Key Thought: The Sabbath is a covenant sign that points back to Creation, the covenant of grace, and to the final recreation when God makes all things new.
May 29, 2021

1. Have a volunteer read Exodus 16:23-28..

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the most important point is in this passage.
2. What does this tell us about whether the Sabbath was a day of fasting or not?
3. Personal Application: If God doesn’t need rest, why would God Himself rest on the seventh-day? What purpose might this resting serve? Why or why not? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states, “Why was God so particular about people gathering firewood on the Sabbath? What kind of activities like gathering firewood might we be guilty of breaking the Sabbath today?.” How would you respond to your friend?

2. Have a volunteer read Exodus 31:16,17.

1. Ask class members to share a thought on what the most important point in this text is.
2. Why did the Lord use the Sabbath as a covenant sign?
3. Personal Application: What is it about the Sabbath that makes it appropriate as a symbol of the saving relationship with God? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your friends states, “How is resting on the Sabbath a sign that it is special? What do people do differently on the Sabbath that makes it a sign?” How would you respond to your friend?

3. Have a volunteer read Exodus 31:13-17..

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the main idea of this text is.
2. What does it mean to “know” the Lord?
3. Personal Application: How does keeping the Sabbath help us to “know” the Lord? Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: One of your relatives states: “What is the Sabbath a sign of? Isn’t it a sign of works for salvation? Isn’t it the Jewish Sabbath given to them to remember the Exodus out of Egypt? What does that mean for us today?“ How would you respond to your relative?

4. Have a volunteer read Exodus 20:8.

1. Ask class members to share a short thought on what the main idea of this text is.
2. How are we to keep the Sabbath holy?
3. Personal Application: Has keeping the Sabbath helped strengthen your walk with the Lord? If nbot, what changes could you make?” Share your thoughts.
4. Case Study: Think of one person who needs to hear a message from this week’s lesson. Tell the class what you plan to do this week to share with them.

(Truth that is not lived, that is not imparted, loses its life-giving power, its healing virtue. Its blessings can be retained only as it is shared.”Ministry of Healing, p. 148).

Amen!(2)

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How often we hear the phrase, the “old Jewish Sabbath.” Yet Scripture is clear that the Sabbath existed long before there were any Jewish people. Its origin is found in the Creation week itself.

Look up Genesis 2:2-3 and Exodus 20:11. Where do they clearly, and unambiguously, place the origin of the Sabbath?

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Although Genesis 2:2-3 does not identify the “seventh day” as the Sabbath (this identification comes first in Exodus 16:26, Exodus 16:29), it is clearly suggested in the phrase “he rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). The word rested (Hebrew, shabat) is related to the noun Sabbath (Hebrew, shabbat). “The word ‘sabbath’ is not employed [in Genesis 2:2-3], but it is certain that the author meant to assert that God blessed and hallowed the seventh day as the Sabbath.” — G. F. Waterman, The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975), vol. 5, p. 183. Evidently, Genesis 2:2-3 teaches the divine origin and institution of the Sabbath as a day of blessing for all humanity.

Read Mark 2:27. Jesus says that Sabbath was made for, literally, “man,” meaning humanity as a whole, as opposed to the Jews alone. Why would God Himself rest on the seventh day? Did He need it? What other purpose might His resting have served?

Although some commentators have suggested that God needed physical rest after Creation, the true purpose for God’s resting was to provide a divine Example for humanity. Humankind also is to work for six days and then to rest on the seventh-day Sabbath. Theologian Karl Barth suggested that God’s resting at the end of Creation was a part of the “covenant of grace,” in which humankind was invited “to rest with Him … to participate in [God’s] rest.” — Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, part 1 (Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark Ltd., 1958), p. 98.

God in His love called the man and the woman on the day after their creation to fellowship in rest, to establish intimate communion with Him, in whose image they had been made. That fellowship and communion was to last forever. Since the fall of humankind, it has offered a weekly high point of one’s life with the Savior.

<–Sabbath Monday–>

Amen!(0)

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Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Genesis 2:2-3; Exodus 20:11; Exodus 16:1-36; Hebrews 4:1-4; Exodus 31:12-17; Deuteronomy 5:14.

Memory Verse: “Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant” (Exodus 31:16).

The seventh-day Sabbath is like a nail that — Thwack! — with unbroken regularity returns us each week to the foundation of all that we are or could be. We are so busy, running to and fro, spending money, making money, going here, going there, going everywhere, and then — Thwack! — Sabbath comes and reattaches us to our foundation, the starting point of everything that follows, because everything that is anything to us becomes that only because God created it and us to begin with.

With unceasing regularity, and with no exceptions, the Sabbath silently hurls over the horizon and into every crack and cranny of our lives. It reminds us that every crack and cranny belong to our Maker, the One who put us here, the One who “in the beginning” created the heavens and the earth, an act that remains the irrefutable foundation of all Christian belief and of which the seventh-day Sabbath — Thwack! — is the irrefutable, unobtrusive and unyielding sign.

This week we look at this sign in the context of the Sinai covenant.

The Week at a Glance: Where does the Sabbath have it origins? What evidence proves that the Sabbath existed before Sinai? What makes the Sabbath such an appropriate covenant sign?

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, May 29.</

Sunday–>

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