1. Illus: My friend Mark Finley, speaker on the international telecast "It Is Written," tells of a popular tourist attraction in Portugal today--an ancient monastery perched high atop the seaside cliffs of Portugal with a spectacular panoramic view.
   1. Tourists from around the world thrill with the vista high atop that rocky dwelling.
   2. But be warned: The only way up to that top of that granite crag is to get into a wicket basket tied to a rope, after which a monk at the top of the cliff begins cranking an old wooden pulley.
      1. You sit in the basket as it climbs jerkily up the jagged cliff.
      2. The sunsets are spectacular from the summit--so you keep reminding yourself as the basket precariously sways to and fro as it ascends straight up the mountain face.
   3. Some years ago a tourist got into the basket, and the monk at the top began to crank and crank.
      1. An elderly tour guide was in the basket with the tourist, and tried to reassure the tourist that it would be OK.
      2. The tourist was most appreciative of the beautiful view that was spreading before him.
      3. But he was also quite nervous about this jerky ride to the top.
      4. Finally the tourist looked at the tour guide and asked, "You know I am a bit nervous and so I was wondering, Do you ever lose anyone as the rope pulls this basket up--you know, I mean, has the rope ever broken and dropped the basket with someone in it?"
      5. The elderly guide replied, "Well, occasionally."
      6. That was hardly reassuring for the tourist, who decided it best to ask a second question: "Well, how often do you replace the rope?"
      7. To which the tour guide replied, "EVERY TIME ONE BREAKS!"
   4. How reassuring--yet how true of life on the planet in this twilight of the twentieth century!
      1. How many of us are going through life with the rope about ready to snap!
      2. Modern society on every continent of this globe has pushed humanity to the very edge of breaking!
      3. Tension, stress, anxiety keep elevating our pulse rates and raising our blood pressures and fraying our ropes!
      4. Illlus: To the place heart disease has become the number one killer in my country--and I wouldn't doubt it was far behind in yours!
         1. One in every four men will die of a heart attack before the age of 60.
         2. Every year in the US alone, there are half a million deaths from heart attacks.
      5. How many pills are popped in the morning to awaken and washed down at night to sleep?
      6. Valium has become the drug celebre!
      7. Muscles are tense, nerves are on edge, hearts are racing, minds are spinning and lives are collapsing!
      8. Because the rope is ready to snap!
      
   5. Illus: In 1603 she lay dying.
      1. With a regal hand she had ruled Britannia.
      2. But now the monarch faces a foe she cannot conquer.
      3. Death is only moments away.
      4. Her trusted counselors gather round her bed, as Queen Elizabeth I enters that universal valley of shallow labored breathing and darkening shadows.
      5. Finally her attendant stoop low to catch her dying breath.
      6. And with one last whisper of strength she breathed her final words, the last prayer of a dying queen: "All my possessions for a moment of time."
   6. And what, you ask, does a dying queen's last prayer have to do with a society whose rope is about to snap?
      1. Maybe what the queen would have given her kingdom for is what we are all dying for.
      2. TIME.....more time....
      3. Time to stop, time to live, time to rest, time to laugh, time to love, time to be, time--"all my possessions for a moment of time."
      4. How much would YOU give for time?
2. Oh, I have a feeling God would give anything--if only you and I would discover His second greatest gift of all!
   1. The first greatest gift is incontestably the greatest gift of all--we noted it the last two times we've been together--I speak of God's gift of salvation to the human race through our Savior Jesus Christ.
   2. We know about the first gift--but alas, so many of us have forgotten THE SECOND GREATEST GIFT.--God's gift of Himself through time.
      1. Not any old time.
      2. But a very special time.
   3. Journey with me all the way back to the day they invented time! Back to the great Book of Beginnings, Genesis 1--you hardly need a page number for this one (p 1)!
      1. We read them last night let's read them again.
      2. Genesis 1:1.
      3. These are arguably the Bible's most familiar words in the realm of literature and theology.
      4. Western astronauts have spoken them as they peered down from their orbiting space craft to the blue-green terrestrial ball we all call home.
      5. Advertising agencies have skillfully woven these words into the soft sell of some new product.
      6. And right here at Andrews University, these words are embedded into the rock plaza outside our large science complex building.
      7. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
      8. Illus: Some English-speaking baseball fan suggested that Genesis 1:1 is the first record of baseball being played in the world--"In the big inning"--but of course, Genesis isn't about any game at all--it is the majestic story of the beginning of the human race upon this planet.
      9. In our last lecture we heard scientific evidence that the irreducibly complex systems of life forms on earth must have had an intelligent designer involved in their origin and development.
      10. I REPEAT: That evidence supports the Bible's opening revelation "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
   4. Now note with me the highlights of Genesis 1, which is the Bible account of the creation of the world in six days.
      1. I'm not going to read every word of this account to you--you can do that on your own sometime.
      2. But let me just highlight the six days of creation here in the account by noting what was created on that particular day as outlined in the text.
         1. Day One--v.3,5
         2. Day Two--v.6,8
         3. Day Three--v.9,13
         4. Illus: By the way, note that when God created the world He didn't need a SEIKO clock to tell time--He used the SUN to differentiate the 24 hours--the dark part of the day (which is what He began with) for the first half of the day, and the light part for the last half--i.e., evening first morning/day second.
         5. Day Four--v.14,19
         6. Day Five--v.20,23
         7. Day Six--v.24,26
      3. There it is--the creation account in Scripture.
   5. But the story isn't over yet--not quite yet!
      1. God has just finished a perfect creation--in fact, Genesis 1:31 reads that He stepped back, took a sweeping gaze upon what He had done over the past six days, and then with great satisfaction exclaimed: "This is very good!"
         1. Illus: You've done that, haven't you?
         2. I took up acrylic painting when I was in graduate school, and I remember spending hours over a canvas, smearing colors and stroking them on in all hues and shapes and designs.
         3. And then I'd step back from that canvas--and no matter what my wife and my friends would say--I'd say to myself: THAT IS VERY GOOD!
         4. Every artist and builder and designer and creator enjoys admiring what her or his hands have accomplished!
      2. And when God is through creating--HE IS NOT QUITE YET THROUGH.
         1. He could have stopped the creation week with 6 days.
         2. But not our Creator God--for as a scientist friend of mine once expressed to me, God is a Being questing for friends.
         3. God could've made a Garden and been happy with that.
         4. Illus: But like parents all over the world, God longed for intelligent and loving companionship on this earth and so He creates man and woman, Adam and Eve, BECAUSE HE WANTS TO SHARE HIS FRIENDSHIP AND THIS BRAND NEW GARDEN WITH SOMEONE!
         5. Which is precisely why when His 6 days of creation are over, He isn't finished yet.
      3. Read Genesis 2:1-3
         1. GOD WANTS TO HAVE A SPECIAL DAY AT THE END OF EVERY WEEK IN WHICH HE CAN CELEBRATE HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH THE HUMAN RACE.
         2. And so God creates a SEVENTH day a day He blesses, a day He makes holy, a day He sets aside for a very special purpose and He calls it the SABBATH, a loving GIFT of time to the human race!
      4. Illus: In fact, look how Jesus in the New Testament beautifully describes this gift--in Mark 2:27,28 (p 970)!
         1. The Sabbath was MADE for man and woman!
         2. Please note that God didn't invent the seventh-day Sabbath and then scratch His divine brow and conclude--"I've got to create somebody to enjoy this day with Me."
         3. Are you kidding! It's the other way around: "I've just created some new friends of Mine and now I NEED A SPECIAL DAY IN WHICH TOGETHER WE CAN CELEBRATE AND SHARE OUR MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP!
         4. The Sabbath was a loving gift from our Creator--a Day in which to celebrate our friendship with Him!
         5. Illus: I can't imagine not being able to have those days in which I enjoy uninterrupted fellowship and friendship with Kirk and Kristin.
         6. We get so busy during the week going our hectic and separate ways.
         7. But every Dad knows that you have got to carve out time-and treat it sacredly, Papa--time when you and your family can shut the world out and share each other's love and friendship in an uninterrupted and undistracted way!
         8. Jesus tells us that is the truth about the Sabbath--it is God's gift of uninterrupted time in which we can celebrate and share our friendship with Him!
      5. In fact, please NOTE: When you think about it, the seventh-day Sabbath was the very first full day God and man and woman ever shared together--I.e., OUR LIFE AND HUMAN HISTORY BEGAN WITH GOD CELEBRATING THIS SPECIAL DAY OF DIVINE-HUMAN FRIENDSHIP.
3. SO IS THERE ANYBODY SURPRISED TO DISCOVER: that so vital is this Day in the heart and mind of our Creator Friend that He enshrined His gift to us in a way that it would never be forgotten--He put His gift right into the very heart of His eternal Law of Love, the Ten Commandments!
   1. Exodus 20 (p 71).
      1. Let's go back to those Ten Great Protectors of every relationship any human being enjoys--the Ten Commandments--we noted them at the beginning a few evenings ago--marveling at how truly RELATIONAL these Ten Precepts are--i.e., how careful God has always been to preserve and protect our friendship with Him and our relationships with others.
      2. Exodus 20--drop down to the 4th commandment beginning in v. 8.
      3. Wouldn't you know it--God is so eager to share a living, growing friendship with every person on this planet that He includes the seventh-day Sabbath in the heart of the Ten Commandments.
   2. And do you notice: There is only one of the commandments that begins with the unusual word "Remember"?
      1. It's almost as if God knew that we would forget.
      2. Illus: But then we humans are creatures of forgetfulness, are we not? I couldn't believe my eyes when I read a press release on how much gets forgotten and left on the Japanese train system every year.
         1. As a school boy, I used to travel those trains every day!
         2. Guess how many umbrellas get left behind on the trains? 500,000!
         3. How much cash? $10.6 million (though 79% of it was later returned--wallets and purses, etc.)
         4. 9 urns were left on the trains--urns contain the ashes of a departed loved one--"I'm looking for my grandmother" someone told the lost and found "up on that shelf!"
         5. One embarrassed physician reclaimed a preserved womb in a bottle of formaldehyde.
      3. We are creatures of forgetfulness--and so to the human race God says REMEMBER My special Day at the end of each week that we might celebrate our friendship together.
   3. Read vv. 8-11.
   4. "I have given you a Gift in time--the Gift of the seventh day of every week, so that together--you and I--we might celebrate the REST OF LIFE for the rest of our lives--just you and I together--Creator and created, Father and child, Friends forever."
      1. The Sabbath is God's gift of the REST OF LIFE.
      2. And God knows we are dying tonight for want of that REST!
   5. Illus: American pollster Louis Harris conducted an extensive survey to ascertain how Americans are doing with this commodity Queen Elizabeth wanted more of--"All my possessions for a moment of TIME."
      1. According to Harris, the amount of leisure time enjoyed by the average American has shrunk 37% since 1973.
      2. Over the same period the average workweek, including commuting, has jumped from under 41 hours to nearly 47 hours.
      3. In some professions--predictably law, finance and medicine--the demands often stretch to 80-plus hours a week.
      4. Vacations have shortened to the point where they are frequently no more than long weekends.
      5. "Time," concludes Louis Harris, "may have become the most precious commodity in the land."
      6. And "this shortcut society is changing the way the family functions."
      7. With both parents having to work in 57% of the families, the time fathers and mothers are able to share meaningfully with their children is on the decline.
      8. "It is ironic," writes social theorist Jeremy Rifkin in Time Wars, "that in a culture so committed to saving time we feel increasingly deprived of the very thing we value."
      9. My friends, it is the great anomaly of life on this planet at the end of the 20th century--we have invented a myriad of time-saving gadgets and contraptions and technologies--AND WE ARE DYING FOR WANT OF MORE TIME!
      10. Stress is killing us faster than any other cause tonight!
      11. This growing sense of frustration is especially acute among women in two-income families: 73% of the women complain of having too little leisure, too little rest, as do 51% of the men.
      12. Illus: Robert Schrank, a management consultant in New York City: "There is now a supercomputer that operates at a trillionth of a second. What's a trillionth of a second? Time is being eaten up by all these new inventions. Even leisure is done on schedule. Golfing is done on schedule. My son is on the run all the time. I ask him, 'Are you having fun?' He says, '...I don't know.'"
   6. We have forgotten how to REST, we have forgotten the REST OF LIFE and so we are losing the REST OF OUR LIVES.
   7. "Remember My Sabbath day to keep it holy."
      1. Because God always knew that the human organism, this marvelous human creation, could simply not withstand the withering assault of life without rest, without God, without sanity.
      2. We who belong to the most stressed-out, DIS-stressed generation in the history of the human race--of all generations we need God's Gift!
      3. AND SO HE GAVE TO US THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH.
      4. A Day of rest at the end of every single week--so that in companionship with our Creator we might rekindle our spirits, release our tensions, reshape our priorities, and restore our lives!
      5. If the human race RESTED every SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH, we would never have fallen into the DIS-stress of our present-day survivals!
   8. Read vv. 8-10a.
      1. "You shall not do any work."
      2. Because God knows work is all we end up doing during the six days anyway!
      3. We are living in a society where people are working every single day of the week!
      4. No wonder we're dropping like flies!
   9. REMEMBER THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH TO KEEP IT HOLY.
   10. Why? Read v. 11.
       1. Why? Because that's how you were created--your Creator made you with a seven-day time clock inside of you--and you and I have been intricately, masterfully designed (and programmed, if you will) to survive and thrive on a cycle of 6 days for labor and the seventh day for rest and refreshment and relaxation with our Creator Friend.
       2. I repeat: The seventh-day Sabbath is both a gift of Friendship and a gift of time--time to rest with our greatest Friend of all!
       3. But not only to enjoy His friendship on His Day but to relish and celebrate all the other relationships that our Creator has given us!
          1. Every other relationship God has carefully endeavored to protect in His Ten Commandments.
          2. "Honor your father and your mother."
          3. What better Day to celebrate family!
          4. God knows we are all on the run pell-mell six days of the week.
          5. But how wonderful His gift of the Sabbath to draw our loved ones about us and celebrate our love for God and for one another!
          6. It makes you wonder, doesn't it seem if the human race had always REMEMBERED the Sabbath, would we be experiencing such a global disintegration of the family tonight? Not just in the West, but now in the East as well.
       4. God's gift of the seventh day in which to celebrate and nurture the most important relationships in all our lives!
       5. The seventh day Sabbath what a gift!
       6. No wonder in the heart of His Ten Commandments, God wrote the Fourth Commandment: REMEMBER THE SEVENTH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY.
4. In fact, so eager is God to share His Day of Friendship with the human race that like a golden thread you will find His offer woven through the entire Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation!
   1. All the great saints and patriarchs of the Old Testament celebrated the seventh-day Sabbath.
   2. And all the great apostles and Christians in the New Testament celebrated God's Day.
   3. In fact Jesus Himself, God come down to us, celebrated the seventh-day Sabbath!
      1. Look at Luke 4:16 (p 994).
      2. Illus: Do you have any personal customs that you repeat every day?
         1. Of course we all do! Which leg of your pants do you put on first?
         2. Which sock, which shoe is the one that always goes on first?
         3. And do you roll up your tooth paste tube, or do you just leave it flattened out and crinkled?
         4. We are all creatures of habit, and we all have our daily personal customs.
      3. Well, so did Jesus--and His WEEKLY custom was to be found every seventh-day Sabbath in church worshiping His Father in heaven.
      4. Do you know that over and over in the gospels some of His greatest miracles are performed on the Sabbath?
   4. But then what would you expect from the Creator who came down to become one with His creation?
      1. That's right--the Scriptures declare that Jesus Christ was in fact the very Creator of this world.
      2. Before His incarnation ("in-flesh-ment"), Christ was the Creator of all the universe!
      3. That's what the Bible teaches in three books of the New Testament: John l, Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1.
      4. Since this is a lecture, we should examine at least one of those references together--and since we've already been to John 1 earlier in this series, let's read Colossians 1:13-17 (p 1132)
      5. THE POINT: This same Jesus--the young Teacher and Healer in those dusty sandals and worn mantle--this same Jesus was none other than the incarnation of the Creator of the universe Himself!
      6. NO WONDER HE CELEBRATED HIS OWN SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH SO FAITHFULLY: He was the One who gave it in the first place!
      7. Illus: And when He died on the cross--guess what!--Jesus our Creator continued to "remember the Sabbath day" by resting in the tomb on that very Day!
   5. Illus: I have had people come up to me when they discover the truth about God's great gift of His friendship through the seventh-day Sabbath, and they will say: "BUT DWIGHT, the Sabbath is simply a symbol of God's wanting us to take one day in seven--isn't that it? After all, how can we possibly know which Day of the week is the Sabbath today? There have been so many changes in time and history."
      1. And for that very good question, there is a very simple answer.
      2. Turn back a few pages in your Bible to Luke 23 (p 1023) and let me ask you something: On which day of the week did Jesus rise from the dead?
         1. The whole world--Christian and non-Christian--knows that Easter is always on a Sunday, is it not?
         2. And on which day of the week was Jesus crucified? Why of course, the Christian world calls it Good Friday.
      3. Now read Luke 23:52-56 and 24:1.
      4. Please note, ladies and gentlemen, on Good Friday Jesus dies--and on Easter Sunday He rises and in between them comes what?
      5. In between Good Friday and Easter Sunday comes what day? According to Luke 23, in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday comes the Sabbath!
      6. Now what day of the week comes between Friday and Sunday--why of course, it is Saturday.
      7. If Easter Sunday hasn't changed over 2000 years, then neither has the seventh-day Sabbath.
   6. Which means that today-----Saturday, the seventh day of the week, is in fact still the Sabbath of the Creator.
   7. No wonder the Bible calls the seventh-day Sabbath the Lord's Day.
      1. It is the Day that Jesus, the incarnate Creator, is still Lord of!
      2. Jesus in Matthew 12:8 declares that He, the Son of Man, is Lord of the Sabbath.
      3. I.e., the Sabbath is the Day He is Lord of it is the Lord's Day.
      4. And which day of the week is His Sabbath? It is Saturday, the seventh-day of the week!
   8. Oh, but you say, the Sabbath is only for the Jews!
      1. Oh really?
      2. We read Mark 2:28 earlier in our lecture and in it, you remember, Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man."
      3. The Bible declares that woman was also made to be an equal partner in marriage with man.
      4. Now, if the Sabbath was made only for the Jews, then does that mean that all women were made to be marriage partners only with Jewish men?
      5. Of course not--both marriage and the Sabbath were divine gifts to the human race from the very beginning, 2300 years before the Jewish race came into existence!
   9. BUT SINCE BOTH MARRIAGE AND THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH WERE THE CREATOR'S GIFTS TO THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE--I'm not surprised that Lucifer is exercising all his hellish power to destroy both GIFTS FROM THE GARDEN.
      1. Look what he's done to marriage!
      2. Look what he's done to the Sabbath!
      3. The world has forgotten God's gift of both in the beginning!
   10. Oh my friends, I wish I could express this with all the conviction I have: God has given to you and to me the gift of the seventh-day Sabbath, as a weekly celebration of His life-giving friendship for all humanity!
       1. Listen to how the Lord of the Sabbath put it, when He was here among us--Matthew 11:28 (p 945).
       2. "Come to Me, and I will give you rest."
       3. You see, the Savior who gave us the rest of salvation is the Creator who gave us the rest of the Sabbath.
       4. "COME TO ME"--is God's passionate appeal to us every time the seventh day arrives!
5. Illus: He was just a boy--young Winston--on that fateful when he was visiting some wealthy relatives.
   1. And on that fateful day, he was playing by himself beside the swimming pool there on that estate.
      1. But he didn't know how to swim very well, and in a moment of careless frolic he lost his footing and fell into the deep end of the pool.
      2. He went straight under and came up once with a gasp for HELP!
      3. The son of the gardener on that large estate happened to be trimming shrubbery near the pool and heard that cry for help.
      4. The young man dashed across the grass and dived into the waters and hauled poor Winston out.
      5. The family of course was profoundly grateful for that act of heroism and asked the gardener's son what they might do for him.
      6. Quick was his reply--He was saving up money for his education but didn't have enough.
      7. Happily the family assured him of their assistance.
      8. Well, young Winston grew up to become the famous Prime Minister and leader of England during World War II.
      9. And so it was that during the dark war, while on a covert visit to the British forces in Egypt, Sir Winston Churchill contracted pneumonia, and he became critically ill.
      10. Hurriedly, the telegraph operators wired England and asked for a specialist to be flown to Egypt to save the prime minister.
      11. Hours later, Dr. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin--that life- giving antibiotic drug, hurried to the bedside of Mr. Churchill and administered his new drug and treated the prime minister.
      12. As he recovered Churchill looked up into the face of his physician and said: "Alexander, you have given me my life twice--and I thank you!"
      13. For you see, Alexander Fleming was that young gardener boy who had saved Winston from drowning--now he has saved his life from dying.
   2. "You have given me life twice, and I thank you!"--the very words we can all say to Jesus Christ tonight!
      1. Once He gave us life at creation.
      2. Once He gave us life at the cross.
      3. Same Savior, same Creator, same Sabbath, same Friend.
      4. No wonder God calls us to remember the Sabbath day!
      5. With a Friend like Him, why would anyone choose to forget?

Let us pray:
"Twice you have given us life, and we thank you!" Gracious Father and loving Creator--You truly are the God who longs for our friendship. And so You gave us Your Day. In that gift of Your Sabbath, we remember your creation, we remember Your cross. "Twice you have given us life, and we thank you!" In Jesus Christ we thank you for the REST of our lives. In His Name. Amen.

Further Study:

The Secret Of Heavenly Rest     (Lecture Study Guide from Discover Bible School)

Topical:   Sabbath,   Sabbath Observance.

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