Transcendent purpose of God’s true Sabbath

Cuthbert Mavheko, Correspondent

WHEN the Eternal God thundered the Ten Commandments from the top of Mount Sinai, He demonstrated His power as Creator by sending forth thunder and lightning and literally shaking Mount Sinai as if it were a wet dishrag.

One of the commandments that His voice thundered said: “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. . .” (Exodus 20 verses 8-9).

This commandment is, in its wording, the longest of God’s commandments. It is placed, protectively as it were, in the very midst of the Ten Commandments. Yet, it is one commandment about which people reason and argue most and which they would most quickly tear asunder and try to separate from the rest of God’s commandments.

Almost everyone has heard about the Sabbath. Many opinions exist about the validity of observing it on the seventh day — Saturday. Many evangelical Christian leaders argue that the Sabbath should be observed on Sunday — the first day of the week.

Personally, I read the Holy Bible from Genesis to Revelation to find verses that validate or command the observation of Sunday as the Sabbath. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, because I did not find a single verse where the Bible commands and enforces the observance of Sunday as the Lord’s Sabbath.

It is very important to stress that the Creator sanctified the seventh day of the week (Saturday) for a spiritual purpose that is simply not understood, even by the broad majority of the professing Christian world.

Men and women were fashioned to have an intimate spiritual relationship with their Creator. To keep human beings in this life in a long friendship and proximity to God, the seventh day was given vital significance.

On the seventh day of creation week (Saturday), God instituted the Sabbath, we are told in Genesis 2 verses 1-3. The command to observe the Sabbath was later codified into the Ten Commandments at the time of Moses. God ordered

His people to keep the Sabbath forever as a sign that He is the Creator of all things (Exodus 31 verses 16-17).
In her book, “The Great Controversy”, Ellen G White, who was well-versed in Church history, wrote: “In the fourth commandment, God is revealed as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and is thereby distinguished from all false gods.

“It was a memorial of the work of creation that the seventh day was sanctified as a rest day for man. It was designed to keep the living God ever before the minds of men as the source of being and the object of reverence and worship.

“Satan strives to turn men from their allegiance to God, and from rendering obedience to His law; therefore, he directs his efforts especially against that commandment which points to God as the Creator.”

It is essential to understand that the Sabbath is a space of time. God set it as that space of time from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. Whenever that time comes to us, we are in holy time. It is God’s time, not ours.

God’s presence is in His Sabbath. He made it holy —– and in the Ten Commandments, He commanded us to keep it holy. On page 7 of his book, “When God said Remember”, Mark Finley wrote: “The Sabbath is a divine invitation to find our true worth in the One who created us.

“The Sabbath is God’s appeal for us to find our roots in Him. We are valuable in His sight because He created us . . . We are children of God, brought into existence by a loving Heavenly Father.

Each week the Sabbath is a perpetual reminder of who we are, where we came from and why we exist. In Sabbath worship we discover life’s true purpose in praising the One who created us.”

However, the perplexing paradox is that in this modern world, the vast majority of professing Christians observe Sunday. One disturbing observation that I have personally made since embracing the Christian faith is that within the Christian community, there are some Church leaders who masquerade as evangelical Christians but are, in fact, unbelieving charlatans. They distort and misinterpret the Scriptures to give credence to their own false teachings which, among other things, stipulate that God’s commandments, including the fourth commandment, which admonishes Christians to keep the seventh-day Sabbath holy, were “nailed to the cross” at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

If we are truly committed to serving God in spirit and in truth, we should not accept everything that we hear being preached today because, as I have already said, some modern day evangelical Christian leaders alter the essential teachings and doctrines of the Bible in a misguided attempt to give credence to their own teachings and doctrines.

As Christians, we give our allegiance to Jesus Christ, not to a particular doctrine or tradition. The Holy Bible, which is the authoritative Word of God, admonishes us to “test all things and hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5 verse 21).

In studying the Bible, I found rock solid evidence that Jesus Christ who left us an example, “that we should follow in His steps” (1 Peter 2 verse 21) always kept the Sabbath “as His manner was” (Luke 4 verse 16).

There’s irrefutable evidence in the Holy Bible that after Jesus Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension to Heaven, His disciples continued to keep the Sabbath. In Acts 18 verses 4 and 6-11, we learn that the Apostle Paul preached to the gentiles on the Sabbath for one and a half years.

In an article titled: “The law is bankrupt”, one Pastor wrote: “The Mosaic law couldn’t and cannot bring us into the right relationship with God. The law was nailed to the cross to allow us salvation by grace.”

The truth that must be said without fear of criticism or contradiction whatsoever is that there’s no scriptural evidence to support the teaching that God’s law or commandments were “nailed to the cross” when Jesus Christ was crucified.
Jesus Christ Himself said: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

“Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5 verses 17-19).

The Greek word translated as ‘fulfill’ in the above scriptures means “to bring to full expression” or to “show forth in true magnification.” These verses prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the seventh day, Sabbath, is still binding today and that neither our Heavenly Father nor Jesus Christ or His disciples instituted the keeping of the first day of the week — Sunday.

The seventh day is the day God blessed and sanctified. There’s not an iota of evidence in the Bible, which supports the common teaching being propagated by some modern-day Church leaders that God sanctified Sunday as the Sabbath day.

“We should learn to keep the Sabbath in a positive way, use the seventh day that God has sanctified and made holy as He has intended — to rest from worldly labour, to pray, to study and to meditate on God’s Word and the purpose for human existence.

“On this holy day, we should take time to do good to other people, to care for the sick and to visit the afflicted. Over and above this, we should assemble with other true Christians on the Sabbath,” said a member of the Gwabalanda Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Cuthbert Mavheko is a freelance writer and theologian. He can be contacted on 0773963448 or 0775522095 or via email [email protected].