In my search for information on the Sabbath, a friend of mine told me about a man called David Lawson. I heard he had some notes on the Sabbath so I rang him. The day I phoned was his 85th birthday.
David comes from a background in accountancy and that background is seen in the following short, succinct, methodical, step-by-step presentation that he titled ‘A Gift from God’.
I felt that David’s notes were well worth recording on the website here, before his time on this earth was over.
If you want more back-up information after reading David’s ‘A Gift from God’, then you may like to go to ‘A Day to Remember’ or ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy – the forgotten part of the fourth commandment’.
Thank you. Ray
by David Lawson
I want to talk to you about a gift from God that many people have failed to appreciate. There are many gifts from God to man - the gift of salvation, the gift of life, gifts of health, happiness, contentment, peace, assurance and the provision of our necessities. But the gift I want to particularly mention is the first gift God gave to the human family after the creation of Adam and Eve. And it is the gift of Rest.
At the close of creation week God ended His work on the seventh-day, He rested on it, He blessed and sanctified it.
Genesis 2:1-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had made.”
There is no doubt that the Sabbath is God's special day. He set it apart right back in the beginning of the world as a day that is different from all the rest. The Sabbath is as different from other days of the week as the Bible is different from other books, and churches are different from other buildings.
This special day was not just for God. It was not just for Adam and Eve either. It was God's first gift to the human family.
Jesus said it was "made for MAN".
“And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ ”
It is therefore a gift from God for all mankind. It has His blessing in it. God's blessing is too valuable to miss, too wonderful to lose, too good to ignore. And if the Sabbath was instituted for our benefit by God Himself, then we should be interested in what the Bible says about that day, shouldn't we?
The Sabbath must be needed for man, or it would not have been made for Him by God. SABBATH means ‘REST’.
Besides the regular nightly rest, God lays it down in the Bible that after the work of six days, man must have the seventh-day Sabbath rest. Certainly man needs rest, and God who made all things knows just how much rest man really needs. We need this gift of rest today more than Adam and Eve needed it in the perfect and peaceful environment of Eden. We live in an age of jarred nerves and unhappiness. Modern life is a matter of “hurry, worry and bury." Talmage says, "Our bodies are seven-day clocks and they need to be wound up, and if they are not wound up they run down into the grave..." God's solution to the problem of pressure, tension and worry that are so apparent today, is the Sabbath.
That means to receive the blessing of God's gift, we are to CEASE FROM WORK ON THE SEVENTH DAY of the week.
And we are not to make others work for us either on the Sabbath. We are to encourage them to rest by NOT EMPLOYING THEM TO WORK FOR US ON THE SABBATH, whether it be the carpenter, the painter, the plumber, the baker or milkman.
Even the housewife is to rest on the Sabbath.
And so it was, on the sixth day, that they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. And all the rulers of the congregation came and told it to Moses. Then he said to them,
“This is what the LORD has said, ‘Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept until morning.’ ”
So they laid up till morning, as Moses commanded; and it did not stink, nor were there any worms in it.
Then Moses said, “Eat that today, for today is a Sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field.
“Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.”
“Now when evening had come, because it was the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath.”
God wants the Sabbath to be a day of physical rest for the whole family. The day before the Sabbath is called the Preparation day as it is the day to get ready for the Sabbath; the day when all the extra cooking, house cleaning, shopping etc. is done so that when the Sabbath comes it can be the day of rest God designed it to be.
If you own a shop or BUSINESS, that too should be CLOSED on the Sabbath. God means you to do that because He wants you to have the Sabbath day rest to relieve you of the worries that are attached to business.
Better to lose a little of the profits if need be, than to destroy your physical and spiritual health by chasing the dollar. This text in Nehemiah also indicates we are NOT TO BUY OR SELL on the Sabbath.
God desires the Sabbath to be different. While the Sabbath is for rest it is not necessarily a day of idleness or laziness. There are some works that are permissible on the Sabbath.
In the next test we notice that it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath. The sick must be cared for and the wants of the needy supplied.
“And behold there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’
– that they might accuse Him.
Then He said to them, ‘What man is there among you has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?’
‘Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’ ”
ACTS OF MERCY are in perfect harmony with the true spirit of Sabbath keeping. But we should never broaden these acts of mercy to include things on the Sabbath that can easily be done on the other six working days.
God tells us of a few other guidelines that will help enhance our pleasure on the Sabbath.
“If you 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 LORD honourable,
And shall honour Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
Then you shall delight yourselves in the LORD;
and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
We are not to use it for our own everyday pleasures. It is to be different. Leave out sports, newspapers, radio, television etc on the Sabbath. And that in itself will be a blessing. God also wants us to forget the world and its problems for one day so that we can find real blessing.
Why these guidelines on how we keep the Sabbath? God asks us to refrain from these things for a grand purpose. The Sabbath is primarily designed for man's spiritual and physical benefit.
“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had made.”
God wants man to devote the day to SPIRITUAL CONNECTION WITH HIM as we rest our bodies from the tensions and pressures of the week's activities.
“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”
We are to KEEP IT HOLY. God wants us at the end of the week to lift our minds from worldly things to holy things. We are often so busy during the week that we have little time for God and the Bible, so He wants us to put everything else aside so we can devote the seventh-day to developing the spiritual side of our natures. In Nehemiah 13:19, we find the Sabbath begins at sundown.
“And so it was at the gates of Jerusalem, as it began to be dark before the Sabbath, that I commanded the gates to be shut, and charged that they must not be opened until after the Sabbath. Then I posted some of my servants at the gates, so that no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath day.”
What a beautiful time to start the Sabbath with God. As the sun sets in the west, we can put aside all work and the cares of the world and pause a moment with our families or as individuals and seek God in prayer that He might help us keep the day for Him. And at the close of the Sabbath, again at sunset, we can pause and lift our voices to God, thanking Him for the blessing of His gift - the Sabbath.
The night of the Sabbath (which comes before the daylight hours of the Sabbath) can be spent in devotional reading from the Bible and other spiritual books, listening to sacred music, praying and singing praises to God, and then getting to bed a little earlier than usual to give the body the extra rest it needs at the end of a busy week. The daylight hours of the Sabbath can be spent as Jesus spent them.
“So He 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.”
His regular custom was to attend the house of WORSHIP and take part in the devotions. We can also spend a good portion of the Sabbath at home in Bible Study and with the family. The Sabbath gives the family a greater opportunity to be together than on any other day of the week. We can take the children out amongst the beauties of NATURE to turn their minds to the God we love and serve. Visiting the sick and needy, and Christian witness are also good ways to use some of the Sabbath hours.
In order to obtain the blessing of His special gift of the Sabbath, God wants us to leave the occupations of our daily toil and devote the sacred hours of the Sabbath to HEALTHFUL REST, to WORSHIP and to HOLY DEEDS. The Sabbath - what a day! A day that is different! A day designed as one of the greatest blessings that can come to man! A day planned by the Creator Himself for man’s benefit.
“But which day is the Sabbath?” you may rightly ask. And there are many lines of positive proof that show beyond doubt that Saturday (sunset Friday to sunset Saturday) is the true identical seventh day of creation week. This the special part of time every week that God has made holy and in which He has placed a blessing too valuable, too wonderful, and too good for man to miss.
Why do we have a seven day week? Not only in civilized lands, but in much of the pagan, heathen world we find a seven day week. Why is it so? The only explanation for the week that was apparent in the nations of old and is still seen all around the world today is the story of Genesis 1 and 2, where God made the world in six days and set apart the seventh as a great memorial of His handiwork.
Genesis 2:1-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had made.”
From then on, time was divided into periods of seven days.
When the Jews came out of slavery in Egypt, God reminded them of the Sabbath. Exodus 16:4,5,11-30 (we read some of these verses earlier), God gave them manna on six days, but none on the Sabbath.
Then in Exodus 20:8-11, at Mt. Sinai, God clearly showed that this seventh day He was teaching them to keep was identical to the seventh day of creation. And for 2,080 Sabbaths in the wilderness (40 years), God constantly impressed on their minds the day He wished them to observe by withholding manna every seventh day.
From that time on, the Jews kept a strict account of days so they would never mistake the true day of worship. In 70 A.D. they were driven from their native land to every nation on earth. From that time till now they have been scattered and separated. And yet today, with communications restored all over the world, we do not find the Jew all mixed up. Genuine Jews everywhere keep Saturday.
When Jesus came to earth, He showed clearly which day was the Sabbath when He worshipped regularly in the temple on the seventh day as we read earlier in Luke 4:16.
He acknowledged the fact that the Jews had not lost the correct day in their reckoning down through the centuries. He kept the same seventh day they were keeping. While He argued with them many times over matters of religion and even the way they kept the Sabbath, never once was He seen in conflict with them over the day on which man should worship the Creator.
Further, Jesus' death put a seal on the seven day week and established clearly the true Sabbath day.
It was God’s plan that the Sabbath should be the day of rest for all mankind.
“And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ ”
This belief, the Apostle Paul upheld in his contact with Gentiles as well as Jews.
Down through the Christian era, there have always been religious groups who have kept the seventh day Sabbath, giving added confirmation to the fact that it has not been lost.
“Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday.” (Gibbons, Roman Catholic)
"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That is Saturday.” (Carrington, Anglican)
"Sunday is not the Sabbath." (Aldridge, Church of Christ)
These are but a few of many quotations from Protestant and Catholic scholars who admit Saturday is the Sabbath.
Webster’s 20th Century Unabridged Dictionary states: ‘Saturday is the seventh or last day of the week.’
How can time be lost?
For the world to lose a day, everyone on this planet would have to make the same mistake. And this is hardly possible. God does not require men to keep a Sabbath that has been lost in the fog of time. The Sabbath is not lost; men are.
The movements of the stars are so accurate that astronomers could pick up a change as small as ‘one thousandth part of a second lost over one thousand years’. They say there is no chance of a lost day.
Above all else, God says the Sabbath will not fail. God wouldn't set apart a certain day, put His blessing upon it, make it holy time, command that it be kept forever, and then let that holy time become so lost that we cannot tell which day to keep. The guarantee of God is behind the seventh day Sabbath. And it will not fail for it is in reality God’s holy day.
“If you 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 LORD honourable,
And shall honour Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
Then you shall delight yourselves in the LORD;
and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
We can read the Bible as Iong as we like but we will never find it any other way. Saturday, the seventh day of the week, was, is, and ever will be God's holy day. We can argue all we like, but we cannot get around such a plain statement of truth. And why should we want to. There is a blessing in the seventh day that we won't find in any other day of the week, no matter how zealously we may try to keep that day. God didn't bless the 1st day, 4th day, 6th day etc. He only blessed the 7th day. And yet it is amazing to find people searching every place for this blessing of God, rather than the place where He said it is.
What a day! What a blessing - peace, rest, contentment, relaxation, communion with the Creator, relief from the tensions, frustrations, pressures and worries of life. God says He has actually put a special blessing in the seventh day. If you don't believe it, then try it. You will find great joy and delight as I and millions of others have found. Accept this gift from God and discover the wonderful blessings of the true Bible Sabbath.
Thank You,
Ray Archer
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