The Sabbath in Creation

By Pastor Aubrey Duncan

A Call that Cannot be Ignored

Recently, the Washington Post joined the universal symphony calling for Sabbath rest. Newspapers large and small from Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, here in the United States, and other parts of the planet are increasingly addressing the need for a day of rest. Documentaries and internet posts are joining the fray, extolling the benefits of Sabbath rest. NGOs are being organized and collaborating with religious organizations to extol the spiritual underpinnings and physical and mental benefits of Sabbath rest. On the surface, this seems quite inoffensive and indeed a noble cause to pursue.

These initiatives are primarily driven by the perceived climate crisis, which some claim will destroy civilization as we know it. International conferences featuring experts from many disciplines are conducted to explore the issue. The participants concoct and issue voluminous reports, which engender more discussions, suggestions, and propositions to save the world from the ravages of climate change. Not infrequently, the proposed panacea is Sunday sacredness. Pope Francis is the main proponent of this narrative. He states: “On Sunday, our participation in the Eucharist has special importance. Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day that heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the world. Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the “first day” of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. It also proclaims “man’s eternal rest in God” (“Laudato Si’, Sec. 237).

However, from the Creator’s perspective, Sabbath rest entails a much broader and deeper significance than the popular calls for Sabbath rest, deceptively calling Sunday the sabbath. Therefore, as we consider Sabbath rest, our first duty is to determine its origin. There is but one place where we can make that discovery; that place is in God’s word, the Holy Bible. The apostle Paul, in writing to the young minister and fellow worker in the cause of Jesus Christ, admonishes Timothy: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). In the same letter, He continues: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness … that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:17).

It is by God’s word, and God’s word alone, that we can arrive at the right conclusions in our human experience. This is where we begin our study of God’s Sabbath. From the very beginning of the Holy Scriptures, we are confronted with the subject of faith. Moses declares: “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). He gives no preamble. No philosophical dissertation is presented. No theological exegesis is entered into. He simply gives us an unambiguous declaration of who God is—our Creator.

If, by faith, you believe this assertion, then you must also believe everything else that follows. This declaration, like all of Scripture, demands our unyielding faith. The Genesis narrative continues in a profoundly systematic way. It unfolds the acts and deeds of an omniscient, all-powerful God as He creates everything out of nothing. God is unapologetically self-assertive in His revelation to us about His creation. He declares not only who He is but also what He does.

The record reveals that, out of that nothingness, our God first created the night and the day. The night, being the first part, followed by the illuminated part called the day.

Together, He pronounced them the first day. As of the time you are reading this book, nothing has changed. The night still exists, followed by the day. The God who created it still exists. Unless you are an atheist who does not believe in God, your faith demands that He (God) still exists, even as the day that He created also exists.

God revealed to Moses His creation of the second day. He continued with the work of creation. He called into existence the heavens and the waters of the oceans. Moses recorded that the evening (the dark part of the day) and the morning (the light part) were the second day (Genesis 1:6–8). As of the writing of this post, we still have the night and the day. The heavens and the oceans still remain.

The Supreme Master Builder proceeded to enhance His work of creation. He revealed to Moses what He did on the third day. He called forth the earth out of the waters. He created not just the earth, but God dressed and beautified it with luscious green grass, lilies, roses, and other flowers, innumerable in number and unspeakable in beauty. The vegetation and the foliage He also called forth. He declared them perfect and good. Moses recorded that this was the third day. (Genesis 1:11-13). But God was not quite done. He proceeded to illuminate the heavens with the moon, the stars, and the sun. Not only were these heavenly bodies for beautification, but inspiration revealed that God ordained them to be for times and seasons. God delegated the moon and stars to the night and assigned the sun to the day. He thus provided man with a means of measuring the days, seasons, and years. This was God’s doing, not man’s. We are utterly incapable of creating time. Therefore, it is impossible for man to change time.

Moses declared that this was the fourth day. (Genesis 1:14-19). God’s plan moved on. He then created the animals of the earth, the fish of the seas (waters), and the birds of the air (the firmament). He created them as they are, to procreate after their own kind (Genesis 1:20–25). This was the fifth day. Notice that God, in His infinite wisdom, provided a dwelling place and sustenance for His creatures before He created them. The record does not indicate that any species evolved one from the other, but rather that each came forth as God created them.

The process of creation revealed that God is a God of order and specificity. Everything not only fits where it is supposed to, but when it is supposed to. The heavens, the earth, and all that is in them were completed except for His greatest creation of all, man. This is what God did on the sixth day. But what is man? The Psalmist David answers, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visited him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and has crowned him with glory and honor … Thou made him to have dominion over the works of thine hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (Psalms 8:4-6).

The glory and honor with which man was crowned at creation are God’s. The record reveals that God created man in God’s own image. (Genesis 1:27) Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman, had the virtues and characteristics of God. They were loving, truthful, honest, meek, peaceful, gentle, temperate, obedient, and faithful. They were perfect in their ways before God. Man was given authority over all that was created before him. (Genesis 1:28). All were created for man’s benefit. All of God’s creations were gifts from God and were good and beneficial to man (Genesis 1:26-31).

Of all of God’s creations, only the creation of man provides some detail as to how God created him. Of the other creations, the record simply declares, “God created.” But of man, Moses writes: “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Please notice that man became a living soul. He was not gifted with an immortal soul. God also provided (for man) one to complement him and be a helper to him.

Moses again writes: “And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an help meet for him … And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam; and he slept. And He (God) took one of his (Adam’s) ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made He a woman and brought her unto the man” (Genesis 2:18, 21, 22).

The work of creation is now completed in six days, and God bequeaths to man an inestimable gift: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them … And on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had made and rested on the seventh day, from all His work which He had made … And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” (Genesis 2:1–3).

As one reviews the record of creation, it is inescapable that God provided all things He created for man’s enjoyment, wellness, and nourishment. With your faith, hopefully still intact, let us take a closer look at the Sabbath in creation, the seventh day of the creation record. Of the seven days, God chose one, the seventh, as His day of rest. God did not choose any one of the seven, nor did He designate the first; rather, most specifically, the Scripture states that God chose the seventh.

This rest was not for God’s benefit. God does not need rest like we do. The record simply expresses the thought that God’s work of creation was completed in six days. The seventh day He has set apart from the other days as holy, blessed, and sanctified. It is esteemed in a way the other six are not. Had it been faithfully observed as He desires, there would be no climate crisis and the increasing calls to honor Sunday in order to solve the problem.

God’s creation lasts forever. Today, there is no denying that we have day and night. No one says that there is no heaven, earth, or seas. It is impossible to say that the trees, flowers, and vegetation are nonexistent. And what of the animals—the birds and fish? They are still here with us. The moon, the stars, and the sun still bless us with their radiance and life-giving power and provide the only reliable measure of times, seasons, and years. And man, what about him? We are still here.

The apostate prophet Balaam certainly understood the concept of God’s immutable, irreversible acts. He declared: “how shall I curse whom God has not cursed? And how shall I defile whom the Lord hath not defiled … Behold, I have received commandment to bless and He had blessed, and I cannot reverse it” (Numbers 23:8, 20).

So it is with all of God’s creation. He has created, and no man can change or uncreate. The seventh-day Sabbath, as part of that creation, cannot be undone by anyone. No man, no ecclesiastical council, and no human judicial process can unbless, uncreate, or alter that which God has created, blessed, and sanctified. The sacred Scriptures declare: “Now therefore let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may be before thee forever. For thou blessed, O Lord, and it shall be blessed forever” (1 Chronicles 17:27).

A Contest for Truth

There is no record of God removing his blessing from His seventh-day Sabbath or doing away with it from His creation. Some may attempt to deny it, but God’s Sabbath will exist eternally. Men may trample upon it, but it is still holy. Some may attempt to change it, but His seventh-day Sabbath remains hallowed and sanctified by the God who created it. Others deceptively declare that God’s Sabbath day is for the Jews only, but, according to the record, there were no Jews at creation. Our Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ, declares: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27–28). The seventh-day Sabbath is, like all of God’s other creations, a gift from Creator God to all mankind.

To reject His Sabbath is to refuse one of the most precious gifts from God. To disregard His gift is to abandon Him who gave it. Regardless of what pretext one uses to cast aside or change God’s seventh-day Sabbath, it is tantamount to denying the God of creation. He has given us His Sabbath as an eternal sign of His creative power. He pleads: ”Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, 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, nor 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” (Exodus 20:8–11).

As the call for Sunday sacredness escalates, Creator God, in His mercy and pity for us, sends out a love message to all mankind in these times in which we live: “Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters” (Rev. 14:7). This is a love message from our creator calling men back to honor Him by choosing His Sabbath day, thereby rejecting the call for Sunday sacredness, the tradition of men.

Jehovah God is announcing to the world that we are in the final moments of earth’s history and that His final judgment has begun. He is calling all humanity to worship Him as Creator. And how do we show the world that we worship the true God, the Creator of heaven and earth? By accepting His gift of rest given at creation—His seventh-day Sabbath. We must recognize and uplift the sign of His creatorship. It is not only for the Jews, but for all mankind.

If, by faith, we accept the works of creation, then by faith, we must also accept the ‘rest’ of creation. A life of work without rest is a life of pain, heartache, and misery. Such is a life of no peace. It is a life constantly seeking to find that which God has already given us from creation—the peace and rest of His blessed Sabbath day. It is what the world is yearning for. Why would you want to deny, reject, and cast aside such peace and rest while trying in vain to find it in Francis’ call for Sunday sacredness? The Sabbath, from God’s perspective, is not so much about what we do or do not do on the seventh day. It is not about an endless set of rules, rites, and rituals.

Rather, God’s Sabbath is a time for us to reflect upon and recognize the manifold blessings He has provided for us during the previous six days. It is a place in time made holy by the One who blesses us abundantly. His Sabbath is a time in which we may rest from our toils and secular labors to contemplate and appreciate all that God has done for us. God’s Sabbath, ultimately, is an eternal footnote to the unbounded goodness of our Creator. It is a time of reflection during which we focus on His matchless blessings towards us. It is the seventh day of the week; today called Saturday.

This is the first in a series that focuses on the real issue behind the climate change agenda and its appeal for Sunday sacredness, referring to it as Sabbath rest. In my next post, I will take an inspired look at how God’s prophets regarded and related to His holy Sabbath day.

About: Follow Pastor Aubrey Duncan at his Unfolding Prophecy Page.