The Gift Of The Sabbath - Is It For Us? - NEW AND IMPROVED??

[Ferris Bueller]

...so I'm not sure why we're claiming that the Sabbath is a sign that doesn't count.

Because ANYBODY can keep a literal sabbath. It's not hard. It's inconvenient, but it's not hard. You don't have to be converted to keep a literal sabbath.

He literally calls it a sign.

Just like he called literal circumcision a sign.
But we know anybody can get circumcised. You don't have to be converted to get circumcised. In fact, it was actually the unconverted that were getting circumcised in the days of the Apostles. The flesh glories in the externals. I'm not saying that's you, or anyone else here, but it's clear to us non-observant believers that, in general, it's the unconverted that get drawn to the externals. I know this because we have those kind among us non-observant, too. People who are big on their service to God, their church attendance, etc. but who eventually are discovered to not be converted at all. And how do we find out? By the fact they are still living in sin, not by their impeccable record of outward service and sacrifice to God in the church.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

Can there be any doubt that God sanctifies believers today? Has he given any instruction that His sign of sanctification has been replaced or doesn't count?

Of course he sanctifies. But what you're not grasping is there is the obedience of sanctification that matters, and there is the obedience of sanctification that doesn't matter. Congregating with believers, for example, is good, and it's expected, but it hardly represents the sanctification and the setting apart of an individual to the obedience that matters. What does it matter if you're congregating, and doing that on the one and only approved day according to the law if you're sleeping with your neighbor's wife, or stealing from your boss? Nothing, of course! It means nothing! Your sacrifice of service and worship to God is meaningless if you are not first obeying God in that which does matter, obedience to the moral commands in the law.

This is a major message of the prophets to a very 'religious', but horribly disobedient nation of Jews. That's what Isaiah is addressing in that Isaiah 1:10-17 passage I shared. And what Jesus is addressing in the Matthew 5:23-24 passage I shared. And so it is in this regard that your religious activities mean nothing; your obedience does. God doesn't even want your religious activities if you are not first obeying him in what counts, summed up in "love your neighbor as yourself". Religious activities are NEVER above and beyond and more important than the commands to care about others and not hurt them. Too many Christians take false comfort in their 'religious' service and sacrifice all the while they are full of hatred and contempt and jealousy and envy and anger, oblivious to the fact that they are not pleasing to God at all in the abundance of their 'church' activities.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

Too many Christians take false comfort in their 'religious' service and sacrifice all the while they are full of hatred and contempt and jealousy and envy and anger, oblivious to the fact that they are not pleasing to God at all in the abundance of their 'church' activities.

This forum is living proof of that. People come in here breathing fire because you don't agree with their theological views. They think they're doing good, serving God by telling people the truth, all the while oblivious to the fact that they nullify any acceptance of their service to God by the hatred and contempt they have in their souls toward those they're 'sharing' with. I'll just say it, BOL is a perfect example.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

I hope you hang around, @BarnyFife . This is one of my favorite subjects, and I'm a little rusty at talking about it. Our discussion is bringing back to these truths that God shared with me many years ago that changed my Christian life. I've never been observant, but I have been overly concerned about things that I thought were of great import, but oblivious to that which actually is of great import. It's was a time of great growth in my spiritual life. I have lots to say about this. Let's continue to talk.

Going up town before the big ice storm hits.

 

[Taken]

No. God expressly puts the caveat “IF” as to what HE WILLED, had been applied. Not ‘IF a man believe', but, if a man BELIEVES, it's because God caused him to believe.

No.

 

[BarneyFife]

You don't have to be converted to keep a literal sabbath.

Some of your points are easy to answer, such as this one. ^^^^

You don't have to be converted to refrain from murdering people, either, so how does 'lack of ability to prove conversion' disqualify any of the ten commandments as being viable?

(The fruit of the spirit is simply the working out of the law from the opposite end of the spectrum from the "Thou shalt not" end of the spectrum. (Galatians 5:23) It is not a symbolic sign. It is a demonstrative sign. It is impossible to love God with all of the heart without spending time with Him. And since man is very susceptible to forgetting God and occupying himself with selfish pursuits, God established in Eden a means for man to have a systematic means of spending quality time with Him. This is as reasonable and logical as can be. He does not leave the matter to us to manage or judge for ourselves.)

But, in viewing the bigger picture, I feel, for the most part, we're venturing into a territory of reasoning and Bible interpretation that I just don't understand nor recognize. Your responses and the conclusions you're coming to are indicative of a hermeneutical model that I've never encountered before. It appears to be a very freestyle form. If it does have a name or organized structure, I sure would be happy to know about it.

You seem to be trying to make an actual defense for the case that the Sabbath is truly different in its identity and purpose as a commandment than any of the other nine. And this is simply absurd. The very idea that a God who declares that He does not change would insert a disposable commandment within His moral code that He wrote with His own finger on tablets of stone (which He did with no other part of the writings of Moses or any other Bible penman) is a concept that I haven't the slightest idea as to how to wrap my head around.

We can continue to volley back and forth about this issue, but I'm not certain that it will benefit anyone if the discussion seems so sporadic in nature. Sorry if this is insulting in any way. It's quite possible that the deficiency is within me.

Just sayin'. Still friends?

 

[BarneyFife]

If I acknowledge that I am profaning the sabbath how is that not the same as I am acknowledging it as a holy day that I am profaning?

Best I can tell, it is exactly the same.

But I also acknowledge how I am guiltless for profaning the sabbath because Jesus is in me & is with me always.

Well, then, as has already been pointed out, this acknowledgment is actually a deception, because it is not wise to eisegete Matthew 12 or any other part of Scripture. The text means what it says and no more.

Tell me that Jesus in us and is with us always does not make us guiltless when it is His righteousness apart from the law that brings us Home.

This is an open-ended license to sin and is in direct opposition of Moses's description of God's very character:
Numbers 14:18 KJV: The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

 

[BarneyFife]

Just like he called literal circumcision a sign.
But we know anybody can get circumcised. You don't have to be converted to get circumcised. In fact, it was actually the unconverted that were getting circumcised in the days of the Apostles. The flesh glories in the externals. I'm not saying that's you, or anyone else here, but it's clear to us non-observant believers that, in general, it's the unconverted that get drawn to the externals. I know this because we have those kind among us non-observant, too. People who are big on their service to God, their church attendance, etc. but who eventually are discovered to not be converted at all. And how do we find out? By the fact they are still living in sin, not by their impeccable record of outward service and sacrifice to God in the church.

Matthew 23:23 KJV: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

 

[BarneyFife]

But what you're not grasping is there is the obedience of sanctification that matters, and there is the obedience of sanctification that doesn't matter.

All genuine sanctification of the Spirit results in heartfelt obedience, as far as I know.

Congregating with believers, for example, is good, and it's expected,

It's actually commanded:
Hebrews 10:25 KJV: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

It doesn't take the form of a formal commandment, but if one assumes the attitude of Christ, as recorded here:
Matthew 4:4 KJV: But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

What does it matter if you're congregating, and doing that on the one and only approved day according to the law if you're sleeping with your neighbor's wife, or stealing from your boss? Nothing, of course! It means nothing!

See Post #208.

Your sacrifice of service and worship to God is meaningless if you are not first obeying God in that which does matter, obedience to the moral commands in the law. Religious activities are NEVER above and beyond and more important than the commands to care about others and not hurt them. Religious activities are NEVER above and beyond and more important than the commands to care about others and not hurt them. Too many Christians take false comfort in their 'religious' service and sacrifice all the while they are full of hatred and contempt and jealousy and envy and anger, oblivious to the fact that they are not pleasing to God at all in the abundance of their 'church' activities.

We're all broken. Preaching to the choir.

I'll just say it, BOL is a perfect example.

Drawing a blank on BOL

I hope you hang around, @BarnyFife . This is one of my favorite subjects, and I'm a little rusty at talking about it. Our discussion is bringing back to these truths that God shared with me many years ago that changed my Christian life. I've never been observant, but I have been overly concerned about things that I thought were of great import, but oblivious to that which actually is of great import. It's was a time of great growth in my spiritual life. I have lots to say about this. Let's continue to talk.

Count on it!

Going up town before the big ice storm hits.

Yeah, I heard your area is in for a good'n'. Take care, my friend.

 

[BarneyFife]

And so it is in this regard that your religious activities mean nothing; your obedience does. God doesn't even want your religious activities if you are not first obeying him in what counts, summed up in "love your neighbor as yourself". Religious activities are NEVER above and beyond and more important than the commands to care about others and not hurt them. Too many Christians take false comfort in their 'religious' service and sacrifice all the while they are full of hatred and contempt and jealousy and envy and anger, oblivious to the fact that they are not pleasing to God at all in the abundance of their 'church' activities.

I can't help but notice that you quote the 2nd commandment of Jesus but not the first and Great one. Do you think the passage in 1 John sets aside other commandments or sums them up so well that the others are all subordinate to loving our neighbors? Or perhaps that God is included as one of our neighbors? I'm just trying to follow your theology here.

 

[Oceanprayers]

God made the Sabbath for us. Not us for the Sabbath. God didn't say, I created the Sabbath for the Jews only!

Because there were no Jews in the beginning. There were just God's people. People created in the image and likeness of God.

The Sabbath was never abolished. Nor were the other 9 commands.

Why would they be?

Those 10 in total represent love,morality, honor, and respect, for God and one another.

Imagine the person who thinks they are in Christ and Christ is alive in them insisting honoring their mother and father no longer applies. Murdering someone no longer is prohibited. Lying is no longer forbidden. Keeping the Sabbath holy, that which God created for us, no longer applies.

I've known people who claim they're in Christ and Christ is alive in them make those kind of arguments against the ten commands Jesus told us to keep if we love him.

And you know what?

Those people were not Christian no matter how much they imagined they were.

They were petty, mean, selfish, arrogant, insulting, and prejudiced.
I think it is because their belief system is one that insists love,morality, honor, and respect, for God and one another no longer applies.

The worst ones, two that I worked with, insisted the ten commands were only for the Jews.
Flabbergasting. Love,morality, honor, and respect, for God and one another are Jewish values not Christian.
In truth they acted like that too.

I learned from those encounters over the years that those who think to correct God and his word are devils.

Not wolves disguised as sheep but are devils.

There's no debating devil's. In the end they deserve what they get by God's reckoning.

 

[farouk]

We do need to remember the distinction between Israel and the church; Hebrews 12.

 

[GerhardEbersoehn]

give the Sabbath more weight than, say, not murdering people.

Why should any Commandment be given any weight if it does not apply? The Law is given because of transgression that made it necessary in the first place. The law in principle predates sin, but in practice (strictly) follows sin. This is so because in principle the Law is the eternal God The Word that in the beginning WAS, yet in history became the Word Who tabernacled with us in the flesh in the Person of Jesus Saviour of his People.
Now for as long as one does not kill <murder people>, that Law carries no weight, it cannot apply or be applied because there is no ACTUAL transgression. But since all men are by NATURE being BORN 'murderers of people', the Law pre-emptively applies, and all men shall yet DIE because of the Law which declares the wages of sin shall be death -- sin in principle as well as sin in practice. Theologians call it 'Natural Law'.
The Commandments concerning human relations may seem to be natural law when they are valued or appreciated humanistically. Only when those same Commandments are appreciated or valued in the light of God's love and mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ, are they received as, and are they applied as, Divine Law, the Word of GOD.
Jesus makes all the difference; He made the difference for the Old Testamenters through faith having looked forward TO HIM; and He makes the difference for New Testamenters through faith looking back TO HIM.

That’s why the Ten Commandments can’t be separated and individually weighed. “All the Commandments HANG ON” the “Great Commandment to love GOD a_b_o_v_e all, AND, one's neighbour as oneself”. Whether hanging perpendicular like on a string the one under the other, or, like hanging from the horizontal bar at the end of the cable of a crane lift, together they reach perfect, balanced, weight. But one removed from the rest, the string must break, or the beam must tilt, and it is all chaos.

The Ten Commandments are called “My Word”. Who is man, sinner man, to think he can omit any Commandment of God’s Word, and call the scrabble, the New Covenant?

 

[GerhardEbersoehn]

These are pretty concrete:

"...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control..." Galatians 5:22-23

O my love!; O my joy!; For the sake of peace! Goodness gracious me!; Gentle gentle now! Get over yourself, control yourself! ... these are pretty rough unstable gravel slopes on the human side!
On God's part of course these are absolutely trustworthy and faithful.

 

[GerhardEbersoehn]

Your confession and honesty is appreciated I'm sure, but I think somewhat misguided. You are owning up to profaning the Sabbath in the same context, on your own admission, as the disciples were found guiltless when picking fruit for breakfast. Is that what you are doing? You really think God condemned people in the OT for rubbing a few grains of corn together to munch on, or plucking a fig from a tree, or a grape from the vine on Sabbath? Where in the OT did God forbid anyone from such things? Where, how, or why, would such a casual activity be classified as labor?

Thumbs up!

 

[Ferris Bueller]

I can't help but notice that you quote the 2nd commandment of Jesus but not the first and Great one. Do you think the passage in 1 John sets aside other commandments or sums them up so well that the others are all subordinate to loving our neighbors? Or perhaps that God is included as one of our neighbors? I'm just trying to follow your theology here.

It's easy: To love God is to love others. To love others is to love God.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

Some of your points are easy to answer, such as this one. ^^^^

You don't have to be converted to refrain from murdering people, either, so how does 'lack of ability to prove conversion' disqualify any of the ten commandments as being viable?

The point is keeping sabbath doesn't signify anything. The fruit of the Spirit does.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

(The fruit of the spirit is simply the working out of the law from the opposite end of the spectrum from the "Thou shalt not" end of the spectrum. (Galatians 5:23) It is not a symbolic sign...)

That's not what John says. He says the fruit of the Spirit, love, is how we know we belong to the truth:

"18Little children, let us love not in word and speech, but in action and truth. 19And by this we will know that we belong to the truth, and will assure our hearts in His presence" 1 John 3:18-19​

The person who is using their sabbath keeping to 'make their calling and election sure' is deceiving themselves. The qualities/fruit of the Spirit is what makes 'your calling and election sure', not sabbath keeping.

"10For God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and the love you have shown for His name as you have ministered to the saints and continue to do so.11We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure." Hebrews 6:10-11

"5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8For if you possess these qualities and continue to grow in them, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But whoever lacks these traits is nearsighted to the point of blindness, having forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.10Therefore, brothers, strive to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these things (vs.5-7) you will never stumble, 11and you will receive a lavish reception into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 1:5-11​

 

[Ferris Bueller]

It is impossible to love God with all of the heart without spending time with Him. And since man is very susceptible to forgetting God and occupying himself with selfish pursuits, God established in Eden a means for man to have a systematic means of spending quality time with Him. This is as reasonable and logical as can be. He does not leave the matter to us to manage or judge for ourselves.)

No one will argue with the need to spend time with God. But that is not the sign in and of itself that signifies that you have a saving relationship with God. Your character does.

And it does not matter when and where you spend time with God. That's what is reasonable and logical. The sabbath day is not the only time you can have quality time with God. The appointed times signified the appointed time of Christ's appearing, not the the only approved and effective times that God will meet with you in fellowship.

 

[Ferris Bueller]

But, in viewing the bigger picture, I feel, for the most part, we're venturing into a territory of reasoning and Bible interpretation that I just don't understand nor recognize. Your responses and the conclusions you're coming to are indicative of a hermeneutical model that I've never encountered before. It appears to be a very freestyle form. If it does have a name or organized structure, I sure would be happy to know about it.

The precedent for this kind of spiritual discerning of the Mosaic requirements comes right from the Bible itself. Example:

"circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code." Romans 2:29​

I'm not taking any liberties to discern the symbols of the law that the Bible itself does not give us. Another example:

"9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”d Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf? Indeed, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they should also expect to share in the harvest." 1 Corinthians 9:9-10​