The Sabbath: God's Memorial To His Creation - Creation Day 7 Series

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.