It is this series of verses that sets the tone for the keeping of the Sabbath; and, again, the Sabbath is shown to have universal validity. It is from Creation. It is not from any of the fathers. It is not from Abraham. It is not from Isaac. It is not from Jacob. It is not from Moses. It is not from any Jew. (When God did this, there were no Jews.) It is from the Creator God.
I want you to notice, too, that it is very clearly established in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis that the Sabbath is theseventh day - not a seventh day. It is the seventh day! That is established by the second chapter of the book of Genesis. This may not be the theological beginning of the Sabbath. Yet, without doubt, Exodus 20:11 clearly establishes that the Sabbath has its roots in these three verses.
There it is firmly established as law, to be kept. Yet it is very clear (as I stated earlier) that, when it is established as law in Exodus 20, the law has its roots in Genesis 2:1-3. That is, in the example that God set in what He did. He rested, and He blessed the seventh day.
God could have rested at any time. Or, we might say, He did not need to rest at all. But He did. He does not grow weary. He does not get tired. He could have ended the creative cycle at the end of the sixth day, but He did not. Do you understand what I am saying there? Creation did NOT stop at the end of the sixth day. It is very important that you grasp this concept. The Creation did NOT stop at the end of the sixth day. The seventh day is a creation of God. He kept right on creating, only this time He created by desisting from work - by not working.
So, what did He do? He created a period of rest, and of holy time. That is, a very specific period of time - the seventh day. And something was created that was just as specific as the things that were created on the other six days. And so, on [the] Sabbath, creating continued; but it took on a different form. It was a form that is not outwardly visible; and the Sabbath symbolizes to man (Get this!) that God is still creating.
Perhaps that gives a new slant to the old Yiddish Proverb, Az men hot a sakh tsu ton, leygt men zikh shlofn, When you have a lot to do, go to sleep - or as a local elder in the Minneapolis Radio Church of God back in 1965 once proclaimed, The key to the next day is the time you hit the hay. Incidentally, in countering the vacuous, ignorant arguments of mainstream Protestant theologians and their often hopelessly muddled commentaries, both the Sabbath command and the clean and unclean laws were in force long before Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, or one single solitary Jew lived on the planet, and more importantly, are still in force for all of mankind today (referencing Genesis 2:2-3 and Genesis 7:2).
It was Almighty God who built into our nervous systems the need for sleep. The very first occasion sleep is mentioned in the Bible is Genesis 2:21, when God placed Adam into a profound anesthetic deep sleep, forming Eve from one of his ribs. Immediately, God establishes a connection between sleep and creativity. Likewise, the Sabbath rest is a state of creativity in which the physical work may cease, but the spiritual work only begins.
That is pretty clear. I do not think there is a need to look too much further there except to establish the fact that God is our model in everything. Of course the One whom this is speaking about was Jesus Christ. He was the One who rested on the seventh day, setting the example. He is the model for mankind and as He did - He also wants mankind to do.
We have a modification of what is in Genesis 2:3 where it only says that He rested. Now He rested and was refreshed.
From this we can understand that when God rested on the Sabbath, it was not because He was tired. The rest has some other meaning. Remember, He is our model. Again these things will become clearer as we keep going through the sermons that follow. Right now we are just laying foundations. I want to focus on the word refresh for a little bit.
To those who keep Sunday as a day of rest are breaking God's law because the law of God says the seventh day is the Sabbath. Therefore, they are spiritual outlaws.
Who in the world thinks they have the right to go against what the God of the universe and beyond says He did for us in creating the Sabbath day and blessing it and sanctifying it? Since breaking one of the Ten Commandments makes us guilty of breaking all of them, then those who refuse to keep the seventh day holy that God established at the end of the Creation Week are lawless. God says He never knew them.
Let us go back to the first occurrence of this underlying root word, qadash, to make holy. We find that in Genesis 2. Now we know God is creating us in His holy, pure, undefiled image, but we also know that no human is even close to God's level of holiness. Hannah's prayer, found in I Samuel 2 reads, No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none besides You.
God could qadash the Sabbath, brethren. Qadash-ed, He made it holy. That is, He sanctified it and made it like Himself. He made it holy.
It was Almighty God who built into our nervous systems the need for sleep. The very first occasion sleep is mentioned in the Bible is Genesis 2:21, when God placed Adam into a profound anesthetic deep sleep, forming Eve from one of his ribs. Immediately, God establishes a connection between sleep and creativity. Likewise, the Sabbath rest is a state of creativity in which the physical work may cease, but the spiritual work only begins.
