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What Does the Sabbath Mean to Us?
Presentation to graduates at the Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church 2005 Vacation Bible School
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone, California, USA
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2005-08-21 15:23Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-sabbathvbs.php
Precisely what are we talking about when we say “Sabbath”?
We are so glad for each family that participated in our VBS here this week. There are so many negative activities for kids, and it has been our privilege to share in something positive with you. I know I speak for each of the division leaders when I say we are glad have have joined in on the fun.
I was asked to share a few thoughts with you about something uncommon in our world today. Conviction. Living by conviction. You see, God has presented in His Bible some teachings that really can help people set things in order in their lives. For thousands of years, one of those helps to spirituality and character, has been God’s holy Sabbath day.
What do we mean when we say “Sabbath”? We mean exactly the same as the Bible: the period of time beginning at sundown on Friday evening, and ending at sundown on Saturday evening. We mean the same day mentioned in Scripture some 150 times.
Is the Sabbath Christian?
One of the questions sometimes asked about the Sabbath is, Is is Christian? The majority of Christians worship on Sunday, not Saturday. Is the Sabbath Jewish or Christian?
I did a little study last night with my Bible. I counted up its references to the Sabbath. There were 107 in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and 58 in the Greek Scriptures (New Testament). But I also checked to see how many pages each section of the Bible has. I used a very common Thomas Nelson company version of the King James Bible. It contained 1044 pages of biblical text.
I found that there were in its Hebrew Scriptures, some 788 pages, or about 76% of the Bible. The Greek Scriptures made up 252 pages, or about 24% of the total. When I compared references to the Sabbath, I came up with a density of about .14 references per page in the Hebrew Scriptures, and of about .23 per page in the Greek.
If you remove the references to ceremonial sabbaths (which are mostly in the Old Testament), the statistics change even more dramatically, so that we find the New Testament referring to the Sabbath twice as often per page as the Old Testament. If anything then, the Sabbath, far from being a no-show in the New Testament, is actually there twice as prominent! The ratio is 2 to 1. Now if you lived in a city with 15,000 cars, and 5000 were Fords and 10,000 were Hondas, you would have to say that was a Honda town. Is the Sabbath is a New Testament teaching? Yes; the New Testament is definitely a Sabbath town!
Historically, Christians have worshiped on the Sabbath since the time of Christ. Seventh-day Adventists received the idea from the Seventh-day Baptists. Today there are more Christians observing the seventh day Sabbath than there are Jews. There are 6M Jewish people in the USA, 5M in Israel, 13M in whole world. I could find little evidence supporting that even half of the Jews observe the seventh day Sabbath. On the other hand, there are over 14M Seventh-day Adventist Christians around the world, along with a few other Sabbatarian denominations. There are indisputably far more Christians today observing the Sabbath than Jews.
How Can a 6000 Year Old Institution Have Meaning in 2005?
So how can something old like the Sabbath have any meaning for believers today? for starters, the pace of life has really accelerated in recent years, hasn’t it? More than ever, we need to take time to rest. Our lives are too full. I guarantee you, there were people who thought about bringing their children to this VBS but felt they were too busy to do it. The Sabbath gives us all an opportunity to slow down, take a break, do something spiritual with our family, provide a moral foundation for them that they aren’s going to get on MTV or that they aren’t going to get over at their friends house playing video games.
Another benefit about the Sabbath is that by pointing to our God who is the Creator, we give our kids a barrier against atheism and postmodernism. The ideas that what works for you is truth and what works for me is truth,that anything you’d like to be truth is truth, are combatted by the recognition that God defines what truth is. No one here is descended from a sulphuric soup of acids and compounds. We are made in the image of God, created as moral beings, people designed to live an ethical life. Fish are designed to swim, birds to fly, your children and mine were designed to be moral beings, to, with Jesus’ help, take pleasure in what is right. Belief in the Sabbath which marks God’s six days of creation, fits in with what many scientists today are saying about “intelligent design.” Statistically, the chance that this world around all happened by chance, is almost infinitely unlikely.
A Bible-based religion gives us insight that we cannot read off the roses and thorns. It helps us explain our world and how we fit into it. It gives us a high identity as God’s children. Seventh-day Adventists did not write the Bible. We just read it. We appreciate the values that we find there. We recognize them as something good for us and for our families.
A few years ago it became popular to ask WWJD: “What would Jesus do?” Well, in our Bibles we have the answer. Consider Luke 4:16:
And He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up: and, as His custom was, He went into the synogogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
Jesus observed the Sabbath on Saturday. It was His custom. From a child, He worshiped God every day of course, but the day of the week that the community especially gathered together was Saturday—the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments. We believe that the Ten Commandments are still binding for us today. It is still right not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to worship idols. It is still right to honor your father and your mother. The Ten Commandments really have a very positive side too, because saying “Thou shalt not steal” is the same as saying, “respect the property of other people.” “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is the same as saying, “Be faithful to your spouse.” When we are given a command by God about what to do, he always helps us and gives us strength to do it.
The Sabbath also has significance when we look to the Bible for an understanding of end-time events. There are so many ways that the Sabbath is a help for our lives.
But I want to finish with one more thought about the Sabbath and why it is important. you see, the Sabbath gives us time to become more like Jesus. Think about it. Taking time to receive values instruction from Bible study is a good idea. God’s plan is for us to become more and more like Jesus. The Sabbath is time set aside to be with God. It is time set aside for myself and my family to give a space in our lives to spirituality.
Another thing about Christianity; it is open source. No one has to just accept what the preacher or the pastor says. You have a Bible and you can read through it, you can check everything that is said or done in church for yourself, to see whether it is really biblical or not.
So, these are just a few ways we find the Sabbath meaningful, and a few hints about what the Sabbath means to us. It gives us time, in a fast-moving world of chaos, to give attention to things that are character-building, that are positive. We take time to brush our teeth and comb our hair. We practice physical hygiene. But how much time do we take for mental and spiritual hygiene? How much time do we take to socialize with other people who are seeking to live their life with values that mean something more and higher than self-indulgence and the shallowness of the television commercial-driven suburban life?
Yes indeed, the Sabbath, according to the Bible, is as old as the earth. Here is a 6000-year old institution that has outlasted basically anything else. We thought we would tell you just a little bit about it, because it is something very close to who and what we are, what we are trying to do, how we are trying to live, and what inspires us to do something like put on a VBS. We hope you have been as blessed as we have. God has so many good things. Why miss out on something as good as the Sabbath? GCO
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