Perhaps you have noticed that attendance at Sabbath school seems to be shrinking. Not only that, but people are arriving later and later until many walk into the church at about the same time the pastor begins the sermon. I suppose we shouldn’t pay too much attention to numbers, but it’s discouraging to plan an interesting program for a mere sprinkling of people. More and more we are seeing the traditional program (several people offering the prayers, special music, and mission story) disappearing and the time going directly to the study of the lesson.
Did I say to the study of the lesson? Well, not always. The lesson may or may not be studied. Sometimes the time is dedicated to a particular subject of interest to the people who attend. There are even classes that are built around the personality and view points of the teacher. If the teacher is interesting and they have some particularly novel approach to a topic, then the people who attend the class are likely to be more interested in their particular viewpoints than whatever may be the subject that week in the lesson quarterly.
Personally, I believe that we would do well to make our Sabbath school classes relevant and meaningful. There is something to be said for offering a class that has a special focus. However, I do feel however that all Sabbath school classes ought to be about the word of God, even though it may not exactly follow the lesson study.
One troublesome phenomenon we are likely to come across these days is to begin whatever lesson study with a “Let’s open the Bible and see how far out or contemporary we can be in our interpretation of it” attitude. There seems to be an “I’m bored with the old-fashioned view points; give me something off the wall to consider” mind set.
Now, it’s true that we ought to be thinking deeper and wider and higher than ever before about spiritual things. But I don’t believe we need to go off the deep end. Jesus said that we ought to be not only hearers of the word (and I guess by that He also meant discussers of the word or even students of the word) but we ought to be doers of the word. A person who isn’t into being a doer of the word will regret it when the testing time comes.
Speaking of being doers of the word, to hear some discussions these days, the bottom line seems to be not how to be a doer of the word but how to get out of being a doing the word. My wife told me of a Sabbath school discussion she was present for. Part of the lesson was about Christian maturity. Someone suggested a hypothetical situation and asked what a mature Christian should do in a certain instance as opposed to a person who was, so to speak, a baby in spiritual things.
Now, that is a good question and one we ought to get a handle on. There is nothing wrong with discussing and understanding the meaning of Christian maturity. But take care of where such a discussion can lead! Someone said, “Suppose you woke up one Sabbath morning and got the idea of going to the beach to meditate on the Bible. By way, I hope they weren’t thinking of meditating on the Bible at Daytona Beach, or New Smyrna Beach, or Miami Beach. It would be hard to meditate on spiritual things at those beaches. But I suppose those are not the worries of a mature Christian! Anyway, the question was, What would a mature Christian choose to do--go to church or go to the beach? Back in the “old days,” when a spade was a spade, the answer would have been, Go to church. But in this contemporary society, we are not looking for the easy answer.
It is difficult to understand this mindset; because when I am having trouble with my car, the first thing the mechanic does is to look for the obvious. He doesn’t start taking the engine apart right away; he runs a process of elimination to find the problem. But then, as I was saying, in spiritual things we seem to be fed up with pat answers, even at the risk that some of them might be right.
So here we are with a dilemma. What would the mature Christian do--go to church or go to the beach? To say we should go to church sounds old fashioned; like, “What do you do on Sabbaths?”
“I go to church.”
“What’s wrong with you? You go to church on your day off?”
You’re much more mature and “with it” if, when someone asks you what you do on Sabbaths, you can say, “I go to the beach and meditate.”
“Oh, really? Far out, man, far out.”
After a lengthy and spirited Sabbath school discussion, just as the bell rang the consensus was struck that the mature Christian would go to the beach.” Once said, the others in the class nodded wisely, leaving everyone to wonder why they were here instead of at the beach.
I believe that we must think deep thoughts, but not at the expense of going off the deep end. There is nothing wrong with having an open mind, provided our brains don’t fall out, if you know what I mean. The question about what a mature Christian will do on the Sabbath is not as difficult as some would try to make it, especially if the purpose of our study of the word is to be not just hearers but doers of the word. This class didn’t have to take the whole spiritual life apart to come up with the right answer to this one. It is an old-fashioned answer, although it may sound a little boring. You remember the text that says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Heb.10:25). There is also the text that says that Jesus had the custom of going to church on the Sabbath. And the book of Acts tells us that the apostle Paul went to the synagogue every Sabbath on his missionary journeys.
I am afraid that in some of our so-called study of the word these days we are sometimes coming at it with an attitude of, “Let’s take that text apart,” and then we don’t know how to get it back together again.
When I was eleven or twelve years old, I decided one day that I was going to take the insides of the back wheel of my bicycle apart. That wasn’t difficult. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to get it back together!
I am afraid that too often we are into taking the word apart and not putting it back together right. This is why even before we understand what the spiritual life is about we ought to put it into practice. When we are practicing the word, we will know what it is about and where everything fits in.
You might be thinking that it is not fair to ask you to do something that you don’t understand. But, why would that not be fair? There are a lot of things we do that we do not understand. We eat before we understand nutrition; we sleep and don’t know how it works. Some people drive a car and don’t know how to change a spark plug!
Please don’t tell me that we have to understand the word of God before we put it into practice. In fact, I am convinced that we will not be able to understand the deep things of God until we are actively obeying Him to the best of our knowledge.
Obedience to the known will of God is a condition before we can go on to the unknown. Faith always precedes understanding. You can check out the miracles of Jesus to prove that. He never explained to a person He was about to heal what He was doing. The person had to take it or leave it. And I don’t know of any who left it.
I am not saying that we should not try to understand and learn more and more of the things that have to do with the eternal; but let us never forget that we can know all there is to know about nutrition and still be starving to death. If we are not doers of the word, we are, to use Jesus’ words, foolish. Back to the matter of the Sabbath school class. Let’s be careful in our personal study and in our study together that the teachers and class members are not wandering into faith-destroying ground rather than faith-building ground. Does not going to church on Sabbath show Christian maturity? Give me a break!
You may have heard me say that I believe we ought to be careful in our study of the writings of the apostle Paul. The reason I say this is because many people these days seem to be using the writings of Paul to get out of being doers of the word. Even Peter agreed that it was very possible to “wrest” Paul’s writings “to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). If the apostle Paul knew the way his writings were being used these days by some people, he would want to set the record straight. If fact, I would caution us here: when we take up the writings of Paul, we had better make it the first item on our agenda to know Jesus Christ in the same way that Paul knew Him. We had better have the same commitment to Jesus that Paul had.
Paul said, “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). He also said, “I am crucified with Christ, and the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal 2:20). Contrary to what some may think and teach, the experience Paul had with Christ didn’t get him out of keeping the Ten Commandments, rather it got him into them. The whole point is that Paul was not teaching people how to not obey the will of God; rather, he was teaching how it is done. He said that we “ought to cleanse ourselves, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). That doesn’t sound to me as though he were teaching us that we don’t need to obey the Lord.
Paul has much to say about freedom in Christ. But make no mistake, my friend, freedom in Christ is not what some people think. Freedom in Christ is not about doing away with honesty, purity, truthfulness, and obedience. Freedom in Christ is not about love of the world or washing down pork with wine.
Rather, freedom in Christ is freedom from sin. Freedom in Christ is to be free from pride, selfishness, lust, bitterness and resentment, and lack of self control. Freedom in Christ is about love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self control. A person who is not manifesting the fruit of the Spirit should not talk about having the assurance of salvation, because the fruit of the Spirit is the down payment. When you make a contract, if you don’t have what they call earnest money you might find out that you in fact don’t have a contract.
I would like to address a few thoughts about the home. The basic institution of human society is the home. God created the first man and woman and then He organized the first home.
The first responsibility that we have as individuals is to live godly lives and to be doers of the word ourselves. the next responsibility we have is to organize Godly homes. Of course, it stands to reason that people who are not Godly cannot establish Godly homes. Even if they try, the so-called Godly home that results will be only an empty shell. It may have a form of Godliness but in its day-to-day operation it will deny the power thereof.
Inasmuch as what we call society or even governments are in actuality only an organization of its respective homes, the corruption of a society will always be due to the corruption of its homes. The converse is also true. A renewed society can never take place unless there is a renewal of its homes.
If we are going to speak of revival in the church, then it is necessary to speak of revival of our homes. The church, after all, is the sum of the homes that are represented in it. And of course, as said a moment ago, a renewed home must be based on family members who are themselves being renewed.
The home is probably a uniquely human organization, at least as far as we are able to understand. At least, I should say, when we compare ourselves with the angels. The angels didn’t come from homes. They apparently were spoken into existence by the word of the Lord. On the other hand, God brought into existence by direct creation the first two human beings. He then set unto motion a process--better said, an institution--that He would use to create the rest of the race, and that was the home.
The male and female would be agents of His creative power for the propagation of the race, and they would have the responsibility to not only initiate new life but to nurture it, to form it, and to train it.
It takes only a few weeks to get a baby bird on its own and able to care for itself. It takes a few months to get a dog or a cat to a state of being able to care for itself. Other species of the animal kingdom generally take only a year or two. But to bring a human being into physical, mental, and emotional maturity takes nearly twenty years. This is why you can raise cattle in fed-lots and chickens on chicken farms, but a human being requires the home in order to develop its potential as ordained by the hand of God.
Because of this, the greatest failure that human society commits is the failure of the home. When the home is a failure, the race is doomed to fail. It should come as no surprise that, as Satan makes his final attempt to debase and destroy this race, it will be the homes that will take the hit.
We make sure that we provide insurance to cover our assets. We make sure that we have insurance to cover our physical necessities in case of illness. We work our heads off to provide for our physical and material comforts. And yet how many seem to be totally ignorant of the fact that the institution of the home itself has become vulnerable and is in fact being slowly but surely dismantled before our very eyes.
It is incumbent upon us, therefore, that, in the face of this present danger, we dedicate ourselves completely to the task of establishing and maintaining godly homes. To wait until we are actually under attack is too late to defend ourselves adequately and successfully.
Just as an army prepares its defenses early on, just as the early pioneers constructed forts before they were attacked, so we too must organize and operate our homes in such a way that they will be protected from the attacks of the enemy. Our very existence as a society is at risk if we allow our homes to be over-run by evil.
Let’s consider some essential things that we may employ, yea, that we must employ, if we are to protect our homes. It is conceivable that some might think it is too late for them; there is no hope for their home; they have gone too far to turn around. They may think that the only solution is to dissolve their home and start again from scratch, as they say.
I trust that we have all learned by now that indeed we can’t start our lives over again from scratch. We can get a new start, but the new start is always built on the realities of the past. If you choose to break up your home to solve a problem, you might solve a certain problem in the short term, but you may very well create a hundred new ones over the long term.
If my hand should become infected and I go to the doctor, I don’t suggest that he cut off my hand as a first option. It may hurt so badly that I wish I didn’t have it; but the fact is, I will do everything possible to save the hand.
In the same way, dissolving a home may seem to be a solution at the moment; but although divorce may relieve a present problem, it will surely create life-long disabilities that we will wish many times over we didn’t have.
Therefore, I don’t want to talk about breaking up homes but rather about some of the things we can do to keep our homes from breaking up. Even if we have an unbelieving spouse or unbelieving children, we must know what a Godly home is. And although we may not at the moment be able to attain the ideal, we need to have an ideal toward which we can head.
I am sure that you have already discovered the importance of establishing family traditions. So it goes without saying that if we are going to have Godly homes we need to establish Godly traditions. A Godly home will always have Godly traditions.
Our society has many traditions. Traditions are closely linked to celebrations. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We celebrate Christmas and the Fourth of July. Families also celebrate weddings, and graduations, and all the rest. In a way, we might say that the more wholesome celebrations a family has, the more it will be bonded together as a family. Have you noticed that most of our family celebrations are around yearly events or even once-in-a-lifetime events? Probably, though, most of our traditions are yearly.
There is an exception, however--a tradition that is, shall we say, the mother of all sacred traditions--and that is the Sabbath. God Himself gave the human family this special tradition. It is a wonderful tradition which, if we would honor it and celebrate it correctly, it would be the most important stabilizing force in the formation and maintaining of Godly homes.
For many (and I am talking in-house to Adventists), the Sabbath is a problem. They enjoy birthdays, the Fourth of July, anniversaries, and Christmas. But they see the Sabbath as a kind of interruption. They know that it is right and that they ought to keep it, but this is where the conflict comes in.
Does this sound familiar in any way? You’re not alone by any means. So let’s reason together a little and see if we can find a resolution. If we have somehow gotten hung up on keeping the Sabbath, maybe we ought to move over to the concept of how to honor the Sabbath. After all, we don’t “keep” our birthday or our anniversary. We honor those special days and try to get the most out of them. So maybe we would understand it better if we would move on from trying to figure out how to keep the Sabbath and learn how to honor it.
Most Adventists know more about what they are not supposed to do on Sabbath than what they are supposed to do. We know what we are supposed to do at a wedding or even at a funeral, but on Sabbath we know what we are not supposed to do. Isn’t that a little backward?
No wonder the Sabbath is not welcome in many homes. If keeping the Sabbath is a list of things you can’t do, it becomes like spending 24 hours in prison each week. This is why many are trying to break out of that prison by doing what they want to do on Sabbath (to them this is being a mature Christian), including going to the beach, eating out, shopping, and other things.
Several years ago I decided to try to get past the “can’t do” hang up that I had and to focus on the “what do we do.” I am not saying that I have solved all of the problems, but at least I am seeing things in a more positive light. My attitude is better. What really helped me to get off dead center was seeing the Sabbath as a type of anniversary.
My wife and I have been married for more than half a century. We married quite young, so you might say we grew up together. Our wedding anniversary is a special occasion. It is not for just everybody or for anybody. It is first of all for us and then for anyone else who loves us and has a relationship with us. Betty and I live in Orlando, where she was raised. The parents of some of her old boyfriends were friends of my in-law’s and for years still lived in the area. Once in a while we might all get together, and we have even had them over to our house to visit.
But I will tell you one time when we don’t have old boyfriends or even old girlfriends over, and that is on our anniversary! You know what I mean? Our anniversary is for us. And that’s why I like to think of the Sabbath as an anniversary. That is why on Sabbath I don’t do the things that I usually do all week long, because that would be like taking our old boyfriends and girlfriends out on our anniversary.
And that is why I don’t get a blessing out of going out to eat at a restaurant on Sabbath. It might be a blessing not to have to cook, but we do our cooking on Friday, anyway, which is why it is called the preparation day. Sabbath was made for man, and the whole purpose is to be a special time not just for me but for God and me. When we do things that leave God out of the Sabbath, we are missing the point.
Speaking of Friday being a preparation day, have you noticed that sometimes the anticipation can be as great as the realization? The time we spend getting ready for an important event can be as special as the event itself. This concept can make Sabbath especially meaningful.
That is the way it is when our children come to visit us. We have fun getting ready for them. Betty spends hours getting the rooms ready where they will stay. She has the custom of going out and buying a little something to put in the chest of drawers for each of them. That is a tradition she got from her mother. Then, of course, we know what time they are going to arrive; and if they are coming by plane, we are always there to meet them.
Speaking of being there to meet them, this is one of the big problems we seem to have with the Sabbath these days. Back when I was a kid, mom got ready for the Sabbath on Friday. Just like a plane arrives at a certain time, so the Sabbath always arrives at sundown. We had clothes that were Sabbath-only clothes, and I can even remember my Sabbath shoes.
Of course, in those days mom probably didn’t work outside the home. I know it is different these days in most homes. That in itself makes getting ready for the Sabbath a bigger challenge. When the sun goes down at five-thirty and you don’t get off work until five, there will be challenges. Sometimes so many Adventist are doing last-minute shopping in the supermarket just before sunset that we probably ought to have a special sundown worship service right there for their convenience.
Do you sometimes feel that the Sabbath is an interruption in your life? Here you are going down the road of life, trying to get somewhere. A red light is the last thing you need, especially if you are in a hurry, which is what most of us are these days. But every Friday evening you encounter a red light. That is unfortunately how many people see the Sabbath. They see it as a red light in their week. And so they are obliged to stop; because if they don’t, they will get a ticket.
But we’re going so fast, we often don’t get our lives stopped in time for the Sabbath, and we sort of skid into the intersection, if you know what I mean. And during the hours of the Sabbath we sit impatiently with the engine running, looking at our watches, waiting for the light to change to green. As soon as the sun sets, we peel rubber, as they say, to get back into the rat race.
I am not talking about other people’s problems, ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about our problems. But I am also talking about what we are doing in our homes to address those problems. Our homes are in danger, and learning how to honor the Sabbath is one of the most important ways that we can protect them.
A few years ago we started addressing some of these problems in our home. Although we have not arrived, I do believe we are making progress. Remember what I just said, that getting the most out of the Sabbath tradition has a lot to do with getting ready for it. Nobody likes to have something thrust on them that they are not ready for.
Let me say a word to us men for a moment. I’m sure you will agree with me that we can’t expect our wives to be the only ones who get ready for the Sabbath. In fact, we men had better come on up to today in this whole matter of cleaning the house and so forth. We are asking for trouble if we expect our wives to be gone from the house for nine or ten hours every day and then do everything--the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the shopping, and taking care of the kids and all--when they get home.
So at our house we (that’s both of us) begin to get ready for the Sabbath on Thursday night. In fact, we do a lot of the house cleaning on Thursday night. This frees up Friday afternoon for cooking and last minute details. I try to not do things on Friday afternoon that are not about getting ready for Sabbath until everything else is ready.
I am not trying to hang a guilt trip on anyone and make the Sabbath more of a burden. But somehow I sense there is something really wonderful here that many of us are missing. I am not saying that all the things we do at our house you ought to do at yours. We’re still looking around for ideas. But we realize that we are to be doers of the Sabbath for the simple reason that life is about doing. We are always doing something even if that something is nothing!
Years ago we started some special Sabbath traditions at our house, beginning Friday night. Some of these we learned from a Jewish friend. The Sabbath is still a family tradition for many Jews. In fact, to a great extent it is what makes them Jewish. This is also why the Sabbath is important to a Seventh-day Adventist.
Of course it is not the Sabbath that saves us. We don’t have a relationship with the Sabbath. You can’t have a relationship with something that can’t have a relationship with you. Being a Seventh-day Adventist is about having a commitment with Jesus Christ and then celebrating and commemorating and enjoying that commitment on the seventh-day.
So ultimately the Sabbath is about Jesus, just like my wedding anniversary is about Betty. If I am not getting on well with Betty, the anniversary won’t mean much, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we are looking for ways that will make Sabbath meaningful to our family, not just what we don’t do on Sabbath but what we do.
Years ago when our granddaughter was living with us, we followed the custom of giving a little Sabbath gift to her on Friday evening at the supper table. By the way, if we are not careful we can make the Sabbath hard on the children. To insist that a little child can’t play on Sabbath could make the Sabbath a dreaded day of the week. I believe that there should be, if you please, a kind of play that the children do on Sabbath that they don’t do during the rest of the week. We used to have special Sabbath toys that were only for Sabbath, and I am not taking about power rangers or transformers.
I surely wish we would be more careful about the kinds of toys we bring into our homes. We are responsible for the toys our children have. Sometimes we are like Aaron, who made the golden calf. He said he threw the gold into the fire and out came a calf! We might say, “You know how children are. They want the toys that everybody else has.” That may be, but we don’t have to make them a golden calf just because they want one. If a toy is not appropriate, don’t buy it.
I could add that the kinds of toys the children want have a lot to do with the programs they are watching on television. Mark my word that someday when it is all over, many parents will regret that they had televisions in their homes. The trend of the programs is more violence and more sex. The devil is poisoning our children’s minds through the medium of television. We should not be surprised; that is the way he is. The surprise is that we are helping him pull it off!
At our house, Friday evenings are special. In the late afternoon we light our Sabbath candles. I call them Sabbath candles because for us that is what they are. I buy them at the supermarket in the Latin foods section. Actually, they are seven-day prayer candles. When we bring them to our house they become Sabbath candles, reminding us that Jesus is the light of the world and that we are to be a light in this world.
We also play Sabbath music. I am sure you know that music has a lot to do with setting the atmosphere in the home, or for that matter even in the car. If you don’t have a collection of Sabbath CDs but you have a computer, you can play lovely sacred music at www.abidingradio.com.
Friends, there is nothing that has things more confused these days as to what is sacred and what is profane as does the matter of music. I greatly fear that what has happened is we have allowed ourselves to form habits of listening to music that is sensual and worldly during the week. This music is in such marked contrast with what we had always listened to on Sabbath that something had to give. So instead of changing our ways of listening to music during the week, we have found it easier to change the music we listen to on Sabbath. So we are bringing the music of worship to God down to the level of the sensual music that we listen to all week.
Just in case you wondered, music is not just about the words. It is about the melody and the rhythms, too. In fact, it is the rhythms that set the tone or the mood of the music. You could put some gross words to a John Phillips Sousa march and it wouldn’t sound half as bad because the mood that the march sets wouldn’t allow it.
So make no mistake, it’s not just the religious words that make music acceptable to our holy God but sacred melodies, as well. It’s the whole ball of wax, as they say. Please understand this. Religious words are being set to music that used to be played at rock concerts a few years ago.
So on Friday night we set the table in the dining room with our best china and all that goes with it. When we are gathered around the table, we repeat the Fourth Commandment together and then we sing, “Don’t Forget the Sabbath.” When there are several of us at home, we also sing several other songs and read a responsive reading from the hymnal.
We always eat the same food on Friday nights. We have had the same menu for many years, ever since the children were young. You may be wondering what kind of holy food we eat. Well, it is pizza. For years we made it from scratch, but these days we buy a good brand of frozen pizza. And we drink root beer. For desert we have tapioca pudding. This meal has been our Friday night tradition for so many years that our children and now grandchildren have come to expect it when they visit us. Some of them have even established the same tradition in their own homes.
The whole point is that life is something we do. Of course, what we do is based on who we are and how we think; but it seems to me that it is impossible to live a Godly life without doing something appropriate. And remember, we are not talking about being saved by doing anything; but when a person is saved, they will do things differently from a person who is not saved.
I have been giving some thought lately to how we dress for Sabbath. You might be thinking, “Oh, here we go again. This guy is really hung up on doing. Of course I am. Because I love Jesus with all my heart, I am hung up on doing things--that is, on doing things His way.
We cannot say that we are not hung up on dress, because everybody dresses a particular way. We dress like who we are. And how we dress indicates how we feel about where we’re going, whether or not it is important or special to us. People generally don’t go to weddings and funerals dressed in cut-offs and tee shirts. Neither would they dress in sports clothes to a job interview nor when they are invited to meet an important dignitary.
It is appropriate and a sign of respect when we wear our best for Sabbath; that is, if Jesus is the most special person in our lives. He deserves the best that we can be. How we dress doesn’t affect how Jesus feels about us, but how we dress can definitely indicate how we feel about Him. Of course, it is the heart that matters; but Jesus Himself said that what we say--and for that matter whatever we do--is an expression of what is in our heart.
What about Sabbath afternoon? It is difficult to remember that it is Sabbath all day when we come home after church and put on our grubbies. You know what I mean when I say grubbies. How we dress sets the mood for the day. It seems to me that we would make Sabbath more special if we would remain neatly dressed even on Sabbath afternoon. That way we would be ready to receive visitors or to make a visit to someone else. These 24 hours don’t belong to us but to Him and His service.
I am not insisting that you do in your house what we do in ours on Sabbath. I only tell you what we do (or maybe I should say, what we are trying to do). We have not arrived, but I am really thrilled that God has wonderful things for us as His people--not only in heaven but right here in this life in spite of the tremendous burdens we bear and the suffering we go through.
Of course we can’t even get interested in the Sabbath as a special day with Jesus if we have not been giving Him the time of day during the rest of the week. If we are living as the world all week, it will be very difficult to have a meaningful Sabbath, and it will probably be boring and a grind to us. Remember, anniversaries are for married, committed people, not for casual friends. The closer and more faithful to Jesus we are, the more blessed His Sabbath will be to us.
Friends, being sons and daughters of God is a twenty-four-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week thing. Living Godly lives, being doers of the word, is what being saved is about. You can study how to fly an airplane, but the real thrill comes from being a pilot and actually flying the plane yourself. You can read about taking a dream vacation, but the fun comes from taking it. And so Jesus calls on us, not to be just studiers of the word, or dreamers of the word, or wishers of the word, but doers of the word. And the word is calling us to Godly living.
Out there in the amusement places of the world on Friday nights, there are people arguing that Saturday is the Sabbath. Out there in the door-to-door surveys by the census takers there are people who say they are Seventh-day Adventists and they haven’t been to church in years. Out there in the Sabbath school classes of the church there are people arguing about who is and is not a mature Christian and they are mean and unforgiving to their families and other members of the church. They don’t eat ice-cream, but their thoughts may be impure and their words unkind. It is time that we get beyond being debaters of the word or arguers of the word. The need of this generation is that we be doers of the word, that we be Godly, and establish Godly homes.
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