Spirituality Column #759

June 1, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentator

Rest for the Wicked

By Bob Walters

“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” – Exodus 20:11 KJV, the fourth of the Ten Commandments

Whatever it looks like when God is busy, He was busy during creation.

While it is the great, searching mystery of the ages how all that exists came to be, the most important aspects of the Bible’s Genesis Creation story are readily apparent: God created everything, and everything God created is Good.

It was a magnificent show, and thanks to the “heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3) of love, peace, perfection, eternity, and divine freedom we occasionally glimpse through our faith in Jesus Christ, humanity’s hope of heaven and our relationship with God’s goodness promise that we need never doubt God’s perfect provision for us.

When God rested on that seventh day He was celebrating perfection, not salving weariness.  And this is a good time to notice a couple of things.

First, in His Creation, God did not create evil.  On God’s first day of rest, man had not yet made bad choices nor started causing trouble.  Creation was untainted. 

Maybe that’s why God made Sabbath such a big deal; it is our reminder that God is perfect and created a perfect, free world that was once our world and in Christ will be again … one day.  When we face sin, evil, and wickedness in our daily lives, it’s good to remember that there was a day God celebrated – that first Sabbath – when there was no sin, evil, or wickedness.  Note: there is no sin, evil, or wickedness in Jesus either.

Evil?  We did that to ourselves.  We blame God because that’s what fallen people do; blame others. We would have no cosmic significance had God not bestowed upon that which He created in His own image, us, the freedom He knew could empower divine love.  Humanity uses that freedom, often, to deny God and empower hate.

Second, the “Sabbath” later became a law and commandment while nothing else about Creation did.  Alongside that, is it irony that observing God’s Sabbath is the only Commandment not “enforced” in the New Testament?  How do we explain “Sunday”?

God takes His day of rest at the start of Genesis 2 and we hear nothing more about it until Exodus 16:4-5, when God, communicating through Moses, tests Israel to see if His people will follow His direct orders: pick up twice the manna on the sixth day, then rest on the seventh.  They mostly whine and groan; many obeyed, many didn’t.  

In Exodus 16:23 God gives this seventh day a name, Sabbath.  In Exodus 20:8-11, it is codified in the Ten Commandments: Israel will observe the Sabbath, and throughout the Bible the Sabbath is mentioned a 150 more times.  But the Sabbath’s tenor changes in the New Testament: it goes from the seventh day of remembering God’s perfection to a new language of a Lord of the Sabbath who in His fulfillment of God’s law, becomes a living Sabbath in the perfect image of God: Jesus Christ.

God made the Sabbath a big deal for Israel because eventually the Sabbath rest and observance of God’s perfection and plan for the salvation of the entire world became the biggest deal all humanity has ever known: Jesus Christ the Son of God.

Jesus is our Sabbath: the perfect rest for the wicked.  More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) ponders what God did on His eighth day.