Why I Honor the Seventh-day Sabbath: Part 1
By Gary L. Clendenon (c) 2013
History, Design, and Intent
From time to time I encounter people, many of them friends, who are surprised to find out that I go to Church on Saturday or still keep the seventh-day Sabbath! As I have interacted with these people, I have begun to sense a theme in their understanding of the Sabbath (or even from my perspective, a potential mis-understanding), and so I felt compelled to make an attempt to share my understanding of the Sabbath. Not in the sense of “Hey, you're wrong!” but in the sense of “Hey, I'd like to share with you a different perspective for you to consider—in case you haven't.”
Please prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to help you sift through my words with Godly clarity to see whatever truth, if any, is here. It is not my intent to argue or Bible Battle with you or anyone. That's not how I want to roll. (I have attempted to keep my own quoting of Scripture to a minimum so as not to come across in that way to you.) I just ask you to consider my words and my perspective to perhaps round out yours. Thanks. Here goes!
First of all, a Disclaimer: Although I am a 4th-generation Seventh-day Adventist, I want to make it very clear that what I am about to share with you are my opinions, understandings, and beliefs. Naturally, there may be some overlap between what I share and what the SDA Church teaches, but I am not speaking for my Church nor am I intentionally or knowingly following any SDA “Talking Points”. My intention is, as much as possible, to make this about my thoughts and understandings—especially in relation to some of the typical responses I have observed towards Sabbath-keeping, as I stated earlier.
As I have sifted through my own Biblical beliefs over the years, I have come to the understanding that looking at the beginning of the Story is extremely helpful for me in making sense of it all. I ask questions like: How did this all begin? Since everything was perfect in the beginning, what was the Creator's original plan or intent for this? If everything had gone on without sin entering into the picture, how would this be now? When I answer these questions, I find clarity and that helps put the rest of the sometimes confusing Bible in a more meaningful context and perspective.
With these questions in mind, when I look at the origin of the Sabbath, I end up all the way back at the Creation Story—naturally, the very first story in the Bible. I find GOD creating in six days our Earth and Solar System, the plants, animals, us humans and everything needed to make it all function perfectly. Then, on the day 7, GOD “rested”. Now, it seems pretty obvious that when you're done with something big and it's finished, that you would stop and rest; and yet, the Bible makes a big deal about this—very specifically telling us about it and that it was apparently a big deal to GOD—this resting thing.
So, that's the first thing I notice about the 7th day: For some reason, it's a big deal! It's important. Genesis says that GOD made this day a “Holy Day”. This is the phrase from which we get the word “Holiday”. Wikipedia defines “Holiday” as: “a day set aside by custom or by law in which normal activities, especially business or work, are to be suspended or reduced. Generally holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate something of cultural or religious significance.”
Wow, so I never thought of this before, but the 7th day “Sabbath” was the “World's First Holiday”!! What does this tell us about GOD? GOD likes to celebrate; GOD likes to party! GOD—get this—created the concept of taking holidays, celebrating, and partying! Now, as you know, in our world, we celebrate holidays once a year, and we think that's cool and all, but GOD's like “Once a year? Pfft. C'mon people, I got this: once a week! We're going to take this holiday once a week!” No stingy God here!
Now, I know that thinking of GOD as a “Party Animal” is going to come to some of you as quite a shock, but the evidence is strong. No “once a year” holiday to honor the Creation of the Earth here. Not even once a month would do. Once a week! How does that not say “Party Animal” to you? GOD chose to make every 7th day of the week a perpetual reminder of the Birth-day of our world! He wanted us to take this one-day-holiday from working and celebrate with Him the birthday of this planet and all that was created on it so that we would never forget the story of how all this began and who it was that began it!
This 7th-day “Sabbath” was celebrated and put in place as a permanent holiday that very first week of this world's history and celebrated by GOD, Adam and Eve, and their descendants to this day! Well, mostly, that is. After sin entered the picture, there were some detours, some getting off track, some forgetting over time, and by some, a choice was made to not follow GOD or His ways at all. But, through all those years, the continuation of the 7-day weekly cycle stood strong as a silent witness to the Creation of the World and its weekly Birthday Holiday!
Think about this: The 24-hour day is shown by the coming and going of the Sun. The month is measured by the repeated appearance and disappearance of the Moon over a period of 28 days. A year is measured by how long it takes us to go around the Sun one time. Here's my question for you to ponder: “What does the week measure?” As far as I know, there is no scientific or other explanation for the weekly 7-day cycle except the one offered by GOD in His Word: “For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.” . . . Holiday!
Oddly enough, one of the strongest pieces of evidence confirming the 7th-day Sabbath is found in every person's daily life. It is referred to often and, for some, always kept close at hand. You know it well. It is the calendar. It starts with Sunday, the 1-st day and goes to Saturday, the 7-th day. The weekly cycle on the calendar is a never-ending reminder of GOD's six days of creation and one day of rest. Ironically, and for some unknowingly, every human being on Earth acknowledges—every day—the 7-day weekly cycle, and thus, the GOD behind it all.
A couple of thousand years after Creation, when GOD pulled his people out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, their knowledge of Him was mixed up with all those years of forgetting plus hundreds of years of living in a culture that worshiped many other gods in many different ways. Because of that, GOD basically had to start over, to teach these people who He was, what He intended for this Earth and all its people from the beginning, and how to go about making that happen. To do this, GOD spelled it all out—in detail—to Moses, the leader of the people now known as “Israelites”. GOD had Moses write it all down so that there would be no confusion or chance of forgetting again. For the most important rules, GOD called all the people together to hear GOD speak them with His own voice.
The 10 rules that GOD personally spoke to the people of Israel were called the “Ten Commandments”. They were the rules that GOD intended for people to use to govern their behavior in relationship with GOD and all people. These rules were the rules over all other rules. They were for all the people in the world who ever wanted to follow the God who created them and the Earth they lived on. They were so important that GOD wrote them on stone with His own finger and had them placed in a very special gold-plated portable container called “The Ark of the Agreement”.
Number 4 of these 10 rules: “Remember the Sabbath day....” was unlike the other nine. Almost all the other rules were stated as negatives: Don't do this. Don't do that. These negative rules were references to harmful things that humans were tempted to do after sin entered the picture. But the fourth rule was stated as a positive because it was referring to something that happened before sin—when things were still positive.
The Sabbath Rule was the only rule of the 10 that started with the word “Remember”. This word had dual meanings. First, it meant “This is something that has already existed—since the dawn of time—that I am reminding you of. To confirm this meaning, the very next words in the rule explicitly tie the remembering to the Creation Story: “For in six days, ….” The second meaning of “Remember” was “keep remembering” or “continue to remember”.
It is interesting to me that when GOD finished speaking all the rules to Moses on Mt. Sinai, the last thing GOD said was to reiterate the importance of the Sabbath—calling the Sabbath “a a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.” (1) Hundreds of years later, in Ezekiel 20, GOD, in great sadness, mentions these exact words again in the context of grieving that His words had not been followed. GOD then reiterates again in verse 20 “Keep my Sabbaths holy, that they may be a sign between us. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.”
Throughout the Old Testament, the Sabbath is mentioned over 100 plus times, and finally, in the last chapter of Isaiah where the return of GOD in the end days and the New Jerusalem is described, “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. Sabbath Holiday forever celebrated, it would seem!
At the beginning of this writing, I applied my “Three Key Questions” to the topic of the Sabbath: How did this all begin? Since everything was perfect in the beginning, what was the Creator's original plan or intent for this? If everything had gone on without sin entering into the picture, how would this be now? Based on the answers I found it seems very clear to me that the Sabbath was very much a part of the original creation (even having its own day!), was made a weekly holiday (which implies a continued and continuing celebration), and given its re-introduction and re-emphasis in God's 10 Rules and the rest of the Old Testament, it seems fairly clear that GOD intended its continued celebration.
Therefore, I conclude that the Sabbath and its celebration was created and began the first week of our world's history. If the world and its inhabitants had continued without sin, there would have been no Ten Commandments; and yet, the Sabbath would still be celebrated as a weekly holiday to this day—for the Birthday Celebration of our Earth's Creation stands alone, with or without any Ten Commandments, or the rest of the Bible.
For me, the Creation story is all that I need to want to continue the celebration of the Sabbath Holiday, but for others, the inquiring types, there needs to be more discussion and more questions answered: But, what about this...? And what about that...? For those, I am writing Parts 2 & 3 on this topic. Stay tuned.
(1) Exodus 31:13
