American Independence Day is July 4, 1776, and it would be foolish to designate some other day as Independence Day. We would call some other day by that same name, but the declaration was signed on July 4, 1776, and there it must remain. Likewise, the Sabbath could no more be changed than our own birthdays without having creation done over again and another day hallowed by God.

<p>American Independence Day is July 4, 1776, and it would be foolish to designate some other day as Independence Day. We would call some other day by that same name, but the declaration was signed on July 4, 1776, and there it must remain. Likewise, the Sabbath could no more be changed than our own birthdays without having creation done over again and another day hallowed by God.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Amazing Facts

Sabbath

Joe Crews

01 The Sabbath

02 The Sabbath


The five-day work week may soon be cut down to 4 if labor leaders have their way. Strange as it may seem, the most enlightened labor law in history was enacted before a single workers' union had been formed. Stay tuned for the amazing facts. Hello this is Joe Cruz from the Amazing Facts broadcast, facts which affect you. You know, friends, the daily papers are crowded with reports of labor union promotion of shorter working hours and higher wages.

The last few years have seen tremendous changes in favor of greater employee benefits. The average workman of today has more leisure time on his hands than any category of worker did in former years. And if present trends continue to develop, the possibility of a four-day work week is altogether possible. Such a development would not seem nearly so revolutionary as another bit of legislation did when it was enacted long before a single labor union had been formed. Now, this law was put into effect a few thousand years ago, and it is still enforced today, believe it or not.

We read the actual wording of it in Exodus 20, verses 8-11, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 6 days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle that is within thy gates, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in 6 days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.

Wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath they inhaled it." Now there it is, friends, 1 of the oldest and most enlightened labor laws ever enacted. It was written and sealed by the hand of God Himself and placed right in the heart of His great moral law of the 10 Commandments, which is still binding today, I might say, upon every creature under heaven. Oh, what a world this would be if all men honored that law! War, crime, and sin would disappear from our society overnight. Every problem of nations and individuals would be solved at the same time.

If even 1 of those laws should be universally obeyed, this world would be a new wonderful place in which to live. Well you say, with labor laws as they are now, everybody is taking at least 1 day a week from the job. Yes, but notice God didn't say to take just any day off. It was not left for man to decide on the day. The Creator Himself chose the day, then He blessed it, sanctified it, and hallowed it so that men would be able to keep it.

No 1 can keep a day holy that God didn't make holy. God commanded the seventh day of the week, because it was the birthday of the world. You will read that in Genesis 2, 1-3. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made. Now friends, let's ask 3 questions about the Sabbath. Who made it? For whom was it made? And why was it made?

First please notice that Jesus Christ Himself is the great Creator of the world and He made the Sabbath. Now this may sound strange to some of you because many people think of Christ as being born in the manger 2000 years ago. Now that is true, of course, but He had already existed from all eternity in heaven, And He was here when the foundations of this earth were laid. Listen to this text in John 1, 1, 2, and 3. And in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things were made by Him, and without him was not anything made that was made, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glories of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Now friends, put that with the words of Paul in Hebrews 1, 1 and 2, God, who at sundry times and divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. Now these 2 verses plainly tell us that Jesus was the agent of creation. By Him were all things made in the whole of creation.

In fact, during those first 6 days of time, He commanded, and the world of matter appeared out of nothing. He formed man and breathed life into that lifeless clay. But on the seventh day, He did something very significant and very different, which we read about in Genesis 2. In fact, we just read it there in Genesis 2, 1 to 3. Notice that the seventh day was set apart by Christ, who blessed the Sabbath in the beginning and rested from the work of creation.

And that is why I love to preach about this subject, friends, because it is so closely connected and intertwined with the Lord Jesus Himself. Now I have heard some people say that the Sabbath was a shadow which disappeared at the cross. But, friends, there could be no shadow of anything before the entrance of sin. Many ceremonies came later as shadows are symbols of the coming of Christ, but they were only necessary because of sin's existence. Shadows were never needed before the first sin was committed.

And the Sabbath was made in the Garden of Eden before sin had ever entered into this world, so the Sabbath could not be a shadow. But now let's ask the second question. For whom did Christ make the Sabbath? Listen to the answer in Mark 2 27 and the words of Jesus Himself. "...the Sabbath was made for man, " He said.

Now the word man is used here in the generic sense to include every person in all the world. The Sabbath was made for mankind. And by the way, the Bible says that woman was also created for man, made for man, revealing the fact that marriage and the Sabbath are the 2 institutions which come to us straight from the Garden of Eden. They were both hallowed and instituted by Christ Himself in the days before the curse of sin had ever tainted the atmosphere of this world. Now I realize that some people believe the Sabbath was made just for the Jews.

They don't seem to realize that Jesus made the Sabbath about 2, 000 years before there was a Jew even. Wouldn't it be absurd to think that He made the Sabbath for a people who would not even appear for another 2 millenniums? Did He hallow it at creation simply to wait until some Jew appeared? If so, why did Jesus say it was made for man? It was never intended only for the Jews, any more than the marriage institution was intended only for the Jews.

The truth of the matter is that the Scriptures never call it the Sabbath of the Jews. It is always called the Sabbath of the Lord. All right, now the third question, why did Jesus make the Sabbath? It was to be a memorial of creation, a sign of His power to make something out of nothing. It would forever testify that in just 6 days the world had been created for man.

In a sense, really, it was to be the birthday of the world. The event for which it was instituted would perpetuate it as an everlasting memorial. Something was done on that day, friends, which can never be changed any more than we can change our own birthday. American Independence Day is July 4, 1776. Now it would be foolish to designate some other day as Independence Day other than July the 4th.

We could call some other day by that name, but the declaration was actually signed on July 4, 1776, and there it has to remain. Likewise, the Sabbath could no more be changed than our own birthdays without having creation done over again and another day hallowed by God. Now let me ask this question. What difference does Christ's blessing make on an event or on a person? We pray for Him to bless our children and our homes.

Evidently everyone feels that His blessing will make a great deal of difference. Even so, it did make that seventh day different from the other 6 days, when He blessed it, sanctified it, and hallowed it. It would forever be different and distinct from the ordinary 6 working days of the week. Now we will find in our study today that it has been God's own day down through the ages to this very hour. Let's prove it by tracing the Sabbath through the Scriptures and seeing how God and Christ regards it.

In Exodus 20 we find the 10 Commandments recorded just as they were written by the finger of God. In the very heart of the law is that fourth commandment we read a moment ago, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, 6 days shalt thou labour and do all thy work. Now notice that this verse begins with the word remember. Why is that? The other commandments you know begin with the words Thou shalt not.

This 1 is different. Listen, because the Sabbath was an institution already in existence, having been established in Eden, therefore God only had to remind man of that which he had already blessed and sanctified for a day of rest. And that is why he just said, Remember the Sabbath. Now friends, some people have been known to ridicule the Sabbath as something belonging just to Moses and the Jews back there. But actually the 10 Commandment Law is the only part of the Bible that man had absolutely nothing to do with.

God was so particular that they should be given properly that He wrote those 10 Commandments with His own finger. Notice Exodus 24, 12, And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me unto the mount, and be there, and I will give thee tables of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them. I'll tell you, friends, let men beware how they ridiculed that portion of Scripture written by God Himself. The fact is, we can narrow our conclusions down to say that Christ was the author of the 10 Commandment Law. Now how do we know that?

Well, read 1 Corinthians 10, 1-4, Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were unto the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Now here it says that Jesus was the rock who followed the children of Israel through the wilderness. Now compare that with Nehemiah 9, 13, keeping in mind that Christ was the rock in the wilderness. Here is the way it reads, Thou camest down also upon Mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes, and commandments, and madest known unto them thy holy sabbath, and gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst." Now, friends, who was that rock? Well, Christ was the rock according to 1 Corinthians.

So He was with the Israelites all through their journeyings. He was the 1 who dealt with them. He gave them water out of the rock, and He wrote the law. He gave the Sabbath. He is called the Lawgiver in Isaiah 33, 22.

So we can understand why Jesus could say that He was the Lord of the Sabbath. He made it and wrote it on tables of stone as a perpetual reminder. This is why the Sabbath is such a blessed institution. Jesus was so closely connected with it. He made everything that was made in the beginning.

He made all those things on each day of creation week, and then on the seventh day he rested, and sanctified, and blessed the Sabbath, and gave it to the world." So that means then that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath, and He indeed called Himself that. Now in our next broadcast we will continue to trace the history of the Sabbath right on through the Old Testament right down to the time of Jesus and the apostles, and we will find out just what that Sabbath should mean to us today. Now let's review just briefly what we discovered in our broadcast today. We found out that the Sabbath was made in the very first week of time, and it depends not upon man's reckoning but upon God's timekeeping, because God set it up on the seventh day, which means that after working 6 days in creation, He Himself set the first divine example by keeping the first Sabbath. And then, of course, He gave it to the world right in the midst of the great moral law of the 10 Commandments.

And of course that law was handwritten. We found out that it is the only part of the Bible that God wrote with His own fingers, showing us exactly how important it is today. Nobody can brush it aside lightly and say that those great moral laws and precepts of God are not important today. They are still binding upon us today, friends, and that includes the Fourth Commandment as well as all of the other commandments too. Now the material that I will be presenting in this special series of messages on the Sabbath is available in printed form.

In fact, folder G entitled Don't Be Fooled covers the entire subject in a most graphic manner. So why don't you write for that free folder today. It's folder G. That's all you

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Sabbath

01 The Sabbath

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01 The Sabbath

14m

02 The Sabbath

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