God Blessed the Sabbath
Wayne Christensen
Creation
Creation, from week one, literally was designed with a built-in rhythm: six days of work followed by one day of rest, six…one, six…one. The Sabbath was another gift from God to man. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk. 2:27). We don’t serve the Sabbath, it serves us.
When the LORD brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, He gave them the law, including the fourth of the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex. 20:8-11). This, of course, refers to Genesis 2:1-3. God is taking his people back to the garden, as it were; they’re returning to paradise.
To better appreciate this commandment, consider the historical context. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and they were being worked to death — probably literally in many cases. Slavery wasn’t a dull, monotonous, nine-to-five desk job that they endured five days a week. These people were oppressed, in the fullest sense of the word. The Egyptians “ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field” (Ex. 1:13-14). Then God miraculously delivers his people and says, “Now you will rest every Sabbath, like I intended from the beginning of creation.” If you’re a slave, this is the greatest commandment you’ve ever heard in your life.
God was serious about making the Sabbath part of Israel’s culture. When he gave them manna in the wilderness, they were to gather twice as much on the sixth day, so that the Sabbath could be a day of solemn rest (Ex. 16:22-30). Even the land was to rest and observe the Sabbath, with six years of sowing followed by one year of rest as it lay fallow (Ex 23:10-11). Keeping the Sabbath was part of keeping covenant with God (Ex 31:16). And anyone who profaned the Sabbath was to be put to death (Ex 31:14-15).
If you understand the blessing of the Sabbath, you don’t ask, “Do we still have to keep the Sabbath?” Rather, you ask, “Do we still get to keep the Sabbath?” And we do. The Westminster Confession of Faith (11:7) describes the continuation of the Sabbath and its transition from the last day of the week to the first day of a new week: “As it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, He hath particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto Him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath.”
It’s sad to observe that in the first century some believers were already in the habit of neglecting to meet together for Sabbath worship and edification (Heb. 10:24-25). Sunday should be the best day of the week. It was on a Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead. It was on a Sunday that our resurrected Lord appeared to his disciples. It was on a Sunday when the Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost and filled the people of God. The early church gathered together on Sunday to listen the apostles’ teaching, to pray, to fellowship and to break bread. If God’s people remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, he promises to make us ride of the heights of the earth (Isa. 58:13-14).