In the Image of God Volume 19, Number 12 August, The Sabbath God s Holy Day

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1 In the Image of God Volume 19, Number 12 August, 2013 The Sabbath God s Holy Day Many people consider the Sabbath as a Jewish holy day, which Protestants and Catholics need not bother to keep. They say the New Testament, after Jesus resurrection, does not tell people to keep the Sabbath, you know, Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy... Therefore, since grace and faith replaced the Law and Commandments, one need not keep the Sabbath. 1Pet. 3:15 but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; Believers keep the Sabbath, also called the 4 th Commandment; the Sabbath does precede the Fourth by a couple of days or millennia. Believers keep the Sabbath (rest in Hebrew) because God made it holy in Gen 2:1-3. God made the Sabbath, the Seventh Day holy; at no time did he unmake the holiness of the day. Besides God would not say or do something out of His Love and Goodness only to change His mind later in history. Once the Seventh Day was made holy, it remained holy. 1Sam. 15:29 Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind. Gen. 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. Hebrew sanctified: 1990 våd q (qaœdash) be hallowed, holy, sanctified; to consecrate, sanctify, prepare, dedicate, apartness, holiness, sacredness. God made the seventh day sacred and holy on the seventh day of the first week of creation. Each Sabbath from there on was inherently holy whether anyone else rested from his work on it or not. Just as the world exists for all to see the One God s work as the Creator, the I Am, the Lord our God, the Sabbath cries out from the heavens each week to rest and keep it holy. For those who believe and believe in Our Father in heaven like Abraham, the Ten Commandments are intuitive, innate, instinctual, untaught and natural. Gen. 26:5 because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws. 1

2 Gen. 1:14 Then God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; Hebrew seasons:(mowed, properly, an appointment, i.e. a fixed time or season; specifically, a festival; conventionally a year; by implication, an assembly (as convened for a definite purpose); technically the congregation; by extension, the place of meeting; also a signal (as appointed beforehand). Until the Commandments were written on believers minds and hearts, people needed the written list from the original stone. They could now keep the Law like Abraham. These are feast days of the Lord beginning with the Sabbath in Lev. 23. Notice Leviticus does not say the feast days of the Israelites, but of God. Believers also keep the Sabbath because Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath and they should really imitate him. Not only that, Jesus kept the Holy Days, (feast days of the Lord), Passover, Pentecost and Trumpets in absentia, the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day. The Apostles kept the Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost and Day of Atonement. But that was only for them, not those outside the Law, above the Law, whatever. See: sabbathchurch.org/sabbathmadeformand.html Believers keep the Commandments out of love, not to please Our Father in Heaven, the God and Father of Jesus. The Second Commandment says, Showing steadfast love to those that love Me and keep My commandments. One of those Commandments is the Sabbath. 1John 5:3-5 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. JFB: 3. this is the love of God consists in this. not grievous as so many think them. It is the way of the transgressor that is hard. What makes them to the regenerate not grievous, is faith which overcometh the world (1 John 5:4):in proportion as faith is strong, the grievousness of God s commandments to the rebellious flesh is overcome. The reason why believers feel any degree of irksomeness in God s commandments is, they do not realize fully by faith the privileges of their spiritual life. 4. For (See note on 1 John 5:3). The reason why His commandments are not grievous. Though there is a conflict in keeping them, the sue for the whole body of the regenerate is victory over every opposing influence; meanwhile there is a present joy to each believer in keeping them which makes them not grievous. whatsoever Greek, all that is begotten of God. The neuter expresses the universal whole, or aggregate of the regenerate, regarded as one collective body John 3:6; 6:37, 39, where BENGEL remarks, that in Jesus discourses, what the Father has given Him is 2

3 called, in the singular number and neuter gender, all whatsoever; those who come to the Son are described in the masculine gender and plural number, they all, or singular, every one. The Father has given, as it were, the whole mass to the Son, that all whom He gave may be onewhole: that universal whole the Son singly evolves, in the execution of the divine plan. overcometh habitually. the world all that is opposed to keeping the commandments of God, or draws us off from God, in this world, including our corruptflesh, on which the world s blandishments or threats act, as also including Satan, the prince of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). this is the victory that overcometh Greek aorist,... that hath (already) overcome the world : the victory(where faith is) hereby is implied as having been already obtained (1 John 2:13; 4:4). Before Sinai, God used the Commandments as the basis to create the world. sabbathchurch.org/creationcovenant.html Before Sinai, Noah walked with God because he understood the Commandments (Noahide Covenant, so called). Further as noted above: Gen. 26:5 because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws. No longer written in stone, the Law is written on our hearts. Romans 6 and 7 explain 1 Tim 1:9. The key to Timothy is revelation: people break the commandments but do not know or care that they are sinners and enemies of God. Then some realize that their lives were lawless and they seek out God s Way and receive grace. Righteous people do not need the Law to repudiate them for like Noah and Abraham, they also walked with God. Then they do not have to do the Law because they became the Law, which was written in their hearts upon receiving the ruach (mind, heart, character) from God. Some will say that they do not murder anyone or commit adultery or steal or covet or bear false witness. How come? Believers do not do these either; do not take My Father s name in vain and have nothing to do with idols especially the sun god, the demon that the Adventists say Sunday keepers worship. Most likely believe in trinity even though the Word says God is one individual being, person, not three in one. The Word says God is one (I go to my God and your God, My Father and your Father), there is no other, one thousand times. Why are only the Sabbath and the I Am done away with? People do not murder or commit adultery but worship on the sun god s day instead of the day God gave in the beginning. Well that is all right, the Law is done away with, even the moral Law, the precovanent Law and the Old Covenant Law. Rom 14:6 JFB: He that regardeth the day, regardeth it to the Lord the Lord CHRIST, as before. and he... not, to the Lord he doth not each doing what he believes to be the Lord s will. He that earth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks The one gave thanks to God for 3

4 the flesh which the other scrupled to use; the other did the same for the herbs to which, for conscience sake, he restricted himself. From this passage about the observance of days, ALFORD unhappily infers that such language could not have been used if the sabbath law had been in force under the Gospel in any form. Certainly it could not, if the sabbath were merely one of the Jewish festival days; but it will not do to take this for granted merely because it was observed under the Mosaic economy. And certainly, if the sabbath was more ancient than Judaism; if, even under Judaism, it was enshrined among the eternal sanctities of the Decalogue, uttered, as no other parts of Judaism were, amidst the terrors of Sinai; and if the Lawgiver Himself said of it when on earth, The Son of man is LORD EVEN OF THE SABBATH DAY (see Mark 2:28) it will be hard to show that the apostle must have meant it to be ranked by his readers among those vanished Jewish festival days, which only weakness could imagine to be still in force a weakness which those who had more light ought, out of love, merely to bear with. Heb. 4:9 So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Heb. 4:9 A Sabbath rest remains, therefore, for God s people. Heb. 4:10 For the person who has entered His rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from His. Heb. 4:11 Let us then make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience. The use of one scripture to cancel out hundreds of scripture is called noise in the science of linguistics, the study of the laws of communication. We learned about linguistics, in the mid 50 s from IT by Shannon and Weaver; a book of some 90 pages of mostly Calculus. They discovered the law of communication, which enabled them to enhance the phone and phone lines. When a person or Person communicates, the consistency and repetitions (called redundancy) make up the spoken message. For whatever reason, purposefully or accidentally, when words or messages come through which do not fit consistency it is called noise. The receiver or listener of the message then cancels out the noise as not part of the original message. Some people cling to the noise and lose the full meaning of the communication. Many Bible scholars today and years ago talk about noise and try to make the noise fit into the redundancy without knowing linguistics (although a few do use linguistics). The Sabbath keeping and Commandment keeping references have quick count of well over 750 times (likely much more) times-good redundancies, half of them in the New Testament, which is much shorter than the OT, thus making up a greater percentage. You do not need any other evidence that God made the Sabbath for man. Mark 2:27 Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Notice Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not the Jews. Gen. 1:14 Then God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. They will serve as signs for festivals and for days and years. HCSB 4

5 The Sabbath is there every week for those who want to rest on the day God rested and made holy by resting. Of course Sabbath means rest in Hebrew. Six days shall you labor Heb 4:9-11 and Lev 23 attest to the fact that the feast days are the Lord, not Israel. God needed a line from Israel (actually Abraham) to have a line to Jesus; so God revealed His Law to them and us through them. Besides they were the only ones who would believe God but hardly persevered in obedience. James 2:10 For whoever keeps the entire law, yet fails in one point, is guilty of breaking it all. James 2:11 For He who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not murder. So if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you are a lawbreaker. James 2:12 Speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of freedom. James obviously views the Commandments as a whole, which is now written on our hearts instead of stone. God gave His Word so all could easily understand it, if they are so inclined, and to those who are called from the beginning. I have no idea why God did not mention the Sabbath or referenced it during that period. Nonetheless, the sky showed the Sabbath during that period. Noah and Abraham walked with God and were righteous; therefore they kept the Sabbath as well as the other Commandments. I know it without it being mentioned because of James. Abe s kid and the other offspring would have kept the day if they were righteous, not likely. Therefore the Commandments had to be written as a testimony and recorded for all to see. Check the article, Torah and Mitzvah on the web site Wednesday. We are under grace, unmerited pardon, not under the consequences of breaking the Law. Forgive us our sins as we forgive others Where do the sins come from? Breaking the Commandments? I m not going into the difference between people who do not know the Commandments compared to those who will not keep the Commandments. Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath and He kept Lev 23 (the Feast Days of the Lord (not Israel) as did the Apostles (Paul preached on the Sabbath and ran over into the first day one time) and a few Christians. I want to keep the day God made holy and Jesus is Lord of it. When did God remove the holiness from the Seventh Day Rest (Sabbath), which He established in Gen 2:1-3? How does God rescind the holiness of the seventh day, by destroying the moon and sun? Jeremiah prophesied Jesus becoming the Lord of the Sabbath. 5

6 Jer. 33:25 This is what the LORD says: If I do not keep My covenant with the day and with the night and fail to establish the fixed order of heaven and earth, The Sabbath is up there in the sky every week as the sun sets at the end of sixth day; then the evening brings the Sabbath on the seventh day. You know evening to evening. That makes its redundancy 7 x 52 x 5773? years so far. One more next week In a New Covenant mode, I look at Gen 1:14 when My Father created the Sabbath rest day (and other Holy Days, as well) and put its sign into the heavens. In Gen 2: 1-3, My Father told us that the seventh day is a holy day of rest. Since we are made in My Father s image, we should rest from all our work every Rest (Hebrew, Sabbath) Day. He made us in His Image; we should work six days and rest the seventh as He did. As far as I am concerned, I do not need the 700 reverences to the Sabbath and Commandments because my Father adopted me and chose me from the beginning out of love, by that love he implanted the Commandments into my mind and heart, and I must behave as a son of My Father out of love for Him because of all He did for me. He gave me the Holy Day of Rest out His love for me and because He created the world from what His Nature is, including the Sabbath. My Father is good; therefore, His Creation is good, including Gen 1:14. He is Our Father and believers want to be like Him by returning His love and adhering to the love He put in their minds and hearts. Abba, furthermore, adopted Jesus as His Son and gave Him the authority over the Sabbath. Therefore, believers want to adhere to the Big Brother s way since Abba put all believers under him. Those who belong to Abba s Family, He teaches, trains, disciplines and brings them out of the darkness of paganism and Israeli rote adherence to Commandments written in stone. The new Sacrifice of Jesus has ended all other Levitical sacrifices and brought about the new priesthood-ruler ship from Melchizedek rather than the Levitical-king duality. The anointed priest hood still exists but was upgrade to a better version, as is the new rulership. 1Pet. 1:13-16 Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. Why would God take the holiness out of the Sabbath? He changed the Law from stone to mind, from sin and death to life by Jesus death, from Levitical priesthood to Melchizedek priesthood. He upgraded the Law not destroyed it. Gil Kovacs, Pastor, Sabbath Christian Church 6