HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2008 / SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER / EDITOR'S COMMENTS

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2008
VOLUME 9, ISSUE 5

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D E P A R T M E N T S

Editor's COMMENTS

Freedom from Sabbath guilt
Colleen Tinker

Guilt flooded me. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing an embarrassingly dirty kitchen floor after sundown on Friday evening—again. Family and full-time work didn't leave me time to keep up with my own mess. I would have been stoned in Israel for working this way on Friday evening—but, I rationalized, I would be utterly unable to rest properly on Sabbath if I had to live in the squalor of my failure to complete six days of work before God's holy day. Technically I was breaking the law, but 30 minutes of floor-scrubbing after Friday sundown seemed a smaller sin than 24 hours of anxiety over living with the tangible evidence of my own failure.

I could never figure out exactly how to keep the Sabbath in a modern world. If Sabbath work was forbidden (except for medical work, of course, since Jesus healed on the Sabbath), how did I justify the role of "unbelievers" who manned the power houses, the police and fire stations, and the pharmacies where, if we faced a medical crisis, we could obtain life-saving drugs (on an emergency basis only)? How could I, in good conscience, even hope that "unbelievers" would eventually come into "the truth" if it meant all of modern society would shut down if everyone kept the fourth commandment properly?

No one could answer my questions. Ellen White gave guidelines for proper Sabbath observance, but she advocated having all work done, the shoes shined, the clothes laid out, the baths taken, and the Sabbath food cooked one-half hour before Friday sundown. Those guidelines were clearly beyond my ability to accomplish. The Old Testament spoke against carrying a burden, doing one's own pleasure, lighting a fire, leaving one's tent, and warned against turning one's foot away from the Sabbath—on penalty of death. Nothing addressed my larger questions about Sabbath's implications for modern society in general.

I remember feeling superior to those who, like some of my mother's cousins, observed all the Old Testament feast days with their Herbert W. Armstrong Worldwide Church of God congregations. I was ignorant of the fact that their total immersion into feasting and "sabbathing" was more consistent than was my sabbatarianism. Moreover, I was completely unaware of the truth about Jesus fulfilling the law.

I was a neurotic mess, feeling simultaneously guilt-ridden and superior to the benighted souls who didn't have "the truth".

Recently I discovered that Paul specifically addressed people like I was who believed the law, taught the law, felt superior to those who didn't "keep" the law, yet failed to keep it themselves:

"But if you…are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?…You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God?" (Romans 2:17-23).

My rationalizing over scrubbing the floor during Sabbath hours had been sin. The Sabbath came with clear commands and consequences, and the Law left no room for rationalizing Sabbath-keeping for a modern society. Furthermore, the law also demanded observing the feast days as well.

I had no business teaching seventh-day Sabbath-keeping to people when I couldn't even keep the day properly. In fact, by doing so, I was actually dishonoring God myself. The law included no clause for doing the best I could; it demanded absolute obedience (Gal. 3:10-12).

What a relief when I learned that Jesus keeps the new covenant for me! "But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises" (Hebrews 8:6).

Jesus fulfilled all the shadows of the Sabbath and is the reality behind every old covenant feast. He alone is holy, and in Him we experience true celebration and Sabbath rest (Heb. 4:1-12)!

In this issue Dale Ratzlaff examines the growing movement of observing the Old Testament feasts. Dennis Palmer writes of his long fight with the shadows of Colossians 2, and Jeff and Sondra Brickell tell their story of leaving Adventism, becoming immersed in the Hebrew Roots movement, and finally finding freedom in Jesus. Cora Holder compares her experience with an unexpected road closure to her journey out of Adventism.

We pray that you will come to know the reality of Jesus who is the Substance behind all the Sabbaths of the Old Testament (Matt. 11:28)! †

 

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