In Genesis
2:2, “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it:
because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”
There was no Jew at this point. The Jews came 2500 years later.
God could
have accomplished creation with one word but he chose to employ six days to
give us the Sabbath.
“The Sabbath was
made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27. The following grammatical rule is worthy of
notice: a noun without an adjective is invariably taken in its broadest
extension. Man is used without restriction; hence all mankind is included here.
It is
customary to speak against the Sabbath and the law as being Jewish, because
they were given to
God honor the Sabbath by
writing the commandments with His own hand twice; more so the Sabbath stands in
advance of the other nine commandments because it is established by the EXAMPLE
of the Lawgiver Himself. For after 6 working days of Creation, God rested on
the Sabbath. Likewise we will keep the Sabbath in heaven. (Isaiah 66:23, 24).
The fourth
commandment itself proves that the Sabbath was made for all mankind, and for
those creatures that share the labors of man. The stranger and the foreigner
also must keep it. But the same persons could not partake of the Passover until
they were made members of the Hebrew church by circumcision.
God created
Man; man therefore owns everything to God; hence it was the benevolence of the
Creator that gave to man six days for his wants. And in setting apart the
seventh day, God was reserving unto himself one of the seven days, when he
could rightly claim all as his.
The fourth
commandment therefore does not require man to give something of his own to God.
To observe this day is to render to God the things that are his; to appropriate
it to ourselves is imply to rob God.
