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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

David Shin

The Sabbath Experience Under Quarantine

I can remember my friends and I were gathered together at their house and we're just counting down the seconds to the moment that sundown would take place because our parents had told us that at sundown we could turn on the television.

So we did an actual countdown beginning at 10, 987654321.

And the moment that sundown hit, all of us burst into an elation of joy and rejoicing because then we could turn the television on.

My Sabbath experience was a day that I could not wait until the minutes ticked away because once sundown took place, then the real celebration could begin.

Now your experience may be different than mine, but it seems like in our community of faith that we go through this pendulum of swinging between a dreadful Sabbath experience on the other side to a Sabbath experience where it is a secular experience and a common day just like every other 1.

And the question is, what is the Sabbath experience really to be like?

Is it to be full of dread and restriction on 1 side?

Or on the other side, is it to be a common day that is secular, unlike every other day of the week?

Now here's an insightful quotation that I wanted to share with you from Richard Davidson.

Seventh-day Adventists have devoted much careful research and evangelistic energy to substantiate the permanence and universality of the seventh-day Sabbath.

Our mission with regard to the Sabbath largely has been to show which is the right day, the validity of Saturday Sabbath instead of Sunday, and its role as a testing truth in the last days.

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 showcased the powerful, positive spiritual values of Sabbath for a vibrant Christian life, the joyous, experiential significance of the Sabbath for Christian spirituality.

So what is to be the experience of the Sabbath?

And today in our reflection and our study, I hope to delve a little bit into the principles of the experience of what the Sabbath can be by the grace of God.

But before we did that, I wanted to touch on a couple verses as a review to remind us of the reason why we keep the Sabbath in the first place.

It's found in Genesis chapter 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." A few observations of Genesis chapter 2, 2 and 3.

And on the seventh day, God finished his work which he had done, 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.

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

And then there's the literary structure of the creation story.

You can see that all of the other days are mentioned just 1 time.

The first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, the fifth day, the sixth day.

And then when it comes to the seventh day, it mentions it 3 times in Genesis chapter 2, 2 and 3.

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

So God creates the earth in 6 days and afterwards he places his signature on it, much like artists do today after they create a painting or a masterpiece or a sculpture, they sign it.

And in this case, God stepped back from his creation and he signed his creative work, not in a place, but in time.

The Bible indicates that He infused His holiness into that day, and it's a signature in time that's to be a memorial of creation.

So every 7 days, like a holy wave, God's holiness comes over us for a 24-hour period, and we have the privilege of the Sabbath experience.

Now we come to Exodus 20 8-11 Remember the Sabbath day, to 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, in it you shall do no work.

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 hallowed it, which literally means to make it holy.

So here you can see at the heart of the 10 Commandments, God begins with the word remember, and then he reveals that even as God worked 6 days and rested on the seventh.

It was a model of what we are to do in our own experience of working 6 days and resting on the seventh.

And then Exodus indicates how we are to relate to a day that God has made holy.

Notice that the Bible says that God made the day holy and we are to keep the day holy.

Exodus 20, verse 8-11 makes it very clear that 1 of the ways that we engage a day that is holy and keep it holy is by not working on that day, by implication, secular labor, and we are to rest on that day following God's example, and this is 1 way that we can keep God's day holy.

This is part of the Sabbath experience of rest.

Now we come to 1 of my favorite passages in regards to the Sabbath experience and it's found in Isaiah chapter 58.

Those from among you shall build the old waste places, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." Notice that Isaiah indicates that something has been established, streets, a city by implication, and walls.

And over a period of time, those walls have become destroyed and neglected.

And part of the role of God's people is to restore those streets and to repair the breach.

Now the question is how are we to be the restorers of the breach?

The next verses indicates how we are to be the repairer of the breach, and it's found in verse 13, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight.

So by implication, the way that we are to be a repairer of the breach is to restore the Sabbath experience.

Now I'd like to spend the majority of our time today in Isaiah chapter 58 because I believe that there are things that we can glean from these verses that can be helpful in guiding our Sabbath experience.

The first phrase I want to highlight here is the phrase, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath.

Now, the other time in scripture that the term foot or feet has been made in reference to something that has been declared holy is Moses at the burning bush.

God said, take off your sandals for the place you are standing is holy ground.

The Implications of this are evident that the thing that made that ground holy was the presence of God.

And God instructed Moses to engage that ground in a different way than he did any other ground.

He was to take his shoes off of his feet for the ground that he was standing on was holy because of the presence of God.

The thing that makes the Sabbath holy is the presence of God.

And because of the presence of God and His holiness, which has been infused into this holy time that we call the Sabbath, we are to engage this time in a different way.

Here's a quotation from Prophets and Kings, page 48.

True reverence for God is inspired by a sense of his infinite greatness and a realization of his presence.

So Isaiah chapter 58 begins with this concept of turning away your foot from the Sabbath, which according to scholars, really implies this notion of turning your foot away from certain activities and turning your foot towards the Sabbath in terms of other activities.

Honorable and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words." Notice that the emphasis of these verses is not doing your pleasure, not doing your ways, not finding your pleasure, and not speaking your own words.

So on 1 end of the spectrum of the Sabbath experience, you have where the Sabbath becomes a burden, like the Pharisees of the New Testament.

And on the other side of the Sabbath experience, you have where the Sabbath becomes secular, where the emphasis is on me and my needs and my ways and my own pleasures, and it becomes a man-centered day.

And I want to share a quote from Ellen White in First Selected Messages, page 204, the enemy of souls has sought to bring in the supposition that a great reformation was to take place among us, and that this reformation would consist in giving up of the doctrines which stand as a pillar of our faith, and engaging in a process of reorganization.

Were this reformation to take place, what would result?

The principles of truth that God in His wisdom had given to the remnant church would be discarded.

The fundamental principles that have sustained the work for the last 50 years would be accounted as error.

A system of intellectual philosophy would be introduced, and the founders of this system would go into the cities and do a wonderful work.

Now the context of this is that Ellen White indicates that there was an alpha apostasy dealing with pantheism and Kellogg in the Battle Creek Sanitarium and the issues that went on there with his book that was written called The Living Temple.

And then she indicates that there would be an Omega Apostasy that would take place in the end of time.

And the Omega Apostasy would be characterized by doing away with the fundamental pillars of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, introducing a new enticing philosophy.

Furthermore, she indicates that this movement would do a wonderful work in the cities, so it's not all bad.

Then she goes on to describe the practice of Sabbath keeping among those that are part of this movement.

She goes on, The founders of the system would go into the cities and do a wonderful work.

The Sabbath, of course, would be lightly regarded as also the God who created it.

She points out that this movement, which would teach an erroneous philosophy that would do away with the fundamental pillars of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, would also have a particular Sabbath experience.

The issue in regards to Sabbath-keeping in the end of time and the Sabbath experience is where the Sabbath becomes secularized.

In other words, the Sabbath becomes common.

And the question is, where is the experience of the Sabbath really to be?

And the answer is found in Isaiah chapter 58.

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 hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.

The mouth of the Lord has spoken it." So when you look at the spectrum here again of the Sabbath experience, on 1 hand you have the burden of the Sabbath, the pharisaical experience of the Sabbath where it's rule-centered.

And on the other side of the pendulum you have the secular and the man-centered Sabbath.

And the Isaiah 58 experience is the God-centered Sabbath where the Sabbath becomes a delight.

About a year ago we celebrated the birthday of our two-year-old boy.

He's about to turn 3 right now and it's hard to believe, but I remember that birthday distinctly.

I made a video just as a memory that we can look back on through the years.

And I remember that day when I got up, I put my phone on airplane mode, I chose not to check my email, I made a conscious decision to put all of those things away and the day was a celebration of my son.

It was all about him, what he was going to have for breakfast.

The whole day was all about my son, his favorite activity, going to the zoo.

And it was a day that was a celebration of my son existing on planet Earth another year.

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The Sabbath Experience Under Quarantine

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