On Sabbath, we are reminded that there is freedom from sin, not in our own power but in the power of God, which is offered to us by faith. Sabbath is a celebration of freedom from all the things that keep us in bondage. What other forms of slavery do we face today? Read Genesis 4:7, Hebrews 12:1, and 2 Peter 2:19. 5:12-15).Īnd though, today, we are not slaves in Egypt, we can all face another kind of slavery, one that, in some ways, can be just as oppressive. This time, the sentence introducing the reason for keeping the Sabbath holy is not about creation but rather about liberation from slavery and bondage in Egypt ( Deut.
The second time we hear the Ten Commandments, Moses is reviewing Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness. Yes, sin has marred and messed up everything, but this earth is still God’s creation, and nothing gives us the right to exploit it, especially to the detriment of other human beings, which is so often the case.īesides honoring a memorial of God as the Creator, in what ways can Sabbath keeping help us to be more conscious of our need to be good environmental stewards?Īs we saw earlier, the Sabbath points to more than just the days of creation. We are to interact with the natural world as God would. Having dominion does not mean exploiting it. Realizing that God also created our world reminds us of our responsibility to creation.
How does the Creation story remind us of our relationship to creation? Genesis 2:15, 19. As humans, made in the image of God, we are unique among all that God created on this world. And, contrary to popular mythology, we are not mere advanced apes or more highly evolved versions of some primeval primate. It’s obvious that, as human beings, we are radically different from any other creature on the planet, regardless of how much DNA we share in common with some other animals. When we remember creation, we remember that we are created in God’s image, something that is not said about anything else depicted in the Creation account. What do these verses teach us about how special we as human beings are, and how radically different we are from the rest of God’s earthly creation? And, too, why is it so important that we understand this distinction? When we remember, we make connections with the past, and “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” marks a straight line back to the Creation week itself. The idea of “remembering” presupposes history, presupposes that something happened in the past that we need to, well, remember. Of all the Ten Commandments, only the fourth begins with the verb “Remember.” It’s not, “Remember, you shall not steal,” or “Remember, you shall not covet.” There is only “Remember the Sabbath day. Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, September 4. This week we will look more at the rest God has given us in the Sabbath commandment and why it’s important. Of course, as Seventh-day Adventists we understand the perpetuity of God’s moral law and that obedience to the fourth commandment, as it reads, is no more working our way to heaven than would be obedience to the fifth, sixth, first, or any other commandment. On the other hand, some Christians have become more interested in the idea of rest, of a day of rest, and though they argue that the day is Sunday or that it doesn’t matter, they have picked up on the biblical notion of rest and why it is important. And, of course, there will always be the argument, strange as it is, that by resting on the seventh-day we are somehow seeking to work our way to heaven. In recent years, some of the arguments have become more sophisticated, claiming, for instance, that Jesus is our Sabbath rest, and therefore, we don’t need to a keep the day or any day holy. We hear all sorts of arguments against keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, don’t we? We hear everything from Jesus changed the Sabbath to Sunday, or that Jesus abolished the Sabbath, or that Paul did, or that the apostles replaced the seventh-day Sabbath with Sunday in honor of the resurrection, and so forth. You shall do no work on it it is the Sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings” ( Lev. Memory Text: “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. Lesson 10 August 28-September 3 Sabbath Rest
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