Sabbath and the Family... Getting Acquainted Continued...

     Adventists believe that the Bible record of creation is true---that God made the world in six literal days and rested on the seventh. And we rejoice in the two magnificent gifts He gave to the human race at the end of creation week.  
     The first gift came when God performed the first wedding ceremony shortly after creating Adam and Eve on the sixth day. The gift of marital and family relationships God gave to humanity in Eden has brought great happiness to those who have invited Him to be the Lord of their homes and families. 
     God gave His second great gift to our original parents the very next day. The Bible says that on the seventh day of creation week God rested, not because He was tired, but because He had finished His work.
     God then set apart the seventh day as a special holy day. The very word Sabbath means "rest." Later, in the fourth of the Bible's Ten Commandments, God asked His followers to "remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Exodus 20:8.
     Still later, Christ came to earth to show us God's love and save us. On Calvary's cross that dark Friday afternoon He proclaimed, "It is finished!" Then He rested over the sacred hours of the Sabbath.
     To us today, the Bible makes it plain that the Sabbath is a memorial of God's power as Creator---but also of His power as our Re-creator. The Sabbath is also a celebration of God's power to deliver us from the power of sin.
   But above all, the Sabbath is a constant invitation to rest from our works as Jesus did from His. Resting in Christ's finished work for us, we are delivered from trying to earn salvation by our own works---by being good. How sad that some actually see Sabbath keeping as legalistic---a symbol of salvation by works---when each week the Sabbath points us away from human works to rest in God's creative, saving work for us.

Please click on the verses and read them. :)
     Exod. 20:3-17    Mark 2:27, 28       Acts 18:1-4, 11
     John 14:15         Gen.2: 1-3             Isa. 58:13, 14
     Ps. 111:7,8         Ezek. 20:12, 20     Exod. 20:14
     Rev 1:10             Luke 4:16             Eph. 5:22-28