Mankind has yet to develop his first flea. What kind of honor is going to be given to some man who claims that he has created life? Even if it is only a tiny speck of life that is in a test tube, and let us say it only lives for a few seconds. I do not know that it will ever occur. But the man would really be hailed, would he not? What might a person like that demand from those who give that person the honor, by acclaiming what he has done?
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.
In Exodus 20:8, God says Remember the Sabbath day. Then He tells us that we are to work six days, and the seventh day we are not to work. In verse 11 comes the reason why.
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.
I want to turn to a verse, and maybe now yo will understand this verse a little bit better. In John 5, Jesus was accused of breaking the Sabbath.
The issue is the Sabbath. God does NOT stop working on the Sabbath. But He is not laboring in a steel mill. He is not laboring bending over an engineering table. He is not laboring by doing work on His automobile, or cutting His lawn, or anything. But what is God doing? Psalm 74:12 tells you that God is working salvation in all the world, and that work does not stop on the Sabbath.
Jesus was justifying what He did on the Sabbath by the fact that He was doing the same thing that God was. He was expending His energy in God's creation; and, therefore - because God works at this - it was also justifiable for Jesus to work. So, creative acts - creative work - of the kind that God is involved in on the Sabbath does NOT stop just because the Sabbath arrives.
The Sabbath is, therefore, an integral part of the same process of Creation that God began on that seventh day. The physical aspect was finished at the end of the sixth day. But the spiritual aspectbegan with creation of the Sabbath; and it continues to this day, as Jesus established there in John 5.
Christ is clearly identifying His mission with redemption, and He is tying it to the liberating intent of the Sabbath, or Sabbaths - both weekly and annual.
God did this to no other day! The Sabbath is a day that is blessed. A blessing is clearly shown in the Bible to be something given, or conferred, in order to bring one into a fuller and more abundant life. The blessing may be monetary. But it elevates the person's life. The blessing may be something that is spiritual - such as forgiveness of sin, or illumination of the mind of truth. But the person then begins to be liberated, and the life begins to become filled with the right things.
A blessing is something conferred in order to bring one to a fuller and more abundant life. We begin to see what God did on the Sabbath - He blessed it! We begin to see the purpose of that blessing. The purpose of the Sabbath is to bring a person - all persons eventually - to a more abundant and fuller life. To liberate them (us) from whatever it is that holds us in bondage. The Sabbath is the day of liberation - of liberty, of freedom.
What is He blessing here? He's blessing what He just created - the living creatures, animals. In verse 28, He blesses man. And then in Genesis 2:3 is the capstone of His blessings in the Creation week. It expresses God's blessing of His whole Creation; and by blessing a recurring period of time, God promises to be man's Benefactor through the whole course of human history. It's an invocation - to you and to me - of God's favor. And, as we continue along here, we will see that it's primary intention is that God will be our spiritual Benefactor.
Now, it also includes the physical as well. The two cannot be separated here, because we are physical. That's why He told us to rest. It is a blessing - to you physically and to me physically - to be able to rest on the Sabbath. Our health is increased because we do it. We don't get as sick as often as we used to. And when we do get sick, we don't get sick as badly as we used to. Because we are resting on the Sabbath day, our body is freed from much of what would normally come upon us. If we don't keep it, we don't get that blessing.
But that still is not its primary intention. Its primary intention has to do with that which is spiritual. Brethren, Jesus is clearly tying His ministry to the Sabbath concepts of blessing, deliverance, liberty, and redemption. That's His mission - to bring those things to mankind.
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.
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.
