Do you have to keep the Sabbath?
Hi, welcome to today's little lesson, we'll talk about Sabbath keeping and Christians
don't agree on this.
Some, I think the minority, believe that it's very, very important to keep the Sabbath,
it's one of the 10 Commandments for crying out loud, and it's based on the fact that
God rested Himself on the seventh day, something that pre-dates the law of Moses.
However, let's be honest, you can't find a whole lot in the epistles about the importance
of keeping the Sabbath, and so we get this question, I get it fairly frequently.
And I first of all remind folks that we are not under the law of Moses.
And that's where you find the Sabbath commandment.
Now that doesn't mean we can ignore everything in the law of Moses.
I have discussed this on a little lesson before because many of the moral laws that you find
in the law of Moses are also found in the law of Christ of which all Christians are
obligated to follow and to obey.
Adultery was a sin under the law of Moses, adultery is a sin under the law of Christ.
When I say you don't have to keep the law of Moses I want to qualify that and say you
do have to keep the parts of the law of Moses that were carried over into the law of Christ.
But I can't say definitively that the law of keeping the Sabbat is part of the law of
Christ.
Now that being said when people ask me, "Do I have to keep the Sabbath?"
I often immediately say, "You're asking the wrong question."
Do I have to keep the Sabbath?
That's like saying, "Do I have to eat ice cream?"
Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
And so it's a gift from God, and primarily to have a day of rest.
Now the Jewish Sabbath of course went from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.
So you want to be very strict on that, you got to reset your whole days.
Christians often refer to Sunday as the Sabbath which of course it is not technically the
Sabbath, but that's what it's been known to be called.
But the point is a day of rest, a day of rest.
And people, I think scientific studies have shown that people that try to ignore that
concept of having one day out of seven for a rest eventually they're not nearly as productive
as they would be if they had that rest.
Because you get that rest and then you get rejuvenated and you get ready to hit it again
on Monday morning.
When you think about it we've got 365 and one-fourth days a year based upon the sun
and moon.
That's how we devised our calendar and so forth.
That all could have been divided up in a lot of ways.
Could have been you work 10 days then you get a day off.
That could be a week.
But the days take 24 hours and people work as many as they can, but they have to sleep.
That's another gift from the LORD when we get to rest.
And it's just built in to every culture around the world.
It's so interesting, it's like a natural law that God has built into our bodies.
And so people practice it who don't have any exposure at all to Judaism or to Christianity
where these things we know that God had something to say about that.
Okay, so it's not do you have to keep the Sabbath, it's you get to keep the Sabbath.
I personally am not one who says, "Oh you got to start sundown Friday and to sundown
Saturday."
I'm not one to say that if you mess up and you have to work or something that you're
going to go to hell.
But I am saying that thank God that God has given this wonderful gift to us and so make
sure you get a day of rest and relaxation.
And if on top of that you can add something spiritual like some special time in the word
or with the LORD or serving somebody that even makes it more of a blessing.
As long as you're not doing the thing that you normally do your five or six other days
of the week.
There's even in my thoughts, and again you may disagree with me, but in my thoughts there
are some forms of work that I could on the Sabbath that they're so easy and so enjoyable
that to me it's really not work at all, it's really just relaxation and playing as it were.
But yet I'm actually accomplishing something and getting something done.
Okay?
So I hope I answered the question as best I can.
You are not under the law of Moses, you're under the law of Christ.
And so read through the gospels, anything Jesus said that His disciples should be doing
you should be doing.
And now again the real strict Sabbath keepers will always say, "Well Jesus kept the Sabbath."
Well of course Jesus kept the Sabbath, He was ministering under the law of Moses.
So He started at sundown Friday and finished it on sundown Saturday.
Sure He did.
But can you find a verse in the gospels or can you find verses or a verse in the New
Testament epistles that says, "Make sure you're keeping the Sabbath as it is described in
the law of Moses?"
No you can't.
All right.
And I'll say in closing, Sabbath keepers and non-Sabbath keepers or less strict Sabbath
keepers, whoever you are, the important thing is that we love each other.
And when people fight over these kinds of things it is a sad sad commentary on our real
spirituality.
Okay?
We need to honor each other, love each other, support each other, and respect the convictions
that others have that maybe we don't share.
Because everyone's trying to please the LORD as best as they understand what He wants of
them.
Okay?
Thanks for joining me on this little lesson.
God bless you.