's kind of tough.

You know, I have trouble with that. You could say, I don't have time to just sit and think, but God gave us some time. He set aside one day each week where there's a lot of other things we don't do. Now, I will say, if you're like me, and you might have noticed I'm the nervous type. I've got a lot of nervous energy, and it runs in my family. I inherited it from my mother and her grandparents, and I'm sad for Sue because Connor has the same tendency. That boy cannot sit still.

So what I do on the Sabbath, I like to take walks, not for exercise, but while I'm walking, it's easy for me to focus my thoughts. It wouldn't be uncommon for me to start talking to God and praying at the same time. There are ways it's not violating the Sabbath, but you can get your mind off of some of those thoughts. It's also a good day for reading. Of course, reading the Scripture, but there are other things we can read. I was telling the folks up in Portsmouth last week that my father-in-law gave me a couple of books on astronomy and science that really focus on how wonderful God's creation is.

I've got called The Privileged Planet, and some of you might have read it. The author is a Christian, or claims to be a Christian. I don't think he has full understanding, but he's describing how our solar system is just the right distance from the center of the galaxy, so that we haven't been bombarded with enough gamma rays to sterilize the planet. And then the Earth is just the right distance from the Sun.

If it were too much closer, we'd burn up. If we were further away, we'd all freeze. And it goes on to show all these things that work just perfectly, and how wonderful God's creation is. So that's not a bad thing to read on the Sabbath. You can read stories of people's lives that are inspiring and uplifting. It's interesting how that can change. I like to read history and biography.

Now, when I was a graduate student, that was my job. And so on the Sabbath, I wouldn't read anything that had to do with history, because I did that all the time. I almost never have time. So sometimes on the Sabbath, especially Friday evenings as a break, I'll spend some time reading some history. Right now, I'm working my way through Winston Churchill's account of World War II, which I've been at it for about a year, and I'm almost at the end of the second volume. So the rate I'm going is going to be about three more years. But Churchill had a way with words, and it's understanding you see heroism, and you see the faults.

You see a lot of things that you see in Scripture. So as I said, that's something in the Sabbath you could turn your mind to some other things, as long as it's all secondary to studying God's Word and thinking His thoughts.

And of course, the Sabbath gives us time for our families and for spending more time with our brethren, with the body of Christ. Now, I'll say, of course, there's another time where we might have some concern if we're not to be speaking our own words, talking about all the things we do during the week. What do you do when you first see someone at Sabbath service? You say, well, how are you doing? What have you been up to? I don't think that's wrong. We want to be concerned and know about each other. But it gives us the time to talk about some of those things in a different way. It's interesting how you might be talking to someone at church services about a problem you've had that the day before you talked to a neighbor and you just griped in whatever. But somehow, when you're talking to your brethren, you can start deriving the spiritual lessons from it and you can help each other. And of course, iron can sharpen iron. And it's wonderful when we get together and we can talk about some of the things we've been studying or look at the events in the news and see how they relate to prophecy. Things we can't do talking with our neighbors or people that we work with.

So rather than scrutinizing every word, I think it's good for us to keep a mindset on focusing on honoring God overall. When spirit-minded people of God discern that the Sabbath is holy to God, then it's easy to understand the Scripture. And I'm just going to refer to it in Mark 2, 27, as where Christ was having a dispute with the Pharisees. And he told them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Now, it doesn't mean it's given to us and we can do whatever we want with it, because it's holy time. But if we consider the opportunities, the blessing it is of what God gave us, then we'll think of more of those things than specifics of, do not do this, do not do that. Now, we shouldn't ignore some of the do nots. Obviously, we're not to work, we're not to seek our own ways or own pleasures. But the Gospel accounts show a lot of Jesus Christ having disputes with the Pharisees. As we just read, He called them a bunch of snakes more than once. But they often accused Him of breaking the Sabbath. And so, modern Protestants and Catholics say, well, of course, they were trying to make Him keep the Sabbath and He was trying to show them that it's done away with. Well, that's not the case. He wasn't doing away with the Sabbath and He didn't change anything about it. But He disagreed with a lot of their nitpicky rules that they developed. I think we should give them not the Pharisees of His day, but maybe those who came before had at least some good motivation. They looked back at what had happened to the nations of Israel and Judah and realized they were conquered, gone into captivity. And at some point they realized, this happened partly because we broke the Sabbath. Time and again, the prophets say, you worshiped idols and you broke the Sabbath, and therefore you're going into captivity. Nehemiah 13, I'm not going to turn there, but Nehemiah goes through a lot of that history and he clearly says, we broke the Sabbath, that's one of the reasons our fathers went into captivity. So, knowing that, a lot of the religious leaders decided we've got to make a bunch of rules to stop people from breaking the Sabbath. The rabbis of the time developed 39 types of actions that were prohibited. It was an agricultural economy, so it included things like plowing and reaping and threshing, winnowing. Regarding the house, they prohibited cleaning, sifting, kneading, baking. But the 39 wasn't enough. They said, we've got to be more detailed to make sure people don't get close to breaking the Sabbath. So they broke it down to where they came up with some ridiculous rules. Like, one of the prohibitions was against tying knots. So, can you not tie any knots? Well, if it's a knot that you can untie with one hand, then it's okay to tie on the Sabbath. And then they had a prohibition against spitting on dry soil, because that might disturb the soil, and it'd be the same as plowing, and plowing was breaking the Sabbath.

And on and on it goes. I think that's a long ways from God saying, don't work on the Sabbath, and keep it as a holy convocation. It's even a long ways from saying, don't do your own ways, don't seek your own pleasure, don't speak your own words. But we still have to apply God's Spirit. I'll admit, I wanted to cover this subject, and I thought it'd be good to get some guidance. So I went through quite a few of the churches, old magazines and booklets, looking for some of the articles. And I found a lot of instruction, and a lot of questions have been asked over the years. Questions come up, what about cooking? What about washing dishes? What is the Sabbath day's journey? What about taking care of livestock? There's that question, what exactly do you mean by an ox and the ditch? And that brought to mind is, a few weeks ago, I was talking to Forrest Shoemaker. I don't know if you know, I think Forrest and Ken both keep cattle on their property. And Forrest was telling me, there was some situation of one of his milk cows got into some shoot crosswise, and was going to hurt itself, and they had to come get it out on a Sabbath morning. And I thought, that is the closest I've ever heard to an actual ox in a ditch on the Sabbath. It wasn't quite a ditch, but of course, you know, Jesus Christ's story shows that he was okay with going and saving your cattle. But he didn't want you to leave it where it could easily get into a ditch.

My thought isn't today to go into a lot of those explanations. Especially when, well, I'll say I'd be glad to talk with any of you about it, but I know many of you are experienced. And I said this in Portsmouth, I said, if some of you are newer in the church and have questions, look around. I can answer your questions, but there's a lot of very experienced people here who will do a very good job of answering those. So I have no qualms in any congregation saying that. My purpose today was to remind us to remember that the Sabbath is holy, to think about the spirit of the law. If we pray and ask for guidance, and if we study God's Word, and think about more how to honor God, then figure out what we can do and still be keeping the Sabbath, then I think we'll do well. And of course, it's good also to remind us that God gave us Friday afternoon or Friday the whole day, if necessary, as a preparation day. And that's worthy of a whole separate message that I didn't want to go into. But we know from the story of God giving manna to ancient Israel, and of course that's one way He made sure they knew which day was the Sabbath. Manna shows up six days, seventh day there's no manna. And He told them, on the sixth day, gather twice as much. It's interesting, He didn't say, gather one seventh as much the other six days, because otherwise it'd go bad if He had any left over. But the day before is a day for preparation. I've tried to be better about that for myself on all kinds of things. I started making a diligent thing that Friday afternoon I'll iron a shirt for the Sabbath and try to buff my shoes if necessary. Now, I don't think it's a sin to iron a shirt on the Sabbath, but it's much better and more wholly to have it ironed ahead of time. So that's what I try to do. Of course, it's funny, a lot of people look at me and say, you just now figured that out, Frank? Well, I figured it out a few years ago. I've just tried to be more diligent about doing it.

But that's the idea I want to leave us with. We can prepare for and we can keep the Sabbath, because God is holy and He wants us to be holy. And He wants us to distinguish between what is holy and what is not, and that includes the holy time that makes up the Sabbath. God made the Sabbath holy, and He wants us to keep it holy. As human beings, we tend to complicate things. We look at a lot of details and cloud the water, but this one doesn't have to be complicated. We just need to recognize and remember that this day of the week is holy. It's a day that we should devote to seeking God's ways, to His thoughts and His words. When we do that, I think we'll find that it's not so hard. So, having said that, I'll encourage us all for whatever it is left. Let's really enjoy and keep the Sabbath.