Quick Presentations on Truth — Royal Priesthood Ministry

A Sabbath evening thought

Whose Sabbath Is It?

About five minutes. Every verse King James Version. Keep your Bible open — there is a verse in here you will want to find for yourself.

Open your Bibles to Exodus chapter twenty. Keep them open. I am going to give you a verse in about two minutes that I want you to find for yourselves — not take from me.

Exodus twenty, verse ten. Read it with me: "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God."

Whose Sabbath? Not the Jews' Sabbath. Not the Adventists' Sabbath. The commandment names the owner. The Lord thy God. So the Sabbath question was never only "which day." It was always "which God." Whoever the Sabbath belongs to is who we are worshipping when we keep it.

Now look up the page. Verse two: "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt." Verse three: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That is the first commandment. Now go down to verse eleven, in the fourth commandment: "For in six 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 day, and hallowed it."

Do you see what is on that stone? The first commandment says one God — no others. The fourth commandment is the only one of the ten with a signature on it. A seal in the ancient world carried three things: a name, a title, and a territory. Name — the LORD. Title — the one who made. Territory — heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is. The Sabbath is the seal of the God of the first commandment. You cannot keep the fourth without confessing the first.

So here is the question the Sabbath forces on us: who is that Creator?

Turn to First Corinthians eight, verse six. "But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him."

One God. Which one? The Father. "Of whom are all things" — the source. One Lord, Jesus Christ. "By whom are all things" — the one through whom it was done. Two prepositions. Of the Father. By the Son.

Now here is the verse I want you to find yourselves. Ephesians three, verse nine. Do not take it from me — find it. In the King James it reads: "…God, who created all things by Jesus Christ." Read it again. God created all things by Jesus Christ. The Creator of the fourth commandment is the Father. The hand that did the creating is the Son. That is why the Son of man is "Lord also of the sabbath" — Mark two, verse twenty-eight. He made it.

Hebrews one, verses one and two, says it a second time, so the teaching never rests on one verse: God "hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son… by whom also he made the worlds." And John one, verse three: "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." Of the Father. By the Son. Three witnesses.

This is not new to this church. The first time our fathers wrote down what they believed, in 1872, the first two principles were these: "That there is one God, a personal, spiritual being, the creator of all things…" and "That there is one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father, the one by whom God created all things, and by whom they do consist." One God — the Father. One Lord — the Son, by whom. They were not being clever. They were reading First Corinthians eight and Ephesians three.

Why does this matter on a Sabbath evening? Ezekiel twenty, verse twenty: "And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the LORD your God." The Sabbath is not only a day of rest. It is how God said you would know who he is. Every seventh day, when you stop, you are saying out loud: there is one God, the Father, who made all things — and he made them by his Son, who rested on that first seventh day and called it his.

And it is the last thing God says to this world. Revelation fourteen, verse seven: "Worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." That is the fourth commandment, word for word, in the first angel's message. Five verses later: "Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." The commandments of God. The faith of Jesus. Both named. Both kept.

So as the sun goes down tonight, do not just rest. Confess. The Sabbath of the Lord thy God — the one true God — and of Jesus Christ, whom he has sent.

Read them yourself, in order

Exodus 20:2–3, 10–11 · 1 Corinthians 8:6 · Ephesians 3:9 · Mark 2:28 · Hebrews 1:1–2 · John 1:3 · Ezekiel 20:20 · Revelation 14:7, 12. The 1872 sentences are Principles I and II of A Declaration of the Fundamental Principles Taught and Practiced by the Seventh-day Adventists (Battle Creek, 1872).