Word of Salvation – Vol.53 No.38 – October 2008
The First Sabbath
A Sermon by Rev John Haverland
Sermon 6 of 19, on Genesis 1-12
Scripture Readings: Gen 2:2-3; Ex 20:1-7; Heb 4:1-13; Mk 2:23-3:6
Confession: Heidelberg Catechism LD 38
Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
Theme: On the seventh day God rested from his work of creation and blessed the day and made it holy.
Purpose: To explain the institution, purpose and benefit of this day of rest and worship.
The Sunday as a day of rest is rapidly disappearing in our society. The Saturday and Sunday are virtually the same in how they are used. All the big shopping malls are open all weekend as well as many of the smaller shopping areas. The movie theatres are playing, large industrial plants keep operating, real estate agents are working, the supermarkets are open, lots of sports games are being played, people mow their lawns, paint their homes and work in their garden.
This day was given to us as a day of rest and it was given to us for our benefit and blessing, but it is not generally honoured or respected. As with many of God’s beautiful gifts, it has been neglected and abused and distorted. That is true of unbelievers who are generally ignorant of God’s requirements for this day; but many believers also disobey God’s commands for this day and do not use it as he intended it.
Today we will consider this seventh day of the creation week. We will see that God set this day aside as a Rest Day , a Blessed Day, a Holy Day.
1. First of all then, he set this day aside as A REST DAY
Genesis 1 tells us that God worked for six days creating the world, forming it and shaping it into the beauty and splendour we see around us. In these sermons so far we have noticed some of the marvels of God’s creation — how he made the land and the seas, the massive distant galaxies, the huge sun, the solar systems, and then this earth that is so finely balanced to sustain life. God filled this earth with a great variety of plant life and he created thousands of kinds of fish and birds and animals. The whole creation is a testimony to the almighty power and great imagination of God the Creator.
And so after the sixth day we read, “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array” (2:1).
Then God rested : “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” (2:2).
He did not rest because he was tired. It’s not that he was exhausted or that he needed to rest. Neither does this mean that God has been doing nothing since then. His creative work had ended but he has continued to sustain his world and provide for all his people and all the creatures of the earth (Ps 104). And he is also active in the work of saving his people. After healing someone on the Sabbath Jesus told the Jews, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” (Jn 5:17).
On the seventh day God rested so that he could enjoy the work he had done. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (1:31). Having completed his work he wanted to celebrate what he had done and take it all in. He wants us to do the same.
We too are to work and rest.
When God created Adam he gave him work to do . He was to name all the animals and he was to work in the Garden of Eden and take care of it. We, too, are to work. The fourth commandment says, “Six days shall you labour and do all your work…” The Apostle Paul wrote that if a man will not work he shall not eat.
This is a problem in our society. The number of unemployed is low compared to other years, but we still have a hard core of unemployed and unemployable people, and there are more and more people on sickness benefits who could well be working. We are commanded to work. God wants us to be busy and active. And he wants us to use our time well and to work hard. But having worked six days he allows us to rest . He wants us to rest and so he commanded this: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day” (Ex 20:8 ff).
Our rest is patterned on God’s rest. We must rest because he rested. This takes some organisation and planning . It means you must make a deliberate decision to take one day a week off from your work. It means that you have to work hard and efficiently so that you can get everything done in six days and then rest.
This pattern and command applies to all of us . We all need a day of rest — ministers, doctors, nurses, teachers, electricians, drain-layers, businessmen, growers. This also applies to students at school and polytech (technical colleges) and university. Your usual work is study. So you have to study hard for six days and then take the Sunday as a day of rest, otherwise you are disobeying God’s command. This is a commandment of the Lord and God wants us to obey him.
It is not easy to maintain this day of rest in our present society where everything goes on as usual — shops, planes, hotels, motels. Some of you are involved in shift work as doctors and nurses and in industries that go on around the clock. But despite the difficulties let’s try to be as consistent as possible in keeping this command. Let’s make every effort to avoid our usual work and let’s try to avoid causing others to work on this day.
But let’s also be careful to avoid legalism . The Pharisees were masters at this. In addition to all the laws given through Moses they added a whole raft of extra laws they had made up that governed every activity in life. Their laws for the Sabbath were especially detailed and restrictive, and Jesus and his disciples were often criticised for breaking these man-made rules.
Be as consistent as you can for yourself in keeping this as a day of rest for yourself and others, but avoid making rules for other people.
2. Secondly, God established this as A BLESSED DAY .
In verse 3 we read; “And God blessed the seventh day…” A blessing is a spoken word that pronounces favour on someone or something. God designated this as a special day, as one that is very significant and important and as a day that would be of help to us, a source of well-being and of benefit. A source of blessing!
Jesus reinforced this one Sabbath day after the Pharisees had criticised his disciples for picking heads of grain and eating them. Jesus told them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). God blessed this day as a day of favour and benefit to us.
It is a blessing for us because we need a day of rest for our own physical, mental and emotional health. We have noted that there are some people who don’t work enough and are lazy. But there are others that work too much ; they are workaholics; they are addicted to their job and they don’t know when to stop.
This happened in Israel. The people neglected the Sabbath and did as they pleased on God’s holy day; they carried on with their usual business and continued trading and buying and selling (Is 58). Some of the strongest condemnations of the prophets are directed at Israel’s abuse of the Sabbath.
This goes on today. Many people keep working seven days a week. Some do this because they enjoy their work and find it fulfilling; others do it because of the money and the overtime. Whatever the motive they are making a god of their work. Their job is an idol — that is what they live for, it is Number 1.
But constant work like this will lead to many physical problems in heart disease and ulcers and tiredness. It will lead to mental and emotional problems as people get too stressed and worried and anxious. It will lead to relational problems in marriage and in families because husbands and wives and parents and children don’t see enough of each other.
For this reason God gave us one day a week for rest. You can stop working and you can do this with a clear conscience because you are obeying God. He gave us a compulsory day of rest so that we will not make an idol of our work and so that we will keep our job in perspective and even do our work better.
Think of the way many unbelievers spend their weekend. Many young people, and not so young, are out partying till the early hours of the morning; they are drinking, dancing, living it up. Others spend their entire weekend busy around their house and garden and others spend it in organised sport. The result is that they come to work on Monday morning dead beat! They had a hard weekend. They start the week tired, exhausted, worn out. This is the “Mondayitis disease”. It produces work that we call a “Monday job” — a task poorly done because someone was recovering from a bad hangover.
God wants us to rest one day in seven so that we can gather strength for another week of work. Yes, we lose income for that day, but if we keep a day of rest in the long run we will be more productive and more useful in our workplace.
But we don’t keep this day merely because it will benefit us; our motive is not pragmatic, not just for what we can get out of it. No, we do this because this is what God wants, this is what he commands. And there is joy in obedience: God promised through Isaiah that if you keep this day “you will find your joy in the Lord” (Is 58:14). We can also note that keeping this day of rest will result in a blessing for everyone. This pattern of one in seven is called “a creation ordinance†which means that it is built into the structure of creation. This is the way God planned it from the beginning and he wants everyone to follow this pattern.
At times people have tried to change the pattern. After the French Revolution in 1792 they decided to change the calendar to a ten day system but after a few years this broke down because people could not work nine days in a row and remain productive. So in 1805 Napoleon changed it back to a seven day cycle. A similar thing happened in Russia in 1917 when the communists abolished the Sunday and wanted everyone to work seven days a week. But they found it was impossible for people to keep on working all the time and so the Sunday off was reintroduced under Stalin.
God has made everyone in his image and we are all his creatures. He has made us and he knows how we best function. So this is one important instruction from the Manufacturer and there is much blessing in obeying him.
There is a city in Scotland that receives it water supply for a lake high in the mountains. The lake is so high that the water in the pipes develops great pressure, so much so that the pipes in the city below could not cope. So an engineer devised a system of breaks in the pipeline as it descended to the city. At regular intervals they built a small reservoir which would break the pressure, and then pipes would take it down to the next level. In the same way God has given us a day of rest to relieve the pressure in our lives. He has given us one day in seven so we can refresh ourselves and gather strength for the next week.
3. The Sabbath is a rest day, a blessed day and, thirdly, it is A HOLY DAY .
God made this day “holy”. The word describes something that is set apart, something different. It is a holy day, not a holiday. It is a day set apart so we can rest from our usual work and worship the Lord with his people. That is very important in our secular world that ignores God and rushes on about its business — a world full of hurry and pressure. In this busy world God says, “Be still and know that I am Lord” (Ps 46:10).
God wants us to come together as his people, as the church, to spend time with him — to worship, to confess our sins, to praise his name, to hear his Word. That biblical teaching is well summarised in Lord’s Day 38 of the Catechism.
We need this time to reflect on our relationship with God, to remember the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving work, to re-orientate ourselves, to re-focus our faith. All this helps us as we go into another week. We can carry the worship of this day into Monday and Tuesday, because all of life is to be worship. Hearing God’s word on Sunday opens our eyes to what God is doing in our lives during the week so that we are more alert to the Lord and his activity.
Those of us who wear glasses need to clean them regularly so we can see. In the same way we need the Sunday to polish the glasses of our faith. This is why we have two services on the Sunday, so that we can keep our focus on the Lord throughout the day.
This makes the Sunday a glad and joyful day . Psalm 118:24 described the day of God’s salvation and said;
“This is the day the Lord has made,
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
That was David’s attitude to temple worship. In Psalm 122 he wrote;
“I rejoiced with those who said to me,
Let us go up to the house of the Lord’.”
Would that we all came to worship with that sense of joy and anticipation!
That is especially true of us in this New Testament age, living as we do in the light of Christ’s resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and in recognition of this world-transforming event the early church met together on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, rather than the seventh day, the Sabbath. So too today. Every Sunday when we come together we remember that Jesus has been raised, that he is alive in heaven, and that he is coming again.
The writer of Hebrews points us forward when he describes the future Sabbath-rest for the people of God. Every time we rest from our usual work and come together to worship God, we are looking forward to the eternal rest in heaven that will come about when Jesus returns.
Let’s resolve to work hard six days of the week so that we can rest on the Lord’s Day. Let’s use this day wisely and well in rest, in worship, in doing what is holy and right and good, so that we may be refreshed and strengthened in our faith and so that we might prepare ourselves for that eternal Sabbath Day.
Amen.