Genesis 2:2-3 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.… I. EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE. 1. Cessation of the creative process. 2. The Creator's resting. 3. Sanctification of the Sabbath day. (1) Seven the Scriptural number (Genesis 7:2-4; Genesis 8:8-12; Genesis 19:18-28; Genesis 41; Numbers 23:1, 2; Leviticus 23:1; Joshua 6:1; 2 Kings 5:9; Daniel 4:1; Isaiah 30:26; Matthew 18:22; Acts 6:1. (2) The seventh day sanctified. Seventh day of the creative week still continues. Although thousands of years have swept by since God ended His work of creation, it is still His Sabbath, or rest day. Works of necessity — i.e., works of providence and mercy — He still carries on: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17). But creation is not a work of necessity. That work He ended at the close of the far-off sixth day, and ever since has rested. II. CHRIST'S DOCTRINE OF THE SABBATH. 1. Man himself is the basis of the Sabbath. (1) Man needs the Sabbath for his secular nature. (2) Man needs the Sabbath for his religious nature.A day of conscious, formal, stately acknowledgment of the Divine supremacy. A day on which to dismiss worldly cares, and look through unobstructed vistas into the opening heavens. An English gentleman was once inspecting a house in Newcastle, with a view of buying it. The landlord, after having shown him the premises, took him to an upper window, and remarked: "You can see Durham Cathedral from this window on Sundays." "How is this?" asked the visitor. "Because on Sundays there is no smoke from the factory chimneys." Ah, man must have a day in which he can retire to some solitude, where his spirit —With her best nurse, Contemplation, May plume her feathers, and let grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired. 2. Man greater than the Sabbath. Man, as God's son and image and representative, is the end, and the Sabbath, like every other "ordinance," is a means. An immortal being, outliving institutions, economies, aeons — capable of carrying a heaven within him — God's own image and son: man is more sacred than ordinances. Jesus Christ did not die for ordinances: Jesus Christ died for man. The Sabbath is sacred, not in itself, but because man is sacred. Hence the Sabbath is his servant — not his master. He is the Lord of the Sabbath. And in accordance with this principle Jesus Christ Himself ever acted. 3. The true method of keeping the Sabbath. Being made for man, the Sabbath must be used religiously: for the capacity for religion is man's chief definition. The Sabbath must be kept in homage of God, in the study of His Word and character and will, in the spirit of worship, private and public. But full unfolding of man's spiritual nature is possible only in the sphere of edification, or society building. The Sabbath summons man to conjugate life in a new mood and tense; but still in the active voice. And here the Son of Man is our Teacher and blessed Model. How many of His healings and works of mercy were wrought on the Sabbath day! And what is man's office in this fallen, sorrowful world, but a ministry of healing? And healing, or edification, is the highest form of worship. Nothing can take the place of it. 4. Objections. (1) "This view of the Sabbath allows too much liberty." My answer is two fold. First: there are two ways of treating men, either as infants, incapable of guiding themselves, or as men, capable of reasoning, and so of self-guidance. The first was the Mosaic way, the Church being a minor, under tutors and governors, and the law being a letter, graven on tablets of stone: the second is the Christly way, the Church having come into the possession of the privileges of majority, and the law being a spirit, graven on tablets of heart (Galatians 4:1-7; 2 Corinthians 3:3). But, secondly: Liberty is itself responsibility. The slave cannot understand, in any thorough, just sense, the meaning of the august word Responsibility; none but the freeman can understand it. And just because the New Testament gives me liberty in the matter of the Sabbath, I am bound to be more conscientious about it than was the Old Testament Jew. It is easier to be a Hebrew than a Christian. (2) But I hear a second objection: "Your view of the Sabbath is dangerous: men will pervert it, perhaps to their own perdition." Of course they may. It is one of the prerogatives of truth to be perverted. III. THE CHANCE FROM SATURDAY TO SUNDAY. Here is a venerable, sacred institution — hallowed by the Creator's own example in Eden, solemnly enjoined amid the thunders of Sinai, distinctly set apart as one of the chief signs that Israel was God's chosen, covenanted people, majestically buttressed by loftiest promises in case of observance, and by direst threats in case of non-observance, freighted with the solemn weight of fifteen centuries of sacred associations and scrupulous observance — suddenly falling into disuse, and presently supplanted by another day, which to this year of grace has held its own amid the throes of eighteen centuries. How, then, will you account for this stupendous revolution? It is a fair question for the philosophical historian to ask. And the philosophical historian knows the answer. Jesus the Nazarene had been crucified. All through the seventh day or Hebrew Sabbath He had lain in Joseph's tomb. In that tomb, amid solitude and darkness and grave-clothes, He had grappled in mortal duel with the king of death, and had thrown him, and shivered his sceptre. At the close of that awful Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1), He had risen triumphant from the dead. And by and in the very fact of that triumphant rising, He had henceforth and for evermore emblazoned the first day of the week as His own royal, supernal day, even time's first, true Sabbath. IV. JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF IS OUR SABBATH, alike its origin, its meaning, and its end. In fact the final cause of the Sabbath is to sabbatize each day and make all life sacramental. And Jesus Christ being our true Sabbath, Jesus Christ is also our true rest — even the spirit's everlasting Eden. (G. D. Boardman.) Parallel Verses KJV: And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. |
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