Not long ago I received a question for my Q & A on Facebook asking, “Must we keep the Sabbath to be saved?”
This question is similar to others that perhaps you have heard or even asked yourself: “Can we go swimming on Sabbath?” “Are we allowed to cook on Sabbath?” “Is it OK to eat out on Sabbath?” “May I ______________ [fill in the blank] on Sabbath?”
We Seventh-day Adventists don’t have a book of rules specifying every detail of how to keep the Sabbath holy. As with all our beliefs, we turn to the Bible as the basis for belief and practice.
In the Beginning
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). After six days of creating the world and all that was in it, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (verse 31).
But one thing was still missing: rest. True, sanctified rest comes only from the Creator.
“Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Gen. 2:1-3).
Notice in this passage the strong emphasis on God as the Creator. Three times it reminds us of the “work which He had done,” and links the seventh-day Sabbath as blessed and sanctified by the One who created everything.
When we “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8), we acknowledge God as our Creator, the one who not only created us but who made all things good.
The psalmist blended Creation and worship together beautifully when he wrote: “For the Lord is the great God, and the great King above all gods. In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights of the hills are His also. The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Ps. 95:3-6).
Paul links this psalm to the Sabbath in Hebrews 3 and 4. In chapter 3 he quotes directly from Psalm 95:7-11: “Today, if you will hear His voice: ‘Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me; they tried Me, though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”
In Hebrews 4 this rest is linked to faith, salvation, and the Sabbath. “Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. . . . For we who have believed do enter that rest. . . . For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.’ . . . There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His” (verses 1-10).
At Kadesh-barnea, on the borders of Canaan, nearly an entire generation of Israelites refused to enter because they failed to believe God’s promise that He would give them victory over the land’s inhabitants. A little later, when God told them that they would never enter the land of Canaan but would die in the wilderness because of their unbelief, they rebelled again against God’s word and tried to win the victory over the Canaanites in their own strength.
As elsewhere (see 1 Cor. 10:1-13; Gal. 4:22-31), Paul saw a lesson from the Old Testament in connection with righteousness by faith. The Sabbath symbolizes resting from our own efforts to gain victory over sin and accepting the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. That rest is still available to those who believe and accept God’s wonderful promises.
Jesus and the Sabbath
Jesus brought the true meaning of the Sabbath back into focus as a day of restoration and healing, a day for re-Creation. We read in that wonderful book The Desire of Ages that “He had come to free the Sabbath from those burdensome requirements that had made it a curse instead of a blessing.”1
Most of Christ’s healing miracles were performed on the Sabbath. One of the many well-known examples is that of the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, recorded in John 5.
This man had suffered for 38 years, longing for healing but virtually hopeless. Jesus’ loving heart was touched. After a brief conversation Jesus told the man to “rise, take up your bed and walk” (verse 8). As the invalid obeyed, his faith was rewarded, and he was healed.
While the man was overjoyed, not all were delighted, especially the religious leaders who were loath to acknowledge the miracle. Instead they condemned the man for carrying his bed on the Sabbath.
Commenting on this incident, Ellen White wrote: “Jesus stated to them [religious leaders] that the work of relieving the afflicted was in harmony with the Sabbath law. It was in harmony with the work of God’s angels, who are ever descending and ascending between heaven and earth to minister to suffering humanity.”2
Christ honored the Sabbath not only in life, but even in death. Crucified on the sixth day, He rested in the tomb on the seventh day, just as His followers “rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56).
Jesus, when speaking of future events, instructed His followers to “pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath” (Matt. 24:20), indicating the perpetuity of Sabbath sacredness in New Testament times and beyond.
Edge of Eternity
As we come closer to the edge of eternity, our Lord’s sacred, seventh-day Sabbath will be a deciding factor in end-time events. For well more than 100 years God as Creator has been ridiculed and relegated to the fringes by most of the world. The truth of His word—the Bible—has been attacked relentlessly. For more than 1,000 years His holy, sanctified Sabbath has been trampled upon by a religious power whose deadly wound is nearly healed (see Rev. 13).
This end-time battle encompasses far more than a discussion on what we can or cannot do. It’s a battle for our loyalty, our faith, and our obedience. Do we really believe that God is our Creator? Do we actually trust that His Word is true? Are we willing to follow and worship Him on the day He set apart and sanctified?
Now is the time for us to draw close to the Lord of the Sabbath (see Mark 2:28). Now is the time to discover the joy of having a relationship with Him, and experience the blessedness of resting in Him as our Creator, Redeemer, and Friend. When we know Him thus, we will eagerly anticipate spending His holy, set-apart day with Him, not only on this earth, but for all eternity (see Isa. 66:23).
1 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898), p. 206.
2 Ibid.
Ted N. C. Wilson is president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Follow Adventist Church president Ted N.C. Wilson on Twitter: @pastortedwilson and on Facebook: @PastorTedWilson