More facts about Shabbat

From June 8th...

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A few more Facts about Shabbat, or Sabbath:

1. Shabbat is Sanctified by God.

2. Shabbat is a sign of the Covenant between God and His people

3. It is the Fourth Commandment

4. Violating Shabbat caused Israel to go into exile.

5. Jesus kept and taught Shabbat

6. God didn't "un-bless" Shabbat

1. Shabbat is Sanctified by God

The Sanctification of the seventh day of the week comes from Genesis 2:1-3:

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (2) And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (3) And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."

The Hebrew word for sanctified is "Kodesh" "Kodosh" or "Kadash" which means "set apart" or "Holy." God blessed the seventh day, He set it apart so it wouldn't be common. He made it special.

Exodus 16:23-36 is the first time Shabbat, or "Sabbath" is named in scripture. Here God, through Moses, was re-teaching His people about His special day that they were forced to forget and take up the pagen practices of the Egyptians. (By the way, only 210 years passed from the time Jacob took his family into Egypt until the Exodus, not the 400 years we were always taught. Clint can show this right there in scripture. After the death of Joseph, a new Pharoah came into power that didn't know Joseph and brought the Hebrews into slavery. It is possible that the Hebrews were slaves for only about 100 years. How quickly a culture can decline. We need to take heed!)

2. Shabbat is a sign of the Covenant between God and His people.

The LORD tells Moses that Shabbat is a sign between the LORD and His people. It is a never-ending covenant: Exodus 31:13-18

(13) Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you. (14) Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. (15) Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. (16) Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. (17) It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

(18) And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.

Who are God's people? Israel, of course and when we accepted Jesus as our Saviour, we became "adopted" into Israel.

3. It is the Fourth Commandment.

To Remember(Zachor) Shabbat is found in Exodus 20:8-11. Incidently, this command has more verses about it than any other commandment. It is very important to the LORD.

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. (9) Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: (10) But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: (11) For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

The Fourth Commandment is restated over and over in various forms throughout the Bible but is emphatically commanded again, with a slight change~"Remember" is changed to "Keep" (Shamor), when Moses re-tells the commandments to the Children of Israel who were about to cross over the Jordan River into the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 "Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. (13) Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: (14) But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. (15) And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. "

Soooooo, Remember the candles I wrote about in an earlier email? The ones in our Shabbat meal called Zachor(Remember) and Shamor (Keep)? Those candles are a Jewish tradition to signify the commands of "Remember the Sabbath" and "Keep the Sabbath." I always wondered why they only used two candles... Pretty cool, huh?!

4. Breaking Shabbat sent Israel into exile

The Bible teaches that Shabbat was insitituted by God at Creation and was kept by Adam and Seth, through Noah, Abraham, and all the way through Joseph. It is not clear if Israel kept Shabbat while in Egypt but they probably couldn't during their time of slavery.

Remember that Israel was broken into two kingdoms after Solomon's death? The Southern Kingdom was known as Judah and consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, with the Levites joining later. The Northern Kingdom was known as Israel and headed by Ephraim (but called Joseph) consisted of the remaining tribes, with Dan (the Judge) not listed.

The reason the Bible gives for Judah's captivity in Babylon is because they (Judah - aka the Jews) profaned the Shmita Year (Sabbath year) and didn't allow the land to rest in order to produce a more abundant, healthier yield.

2 Chronicles 36:20-21 "And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: (21) To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years."

Nehemiah 13:17-18 "Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? (18) Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath."

The Northern Kingdom (Ephraim) was carried into captivity due to disobedience and idolitary.

Ephraim is still lost today. These are the "lost tribes" of Israel which are prophesied to be found and restored in the last days.

5. Jesus kept and taught the Shabbat

Jesus kept the Sabbath; He never broke God's special day!

Luke 4:16, Luke 4:31, Mark 6:1-2, Mark 1:21

What He "violated" were the laws and customs added by the Pharisees and Saducees that had little, if anything to do with God's commandments.

Matthew 12:1-13, Luke 13:10-17, Luke 14:1-6, John 5:8-18, John 7:19-24, John 9:6-16

Even after the Resurrection of Jesus, the Disciples and followers of Jesus continued to keep the Shabbat ON the seventh day. They did NOT change to Sunday. Paul did not preach against Shabbat!

Acts 13:14-44, 1 Corinthians 11:1, Acts 16:13, Acts 17:1-2, Acts 18:1-4

There are too many scriptures in the NT to give in this email. It is recorded at least 84 times where Paul preached and taught on Shabbat, that's not counting the other Apostles.

God set Shabbat apart and made it Holy back in Genesis. He never made it un-holy... Constantine did that. Aaaaarrrrgh!

6. God has not "un-blessed" Shabbat

the Children of Israel's disobedience doesn't change the fact that the Shabbat is still the set-apart day to rest, remember, and keep. What about the New Testament verses of Jesus' resurrectionand the meeting in the Upper Room? A deeper study on the phrase "first day of the week" shows a poor translation into English. A better translation would read "one of the Sabbaths" or "first of the Sabbaths," which is a very specific time of the year; the first Shabbat after Passover and the counting of the seven Shabbats between Passover and Shavuot!

And the famous Revelation phrase of "in the spirit on the Lord's Day..." Where did anyone get the idea this meant Sunday? Jesus said he was Lord of the Sabbath so the Lord's day would still have to be habbath. The "Day of the Lord" is a phrase used several times in the Old Testament that refers to the second coming of the Messiah. John was "In spirit" seeing the events of the end times.

Many people say that the fourth commandment is not in the New Testament but it is definately stated in Hebrews 4:9. Again, a poor translation clouds the reading.

(8) "For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken later about another day. (9) A Sabbath rest remains, therefore, for God's people."

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The Greek word, Sabbitisimos literally means "a keeping of the Sabbath." So perhaps a better wording would be:

(9) So then, it is firmly sure that the people of God are to keep a Sabbath-rest. (Norton NT Peshitta)

Shabbat remains to this very day, God's set-apart time.

Blessings!

~WOW

More about Shabbat

From June 6th...

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Hi everyone!

Last night Shabbat began again. We really look forward to this time when we can pull in, rest and enjoy each other.

I'm still mending from that awful virus and multiple headaches I had this past week. Now Mrs. Grace has it and is miserable and Rachel might be getting it too, poor baby.

We moved our Friday Bible study to Saturday afternoon so our Friday evening looked like this:

The girls and I got the house clean and ready for Shabbat and the Bible study today. Nathan didn't work at the tree job because we were behind on all the mowing. He got us caught up. (We only mow four yards but it takes us two days!)

I am so glad I planned an easy meal because I got hit with some awful stomach cramps right before the evening and wasn't much good for anything!

Since we rescheduled our Bible study for Saturday, we had our own little Shabbat service before the meal complete with wine and the two candles. They are actually named "Zachor" for Remember and "Shamor" for Keep. (More on this later... It's really cool!!!)

We stumbled through the blessings but eveyone seemed to get better. Even Isaac said a little.

Then we ate. I was still crampy but I did eat some. Here was the menu:

gluten free bread (not the greatest but worth a shot)

chicken shawarma (I even had a little!)

vegetables (onions, bell peppers)

steamed broccoli

raw carrots

Salad

fresh strawberries

Each week we study the "Parasha." This week it is Beha'alotekha and is found in Numbers 8:1-12:16. It's title in English is, "When you kindle." So Rebecca thinks she now has scriptural proof that we need to buy her a Kindle from Amazon.com!

Parasha means "portion" or "section" and is the portion of the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy, that all Israel studied, and continues to study during the week. Ezra the scribe is the one who made the schedule of readings during the Babylonian captivity in order to unify the people and re-teach them the Law. There are 54 Parashot, one for each week of a Hebrew leap year (an extra month) so that the entire Torah is read during the course of a year. In a non-leap year, shorter portions are doubled up.

The Haftarah is taken from Zechariah 2:10-4:7.

One theroy of how the haftarah came into practice is when the Israelites were under the cruel authority of Antiochus Epiphanes, reading the Torah was outlawed under penalty of death. Since the books of the Prophets were still available, someone (I don't know who. Clint probably knows...) found correlating themes and teachings and made a reading schedule. That is why the Parasha is sequential and the haftarah is not. Haftarah does not mean half-Torah, it means "concluding portion."

In reading the sermons and parables of Jesus, it is possible to know what time of year it was because he was probably teaching on that week's Parasha that everyone was studying! That is incredibly cool!!!

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Michelle, here is a bit more of what we're learning about Sabbath, or Shabbat, or Shabbos for your VBS. (Sabbath is English, Shabbat is Hebrew, and Shabbos is Yiddish.)

I don't know what ages you will be teaching so here goes. Just take what you need...

Sabbath means rest, intermission, or release. It begins at sundown on Friday and ends sundown Saturday in accordance with Genesis 1:5

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

Shabbat is spelled as shin-bet-tav but from right to left. I wish I could type the hebrew characters for you because it is really neat to learn that little word.

The Paleo (pictograph) Hebrew meanings of the letters are:

Shin~

it looks like two teeth

means sharp, press, eat, two

makes the "sh" sound

Bet~

the image of a tent

means house, family, In

makes the "b" or "v" sound

Tav~

image of crossed sticks (it actually looks like a cross)

means Mark, sign, momument, Covenant

makes the 't' sound

so the sound is Sh-B-T but we say Shabbat. The Paleo meaning of the letters is actually "Two House Covenant" which makes sense because of God making and keeping the Covenant with the two houses of Israel, the Northern tribes and the Southern tribes.

Here's an extremely helpful website that we use...

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/

There is actually more than one type of Sabbath: the weekly, seventh day Sabbath, the yearly or High Sabbath, and the Sabbath Year, called a Sabbatical Year or a Shmita (Shmee-ta).

A Shmita is the seventh year of the agricultural cycle when the land was allowed to rest. (Exodus23:10-11, and Leviticus 25:1-7)

There are seven High Sabbaths and they occur each year during the Hebrew festivals: the first and last day of Unleavened Bread (Hag HaMatzah), Feast of Weeks (Shavuot or Pentecost), Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah), Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and the first and last day of Tabernacles (Sukkot). Passover (Pesach) and First Fruits (Yom Bikkurim) are NOT High Sabbaths.

A High Sabbath can be any day of the week but the weekly Sabbath is every friday evening toSaturday evening, regardless of when the High Sabbath falls. (Clear as mud?)

Yes, you can actually have two Sabbaths back to back as we did for this past Shavuot. The weekly Shabbat was Friday evening, May 29th to Saturday evening, May 30th. Then Shavuot, a High Sabbath, began Saturday evening, May 30 and ended Sunday evening, May 31. So from Friday evening to Sunday evening, it was Sabbath!

You can have a Sabbath, then skip a day and then have a Sabbath ,or they can both be the same 24 hour period; friday evening to saturday evening That happened this year during the first day of Unleavend Bread...

Neverless, the weekly Sabbath is always every Friday evening to Saturday evening, just like clockwork and has been an unbroken chain for centuries because the Jews have kept the Sabbath all this time.

**I will give you NT scripture references for both weekly and High Shabbats later. This email is getting long!**

Shalom Aleichem!

Peace be unto you..

~WOW

Shavuot is coming

From May 29th...

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Hi everyone!

Today is Israel's Independence Day, Yom Ha-Atzma'ut. Tonight begins the Shabbat before Shauvot, (Shav-oo-ote', aka Pentecost) which is one of the High Shabbats.

This week's Parashah, or "Portion" is Naso, which means "Take" and refers to when The Father told Moses and Aaron to "take the sum of the sons of Kohath from among the sons of Levi..." It also teaches about the amazing offerings to the Tabernacle, Nazarite restrictions, and the judgement of the wayward wife. It is a longer reading and an immense study opportunity!

Naso is found in Numbers 4:21-7:89;

Haftarah:Judges 13:2-25

Brit Chadasha: Acts 21:17-26

We are doing our normal Shabbat preparations; cleaning the house, readying for guests, cooking... But since Sunday is also a Shabbat, AND our 23rd anniversary, we are doing a little extra to be ready for that day as well.

The LORD is very kind in that cooking is permissible for a High Shabbat, just no servile work, (work that involves the exchange of money.)

Here is some of what we have learned about Shavuot so far:

Shavuot is one of the Biblical Feasts of the LORD and is not just for the Jews. Just as the Levites are from the tribe of Levi and the Rubanites are from the tribe of Ruben, the Jews are from the tribe of Judah and are only are only 1/12th of the equation.

Shavuot is one of the only feasts NOT given a specific date in the Bible but is determined by counting 50 days, or seven Sabbaths after Bikkurim, or First Fruits, the beginning of the Barley harvest. (Bikkurim is the second day of Hag Ha-Matzah, or Unleavened Bread)

This counting of days between Bikkurim and Shauvot is called Sefirat Ha'omer, or Counting the Omer. An omer is a unit of measurment and was the amount of barley offered on Bikkurim and of wheat offered on Shavuot. It is aprox. 3.7 quarts and makes a really large loaf of bread.

Counting the Omer helps connect the first Pesach, or Passover to the giving of the Law, and the sacrifice of Jesus, Yashua (which means Salvation!) to the giving of the Holy Spirit, the Ruach HaKodesh.

Shavuot happened on the 50th day after the children of Israel left Egypt and was the day The Father gave The Torah, The Law, the Pentatuch, to the children of Israel in HIS own voice from Mt. Sinai. 3,000 men died that day due to disobedience. It was later mandated to be when the first of the wheat harvest was waved before The Alter of the Tabernacle when Israel entered into the Land.

It was one of the three feasts mandated by The LORD for the men to travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the temple. The Greek name for Shavuot, Pentecost which means 50th, is also when The Holy Spirit was given to the Apostles as "tongues of fire." The Apostles, who were NOT in the upper room at this time as commonly taught, but were at the Temple for the Feast of Shavuot, began preaching boldly to the masses who were there from every country for the Feast. The LORD spoke through the Apostles, and every man heard in his own native language. As a result, 3,000 souls were added to the Kingdom on that day.

Some refer to this miracle as the "birth of the church." However, Pentecost is not when the church started. The church started that same day, aprox 1,500 years earlier in Exodus at Shauvot, when the people said "All that the LORD hath said, we will do." Thus, agreeing to the "Ketubah" or marriage covanant with the LORD and entering into a betrothal with HIM.

Hope this helps!

Shabbat Shalom!

~WOW

catching up...

I send a weekly Shabbat post to family and friends letting them know what's going on with us and how a gentile can learn to keep Shabbat. I decided these emails would fit nicely here...

This is from May 22, 2009

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We are busy preparing for our Dinner and Bible Study. The little ones have been jumping around yelling, "Tonight is Shabbat!" They love Shabbat, partly because they can have special treats! LOL!!

Tonight's tentative menu:

gluten free flat bread, I hope it turns out this time!

Big Salad

Lentils

Brown rice w/ savory herbs

steamed veggies

raw veggies

dips and sauces

grilled chicken for the guests

fresh fruit

This week's study is taken from Numbers 1:1-4:20, Hosea 1:10-2:20, and I Corinthians 12:12-20.

Here is a quote from http://www.TorahCalendar.com...

"Today the Parashah is Be-Midbar which means 'In the Wilderness.' Be-Midbar is also the Hebrew name for the book of Numbers. Be-Midbar was the Parashah on the first Sabbath after the ascension of the Messiah.

Tonight is Shabbat Mevarekhin which means "Sabbath of Blessing." It is the last Sabbath before the new moon. Shabbat Mevarekhin does not occur in Month 6 as the entire month anticipates the new moon of Month 7."

Shabbat Shalom everyone!

Sabbath Peace...

~ WOW

Holy Conversations

I just have to share this. My 5 year old son was yelling out the window, listening to his voice echo back and was soooo excited. He kept yelling, "Hello!, Can you hear me? Hi! This is Joshie! I love you!" I said, "Are you playing with your echo?" He said, "No, Mommy, I'm talking to God!"