[Sabbatarian Caucus]Bible Reading: Isaiah 58:13,14

Today's reading comes from the book of Isaiah, chapter 58, verse 13 and 14. These verses contain basic instructions for observing the Sabbath of the Lord God and the blessings that God promises will follow for those who do.

Isa 58:13 "If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the LORD honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words,
Isa 58:14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Lesson 1: The Lord expects his followers to regard and observe his Sabbath in certain ways.

* Don't do our own pleasure on the Sabbath of the Lord. It's not our day. It belongs to the Lord and we should do his pleasure.

* Call the Lord's Sabbath a delight. Find the good in the Sabbath. Discover the happiness. Don't consider it a burden but consider it a delight.

* Call the Sabbath of the Lord honorable. It honors God when we honor His Sabbath and don't make it a normal day...a day about us.

* More delight will be found in the Lord. The Contemporary English Version translation is "Then you will truly enjoy knowing the LORD." Observing the Sabbath of the Lord allows us to know the Lord more deeply and fully.

* We will be blessed and honored by the Lord. Gill's commentary says about high hills of the earth: "to live above the world, and to have their conversation in heaven; to be in the utmost safety, and enjoy the greatest plenty, especially of spiritual things: or to be superior to the men of the world, even the highest of them; to have power and authority in the earth, as the saints will have in the latter day; particularly this will be true when the mountain of the Lord's house is established upon the top of the mountains"

* The heritage of Jacob, or Israel. We will attain all that God has promised to his people, Israel. Great promises indeed!

Lastly the verses conclude with "The mouth of the Lord has spoken". Scripture emphasizes that these worlds come straight from the mouth of the eternal, the Lord God and so should be considered soberly and taken seriously.

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[Mark 2:27] And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:

Many folks have suggested to me there may be a contradiction in these two passages.

What would be your answer...........Douglas?

[Isaiah 58:13] If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
[Mark 2:27] And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
Many folks have suggested to me there may be a contradiction in these two passages.
What would be your answer...........Douglas?

I think you know as well if not better than me old friend... :-)

The first thing I would do is to remember that the same person, Jesus Christ, said both things.

Second is that scripture can't be contradictory.

In Mark, Jesus was being chastised by the Pharisee's who had put their own rules and burdens, mostly non-scritpural, on the sabbath.

Their manmade rules and traditions had turned the sabbath from being a delight to making it a burden.

Christ told them the original intent of the sabbath...it was made for mankind to be a benefit for mankind. To be a delight, something healthy and good.

Mar 2:28 “Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”

What's great is that Jesus affirms the sabbath and identfies himself as the Lord of that very same sabbath...or looked at another way as the author of Isaiah 58:13,14!

Christ told them the original intent of the sabbath...it was made for mankind to be a benefit for mankind. To be a delight, something healthy and good.

The original intent. I like that.

Yes....by the time of the Babylonian exile (590 B.C.) and after.....the Rabbinical Councils had begun to take it upon themselves to change quite a few things....all without divine authority. The Pharisees took that ball.......and ran with it and by the first century many things were no longer what the "Original Intent"........ had required. Much of what we hear from Yeshua is constant criticism of the Pharisees and their peculiar take on things.

A cornerstone of the first Covenant from Yahweh was maintaining a tremendous difference between things that were profane (common) and things that were sacred.

Numbers 18:32] And ye shall bear no sin by reason of it, when ye have heaved from it the best of it: neither shall ye pollute the holy things of the children of Israel, lest ye die.

Things that were "Holy"..... and had been so designated by "The Great God of the Universe" were not to be treated as "Common". The Sabbath had been consecrated as something very holy and it contained restrictions on how it should (and should not) be observed. It was to retain its own distinctive nature and not be profaned.

[Exodus 16:23-26] And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake that which ye will bake to day, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. 24And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. 25And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day is a sabbath unto the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field. 26Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.

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