The Lord has asked His followers to keep the Sabbath day. Sabbath is God’s gift for us to partake in spiritual and physical renewal and delight ourselves in the Lord.

<p>The Lord has asked His followers to keep the Sabbath day. Sabbath is God’s gift for us to partake in spiritual and physical renewal and delight ourselves in the Lord.</p>

<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

David Shin

The Sabbath: A Day of Delight

Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity that we have to rest in you on the Sabbath day, to come apart from the cares of this life, to worship you in spirit and in truth.

Speak through me, Lord, you know that my feet are made of clay.

We pray that the Holy Spirit would apply the truths necessary for every heart today.

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

I want to invite you to open your Bibles to the first book of the Bible, the second chapter, Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3.

God has just created the heavens and the earth in 6 days.

The Bible tells us that on the seventh day, he did something different.

Genesis 2 verses 1-3, 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." We're Seventh-day Adventists.

If you're a visitor, this is a Seventh-day Adventist church.

And this last part of the verse, where it says that God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, literally means to make it holy.

So uniquely on the seventh day, we have this opportunity to have a date, a connection, communion with God.

This is another passage that we're familiar with.

God made it holy in Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3.

In Exodus chapter 20, verse 8 through 11, remember the seventh day to keep it holy.

1 of the ways that we keep it holy, 6 days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.

And part of this command is we are to be industrious and live productive lives.

But the seventh day, 1 way that we rest in him and keep a day holy is not working on the seventh day.

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, made it holy.

Now let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I'm a third generation Seventh-day Adventist.

My grandfather on my mother's side was a Seventh-day Adventist minister.

Growing up in the Adventist culture, there were certain times that I dreaded the Sabbath.

I remember 1 time we came to the end of the Sabbath and we knew what time sundown was in Maryland where we were living.

I remember my friends and I put a timer on.

And when it got down to 10 seconds, it was like 10, 9, and we were all together in unison.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and we just erupted into this euphoric cheer because that meant that we could watch television.

Our parents made us wait another half hour after that.

That's not the way you experience the Sabbath, but for us in some ways the Sabbath was this time of restriction.

You can't do this and you can't do that, you can't do this And we would dread the Sabbath hours, oh, for 24, and you know how kids are, seemingly eternal hours.

And this is not to say that the Sabbath should be a time where you do anything that you want, but the frame of the Sabbath for a person that grew up in this church became this restrictive day that, quite frankly, I did not enjoy.

And Seventh-day Adventists come from a posture of showing, 8, 0, there's a dead spot there, which day is the Sabbath.

Apologetic response as to which day is the Sabbath, and when we talk about Sabbath keeping, many times it's framed in a negative, prohibitive context as to this day that you can't work from this time to this time.

In other words, our lens of understanding the Sabbath is a very, very restrictive lens for some, and that passes on to the kids.

And there was a reason why we erupted into cheer and why we had this countdown, because better for worse, the Sabbath was framed in this particular context.

Today, I want to talk about the experience of the Sabbath.

Richard Davison comments, little has been written dealing with the right way "'to keep the Sabbath, and often even this material "'has highlighted the negative, "'what is inappropriate Sabbath observance, "'and not showcase the powerful, positive, "'spiritual values of Sabbath for a vibrant Christian life, the joyous, experiential significance of the Sabbath for Christian spirituality.

We talk a lot about the rightness of the day, but what about the experience of the Sabbath?

I believe that if we experience the Sabbath the way that God intended us to experience it, that itself is a powerful witness.

In Isaiah chapter 58, verse 13 and 14, it talks about the Sabbath and the experience of the Sabbath.

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable and shall honor him not doing your own ways nor finding your own pleasure nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high heels of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." Now I've heard this text many times growing up in the church of the Seventh-day Adventist Bible-believing Christian and the thing about this passage that always was mysterious to me was there's a portion of this passage that says not doing your own ways nor finding your own pleasures nor speaking your own words and then in that same passage it says twice that the Sabbath is a delight.

To me, As a young person growing up in this church, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, was anything but delightful.

Now I want to spend some time going through this passage.

Now there's 2 pitfalls that we can come into in regards to Sabbath keeping, and I've alluded to 1.

This thing that we just, oh, have to endure.

That's 1 pitfall it becomes so restrictive so just Just this Prison that you go into for 24 hours.

The other pitfall is that the Sabbath becomes like any other day.

It's a day that you do everything else that you do on any other day.

So that's the other pitfall that you can fall into.

And the devil wants us to fall into 1 of 2 camps.

Either you treat the Sabbath like any other day, it becomes common, or it becomes dreadful.

A drudgery, something that you have to endure.

Now here is a unique concept that emerges from it, and I wanna pick it apart with you for a little bit.

Now, the translation here is a little bit obscure because actually what it's talking about is to return to the Sabbath.

You turn away from something and you return to the Sabbath and it talks about the foot.

The other place where the Bible refers to the foot in relationship to an entity that is holy is at the burning bush experience with Moses.

Moses comes to the burning bush, he's about to have this communion with God and God says, take your shoes, the actual translation should be sandals because they didn't wear shoes back then, take your sandals from off your feet because the ground that you're on is what?

So God is there, and because God was there, Moses was told to take off his shoes.

Now I want you to consider the dynamics of that.

In other words, that ground that Moses was about to step on was different than any other ground.

The Sabbath: A Day of Delight

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

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Pause for Peace

43m

Falling Back In Love

To Rest From All Your Works

40m

Rest in a Restless World

54m

Talking Points, 4th Quarter 2020: Education

12- Sabbath: Experiencing and Living the Character of God

30m

Revelation Made Simple

4. Revelations Eternal Sign

40m

Finding True Rest

39m

Plenary

Church - God’s Great Week

1h 4m

The Big Questions (Evening Meetings)

7. How to Ace Your Exams and Still Be Normal

1h 13m

Remember the Sabbath Day

The Essence of the Sabbath

1h

Remember the Sabbath Day

Spiritually Special Sabbaths

1h

Apologetics

Defending the Sabbath

1h 1m

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Sabbath and Sanctuary

31m

Sound Doctrine