To Sabbath or Not to Sabbath: Fact#3
This week we consider the third fact about putting together a correct understanding of the meaning of Sabbath.
Here, once again, is the text before us, Genesis 2:1-3 from the English Standard Version:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
FACT #3: The area of focus today is the specific action from which God rested was creation. The text says, “So God…rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (v. 3b). There is no further record of any creative activity. God created man then He rested. Nothing has been made by God since. Man is the last physical effort of God in the creation story. It can therefore be concluded that the Sabbath (rest) in which God entered continues to this day. God is continuously active in a multitude of ways but He is not physically creating today.
Jesus is accused by the Pharisees of breaking the Sabbath when he healed invalid man in John chapter five. Jesus replies by saying in verse seventeen, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” Christ’s argument was that it was proper for him to do an act of mercy on the Sabbath day because he was simply emulating his Father who was continuously active in mercy and love on his Sabbath day, his protracted rest. God stopped creating but he was still busy in a thousand different ways.
Hence, the third part of the Sabbath puzzle is this: the true Sabbath means that God’s creative activity has ended.
Just an added thought to mull over. Numerous evolutionists acknowledge that man is the end of the evolutionary ladder, and that nothing further has evolved since the advent of man. We cannot agree with them as to how man came into being, but it is curious that they agree at this point that there is no further indication of evolutionary development beyond man.
Here, once again, is the text before us, Genesis 2:1-3 from the English Standard Version:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
FACT #3: The area of focus today is the specific action from which God rested was creation. The text says, “So God…rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (v. 3b). There is no further record of any creative activity. God created man then He rested. Nothing has been made by God since. Man is the last physical effort of God in the creation story. It can therefore be concluded that the Sabbath (rest) in which God entered continues to this day. God is continuously active in a multitude of ways but He is not physically creating today.
Jesus is accused by the Pharisees of breaking the Sabbath when he healed invalid man in John chapter five. Jesus replies by saying in verse seventeen, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” Christ’s argument was that it was proper for him to do an act of mercy on the Sabbath day because he was simply emulating his Father who was continuously active in mercy and love on his Sabbath day, his protracted rest. God stopped creating but he was still busy in a thousand different ways.
Hence, the third part of the Sabbath puzzle is this: the true Sabbath means that God’s creative activity has ended.
Just an added thought to mull over. Numerous evolutionists acknowledge that man is the end of the evolutionary ladder, and that nothing further has evolved since the advent of man. We cannot agree with them as to how man came into being, but it is curious that they agree at this point that there is no further indication of evolutionary development beyond man.
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