Chapter 3 Monument to Creation

When we come to understand that God is our Creator, then we recognize how reasonable is His plan that we should acknowledge Him as fully sovereign over every ability we have, and everything we do. Our relationship to God, the relation between creature and Creator, is set forth in detail in the Holy Scriptures, which we have come to appreciate as the inspired word of God, and the ultimate authority in our lives. One of the very first things that the Bible tells us about this connection between us and God, is that our Maker, very early on, provided mankind with a permanent monument to His creative power, a token given to serve as a sign of allegiance to Him:

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.
And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made (Genesis 2:1-3).

To honor and commemorate His work of creating this world with man upon it, God made the seventh day of the week a holy day, setting it apart from the other days of the week. The very first full 24-hour day that Adam and Eve spent together was the Sabbath day. And what a Sabbath day that must have been! Since God made the Sabbath for man (Mark 2:27), we can picture Him coming down to Eden, taking the first happy couple for a long Sabbath walk, and pointing out to them some of the intricacies of trees and flowers, of animals and birds, of water and air. As their wondering eyes tried to take this all in, how their hearts must have thrilled with love for such a Creator, and for each other. And, just to think they could look ahead to this blessed fellowship with God every week from then on.

And as for God, He was just as thrilled to associate with the new human beings as they were to be with Him. For when He "laid the foundations of the earth . . . the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:4,7). Throughout Scripture, a most pervasive and important teaching is that God wants to be our Friend. He loves us. He craves our love. And He wants us to love each other. Communion with Him and fellowship with one another are of cardinal importance to Christians.

How God has endeavored to encourage and maintain this close relationship with human beings can be seen when we look at how He emphasized the importance of keeping the Sabbath as He made it – holy! The fact that the Bible does not discuss the importance of Sabbath-keeping during the patriarchal period shows that during that time Sabbath-breaking had not yet become a problem among God’s followers. We do find here that God gave as a reason why He promised so much seed and so much land to the patriarch Abraham: "because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws" (Genesis 26:5). It is clear, then, that God’s commandments were in effect before the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.

The real struggle over the keeping of the Sabbath began when Moses and Aaron were called by God to lead His people out of Egypt, so that He might settle them in the land of Canaan, and make of them a great nation, the nation of Israel. By Moses’ time these Hebrew people had been held in slavery in Egypt for several generations. Laboring day after day under the whip of harsh taskmasters, they had lost sight of the sacred nature of the seventh-day Sabbath. It is evident that Moses and Aaron were attempting to restore Sabbath-keeping, and that Pharaoh had learned of this. For the Bible account reads:

Then the king of Egypt said to them, "Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor."
And Pharaoh said, "Look, the people of the land are many now, and you make them rest from their labor!" (Exodus 5:4,5).

This, then, is the second evidence that God’s commandments pre-date Sinai.

The third very clear evidence showing the binding nature of God’s laws previous to the thundering from Mount Sinai is found in the episode dealing with the Sabbath at the time that God began to provide manna as food for Israel. He instructed the people to gather a double portion on the sixth day, and not to attempt to gather any on the seventh day. Notice what God said when some of the people ignored this instruction:

Now it happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found none.
And the Lord said to Moses, "How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws?" (Exodus 16:27,28).

It is fitting at this point to review the record of God’s efforts throughout the Old Testament to emphasize His requirement that His people keep the weekly Sabbath-day holy. The primary occasion to consider here would of course be that of God’s writing the Ten Commandments with His own fingers on two tables of stone, and giving them to the children of Israel. These people were to be the custodians of the oracles of God. The mandatory observance of the seventh day is set forth in the fourth commandment:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work; you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it (Exodus 20:8-11).

The surpassing importance of refraining from Sabbath-day labor is remarkable, as expressed in Exodus 34:21: "Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest." If a farmer fell behind in his work, or if the weather happened to be especially favorable for working in the fields, he still was forbidden to labor on the Sabbath.

It is interesting to notice that when God Himself spoke the law to Israel from Mount Sinai, He cited His creatorship as authority for the Sabbath commandment. But when Moses spoke this commandment to the people just before they entered the Promised Land, he cited the deliverance from Egypt as the reason for this command (Deuteronomy 5:15). There is no need for confusion here. This was Moses’ way of re-identifying God by referring to the Creator’s more recent and directly relevant act on behalf of His people. The same God creates and delivers. It is abundantly clear from other passages of Scripture that God’s power manifested in creation is the supreme event underlying the whole idea of a seven-day week, with a working period of six days, and a rest on the seventh.

The blessing of Sabbath-keeping was promised not only to Abraham’s seed, but also to the Gentiles who accepted the Lord:

Also the sons of the foreigner
Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him,
And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants –
Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And holds fast My covenant –
Even them I will bring to My holy mountain
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar;
For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations
(Isaiah 56:6,7).

Everyone, whether Jew or Gentile, who worships the one true God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, is expected to keep the seventh day holy.

In a beautiful poetic passage in the 58^th chapter of Isaiah, God gives us a picture of the kind of benevolent life that pleases Him – indeed, the kind of deportment that He requires. We see here the promise of gratifying rewards for those who take delight in celebrating the Sabbath, who make it a happy time:

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath,
From doing your pleasure on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the Lord honorable,
And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord;
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the Lord has spoken (Isaiah 58:13,14).

Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them (Ezekiel 22:26).

Ezekiel and Jeremiah were contemporary prophets who presented messages from God just prior to the carrying away of Judah into the 70-year Babylonian captivity. These men were both witnesses to the habitual desecration of the Sabbath among God’s own chosen people. These Jews were carrying on their commercial pursuits on the Sabbath, in a flagrant disregard of the sanctity of the seventh day of the week. And so in a solemn, final warning just before the fall of Jerusalem in the siege by Nebuchadnezzar, God laid out clearly before His people the good rewards for Sabbath-keeping, in contrast with the bad consequences of Sabbath-breaking. This very vivid delineation is recorded in Jeremiah 17:24-27:

And it shall be, if you heed Me carefully," says the Lord, " to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work in it,
"Then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, accompanied by the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and this city shall remain forever.
"And they shall come from the cities of Judah and from the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin and from the lowland, from the mountains and from the South, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and incense, bringing sacrifices of praise to the house of the Lord.
"But if you will not heed Me to hallow the Sabbath day, such as not carrying a burden when entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched."

One would expect that, in view of such beautiful promises of prosperity for Sabbath-keeping, and such drastic threats of calamity for Sabbath-breaking, God’s people would surely strive earnestly to please Him by faithful obedience to the command regarding His holy day.

But no! Though the Lord loved them dearly, and cared for them patiently, they were untrue to Him. They became idolaters and Sabbath-breakers; and the result was national disaster. Three sieges – 605, 597, and 586 BC, by Nebuchadnezzar – laid waste the city of Jerusalem, including Solomon’s spectacular temple. A large number of Judah’s population were taken captive to Babylon, where they lived in subjection to the heathen Chaldeans for seventy years.

It is important for us at this point to recognize certain beliefs that are basic to the Christian faith: We acknowledge that there is a God. We have learned from the Old Testament Scriptures that He is our Creator. We have also discovered that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice, our true ground of authority. We have read in this Bible that God rested from His work of creation on the seventh day of the first week, and that He set that day apart as a holy day. Throughout the Old Testament we notice that the Lord continued to emphasize the very strict requirement that His followers celebrate this holy memorial of His creative power.

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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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