Fresh Manna 2021

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Strong Tower Radio

Keeping the Sabbath by David Austin

David Austin

02 Keeping the Sabbath Holy

Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was fresh from the ovens of heaven, Baked by the master baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now experience the taste and the smell of fresh manna.

Today you'll be listening to David Austin, pastor of the Manistique, Macmillan Northwoods, and Sault Ste.

I want to begin our sermon today, this portion of our service with another prayer.

Lord, we open your word asking you that you would open our hearts.

For Lord, we want to experience the blessing that you have prepared for us.

This is part 2 of keeping the Sabbath holy.

Today we're going to be talking about worship.

In part 1, we saw that keeping the Sabbath holy included coming to God's house, recognizing his presence, treating his house differently, because we're recognizing we're standing on holy ground.

It's not the building that makes it holy ground, it's the presence of God that makes it holy ground.

So this morning we've come into God's house.

What is our purpose in gathering here together today?

Is it just an attraction kind of like the burning bush, something akin to curiosity or entertainment, or maybe we're looking for friends.

When Moses arrived at the burning bush and he was informed that while it may have been curiosity that brought him, it was worship that would keep him there to participate, he changed.

He took off his feet and fell to his face.

We're never sure why people may show up in this place.

Our hope though, is that whether it's a bush or a building, that when people come, they will not be entertained, neither will they be satisfied in their curiosity, as much as they will be enticed to worship.

We ought to recognize that this is a holy place.

But what about what we do when we arrive?

What does the Bible say about keeping the Sabbath holy?

Obviously it goes hand in hand, but to be honest in this day and age sometimes it doesn't.

There are some people that gather for worship and it's not holy time.

Let's take a look in scripture and find what it means to worship and keep the Sabbath holy.

The first question we have to ask is, does God have holy time?

Now on the surface, that seems like an easy 1 and you'll probably easily shout yes.

And you'll probably even think that we're talking about the seventh day, but I want to go before that.

Psalm 92 in verse 1, because before the Sabbath can take place, something else needs to be happening.

Psalms 92 verse 1, we'll read verses 1 and 2.

This has a bigger impact on our holy time than coming together once a week to worship on the Sabbath day.

Psalm 92 verses 1 and 2 says, "'It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High.

That sounds like a worship service, doesn't it?

Verse 2, to show forth thy loving kindness when?

In the morning and thy faithfulness when?

So how often should we have a little bit of a worship service with the Lord?

That makes total sense when you go back and there are scriptures that say we ought to, you know, pray without ceasing.

We ought to have a constant communion with God.

We really ought to have a connection that doesn't break as soon as the services are done on Sabbath.

In fact, it's really important for us to understand that this is how God began.

The evening and the morning were the first day and then the second day and then it was building.

It was building to something and the celebration of it was the Sabbath, but it wasn't non-existent all week long.

This is a very familiar text we oftentimes use in proving to people the Sabbath, but it really shows that it's so much greater than 1 day.

This says something very important for us today that to be honest even as Adventists sometimes we often miss.

Ezekiel chapter 20 and verse 12 and it says, Moreover also I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." Now this is really important.

That means though that the Sabbath is not the sanctifier.

So if he doesn't sanctify on the Sabbath, then when does he sanctify?

All week long, the Lord is working to make us holy, to refine us, to make us in his image all week long, and the Sabbath is to be the celebration of what we've been allowing him to do all week long.

That means that all week long, if we have not been communing with him and letting him change us, then come Sabbath morning, we may have no experience to share, no worship to give, and then we might find ourselves in a situation where many people are today, well I went to that service but I didn't get anything out of it.

The number 1 reason why people change churches.

I mean, what they're doing is they're critiquing an entertainment scenario.

They're not actually thinking about what they had to give or what they had to celebrate.

They missed out on that celebration experience somewhere along the line.

So all they had left was to judge whether or not the ceremony had been flawless or not according to their personal tastes.

Verse 20, same chapter, Ezekiel chapter 20, verse 20, 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.

That means that how we are letting Him be God in our life all week long is celebrated on the Sabbath day.

We come and recognize him for his faithfulness, for his goodness, et cetera, on the Sabbath day as to how he's treated us and how we have come closer to him all week long.

So this idea of holy time, a lot of people like to imagine that it happens in church, but 2 to 3 hours in church is really not enough to make us holy.

It needs to be a richer, deeper experience.

The Sabbath, he is our God and our savior.

He's our God and our Savior all week long.

And it builds to a climax on the seventh day of creation.

01 Keeping the Sabbath Holy

Today, you'll be listening to David Austin, pastor of the Manistique, Macmillan Northwoods, and Sault Ste.

I want to begin this portion of our service with another prayer, So if you would bow your heads with me.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your love, for your word, for the Sabbath.

Lord, may your word speak to us today about the blessings that you have prepared.

Lord, may we recognize your presence here today in Jesus name.

OK, keeping the Sabbath holy, so this is a very short series.

We're going to talk a little bit about what it means to keep the Sabbath holy.

And we'll start in an obvious place, and that is today, God's house.

You know, what does that have anything to do with keeping the Sabbath holy?

But we'll move beyond that because Sabbath is an experience that should be happening all week long and celebrated on the seventh day.

It should be an experience that we are entering into on a daily basis.

So how is it that we keep the Sabbath holy?

We talked a little bit in the children's story about things we ought to do or ought not to do.

And when people talk about worshiping in God's house, well, there's a lot of different places.

Tent, a castle, a monastery, a church, a shack, a mosque, a temple, et cetera.

There's a lot of different places that I have seen called the church.

And I've seen them treated in so many different ways.

I've seen a toddler in the middle down below a pulpit rolling around, playing with cars.

I've seen people praying throughout the entire service.

I've seen a fist fight break out in a church service, an argument, praising, yelling, debate, eating, singing, and silence.

Now, some of those are inappropriate at any time.

Some of those should happen in a church and some of those shouldn't happen in a church.

Some of the things that we do today are a little unique because we have changed things a little bit through time.

It used to be back in the time of Jesus that the temple was the temple and that was pretty much it.

But as the temple got expanded, then it became living quarters and storage quarters and all kinds of other things as well.

And so there was this hub of activity that surrounded the holy place and the most holy place.

And so there wasn't as much silence as there was before because of the chaos.

And then, and then of course it escalated and then there was buying and selling and all kinds of other things in the courtyard and Jesus had to reprimand them for it.

It was not uncommon for the sanctuaries to be used as pretty much anything.

The church was also the school during the week.

It was the wedding reception area when they needed that too.

It was usually in the center of town and it was the center of all those activities.

And then of course, obviously church at the end of the week.

Today, we generally try to separate things.

We generally have a separation between the sanctuary proper and the rest of the church.

We generally try to have a separation, but it hasn't always been that way.

I want to submit to you that physical barriers don't mean an awful lot.

So the question is, what or where is God's house?

Isaiah 66 verse 1, what or where is God's house?

It says, thus saith the Lord, the heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool, where is the house that ye build unto me and where is the place of my rest?" This is really important.

Generally we think of God residing where?

We think of that being God's residence, but really can he be contained?

If heaven is his home and earth is his footstool, Is there, I mean, that's a pretty big God, right?

If his feet are on the earth and his head is in heaven and he stretches out his arms and it encompasses everything he's ever created, he's a very big God.

So is there really any 1 thing that can confine him, right?

And yet then he asks, and where is the house that you will build for me?

Can we build him a house that would fit him?

If we're taking the context of this verse at the very beginning, very literally, there is no structure that we could build that would fit God.

He wants a place that we have built, set aside for him.

It's not that he couldn't create 1 all on his own, but it says something when we prepare it for Him.

Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10 verse 25.

Hebrews chapter 10 verse 24, but the emphasis will be on 25.

Hebrews 10, we'll start in verse 24, says, And let us consider 1 another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting 1 another so much the more as you see the day approaching." Interestingly enough, the whole idea of us assembling together, coming together, you see throughout scripture that we would come together, praise and worship and glorify God, and there's no set pattern on this.

We like to sit in a particular place, we like to sing particular songs and heaven help the person that sits in our seat.

I've told it as a jest at times past, but I'm not in a favor of when a church needs to be built, allowing church members to donate money so that their name can be on a plaque on a pew.

Because I've literally seen someone with their name on the pew because they donated some money claim that pew.

And when guests come in, they make the guests move so that they can sit in their pew.

But whether or not you're avid about your seat or not, we're creatures of habit.

Most of you sit in the same, including me, most of us sit in the same place all the time and if someone changes something, what, hey, what are they doing?

Coming together to fellowship together, to praise together.

And it doesn't have to be some set guideline.

We ought to shake things up once in a while.

We ought to shake things up once in a while so that our relationship with Jesus doesn't get rusted in place.

This is that idea of provoking 1 another in a good way.

Generally speaking, when we think of a brother and a sister and 1 provokes the other 1 to wrath, right?

But this here is a good context, provoking 1 another to love and good works, not to frustration and rage, but to love and good works.

We ought to shake things up a little bit and we do that by coming together.

The more we come together, the more we are an encouragement and a strength to 1 another to drive us to love and good works.

And so this is, Notice now, it doesn't say what type of a structure we should come to.

It doesn't even say we should come to a structure.

It just says that as the day approaches, we should not forsake the assembling.

Series

Keeping the Sabbath by David Austin

01 Keeping the Sabbath Holy

Transcript

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