Walking as Jesus Walked

Walking as Jesus Walked

VOICE OF PROPHECY BIBLE GUIDE P.O. BOX 172-MOROGORO-TANZANIA

In 1896 a book came off the presses and became a best seller almost overnight. Eventually it was translated into 23 languages and 20 million copies were sold. The book was In His Steps by a young Kansas minister, Charles M. Sheldon, who had a deep understanding of what the gospel of Christ is really all about.

The story opens with a minister preaching his usual weekly sermon to his wealthy, self-satisfied congregation. But on this particular morning something occurred that shook that church out of its complacency and started a revival in Christian churches throughout America.

A stranger entered the church, and instead of taking a back pew as his worn clothes and generally poor appearance would dictate, he walked slowly down the main aisle directly to the pulpit. By the time he had gone the full length of the church, it was evident that the man was very weak, possibly ill.

When he got to the front, he turned and in simple words told how he had come to town looking for work to support the family he had left waiting at home. He had found no one willing to help him. And at only one house had he even received kind treatment. If this was their idea of what Christ would do, then Christianity wasn't what it claimed to be.

Before the man could say more he fainted from weakness and hunger.

Imagine what such a scene would do to a church! The minister of course dismissed the service hastily and with the thought in mind, "What would Jesus do?" took the man to his own home and cared for him.

But this wasn't the end. The next week the minister challenged his whole congregation with the question, "What would Jesus do?" And for the first time some of that self-seeking group realized that Christ is to have control of every aspect of our lives.

Actually this best-selling book is based on a very old idea—one the disciple John had presented centuries before, but one so many of us fail to realize in our own lives:

"He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to WALK, EVEN AS HE WALKED."—1 John 2:6.

But how can I know what Jesus would do with any particular problem or under any given circumstance? By studying what He did when He lived as a man among men. We will never go wrong if we discover what Jesus did and then, through His power, follow in His footsteps.

1. JESUS' LIFE OF OBEDIENCE

Jesus and the Father are inseparable. Jesus said:

"I and my Father are one." John 10:30.

"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."—John 14:9.

Jesus made it plain that He came to earth to do the will of the Father when He said:

"Father not as I will, but as thou wilt."—Matthew 26:39.

God's will is for a man to delight to obey His law.

"I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart."—Psalm 40:8.

So Jesus delighted in keeping God's law. He said:

"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I HAVE KEPT MY FATHER'S COMMANDMENTS, and abide in his love."—John 15:10.

Motivated by love, we are to keep God's commandments even as Jesus did.

More than thirty years after the resurrection of our Lord, we find John declaring that the same commandments that were in force in the times before the cross, still apply in the gospel age.

"Brethren, I write NO NEW COMMANDMENT unto you, but AN OLD COMMANDMENT WHICH YE HAD FROM THE BEGINNING. ... Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."—1 John 2:7, 8.

He said, "No new commandment." Yet he makes it plain that the old commandments were "new" because Jesus had demonstrated how, with love as motivation, the Ten Commandments are to be kept. The light of Jesus' perfect life illuminated God's commandments. Now we see them transplanted by the grace of God from tables of stone into the human heart, and they glow with a new light and glory. Jesus' life of loving obedience demonstrates how God would have men obey Him. Jesus said:

"If ye love me, keep my commandments."—John 14:15.

2. THE LORD'S DAY OF GOD'S WORD

Christ was active with His Father in the creation of the world.

"GOD, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his SON, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, BY WHOM ALSO HE MADE THE WORLDS"—Hebrews 1:1, 2.

In the beginning the Father, through Jesus, made the world in six days, then rested the seventh day. The Father and the Son placed a blessing on the Sabbath day.

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. 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."—Genesis 2:1-3.

Christ set apart the seventh day by three divine acts:

• He RESTED on the seventh day.
• He BLESSED the seventh day.
• He SANCTIFIED the seventh day.

God made the seventh day holy and gave it to man. Only the Creator can make a day holy. No man can do this. The Sabbath is the "set-apart" time of the week, when we may experience the spiritual rest that comes from contact with God. The Sabbath was MADE holy, set apart, for man's rest, blessing and benefit.

In the fourth of the Ten Commandments God says:

"But the SEVENTH DAY is the SABBATH OF THE LORD thy God."—Exodus 20:10.

God's Sabbath, the seventh day of the week is the Lord's day—not Sunday, the first day of the week. The Holy Bible knows no other Sabbath than Saturday, the seventh day of the week. God calls the seventh-day Sabbath "My holy day."

"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on MY HOLY DAY; and call the sabbath a delight, THE HOLY OF THE LORD, honourable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words..."—Isaiah 58:13.

When Jesus lived on earth, He declared that He is the Lord of this seventh-day Sabbath:

"And he said unto them, the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is LORD also OF THE SABBATH."—Mark 2:27, 28.

Jesus assures us in this text that He is the Lord of the Sabbath of creation. As the Creator, Jesus with the Father made the seventh day. Christ is by creative right the Lord of the Sabbath.

"The Lord's day" is mentioned in the last book of the New Testament. When the apostle John was exiled to the Isle of Patmos, he received the visions of the book of Revelation. His first vision evidently came to him on the Lord's day, for he records:

"I was in the Spirit on THE LORD'S DAY, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet."—Revelation 1:10.

Since Christ is "LORD of the Sabbath," "the Lord's day" mentioned by John must refer to the day Christ claimed as His holy day. What an opportunity we have as followers of Jesus to fellowship with our Lord on His holy day.

3. JESUS KEPT THE BIBLE SABBATH (Part 1 of 2)

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, AS HIS CUSTOM WAS, he went into the synagogue on THE SABBATH DAY, and stood up for to read."—Luke 4:16.

"As his custom was." Jesus was a Sabbathkeeper by habit. He was found in the place of worship on the Sabbath. Jesus worshiped on the Sabbath because He made it His business to "fulfill all righteousness" Matthew 3:15. Righteousness is right doing, which is loving obedience to the Word of God in all things.

Never once do we find Jesus condemning the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. Always He honored it.

"And [Jesus] came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and TAUGHT THEM ON THE SABBATH DAYS. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power."—Luke 4:31, 32. (See also Mark 1:21, 22.)

Sometimes Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath. When criticized for it, He defended His acts of mercy with the pointed question:

"Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath?"—Mark 3:4.

And in reply to His own question, He answered that it is lawful.

The Sabbath is a time when God brings rest to His people. The word Sabbath signifies "cessation" or "rest," but the formalists of Israel had made it a day of legal observances. Jesus came to teach men how to keep the Lord's Sabbath day and find in it rest for body, mind, and soul.

Looking ahead to the years after His ascension to heaven, Jesus talked with His disciples about the troubled days to come. Speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place in A.D. 70 about forty years after the resurrection—He counseled:

"But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day."—Matthew 24:20.

So, forty years after His resurrection, Jesus expected His disciples to be keeping the Sabbath.

How harmonious is this position of our Lord with His divine command given on Sinai centuries before:

"REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY, to keep it holy ... the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God."—Exodus 20:8, 10.

3. JESUS KEPT THE BIBLE SABBATH (Part 2 of 2)

The seventh day is the day of God's appointed rest. Neither church nor state can make any other day "GOD'S rest day." If we are to enter into the spiritual experience of rest in Jesus Christ, we must "remember" as the day of rest, the day that He tells us never to forget.

Although, by His life and teachings, Jesus shed light on the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment, His enemies charged Him with attempting to do away with the Ten Commandments. Read how clearly He defended every one of these commandments:

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I AM NOT COME TO DESTROY, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, TILL HEAVEN AND EARTH PASS, ONE JOT OR ONE TITTLE SHALL IN NO WISE PASS FROM THE LAW, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."—Matthew 5:17-19.

According to this scripture, God would remove heaven and earth before He would change His moral law. This text makes it impossible to teach that any minute part of the Ten Commandments was changed.

Is the Sabbath commandment too insignificant to obey? According to Jesus, not a "jot or a tittle"—not the dotting of an "i" or a crossing of a "t"—is to be changed in God's commandments. The Sabbath commandment must remain intact.

Jesus, the Living Word, magnified the law of God by obeying it. Centuries before the birth of Christ, Isaiah had prophesied of Jesus' attitude toward God's law:

"The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness' sake; HE WILL MAGNIFY THE LAW and make it honourable."—Isaiah 42:21.

Jesus kept all of the Ten Commandments, including the seventh-day Sabbath, the Lord's day of the Bible. His earthly life was one of magnifying, or making clearer, the meaning of true obedience to the will of God.

4. FOLLOWING JESUS' EXAMPLE (Part 1 of 2)

After completing His work of creating the world in six days, Jesus rested on the seventh day from all His work. After completing His work of saving the world by dying on the cross, He rested in the tomb on the seventh day.

Christ's followers were careful to keep the Sabbath on which their buried Lord rested from His death struggle with sin.

"And that day was the preparation, and the sabbath drew on. And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and RESTED THE SABBATH DAY ACCORDING TO THE COMMANDMENT."—Luke 23:54-56.

There was no question in the minds of the apostles about the Bible Sabbath's being the "Lord's day." Says Henry Sloane Coffin, a Presbyterian minister and educator:

"The attempt to make out that in the New Testament the sabbath is re-established, and shifted from the seventh to the first day of the week, is merely to read into the New Testament what is not there; and the effort to find some basis for keeping Sunday as the sabbath by saying that privately our Lord, or at least His apostles, gave directions to this effect, although they are not recorded, is equally fanciful. [Sunday observance] was not commanded by Jesus, nor by any of His immediate followers. It was simply kept for sentimental reasons. ..."—The Ten Commandments (New York: Hodder and Stoughton), pp. 77, 78.

The apostle Paul was commissioned by God to take the wonderful story of salvation from sin to the Gentile world. He kept the Sabbath among the Gentiles. In Corinth, for a year and a half, he preached every Sabbath.

"And he reasoned in the synagogue EVERY SABBATH, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them."—Acts 18:4, 11.

4. FOLLOWING JESUS' EXAMPLE (Part 2 of 2)

Acts 13:14, 42, 44 tells of Paul's Sabbath observance while in Antioch of Pisidia. From this it is evident that the first Gentile Christian church at Antioch in Syria kept the seventh-day Sabbath. Acts 16:12, 13 tells of the Sabbath services conducted by Paul and his fellow Christians by the riverside at Philippi. When in Thessalonica, Paul observed the Sabbath "as his manner was."

"And Paul, AS HIS MANNER WAS, went in unto them, and THREE SABBATH DAYS reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ."—Acts 17:2, 3.

Revelation 14:13-16 pictures the second coming of Christ. The preceding verse, verse 12, identifies those today who are waiting for the second coming of Jesus:

"Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD, and THE FAITH OF JESUS."—Revelation 14:12.

So God's people in the last days will be noted for their keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. The people of God, just before Jesus comes, will be faithful to all of God's commands. They will remember God's Sabbath day to keep it holy.

When the redeemed enter into the new earth of the hereafter, the Sabbath of Jesus will be their sign of eternal rest.

"The new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, ... And it shall come to pass that from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord."—Isaiah 66:22, 23.

All will be Sabbathkeepers in the new earth. Since in this life we prepare for the future life, why not begin here to keep God's Sabbath day?

5. THE JOYS OF SABBATH KEEPING (Part 1 of 3)

God says of the seventh-day Sabbath:

"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."—Exodus 31:13.

"Moreover also I gave them MY SABBATHS, to be A SIGN BETWEEN ME AND THEM, that they might know that I am the Lord that SANCTIFY them."—Ezekiel 20:12.

Like a flag, the Sabbath stands for the authority of God's government. It is a token of His power. It promises security to the Christian who is truly a follower of Jesus, a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. It is the sign of living the sanctified life.

Note the blessings that will be yours if you are loyal to the emblem of God's creative power:

"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and CALL THE SABBATH A DELIGHT, THE HOLY OF THE LORD, honourable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, 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."—Isaiah 58:13, 14.

Do you need peace and rest? Then listen to the promise of spiritual rest to those who keep all of God's commandments:

"O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy PEACE been as a river, and thy RIGHTEOUSNESS as the waves of the sea."—Isaiah 48:18. (See also Matthew 11:28, 29.)

Are you tempted to say: "I can't keep God's Sabbath, but I'll keep the rest of the Ten Commandments and claim nine-tenths of the blessings to the obedient"? But it doesn't work that way. Anyone who willfully violates one commandment is accounted disobedient to all the commandments.

"For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."—James 2:10.

Harmony with God in commandment-keeping is the only hope of heart peace.

"There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."—Isaiah 48:22.

5. THE JOYS OF SABBATH KEEPING (Part 2 of 3)

Repeatedly God emphasized that the Sabbath was to be kept as a sign of rest to Israel, and He pointed out that their obedience must be from the heart.

"O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!"—Deuteronomy 5:29.

Again and again, Israel disobeyed the Lord. They turned from the worship of the true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, to bow down to the false gods of the pagan nations about them. Turning to these gods, they naturally forgot to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." The result was that God never could completely fulfill the promises made to them, for their fulfillment was conditional upon obedience to the law of God, including the Sabbath, the sign of His rest and power.

But what has this to do with Christians this side of the cross? We worship the same God as did Israel of old. His great moral law is unchanging, and the Sabbath instituted at creation has through the centuries been the emblem of a life of rest in Christ. This holy day meant rest to Adam and Eve in their perfection. It signified rest to the patriarchs of old. It symbolized the promised rest for which enslaved Israel looked. It provided rest to the crucified Christ as He lay in the tomb on the Sabbath.

Has the Sabbath changed for the New Testament church? Listen to this statement from a New Testament writer:

"For he [God] spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And GOD DID REST THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS. Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief: ... For if Joshua [margin] had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. THERE REMAINETH THEREFORE A REST TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his."—Hebrews 4:4, 6, 8-10.

5. THE JOYS OF SABBATH KEEPING (Part 3 of 3)

God's people of old had the same gospel that we do, but they denied the faith and disobeyed. Because the promise was conditional on obedience, they never received the spiritual rest that could have been theirs in Canaan.

The apostle tells us that their failure to obtain spiritual and material rest in the Promised Land did not end the promise to God's people. Rest is still a part of the new-covenant promise. The Sabbath still remains in New Testament times as the emblem of eternal rest. Note the marginal reading of Hebrews 4:9:

"There remaineth therefore a keeping of a sabbath to the people of God."

The seventh-day Sabbath of creation is the eternal token of peace and rest in Jesus Christ. Just as Sabbath keeping was a part of God's plan for man in the beginning, it is part of God's plan today and will be in the world to come. Just as surely as the cross of Christ promises peace to the believer, so heaven promises eternal rest to those who enter there.

As a new-covenant Christian, you will want to be a Bible Sabbathkeeper. You will not keep the Sabbath to be saved, but you will keep it as a sign that you are saved, and that as a saved person you have God's law written in your heart and mind. You will be the happy possessor of the sanctified life. The Sabbath of the whole Bible will be your flag of citizenship with Christ in God.

Do you need peace and rest? With Jesus in your heart you have the unique peace of God. (Philippians 4:7.) With Jesus in your heart, you will find yourself walking "even as he walked" (1 John 2:6), a keeper of all the commandments, the moral law of God. Will you choose right now to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, the Christ-made emblem of God's kingdom of rest and peace?