<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>, a.k.a. Music Sharing, license.</p>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Stephen Bohr: Ready for His Appearing

Stephen Bohr

Three Inseparable Doctrines

Hidden Sabbath Truths

Reflections on Daniel 11

The Holy and the Profane

I praise the Lord that he's given us music.

You know, it's a language that can express things that words can't.

And that's why in the Bible, most of the praise scenes that we find in Scripture are connected with music, good music.

Before we get into our study this morning, I would like to invite everyone to bow your heads with me and we're going to ask the Lord's guidance as we study together.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this beautiful, sunshiny Sabbath day.

We thank you, Lord, for the air, the fresh air that we breathe.

We thank you for the privilege of being gathered here, your people, on your Holy Sabbath.

We thank you, Father, for your Word, which is a sure guide in a world which is confused.

And as we study about 1 of the great doctrines of Scripture this morning and what it means to us personally, we ask for the guidance of your Spirit.

Give us clarity of thought and give us tender hearts to receive the seed of truth.

We thank you, Father, for hearing and for answering our prayer, for we ask it in the precious name of Jesus.

I've been a Seventh-day Adventist all my life.

I guess you could say a Seventh-day Adventist from birth.

My father was a pastor for 41 years before he decided to retire many years ago.

All of my education I've done in Seventh-day Adventist schools, primary, secondary, college, and postgraduate.

I've served as a minister for close to 35 years and 6 of those years I had the privilege of teaching theology in our university in the city of Medellin, Colombia.

The reason why I mention all of this background is because all throughout the course of my life, not only since I started studying theology, but since I actually started getting into the study of scripture, I've had 2 questions as I've read the book of Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2.

And these 2 questions have basically perplexed me for many, many years, until March of this year.

Now, in March of this year, I was traveling to Panama to organize a trip, a mission trip that our church was going to take in the month of August.

And as I was traveling I always take good reading material.

I had patriarchs and prophets with me and of course I had my Bible and I was reading the chapter in patriarchs and Prophets on creation.

And as I was reading this chapter on creation, I came to probably 3 lines that I had read many times before, but I had not really discerned what those lines were really saying.

And that sent me on a journey, on a research journey, and I want to share with you this morning the results of the studies that I've done since the month of March on these 2 perplexing issues concerning the Sabbath.

Now I'm going to tell you what those 2 issues are.

Issue number 1, when you read Genesis chapter 1 and the first few verses of chapter 2, you discover that the text tells us that every day of creation had an evening and a morning with the exception of the seventh day.

It does not say that it was the evening and the morning of the seventh day.

You know I frequently thought maybe Moses just forgot to put that in there.

But then thinking it over I said no no if God wanted it in there it would have been in there.

There has to be a different reason than just that Moses forgot to put that there was an evening in the morning of the seventh day.

Why doesn't the Bible say that it was the evening and the morning of the seventh day.

The second question which perplexed me is the absence of any direct command in Genesis 2 for Adam and Eve to keep the Sabbath.

Now I know that indirectly we can prove that the Sabbath was made originally for the human race.

For example, Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

So that tells us that the Sabbath originally was made for man.

We all know the manna episode where you know manna didn't fall on the Sabbath and that took place before the 10 Commandments were given on Mount Sinai so it shows that the Sabbath pre-existed Mount Sinai.

We all know the text in Genesis 26 verse 5 where we're told that Abraham kept my commandments and my laws so God had commandments and laws before he gave the law on Mount Sinai.

So I knew that there were indirect ways of showing that the Sabbath was originally made for man.

Nevertheless, throughout the course of the years, I thought how wonderful it would have been if God had just told Moses, hey, put in there, in Genesis chapter 2, Adam and Eve, keep the Sabbath.

And all of your descendants are to keep the Sabbath from this point on.

But really when we read Genesis chapter 2 we discover that every time we are told that God was the 1 who rested on the seventh day.

Never are we told that Adam and Eve rested on the seventh day.

By the way, the 2 points that I'm going to cover this morning, these 2 perplexing questions, which I believe through the grace of God I've been able to find the answer for are 2 of the main arguments that are used by the enemies of Adventism today against the Holy Sabbath.

Perhaps you've heard about Dale Retzlaff.

He publishes a newsletter, I guess you could call it, that comes out every so often called Proclamation.

And 2 of his main arguments against the Sabbath, he used to be a Bible teacher at Monterey Bay Academy in the Central California Conference, and he's left the church and now his lone mission in life seems to be destroying the Seventh-day Adventist Church, particularly the theology of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In his book, Against the Sabbath, these are 2 of the main arguments that he brings out.

The Sabbath had no evening and morning, which means that the rest of God is open for us to enter any day of the week.

And secondly, you can't prove from Genesis that God commanded man to keep the Sabbath.

You only have that command when you get to Exodus chapter 20.

Now as we examine the story of creation in Genesis chapter 1, particularly the first 6 days of creation, we discover that these days are God-focused.

God is the subject of the story of creation.

We find expressions such as these more than 30 times just in chapter 1.

In other words, the center of focus in the first 6 days of creation is God.

God is the 1 who worked the 6 days of creation.

Notice Genesis 1 verse 31, the conclusion of the first 6 days of creation.

There we find the same emphasis that the first 6 days are all about God because God did all of the work.

It says there in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 31, then God saw everything, Now notice this, that He had made, who made it?

God that He had made and indeed it was very good.

So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

So you notice that when the sixth day ends everything that exists was made by God.

God is the subject of the first 6 days of creation.

But God is no less the subject of the seventh day.

Notice Genesis chapter 2 and verses 2 and 3.

And I want you to notice the number of times that God is emphasized as the subject.

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.

Somehow I think God wants us to know that he was the 1 who did it.

Do you know the number of times that the pronoun is used here and that the word God is used in 2 verses?

We're told that it was God who worked 6 days, He did it all, and on the seventh day it says here that it was God who rested.

Now we need to understand what the word for rest it is here.

There are different words for rest in the Hebrew.

The word that is used here is the Hebrew word Shabbat, where we get Sabbath from.

Now Shabbat in Hebrew does not mean the quality of rest that takes place.

You can look up the word Shabbat in the Old Testament.

You're going to find that the word Shabbat is not talking about the manner of rest, how 1 rests, what 1 does while he rests.

The word Shabbat simply means to cease, to stop, to suspend.

So what these verses are emphasizing is that God at the end of the sixth day, Shabbat, at the end of the sixth day He ceased His work of creating.

It's not saying anything about the manner of his rest, how he rested on the seventh day.

It's simply saying that when the seventh day began, God ceased.

Allow me to read you a statement by a scholar.

This individual is well known, Vines Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words.

He says this about the word Shabbat, the writer of Genesis 2 verse 3 is not stressing rest from work, but rather God's ceasing from his creative work since it was complete.

So in other words the word Shabbat, the word rested does not mean the quality of God's rest on the seventh day.

Back to Menu

Series

Stephen Bohr: Ready for His Appearing

Hidden Sabbath Truths

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Sabbath, Creation, and the End Time

41m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

10 Repairers of the Breach

51m

Pause for Peace

43m

From Sabbath to Sunday

47m

Jesus on Prophecy

13 How to Observe the Day of Worship?

47m

Dee Casper's Weekend

04 Worship Him Who Made

54m

Fresh Manna by Sean Reed

Wholly Holy

44m

How Do I Keep the Sabbath?

45m

How the Sabbath Keeps Us

53m

What Jesus Said

10. History’s Greatest Hoax

1h

A Day of Delight

59m

Sound Doctrine