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 not being offended by but having love for brother.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of October 1, 2011
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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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:1–13 emphasis added)
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1.
Sabbatarians tend not to preach much about love: love is not a defining characteristic of Sabbatarian fellowships. Rather, lack of love has been, for the past sixty years, the unintended definition of Sabbatarian fellowships that keep both weekly and annual Sabbaths of God. For where is love in denying the genuineness of unborn fetuses, which is what Christian orthodoxy represents: not-yet-born-of-spirit sons of God who will receive birth from above at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
But the lack of love that characterizes Sabbatarian Christians isn’t merely evident in the Christian’s relationship to other Christians. All too often, it is also evident in personal relationships.
As a linguistic icon, love is a nebulous collection of everything one person wants from another person. It is a signifier with a harem of signifieds, a word without a hard definition. Paul describes love’s many characteristics: patient and kind, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way, not irritable or resentful …
Why are Sabbatarians rude to other Sabbatarians? Why would one Sabbatarian belittle another who is obviously a spiritual infant even though this second Christian has been attending services (warming a folding chair seat) for three or four decades? Why is there an expectation by the one Sabbatarian that the other should have grown far more in three decades of intense Bible study? The one who expects growth doesn’t understand why growth hasn’t occurred when it is the one who expects growth that has much growing before him or her—not growth in knowledge, which comes with surprising ease, but growth in love.
For far too long, too many Sabbatarian disciples have fancied themselves to be teachers … knowing nothing but believing that the Sabbatarian understands the mysteries of God, the Sabbatarian plunges into Bible studies, bringing to the Bible study his or her snippet of knowledge and a great deal of harm. For there is authority within the Body of Christ; there is authority within Sabbatarian Christendom; there is authority within a sect, a fellowship, a family. And the person who teaches without being called to do so usurps this authority, becoming to Christ an adversary.
What lead to the Adversary’s condemnation?
How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
'I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.'
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit. (Isa 14:12–15 emphasis added)
The Christian who teaches without having been called by Christ to teach as Paul was called usurps the authority of Christ Jesus, and seeks to make him or herself like Christ Jesus, thereby making him or herself an agent of the Adversary—and this includes all of the ministry of Christian orthodoxy and all who assign personhood to the breath of God and all who deny Christ by teaching that God the Father was the Creator of what has been made. But the children of the Adversary include both Christians that practice lawlessness [Christian orthodoxy] as well as Sabbatarian Christians who do not love their brother (1 John 3:10).
It is easy to judge a person against oneself,
making the Christian the standard, the benchmark, not Christ Jesus. But why are
Sabbatarian Christians so quick to judge others—and historically, they produce
judgments upon first impressions, judgments they never seem to get over,
judgments that have Christian orthodoxy being Churchianity.
Is love easy? Is loving brother and neighbor easily done? If love was easy—if that were the case—then love would not be greater than faith/belief or hope (1 Cor 13:13).
Love is difficult … having patience with a brother who is irritable or resentful is not easy. It is far easier to simply tell the brother, “Get over it,” “Grow up,” “Act like an adult.” For the offense that challenges love is seldom serious, and is usually a very small slight, something the mature Christian should easily handle. But almost without exception, Sabbatarian Christians are very small spiritual children, infants really, not able to handle much more than the preaching of Christ and Christ crucified. They want to have their egos stroked, their specialness before God reinforced with assurances that they alone understand the mysteries of God when they don’t really understand much of anything—when they don’t truly understand that without love they will never enter the kingdom of the heavens [yes, plural, heavens].
All that Paul writes in his first saved epistle to the holy ones at Corinth is spiritual milk, and this includes what he writes about love … the author of Hebrews said,
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (5:12–14)
With very few exceptions, Sabbatarian Christians need someone to teach them the basic principles of the oracles of God, which isn’t to keep the commandments in isolation to interpersonal relationships with the world, other Christians, or parents, spouses, and children. The commandments form the shadow and copy of spiritual love for God and for brother. Love fulfills the commandments, and love for God will have the Christian keeping the commandments. Love for neighbor and brother will govern how the Christian relates to fellow human beings in situations that are not easily covered by a commandment. Love for brother will prevent a Christian from being irritable or resentful.
The Sabbatarian Christian who lacks love—who is irritable or resentful—will inevitably, instead of sitting back and learning with all quietness, how Paul tells Timothy that the Woman (the Christian Church) should learn for Eve was deceived and became a transgressor (1 Tim 2:11–14), spout forth spiritual venom that usually does more harm to self than to others, but which negates whatever good the person sought to do. The venom discloses what is in the Christian’s heart; discloses what the person has hidden from others and often from even him or herself for decades. If the Sabbatarian can, upon hearing his or her own words, repent, the Christian will be saved, but if the person doesn’t hear the ugliness that comes from within the person, this person will perish regardless of the person’s knowledge or prophetic powers.
Love never ends, or so Paul states … prophecies are fulfilled and knowledge will be found to be incomplete, but love continues on, bridging spiritual infancy and adolescence so that the mature Christian can cross from this present evil world into the world to come.
And if—here is where wisdom and maturity is required—the Sabbatarian never encounters situations or individuals that bring out what is truly within the Christian, inner ugliness can be masked for a lifetime. Hurt as an infant can fester within the Christian, never being manifested, but always there, waiting its day … it is said that a Canadian thistle seed can remain in soil for fifteen years before sprouting: an offense committed against a Christian when the Christian was a small child can dwell in the heart of the Christians for decades after conversion. However, Christ Jesus knows that the offense is there, and knows that unless the offense is resolved, that offense will keep the person out of the kingdom of the heavens. The Adversary will have slain another, with the death blow having been delivered when the human person was too young to be aware of sexual identity, too young to understand mocking, abuse, neglect, broken trust, with the offense carrying over from the dead old self to the living new self as a cyst of resentment.
The Christian who blows up when frustrated, when angered, when offended will not—in the Christian’s present state—enter the kingdom; for once a glorified son of God, with the power and authority of God, an uncontrolled outburst of emotions would be disastrous … emotional outburst do not stem from having love for God and neighbor, but from selfishness. And the person subject to emotional outbursts is too young spiritually to pastor or teach others the principles of Christ. Same applies to the person who is irritable or resentful.
In the Torah, Christians encounter in Moses a physical shadow and type of Christ Jesus … the Messiah would be a prophet and teacher like Moses—
The LORD your God will raise up for you [the people of Israel] a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.' And the LORD said to me [Moses], ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ (Deut 18:15—20)
The prophets/pastors that speak the words of the Lord in Christian orthodoxy presume to speak in the name of God what the Lord has not commanded them to speak, and the prophets/pastors of Christian orthodoxy shall perish in the lake of fire … there is no hate, no resentment, no animosity in stating what will be true. Rather, there is great sadness in saying that very many sincere, well-intentioned individuals will perish forever because they believed a lie rather than God. They could have believed God; could have believed the writings of Moses and heard the voice of Jesus and believed the words of Jesus (cf. John 5:24, 46–46; 12:48). But—and this is where there is cause for true sadness—pastors and teachers within Christian orthodoxy have been deceived as Eve was deceived. They were set up to fail centuries ago; for they believed the lie of that old serpent, Satan the devil, when they first encountered Jesus words, “‘And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’”(Matt 16:18–19).
The lie that the serpent told Eve in the Garden of God was, You shall not surely die (Gen 3:4), and the lie that the old serpent, Satan the devil, told the last Eve, the Body of Christ, is what Jesus meant when He said that the gates of Hades would prevail against His Church [assembly] was that the Christian Church would never die … Jesus’ earthly body formed the shadow and type of His spiritual/heavenly Body, and the gates of Hades did not prevail against Jesus’ earthly body: the Father raised Jesus from the dead [not from the living in Hades], and the Father will raise the spiritual Body of Christ from death at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
What the many sincere prophets/pastors within Christian orthodoxy have failed to understand is that they are spiritually dead—they have no living inner self. If they would have a living inner self, they could not sin (1 John 3:6–9). They would never intentionally transgress the commandments. They would be striving to keep all of the commandments out of love for God, and this means that they would be keeping the Sabbaths [plural] of God, perhaps the easiest of all the commandments to keep.
It is far easier to physically stop working, stop doing the mundane things necessary to earn a living on the seventh day of the week than it is to get rid of inner anger, inner resentment. It is easier to focus one’s mind on the things of God on the seventh day of the week than it is to not be irritable, or to not be arrogant or rude. It is far easier to open one’s Bible and study the words of Moses on the Sabbath than it is to bear slights and offenses that are usually unintended—
Again, love is difficult, but without love, the Christian will never enter the kingdom of the heavens. And the pastor or teacher within Christian orthodoxy who, today, mocks Christ Jesus by deliberately living as a Gentile, needs the Sabbatarian to extend to this teacher of others the love Christ Jesus extended to the Sabbatarian before he or she was drawn from this world and given a second breath of life, the breath of God … the Sabbatarian Christian who does not love both living and not-yet-living sons of God is a child of the Adversary; is of the Adversary, and will perish in the lake of fire as is right and good. Having love—not being arrogant or rude, irritable or resentful—is of much importance to God; is of far more importance than merely keeping the Sabbath, the least of the commandments.
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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."