4/13/05 & 4/17/05 - “GOD’S TEST OF LOYALTY” Part 11
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Hello!  This is Richard Vaughn

Today we will continue our series titled, “GOD’S TEST OF LOYALTY” and today’s segment will be Part 11. Before we begin, let us seek God’s guidance, “Heavenly Father, we have identified in your word the seal of God as it is in the fourth commandment, and that  those who have that seal will be saved. Father, we desire the seal of God. Help us to really understand what it is, so that we do not receive the mark of the beast. And once again we ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and we pray for wisdom, knowledge and understanding so that we may live in the center of Your revealed will, as we ask in Jesus Name, Amen.”
Right now, I continue to keep my pledge, to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up my voice like a trumpet and to show God’s people where they are transgressing God’s law.

Isn't it just so sensible that God looking down the centuries and millenniums spotlighted the fourth commandment in particular by beginning it with the word “Remember”?  That is the one commandment that the world as a whole and Christendom in particular has forgotten and been trampling upon, and doing it in the name of the Lord, and calling Sunday the “Lord’s day.” 
Sunday is not and never has been the Lord’s day and there is not a single Bible text that connects Sunday to the Lord’s day? But the Bible clearly names the seventh day, God’s Sabbath, today our Saturday, to the Lord’s day. Matthew 12:8 says, For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. Mark 2:27, 28 says, and this is Jesus speaking, And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:  
  2:28   Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.  Which day is Jesus Lord of? The Sabbath. Luke 6:5, And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. New Testament, New Covenant Christians, Jesus is telling you which day is the Lord’s day just as He told the world on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20:10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God:  Which day is the Lord’s day? Not Sunday, that’s Satan’s counterfeit Sabbath to draw the Christian world away from God’s true Sabbath. But God is even more clear in Isaiah 58:13,14 because he knew Christians in the 21st century would be trampling His holy day and He tells us to get our feet off His day, listen God says, 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:  
  58:14   Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD;”
	Now if you still say it doesn’t matter, you are grieving the Holy Spirit and He will depart from you. God’s word is clear on what constitutes the unpardonable sin so friends, we are talking about a life and death issue. Most of you are going to reject God’s clear word on this subject and you will receive the mark of the beast. Noah preached the end time message in his day and he preached his heart out. He had many brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and what did they do. They went with the accepted teaching of the world. They went with the majority and the flood destroyed them all. 
	Just as the forbidden tree was Adam and Eve’s test of loyalty, so God’s Sabbath is the end time Christian’s test of loyalty as to who will receive your worship. Either the Creator God and His Sabbath, or the little horn power from Daniel 7, the first beast of Revelation 13, the Antichrist Papacy of Rome who changed God’s seventh day Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Who gets your worship? The Creator or the Papacy? And it comes right down to Christ or Satan?
	If your pastor says it doesn’t matter, when God says it does, who are you going to believe?
	  Please listen carefully.  The sabbath is a gift from the Lord. It’s a gift of time with Jesus! Christianity is about having a relationship with God.  And God wants a whole day for intimate communion with Him.  And it's a special appointment time when we come apart from our regular routine, and commune and remember the Lord in a special way.  We fellowship together as true believers in a special way, and rejoice in the Lord's salvation in a special way.  
It's also a time for rest from physical labor and temporal problems and WE NEED THIS!  One reason so many people are uptight, and getting ulcers, and heart attacks, and explode every time you step on their toes; the reason that husbands, and wives are always screaming at one another is they are under the hammer seven days a week.  You need one day, when you're not worrying about the mortgage.  You need one day when you're not worrying about the bills, and collectors don't knock on your door, or call you on the phone,  because you've told them not to.  You need one day when you don't have to worry about who's fighting who in the Middle East.   God gave the sabbath not to be a problem, but a privilege, and human nature needs an opportunity to regroup and recoup and become refreshed so that we can face another week with all its concerns and bills.  Let me repeat again, the sabbath is a gift of time that the Lord sets aside for His children.
	Yet somehow people continue to say the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath holy is Jewish.  Is the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" Jewish?  Is the one that says "Thou shalt not steal" only for the Jews?  Is the one that says "Thou shalt not have any other gods before me."  only for the Jews?  Here, in the 4th commandment God says it is "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God".  And you can search the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and back again and you will not find the expression  "Sabbath of the Jews".   The Sabbath is always stated as  "the sabbath of the Lord thy God".  
The Sabbath is no more Jewish than is the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill."
Mark 2:27 Jesus says, And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for M.A.N. Now that’s a funny way to spell JEW. 
The Bible says,  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: "
The Sabbath is the only day that Jesus ever spoke about as being His own.  He said "My holy day".  When you put it all together friends, you can come up with only one conclusion, and that is that the "Lord's day", and the seventh day Sabbath day, Saturday, are one in the same.   
 	The idea of "The Lord's day" being any other day but the seventh day Sabbath is another gross error that has been repeated often enough and by people influential enough that innocent, sincere people have believed it.

***Now popular opinion and tradition has replaced Scripture for many and men have declared that Sunday, the first day of the week is the Sabbath, and they call it the "Lord's Day".  I recognize that many of you who have been observing Sunday are wonderful Christian people.  Don't misunderstand me. I want to be perfectly clear that there are many people that presently worship on Sunday that are wonderful Christians. 
 	I do challenge you though to search for yourselves what the Bible says about which day is God’s true Holy day of rest.  The idea of Sunday-keeping as a holy day is not based on the Bible.  The real reason many people worship on Sunday is that it is a tradition passed down to Christianity from Paganism.
Luke 23:54
 	The Bible says,  "And that day was the preparation, (talking about the day Jesus died now), and the sabbath drew on.  (In other words, on the day called Good Friday, the Sabbath had not come yet.)   And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid.  And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.  (Luke 24:1)  Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.  And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre." 
 	Here we have 3 days mentioned in quick but orderly succession.  The preparation day, the day that Jesus died.  Then we have the Sabbath day, the day that Jesus laid in the tomb.  And the first day of the week, the day that Jesus rose from the tomb. 
 	Here it is for all who want to see it just as plain as can be.  Here Jesus died on Friday, He rose on the first day of the week, Sunday, there's only one day left in the middle and that's what?  Saturday, which the Bible very clearly here calls the "sabbath according to the commandment.", the seventh day of the week according to the gospel writers.   
 	The Bible pinpoints which day it is.  The cross of Calvary establishes the Sabbath. The cross of Jesus Christ establishes the Sabbath.  Jesus died on Friday, kept the weekly Sabbath by resting in the tomb, and rose up on the first day of the week.
	Jesus created this world perfect in 6 days and then rested on the seventh day Sabbath, from His work of Creation. Jesus then redeemed this world from sin at Calvary on the 6th day of the week through His death, and immediately He rested in the tomb from His work of redemption on the seventh day Sabbath. The Sabbath is the ultimate and perfect symbol of belief in the Creator God and faith in God as our Redeemer through Jesus Christ.  As we rest from our labors outwardly, it is the sign that we rest in His redemption inwardly. 
	Now what day of the week did Jesus keep and worship on while He was here? I think we can be safe if we do what Jesus did, don't you?  Jesus is "the Way the Truth and the Life".
In fact, 1 John 2:6 tells us that we ought to walk, even as he (Jesus), walked.  So how did Jesus walk in relation to the sabbath? 
Remember, Christianity is following Jesus.  So what example did Jesus leave us?

Luke 4:16  "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, (What do we mean when we say, 'As his custom was'?  His habit.  Something He always did. Well what was something that Jesus always did?)  . . . he went into the synagogue on  the on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read."
  Jesus had a custom of going to church and worshipping on the Sabbath day. Would you like to be following in the footsteps of Jesus today friends?

Time is up so be listening Next week for “God’s Test of Loyalty” - part 12.
God bless you friends and study your Bibles daily,
Until next week, Jesus said in John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me”. Even so, Come Lord Jesus.