Dennis Tuuri

There’s something downstairs. I thought I would point out something that I got in the mail this week. We visited the Oregon State University Extension Service office in Washington County a week or two ago and got some stuff on how to take care of moles, which I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do correctly. But we also signed up to receive some information on parenting from the extension service because I was kind of intrigued by the title of the publication.

The package they sent me included one of the first newsletters they send out to people with preschoolers. This particular newsletter is on disciplining. And it shouldn’t surprise us, but I just thought I’d point out a few things that are in this newsletter about disciplining.

A clue to this: one of the first things they say here is that effective discipline teaches children to decide what is desirable behavior and practice it because it feels right. And that’s the aim of the discipline—get them to make the decisions on what feels good to them. Of course, with that in mind, physical discipline or physical punishment is not acceptable. They say that physical or verbal punishment teaches children to hate themselves and others. Parents who use physical or verbal punishments are teaching children that it’s all right to solve conflicts with hitting or name calling.

So that’s the problem with spanking. It teaches kids that it’s okay to resolve conflicts that way. And then of course they say that much of children’s behavior considered naughty or bad is best thought of as learning behavior. So all those things your kids might have done this last week is actually learning behavior. They go on to list various reasons why children misbehave. They say children misbehave because they lack knowledge and experience, they don’t feel well, they’re upset, they’re discouraged, or they feel rejected. And that is the sum total of why children act badly.

Of course, the missing element is sin. And that missing element colors everything they say.

The reason I brought it up is because the title of the publication kind of intrigued me in light of our talks on Moloch worship several weeks ago. The name of the publication is “Oregon’s Children.” I’m going to make short reference to that later on in the talk this morning. It is somewhat related, and we’ll see why toward the end of today’s talk.

We began this morning going more in depth into what we considered last week in a very summary fashion in terms of various teachings of the scriptures, both Old and New Covenant, on the teaching of the Sabbath. And this morning, you’ll notice from the outline if you picked one up—they’ve been available out here—that the name of the talk is “The Sabbath, the Creation Ordinance.” This is a very important element of a correct understanding of the biblical Sabbath.

I decided to start with this because that’s where the Bible starts with the Sabbath. It begins with talking about God’s Sabbath rest on the seventh day. So if you look at the outlines, you’ll notice that we’re going to talk about a two-fold witness to the Sabbath being a creation ordinance: both the witness of the Old Covenant and then the witness of the New Covenant. Then, having considered that two-fold witness of the scriptures to the Sabbath as a creation ordinance, we’ll talk about the implications of that for us today as new covenant people.

So that’s the three points we’ll be covering this morning. First of all, the Old Testament witness to the Sabbath being a creation mandate. And we began this morning by reading from Genesis 1:26-23. I think these scriptures are really, on the face of it, very self-explanatory. Some people object to saying that this was the ordination of the Sabbath or the creation of it, but I think it’s really hard to miss the fact that what we have here is God setting a pattern for man by working six days and doing creative work, and then resting from his work on the seventh day.

Now, it’s true that the seventh day has no night associated with it in the account that we have before us. God’s Sabbath rest is perpetual. Okay? He didn’t rest the seventh day and then begin working again on the first day of the week. His rest is perpetual. But man’s rest at this point in time is not perpetual. It may be that Adam was intended to enjoy that Sabbath rest with God as a perpetual rest as well for himself.

Having gone through a probationary period of testing in the garden and having failed that test, however, he then has no eternal rest with God on the basis of his works. And so the pattern set by God remains a pattern for man in terms of the week itself.

We talked last week about how our calendar itself is structured around the seven-day week and about how various revolutionary movements, including the French Revolution and Russian Revolution specifically, have attempted to get rid of that calendar because the calendar itself—our measure of time—is delineated by the seven-day week of creation ending in a Sabbath day rest that God himself rested in after the days.

So it’s important to recognize that first of all, the very first reference to a seven-day week, while not mentioning the word Sabbath, specifically mentions the word rest. This indicates to us that God’s pattern for Sabbath rest has been established with his creation.

Now, that may seem real obvious to you right now. I think it would to most people with a simple reading of the text. But it’s very important for how we’re going to build on our concept of what the Sabbath is and how it relates to us today as new covenant believers.

Now, it’s important in this account of the Sabbath rest to note several things that God did that is specifically mentioned in this portion of scripture. We read that God’s rest followed his work and followed the evaluation of his work as being very good. God would create various things on various days of the week and then say it was good. At the conclusion of all his creative works at the end of the six days, God looks at all his creation and says that it is very good.

Now that’s an important element of the creation and of God’s rest in the creation, because what that teaches us is the importance of the physical universe—the goodness of the material creation itself. Many of us come from backgrounds that may tend to downplay that aspect of the creation of God. In other words, some of us have sung songs in the past about “turning our eyes upon Jesus, and the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of his wonder and grace,” for instance. That’s one indication of a theme that has been permeating the churches of America for the last 100 years or so.

Anyway, probably that theme, while it may sound very correct and very right to be very heavenly oriented in that sense, really misses a central element of God’s creation and rest in the creation—in the created work that he had made, the physical universe. The scriptures say that God created the universe very good. Now that universe changed with the fall of Adam. But the fact is that God still perceives the universe, in itself, as his created work—as a very good thing.

And so it’s wrong to somehow think that material things in and of themselves are bad. A radical development of this in church history was with a man named Mani, who led to a sect called Manichaeism. Mani believed that the physical creation was governed by an evil god and that the spiritual creation was governed by a spiritual god, and that there were two gods over these two different creations.

Now, no church today would go that far. But when we denigrate the physical creation, when we think that the end-all and be-all of all that we’re involved in is a spiritual reality that has no implications for the created universe, we tend toward that error. God’s Sabbath rest is one indication that this is incorrect. God rested in the finished created work that he had done, including spiritual creations in terms of the angelic host that are talked about here—in the sixth day, in terms of God’s resting in the finished works of the creation of the heavenly hosts themselves.

But he also rested in the created work of the physical universe. And so God established rest first of all to remind us that the physical universe itself is a good thing, and not to denigrate it at all.

Now God says that he rested from his work, and then on the seventh day he blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it. He blessed and sanctified the day—he set it apart. That’s what the word sanctified means: he set it apart to a purpose, and that purpose was his Sabbath rest. And God blessed the Sabbath day. He, as it were, endued the Sabbath day with blessing.

Now, we’re familiar as covenant creatures with blessings and cursings of the covenant. Those blessings and cursings come forth from the hand of God. And here we’re told that the Sabbath day itself was blessed by God and is part of the blessings that we receive from God as well.

Vos—Johannes Vos—in his work “Biblical Theology” says that rest of God then involves the consummation of work completed and the joy and satisfaction attendant upon this. God’s rest on the seventh day was not a retreat from the physical universe. God’s rest on the seventh day was an acknowledgement that he had brought it to completion through six days of work, and he then enjoyed the creation that he had made.

And so the beginning Sabbath day is marked by a sense of completion, a sense of cessation in terms of creative work on the part of God, and then finally by the joy of God in his creation. He saw the creation as very good and he joyed in it.

Now remember last week we talked about the fact that what we want to make clear throughout this series of talks is that the Sabbath is a time of great joy. And here in the very ordination of the beginning of the seven-day week is set down by God—one day of rest in that week that is a prototype for man to follow. We see that prototype involving an aspect of joy being a central aspect of that Sabbath rest of God: joy in his creation, evaluation of it, and seeing it correctly.

Remember we talked several weeks ago about the rearing of children—that our evening prayers should be times of evaluation of the day just passed and a confession of sin before God and an asking for his blessing upon the next day as we look forward to it. Well, in a way, that’s what the Sabbath was also. It was a day of evaluation, and God saw that he had made the creation very good. He evaluated it, and then he rested in it and enjoyed it.

And so when we teach our children about the Sabbath, we should teach them that the Sabbath also has a sense of the day of evaluation in it, because it’s founded in God himself. Rabbinic literature speaks of God’s rest on the Sabbath as being an enthronement, as it were—that God sat on his throne evaluating, judging his creation, seeing it very good, and taking pleasure in it.

There is much biblical evidence that would support this. Throughout the Old Testament, there are many verses that correlate rest with God sitting on a throne. And so we see there again the aspect of God’s evaluation of his creation and then his joy in it. God blesses and sanctifies that day and sets it apart for his use.

Now remember that seventh day was Adam and Eve’s first morning. Okay? They had been created on the sixth day. And their first morning then was a day intended for the evaluation of the creation and their understanding of the goodness of God’s creation and their participating in his joy.

Now, if you look at it that way—that Adam and Eve were to rest that seventh day in God’s rest—then you see again this emphasis upon the joy of the Sabbath and not some sort of onerous duty upon man. Adam and Eve’s first morning was that day of Sabbath rest.

Now, recall I titled this talk “The Sabbath of Creation Ordinance.” John Murray, in writing about creation ordinances, cites as creation ordinances four specific things: parenthood, marriage, work, and Sabbath. When we say creation ordinance, we mean that it was set apart or ordained at the creation itself. And so it has an implication for all of creation.

As long as there is the physical creation that God has given to us, as long as we are men and women, we will have these things with us. We will have marriage, we’ll have parenthood, we’ll have work, and we’ll have rest. And all those things come forth from the creation.

We have tried to say in the last couple of years in this church that what the scriptures do is give us an understanding of the person of God. On the basis of that revelation of the person of God, then we understand who we are. We’re creations of God. We cannot be understood in isolation from the creation. We are creatures that have been created in a time sequence.

Now remember that God himself is eternal. The time sequence itself has also been created by God in this creation. God’s seventh day rest, which for him is a perpetual rest, is not to be seen as mandating that God himself exists in time. God supersedes all time. He is infinite. Why then did God rest on the seventh day? Why did he talk about his creative actions in terms of time and the creation of it? Because it gives us a pattern for our time.

We’re created beings and we’ve been created in a time sequence, and we live in that time sequence. And if we understand our use of that time, we must understand it in correlation—analogically—to God himself. And God says that on the seventh day he rested from his works. And implicit in that very statement alone—if we concluded with that this morning—we should probably come to the assumption that we then, as his creation, are to work six days and rest the seventh day.

Now that’s clear, isn’t it? We were created in that creation and we have that understanding of our personhood being understood from God himself.

Now, it’s interesting that, as I said, Adam and Eve were supposed to enter into that rest of God. And yet, we know that rest didn’t come for them. We know that because of their fall, things were changed and the seventh day became not a day of finished rest as it was going to be in terms of a perpetual Sabbath rest in God.

The scriptures contrast the rest of the righteous versus the rest of the wicked. For instance, in Isaiah 57:20, we read as characteristic of many scriptural statements on the wicked. Let’s start at verse 19.

“I create the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the Lord, and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”

That is a contrasted element to the rest that God has dictated for us. In the Sabbath, God rested from his works. We’re to rest in those works as well. But the wicked have no rest. They are restless. Our rest must be in the providence of God.

When we get together once a week to commemorate the finished work of Jesus Christ, it really could be seen as a great waste of time for us, couldn’t it? In light of the things that I read this morning, for instance—”Oregon’s Children.” There’s no doubt, and remember, this publication is funded by your tax dollars going through the federal government first and then through the state government as well. There’s no doubt about the tremendous problems we face as a society and culture today in terms of the growth of Molech—or the state—and its requirements of everything that we have.

In light of that, in light of the terrible necessity of moving and moving quickly to try to thwart the plans of those people who would take our children away for their own purposes, why do we set aside a tremendous percentage of our time—one day out of the week—to rest and to not work on things like that? That could be seen as a tremendous waste of time, couldn’t it?

Now, we know that later on—and we’ll talk about this more in the future in terms of economics—but we know that at the time of Nehemiah, some people had that same idea about monetary work, didn’t they? “Why? If we work one more day a week, we can increase our productivity by some 16, 17% by working one more day a week. We have that much more money to spend as we seek our leisure time based on our own cycle.”

Well, the same thing could be said of us today. We may not be money-hungry in that sense as people who have our priorities straight. But we must understand that the dominion mandate that God has given us—including the idea of vocational calling—has to be subservient to the creation ordinance that God has established here: one day in seven of rest.

Why is that? That’s because we’re to rest in the providence of God. We recognize that it is his providence that controls all of creation and all the history of mankind. The seventh day rest is an indication of that providence, then, being formed by God at creation. We rest because we know it’s not ultimately our efforts that will turn this country back to righteousness. We rest because we know that it’s not our efforts that will protect our children and our families from the intrusions of the state.

We rest because we know that the word of God will go forth and will bring forth fruit. And so it is a fundamental element of our faith to set aside one day out of seven, in spite of the tremendous pressing responsibilities we have at home, at work, or in the nation or in the state—to set aside that one day out of seven and acknowledge God’s creation of all things, and that because of that creation they move forward in obedience to the providence of God as he brings history to pass for his own purposes of glorifying himself.

The Sabbath rest teaches us that, because it teaches us that the Sabbath rest is a creation ordinance and then is based upon God’s providence.

Now, there are some indications of this Sabbath rest in antiquity. Some people will say, “Well, if the Sabbath was instituted at creation, how come we don’t have instances of Sabbath worship before we get to the book of Exodus, with the Old Testament account of people prior to the deliverance from Egypt? Why don’t we have references to the Sabbath rest?”

There may be some indications of that in the scriptures. For instance, in Genesis 2:9, verse 27, there is the idea of the week in place. Now, you may say, “What’s a week got to do with the Sabbath?” Remember, the seventh day rest is the establishment of the week. Why else do we have a seven-day week apart from the six days of creation and the one day of rest?

It’s been interesting for me reading these last couple of weeks on the supposed origins of the Sabbath for the Israel covenant community. And you’ll find many accounts of people saying, “Well, they actually got it from the Babylonians, or they got it from the Saturn worshippers, or they got it from this or that other people”—because there is a great deal of evidence from antiquity, prior to the point in time where the people were delivered from Egypt and brought into the promised land.

There’s a great deal of evidence of weekly structures. The Babylonians, for instance, had weekly rest on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days. There’s a great deal of evidence from antiquity to support the idea of a week and of seven days of that week, and even a seventh day rest or keeping from activity on a weekly cycle like that. So there is evidence to suggest it.

I think that to say that because we don’t have any explicit evidence from scripture of Sabbath observance prior to Exodus 16—which we’ll look at in just a minute—is really sort of not much of an argument. If, for instance, you consider the fact that such a thing as important as circumcision is deleted—there’s virtually no references to circumcision after the time of the judges throughout the historical accounts. Why is that? Well, it’s an assumed thing, isn’t it? People of God were doing that on a regular basis.

The week is an assumed thing. And throughout the scriptures, we have that week assumed in most of the writings of the scriptures, including prior to Exodus 20 or Exodus 16 and the deliverance of the people from Egypt. And so that seven-day work—the seven-day week—is evident in antiquity.

By the way, one of the interesting things about some of those Babylonian or other observances of the seventh day is that they usually—normally you say, “Well, the Israelites really couldn’t have got it from them because they see the seventh day as a day of bad omen and not as a day of rest or blessedness.” So, you know, they couldn’t have got it from them quite.

Well, that’s true. But they did get it from the same source, didn’t they? The people that had a seventh day observance—because work on that day was a bad omen and bad things would happen to you—those people are like the people we read about from Isaiah, the wicked. They have no rest. Their only rest is in a fearful day when God’s judgment and evaluation is not one of blessedness and is not one of joy on them but is rather one of cursing. And so that itself supports the creation ordinance of the Sabbath.

I think that it’s correct to think that the Sabbath day, as some have said, was the birthday of the world. That’s a good understanding of what the Sabbath day was all about—a day of great joy, the birthday of the world—and so has implications for man in his creation itself and relationship to the rest of creation.

Well, so the scriptures seem to have first affirmed that God instituted the Sabbath day as a creation day at creation from Genesis 2. And then we see further evidence that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance in Exodus 16.

In Exodus 16, we have the account of a Sabbath observance. You remember here the people were grumbling because of lack of food. And God then in Exodus 16 gives them manna to eat. And he tells them specifically that the manna will come and you can gather it on six days, but the seventh day you’re not to gather any manna.

On the sixth day, each day that they gather manna, there’s just enough for that day. And if they try to store some up, it rots, because it’s a disobedience to God’s command not to store it up for the next day. He’ll provide for them on a daily basis. That’s a great picture for us, by the way, to use with their children of the sustenance that God gives us. It’s a great thing to remind our children at dinner time, the smaller children, to begin to teach them that God provides and sustains us in everything that we do.

And that’s what he was doing here, demonstrating his sustenance of people’s daily needs. But more than that, that requirement not to store up food was going to be part of his overall plan here, which was to reintroduce the Sabbath back into the nation of Israel. He told them on the sixth day there’d be more than enough for one day, enough to be enough for two days. Okay? And they had to gather on the sixth day enough for the Sabbath, the seventh day as well.

The Sabbath rest. And they did that then, and sure enough, on the sixth day there was enough for two days. And so they had to understand then that God wanted them to rest in that day.

Now it’s interesting that some people did actually go out on that seventh day and attempt to harvest, but there was none to be harvested. So you say so what? It’s an interesting occurrence. We have the Israelite nation here. They’ve been delivered from Egypt. So it just shows it’s a thing having to do with the Israelites and nobody else. But remember here that this is prior to the giving of the law in Exodus 20.

We’ll look at that in a minute too and show how that also reinforces the Sabbath’s creation ordinance. But right now recognize the fact that this is prior to the giving of the law. The law—the Mosaic law, as it were—has not been given at this point. And yet God is telling them on the seventh day, you’re to rest. You’re not to work or harvest on that day. That’s an indication again that the Sabbath ordinance predates the Mosaic law, and I think indicates that it goes back to the time of the creation—the seventh week itself, the seventh day of the first week itself.

Now the objection to this particular view may be: Why does he then have to tell them to do this? Well, remember where they’ve just been. They’ve been in bondage to Egypt, and they’re being delivered from that bondage now. They’ve been in bondage quite a long time, and it’s quite likely that Pharaoh didn’t give them every seventh day off from brickmaking.

They had to work and continue to work for Pharaoh in spite of their own religious observances. And so I think it’s completely appropriate here that God would reinstitute or cause them to remember again the Sabbath day ordinance that they had apparently forgotten in Egypt. I think that’s what’s going on here.

We have a similar occurrence, of course, at the end of the wilderness period. We have all the people being circumcised before they go into the promised land. And so I think what we have here obviously is a dating of the Sabbath prior to the giving of the law, which will occur in Exodus 20. That’s one more indication that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance and was binding upon the people prior to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai.

But let’s look at the giving of the law at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20, just a few chapters ahead here now. Exodus 20: God comes down, Moses goes up and talks to God, and God appears to him and God speaks all these words to Moses—the ten words of the Ten Commandments.

The fourth word, the fourth commandment, is found in Exodus 20, verse 8 through 11:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work. Thou, thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

Now, I want to point out a couple of things here that are important to see in terms of this fourth commandment—or fourth word from God—that again point to the Sabbath as a creation ordinance.

In verse 8, we the covenant community are told to remember the Sabbath day. He doesn’t say it’s something new here. He doesn’t say that this is now a new commandment for a new people in isolation from everybody else. It’s not just for you here. You’re remembering back to the Sabbath day. What are they remembering to?

I don’t think Exodus 16 was just to help them remember as well what they’d already forgotten. In Exodus 20, we people of God are told to remember the Sabbath day. I think pointing them back clearly to the creation—the creation by God in six days and his rest on the seventh day. They’re to remember it. It’s not something new.

And then to see the relationship here and what they’re to remember on the basis of the Sabbath itself, the reason for the Sabbath is given in verse 10: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Clearly referring back to the creation and God’s rest on the seventh day. “In it thou shalt not do any work.” God did no work on the seventh day. “You shall do no work on the Sabbath day either, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.”

Again—nor thy cattle. Part of the creation here. Again, not specifically Israelite in nature, although of course under the authority of the Israelites, but still the fact that creatures are mentioned here in terms of that seventh rest is another indication that the Sabbath day is a creation ordinance and comes forth from that, and so is tied back to it in Exodus 20.

“Nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

Directly quoting from Genesis 2, God in the giving of the Mosaic law to the covenant people indicates that the giving of that fourth commandment has specific reference to the creation itself. That’s really clear, isn’t it?

Now again, you may think I’m kind of spending a lot of time on something that’s not important here, but believe me, this is extremely important. If you accept the fact that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, it then has implications for us today. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit.

But the point is, some people would say that the Sabbath was a commandment given to a specific people—Israel—for a specific part of redemption history, and therefore is no longer applicable for the new covenant community. If the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, however, that means it predates the Israelite people and predates that special dealing of God—the special covenant people in terms of redemption. And therefore, since we’re part of the creation, we also must have a Sabbath rest.

And that’s where we’re pointing to this morning. This evidence seems real clear, but it’s very important to get all these evidences before you because, across the whole board, they present a compelling picture that the Sabbath is indeed a creation ordinance.

Okay? And we’re told in Exodus 20 that they’re to remember the Sabbath day—remembering back to the creation itself. He then reminds them of that creation: that God worked on six days and rested on the seventh day. To remember that then means that man is also to obey that order that God has set up. Man is to find his own order, basing it upon God’s order. Man cannot be understood in isolation from God. Man rests the seventh day the way God rested the seventh day, based upon the creation itself.

Now another objection to this particular point of view is that later on in Deuteronomy, where the Ten Commandments are quoted, the reason affixed to the fourth commandment is a different reason. In Deuteronomy, we read that the fourth commandment is based upon the fact that God has delivered them out of Egypt, out of slavery. It’s a redemption reason given for the fourth commandment.

But does that mitigate against what these verses are saying? No, it obviously doesn’t. The logical answer to that—the obvious answer to that—is that of the two readings of the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 20 and then in the book of Deuteronomy, we have two specific reasons appended to the Sabbath day observance. One having to do with the creation, the other having to do with the redemption from the land of Egypt and the deliverance from slavery.

Next week, we’ll talk about the Sabbath as a redemption ordinance and talk about the fact that it does have a basis in redemption—in the redemption of the people of Israel from Egypt and in our redemption from sin and death in Jesus Christ.

The point I’m trying to make is: redemption and creation. Creation isn’t subsumed under redemption. Okay? Redemption is an outworking of creation and recreation, not the other way around. Creation is the controlling motif, if you will. That’s the ultimate truth of all things. And redemption is a part of that history of man as they work through that.

And so the very first indication we have here of the account of the giving of the Ten Commandments—the fourth commandment—is based upon a creation ordinance and not a redemption ordinance. Yes, for the people of Israel and the land of Canaan, it was a redemption ordinance as well. And yes, that has implications for us as well in the new covenant. We’ll talk about that next week.

But I want you to see here that the redemption ordinance in Deuteronomy does not cancel out the creation ordinance in Exodus 20. Okay? And in fact, when we could—and we probably will next week—look at the redemption of Israel from the land of Egypt and see that redemption was itself an act, as it were, of recreation.

I won’t get into it now, but David Chilton in “Paradise Restored” does an excellent job of tracing the etymology of some of the words used for the deliverance of people from the land of Egypt and shows that those words are recreative words—that the redemption act is seen in the context of, or under the motif or controlling aspect of, recreation itself. That’s important.

But in any event, Exodus 20 clearly teaches that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. And so those three witnesses of the Old Testament teach us, based upon the explicit teaching of the Sabbath of the creation of the world and everything in six days and God’s resting the seventh day from Genesis 2—Genesis 2 teaches the Sabbath is a creation ordinance.

Exodus 16, which shows the Sabbath was to be observed prior to the giving of the Mosaic law, indicates the Sabbath was a creation ordinance. And then the giving of the Mosaic law itself, the fourth commandment, pegs the Sabbath and the keeping of the Sabbath not strictly and solely to redemption but to the creation of the world.

And so all those three witnesses of the Old Testament teach us the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. Well, let’s go to the New Testament then and see if that holds muster, as it were, and see if we have a witness there as well. And I think that we do.

Many people have made much of Mark 2 and saying what Jesus is saying here in terms of the Sabbath. We’ll deal with this portion of scripture over the next month and a half or two months. But for now, I want us to look at Mark 2:27.

This passage of scripture is frequently used to say that Jesus is doing away with the Sabbath or that whatever. But in point of fact, I think we’ll see over the weeks to come that Mark 2 shows Jesus correcting a Pharisaic misinterpretation or an ethical rejection of God’s Sabbath in favor of something else. Jesus is not saying the Sabbath isn’t around. He’s saying you don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of observance of it and what it means. And Jesus then is explaining the real Sabbath of God to them and what it implies and what it means for observance by man.

And what does he tell us in verse 27 in his concluding argument?

“And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”

Now, it’s interesting. In the rabbinic writings at the time of Simeon, there was a saying based upon Exodus 31, I believe, or a portion of Exodus that dealt with the Sabbath law. There was a rabbinic saying that “the Sabbath is given over to you, but you are not given over to the Sabbath.” Okay? The Sabbath is given over to you, but you’re not given over to the Sabbath.

Sounds very similar to what Jesus said, doesn’t it? But there’s a couple of key differences here. The first is that the rabbinic saying—”the Sabbath was given over to you, handed over”—Jesus said the Sabbath was made. The Sabbath was made, indicating that it was part of that creation work of God. God’s resting the seventh day made the Sabbath day. And so when Jesus corrects the rabbinic misinterpretation of the Sabbath, he does so by pointing to the creation ordinance of the Sabbath itself—back to the seven days, six days of creation, the seventh day of rest.

This is further pointed out: the rabbinic interpreter said it’s given over to who? To you, the Jew, the Israelite, in isolation from all the other nations around you. That was the understanding of apostate Judaism at that time. But our Lord again corrects that thing.

He says the Sabbath was made first of all, and it was made for man. He doesn’t say it was made for the Jew. He doesn’t say it was made for a particular part of redemption history. He uses the general term here for all of mankind: “the Sabbath was made for mankind.”

Again, clearly pointing back, I think, to the creation ordinance in Genesis 2. Jesus, in rebutting the false interpretation of the Pharisees of what the Sabbath was, points them back to the creation ordinance of the Sabbath—that it was not restricted to the Old Testament covenant community in isolation from the world. It was made. It relates back to the creation, to creation itself, and it was made for all of mankind because all of mankind comes forth from that creation.

And so here’s one more evidence from our Lord himself that the Sabbath is indeed a creation ordinance.

Let’s turn to the epistles then for another witness from the New Testament as to the creation being a Sabbath or the Sabbath being a creation ordinance. In Hebrews 3 and 4, we won’t have time to do a detailed study of this. But I want us to note a couple of things in interpreting this passage.

Again, we’ll be dealing much with this passage over the next few weeks or months. We’ll be coming back to it. It has been used by people to assert that the Sabbath is now finished or done away with for the new covenant community. But what does it actually say in Hebrews 3 and 4?

Now it’s important here to recognize first of all the context of this. The general context of the book of Hebrews is an exhortation to steadfastness. You remember how we talked before in terms of child discipline—how the emphasis on that whole thing was to be careful to throw aside the sin that so easily besets us, to run the race fervently and strongly. Remember that emphasis that permeates the book of Hebrews—the exhortation to continue in the work of God, to be faithful in good works, to keep persevering in the faith.

Coupled with that there are warnings: if we don’t do that then God will judge us, and it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, to be judged by him. There are warnings given in this exhortation and there are promises given also to exhort us unto faithfulness. That’s the overall thrust of the book of Hebrews.

Well, in Hebrews 3, the immediate context of this long section—Hebrews 3 and 4—that deals with the creation, or the Sabbath rather, the rest of that we have in Jesus Christ and in God. The overall context really occurs about verse 5 or 6. Beginning in verse 3, we’re talking about Jesus as our apostle, our high priest of our confession. The wise book of Hebrews then talks about how Jesus was faithful over the whole house.

And then in verse 6, it says that Christ as a son is over his own house, as opposed to Moses. Christ is the son over his own house. “Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.”

So the contrast and then he goes on to this discussion of the Sabbath of the rest of God and coming into the rest and not falling short of the rest. All that follows from verse 6 through chapter 4 near the end can almost be seen as a parenthesis back to this idea of Jesus being our high priest. And indeed, in chapter 4, verse 14, he gets back to the idea of Jesus being a high priest and picks that back up again.

Okay. So from Hebrews 3:6 through Hebrews 4:13, there’s this parenthesis, as it were, built upon the fact that he’s trying to reinforce to us that if we stay fast to the end, then we’re part of the house of Jesus Christ. And then this high priest applies to us. We’re part of his temple. If not, then we’re not.

And so that’s the context of the statements in Hebrews 3 and 4 about the Sabbath of God. Okay. Having said that, then what he then goes on to do is this: he’s the only New Testament commentary on two specific portions of Old Testament scripture—Genesis 2 and Psalm 95. He quotes Psalm 95 and Genesis 2. Those are the only places in the New Testament where we have a commentary on those particular passages of scripture.

And he talks then about the people of God who didn’t enter into the rest. He talks about the old covenant community in the wilderness and how they did not mix, as it were, faith with the hearing of the word and then obedience to it. And so they fell short of the rest. They couldn’t enter in.

What were they entering into? They were to enter into Canaan. Canaan was the picture of God’s eternal rest to them, and they failed to enter in because of unbelief. Okay? And of course you realize they actually literally did not enter in. They all died off in the wilderness till they were all dead, and then the new generation enters in.

The point is that he here is exhorting the new covenant community to persevere in the faith and to have belief in God and his promises and to act in obedience to that belief and perseverance. That’s the context of what he says about the Sabbath rest.

Now, understanding that is the context, then the critical verse in this whole passage, I suppose, is in Hebrews 4, verses 9-11. Let’s say:

“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that has entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works as God did from his. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.”

That has certainly confused some people I know that looked at these verses. That has particularly been confusing to them because they have been taught that verse 10 refers to justification by faith—that we rest in the completed creation work of Jesus Christ the way that God rested in his completed creation work. But I don’t think that’s what’s being talked about here.

If you look at verse 9 first of all: “There remaineth therefore a rest of the people of God.” That word rest there is not the same word for rest throughout the rest of the chapter. And in some of your newer translations, it might actually say “Sabbath rest” there, because the Greek word is “sabatismo” and relates back to Sabbathkeeping of the old covenant. Okay? It has specific reference then to Sabbathkeeping. “There remain a Sabbathkeeping or a Sabbath rest to be kept for the people of God”—talking about the future.

And then he goes on to say: “He that has entered into his rest, he also hath rested from his own works as God did from him. Let us labor therefore, and enter into that rest.”

The point is, we haven’t entered that rest. We’re not going to enter that rest until things are brought to completion. What Hebrews 3 and 4 is talking about is the finished rest of God, which, as we said before, from the seventh day was a perpetual rest, and our participation in that perpetual rest of God. That is a yet future event for everyone that walks the face of this earth. Okay? It’s a future event that we enter into after we rest from our works.

What are our works? Hebrews, in this chapter, verse 10, does not imply these works are bad works. If you believe that this teaches justification by faith, then you have to believe that the works here of man are bad works. Our works can’t justify us, right? But what does it say? It says that we rest from our works. Talking about the one to enter the rest of God, even as God did from his. God worked six days, entered his final rest. Man works over his lifetime, enters his final rest. There’s correlation there to the rest.

And if you’re going to have correlation in the rest, you have to have correlation in the works. Our rest isn’t from bad works. God’s rest was from good works. Our rest is from good works as well. Hebrews is peppered with references to the importance of good works—that we’re to be faithful in those works.

Remember that the unbelief of the Old Testament covenant community was manifested through bad works. They said, “We’re not going to go in there.” Their works rebelled against God and they didn’t do what he told them to do. That’s the thrust of Hebrews 3 and 4.

If you fail to continue in good works, if you don’t persevere into the end, you’ll demonstrate you’re not part of the elect covenant community of God. And it’s that elect covenant community of God that has Sabbath rest in God in the future, after our works have been tested through about the course of our life.

I remember Otto Scott recently on a tape on history said that you can’t really evaluate a man’s life until he dies, because the book isn’t written till then. You don’t know how it’s going to turn out. And that’s true of every one of us as well. We can’t really evaluate each other until we die because then we’ll see if our good works persevered in life, and then we’ll enter the perpetual rest that God is in.