Biblestudy: The Commandments (Part Five)

The Sabbath (Part One)
#BS-TC05
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 15-Oct-88; 66 minutes

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This is a question-and-answer thing that was clipped out of a Catholic newspaper by a member in Hammond and then given to me and so I thought that I would read it here at the beginning of this sermon. It is in regard to the Sabbath. The question is,

Please comment on Herbert W. Armstrong's book, The United States and Britain in Prophecy and the Plain Truth magazine. I've been reading the magazine for a year. I find its articles helpful to my spiritual growth and understanding of the Bible. The book clearly states the 7th day of the week is the Sabbath of the Lord. It is one of the Ten Commandments. How can we change a commandment of God? Also we Catholics are like pagans who worship idols with our images of Christ and Mary in our churches and homes.

The question was written to a Father Sheedy and he is obviously a Catholic theologian. And this appeared in a Catholic weekly newspaper that is sent to their members. Now here is the answer.

Your letter reveals the reason why I have continually urged in this column that Catholics not watch Protestant and cultic programs on TV because listeners are continually being brainwashed with the beliefs of a TV personality. The Worldwide Church of God is a mishmash cult rooted in the odd personality of its founder, Herbert Armstrong. Like the Seventh Day Adventists, the church worships on Saturday instead of Sunday. Like Jehovah Witnesses, it denies the Holy Spirit as God and the existence of the Trinity. Like the Jews, its members eat only kosher foods and observe Jewish festivals. William J. Whalen, who has studied this sect, says in his book, Strange Gods, that the cult is an amalgam of Adventism, Mormonism, Judaism, Russellism, fundamentalism, and British Israelism. The latter is the curious notion that the 10 lost tribes made their way to England and set up a new Israel there. Armstrong denies the immortality of the soul and affirms that men can become gods. I have not the space to answer Armstrong's absurdities, but there is no commandment making Saturday the Sabbath. The Jews chose that day as the apostles chose Sunday.

Now as you can see just from what I have read there that is no answer at all. The question was never addressed and the way that they approached it was simply to ridicule the man and doctrines without giving any kind of a basis for proof about any of the doctrines, including the original question. Now if Mr. Sheedy is at all conversant with his own church's literature, then he ought to be able to understand that the Catholic Church, very plainly in their own literature say very clearly without any way to misunderstand, that they were the ones that changed the day from Saturday to Sunday, and indeed, in making a statement like that, it is very clear that they admit the Saturday of the calendar is the equivalent of the Sabbath of the Bible.

The past several months I have been stressing the importance of idolatry in our lives as a negative force drawing us away from the one true God who is the source of truth, of beauty, of goodness, and a way of life that produces right relationships. Now just by way of review about the commandments that we have covered so far, I want you to turn very quickly to Romans the first chapter, verses 24 and 25, where it states,

Romans 1:24-25 Therefore God also gave them [meaning these people about whom He is speaking] up to uncleanness, in the lust of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie [The lie, I think in this context is idolatry.], and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

Now the first commandment deals with that principle. The first commandment has to do with what we worship. Brethren, we are, as this verse shows very clearly, to worship the Creator. But mankind has consistently, without any kind of turning away except for very brief periods of time and among the Israelitish people, man has consistently worshipped the creation rather than the Creator. Now there are a vast number of things that they have worshipped within the creation. Not every nation, not every religion has worshipped exactly the same things, but it all boils down to the same thing. They have worshipped the created rather than the Creator.

In John the 4th chapter, verses 23 and 24, Jesus stated to the woman at the well,

John 4:23-24 "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth."

The second commandment deals with that principle. It deals with how we worship. We are to have no aids, no mechanical aids, no artistic aids, no device that has come out of the mind of man in an effort to try to capture what God is in a work of art, as in a picture; a work of art, as in a sculpture of some kind; or a work of art that has to do with simply man's definition of what God is. No man can capture the essence of God. Even if a man were able to see God, full face-to-face, there is no way that a man could recapture that on a piece of canvas. There is no way that a man could recapture that in a piece of marble or some kind of bronze statuary. God is a living holy God and He wants us to concentrate on what He is, not what He looks like. Any conception that a man comes up with as to what God looks like is already a lie because he cannot recapture it. And if it is already a lie, it is going to mislead the worshippers.

So God has purposely hidden what He looks like from men in order that they concentrate on what He is. He is Creator, ruler, sustainer, provider, healer, and on and on it goes; Savior, King. His attributes are beyond the capability of man's mind to fully capture.

The third commandment deals with the quality of our personal witness of everything that the name of God implies. His name stands for His position, His character, His power, His office as the great ruler, sustainer, and provider of this universe.

Matthew 28:18-19 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them [and the English Bibles say] in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

But that word in comes from the Greek word eis, and even though in certain situations it can be translated in, it obviously means "into" here. That is the more proper translation. That is, to put something inside of something else, to plunge it in. When a person is baptized in water, he is plunged into the water. Now what Jesus is describing here is that a person is put into the name of God, and that name becomes that person's spiritual family name, and the responsibility to uphold that name falls on the person who is bearing that name, even as your family name bears with it the responsibility of upholding it.

In Proverbs 22:1, God tells us that a reputation is more precious than rubies. That is, rubies is just an example of something that man considers to be very valuable and something that he wants to collect and something that he wants to polish and to make beautiful. Well, that is what we should look toward doing with the name of God, that we are to uphold its reputation. We are not to allow it to become tarnished. We are to shine it up and enhance that name by our personal witness.

In Isaiah 43, verse 8 there is a courtroom scene that God is conducting. It is as though He is the judge and He is deciding a case and He is calling for witnesses. Now he has all nations gathered before Him in the picture that is going on here. He has the Gentile nations as well as the Israelite people before Him, and He is asking these people to bring forth their witnesses as to the value of their god. And so He asked them,

Isaiah 43:8 "Bring out the blind people who have eyes, and the deaf who have ears. Let all nations be gathered together."

That is the way people are. They have eyes but they do not see spiritually. They have ears but they do not hear spiritually. And so God is asking that these people come out. They are worshipping false gods. They do not know that they are worshipping false gods or they probably would not be doing it. But He is asking them to bring forth their witnesses and show to God the superiority of their god over Him.

Isaiah 43:9 "Let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us the former things? [Okay, let us have your god, people. Tell us what happened way in the past.] Let them bring out their witnesses, that they may be justified."

Did your god tell you things that were going to happen before they happened? Well, our God can. That is the point. The God of the Israelites does that. He tells the people what is going to happen before it happens, and then He brings to pass what He told them that He was going to do. But can a god of wood, can a god of iron, can a god of bronze, can a god of marble, can a god that is a picture that is on a wall, can any of those things even speak? Do they have life? Can they hear? Can they tell you what is going to happen? Can they bring it to pass even if they could tell you?

You see, all these questions are ridiculous. So He says, "Let them bring out their witnesses that they may be justified; or let them hear and say, "It is truth." Then God turns to His people, the Israelitish people, the people who should have no excuse whatever. Because as He says in the book of Amos, "You only of all the nations have I called, you only have made an agreement with Me" that we call a covenant. You only have I fellowship with, and "You are My witnesses," says the Lord, "and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He."

Now all of this has a bearing on the keeping of the third commandment. What good is the quality of our witness going to be if we do not really believe that our God is God? How good is our witness going to be if our understanding of that God cannot be in any way elevated, refined so that we know Him better? How can the Israelite carry out his responsibility if he has never ever allowed God to work in his life? How good will the witness of an Israelite be if he has never allowed God to save him? Do you realize that is how you come to know God? That until God delivers you (that is what the word Savior means) and you know and you know that you know that God has delivered you, that is how you come to know God. If our knowledge is merely intellectual and God has never saved you from anything, healed you, provided for you financially, intervened in terms of a job, where it has become obvious to you that nobody else had anything to do with your salvation, with your deliverance, except that God may have of His own volition decided to use other people, then, you see, you can be a witness for Him that He is indeed Savior.

So He said,

Isaiah 43:12 "I have declared and saved [God tells you beforehand what He is going to do.], I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign god among you; therefore you are My witnesses," says the Lord, "that I am God."

There is our responsibility. Because we understand that God has turned away from Israel, and now He has made the covenant with the church and it falls the responsibility of the church to be the witness that Israel failed to be, and we are the Israel of God. So our responsibility then is to uphold the name of God in every area of life.

Now the church is not a great nation. It is not a military power. It is not a cultural center. We exist solely to witness for God before the world. That is our responsibility. We do it in a corporate way through the work of God, through the television program, through the Plain Truth, through the Good News, through the booklets and articles. We do it that way. We also do it individually in our own lives in the way that we live. And from time to time, God even calls us to witness for Him verbally. That does not happen very often, and God does not require it very often. But what is our witness like? What is the quality of it? It is going to be determined by how well we keep the third commandment.

Each believer is a witness before the world of the value that he places on Jesus Christ. Now the greater the value that you place on Jesus Christ, the more powerful and effective your witness is going to be. See, he who has forgiven much loves much. It is part of that principle. Because that person who has forgiven much places a great value on Jesus Christ and on His blood. But if he does not place much value on it, then he is not going to be forgiven much and there is going to be very little spiritual power in that person and their witness is not going to be very strong. So it is in the making of that witness that God's purpose is carried out through the preaching and the personal conduct of each individual part.

Now how can we witness unless we know what to do, sort of a parallel on Romans the 10th chapter. How can we witness unless we know what to do? How can we know what to do in our witnessing unless we are taught? This is one of the major purposes then of the fourth commandment: to provide a means of unified instruction in order that the witness be carried out.

This sermon is going to be mostly proving why we should keep it. We are not going to be delving into how it should be kept, but showing why it should be kept.

You just heard what I read from this Father Sheedy. He debunked the Sabbath merely by saying it was something that the Jews chose. Now that in general is an approach that virtually anybody in the world would or could take. But is that all there is to it? Can something like the Sabbath be brushed off by saying that it was simply the choice of the Jews and thus imply that any old day will do? The Muslims use Friday. Is Friday just as good as Saturday? This Christian world uses Sunday. Is Sunday just as good as the Sabbath? Now there are those who say that they worship seven days a week. Well, good, maybe they should.

But that still does not answer the question. It avoids answering it and really it is a cop out. The Jehovah Witnesses do that. They claim that they worship every day of the week but that really does not answer the question. So let us go back to the book of Mark, the second chapter, verses 27 and 28. It is very interesting. We are going to see this clearly, maybe we will not see this clearly today because I am not going to go into this aspect of it very much. But I want you to understand—and I know that what I am going to say to you, you also will find to be true, or you have already proven this—there never was any dispute between Jesus and the Jews over whether the Sabbath was to be kept. There were a lot of disputes over the Sabbath, but it was always how the Sabbath was to be kept. They were in agreement that the Sabbath was to be kept. Jesus nowhere said, nowhere intimated at all that the Sabbath was not to be kept. In fact, as we go through the scriptures over the series of sermons that we will eventually be giving regarding the Sabbath, you will see it very clearly that Jesus confirmed the keeping of the Sabbath over and over and over again.

Now here in Mark 2 we have an occasion where there was disagreement on how to keep it. So Jesus gives an explanation regarding the particular disagreement that they had over whether or not it was all right on that occasion for the disciples to go out into the field and pick some wheat berries or whatever it was, and then they rubbed the chaff off them and then they blew the chaff away and then they popped the berries in their mouth and ate them. Now Jesus said they were not breaking the commandment. The Jews said that they were breaking the commandment.

Mark 2:27 And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."

Another way of saying this would be that the Sabbath was made on account of man. In other words, man existed before the Sabbath, and you know that is true from Genesis 1 and 2. And then the Sabbath was made on account of man. Man was not made for the Sabbath. Now, if man was made for the Sabbath, then the Sabbath would be something that could be made to be very constrictive to the life of a person rather than a needful part of life to enable him to have right relationships with God and with men. So the Sabbath was not made for its own sake at all, but it was made as a service for or to man.

Also notice that it said it was made for man, it was not made for the Jews. Man meaning mankind, not just one specific group within mankind, the Jews. It was made for all of mankind.

Now men honor other men who have made significant contributions to society. And they honor these men, as often as not, as often as they can, by memorializing them in a day. They set apart a day. And so here in the United States we honor George Washington and we keep his name fresh before the people because one day a year we come around to Washington's birthday. We do the same thing with Abraham Lincoln. We do the same thing now with Martin Luther King, Jr.—because we feel that these people have made significant contributions and they are then to be memorialized through the setting apart of a day.

The Sabbath is in one regard very much like that. God is memorialized through the setting apart of a day. Now His contributions to mankind, of course, are significant beyond our being able to enumerate, even to name them. See, He is Creator. It says at the beginning of the Book, in the beginning, God created. That is an awesome statement! No man can even begin to come close to that. Everything in this fantastic floating greenhouse that we call Earth is a memorial of His genius and of His love for His creation, for His creatures—for you and me.

Now you compare that to man, and man has yet to develop his first flea. I will tell you it is going to be a significant occasion when man is able to give life to something except through the processes that God has already created, that is, the procreative processes. Now if a man did find a way to give life to what was formerly inert material, what kind of acclaim would that person get? I am sure that it would be significant. I do not think that we are ever going to reach it in this era when man is able to create life. But our God did; and the Sabbath is part and parcel of a memorial to that God's creative power.

Let us go back to the book of Genesis, the second chapter.

Genesis 2:1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all of 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 created and made.

If somebody really wants to become picky in a commentary, they will say that this was not the theological beginning of the Sabbath. Now they do that in an attempt to separate Exodus 20 from Genesis 2. Because if they can make a connection between Exodus 20 and Genesis 2, then they are going to have to be forced to admit that the Sabbath superseded even the Ten Commandments as they were given to Israel. But I am going to show you, you cannot separate it. And I think that you understand that very well because the Sabbath commandment itself reaches right back to Genesis the second chapter, and what does it begin with? Six days shall you work and do all your labor. For in six days, God created the heavens and the earth.

When God gave the commandments there in Exodus 20, He specifically tied it to the creation. The Sabbath, because of this tie to the creation, has universal validity. And Jesus made that very clear when He said that the Sabbath is made for man—mankind, for everybody. And we can see that this validity goes all the way back to the Creation Week. It is not something that came from the fathers. It did not come from Abraham. It did not come from Isaac. It did not come from Jacob. It did not come from Moses. It did not come from the Jews. There were no Jews at creation. There was only Adam and Eve. And God made the Sabbath for them, the father and mother of all of mankind. The Sabbath then was made for all of mankind, not just for any particular family.

Now it is in these verses also that the tone is set for the keeping of the commandments, that is, the Sabbath commandment. The foundation is right here. God could have rested at any time. For it says in Isaiah, He never gets weary. He need not have rested at all. There was no need for Him to do it because He was tired. Now that begins to help us to understand that the Sabbath was specifically created by a God who had intent and purpose for it far beyond Him needing a rest or even man needing a rest. The Sabbath is in fact the crown of the Creation Week. What God did is He created a period of rest and holy time. It was a very specific period of time. It was the seventh day. He could have rested at any time, or He could have created by resting any time, but He waited until the six days were over. He did not have to create on the seventh day, He did it on purpose. It was a purposeful creation, and He waited until that time before He did it.

By His resting, something was created that was just as specific as the things that were created on the other six days. The Sabbath did not end God's creative efforts. It simply shifted into another level. It is important that you understand that. The creation week lasted seven days. It did not end at the end of the six days. It continued right over on into the seventh day.

So on the Sabbath then the creating continued, but it just took on a different form, a form that was not so outwardly visible as the things that were created on the other six days. And so the Sabbath then symbolizes to man the fact that God is still creating. It has not ended. It never ended. God is a Creator. That is what He does for a living, if I can bring it down to man's level. God creates. So God is still creating and He wants us to see that the Sabbath is an integral part of the same process of creation, see, that began with the first day.

Now at the end of the sixth day, the physical aspect was finished. But the spiritual aspect began with the creation of the Sabbath, and that has continued to this day. Now in the physical sequence of events that are given in Genesis the first chapter, God created for man an environment that was suitable for him. You see, an environment that would support life as God was going to create it on the sixth day. But God shows then through the creation of the Sabbath that the life-producing process is not complete with just a physical environment, that something else was needed in order to add a dimension that one could not extract, absorb, get from, merely having a physical existence.

We understand from other portions of the Bible then that the Sabbath plays an important role in producing spiritual life. And that is what He began in the creation of the Sabbath by resting. So we can begin to see then that the Sabbath is not an afterthought of a tremendous creation but a deliberate memorializing of the most enduring thing that mankind knows: Time. And time, brethren (those of you who understand what God is doing), plays a very important role in what God is creating, in God's spiritual creation. Now it is as if God said, "Look at what I have made and consider that I'm not yet finished creating. I am reproducing Myself and you can be a part of that spiritual creation."

Now the Sabbath was created by God resting from His physical exertions, and thus He set the example for men in how to keep that day, that we also are to rest. If we are going to emulate God, we are going to rest then from our physical exertions. Now God also then, it says He blessed and He sanctified it. He did not do this to any other day. Only the Sabbath, only the specific seventh day. That He blessed it and He sanctified it. Now men can read that and yet they argue against the keeping of it even though they will admit that when God came in the flesh, He kept it. And nowhere did He say that it was done away. And yet they will still argue against the keeping of it. It has validity from the creation. It has validity right through the life of Jesus Christ and as we can understand right through the life of the apostles, and yet still men will argue against keeping it.

I ask you, Is this the commandment that men consider to be the least? You know the answer to that is yes. I am talking generally here. That is the one that they have felt most free to think that they could change and that any old day that they decided would be good enough.

God not only blessed it, it says that He sanctified it here. In chapter 2, verse 3, it says sanctified. In the commandment itself in Exodus 20, it says that the Sabbath is holy. Both of those words are the same word, sanctified and holy, except they appear in different tenses, one that is past tense, sanctified, and the other it is present tense, holy.

Now it takes a holy God to make something else holy. And God made no other time other than His Sabbath holy. Understand that. He did not make Monday holy or Friday or Sunday. He only made His Sabbath holy, sanctified, set apart. Now, man, we learn in the Bible, can be made holy by a holy God. But no man has the power to make anything else holy. Even though the man has been made holy by God because he has been sanctified by God's Holy Spirit and he has God's Holy Spirit and that person becomes holy because of God's Spirit in him, God has never given to man the power to make anything else holy. Therefore, if men take it upon themselves to change the day of worship, it still remains a common and ordinary day because no man can declare a day holy. Only a holy God can make a holy day. And God made Sabbath holy.

I hope you see what I am doing. I am giving you reasons for keeping the Sabbath without enumerating them here. Things that go in areas other than what we just go into in our [WCG] booklet. Now that means that because the Sabbath is holy, it means that it is worthy of reverence, of devotion. It is set apart for sacred use because it is derived from God. Not derived from a church that says that they have the power to change the day. No man can do that. They are not holy enough to do that, even God's church that really does have His Spirit does not have the power to make something holy. Only God can do that. And He has done that in His Word to us that it is holy.

Now the whole implication of this word holy is different. The major implication comes from a root which means "to cut." And what it is implying is that something is cut away, some smaller thing is cut away from something that is larger and thus in the case, let us say, of ranching, an animal is cut away from a herd. And when it is cut away, it is set apart. It is sanctified, you see, from the main body. This is the same word that is translated holy in the Bible. But when we use it in a common profane situation, it simply means to differentiate, to make different by cutting something away. It can also mean "a cut above," that is, "better than." That is an idiom that we use in the English language, that that person is a cut above. Well, certainly that is the way God is. He is a cut above mankind, He is holy and mankind is not.

The Sabbath, you see then, is holy. It is set apart. It is taken away from the main body of the week, which is common and ordinary, and it is set apart for a sacred use and that setting apart was done by God. Now the other six days then are common and ordinary, and they are given over to the pursuit of that which is common and ordinary. That is, our mundane work.

Now because the Sabbath then is holy, we should be striving to avoid those mundane things which make the Sabbath or promote the making of the Sabbath into an ordinary day.

Let us turn to Exodus the 3rd chapter.

Exodus 3:1-5 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn." So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." Then He [God] said, "Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground."

Now if Moses was a skeptic, he would have said, "Lord, You've got to be kidding. I've been walking this sand for the last 40 years, and this stuff that is under my sandals right now looks the same as that stuff that I just walked on over there. It's 25 feet away and all the way up you can see my footprints, my sandal prints, and it looks exactly the same as the ground that I'm standing on. Oh, don't hand me that stuff, Lord. This ground is no different from that stuff over there."

Well, Moses was not a skeptic, and he took off his shoes. But if he had said that physically, carnally what he said would have been true. The ground there was no different from any other ground that he had trod on for the last 40 years. But it was holy because God was there, because God's presence was in that parcel of ground in a way that it was not in or on any other parcel or ground that Moses had ever walked on in his lifetime. And it was the presence of God who had injected Himself into that area that made that area holy.

It is that same principle that makes the Sabbath holy. I do not know the logistics of how God does it. But God somehow puts Himself into the Sabbath in a way that He is not in the other six days of the week. And it is holy because His presence is in it and that is what makes it different. That is what lifts it from being something that is common and ordinary and makes it imperative for you and me to treat this enduring space of time that occurs every seven days with deference and respect and honor in a different way than we treat the other six days of the week.

Now our recognition of the fact that the Sabbath is holy is something that is spiritually discerned. It has nothing at all to do with that which is physical. The Sabbath does not look any different from Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. It is supposed to get to be 88 degrees today. A beautiful clear day because the Santa Anas are blowing. Well, the Santa Anas are going to blow tomorrow too, and it is probably also going to be in the high 80s tomorrow, but it is going to be Sunday. It is not holy time. The Sabbath on the surface looks no different from any other day. It is something that is holy though, because God somehow makes it mean something to you. He has injected Himself not only into the day but into your mind. You see, if Moses wanted to be real carnal, he could have rejected what God said. But God had already given that man enough understanding that Moses knew that indeed this was holy ground, even as the Sabbath is holy time.

In Amos 3, verse 3, a verse that so often we use maybe in other contexts, but in this case it says,

Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?

This verse is sometimes used in another way from what I am going to explain it here. But what I am going to explain to you is really its primary application. And that is, it is easy for people to meet by accident and they can walk together in agreement for a while. That is not what God is talking about. He is talking about two people who have planned, they have made an appointment together, an agreement to meet at a certain time, at a certain place. Now could they possibly meet at a certain time in a certain place and then walked together unless they agreed that this was the time and the place that they were supposed to meet? No, they could not. In order for that appointment to be kept, both had to agree that this was the time and this was the place that we were to be.

Now God has made an appointment with His people to meet at a certain time and a certain place. And that place is where He has set His name, and that time during the week is His Sabbath, that holy time. No other day will do for what God wants to accomplish. It cannot do because God has not made other time holy. There is something specific that He wants to accomplish on the Sabbath day, and it demands that His people be together in congregation, fellowshipping with one another in order for that to be accomplished.

In Exodus 31, where we have that special covenant that God made with His people, beginning in verse 13.

Exodus 31:13-14 "Speak also to the children of Israel, saying, 'Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. [We will get back to that in just a bit.] You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy [set apart, sanctified, special, different, a cut above] to you. [He has not set apart any other day.] Everyone who profanes it [profane means to treat as common and ordinary] shall surely be put to death.'

That still is in force. God does not execute us the minute we break it. God gives us time, in His grace, in His mercy to grow in the understanding and the keeping of it. But if we persist in breaking that holy time and failing to keep the appointment that He has with His people, then the death penalty indeed will be executed by Him—the second death.

Exodus 31:15-16 'Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.'

The generations of the children of Israel are still continuing. The Sabbath commandment is still in effect. As long as there are Israelite generations, the Sabbath is set apart for them. Now we are the Israel of God and we became that by means of a covenant and we are therefore to keep it.

Exodus 31:17 'It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days [here comes the reference back to the creation again] the Lord made the heaven and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.'"

Now the Sabbath, it says, is a sign. It is not a mark. Now the way the Bible uses those two terms, it becomes clear that a sign is something that is voluntarily accepted, whereas a mark is put on against one's will, impressed upon. We have the mark of the beast. It is going to be impressed upon people. It is do this or else. With the keeping of God's commandments, including the keeping of the Sabbath, God will open the person's mind, but that person has to use his free moral agency to keep it. And so in the keeping of it then, that commandment becomes what sanctifies the Lord before him. And then he comes to know that he himself is being sanctified by the Lord through the keeping of that commandment.

The Sabbath is a special sign between God and His people. Now a sign identifies. It identifies, if one can think of it, a street, a direction, a way to go. They put up a sign that says Lankershim Boulevard. And so that street then is identified and makes it different from Satakore. And so it identifies. If a sign is put on a building, it identifies the persons who are occupying the building. Or it identifies the occupation of the people who are in that building. So we have John Smith, Doctor John Smith, lawyer, you see, John Smith, welder, or whatever the person happens to be. The sign is identifying what that person is and what that person does.

A sign can identify, let us say in terms of the army, all the various units put a patch on their shoulder. It says 1st army, 2nd army, 3rd army, and it has the insignia. Now each one of these armies within the whole U.S. Army might be a very large unit consisting of many divisions. But you see, those people will not know everybody that is in their division or everybody that is in their army, but that patch identifies that they have something in common with everyone else who is also a part of that division or that army. So it begins to identify commonality that people have with one another.

Now back to the metaphor about the building and its occupants. The sign then tends to bring people together who have common interests with one another or want to accomplish common goals. A lawyer has an expertise in the law, so he advertises that by putting out a sign. Now people see that sign and they are attracted to him because he has the expertise in the law, and then they become partners together to accomplish something. And it was the sign, or we might call it the advertising, which serves to accomplish that end, and now they have something in common, that is, the winning of the case.

You can use the same principle in regard to, let us say, a doctor. He hangs out a shingle that says that he is so-and-so MD. People who have illnesses go to see him because of the sign that he has out there, and now they have a common interest because the doctor and the patient are working together in order to cure the patient's illness. And so then they are heading toward a common goal.

Well, all of these factors are at work within the sign that God has appointed in His church. Now, the Sabbath does something that other signs also do, but maybe to a lesser extent. And that is that once a person begins to keep it, he himself begins to be sanctified, set apart from everybody else in the community except those who are also keeping it. So they, the person then who is keeping it, becomes sanctified, set apart from the others in the community merely by the act of keeping it. He does not have to preach about it but sooner or later it is nosed around the community. So-and-so goes to church on Saturday.

Do you know that Sunday hardly sanctifies anybody? Do you know why? Because everybody that is keeping it or worshipping God keep Sunday. (Supposedly worshipping God.) You never hear anybody say Old Jones down the street, they are keeping Sunday. It does not sanctify them at all. But the Sabbath sanctifies, it sets the person apart. It cuts them out from the rest of the mob, and you may as well be wearing a patch on your shoulders. Your witness for God has begun whether you opened your mouth or not. The mere fact that you are keeping it is beginning to set you apart.

So it is by the keeping of the Sabbath that the Israelite knows that God is sanctifying him.

God has a purpose He is working out. He has a tremendous investment in you and me in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, in the fact of the creation. And the Sabbath is being used by God to protect His investment. If the only reason that He created it was so that we could have a rest, a physical rest, any old day would do. But God did not designate any old day. He designated the seventh day. He designated it from the beginning of the Bible until. . . now I am going to say end. But what I mean here is the chronological end of the Bible in terms of reference to man. And some of those things appear in the book of Isaiah, not in the book of Revelation. And what do we find? We find the Sabbath still being kept. God never intended that it be done away. God created a specific period of time, special to Him and to His people, so that it would help to make them different.

Now He educates us in His way, and this is what the Sabbath is used for. It is used to help prepare His people for carrying out the witness that He wants them to give testimony of on earth. Now suppose a basketball coach said to his players, "Come to such-and-such a gym on such-and-such a day at such-and-such a time." But some of the players decided to go to a different gym at a different time and be with a different coach. Now I think you can begin already to see where I am headed.

A team learns a way of playing. A team learns a philosophy of playing from his coach. Those of you who are interested in basketball at all know the name of John Wooden. There was the "John Wooden way." Now what they are doing, you see, in conforming themselves to the John Wooden way is that they are taking on the sign that sanctifies them from other coaches in other ways.

That is what the Sabbath is for. If we use some other time, we are going to be under a different coach, and we are going to learn a different way. We will not absorb the way of life or the attitudes or, if you will, the philosophies of the God who set apart the seventh day of the week. We will take on the attributes of the other coach and the other way. And so we can begin to see that the Sabbath was specifically created by God because it protects His investment and enhances the people who are keeping its relationship with Him and with other people. And it also serves, because we are in the presence of God's Spirit, to keep us in a proper frame of mind. Often, by itself, it cannot do all these things. It requires our cooperation. But if we will cooperate with God, these things will be accomplished in our life.

Now we live in a grubby, grasping, material-oriented world. Everything that we do practically in that world on the other six days has a bias toward materialism. And under that kind of a circumstance, it is not hard to avoid spiritual things at all. It is very easy to avoid them. But brethren, if we are keeping the Sabbath with any respect and reverence, understanding the meaning of the day, it is virtually going to force us to think about spiritual things, about God and about His creation, and it presents us with the opportunities to consider the whys of life in order that the other six days might be made better.

The Sabbath is the kernel, it is the nucleus from which the proper worship—which is our response to God—grows. Existentialist philosophers tell us that life is absurd. That all of life is nothing more than a prelude to death. But brethren, the Sabbath keeps telling us that it is in fact a celebration of just the opposite. That this life is in reality a prelude for a life that is fuller, more abundant, and greater than anything that we can ever begin to to imagine. And the more that we become like Him in absorbing what He is, especially on this day, the more sanctified that we are going to become from the world, the more different, holier. And I can almost guarantee you along with it is going to come persecution. The world does not like holy things. Nobody has to tell them that that this person is holy. They will recognize it and shrink from it.

It is in experiencing that rest and the elevation that comes from the Sabbath that one begins to have just a little tiny foretaste of the liberty that is coming when God's sons are born into this world.

Brethren, there are many other things that we could go in that are reasons why we should be keeping it, one of which I think is extremely interesting in Exodus 16 where God specifically shows the Sabbath commandment. Before He put the other nine commandments in what we call the Decalogue, a code, He first of all revealed the Sabbath to His people. That is significant. It is no minor thing. Because this was the day that was going to make things work. The one that you might say provides the energy, the fuel that keeps us going and sanctifies us further and further into what He is and away from the world.

We could go into Ezekiel 20 and show very plainly and clearly how that God shows that whenever Israel went into captivity, there were two sins of which they were guilty more than any other: idolatry and Sabbath breaking. When one loses the Sabbath, one loses contact with God, and idolatry follows right on the heels. And since the Sabbath is probably the least of the commandments in people's eyes, that is the first one to go. It cuts people off from God, and idolatry is going to come as sure as anything.

The Sabbath is not unimportant. It is almost like it is the keystone of God's spiritual creation. Like I said, it seems to be the commandment that makes things go.

I will just mention to you Hebrews 10:25-31, which is obviously a reference to the Sabbath, and He says if we forsake the assembling of ourselves together, we are in trouble, especially as we see the Day approaching.

Now let us summarize. Why have a Sabbath? Number one is because we are human and because God has a specific purpose that He is working out. We need the time to be taught about God's way of life. We need the time to contemplate its application and meaning. We need the time to evaluate our progress. We need the time, the fellowship with those of like minds. We need the time to escape the inequities that are in this world.

Brethren, there is no other commandment that so clearly defines God's purpose. So we need to understand and work at understanding what an awesome blessing it is and to celebrate it as a memorial of our Creator and His purpose.

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