<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath

David Shin

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath - Part 1

Father in heaven, we thank You so much for this opportunity that we have to come apart from the cares of this life, to rest in the assurance that we can't make ourselves holy.

It is God that works in us, both to will and to do of Your good pleasure.

So as we spend a few moments this morning to reflect on the seventh-day Sabbath, we pray that You would speak to us, speak to our minds, inspire our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

For we ask these things in the precious name of Jesus.

On the screen, I have a photograph of a sculpture that was created by Michelangelo, arguably 1 of the greatest artists of all time.

And this sculpture is an artist's impression of Mary holding the limp body of Jesus after the crucifixion.

And Michelangelo completed this sculpture at the age of 24.

And this is considered by many to be the apex, the sculpture came at the apex of the Italian Renaissance period.

It's considered to be 1 of Michelangelo's greatest works.

And the story goes that as Michelangelo had just completed this sculpture, this masterpiece, that he overheard an individual credit the sculpture to another artist.

So later on he went back to this sculpture and he chiseled in the sculpture the sash of Mary, these words, and I zoomed in on the sculpture.

You can see it says Michelangelo's okay and if you do the translation here it is.

This is a literal translation of what he inscribed on the sash.

Michelangelo, I can't say this, Buonarroti, Florentine, made it.

He wanted no question as to who was the creator of this sculpture.

He had signed it in stone and inscribed it on this statue.

And this is the only work of art that Michelangelo actually signed.

Today we want to talk about another signature.

It's the signature of God, and it's not in a place or in an item.

And I invite you to go to the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 2 verses 1 through 3, as we look at the culmination of the creation week, Genesis 2 verses 1 through 3, thus the heavens and the earth and all the hosts 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." at the end of the creation week the Bible says that God rested He blessed and he sanctified the seventh day.

He made it Holy just a few observations This is before there was any Jew.

I don't know what they were, but they're original.

Jews came many years later, descendants of Abraham.

So, The idea that the Sabbath is a Jewish institution really is contrary to scripture.

And this was before there was any sin on the planet.

When everything was perfect, God instituted the Sabbath in Edenic perfection.

The Sabbath was instituted and the first complete day that Adam and Eve had the joy of experiencing was the Sabbath.

The first complete day was the Sabbath, the Sabbath rest, the first complete day that Adam and Eve were able to experience.

Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy." We're familiar with this text.

I want to spend a few moments reflecting on the sanctity of this day that we call the Sabbath, a memorial of creation and redemption that God rested, he blessed, and he made it holy.

Now, when we look at these words in the Hebrew, by the way, Genesis is a beautiful work of literary genius when you look at it.

It's interesting because in Genesis chapter 2, 2 and 3, it says, and on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and this is exactly 7 words in the Hebrew, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done, again, 7 words in the Hebrew.

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

Beautiful, just poetic masterpiece that was put together.

And you look at the other days that are mentioned in Genesis 1.

But then you come to the seventh day and it's Interesting because you come to the seventh day and it says the seventh day the seventh day the seventh day When you look at Hebrew syntax when the authors wanted to emphasize something as being important they would repeat it twice.

The seventh day, the seventh day, the seventh day.

Now, when your mother tells you something, right, and she tells you it, come on, we got some mothers in here, right, mothers in Israel, and she tells you something twice, it's important.

But when she tells you 3 times, it elevates the importance.

So here we come first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, the seventh day, the seventh day, the seventh day.

Just from the repetition of this text, these words shows you that this has importance.

This is something that we should pay attention to.

It's repeated, as we've just read in Genesis chapter 2 verses 1 through 3.

Now I want to go back to the beginning of the creation week and let's go to Genesis chapter 1, the very first words of the Bible.

You're familiar with the way the Bible begins.

And the Bible begins with an interesting way of framing the creation week.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Verse 2, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The Bible points out that prior to the creation week, there was something that was there.

I don't know what it was, but there was some sort of substance that was there.

It was without form and void, and there was nothing in it.

There was this mass that was there prior to the creation week.

Earth was without form and void, and the Bible says that there was water evidently on it.

When we look at the words without form and void in the Hebrew, Form, without form is the Hebrew word tohu, it indicates without shape.

There was no form or definition to this planet.

The other word, void, bohu, means that it was empty, there was no sense in it, it was uninhabited.

And when we look at the creative process, God goes through the creation week and forms the earth and then proceeds to fill it.

In the first 3 days of creation, he forms and in days 4, 5, and 6, he proceeds to fill it.

Muscala and this is a chart that he describes in 1 of his scholarly articles that he published, peer-reviewed, and here it is.

Remember the earth was without form and void.

It did not have shape and there was nothing in it.

So God proceeds to form the earth and then to fill it.

So in the first 3 days, you can see on the left side of this column, God proceeds on day 1 to separate the day from the night.

Now how do you give something shape and definition?

There has to be a process of distinction, of definition, of separation and division.

So the creative process involves a separation and division and this is the first 3 days of creation.

God goes on day 1 and separates the day from the night.

On day 2, he separates the water and the sky.

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath - Part 2

Let us bow our heads together as we pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this holy Sabbath that you've given us, this time that we can come apart from the cares of this life and worship you in Spirit and in truth.

We pray that as we pause for a few moments in time to reflect on Your goodness towards us, to reflect on this time that You've given to us every 7 days, to think about our Creator and Redeemer.

We pray that You would speak to us, for we ask these things in the precious name of Jesus.

I invite you to open your Bibles to the last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter 7.

After these things, I saw 4 angels standing on the 4 corners of the earth, holding the 4 winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree.

The imagery that you see in Revelation 7, verse 1, is 4 angels that are holding back the 4 winds.

I believe that some of those winds are sweeping out.

When you look at the context of Revelation, when those winds are loosed, the final events will rapidly come, and the second coming of Jesus is around the corner.

So the scene is that there are angels under the instruction of God that are holding these 4 winds back and then there's another angel, a fifth angel that comes in verse 2 and says, "'Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the 4 angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their forehead." There's a lot that we can talk about in this verse, But the point that I want to really hone in on is this idea that God is holding back the winds, the final events, the second coming of Jesus, until what, according to this verse?

Until the servants of our God are sealed on their foreheads.

In other words, God is not waiting for the beast power or for world events or for a certain political process to take place.

God is not waiting for any of those things.

What Revelation chapter 7 indicates is that God is waiting for who?

God is waiting for the sealing to take place, for the seal of God to be placed on the foreheads of His people.

Now, the book of Revelation is a symbolic book.

This is not a literal mark that an angel from heaven comes down and stamps Jehovah.

I've seen some of these illustrations in our other denominations.

You know, you place Jehovah on the forehead or Yahweh or a different name for God.

This is a symbolic seal that is placed on the forehead.

In the first century, there were these seals that were used.

This is an archeological discovery of a first century seal that was used in ancient times.

And when a document was signed, it was authenticated by a seal.

They would take something like this, put it into wax, and impress it upon the document.

This was the equivalent of an ancient signature.

We talked about the signature of Abraham Lincoln in our children's story.

This was the authentication of a document or a scroll.

After you completed the document, you would place your seal upon it.

We write signatures all the time when we're buying a home or saying that we're gonna pay the credit card amount that we've just swiped and so forth.

Now, when you look in Revelation chapter 22, it's interesting because the Bible says it a different way.

Remember in Revelation chapter 7, it says that the seal of God was placed on the forehead.

In Revelation chapter 22 it says it a different way.

It says, they shall see his face and his what?

So the seal of God and the name of God are synonymous.

It says that the name of God shall be on the forehead.

The forehead is where the character resides, reason, conscience.

This is the prefrontal cortex, the name of God.

Names in the Bible have special significance.

Remember Jacob's name was changed from deceiver, which is Jacob, to Israel.

So this indicates that God's last day people will have the character of love.

The character of God, the transformation that takes place by grace is a part of the process of what we call the sealing.

Last Sabbath we talked about the signature of the Sabbath, the signature of the 7 day Sabbath and let's do a brief review of last Sabbath study.

Let's go to Genesis chapter 2 verses 1 through 3.

We stated that the Sabbath was God's signature in time.

Genesis chapter 2, turn there, first book of the Bible, then the heavens and the earth and all the hosts 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.

This is before the Jewish nation was even thought of.

This is at the very beginning of creation.

And we made this observation when you look at it in the Hebrew, and did his work which he had done, which is 7 words in the Hebrew, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done, 7 words in the Hebrew.

And so God blessed the seventh day and hollowed it, 7 words, 7 words, 7 words.

In Genesis chapter 2 verses 1 through 3, You can see the repetition of the seventh day is stated twice or 3 times I should say and we said when you look at the literary structure of Genesis You see that each day is mentioned once you have the first day second day third day fourth day fifth day sixth day but when you come to the seventh day, it says the seventh day, the seventh day, the seventh day.

Now is God saying it 3 times because it's not important?

This is an important repetition that God is making in the literary structure of Genesis.

We also stated that when you look at the entirety of the creation account, when you look in Genesis 1, verse 2, the Bible states that the earth was without form and void.

Without form indicates that it's without shape.

So there was something there when God began to create.

There was some formless, empty entity that God formed and then he filled.

And we looked at this literary structure, this is according to Dr.

He states that in the creative process God during the first 3 days He forms the earth remember it was without form and void it was shapeless and then empty first 3 days He forms the earth and then the next 3 days 4 5 and 6 He fills the earth first 3 days on day 1 He divided the light from it was a light division from the day to the night and the forming, when you define something, there's a separation that's involved there.

On day 2, he divides the water from the sky.

And on day 3, he divides the earth and the land.

Day 4, he proceeds to fill the heavens, the sun and the moon.

On day 5, he fills the water and the sky with the fish and the birds.

On day 6, he fills the land with animals and man and woman.

The creative process is a unique 1 of forming and filling, and according to Dr.

Miscala, on day 7, this is very unique because on day 7, It's the only day that has both forming and filling within it.

All the other days had 1 of those creative processes, but on the seventh day, he forms the Sabbath.

In other words, he separates it from the other ones.

The word sanctified literally means to set apart for holy use.

So he forms the Sabbath and then he fills the Sabbath.

The seventh day is the only day in which the creative process and forming process come together in 1 day.

He sets it apart for holy use and then fills the Sabbath with His holiness.

We right now are living and experiencing holy time.

God put his holiness into time, And we are experiencing that right now, like a holy wave every seventh day.

Wherever you are in the world, that holiness that is infused with the presence of God, infused with His holiness, comes over us like a holy wave, and we are in it right now.

And we can participate in the holiness of God during this 24-hour period.

Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

Back to Menu

Series

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath

Reflections on the Seventh-day Sabbath - Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Too Smart

11m

His Way is in the Sanctuary

13. The Sanctuary Shall Be Cleansed (Part 2)

57m

Bible As the Center of Academic Curricula

1. The Bible: The Basis for True Education

1h

The Purified and Refined Will

35m

The Prodigal Son

Not Enough to Be Religious

44m

Faithfulness with Joy

1h

God is Law?

50m

His Way is in the Sanctuary

3. Death and Life in the Sanctuary

57m

How to Deal with Loneliness

23m

Living Faith

1h 6m

The Inspired Word

The Inspired Word- Part 1

1h 15m

Division In the Home- A Divided House Is Not Able to Stand

23m

Sound Doctrine