The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is The Yoke of Christ.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of April 3, 2010
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:25–30 emphasis added)
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” And He said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Ex 33:12–14 emphasis added)
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But in writing about the nation Moses brought out of Egypt, the Psalmist delivers the words of the Lord: “For forty years I loathed that generation / and said, ‘They are a people who go astray in their heart, / and they have not known my ways.’ / Therefore I swore in my wrath, / ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (95:10–11).
The writer of Hebrews uses Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness of Paran, the homeland of Ishmael’s descendants, as introduction to a warning against unbelief such as would be seen by disciples not keeping the Sabbath … three days’ journey into the wilderness, the Lord brought Israel to Marah, so named because the water was bitter (Ex 15:22–23), and there the Lord tested Israel as in to “prove” whether the people believed Him. But the people grumbled against Moses; the people did not “see” the Lord but saw only Moses. They saw Moses as god (Ex 4:16), which is actually how the Lord had set up the scenario. For in the eyes of the people, Moses had delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh, and Moses had told the people to stand firm when Pharaoh’s army had then trapped on the shore of the Sea of Reeds, and Moses lifted up his staff and stretched out his hand to divide the sea, and Moses had stretched out his hand over the sea so that the waters returned to their place. The people saw no one but Moses do their great things, and they did not acknowledge the Lord even though the pillar of fire and the cloud led the people.
When the people grumbled against Moses and Moses cried out to the Lord, the Lord showed Moses a tree, a stake, a type of the cross that Moses through into water to cause the water to become sweet—and “he” made with Israel a statute and a rule, and there, where the water were made sweet as a type of living waters, the Lord tested the people (Ex 15:25): “‘If you [Israel] will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer’” (v. 26).
The test was simple: if Israel would listen to the voice of the Lord and do what is right in His eyes and listen to His commandments and keep His statutes, the Lord would not put on Israel the diseases of the Egyptians, with death being the principle disease that occupied the nation of Egypt. In the test’s most simple expression, if Israel believed God the nation would live.
But Israel would prove that the people did not believe the Lord.
After Israel journeyed to the twelve springs of Elim then set out from Elim, the people of Israel again grumbled against Moses and Aaron (Ex 16:2), and the Lord told Moses that He would “‘rain bread from heaven … that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law’” (v. 4). For six days, the Lord sent manna, but on the Sabbath there was no manna. Although for the first five days of each week, manna left overnight would spoil, but not so on the sixth day when Israel was to gather twice as much, two omers for each person (v. 22). Israel was not to go out to gather on the Sabbath. The test was whether Israel would believe the Lord and keep the Sabbath, for the absence of manna established which day was the Sabbath—and on the seventh day, “some of the people went out to gather, but they found none” (v. 27).
The Lord gave the Sabbath to the people of Israel as a type of entering into His rest (Ex 16:30).
Test after test Israel failed, in that the people would not believe the Lord. Finally, when the twelve spies returned from Canaan and ten of then brought an evil report of the Promised Land and the people believed the ten rather than the Lord or Joshua and Caleb, the Lord had had enough. He was ready to again wipe out the nation: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they’” (Num 14:11–12).
As in the case when the people broke loose at Sinai, Moses argued for the lives of the people, and as in the case at Sinai, the Lord granted a stay of execution: “Then the Lord said, ‘I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it’” (Num 14:20–23).
Ten times Israel was tested by the Lord, and Israel “tested” the Lord—there would be no eleventh time. Except for Joshua and Caleb, the nation was condemned to death in the wilderness. The nation could not enter into God’s rest, with this rest represented by the Promised Land, the land of Canaan [ Judea].
Returning to what the writer of Hebrews said,
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. / Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest,’”
although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. (Heb 3:12–4:11 emphasis added)
Yes, there remains the keeping of the weekly Sabbath (the diminutive form of the Sabbath — sabbatismos) for the people of God. This is the type and shadow of entering into heaven, the Promised Land for circumcised-of-heart Israel.
When Jesus said that He would give His disciples rest, He spoke metaphorically as He did in everything He said during His ministry (John 16:25), with Sabbath observance serving as the metaphor for entering into heaven on the seventh day of the spiritual creation.. And Christians test God when they do not believe Him; i.e., when they do not keep the commandments. Although believing God is more than keeping the commandments, believing God will always have the disciple keeping the commandments by faith, with entering into Sabbath observance being the most outward or visible expression of belief.
Keeping the commandments is not a burden; is not a heavy yoke, but a very easy yoke that is nothing more than simply believing God and doing what is pleasing in His sight.
Is there a heavy burden in honoring father or mother? How about in not being angry with brother or neighbor, not lusting after strangers, not stealing, not lying, not coveting?
The Apostle Paul wrote,
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. / Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Rom 7:7–20 emphasis added)
Sin is a cruel taskmaster, forcing the disciple to do what the disciple does not want to do, but the yoke of Christ is easy and light. It requires that disciples enter into the rest of God that is represented in this world by Sabbath observance, that period when the mind does not focus on the things of this world but on God. The body rests; the mind has peace; and God is pleased to the extent that the disciple believes Him.
The commandments make sin alive so that sin can be recognized, identified, and defeated … when a saint knows what sin is (i.e., simple unbelief), then the disciple has the option of not sinning by believing God, with grace covering those times when the body fails to do what the mind knows is right.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."