Stephen
Terry, Director
Old
Testament Prophets
Commentary
for the October 17, 2026, Sabbath School Lesson
"Then
the Lord said to me, 'The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not
sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you
false visions, divinations, idolatries, and the delusions of their own minds.'" Jeremiah
14:14
In
the beginning, we had Eden where Adam and Eve dwelt. It was the epitome of
beauty and peace. If a young married couple were to pick out the most beautiful
place to have their honeymoon, no matter how nice, it could not hold a candle
to Eden. It was created by God out of his word. He spoke love and Creation
happened. He spoke love and Eden happened. He spoke love, and Adam and Eve
embodied that love in their characters. They were created from love to be love
for God himself is love. (Genesis
1:27, 1
John 4:8) They lived in harmony with Creation and in harmony with God. They
walked with him in Eden as we walk through meadows today, talking and sharing
the joys of each day as a child will with a loving parent. Even though he
created it all, every time Adam or Eve shared with him a new discovery with so
many wonderful things from the overwhelming elephants with their magnificent
trumpeting to the small, but beautifully iridescent insect, he thrilled along
with them, rejoicing in seeing the world through their childlike innocence.
We
are not told how long this harmony lasted, but one day the lie came to visit
Eden. (John
8:44) Maybe the first couple were naïve having never been lied to before.
God and angels may have warned them to be careful, but we know how well that
works sometimes. How often are we told not to click on dubious links on the
internet? Yet, despite all the warnings, tech support workers never seem to run
out of emergencies where those of us who should know better have clicked on one
of those links anyway. We were warned. We clicked anyway because someone
promised something that seemed too good to be true, and evil entered into our
phone, our tablet, or our computer just as it entered the world when Eve and
then Adam chose to click on that metaphorical tree.
When
that happened, everything changed. Adam and Eve no longer wanted to walk with
God in Eden. Instead, they hid from him. (Genesis
3:8-10) Why did they hide? Something new had come into the world with the
evil: fear. Although there was no reason for it, the presence of evil switched
their default from loving God to fearing him. Though it broke his heart to be
separated from his own image in Creation, he placed separation between himself
and humanity lest their fear destroy them. But he did not abandon them. There
were those like Enoch who refused to believe the lies about God. Even Noah preserved
enough faith that God could still speak with him and give him hope though deluged
with the evil flooding the world. Mankind could think of nothing but evil
constantly and fear ran rampant everywhere. (Genesis
6:5)
Such
fear is destructive and not only poses a danger to everyone, given free rein, humanity
could bring about its own extinction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrate how
close we have already come and over eight billion people live in constant fear
that apocalyptic, nuclear fire capable of ending all life is only moments away.
The killing began shortly after fear and evil had their way when Cain killed
Abel not far from the gates of Eden. It has continued unabated ever since.
Hundreds of millions have been swept into premature graves by all the violence
generated because of that fear. Even now, two countries, Russia and Ukraine,
remain set about that evil business as they murder and bury a generation of
their people because they are afraid of what might happen if they cease
fighting. The former invaded the latter, and the latter sought survival by
defending themselves, and both now have a tiger by the tail, afraid to let go.
Despite
all of this, God has not abandoned us. Love does not do that. Love never gives
up. When he realized that fear kept people from being able to communicate with
their Creator, he sent human beings like themselves to speak to the people and
woo them back into a loving relationship with him. Those people were often
called prophets. They preached about humanity's plight, and God's desire to
restore and honor those he had lovingly brought into being. But repeatedly we
chose to believe the lie and turn from God in fear instead of lovingly
embracing our Creator. To the very end of time, we are continually called to return
to that relationship. John the Revelator cites the message as being proclaimed
by the first of three angels before the apocalypse. "Worship him who made the
heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water." (Revelation
14:6-7) It is a theme echoed earlier in the Pentateuch and memorialized through
the observance of the Sabbath.
"Remember
the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your
work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall
not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female
servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six
days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them,
but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day
and made it holy." Exodus 20:8-11
Why
does this close relationship between Creation and Sabbath exist? It is because the
Sabbath was the crowning act of love, a gift of grace to humanity in perpetuity
to remind us that God does not love us because we are lovable. He loves us
because he himself is love. The Sabbath was the very next thing created after human
beings before we could ever do anything to earn such a rest. The Bible has preserved
it throughout its pages because it also is about God's character, his Creation
in the beginning and his offer of re-creation of his loving image in our lives.
Prophets throughout the Old Testament tried to remind people of the connection.
Isaiah who prophesied so much about the coming of the Messiah also prophesied
about the importance of the Sabbath. (Isaiah
58:13-14) and even prophesied that it would be observed in heaven. "'From
one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come
and bow down before me,' says the Lord." (Isaiah 66:23)
Strangely,
though, even among Christians who claim God as their creator, the Sabbath has
been done away with and another day substituted in its place. Sunday has been
claimed as the new day of worship and as a replacement to honor Jesus and the
resurrection based on his rising from the tomb on Sunday. This is despite no
command in scripture to substitute a new day and despite Jesus resting in the
tomb over the Sabbath. Since the beginning, the lie has been all about separating
humanity from their Creator, and this has seemed to do the trick. The day of
rest no longer has a connection to Creation. Why would the lie seek such a
separation? It is an ultimate act of disrespect to refuse a gift given in love,
especially an eternal gift, a memorial of the love between God and his creation
that will exist for all time. It says what we create is better than what God
creates, and we can cast aside his gift at any time and replace it with an ersatz
gift crafted of human works instead of God's grace.
The
Sabbath has been a special target of false religionists for millennia as they
have loaded it down with so much legalism, exercising every effort to make it a
burden and to cause separation between God and humanity, between lover and
beloved. Sadly, even among the remnant who still value the gift God gave us
with the Sabbath are those who still try to make it so burdensome that there is
no longer God's intended delight in the relationship. The picture of God they
create is someone sitting on his throne in heaven watching his Rolex to make
sure no one violates even one second of the Sabbath hours with any kind of joy.
This reminds me of a fabled Seventh-day Adventist employer who would sit outside
his employee's home watching the hands
on his watch for the exact moment of the sunset on Saturday, when he
could legally call his employee back to work. Whether or not such a person
existed, we perpetuate such ideas when we publish sunset schedules that give
the precise moment for Sabbath beginning and ending. The series about Jesus, "The
Chosen," has an episode where Mary celebrates her first Sabbath, and the
beginning of Sabbath is said to be the moment the first star appears in the sky.
This is a beautiful thought and is dependent upon the eyesight of each believer
rather than some magisterium decreeing the moment Sabbath begins and ends as
though it were a legal statute rather than a loving gift from God. His wish is
to see us open the gift and desires to rejoice along with us as we discover the
joy and love he placed in that day.
"Thus, the heavens and the earth
were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the
work he had been doing; so, on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from
all the work of creating that he had done." (Genesis 2:1-3)
God has given us a gift that blesses
us for all eternity. Every biblical prophet has rejoiced to receive that gift,
including Jesus himself (Luke
4:16), but modern day "prophets" have declared we do not need that gift
anymore, and they have crafted a new day in its place. Whose gift will we open?