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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jeffrey Harper

How Do I Keep the Sabbath?

It is a privilege to be here and I thank you for the invitation.

My name is Jeffrey Harper and I'm the associate pastor at the Fallbrook Seventh-Avenus Church and Fallbrook is on the way down to San Diego.

So if any of you guys are ever on a Sabbath traveling down that way, I encourage you to stop by.

So pretty good bet that we'll get to feed you, but it's a privilege to be here.

I was with the Pathfinders at their conference camporee, and we got rained on last night, but I had my trusty RAI tent, and so I was good, and I was thankful for the ability to come here this morning and I'm looking forward to getting into God's Word and so I invite you to bow your heads with me as we begin and let's let's pray.

Father we want to thank you so much for this opportunity to open up the Word of God, to open up your scriptures.

And God, this is not our book, this is your book.

And so we are praying specifically that your Holy Spirit would lead and guide us as we spend time in your word, and we pray these things in your name, amen.

My father is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor.

He works for the Georgia Cumberland Conference, and so I grew up in an Adventist home.

And 1 of the things that frequently came up was obviously as a pastor's family was the Sabbath.

And as a kid, and many of you maybe have grown up as well in the Adventist church, but as a kid there's mixed feelings at various stages in your growing up years as a young Seventh-day Adventist child about the Sabbath.

There's some times where you're excited, you get to go to church and Sabbath school, and there's other times, I admit that we'd come home and my parents would take a nap.

And so you'd be forced to come up with things to amuse yourself on the Sabbath afternoon.

And naturally, as young kids, and perhaps we shouldn't have done this, but of course, you come up with games like Bible basketball.

And so if you shoot a basket and you make it, you have to say a Bible verse, but if not, you know, there's different things that you do as children.

And as I've grown older, Sabbath keeping in general has become something that I have thought about.

It's something that's really not talked a lot about in Adventism.

As Seventh-day Adventists, we worship, praise God, on the correct day, the Sabbath, the seventh day, but what about the keeping of the Sabbath?

And I think part of the reason that it's not talked about as much is because of the fact that within Adventism there's a lot of different views on Sabbath keeping.

There might be a group that says, hey you know what we feel comfortable doing this, another group says we feel comfortable doing this, so there's a lot of different views.

So with that being said, You might fear the title on the screen, how do I keep the Sabbath?

But we want to look in Scripture, what does the Bible have to say?

Because as a pastor, I've wrestled with this question.

The Sabbath is something that, honestly, it's 1 of my busiest days as a pastor.

We have first service at our church that starts at 815, especially if I'm preaching, I like to be there early, so I'm up early on Sabbath, I'm getting ready, and Sabbath, you know, we have afternoon activities, there's potluck, there's people that come and talk to you, and it can potentially be a very busy, hectic day.

And so I've asked myself the question, Lord, how do I keep the Sabbath?

And so in order to answer that question, I figured that the best way to do that is to go to the Word of God.

Because we can have a lot of different opinions, we can come from different places.

Perhaps maybe there's some non-Seventh-day Adventists in this room, praise God.

And you've been coming to this school and you've heard about those Seventh-day Adventists and well, I know they worship on Saturday, but what do they do?

And so with all these various opinions that abound we want to go to the Word of God and see what Scripture has to tell us.

So I invite you to turn in your Bibles with me to Isaiah chapter 58.

Isaiah chapter 58, a very common passage that talks about the Sabbath that perhaps some of you have heard about.

Isaiah 58 will also have a number of these verses on the screen.

And in fact I want to turn, and I apologize, I should have had you turn to Isaiah 56.

I want to turn back just a couple chapters in Isaiah chapter 56.

Isaiah chapter 56, And I want you to notice in verse 1 and 2, because when you look in scripture, you'll see that Sabbath reform is something that's often talked about.

In the book of Nehemiah, God called for Sabbath reform.

Here in Isaiah, God calls for Sabbath reform.

In Jesus' time, Jesus called for Sabbath reform and so there's very times in Scripture where God calls for us to look at our Sabbath observance and to evaluate where we stand to make appropriate changes.

So here in Isaiah 56, notice verse 1 and 2, I don't want to spend a lot of time on these 2 verses, but just want you to notice that this the Sabbath question or subject comes up before Isaiah 58.

So Isaiah 56 verse 1 and 2, it says, Thus says the Lord, keep justice and do righteousness, For my salvation is about to come and my righteousness to be revealed.

Blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who lays hold on it, who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil.

Alright, so there the Sabbath question comes up in verse 2 and then notice again in verse 4.

Alright, this is not on the screen, but it says, For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant, verse 5, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters.

I'll give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

So God here is not only addressing the Israelites but also the Gentiles, the eunuchs, those that were outside of the Israelite community said, hey everyone can keep the Sabbath, amen?

God from the very beginning has been interested that people talk about and keep the Sabbath.

Perhaps you've heard 1 of my favorite quotes, Mrs.

White says that if everyone had been keeping the Sabbath from the very beginning there wouldn't be an atheist left today.

And so in Isaiah 56, Sabbath reform is definitely talked about.

And when I say Sabbath reform, because I know that word is a word we don't use very often, I mean that God is calling for men and women, calling for us today, to look at how I keep the Sabbath.

I want you individually to say, Lord, how do I keep the Sabbath?

I want to evaluate how I'm doing it, and I want to realize the incredible delight that Sabbath really is, amen?

So in Isaiah 58, you can turn over just a couple chapters, Isaiah 58 verses 13 and 14.

And the call of Isaiah 58 is not simply a call to the correct day, which is important, but it's a call to recapture the meaning of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was never intended to be an end in itself, but rather a means by which man might become acquainted with God.

So let's go ahead and look at verse 13 and 14, and you notice what is the very first word of verse 13?

And we'll read these in a second, but it's if.

And then notice verse 14, the Bible starts with what word there?

Now I know that there's, we're at a university and so this is a very intellectual place and there's a lot of intellectual people here and so we know that if we have an if and a then statement, it's cause to effect.

If this takes place, then this will happen.

Perhaps as an associate pastor, I work with young people, and we were talking about this recently and we were giving examples of cause and effects.

They said, well, if you eat a gallon of ice cream, then you won't feel good.

Especially me being lactose intolerant, I definitely would not feel good.

Maybe we could come from a positive aspect that if you study a lot, then you will get good grades.

So we obviously understand the concept of cause and effect.

So what we're going to do in verse 13 and 14, we're only going to look at those 2 verses.

We're going to break down these verses and we're actually gonna start with the effect.

We're gonna start with the then in verse 14.

Alright, so if we go back to the studying example, you get good grades in your test.

If someone said, I can show you exactly how to get good grades in your test, you say, tell me how, right?

And then you get to the, well, you have to study.

But we're going to start out with the, how do you get good grades in your test?

We're going to read the blessing in verse 14, all right?

So we'll go ahead and jump over here to verse 14.

It says, "...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." So the very first phrase there says, you shall delight yourself in the Lord.

Another version says, you shall find joy in the Lord.

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How Do I Keep the Sabbath?

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