Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD, USA
www.mycrossway.org
View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118
We’ve spent a considerable amount of time covering the creation narrative of Genesis. It is my belief that this a critical foundation to the Christian faith that has been largely ignored at best, or sacrificed at worst in the battle with evolution. The very fact that I am telling you this is an uncompromising tenant of the Christian faith will label the believer as extreme in some circles. But I believe we have an obligation to be faithful to the Scripture before all other things. Let me share with you some key ideas I’ve presented to you on why this is so important for our study:
--Origins. There was intentionality in how the universe is designed. Time+Chance+Matter is an impossibility. Instead, creation by God answers the four pervasive questions that only Christianity can answer:
1. Origin
2. Purpose
3. Morality
4. Destiny (Zacharias)
--Sovereignty. All of creation is the handiwork of God. If He is our creator, then He is our redeemer.
--Relationship. You were made by God for God and with a purpose. We are created to glorify Him
1. In His Image
2. With dominion over the earth
3. To be fruitful
4. With abundant life
Of the most significant in the creative order is God’s creation of man. The fact that we are not advanced primordial slime or monkeys who just so happened to have a lucky break in the evolutionary chain is significant and something we cannot overlook or understate.
Viktor Frankl who served twice in Auschwitz as a prisoner says this: “If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of heredity and environment, we will feed the nihilism to which he is already prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment; or as the Nazis liked to say, ‘of Blood and Soil.’” — Listen to the statement – “I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or another in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
Our very identity, morality, and rationality in how we relate to each other and the world around us are rooted in the creation narrative. So now we come to a place that is just as important to God’s creation, although nothing more is going to be created. The Seventh Day.
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2:1–3 ESV)
The seventh day is mentioned three times here in Genesis 2:1-3. The seventh day is unique; it has incomparable significance, indicated also by the fact that this is the first time the word “holy” is used in Scripture. The Hebrew word Kadosh, is the word “holy.” The root meaning of Kadosh, is thought to mean to be cut off or to separate. And holiness (kadosha) means “elevation or exaltation above the usual level.” So the Sabbath day is a day set apart; it is a day cut off from the other days and elevated.
Now, there are three reasons why it is unique, and those three reasons are indicated by three verbs in this passage. God Completed (verse 1) God Rested (Verse 2), God Blessed (Verse 3). This is a sanctified day, this is a holy day, this is a set-apart day, this is a unique day in that it memorializes that God completed His work, rested from His work, and blessed this unique day. Rather than get into the meaning of what is sabbath rest is, I’m going to leave that to Jeff in a few weeks. I’m going to focus on the why. Because it will make better sense to us (beyond we need a day off) if we understand the origin of the Sabbath and what caused God to set apart the seventh day after 6 days of creating.
But let me say this: Understanding who created us, why He created us, how He created us, and the full scope of that creation, including the 7th day, is critical to your health as a believer in Jesus Christ. James Bryan Smith writes, "The number one enemy of spiritual formation today is exhaustion. We are living beyond our means ... physically. And as a result, one of the primary activities of human life is being neglected: sleep. In the 1850s, the average American slept 9.5 hours. By 1950, that had dropped to 8 hours and today the average American gets only 7 hours of sleep a night.
James Bryan Smith continues, "Neglecting our bodies ... impedes our spiritual growth ... If our bodies are not sufficiently rested, our energies will be diminished and our ability to pray, read the Bible, enter solitude or memorize Scripture will be diminished." (Tim Smith, Sermon Central)
?
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.(Genesis 2:1 ESV)
What is being explicitly said here in the Hebrew is that creation was finished at the end of day six. Finished in 6 24-hour days. Since that time, there has been no other creation. Creation ceased at the end of Day Six. There was nothing more to do. No evolving, no fine tuning, no tweaking here or there. As Genesis 1:31 points out, God stood back and surveyed all that he had created and said that it was “very good.”
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31 (ESV)
You know, that’s a high standard. “Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing” (Eugene Peterson, The Pastors Guide to Personal Spiritual Formation, p.134.) I imagine that God was doing just that, but this Sabbath Day was a time when God stopped creating because the creation was finished. It wasn’t rest because he was tired. He didn’t cease to be God of the Creator. He reached the goal. Finished the race so that there was nothing left for Him to do.
Now, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that there are three pegs to hang your creation hat on in our theology.
The first is materialistic evolution. This says that there is no such thing as creation, and there is no God who is Creator. Nothing came from nothing through billions of years of evolution and mutation into the intricate complex and vast universe of today.
The second option is what’s called theistic evolution, which believes that God through His power launched creation and initiated the process of evolution and only inserting His divine power where creation needed a nudge here or there.
The third possibility is Divine Creation, which says that God sovereignly, intelligently, and purposefully created this universe and this world, including you and me.
The first option can’t be true because evolution is impossible. Nobody times nothing cannot equal everything. The second option is also impossible, because since evolution is impossible, any kind of evolution is impossible, even theistic evolution. We’re really left with only the third option, and that is that the universe is created by God. In addition to that, it is the testimony of Scripture.
So what happens here in the creation is God sees that everything He made at the end of six days was “very good” and the Sabbath is His declaration of approval. If there was still evolving going on, He would say, "It’s a great start, let’s see how things turn out.” That’s not the case. The word translated “rested” is the Hebrew word “Shabbat” which means to cease or to desist from work, in this case. “Shabbat” (The modern term is “Sabbath.”) is the name of the day that was later given to Israel as a time of cessation from normal activities (see Ex 16:29; 20:10–11; Deut 5:15; Jer 17:21; Amos 8:5).
Which brings me to number 2. Number one, “God completed… Number 2, “God rested”
2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. (Genesis 2:2 ESV)
Now, the verb rested is “wayishbot”. It is not to imply weariness. Isaiah 40:28 says, “He faints not, neither is weary. There is no dissipation of energy. There is no law of entropy. There is no breaking down of matter. There is no disintegration in the absolute, ineffable, pure, holy power of God. That’s why Psalm 121:4 says, “He doesn’t slumber, and He doesn’t sleep.” He does not need replenishing or refreshing because He never gets weary.
The Hebrew word simply means, “not to work.” It has a negative connotation and what it is saying is since He had completed the creation, there was nothing more for Him to do. But there is also a positive connotation in that word can connect with a covenant.
Exodus 31:17 “It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’ The idea of that Hebrew word “refreshed” is the idea of satisfaction or delight. It’s really the response of God to what is stated in verse 31, that He saw everything He made, and it was very good and, as a result of that, He was satisfied.
Now there is nothing in Genesis 2:2 that indicates man resting here. In fact, man isn’t even mentioned here in connection with this seventh-day rest; only God is mentioned. Man isn’t included until the Mosaic Law. The Sabbath is not included in the covenant with Noah or Abraham or anyone else. We have no indication that they observed a Sabbath.
When you read this, there is a startling omission here. The little phrase, “There was morning and there was evening.” It’s not there. It’s not there. It was in every other day - verse 5, verse 8, verse 13, verse 19, verse 23, verse 31 – but when you look at the seventh day, you find no such formula. We might expect, “And the seventh day was evening and morning,” but it isn’t there. And when you see something that is there all the time and is all of a sudden omitted, there must be a reason. The reason is that the Sabbath is a memorial to the magnificence of God’s creation and His holiness. It is all about God; not about us. In reality, the Sabbath was intended to be a permanent and everlasting period - until creation was corrupted by sin.
How well pleased God must have been when He saw the created universe free from sin and decay. He saw pristine blue skies, sparkling with diamond stars. A brilliant, blazing sun and crystal clear waters without any kind of pollution. A world without death. Magnificent, colorful flowers and stately trees. And how much God must have delighted walking through this creation with Adam and the wife! That one day, that seventh day inaugurated some period of time in which God delighted in a world that sparkled with pure life, in a world which enjoyed the presence of God and a man and his wife in open fellowship with their Creator.
2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.(Isaiah 59:2 ESV)
The third verb used to describe sabbath rest is the ceasing of God’s work.
3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2:3 ESV)(
All of creation occurred in one six-day period – not billions of years. And so God took that seventh day and said, “I’m going to bless this day. I’m going to elevate it and set it apart as a reminder that it was I the Lord God who created all this in 6 days. It didn’t evolve. It is not randomly creating itself. The blessing of the seventh day was to establish that day as a reminder of God as Creator. That is what we are to remember. He created, He sustains, He provides, He clothes, He heals, He puts everything, including the messes in your life in perfect order when when submit them to Him.
This is why Jesus was so confrontational about the abuses and burdens put on the Sabbath day. How many of you have burdens in your life? How many of you need endless other burdens in the form of laws and traditions so you can “rest?” It was included in the 10 Commandments. It’s important and it should continue to be honored as holy, but not as a burden.
27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27 (ESV)
28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. (Matthew 12:28 ESV)
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 ESV)
We are busy, busy people. I am guilty too. Many Christians have so busied themselves with programs and activities that they no longer know how to be silent and meditate on God’s word or recognize the mysteries that are in the Person of Christ. I long for this more and more as a pastor. When life becomes chaotic, unhinged, and burdensome, we cry out, “Where is God?!” But the reality is I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away it because that is where we have put Him. We have kept Him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on Him in prayer we wonder where He is. That’s not rest; that’s not Sabbath; that’s not life abundant. I think before all things, we must become a church entrenched in prayer. Prayer for our families. Prayer for each other. Prayer for your pastors. Prayer for our neighborhoods.
