God’s Temple

Sabbath is perhaps one of the most well known practices of the Seventh-day Adventist faith but at the same time the least understood. The Sabbath is seen as a day filled with rules, regulations, and restrictions that must be suffered through once a week. But Jesus and His disciples seemed to enjoy the Sabbath, so what is it really all about?

Sabbath is the English translation of the Jewish word Shabbat. Shabbat is primarily a day of rest and spiritual enrichment. The word "Shabbat" comes from the root Shin-Bet-Tav, meaning to cease, to end, or to rest.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel points out that before we can understand what the Sabbath is, we must recognize that the universe around us is made up of two things, space and time. Space what we do. We acquire things in which to fill it, we work, labor, and toil in it, space is basically everything you can see, touch, and feel. Time, on the other hand, is eternal. It is around us every day, but unlike space time goes on forever, and no matter what we do we cannot really affect it. According to Rabbi Heschel, time can touch every piece of space, and it is time where God lives (since God lives in eternity).

All right, to apply that concept that looks like it came out of Star Trek to the Sabbath, let us look at what the scriptures have to say.

The first mention of the Sabbath is in Genesis 2:2-3:

On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.

But wait, you might say, the Sabbath isn’t mentioned there at all, just that God rested on the seventh day. Let’s look at the verse more closely. “On the seventh day God finished...” The Hebrew root word Bet means “to end” and another word for ending something is to cease what you are doing, and the Hebrew root for “to cease” is Shin. “...He rested on the seventh day...” The Hebrew root word Tav means “to rest.” You have Shin-Bet-Tav, the root word of Shabbat (Sabbath) right in the Genesis account.

Of course, any discussion about the Sabbath wouldn’t be complete without looking at Exodus 20:8-11:

“Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”

This fourth commandment is the one that most Adventists hold up to justify all the rules, regulations, and restrictions that we generally associate with the Sabbath. We tend to focus in on the “not working, as God did not work” portion of the commandment, and in doing so we miss the most crucial part.

Look at the first word of the commandment: Remember. In the other commandments, God firmly says THOU SHALT NOT...not covet, not lie, not kill, not steal. But not so with His commandment about the Sabbath. God does not do that with the fourth commandment. What God is asking us to do is REMEMBER.

What are we supposed to remember, exactly? The commandment tells us what to do. “Remember the Sabbath day” it says. “In six days the Lord made the heavens, earth, sea, and everything that is in them (including we humans) but on the seventh day He rested. The Lord blessed and set apart Sabbath day.”

God created everything we know in six days. He filled the empty space around us with birds, plants, trees, animals, even humans. The seventh day He made for us by setting it aside so that we could stop what we’re doing and spend some time remembering all that He did for us and all that we have to be thankful for.

You might ask “So God made the Sabbath? Isn’t that still creating?” The simple answer is that yes, God did create the Sabbath. But it’s more than that. Think about temples and churches that have been built to honor God over the years. There was the Tabernacle of Moses, whose fabrics have long since rotted away. We can’t worship there any more. Solomon’s Temple was the most glorious ever built, until it was razed by the attacking Babylonians. Then the returning Jews built another temple of the remains of Solomon’s, which was built over by King Herod when the Romans took over. After Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, Herod’s temple was ruined. Then the Moslems constructed the Dome of the Rock to honor God. Do you see a pattern? Temples and places of worship have been constructed and torn down for centuries. Anything we build in the space we live simply can’t last forever.

God recognized this, so God built His temple in time. God’s temple is eternal, it can never be broken down, bombed out, razed, or pillaged. No matter what we do in the space around us, God’s eternal temple will always be there.

There is a story of a rabbi who was thrown into a deep, dark dungeon. He could not see the sun, the moon, or the stars. After awhile he lost track of the days because they all seemed the same to him. But he always knew when Sabbath was because he felt different. His spirit told him that he was entering into the Temple of God to worship.

So what is this sacred space, this Sabbath? It is a temple made by God Himself in which we can put aside the things of this world and go and worship Him, to spend time with Him. The Sabbath is not about a bunch of rules and restrictions, but about coming before the Creator to thank Him for what He’s done for us. As Jesus so wonderfully put it in Mark 2:27:

“The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.”