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University SDA Church- East Lansing

The Seventh Day

David Shin

The Seventh Day- Part 1

Our Father in heaven, we thank You for this opportunity that we have to come apart from the cares of this life, to worship You on the Sabbath.

We thank You for the Word of God that You provided for us, And we recognize this morning that there are individuals in history that gave their lives so that we could have this book.

And we thank you for this privilege that we have to worship you in freedom in this country.

We pray now that as we open your word that you would speak to our hearts.

May your Holy Spirit inspire, instruct, and encourage.

On the screen, I have a picture of a statue that is found in St.

It was crafted and formed by none other than Michelangelo.

It is highly regarded by many as the most remarkable piece of art that Michelangelo ever made.

It took him 2 years to make this statue, to etch it out of marble, and he finished it at the young age of 24.

The story goes with this statue that after Michelangelo had finished it, he overheard another individual that was admiring the statue and attributed another sculptor to have created it.

As you can imagine, this did not go over too well with Michelangelo and so shortly thereafter Michelangelo went and etched out in marble.

He carved it into the marble a Inscription And I've blown it up here on the screen, I think you can see it.

You can see the first word there, it's Michelangelo's.

He wanted to make it very clear who the creator of this sculpture was in that he etched it in stone.

And the statue is of Mary holding Jesus there shortly after the crucifixion.

He etched it there across the sash of this statue, and that's not all he wrote.

When you translate the inscription across the sash of this statue, it literally can be translated as, Michelangelo Buonarroti Florentine made it.

So, he wanted to make it very clear who signed or who created this statue.

He says Michelangelo made this, Michelangelo created this, Michelangelo formed this, and they say that this is the only work of art that Michelangelo ever signed.

This morning we want to look at another masterpiece by an artist that is even greater than the great Michelangelo.

We want to look at the beginning of the Bible in which the Creator God creates the world and He signs it at the end of His creation.

I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles, if you have not already, to our scripture reading, Genesis chapter 2, the first book of the Bible.

I want to thank Sharon for doing our scripture reading this morning, Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3.

I'm reading from the Bible that has been provided for you there in the pew.

Thus the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of them were, what does the Bible say?

God had completed His creation, His masterpiece.

And on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had done, then 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." This is what we see when you read the Genesis account.

And today if you have some time, I want to encourage you to read Genesis chapter 1 and 2, you see that God creates the earth in 6 literal, contiguous, consecutive days.

And the Bible says, he said, it was very good.

And on the seventh day, the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter 2 verses 1 through 3 that God rests on the seventh day and he does something very unique.

He does not sign his signature in a particular place or location.

It is not etched in stone, but in this case, God signs his masterpiece in time.

In a time period, He infused His holiness into a 24-hour period.

This is the signature of God after the creation account and so that when we go through our weekly cycle that like a holy wave this sacred time comes across our reality.

Wherever you are in the world you can participate in this sacred sanctuary in time.

I'm so glad that God did not make a place holy like Jerusalem so that every 7 days you have to go to that place.

You know, I wouldn't want to live very close in that situation.

But God made it so that wherever you are in the world you can be a part of the sacred time that God infused.

I want to encourage you to take out of your bulletin, you will have a study guide there provided for you.

And if you don't have a study guide, raise your hand.

And I'm going to call out to Leanne back there.

I want to make sure that you have this study guide.

Now, for some of us, this will be a review and that's alright because the Bible tells us that we need to always give a reason for the hope that is within you with meekness and fear.

So, when someone asks you about the Bible Sabbath, this can be a study that you can do and for some of us This may be new information, but either way, I want to encourage us to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

We want to be individuals that are people of the book, people of the Bible.

Want to encourage you to fill this out as we go through our study here today, our first passage is Genesis 2, verses 1-3.

I filled in the blanks conveniently for you there on the screen.

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 created and made." Now, I have a question for you here this morning.

How many Jews were around when this happened?

Jews came along much later, after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

That is where the Jewish nation came from.

There was not 1 living Jew during this time.

This is during the time of Edenic perfection God institutes the sacred Sabbath at the very beginning of the Bible.

If you read on in your study guide, in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we discover that God did set a day aside as special.

This day was the seventh day of the week.

God did 3 very special things on this day.

That third term, sanctified, means to make holy.

Now, God is the only individual that can make anything holy.

And in this case, he made a particular day holy, a 24-hour period.

Now when you look in the Hebrew, you will notice something very fascinating about Genesis chapter 2, 2, and 3 is that the first phrase, and on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, it's 7 words in the Hebrew, And he rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had done." Again, 7 words in the Hebrew.

So, God blessed the seventh day and hollowed it, 7 words in the Hebrew.

Furthermore, when you look at the literary structure of the creation story, you see that in Genesis chapter 1 verse 5, it says the first day.

Genesis chapter 1 verse 8, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day.

In each 1 of these accounts the day is only mentioned once.

But when you read about the seventh day you'll notice something interesting.

It says the seventh day, the seventh day, the seventh day.

Now the reason for this is not because God wants us to forget about the seventh day, it's because God wants us to take note of this day.

It's by particular intention that in this case, God says the seventh day, the seventh day, the seventh day.

Now, if your mom tells you, don't forget this, don't forget this, don't forget this, is it because she wants you to forget or because you want to remember?

When you repeat something, it's for the sake of emphasis.

And when you study Hebrew syntax, when they want to make an emphasis on something, they would repeat it again and again and again.

The Seventh Day- Part 2

You would naturally assume that this would not be a large error because the Bible has over 700, 000 words in it.

But the omission took place in Exodus chapter 20 and verse 14.

It's none other than the 7th commandment.

It reads, thou shalt not commit adultery.

And he omitted the word not and it read, thou shalt commit adultery.

You can see a picture there on the screen of that Bible.

As you can imagine, King Charles I was not pleased.

Matter of fact, he was infuriated with this mistake, so much so that he took away the printing license of Robert Marker and fined him 300 pounds, which was a lifetime worth of earnings.

There are only 11 of these Bibles available today because the king did all in his power to destroy all these Bibles as you would imagine.

Now the printer in this case did an innocent mistake in omitting this Bible or this word out of the Bible.

It was not an intentional mistake, but the Bible tells us that there will be another power as we approach the end of time that will seek to change times and laws.

This is found in Daniel chapter 7 verse 25.

He shall speak words against the Most High and shall wear out the Saints of the Most High and shall seek to change times and laws." There will be an attempt to change, to alter or modify God's 10 Commandments.

And this power is what we are going to be addressing today as we talk about the seventh-day Sabbath and I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles if you have not already to go to our scripture reading Exodus chapter 20 verse 8 through 11 I want to thank Mike for reading this scripture to us this morning.

Page 83, if you're using the Bible that has been provided for you by the church there in the pew, Exodus chapter 20, verses 8 through 11, page 83, it says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

6 days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God.

In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.

For in 6 days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hollowed it as we said last week this commandment begins with the word remember it's the only commandment that begins with the word remember Quite ironic that the only commandment that begins with the word remember is the 1 that we are called by many Christians to forget.

Now when someone tells you to remember something, the implicit concept when someone tells you to not forget or to remember is that this has been given to you before some people assume that this is a jewish sabbath instituted by moses but this is not the case This was actually instituted as we saw last week in the book of Genesis.

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.

By the way, if you missed last week's presentation, you can get it online at our website, there in your bulletin, and you can also download last Sabbath's handout as well.

We said last week that God did 3 things on this day.

He blessed it, He sanctified it, and He rested on the seventh day.

God could have made a place holy, But in this case, God made time holy.

Into a 24-hour period of time, God injected and infused his holiness.

And it doesn't matter where you are in the world, that holy time hits you like a wave.

It's a memorial in time that God instituted at creation.

Last week we said that in over 140 languages of the world, the word for seventh day of the week is actually Sabbath.

And you can see a list of those on the screen as well.

As we said last week, some people say, hasn't the calendar been changed?

How do we know that the seventh day today is the seventh day at creation?

Well there was 1 calendar change that is of note when we went from the Julian calendar to the calendar that we have today, the Gregorian calendar, and this happened in October of 1582, and the switch happened on that Thursday and Friday.

Thursday the 4th was the Julian calendar and Friday the 15th was the Gregorian calendar.

It switched in that interim period right there, but you can see that the days of the week did not change.

Thursday was still Thursday, and Friday was still Friday.

Another quote that we saw last week by individuals that are brilliant, a lot smarter than I am, that study time.

He says, There has been no change in our calendar in the past century that has affected in any way the cycle of the week." Another quotation from the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich, England.

This is where the international date line goes through.

Frank Jeffries he's a fellow at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich England and I quote it says it can be said with Assurance that not a day has been lost since creation and all the calendar changes Notwithstanding there has been no break in the weekly cycle now This is fascinating that the weekly cycle the first day to the seventh day and then starting over again, going all the way back to antiquity has not been broken.

It has been kept all the way to this day and we can know with assurity that the same day that Jesus kept, the seventh day, is the same day that we keep today.

Luke chapter 4 verse 16, 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.

We said last week that the apostles kept the Sabbath.

We also said that in heaven will keep the Sabbath as well.

For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me says the Lord so shall your descendants and your name remain and it shall come to pass that from 1 new moon to another and from 1 Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to worship before me says the Lord.

So here's the logic Sabbath at creation, Sabbath and 10 Commandments, Jesus kept the Sabbath, the Apostles kept the Sabbath, we'll keep the Sabbath in heaven and it's only logical that God wants us to, by His grace, keep the Sabbath today.

So here is a summary of what we've just gone through.

From creation to the new earth, the Sabbath was kept.

How is it that today the majority of the Christian community, sincerely I might say, keep Sunday instead of Saturday?

It goes actually back to the time of antiquity when individuals worshiped the sun.

It was known as the Venerable Day of the Sun.

You go all the way back to ancient Babylon and sun worship was an integral part of pagan worship going back for millennia.

Sun worship was a vital part of the communities going back to Babylon.

Now what had happened was that from Babylon to Medo-Persia to Greece to Rome, sun worship was kept by every conquering empire, particularly the Romans.

They believed in what we call polytheism, which meant that they believed in many gods.

And the Roman Empire, for the most part, kept Sunday as the day to worship the sun.

Now in the year 300 Constantine came into power and the community was split between the pagans and the Christians and he wanted to unite his empire.

Sabbath, a Hebrew word signifying rest, Sunday was a name given by the heathens for the first day of the week because it was the day in which they worship the sun.

As we noted earlier Constantine came to power and he wanted to unite his empire and so he started to legislate a day in particular in which they were to close their shops on Sunday on the venerable day of the sun, let the magistrates and the people residing in the cities let all the shops be closed.

And so there was civil legislation in regards to Sunday.

And over time, The Sabbath was lost and Sunday became the day of worship.

The sun was the foremost God with heathenism.

There is truth, something royal, kingly about the sun making it a fit symbol of Jesus, the son of justice.

Hence, the church in these countries would seem to have said, keep the old pagan name, it shall remain consecrated, sanctified, and thus the pagan Sunday dedicated to Balder became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus.

And so this is what happened down through the ages going back to the year 300, which is many hundreds of years ago, that this transfer took place and has been kept as part of tradition.

Now, for our study today, I want to invite you to turn in your bulletin or open your bulletin you will see there a study guide and if you don't have a study guide raise your hand and our associate pastor Daniel will get you a study guide.

And what we're going to do today is a Bible study and go through every single first day text in the New Testament.

Every single first day text we're going to go through here this morning.

Now some of you may think we're gonna be here a long time but don't worry I'm not gonna keep you all day.

There's only 8 first day texts in the New Testament.

And we're going to go through every single 1.

I want to read the introduction of our study guide.

And I want to invite you to fill it out as we go through it together this morning.

Many sincere christians today who love the lord worship on sunday the first day of the week in this study will look at every text in the new testament that mentions sunday or the first day of the week as bible students we will search to find anything if there was a change in the day of worship.

It's actually the earlier part of John chapter 20.

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The Seventh Day

The Seventh Day- Part 1

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The Seventh Day- Part 1

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The Seventh Day- Part 2

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