This is the last of the sermonette on Romans 11 and the remnant.
In Romans 11, Paul takes us back to the confrontation on Mt Carmel between Elijah and Baal's prophets. Let me remind believers today. In our lives, we all have to come to Mt Carmel. Baal's prophets have been at work, and God has been at work too (Jesus says I work and My Father also works). Whether in family life, at work or in church, we all have a Mt Carmel moment. The question is, will you side with Baal's prophets for thirty pieces of silver, 15 minutes of fame, or stand with God's invisible church, in shame, pursued and hunted down by the Jezebels of this world? Where will you stand?
1. Christianity was once a small but united and loving, faithful lot. While the apostles lived, error of a spiritual kind could not be countenanced. But once the apostles left the scene, wolves came in to ravage the sheep. Clothed in woolly garb, they claimed the name of Christ but not His truth. They called themselves believers and wanted to inherit heaven, but didn't want anything to do with God's holy law. They accepted all He said where it was convenient, but when He says "Thou shalt not steal" they shied away in corruption. When He said "Six days shalt thou labor, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God" they gave a million excuses. Hadn't the Lord Himself pronounced the Ten Commandments? Hadn't He written them down with His own finger? Hadn't He given them to Moses to put IN the ark of the covenant? Hadn't He followed it up years later, coming down as a Man, to do them "as His custom was"?
Luke 4:16 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.
Hadn't the apostles followed this example?
Acts 17:2 And Paul,
as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,
2. Christianity broke into many parts, each group following its own dictates. But thank God, unbeknown to many, God by His grace has kept to Himself a remnant. Amen! Not for our righteousness, O God, but for your grace, have you kept your church faithful. Glory be to God and not man.
One of the institutions man has set up to rebel against God is Sunday worship. Like in I Kings 18, Satan has set up his spurious sabbath in direct defiance of God's law in order that he too be worshiped. He knows you won't follow him when he comes red in tooth and claw, so he comes in the name of God. White, smooth-talking, charity loving, goodly doing, humble lookingly, he has crept into the church. Thank God, like the wolf he truly is, when he speaks, every believer knows the voice. Christ too has a voice and He says "My sheep know my voice". Sunday is the one institution that Rome claims to have set up in defiance of God's law and the mark of her authority.
"Sunday is our MARK of authority...the church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact."
- The Catholic Record of London, Ontario, Canada, September 1, 1923
Q. Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept?
A. Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her, she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.
The Papacy claims that it changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday and that Sunday or Sunday-keeping is its mark of authority and power. God's mark or sign of power, is Sabbath and Sabbath-keeping and the beast's sign or mark of power, is Sunday and Sunday-keeping.
- A Doctrinal Catechism by Stephen Keenan.
"You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day' who shall dare to say, nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of worldly business on the seventh day, but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead? This is a most important question which I know not how you can answer. You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet, in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that which He has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the ten commandments; you believe the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principle, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."
- Library of Christian Doctrine, Burns and Oates, pages 3-4, London.
Rev 12
15 And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.
16 And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with
the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.Notice the link between keeping the commandments and the claim to being a remnant. If you can find a church that keeps the commandments, that church can make the audacious claim to be the remnant, not for its righteousness (for in it is indeed a mixed crowd), but because God's word says there remains a remnant of the virtuous woman's seed. As long as the Adventist church keeps the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ, the Bible calls them "the remnant of her seed." The reference to a woman's seed is prophetic, for Christ Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, and all who follow Him in truth are His remnant.
To God be the glory! Amen.