Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Pastor Robert Heidler. I’m speaking to him at his church office Glory of Zion Outreach Center in Denton, Texas. I have interviewed him previously on his unpublished manuscript “The Messianic Church” which we quickly published and got out to you as fast as possible. If you didn’t get a copy of it yet you really need it, but in addition to that what you do need is to understand the cycles of God. You see there was a whole calendar put in the Bible for the church, and it was literally heisted by the devil. There is a whole activities of worship put in the Bible by God, and this was stolen. All of these things before the Messiah returns they’re going to come back. I want to read something to you because I got an email from someone that watched our television show in the Dominican Republic, and this is what he says “My concerns are that my wife’s brother-in-law is a Seventh Day Adventist. I’m a Pentecostal, I know that will save me, all that will save will be the Lord, but he has made the argument because we don’t follow the 4th commandment, which is remember the Sabbath day, that are not saved. He argues that only the sacrificial laws, or the Mosaic laws were abolished not the Sabbath day. Please help me, I know you have more knowledge than me on this.” Robert let me read to you the answer I gave him, and see what you would add to that because this is a sincere question, but it is a question that many Christians kind of struggle with a little bit.
Robert: Hmm, hmm.
Sid: Even though we’ve been told things through tradition, we kind of sense that’s not the total answer. So this is the… this is what I wrote back to him. “God never changed the Sabbath, the Sabbath is Saturday not Sunday. Although there is blessing in taking Saturday as a day of rest it has nothing to do with salvation. Also a day of rest has nothing to do with even a church service. Most just take the day to rest to be with family and think about God. The Sabbath is fulfilled in Jesus; Saturday is not our rest Jesus is our rest. However, God does bless us by observing this Sabbath, Saturday day of rest.” Now what would you say to that?
Robert: Oh Sid I believe that is exactly right. Sabbath, Shabbat, is a blessing, it’s not… when the New Testament deals with the issue of Sabbath, in Colossians 3:16 the main focus is “Don’t let anyone judge you in regard to the Sabbath.” In other words, he is saying “This is not to be a legalistic thing, it’s not to be something that you sit in judgment on each other. It’s not a burden. You know there were 2 kinds of Sabbaths in the Bible, there was the Sabbath of God that was a blessing from Him, and then there was the Sabbath from the Pharisees that tried to make it a legalistic burden. What he says in Colossians, it says 3:16 “Don’t let it be a legalistic burden, don’t judge each other on it.” This is a special time God wants you to rest and enjoy His presence.
Sid: So tell me how Sabbath plays out with your family, with your church.
Robert: Well we have church on Sunday. Some people ask me why don’t we switch and have church on Saturday, and I answer “Because Saturday is my Sabbath, I want to be able to rest on Saturday.”
Sid: Let me tell you I’ve come up with that same sort of thing and I almost make it and I say “I am so glad that the church switched from Saturday to Sunday because when I go to a Sunday worship service there’s a lot of work involved in this.” I need a day of rest; it’s not just the pastor that needs a day of rest. I need a day of rest. So because the church switched to Sunday it allows me to have my Sabbath. [Laughing]
Robert: Amen. Interestingly when you study church history in the first 3 centuries they really had 2 special days. They celebrated Saturday as a day of rest to celebrate God’s creation. Then they celebrated Sunday as a day of worship to celebrate the resurrection of Yeshua. So they really celebrated both.
Sid: When you see the freedom that God has given us, why even bother, why even bother with this Sabbath business?
Robert: Well because it’s a blessing God wanted us to have. I know in our lives… one of the things that celebrating Sabbath does, if you really see it as a blessing of God and not a legalistic burden, is you realize the goodness of God. You finish a busy busy week and you come to Friday evening and you realize God says “It’s okay to rest.”
Sid: You know what I’m wondering, in the Jewish scriptures it talks about even giving the land rest. Many times we haven’t followed these Biblical laws and as a result our fruit isn’t as good. Isn’t there a physical reason why God wants us to have one day of rest a week?
Robert: I believe it is. You know God wove that into creation; the Sabbath goes the whole way back to creation. God didn’t rest then because He was tired, but He rested to establish something in creation. It’s interesting in college I was taking a sociology course and they talked about during the French revolution they wanted to do away with a 7 day week an institute a 10 day week to get away from the Biblical pattern. What they found was people’s productivity plummeted because our bodies are designed on a 7 day cycle. They’re designed to work most effectively if we work 6 days then rest on the 7th.
Sid: I have to tell you I don’t go to any service on Sabbath, not that I’m opposed to that at all, but I really look forward to that day of rest. I look forward to just being able to not have to do the things I normally do, and just relax and be dressed up, and just be with my family. There’s something very special about it.
Robert: God wants us to know that He has a work for us to do, He has a call on our lives, all of those things. He also wants us to know 1 day a week we can put all of that in His hands and just enjoy Him, just enjoy His blessing, and enjoy His goodness.
Sid: Okay tell me how your family observes the Sabbath, tell me how your church family observes the Sabbath.
Robert: Well I’ll start with our family. My wife and I, our kids are grown and out of the house. On Friday evening we don’t do a traditional Jewish Shabbat, we usually go and sit on the couch with the coffee table in front of us and have all of our favorite foods and snacks. We light the candles and just welcome the time of rest. We pray for our kids, we pray a blessing over our family…
Sid: Now just out of curiosity, why do you light the candles?
Robert: It’s a traditional thing, but it’s a way of saying we have transitioned, we are moving from the normal week into this special time that God has set aside with us. You don’t have to light candles, but for us it just sort of sets the stage…
Sid: Well in every Jewish home we light the candles. Shouldn’t there be a connection between Christians, who are the spiritual seed of Abraham, and the physical seed of Abraham, Jewish people?
Robert: Exactly. That’s really where we got the idea because we’ve been to a lot of Shabbat celebrations, Messianic circles. It’s interesting in the early church there’s evidence they had special prayer for the lighting of the candles at the start of Shabbat.
Sid: Okay so go on what do you do on a Friday night? What else?
Robert: We have our favorite foods out there, we light the candles…
Sid: Are you sure you’re not Jewish? I mean the way you’ve said twice your favorite foods I can tell that’s really important. [Laughing] I’m teasing, go ahead.
Robert: [Laughing] Shabbat is a time to enjoy. This is the time to say “Lord you have blessed us. Lord you are good to us, and we want to enjoy your goodness and overflow with thankfulness.” To me that is what Shabbat is all about.
Sid: Alright that’s the way you feel how about your wife, how does she feel about it?
Robert: The same way. We just look forward to it. To me Shabbat it says “Don’t do your usual work,” which for me means don’t turn on your computer. Sometimes we’ll go out and do some shopping, sometimes we’ll do some things in the yard, but it is a time to just get away from the usual grind. Do what is enjoyable, do what you enjoy the presence of God in.
Sid: Now how’s your church observe Sabbath?
Robert: Different one’s do it in different ways. We’ve taught on it, we encourage it; we have one or two cell groups that meet on Friday night and has a Shabbat meal together.
Sid: I have to tell you if you were to invite a neighbor to your Shabbat service, I think that you would soften them to such a point to want to know the Jesus you know.
Robert: I would hope so. We don’t lay down a legalistic law that this is how you have to do it. We just want people to know God wants you to take a day off to enjoy to be thankful for His goodness. I find that people once they enter into that it’s addictive you don’t want to give that up.
Sid: Have you seen that Christians worldwide are gravitating towards the Biblical festivals?
Robert: That has been so interesting. You know when we got that prophetic word to begin celebrating the festivals I didn’t know what they were, I never heard of a Christian celebrating them. Over the past 6 or 7 years I’ve seen place after place Christians….
Sid: Oops! We’re out of time.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth