Hank Smith: 00:04 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m here with the wonderful John, Bytheway. We are the hosts of a podcast called followHIM. But each week, we do a little clip called followHIM Favorites, where we’d answer just a single question from this week’s lesson.

Hank Smith: 00:20 John, we’re in Exodus 24, 31 through 34, and we’re going to focus in on a question from Chapter 31, which is all about the Sabbath day. Why is the Sabbath day important? Because I remember when I was a kid, I would’ve told you Sabbath day was a big day of “Don’t do that. Don’t say that. Don’t watch that. Don’t laugh at that. Don’t look at that. Don’t play that.” So there was a lot of “don’t do that” on the Sabbath day, and it kind of built up a little bit of resentment in me. I remember not loving Sunday. So what is Exodus 31? And what do you have to say about how can we make the Sabbath day a better day, right? A day that we look forward to instead of a day we’re fearing.

John Bytheway: 01:04 There’s a couple of great lines in here that I know President Nelson has talked about, and that is that the Sabbath will be a sign between me and thee.

Hank Smith: 01:13 That’s Exodus 31:13, also Exodus 31:17.

John Bytheway: 01:17 It’s also in Ezekiel 20:20, which is the one I like because 20:20 is easy to remember, because it sounds like good vision, like the Lord’s watching you, kind of like if the Lord had a hidden camera on you and were watching you, would he be able to tell that your Sabbath day is any different than the other days? And it’s a sign between me and you throughout your generations.

John Bytheway: 01:40 And I don’t know, that helped me a lot. I thought about my first year of marriage, I looked at my Franklin day planner. This is going back. Okay. It wasn’t electronic. It was on what we call paper. No, it was on papyrus that I got from the Nile. And I just remember looking at the date August 9th and going, “That’s something. What is that?” And I’m so glad. I remembered that was the anniversary of our first date.

John Bytheway: 02:07 And so I stopped. I bought a rose or something. Just, I spent five bucks or something, but it had such an impact on Kim. She’s like, “You remembered our first date?” It was a simple thing, but I remembered her on her day or our day really, I remember her and wrote a little note. And it just occurred to me God has a day, and how do we make that different to thank him for all he’s done for us.

John Bytheway: 02:33 And really, there’s not really much of a day of rest, especially if you have a heavy calling, but it’s resting from worldly things and from all that stuff. And you can think about more wonderful things during that whole day. A lot of it’s just a matter of having a good attitude, I think, and making sure that you make the Sabbath a sign to the Lord. And I have a hard time remembering exactly how that worked as a teenager for me. What do you think?

Hank Smith: 02:59 Well, the one thing I see here in verse 17, Chapter 31, verse 17 is it says the Lord, he used the seventh day to rest and was refreshed.

John Bytheway: 03:09 Yeah. Look at those two words: rested and refreshed.

Hank Smith: 03:11 Rest and refreshed. And I have learned through the years, and again, I don’t think I understood this when I was a teenager, but I’ve learned through the years that the Lord’s work is quite refreshing in what you do the other six days of the week. So this idea of… Here’s what I think, is the Lord says here, “If you’ll do what I ask you to do on this day, I can make your six other days. I can make you better. I can make you faster. I can make you smarter. I can make it so you have the right perspective on those six other days. Give me one day a week, and those six other days, I can make you better, faster and smarter than you would’ve been had you used all seven days to do your own work.”

Hank Smith: 03:53 And I think, to me, that’s been the faith issue, where I say, “Okay, I trust you that if I put all of this aside, focus on you and your work on this day,” and I have, I’ve been a better husband, father, teacher on the other six days of the week than I would be if I devoted all seven days to my own work. So it’s a bit of a faith issue, too, that I’m saying I trust him that he knows what he’s doing.

John Bytheway: 04:16 So many, probably hundreds, thousands of stories about people who have honored the Sabbath and have been blessed by it. And I just remember an old saying about the Jews. It wasn’t so much that the Jews kept the Sabbath, but the Sabbath kept the Jews. It became such a special day for them that it helped them and preserved them. And I also remember Truman Madsen saying once that we’ll be held accountable for the joy we could have felt on the Sabbath, but we didn’t.

Hank Smith: 04:44 That’s funny.

John Bytheway: 04:44 So look forward to that, a time to rest from worldly things and be rested and refreshed. And if you can’t figure out how to make it a wonderful day, figure out how to make it a wonderful day.

Hank Smith: 04:54 Yeah. That’s what I’d say is that you can do this. You can be creative with it. Instead of looking at everything you can’t do, look around and see what you can do. There’s times where I just sit around with my children, if I get it a couple of hours on Sunday, and that’s usually time I don’t get during the week. We just sit around. We talk. We play games. We’ll just go on a nice walk together. And I do, I feel very refreshed from that time just spending with my loved ones, or out with my ward members, serving them, knocking on doors, saying hello, visiting people, there’s a refreshment that comes.

John Bytheway: 05:33 Yeah. There’s a lot of young people probably listening, but boy, when I think of it now, I think, oh good, couple of my kids that are at college are probably going to show up. I look forward to having the family around, the Sunday dinner, and “How was your week? And what’s going on?” And then we get to do a little Come, Follow Me together, and let’s open this up, that me and Hank get to talk about, right? I look forward to it. So you can do it. You can do it, if you really want to. You can make your Sabbath wonderful.

Hank Smith: 06:02 There’s an attitude about it that if you take in a certain perspective, a certain lens, you’re going to start seeing what you want to see. So if you want to see something miserable, then you’re going to see that. But if you’ll just try this out, try what John and I are saying here, just give it a try, put on this lens of, “Okay, the Lord knows what he’s doing obviously. He knows more about this life than I do. So I’m going to try it his way. I’m going to look for the good in this system that he’s created for the Sabbath,” and see what happens. See what happens. Yeah, you’re going to start seeing things that maybe you’ve never seen before.

John Bytheway: 06:35 We’ve had this discussion with our kids that I think Elder Bednar talks about his wife going to church not just to listen and to be fed and to be instructed, but to look around and say, who can I talk to? Who can I serve? Who can I encourage? Who can I go find and say, “Man, it’s good to see you this week, and how was your week?” And the service aspect of the Sabbath is something wonderful we can do, not just go to our meetings so that it’s all about me, and if this lesson isn’t any good, I’m going to be on the couch in the foyer, but go out to say, who can I lift and encourage? And that’ll make it a better day for you, too.

Hank Smith: 07:12 I’ve noticed that in my reading of the four gospels, that Jesus is always healing people on the Sabbath. Right? He says over and over. Man was not made for the Sabbath, but Sabbath was made for man. It was made as a gift to you, and you can go and you can do some healing of yourself and others on the Sabbath day, if you choose to.

John Bytheway: 07:32 Love it.

Hank Smith: 07:33 We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. We’re with Dr. John Hilton III this week, talking about these chapters. Come join us next week for another followHIM Favorites.