Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28, verse 19, go therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy ghost. Welcome to go teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through australian and international speeches. And here is today's presenter, Doctor Ken Landers.
I'm saying it's a bombshell because it's a message that I believe may unsettle some people here today. I believe it's a message that may offend some people here today. I believe it's a message that may enlighten us today.
And, you know, whenever I get asked to come to Waitara, I always think, well, it's different in Waitara. The people don't feed on milk, they feed on the solid word. So today I want to bring you the solid word.
And that word comes from Isaiah, chapter 58, verse 13 and 14. And before we start, let's have a prayer. Father, I stand here before you, a frail, unworthy human being, only by your grace and your mercy, after all my failings and my faults you've preserved before this time.
Please use me, Lord, frail and human as I may be, to bring the words that you've laid on my heart today to the people, Father, for whom Jesus has died, that are sitting here before me. Some of them may be on Zoom or on YouTube, but those that are here, Father, may they open their hearts and their minds so that your word, not my word, your word, may find a dwelling place in their hearts. Is my prayer.
In Jesus name, amen. The message is entitled, what's our delight? The pastor came and he made a small error. He said, what's your delight? No, I'm not here to ask you what's your delight.
I'm here to ask myself, what's my delight? You see, we delight in a lot of things as human beings, as people, as christians, as 7th day Adventists. We delight in a lot of things. But what are they? I've got a few slides here.
There's a little boy who, I think it may have been a race. I don't know what it was, but you can see he's delighted. The one on your right hand side is your left hand side, your left hand side and my right hand side.
But you can see he's got a number three at his feet and the little one in the middle or next to him has got a one. And I've taken a bit of advantage of iPhone and you can see the little boy with the one. He looks very unsettled, doesn't he? He looks upset.
What's this guy so happy about? Doesn't he know? He came third? But that's what delight is. And different people delight in different things. And don't get too excited, ladies, when you see the next picture, because I'm sure most of you would not afford over $170,000 for a pair of shoes.
Sorry. I saw some of you. Sorry, I shouldn't say most of you, my apologies.
I'm sure some of you may be able to afford it, I don't know. But then, of course, there's some guys that want to drop a million on that, you know, take it out of your pocket and everybody can see you got class, you got status. Or maybe you'd rather put 14 million on that thing.
I don't know what it is. Somebody asked me, what's it made of? I think it was made from mud or something, I don't know. But some russian oligarch gave that to his wife as a birthday gift and it was 14 million plus.
Or really, if you're really silly and you delight in silliness, then 50 odd million for that glass, that bottle. But as humans, we often delight in things that are ephemeral, things that are around us, things or circumstances that are not going to be lasting. And our verses today call on us to delight in something completely different.
Turn to your bibles. Isaiah, chapter 58, verse 13 and 14. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath.
I'm using the King James Version of the Bible. I used to be an NASB man, but I moved back to the King James and there's not time to talk about it now. So I'm sure you can ask the pastor if you're not a king James man or person, sorry.
Or lady. Or if thou turn away 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, nor speaking thine own words. Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.
And I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. What about Isaiah? The Book of Isaiah is often looked upon as being one of the most profound books of the Bible, the most quoted book in the New Testament.
It's the longest of the prophetic books and it's got 66 chapters. It uses more words than any other book in the Bible. So when I say more words, more different words, over 2600 words, more than even psalms, which uses about 2100 words.
But really Isaiah as a prophetic book is about salvation. 26 times you find that word in the book of Isaiah and in the other prophetic books two or three times or four times. So it's been called the Bible in a book because there are 66 chapters.
And we all know that there are 66 books of the Bible. 39 of those books or the 39 of the chapters, sorry, of Isaiah, are labelled as or said to be the Old Testament because they're about history. And the last 27 chapters are about eschatology.
You all know what that is by now, I mean, I'm in Watara after all. You know, if I was anywhere else I'd explain to you what it means. No, it means end times.
The 27 chapters are about the end times. And I don't know where you sitting, I don't know where you are in your mind, I don't know where you are in your estimation of what's happening in the world. But I believe you may argue or differ from me.
That's okay. I believe we are living in the end times. So the message today has got a connection to the end times because it's a message about God's day.
You see, there's only one time in the Bible that God says my holy day and that is the 7th day. If you've got time to waste. Oh, sorry, my apologies.
I'm talking to myself. Of course. I sometimes waste my time watching things on YouTube.
I only, only work two days a week now. You know, I've taken a break from working 80, 90 hours, 100 hours a week, which I used to do when I was younger. And now I work two days a week, 16 hours.
Gee, what a life. How lucky I am, how blessed I am. I should say not lucky.
But if you looking at things on YouTube, you will find a rise in the attacks against a church with three letters. You know what that stands for? Sda. And people are calling into question whether we need to keep God's holy day.
God only calls one day his holy day. That's the Sabbath day. We're not going to look at that now.
What we're going to look at is seven things that are spoken in these verses that we need to do on the Sabbath, that we need to do before the Sabbath, that we need to do in connection with the Sabbath. Why the number seven? Because the number seven is the same number as the Sabbath. 7th day, seven things.
We all know that the number seven has got a symbolism associated with in the scripture. It's the number of perfection, the number three is the number of divine perfection. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The most holy place was a cube. The city of Jerusalem is a cube. That's the number of divine perfection.
But we're looking at the number of perfection. So there are seven things that I have identified. Go with me as we go through them.
The first one is turn away thy foot from the Sabbath. What does God mean by saying turn away your foot? In other words, God doesn't mean that you must not go to church on the Sabbath. We say that as human beings.
Don't tramp all over my patch. In other words, metaphorically, you are messing with my space. You are dominating where you shouldn't be dominating.
You are interfering where you shouldn't interfere. It's a metaphorical statement. If you turn away your foot, in other words, you don't mess with the Sabbath.
That's the first thing. What is our mindset? As we find ourselves approaching the Sabbath day? What is our mindset? And then God says, call the Sabbath a delight. I've got to be honest with you, I was challenged when I first started reading these verses because I don't think I've ever thought of the Sabbath as a delight, really.
A delight. Something that you look forward to is a delight. Something that you crave for is what you delight, something that you want to re experience.
And experience is a delight. And God says, we must call the Sabbath a delight. Now don't tell me, I'm a legalist.
There's two pastors here. You know, I always get nervous when there's two pastors in the audience because, you know, I've got to be careful. They may come to me afterwards and say, brother, I just need to talk to you privately.
This is not legalism. This is not climbing 24 steps in the city on the seven hills. This is not walking across Spain because you want to be righteous.
These are things we must do, but you dont need to move a finger to do them. Calling the Sabbath a delight is not works. It means that you've got a frame set, you got a mindset, you got a new paradigm of looking at God's day as a special day.
And we're going to see that as we go further into this message. Because God is making himself available in a special way on his day. That's why he put it aside for a special use.
That's why he said it's a holy day. That's why he says, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Remember the only commandment that starts with the word remember is the commandment that people tell you you should forget.
If you go online, they come up with all fanciful interpretations. The Sabbath, as a model is part of the ceremonial law. What a load of nonsense.
The Sabbath is not part of the cyrembonial law. The Sabbath is the moral law. God's law was written by God with his finger in stone to make a point to the world.
This is not alterable, this is not changeable. This is not something that you can use an eraser and get rid of it. Moses wrote in a book, Moses words were put on the side of the ark, but God's word was put in the ark.
And that's why he calls it the ark of the testament. That's why he calls it the ark of the covenant. That's why he says that my covenant will stand for a thousand generations a generation.
In Bible times, depending on which bible you look at, is either 38 years or 40 years. When I went to school, 38 times 1000 was 38,000 years. The world hasn't been around for 38,000 years.
In fact, the dinosaurs haven't been around for 6000 years. But the scientists will tell you it was 62 million years, right. How come they still got blood in them? That's liquid.
Because people believe what the scientists tell them. And the scientists don't want to know the truth for themselves. This scientist did the same experiment 19 times because she couldn't believe that a dinosaur had liquid blood in it.
Go figure. That's why we need discernment in today's world. We need discernment.
We need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes so that we can see that not everybody's selling you or telling you the truth. So God's word cannot be altered. And how do we call the Sabbath? Keep that in your mind.
We're coming back to that word, delight. How do we call the Sabbath? Or do we call the Sabbath the delight? Then God goes on. Is it working? I'm pressing the right button.
Oh, sorry. Number three, he says, honour him. Honour God.
Here comes a big roadblock. Or should I say a mental block? Here comes something that I'm starting to think. How far do you go when you say, honour God? I want to challenge you, my brothers and my sisters.
I'm not here to throw stones, I'm not here to point fingers. But brothers and sisters, friends, young people, we worship a mighty God. We worship a God who is so mighty he can't be contained in our minds.
He is above our thinking processes. He's above us in so many ways. But how do we honour him? You know, this morning I left.
I left the apartment that I'm living and I thought to myself, why are you leaving so late? I have a prayer meeting or a Bible study at 08:00 every Sabbath morning. And I have people from Willywood attending from different countries, but there's no excuse for me to be late. If I was prepared, if I was ready, I'd be ready at 08:00 and 09:00 when the prayer meeting is finished, I would walk out and I would be able to come to church on time.
Am I honouring God by just rocking up whenever I like? Because, oh, I've had a Bible study, so that's my excuse, you know, that's why I'm late. Had a Bible study. You know, we would never rock a blade for court.
You rock a blade for court, you'd be in big trouble. And you're not even rocking up for God. You're rocking up for some lawyer, some judge, somebody who earns three times more than you or four times just because they got b a l l B q c behind their names.
They can boss you around. The point is, friends, I want to challenge you today, young people, I want to challenge you. If we can honour people by being on time, if we can honour people by our attitude, by our mental frame set as we go to visit them, then how do we honour God? Because God says.
I'm not saying it. God says, it's in the Bible. Don't look at me.
I'm just a weak human being. I'm not perfect, I'm not faultless, I'm not flawless. God says, honour him.
And, you know, we really need to think about it. Because, you see, God doesn't work on megascale. Only God has put the planets into existence.
Yes, but God works on micro scale. He doesn't work in millimetres, he works in nanometers. 1 nm is one.
Pardon me, 101,000. Sorry, millionth of a millimetre. That's God's scale.
He's the God of small things. He's put you together and he does so many millions of things in your body every day that if you were to think about it, you would be down on your knees sobbing and asking God for forgiveness for all the times you've abused your body. Because God is a God whose genius is beyond our comprehension and he puts us together in a way that scientists can't explain.
I won't even start talking about the brain. I'll be here still this afternoon. And you'd be past probably all half asleep.
But just think about the brain. In between my fingers is the. Sorry, I'm not a brainiac.
Okay, think. I'm claiming to be a brainiac. But you put your fingers to your head.
Between your fingers are the most powerful machine on the planet. Period. Full stop.
And for scientists to do the same, they need a building which is 6000 square metres. Which costs over a billion dollars and which needs 90,000 litres of water a minute to cool down. It costs enough to feed 10,000 homes with electricity because of the electricity it needs per day.
But God has given you a machine that is more powerful than that computer. So God is a God that we must honour because he is a God beyond our comprehension. And number four says, not doing your own thing.
And number five, not finding your own pleasure. Notice in verse 13 it says, pardon me, not doing your own pleasure. Here it talks about not finding your own pleasure.
In other words, the one is physical and this one is mental. You're not doing anything. You finding.
In other words, you in a mental process of finding your own pleasure nor speaking your own words. Some more big food, I think. Why is it on Sabbath we can't find things to talk about? You know, I've been in so many dinners on a Sabbath where people are talking about the cost of living.
Really? Is that what we're going to talk about up in heaven? Interest rates are going up. Yeah, electricity is going up. Cost of tickets.
What can we find nothing to praise God for on the Sabbath that we cannot lift our conversation to be on a heavenly plane. I had a conversation with this friend of mine. He's from South Africa.
I met him recently and we were talking. I was going to invite him for dinner at a thai restaurant. He says, oh, I don't like to go to Thai.
You know, because they don't have meat there, man. I said, brother, what you going to eat when you get to heaven? He says, your uncle Ken. In other words, wow, Uncle Ken, that's a heavy thought.
It's true, isn't it? I don't think God is going to be barbecuing up in heaven. Tell me if I'm wrong. Last Saturday night I went to a man versus meat meeting.
Some friend, not from the church, invited me to this meeting. Man versus meat. They had to feed me.
Vegetarian, of course, vegan. But I got a nice gentle curry. Yeah, it was good.
But the point is, brothers and sisters, pardon me, how is it that on the Sabbath, which is God's day, which God has given us for a day of rest, which God has given us for a day of renewal, which God has given us for a day of restoration, of not renovation, of rejuvenation, that we cannot find subject matter to discuss. That is in keeping with God's day. Surely if we count the blessings that God has given us, we'd have so many things to talk about.
You've made it through the week. Think about all the thousands that haven't made it through this week. That alone should keep us busy for a few hours.
Then there's two promises I've got to keep moving. Two promises. Then shalt thou delight thyself in the lord.
God says, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father. So those are the two promises that come in verse 14. After the seven things that we've spoken about.
God gives these two promises. So what's the first promise? What does it mean to ride upon the high places of Israel? I want to put it to you that because this chapter is part of the eschatology, is part of the end time. This is a pointer to what's going to happen at the end of time.
Deuteronomy 30, 212 and 13. When God led Israel out of slavery, the promise was he would make them to ride on the high places of the earth. So what's the connection between the slavery of Israel and our situation today? Those that honour God and his Sabbath, he will thus honour God, will cause us to ride on the high places.
What's the connection? It's slavery. The Israelites were slaves physically, but we are slaves spiritually. We are slaves to the things of the world.
So God is going to lead us out of slavery, out of being confined to one place, to a point where we going to live, and we're not going to look for money for a ticket. I was just thinking about this last night. Just think about it.
You won't need a passport up in heaven. You won't need to stand in a queue, go to the airport for 2 hours so that you can get into the plane. No, you want to be in the next galaxy, you're there.
You know, we don't think about those things. But God is going to remove us from the confines of these physical bodies that we have and he's going to give us new bodies. He's going to give us.
Maybe my nose will be a bit smaller. I don't know. Some people say I got a big nose.
Sorry, I shouldn't say that, but I know I'll have my hair back. But the point is, friends, that God wants to lift us from the conditions in which we are living and give us something that's going to be so mind boggling, so mind blowing that we going to struggle to accept it. He's going to deliver us from slavery.
And what's the next one he's going to feed us on the heritage of Jacob. What was Jacob's heritage? This is something that I struggled with to find out what the answer is. And the world was the heritage of Jacob because when Jacob fled from his brother who wanted to kill him, because he had duped his father into handing over the birthright, he had a dream and God gave him a promise.
All families of the earth were to be blessed through Jacob. And we are God's spiritual Israel. There's no longer Israel, but there's a spiritual Israel and that's who we are.
So these blessings apply to us. So let's make a link here between what we're doing today and what is in the end time. What we are talking about is the Sabbath, is the fact that it's God's holy day.
And what does the book of Revelation say? And I just want to share these three verses with you. I'm sure you know all of them already. I don't need to go through them, so I'll just flick through them very quickly.
Revelation 1217 says, the remnant which keep the commandments. There's a clear, clear as to me, a clear as crystal message in the book of Revelation that there's only going to be two classes, those who have the mark of the beast and those who have the seal of God. You see, God knows we don't like big choices.
Now some of you may disagree, but psychologists, I studied this because I preached a message about it some years ago. I studied this. Psychologists know that humans don't want multi choice.
They prefer less choice. And people have found that out. The more choice people have in the shop, the less they're going to buy.
So God gives us two choices. We either follow God or we follow the beast. Simple, easy.
You can't say, oh God, you know, I didn't know what to do because I had so many choices. No, God gives us two choices. These keep the commandments of God in the testimony of Jesus, revelation 14, and worship him that made the heaven and earth and the sea.
Where do those words come from? They come from Exodus, chapter 20, verse ten. The fourth commandment is the commandment with the most words. I counted the hebrew words.
It's 55 hebrew words. And there are 163 hebrew words in the whole commandments. So one third of the commandment of the commandments is just about the Sabbath in the original language.
And then finally, revelation 20 214. This ties back to what I was saying about modern translations. In the modern translations, they don't have this verse.
They say, blessed are they that wash their robes. But the King James Bible says, blessed are they that do his commandments. So it's not about the fact that the commandments are thrown out.
God has given us his law, and his law is not changeable. It's immutable that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city. So three things.
I want to just focus on these three things very quickly. I've got seven minutes. The Sabbath.
The importance of the Sabbath is that it's a reminder of our creator. It's a reminder of the fact that God is a God who is beyond our comprehension, who spoke the world into existence. He didn't do anything.
He just spoke, and it happened. The Sabbath. The word Sabbath in the over 150 languages means rest.
Shabbat means rest. Sabado subuto. All those words in different languages, they all mean rest.
And the Sabbath is a time of rhythm. I want to introduce you to this, because I came across this. The word came to me from the Lord.
Think about the rhythm that the Sabbath brings. And I was amazed in my preparation. I was doing a lot of research or a lot of looking for rhythm and friends.
Your body operates on rhythms. We call them circadian. But without you thinking every day, your body is being taken through cycles, through rhythms.
Your body turns itself off as you. As it's coming towards sleeping, it turns itself off. And as it's coming towards daylight, it turns itself on.
There's many hormones and proteins that are being manufactured. Those of you that are medical people will know what I'm talking about. Your blood pressure goes down as you start waking up, your blood pressure goes up, your cortisol goes up, because you need to be moving.
All those things are the rhythm of life. And by resting on the Sabbath, you are fitting into God's rhythm. Because, you see, God didn't need to stop working.
God is not a human being that he must take a break, that he must have a holiday, that he must go away to escape what's going on. But God stopped so that we can enter into his rest. And God started a rhythm.
123456, a break. 12345. And the French, those of you that know history, you know what happened during the french revolution.
They said, no, we. We're going to throw this out. We're going to have a ten day week.
What happened? They started breaking down. The point is that our bodies need rest. And God gave you a brain that is adjusting, that is just configuring your body for a rest.
And I was amazed to find even plants have a rhythm. Somebody, some scientist, has taken a plant and put the plant in a cupboard. But he found that the plant was still going through the rhythm.
So, rhythms of life, by keeping the Sabbath, we entering into God's rhythm and we communing with him in a special way, like we've never communed with him before. I just want to share very quickly what the scientists are doing now. There's one group in somewhere in Denmark or somewhere they've been for the last ten.
They're going to. When it comes to 2028, they would have spent ten years studying rhythm. Because rhythm affects our bodies, many people probably don't think about it much, the professor says, but the rhythm is extremely important in almost everything we do is necessary for understanding, for engaging in dialogue, and for coordinating and synchronising ourselves with one another, says Professor Danielson.
That's the. She's looking after this rhythm centre. It's called a rhythm centre.
Rhythm, time and motion. And then another neuroscientist says, social encounters with rhythm influence our attitudes. This is all research.
It was done that showed that people will connect or think more highly of somebody with whom they have a rhythm. Of course, the experiment they did was there was a barrier, and somebody was sitting on the other side of the barrier, and the people were here, the subjects, and the person on the other side was typing a certain rhythm. And those people that were the subjects of the research had to type a rhythm.
And when the person that they didn't see was typing the same rhythm, at the end of the experiment, they were asked, what do you think about this person? And if it was the same rhythm? They said, yes, it's a good person. It's wonderful. And if the person wasn't typing the same rhythm, then they were negative.
So without us even thinking about it, we are affected by rhythm. And I want to challenge you. Enter into God's rhythm.
Enter into his rest. Put aside the Sabbath. Delight in it, because God wants us to delight in it.
That last research came from that book by this person, Nina Krause. So what does it mean? We saw. I just very quickly go back through the.
Oh, sorry, I'm connecting. I'll stop. I'll just very quickly go back to those two words, delight.
Verse 13 says, we must call the Sabbath the delight. And verse 14 says, then shalt thou delight. So this word comes up twice, but each time it's not the same word.
In the first verse, it's a hebrew word called oneg, which is a noun or a naming word. And God is saying that we must call the Sabbath, we must give it a name, and that is the light. I must admit I've not thought of it.
In English, the word means a feeling of great pleasure. On Thursday I was standing in the post office, and as I was waiting for a parcel, and as I was standing there, I heard these squeals of delight. I could hear this person was having great delight.
I looked around, was a little girl, I think she must have been about two years or three years old, and she had this furry little puppy in her hand and she was throwing it up in the air and she was squealing, she was uttering this noise. Her face was just beaming. It was squeals of the light.
And let's acknowledge that the spirit of Christ alone can stir in our heart this desire and give us the power to delight in Jehovah. Those of you who are students of the word and theological things may have heard this person before, aw Tozer. And this is what he says.
He's not an Adventist. We pursue God because, and only because he has first put in us an urgent that spurs us to the pursuit. And when the Holy Spirit shows us God as we admire him, as he is.
Sorry. When the Holy Spirit shows us God as he is, we admire him to the point of wonder and delight. God is sovereign.
The spirit, Toza says, is the fire that kindles the soul, the spring that moves, the watch, the wind that drives the ship. And just as prayer is the work of the spirit in the heart, so delight in the Sabbath owes itself to the same author. Verse 14 says, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.
In verse 13, that was the word oneg. In verse 14, it's another hebrew word, anag, and this is a verb which we all know is a doing word, and we should recognise that it follows on if we practise these seven principles for keeping the Sabbath, then we will keep God's day holy. I found this quote in the website precept awesome.
The idea of this verb is that the one who obeys this command to delight experiences a sense of joy in the Lord. The picture is of one who enjoys the Lord, taking pleasure in him, experiencing satisfaction in him. It's the call for us as finite created beings to take exquisitely light in the infinite, transcendent, majestic, glorious creator of the universe.
And Matthew Henry, a well known non adventist theologian and a commentary on the whole Bible, had this to say. The Sabbath is a sign between God and his professing people. His appointing it is a sign of his favour to them and their observing.
It is a sign of their obedience to him. On Sabbath days we must not follow our callings or our pleasures in all we say and do. We must put a difference between this day and other days.
Are we finding the Sabbath to be a delight? That's the question I want to leave with each one of us. Or is it a burden? Is it an imposition? Is it something that we must just, you know, grin and bear it and ah, it's just the, it's just hiatus. It's just tripped me up.
I'm too busy, really. Or is it just something we must do for a couple of hours, you know, just get it out of the way and then we can go on? Is it something that we look forward to and take delight in? I don't know what Sabbath is, but to each one of you, friends, God knows. God knows our hearts.
He knows our minds. I said in the Sabbath school this morning, he knows our motives, things that we don't even think about. God knows them.
I'm asking you to have an experience like you've never had it before, to find a light in God's day every Sabbath. And when he comes, we'll all be ready. We'll all be waiting with great delight.
Let's close our eyes. Father, I want to thank you for your words. I thank you for your blessings that you pour out upon each one of us every day.
And o Father, open our eyes and our minds to our own need of having a deeper, a more meaningful relationship with you. Of delighting in your holy day and delighting in you, of seeking to please you in everything that we do or say, not only on the Sabbath, but every day of our lives. And may the Holy Spirit, Father, be given free rein in our lives.
To clean, to renew, to change, to revamp, to remake, to remodel. Father, may the Holy Spirit be working to change us into the people that will be fit for your kingdom, is my prayer. In Jesus name, amen.
This message was made available by the Waitara Seventh-day Adventist Church. For more resources like this, visit waitarachurch.org. It's been a pleasure bringing you this programme here on 3ABN Australia radio.
