Sunday: The Sabbath in Genesis
One of the most deeply imbedded truths of the Bible is that back in Eden, in a perfect world created by a perfect God, the seventh day was set apart from the rest of the week and made holy. That’s how far back, and basic, the seventh-day Sabbath is. From the perspective of this world, you can’t get much further back than that. With the Sabbath, then, we’re dealing with one of the most fundamental and foundational of all biblical truths.1
What four actions of God are recorded in Genesis 2:1–3 as He created the Sabbath?
God created a day, He rested on that day, He blessed the seventh day, and He sanctified it, which means He made it holy or set it apart for holy use. How fascinating that God Himself “rested” on the seventh day. Whatever that means, it shows how seriously the day is meant to be taken, because God Himself rested on it!
Genesis 2:3 also states that the Creator “blessed” the seventh day, just as He had blessed animals and man on the day before (Gen. 1:22, 28). God refers to this blessing of the Sabbath in the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, forever linking the creation Sabbath with the weekly Sabbath.
Notice how many times the phrase “the seventh day” is repeated in Genesis 2:1–3. What possible significance does that repetition have?
Three times that specific day is mentioned. This accentuates the extraordinary nature of the seventh-day Sabbath and clearly sets it apart from the rest of the week. It should always remind us that God didn’t make the first day special, or any other day. The special blessing is for the seventh day and no other.
With the creation of the seventh-day Sabbath, God ended His creative work. He took the seven days of time and crafted them into a week. This weekly cycle is observed throughout the rest of Scripture and history. Thus, God demonstrates His manifold power over not just space and the things of space but over time, as well. None of us can control an hour, or even a minute, of time. Time relentlessly marches on, completely beyond our machinations. How important, then, that we learn to trust the Lord with the little amount of time we have here on earth.
Think about the march of time, how it sweeps us along moment my moment, day by day, and year by year. Though we have no control over time itself, what we can control to some degree is what we do with it. How well do you use your time? What things occupy your time? How might you use your time, the little bit you have here, better?
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It is therefore very bad that we spend all our limited time on this earth pursuing things that do not really satisfy. Our focus should be therefore in pursuit of eternal life with Christ. Lord help us to truly pursue those things that are yours, one of them being the day you so cherished
Yeah, really. Often we spend our time with, you know, things that turned us out away from God, things that are temporary, things that would just pass away. Especially talking about God's special day which is the Sabbath, we often forget & steal even a single minute or even an hour or more of His 24-hour holy day. It is really necessary to be reminded by by our lesson. Therefore, I encourage every Christian to give your time to God willingly.
-That's right, specially to those who already know the importance of God's holy day. Everyone is guilty of stealing time for God's special day, which is the Sabbath. Each one of us is struggling from the burden of sin. Let us always consider that we are sinful in nature, but we must always remember also that we have Jesus on our side. "Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Let us always ask the guidance of God on every decision we make, specially on how we spend every second of our precious life.
"HEAVEN is our only GOAL"
Time flies, but what we have to do is give every flying minute something to keep in store. Let those things that will edify us spiritually occupy my mind and time, let our focus be on things above, in Jesus name, Amen!!!
I have a question I have pondered off and on. When did GOD create Eve for Adam? He created man on the 6th day, gave him his charge over the earth and to name all the animals. At what point did Adam notice his singularity for GOD to say to Himself it is not good for man to be alone, I will make a helpmate for him. I just wondered if this all took place on the 6th day as we assume - I don't doubt the literal 6 days of creation. But just wondered if Adam was so busy in his new world would he have noticed his "lack" or was it after some time of observing the animals that he realised that he himself was without a complement?
Dear Mary-Ann,
Good question! In my Bible, Genesis 1:27-28 reads:
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Then, at the end of verse 31, it says, "So the evening and the morning were the sixth day."
Does this answer your question?
Yes. Thanks very much much.
To Mary-Ann I know Adam must have been busy naming animals too, But I don't think he named them individually, I think he named them by species. Also remember he was perfect in the image of God so his intellect was unimaginable compared to ours.
We the entire human race have a choice on what to do on the Sabbath day, whether to keep it as God has commanded or not. But, we can never escape the Sabbath or bypass it, because God entrenched it within time. We shall therefore give an account on how we kept our Sabbath day in worshipping our God.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we study the creation; from the first to the sixth day, God created everything including us as human beings. The second chapter begins with another kind of creation: the Sabbath (Gen.2:1-3).
To give us an example to follow, God Himself rested on that day. He blessed and sanctified it, what we can call a "spiritual activity". So, we can assume that our God is the first Sabbath Keeper. He blessed all He has created: plants, animals, human beings and the Sabbath. He is a God of blessings.
The Seventh day is a special day because it marks the end of the week's cycle. Without that sacred time we would have been functioning in a non-stop mode.-
Always wondered where the holyness of Sundays came from
Dear David,
The idea of Sunday sacredness would seem to have been an invention of the Roman church during the centuries after the earthly ministry of Christ. I certainly do not find it anywhere in the Holy Scriptures.
Sunday is special in that it is the first day and we are called to give God the first fruits. Jesus rose in the first day and ascended to the father to present Himself the first fruit to Him. We gather on Sunday and give God the forst dya, our first worship and our first in tithes and offerings. However, Sunday is not the the Sabbath. Jesus fulfilled the law of the Sabbath when He stood in the grave and rested. Jesus never changed the law of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a celebration of the finished work of Christ on the cross on our behalf. God rested when He finished creation, on the cross Jesus said it is finished and He rested till Sunday, we can rest in His amazing grace and finished redemption, we cease from striving because Jesus has won the victory over sin, death and the grave. He has paid our debt in full and Satan is defeated. In honor, reverence and adoration to Him, we obey and commemorate the Sabbath and the day of first fruits to the glory of God.