Friday: Further Study
God could not for a moment stay His hand, or man would faint and die. And man also has a work to perform on this [the Sabbath] day. The necessities of life must be attended to, the sick must be cared for, the wants of the needy must be supplied. He will not be held guiltless who neglects to relieve suffering on the Sabbath.
Image © Providence Collection from GoodSalt.com
God’s holy rest day was made for man, and acts of mercy are in perfect harmony with its intent. God does not desire His creatures to suffer an hour’s pain that may be relieved upon the Sabbath or any other day.
-Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 207.
No other institution which was committed to the Jews tended so fully to distinguish them from surrounding nations as did the Sabbath. God designed that its observance should designate them as His worshipers. It was to be a token of their separation from idolatry, and their connection with the true God. But in order to keep the Sabbath holy, men must themselves be holy. Through faith they must become partakers of the righteousness of Christ.
-Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, page 283.
Discussion Questions:
- Isn’t it amazing just how clear the Bible is about Jesus and the Sabbath? And yet, millions of churchgoers around the world still insist that the seventh-day Sabbath is no longer binding or that it doesn’t matter or that keeping it is tantamount to legalism. What should this tell us about why unwavering fealty and obedience to the Word of God is so important? On something as foundational as God’s holy law, the masses are so deceived. What crucial warning does Jesus give us in Mark 13:22?
- Look at how Satan has worked so hard to destroy the Sabbath: either he used the leaders in Israel to turn it into a heavy burden, all but denuding it of so much of what it was supposed to mean and be; or he used, and still uses, leaders in the church to dismiss it as antiquated, legalistic, or a mere Jewish tradition. What is it about the Sabbath, and what it entails, that would make it such a target of Satan’s enmity?
- Jesus is the
Lord of the Sabbath
(Luke 6:5, NKJV). What implications does this statement have for Christians and their attitude toward the Sabbath?
(18)
Why did Luke only record healings of chronic sufferers on Sabbath?
There is an implication that Jesus only did these few healings on Sabbath, is this true?
EGW states "acts of mercy are in perfect harmony with its(Sabbath's)intent", however I am disturbed when I hear people use this as an excuse to say go and build a house on Sabbath when they could just as easily have done it on Sunday but then it would infringe on their pleasures.
However I believe we should not judge people if they celebrate Sabbath differently to the way we do, we all have different temperaments and are at different stages on the road to be mature Christians Heb 6:1.
Some people are extroverts and other introverts, an extrovert is energized by interactions with crowds while introverts are drained by crowds and need alone time to be energized. So a day of rest and revitalization will look different depending on your temperaments.
Shirley could this quote help in answering your questions?
The quote has to do with the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda who Jesus healed on the Sabbath (Jn 5). This same train of thought also seems to be implied in Jn 4:1-3 being the reason He left Judea and might explain why Jesus many times (nine verses in the gospels) told people not to say anything about Him being the Messiah.
Hi Tyler, thank you for that quote. I understand from this quote that the reason Jesus made an exception for these Sabbath healings was not because it was a medical emergency but because Jesus had compassion for them because of their "supreme wretchedness", because they had been suffering for so many years, because they had given up so totally of ever getting better. Jesus risked His mission to respond to these extreme cases. Just so the Triune God together agreed to risk everything and send the Son to rescue us who were supremely wretched!
I don't think Satan attacks the Sabbath as such but is attacking the God of the Sabbath. It is the one day that says so much about God and our relationship to Him. To me it is the most powerful command God ever gave because embedded in it is a promise of rest and restoration from the great controversy. It is also an invitation to fellowship and communion with God, an invitation to open dialog and communication which Satan would dearly love to shut down.
It has been called the hinge of the commandments. It spans both the vertical and horizontal aspects of the law and is in the Hebrew Bible exactly in the center of the commandments. The rest it calls us into is not just a physical rest but a rest from all the problems this life deals us.
To me,one of the most important acts on the Sabbath is worship. I enjoy going to church to worship God and have fellowship with the saints. Once I have spent time with the children of God, I enjoy time with my family. One of the best parts about the Sabbath to me is worshipping God and not having to do any manual labor.
Seems to me that Satan attacks the Sabbath because it so closely identifys God. Also I thought about the only gifts from God to man to remain from eden are marriage and the Sabbath! And of those the only one to survive to the new heaven and earth appears to be the Sabbath Rev 22. Something that powerful would certainly draw God's enemies' attacks?!
We are discussing this week how to keep the Sabbath, per Christ examples, teachings, and preachings, in my humble opinion. God is a God of love. This is permeating through out the Bible. IMHO part of Christ mission was to teach us how to observe the Sabbath. He rested on the Sabbath, He also did good on the Sabbath. I do believe. He healed more on week days than the Sabbath. It just so happened by design that most of His recorded healings were on the Sabbath. This gave Christ the opportunity to teach one of the most important characters of God; God is a God of love even on the Sabbath. If you do it unto the least of these My brothers you do it unto Me. Thought found in Matthew 25:45.
If you take your foot away from the Sabbath, and do thine own pleasure, you are letting yourself be made for the Sabbath and not the Sabbath be made for you. What's more, you are not allowing Christ to be Lord of the Sabbath. Thoughts found in Mark 2:27 and Isaiah 58:13-14.
I do believe that the principle of Galatians 5:13-14 apples to the Sabbath as well as to salvation. Read with me. Now it is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? The Message.
John, I honestly think you had all the best of intentions in quoting from The Message but after comparing it to the other translations I have I came to the conclusion that in these verses it does more muddying than clarifying. The Message is a very interpretative paraphrase and deviates considerably even when we compare it with another good paraphrase such as the New Living Translation.
In this rendering along with the others I have it says nothing about the destruction of our freedom for how can the exercise of our freedom destroy itself. The force of what it says seems to be that we do not use our liberty with disregard to what it does to others. Paul seems to say about the same thing in other letters when discussing food offered to idols for instance:
In other words we are to live a life of controlled liberty. We are indeed free to do what we want but at what expense to others are we willing to let go of self control and indulge our appetites (that is any legal desires including food).
Thank-you Tyler for your point found in New Living Translation and others. I do believe that The Message was not saying that exercising our freedoms in the right direction is destroying our freedom, rather the author was saying that we should not think that we can abuse our freedom, just because we are free. Freedom does not excuse us from stepping aside of the law. Freedom draws us to obeying the law by our own choice rather than by serving out of fear. God is a God of Love not fear. But He does warn us of the consequences of taking our freedom in the wrong direction, such as verse 15, which to us is an expression of His love. You were right my intensions were good. I was just conveying the principle of freedom as it applies to keeping the Sabbath, and worshiping on the Sabbath. I do understand the force of what Paul was saying. The freedom principle can be applied to healthful living. Unhealthful eating destroys my freedom to live longer.
Good Day