Sabbath Controversies

Life, Ministry and Teachings of Jesus Christ Unit 2: The Beginning of the Ministry of Christ, Jewish Conflicts and the Kingdom of God Lesson 2: Sabbath Controversies and Withdrawal As we begin Lesson 2, Dr. Meredith recounts Christ’s calling of Matthew, a publican and tax collector.

Christ’s selection of disciples who were not academically trained displeased the Pharisees. They began to attack Him and His disciples as He continued to violate and contradict their regulations and traditions.

He feasted instead of fasting, healed the lame and even picked grain to eat, all on the Sabbath day. Christ defended His approach toward the Sabbath, embarrassing them with His clear and sound explanations and infuriating them with His claim of authority over the Sabbath and proper keeping of the day. He proclaimed to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Listen as Dr. Meredith continues the class, as Christ speaks to Matthew, saying, “Follow Me.”

Lecture: Sabbath Controversies Dr. Roderick Meredith

Picking up in the Harmony of the Gospels, here on page 39, where we left off last time, teaching the message of Jesus Christ. We’re going through what Christ Himself, the Son of God, taught, and understanding what true Christianity is. True Christianity is not the world’s idea of what they think Paul taught (which he did not teach). It’s the message of Christ. Paul taught that message faithfully. We’ve got to get back to the beginning. We’re restoring apostolic, or original, Christianity, and here it is--what Christ Himself taught.

So open your Harmony here, to page 39. We finished the section where He had healed this man, and they said, “We have seen strange things today.” They were filled with awe. So then, as you read on, in Mark’s account, on page 39, here, verse 13, “He went forth again by the sea side, and all the multitude resorted to Him, and He taught them. And as He passed by, He saw Levi, the Son of Alpaeus sitting...” (He was a tax collector), “…and He said, follow Me.” So he left, of course, his job, and no doubt, again, He had talked to this man before. It wasn’t just strange man passing by. ”And it came to pass that He was sitting at meat…” (or eating a meal), in the house of this Jewish tax collector who had now become His follower, ”And many, publicans…” (or other tax collectors), and sinners were there “with Jesus and the disciples. Then the Scribes and Pharisees…” of course, they were jealous, but they didn’t like that. They saw all these people, and they said, “He eats and drinks with publicans and sinners,” verse 16. In verse 17, “And when Jesus heard it, He said to them, They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.”

Now we know that God heals. But, my friends, God does not condemn doctors. Jesus said, “They that are whole…” (you know, you’re not sick, nothing is wrong, you have no need of a physician). But then the last part of the sentence says, “…but they that are sick…”indicating there are times you should go to a physician, and that is not wrong. So each one has to decide how much to do that. We know that many drugs, many kinds of operations, have side effects that can hurt us even more than the original problem.

Each one has to be careful. I would just say, if you go to a doctor (if--that’s up to you), you’d better go to a good one. Try to get an expert in that field, or a particular specialist, who knows what he’s doing. A good high-powered, high-class health professional: maybe the best chiropractor or the best naturopath if you’re going to go that direction. Or maybe sometimes you’ll have a doctor to set your bone, but a naturopath to help you follow through and build your health, if you follow me. You have to use wisdom.

Ask God for wisdom and for faith. There are many things where God will heal you, can heal you, should heal you. But sometimes, you may need to have a bone set. God shows there are things physicians can do. Then, above and beyond that, you want to ask God to do what man cannot do. That’s not a lack of faith in God. Always bring God into the picture. Don’t leave Him out of the picture. Anyway, Jesus said that. “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.” “…but they that are sick.”

In other words, they need a physician. That’s what it’s referring back to. Then He said, “I came not to call righteous, but sinners.”

Over in Matthew’s account, in the center of the column here, “But go you and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice: for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” So He didn’t come to call these self-righteous Pharisees. He came to call tax collectors and harlots and drunkards, and people that were willing to acknowledge, I am wrong, and come to Christ. He called them and opened their minds, because they were not so stiff-necked and self-righteous about things. He brings in the same thing about healing here. If you’re self-righteous, (well I won’t do anything besides just go to God), maybe you’ll have lessons to learn. There are times you may need man’s help, and that is not wrong. We want to understand that.

Going ahead in Mark’s account, “John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.” They often thought they’d somehow, by starving themselves, they’d gain God’s favor. That’s not always true. You have to read Isa. 58. If you’re just fasting for your stiff-necked attitude, (you know, I’m fasting and you’ve got to do what I say), that’s not the approach. You’re to humble yourself, and cry out, and love others, serve others, forgive others, and learn humility through fasting. But these people, these religious leaders, were fasting. “And they came to Him and said, why do John’s disciples, and the…Pharisees fast, but your disciples fast not?” This is in Mark’s account, here, at the bottom of page 40. “And Jesus said…can the sons of the bride chamber fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom, they cannot fast.” Well, if you’re at a happy wedding occasion, you shouldn’t be fasting. Of course, Jesus is pictured, in a sense, as the bridegroom, coming to marry the Church. “But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.” Yes, God’s people will fast. You see, when they had Christ, who is God in the flesh, right with them, they didn’t need to fast in the same way perhaps, to seek the invisible God. But He’s not here in the flesh, and we’re physical. God seems way off, and sometimes by humbling ourselves through fasting, and spending extra time studying, meditating on God’s word, and praying, God becomes more real to us, and He helps us tremendously through fasting, because Christ is not with us in the flesh anymore. “They will fast in that day.”

“No man sews a piece of undressed cloth in an old garment.” Why take an old worn out pair of blue jeans and try to put some fancy patch on it? The cloth all around will probably just rip again, if you go out and get vigorous or do something. “A worse rent will be made. And no man puts new wine into old wineskins.” Back then, they didn’t always use bottles. They had wine skins. The skin of an animal was made as a place for the wine to go in, and then the skin would swell because the wineskin (the hide), had not swollen or stretched before. But it could not later. Once it’d stretched, it’d become stiff, and it would break later on. So, you see, it’s using an analogy here. You don’t put new wine to ferment into old

wineskins, “…else the wine will burst the skins and the wine perishes. But they put new wine into fresh wineskins.” The principle here is that, of course, you have to become a new creature. God will put His extra truth in those who are really changed. He’s not trying to mix the attitude of how to fast, His idea of how to fast, with the Pharisees and the Sadducees who’d just been asking about their idea of fasting, or the Pharisees and John’s disciples. Now the holy spirit was available, and you’re to fast for the right reason and in the right attitude.

This principle, of course, is given back in 2 Corinthians (if you would just write this down or turn to it with me briefly here). In 2 Cor. 5:17, the Apostle Paul was inspired by Christ to put here, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ…” (if you’ve been converted, and you have God’s spirit in you and Christ is living in you), “…he is a new creation,” (a new creature, or a new creation). “Old things have passed away; behold, all things become new.” You don’t fast with that old attitude that the Pharisees had. You fast with a new attitude of seeking God in humility. Christ is teaching us a whole different approach to some of the same things that the Jews didn’t have straight. New wine, new teaching, Christ’s New Testament gospel cannot be put in the same old hardheaded person. You have to change, and humble yourself, and be willing to change and be fashioned and molded by God. Going on in page 42, now, in the Harmony, and here it picks up in John’s account because these happenings came in about that time. “After these things, there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” A feast of the Jews. Why does he called these a feast of the Jews? Because the Jews were the only ones keeping them, and John now, frankly, is writing the Gospel of John and I, II and III John (nearly all scholars agree), up in the 90s A.D. This might have been 95 A.D., and Christ was, remember, crucified about 31. So even if this was 91, let’s say, that would have been 60 years after Christ was crucified, and 21 years after Jerusalem was torn down and burned by the Romans, and here John, this old man, was writing these things. They had to know, well, what are these feasts being talked about?

Because he’s writing in a Gentile area, perhaps on the island of Patmos. These are the feasts these people called the Jews kept. He did that to identify them, yet the whole Bible in the New Testament and the Old Testament shows the seventh day Sabbath was God’s Sabbath, not just the Jews’, and these feasts of Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, and so on, were festivals that God gave, and Christ kept, setting us an example, and the apostles kept. So this term “feast of the Jews” was used, no doubt for that other reason.

Remember, if God had wanted to make all these things plain (Please understand this class. God could have done that. He made our brain. He knows how it works.), He could have said, the Old Testament, and then you come to the New Testament, and He could have said now you’re to believe everything in the Old Testament of this sort, and this is what I’m magnifying in the New Testament, and He wrote everything out. He could have inspired it to be, Roman numeral I, II, III, A, B, C, just right down the line so you couldn’t misunderstand. Why didn’t God write the Bible like that? Because He was giving man 6,000 years to write the lessons of him going his own way, of taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He’s letting man try out his own ideas. He puts the Bible here, where in a sense you have to be willing to seek the truth and to study. As Scripture says, “line up on line, line upon line,” and so forth, as you drink in of the Bible. You see it’s very clear, if you’re guided by God’s spirit. The Bible does not contradict itself. As Jesus said back in John 10:35, “…the Scripture cannot be broken…” You can’t knock in the head one scripture with another. He wrote it a little here and a little there. That’s the way He did it, because He was not trying to call everybody. Jesus said He spoke in parables so they could not see and could not understand, lest they were converted. God is not trying to save the world now. Otherwise,

He’d be doing it. His name in the Hebrew is El Shaddai, God Almighty. He’s not trying to save the world.

But He wrote the Bible a little here and there, and people have to be humble and drink out of the Bible what it honestly says, not read their idea into it. But you see as you read the Bible humbly, yes Jesus always kept these days, setting us an example, and the New Testament Church did.

“So Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” Then it tells about this pool with five porches, and how this man lay sick there. Normally, they say an angel came down and troubled the water, and the one who stepped in afterward was healed. But then Jesus found this man who had been sick all his life, crippled, and healed him. He showed He was the healer, not just think God had allowed them to have at that time. So it was the Sabbath on that day,” (verse 10), “So the Jews said to him that was [healed], it is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed. [But this man answered] He that made me whole…said…take up your bed and walk. They asked him, who is the man who said [that]?” Well, He didn’t know because Jesus didn’t try to make a big deal of it and identify Himself when He healed him.

Afterwards, Jesus found this man in the temple, and said, “Behold, you are made whole; sin no more.”

Normally, sin bring sickness on us. Sometimes spiritual sin; you commit adultery and a man goes sleeping around, he’ll get venereal disease or AIDS. If he’s drinking too much or smoking too much, you’ll have physical ailments because of that. If you eat too much or eat wrong foods, you become sick. If you’re careless, and are careless with the way you walk and climb stairs, you may fall down. If you’re careless and step out in front of a truck, you’ll get hit. You break a physical law. “Go and sin no more.” We don’t know what kind of sin there He’s referring to, but the principle is there. “…lest a worse thing befall you.

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus [who] made him whole. For this cause…” Were they so grateful to God for the healing? No. They were self-righteous. Are they going to be very happy, the people of this world, as they see this work grow in great power and talk about a coming, wonderful, world tomorrow with God’s kingdom set up? No, they’re not going to like it, because it contradicts their little playhouse that they have built up and their whole little religious system. So they won’t like that.

Their playhouse is being destroyed, they will look at it. They don’t think of it that way, but that’s what it amounts to. They won’t like that, and they will be jealous and they will persecute God’s ministers very much in years to come.

So they persecuted Jesus because He did these things on the Sabbath. Well, that was an excuse. They should have known if God did that through Him (He couldn’t do it; it was God doing it), and God does not break His Sabbath. They weren’t willing to figure that out. “But for this cause therefore, the Jews sought to kill Him.” They had hate and resentment because He not only broke the Sabbath (according to their idea), but “called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” That’s quite a statement there. If God is really your Father--I have four sons, and two daughters. They’re equal to me. They are fully human, as I am fully human. When we are really born of God in the resurrection (we’re begotten of God now, as we shall see), God’s spirit is in us, but we’re not yet spirit beings. When we’re born of God, we will be like God. God the Father will always be the boss. He’ll be the Father of the family, but we will be equal with Him. We’ll be able to shoot here and there throughout the universe. We’ll have a spirit body like our Father. We’ll be of the same level of existence. So they sort of recognized what that meant, and yet not fully. We can’t recognize it fully until we have God’s spirit and grasp what God is really getting at when He made man in His image and tells us that we can be born again into the very family of God. Then we will be full sons of God, not pseudo-sons – real sons of God.

“Jesus therefore answered and said [Amen], I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself.” Think about that. Christ was in the flesh. He was not fully God in that sense of having the total power of the Father.

But He was the spirit personality who had been God, and that personality was God that transferred into the flesh, so He was able to do many things. But, only as He yielded to God, and God intervened to back it up. “The Son [of Man] can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing, for what things… he does, these the Son does also…” So Christ followed the directions of the Father in preaching the truth, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and greater works than these He will show Him that [they] may marvel.

For as the Father raises the dead…” and makes them alive, quickens them, makes them alive, “…then, Jesus said, even so the Son of man will also quicken whom He will.” Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, and Christ raised this young woman from the dead, physically, this little twelve-year old girl. Raised her from the dead back to physical life. But the big thing is later on, He’s going to raise all of us, not to physical life, but to spirit life, at the final resurrection, or at least the first resurrection when He comes again.

“For neither does the Father judge any man, but He is given all judgment to the Son.” Why is Christ the judge? Because He spent 33 ½ years with us, in the physical flesh. God understands very deeply in principle what we’re like. He is God. He made us. But to actually go through it, Himself, God had Jesus do that. So He fully understands the human trials and tests that we face in the flesh. He is our judge acting for the Father.

“That all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” So He’s given all judgment. Who’s going to judge you? Jesus Christ: your savior, your living Head, your High Priest, and your coming King, if in fact you’re really converted and have God’s spirit. He is those things to you. He will be the one who will judge you, acting for the Father. That, He says here, God wants “that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” Some people, you see, think the Father’s way up there. Well, who’s Christ? He’s not an important part of the gospel. In a sense, He is the gospel. It’s His message. It’s all about Him. He is the one to bring about the good news. He is the coming King over the whole world. He’s the one who magnified the Old Testament and made the law holy, and so on. So you’ve got to honor Christ profoundly, honor Him as you honor the Father. That’s what it says right here in God’s Bible, in God’s word. Profoundly worship Jesus Christ. He and the Father, sitting at the right hand, sharing the power, the glory, of God as they had done from eternity. Christ is not to be put way down here, and the Father’s way up there. They are the same. Jesus said later, “I and the Father are one.” That’s so wonderful to realize what that really means, that they are one God, one family, one level of existence. So I don’t give you the wrong verse, I think I had it straight. Yes, it’s John 10, back in John 10:30, Jesus said, “I and My Father are one.” So they are not all separated. They are all one level of existence. The Father is the leader. He’s the greater. Jesus said, “The Father is greater than I.” They’re two different beings, but in their mind, in their purpose, in their will, in their character, they are one, and they work together totally, far more even than a husband and a wife. Sometimes husbands and wives have antagonism. They don’t think exactly the same. But God the Father and God the Son think totally alike. They’ve learned to interact, and to share, and to plan from eternity, and they’re both filled with and led by and composed of the holy spirit. So you’re to honor Christ as you honor the Father.

“He that honors not the Son honors not the Father which sent Him.” See, you don’t honor God by dishonoring the Son. He wants you to honor the Son. God the Father will never be jealous if you honor His Son, because if you really honor His Son, you’re honoring Him. You will learn to honor Him even

more, and He will be even more real to you, because Christ came to reveal the Father. They didn’t know the Father in the Old Testament. The one that was their God in the Old Testament (as I’ve explained) was, in fact, the one who became Jesus Christ. Christ came to reveal the Father. “[Amen, Amen], I say to you,” or “Verily, verily…He that hears My word and believes Him that sent Me, has eternal life.” What do you mean? That you’re already immortal? No, but you have the presence of eternal life through God’s spirit in you. “…and comes not into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. [Amen, amen], I say…the hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.” Who’s going to call you up in the resurrection? Not God the Father personally, but God the Father working through His Son, Jesus Christ. Christ’s voice will be saying, come out of that grave, you people, you saints of mine, who’ve been faithful, in the first resurrection when He comes. It’s His voice.

“And they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in Himself, even so [has He given] to the Son…to have life in Himself, and He gave Him authority to execute judgment because He is…” what? “…the Son of Man,” is emphasized here, not the Son of God. He’s the Son of God, but He was also born as a human being and He, as it says back in Heb. 4:15, He was tempted in all points as we are. He went through it. He understands. He can be totally fair because He was tempted in every single point of the law, just like we are tempted, and He understands us. He’s able to grasp the feeling of our infirmities, as it says back in Hebrews, and be our judge and faithful judge, an understanding judge. So, He’s the Son of Man also, and has that background to be our judge who has been a human being.

“The hour comes, and now is, when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son to have life in Himself: and He gave Him authority to execute judgment.” Christ is the one to execute judgment because He’s the Son of Man. He has that background to understand. “Marvel not at this: for the hour comes, in which all that are in the tomb shall hear His voice.” All. Many thousands will hear His voice at the first resurrection (in another ten to twenty-five or thirty years), when Christ comes back to this earth. I think it’s gonna be closer to ten than thirty, by the way. But when He comes back here as King of kings, the true saints (not many), but the true saints will hear His voice. Then others will be called during the Millennium. Then there’s a time after the millennium called the Great White Throne Judgment when all who have ever lived and died and haven’t really understood (they’re not going be given a second chance; they’ll be given a first, genuine opportunity to really know the truth), then they will be resurrected and made spirit beings in God’s family, in their time. There is a time for all these things. So there will be a time when “all that are in the tomb shall hear His voice and shall come forth. They that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done ill [or evil], to the resurrection of judgment.” Some will be up in the final, what we call the third resurrection. They’ve already had a chance and turned it down, knowingly turned it down. They will be facing a lake of fire.

“I can of Myself do nothing.” So once again, He shows that it’s totally up to God to do things. “As I hear, I judge and My judgment is righteous because I seek not My own will.” That teaches us something. We’re not to, well what do I think, what do I want. We better think, Father, what would You have me think, what would You have me do? “I seek not my own will but the will of Him [who] sent me. If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true. It is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which he witnesses is true. You have sent to John and have born witness,” (of course, he was a shining light, as it goes on to say, but God gave Christ great power to show that He was in fact the Son of God).

He says, “for the works [which]…bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me. And the Father which

sent me…has born witness of me.” Down in verse 37, “You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.” God revealed that Christ was the Son of God by giving Him tremendous power to heal, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of sick people of every imaginable disease, cast out demons, raise the dead, walk on the water, and so on. He did those things to show that He was God in the flesh. “So God bear witness of Christ in that way.” But He said, “you have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form.” Even those Jews had not done that. No one’s ever done that.

Back in 1 John, if you turn to the very end of your New Testament here, it shows that it’s meaning for all time, not just then. He’s saying you, talking to those people right there, but in 1 John 4, near the end of your New Testament. 1 John 4, beginning in verse 12, “No one has seen God at any time,” John writes, this great apostle who was Jesus’ favorite, in a sense, His best friend. “If we love one another, God abides in us.” See He lives in us through His spirit. “And His love has been perfected in us. No one has seen God at any time.” They saw the God of Israel back in Ex. 24, when they had the celebratory, sort of banquet, after the giving of the Ten Commandments. Who was the God of Israel? The one who emptied Himself and became Christ. No one any time, back there, or any other time, has seen God the Father. They have seen God the Son, and part of His glory. He even told Moses, remember, you’re not to look on My face.

They never got to see His full glory. They saw part of His glory at various times, but not God the Father.

So that’s another matter.

He says, “You have not His word abiding in you, for whom He sent, you believe not. You search the Scriptures because they bear witness of Me.” And He said you’d better search the Scriptures, another way of understanding this, there are different ways it can be possibly interpreted – search the scriptures, the King James has, but He says, search the Scriptures. You’ve got to search the Scriptures to find the truth of God. Don’t search the writings of men or some church handbook. It will often just lead you into their idea of religions. Search this book--the Bible.

Down at the bottom, He says, “Think not that I will accuse you…” (verse 45), “…to the Father. There is one who accuses you, even Moses on whom you set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me.” Moses wrote of Christ and showed that there was to be one coming like Him. “But if you believe not His writings, how shall you believe My words?” See, you must learn to believe, What? The writings of Moses? Where are Moses’ writings? In what we call the Old Testament.

Believe those, and yet understand if Christ said no, you don’t have to offer animals anymore by His teaching by His example, and then by the other examples in the book of Acts. But you accept the sacrifice of Christ in place of that. You don’t have carnal washings and ordinances, as it tells you back in Hebrews 9. But you do have to give your body as a living sacrifice. Some of those things were changed, not done away. But the principles of the Ten Commandments (all ten), are magnified and made even more binding, not done away. God’s basic law stands, because He does not change. He had Abraham do those things, even back before the Old Testament Israel came along as a nation.

Alright, turn to page 44, now. Here, you come to Mark’s account of Jesus going through the cornfields on the Sabbath. “Behold, they said to Him, why on the Sabbath day, do your disciples pluck…” you know, some grain, just some pieces of grain to chew on. They were going through the cornfields, or the barley fields, perhaps, some kind of grain. “…and Jesus said, did you never read what David did, when he had need, and was hungry. He and those who were with him? How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was High Priest and did eat the showbread which is not lawful to eat.” It was not one of the Ten Commandments they were breaking, but one of the principles back there that applied to the priesthood.

But David, as a prophet of God, guided his servants to eat that, and it was alright, and Jesus showed that.

He says, in Matthew’s account, in the middle, “Or have you not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and [they] are guiltless.” How did the priests profane the Sabbath? By doing all kinds of worldly things? No. They had to do the work. If you’ve ever been a butcher, the way they used to do without these electric saws that literally cut through the bone, to cut these big animals up, they were covered with perspiration perhaps after that. Offering these sacrifices.

They worked hard, but it was something directly in the work of God. So they were guiltless. So there are ways, you see, God chose how to keep the Sabbath. Not according to man always, but He shows that you can do good on the Sabbath in those ways. “But I say to you the one that is greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Of course, Jesus showed here in Mark’s account, continuing on, He said to them, the bottom of page 27, “the Sabbath was made for man.” Man was not made to serve a day, but the Sabbath was made as a blessing for man. Not Sunday, though. The Sabbath was always what we call Friday night sunset to Saturday night sunset. But it was made to point out God as the Creator. It was also made for man to rest, physically, and made for man to rest spiritually, or to seek God and worship the Creator on the Sabbath, a holy convocation, a commanded assembly. So it was made for man, to serve man, not to bind man by saying you can’t do this and that, and all kinds of things man adds to the Sabbath sometimes, but you’re not to do your regular work on the Sabbath. God did make that clear.

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man [to serve] the Sabbath,” as they had made it with all their dos and don’ts (the Pharisees did on the Sabbath) so that the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.”

The Son of Man is not Lord of Sunday, in the sense of that being a special day. He is Lord of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath Jesus kept, the Sabbath Peter and James and John and Paul and all the original church kept, was the seventh day. As the Jews keep it, but we do not keep it today as they keep it. We understand the spiritual teachings of Christ as to how to keep it, and what it means spiritually. But it is a special commandment, a test point, frankly, and a sign of God, of the true God. It identifies the true God as Creator. So that’s a very important understanding. The Sabbath was made, who? For the Jew? No. The Sabbath was made for man. As you look back in Genesis (perhaps we’ll review that next time), the Sabbath was made back in Gen. 2, when man was made, long before there ever was a Jew. God made the Sabbath, and shows it was a holy day. So we want to keep it, and we want to keep the teachings of Jesus Christ.

So we’ll stop here at the top of page 45 and pick up next time. Be sure you study, follow through on your review and your study, and learn the message of the Son of God. We’re dismissed.