Sermons on the Sabbath and the Law

SERMON SIX — THE SABBATH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

“And he said unto them, 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. SOSL 58.1

THE Sabbath does not pertain to one dispensation, merely, but to all. It is not peculiar to the Edenic, or antediluvian, or patriarchal, or Mosaic, or Christian, age. It does not pertain to men as Jews or Gentiles, as sinners, or as saints. It belongs, exclusively, neither to man’s innocence, nor to his state of guilt; no, nor even to the period of his final recovery. It covers all time; it embraces all races of mankind. It begins with the first man; it lives with man after he becomes immortal. It commemorates the creation of the heavens and the earth, and shall, therefore, last while heaven and earth endure. SOSL 58.2

It was made for man. There was, therefore, a time when it was made, and certain acts by which it was made. There was also One who made the Sabbath. It was the same One who also made the heaven and the earth. As the act of creation marked the beginning of the first week, so the making of the Sabbath fitly brought that week to a close. Three acts entered into God’s establishment of the sabbatic institution: 1. He rested on the seventh day. 2. He blessed the day. 3. He sanctified it. These last two acts were wrought because he had rested upon it. No one disputes that the Creator’s rest was on the day succeeding the six days of creation. He rested on the seventh day. That he did not defer the blessing and sanctification of the seventh day till the time of Moses, is shown, 1. Because this does violence to the narrative in Genesis 2:1-3. 2. Because there is not the least trace of such a work on the part of the Lord in Exodus 16; for everything in that chapter indicates that the Sabbath was an institution which had been in existence from some previous time. 3. But what is still more definite in fixing the time of this blessing and sanctification of the seventh day is this decisive fact: God did this to the seventh day because he had rested upon it. The reason existed when the rest of the Creator was complete. And nothing can be more certain than that God acts without delay whenever the reason for his action exists. God having used the seventh day in rest, man must never use it in labor. No sooner, therefore, had God rested, than he set apart the day for man to do the like. God’s rest was to lay the foundation for a divine institution. Man’s rest was to commemorate God’s. The rest of God was from the work of creation. Man’s rest is in grateful commemoration of the Creator’s work. SOSL 58.3

The foundation of the Sabbath being laid by God’s act of resting on the seventh day, two further acts were necessary on his part, in order to give it complete form. It was necessary to put his blessing upon the day, so that all who would use it as he should bid them, might share that blessing. And lastly, it was necessary to give a precept concerning the day. God had rested upon the day; he had for that reason placed his blessing upon it. Now he must bid man use this day for sacred purposes only, that he may commemorate the great Creator’s rest. And so the record tells us that God sanctified the day of his rest, i.e., he set it apart, or appointed it, to a holy use. And thus we have the Sabbath made by God’s rest and blessing, and set apart by God’s appointment. Its observance was, therefore, certainly incumbent upon the first Adam in the garden of God. SOSL 59.1

And this fact is made very apparent by the text at the head of this discourse. In the original Greek, the definite article is used each time in connection with the noun, man. Thus we read: “The Sabbath was made for the man [Adam], and not the man [Adam] for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of the man [Adam] is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Here are the two Adams brought into very close relationship. The Sabbath, being given to the first Adam in Eden when he was the head of the human family, formed no part of any typical or ceremonial code, but did constitute a part of that existing arrangement of perfection that needed no change, and contemplated none. SOSL 59.2

The second Adam is the Lord of the Sabbath. And well he may be; for in his divine nature, as the Son of God, he was with the Father when the Sabbath was made. Indeed, God, the Father, made the worlds by him. John 1:1, 2; Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2. Our divine Redeemer was, therefore, directly concerned in the institution of the Sabbath of Eden. And Adam the first having forfeited his place as head of the family of man, the second Adam is ordained of God to fill it. So he is both the observer and the Lord of the Sabbath. He was concerned, as the Son of God, in its institution; he is concerned, as the Son of Man, in its perfect observance. We have seen in a former discourse that the law of God takes hold of each Adam. Here we see the same in the case of the Sabbath. It began with Adam the first, and it shall endure as long as the reign of Adam the second. But the existence of the Sabbath in the future kingdom of God will be more particularly noticed in the conclusion of this discourse. SOSL 60.1

The fall of the manna is a remarkable event in the history of the Sabbath. It attests the fact that the Sabbath is not an indefinite, but a definite, day. It is a providential testimony to the fact that the knowledge of the true seventh day had been preserved; for there could be no mistaking, when the manna so plainly declared the truth in the case, that a certain day was the Sabbath, and the other six days were not. And it is to be observed that the people have the right reckoning of the week; for of their own accord, without direction given them so to do, till after they had themselves acted, they gathered a double portion on the sixth day in anticipation of the Sabbath. Exodus 16. SOSL 60.2

When, therefore, the following month, they reached Mount Sinai, and, after solemn preparation, heard the voice of God in the proclamation of the ten commandments, they were well prepared to appreciate the words of the fourth precept. As the commandment recited the events of the creation week, and bade them observe, in a sacred manner, the seventh day because of what God did to that day at the close of the work of creation, they could understand beyond all doubt what day of the seven that was. Three miracles in the case of the manna did each week, for the space of forty years, attest the sacredness of the Sabbath, and definitely point out the day which they should honor in obedience to God’s commandment. These were, 1. A double portion on the sixth day. 2. None on the seventh. 3. The preservation over the Sabbath of that gathered on the sixth day. SOSL 61.1

Shortly after the ten commandments had been so solemnly proclaimed from Sinai by the voice of the Law-giver, he called Moses up into the mount to receive his law written in ten commandments upon two tables of stone. Exodus 24:12. God first gave to Moses the plan of the sanctuary, and the ark, and then at the end of forty days’ time, gave him the tables of stone to be placed in the ark, and that to be kept in the most holy place of the sanctuary. Exodus 25-31. When Moses came down from the mount, behold the people had made them a golden calf, and were worshiping before it. Then Moses, in his distress, broke the tables, acting in this, as it appears, under a divine impulse. Exodus 32. Then Moses caused the leading idolaters to be slain, and next asked God to pardon the sin of the remainder. And God bade Moses hew him out a second set of tables, and take them into the mount, and he would again write for the people the words of his law. And at the end of the second period of forty days Moses received again from the Lord the tables of stone, with a second copy of his law written thereon. Deuteronomy 9, 10. Thus the Sabbath of the Lord shares, with the other precepts of the law of God, the great honor of having been once publicly proclaimed by the voice of God; and twice written upon tables of stone by the finger of the Law-giver. It has, moreover, one signal honor which the other precepts cannot lay claim unto; viz., the fact that it is founded upon the example of the Almighty himself. SOSL 61.2

The law being thus delivered to Moses, and by him brought down from the mount, was, by God’s command, placed beneath the mercy-seat in the ark of God’s testament. Exodus 40:20; Deuteronomy 10:5. SOSL 62.1

The whole work of atonement and sin-offering in the earthly sanctuary related to this law of God; and the Sabbath of the Lord constituted one-tenth part of that law. Leviticus 16. SOSL 62.2

During the period of the forty years’ sojourn in the wilderness, the children of Israel did very generally violate the Sabbath. Ezekiel has given us much information on this point. It even appears that while Moses was in the mount during the first forty days, Israel did then greatly pollute the Sabbath. It was one of the sins for which they came so near being shut out of the promised land at that time. Ezekiel 20:9-13. But God gave them a second probation, or rather prolonged their existing probation, but it was, for all that, a failure. So he lifted up his hand in the wilderness and solemnly sware that they should not enter the land. See Numbers 14:28, 29; Ezekiel 20:15. And here is the reason for this oath, as stated by Ezekiel in the next verse: “Because they despised my judgments, and walked not in my statutes, but polluted my Sabbaths: for their heart went after their idols.” When, therefore, Paul wrote to the Hebrew people, the descendants of these very persons who thus failed to enter the promised land because of their violation of the law of God in general, and of the Sabbath in particular, how significant to them must have been his solemn exhortation, Hebrews 4:11: “Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” Their unbelief showed itself in acts of direct and positive disobedience to God’s commandments, and in especial manner to his Sabbath. Against their evil example Paul solemnly warns us. SOSL 62.3

Even after the exclusion of all the adults from an entrance into the land of Canaan, the same acts of disobedience were performed by the children. God entreated them not to act like their fathers, but to walk in his statutes, and keep his judgments, and hallow his Sabbaths. And this, strange to say, they refused to heed. They did not regard his law, nor keep his judgments, but they polluted his Sabbaths, until God meditated their overthrow in the wilderness, like the overthrow of their fathers. Instead of this, he lifted up his hand to them in the wilderness, that he would, even after their entrance into the promised land, scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them through the countries, because they had not executed his judgments, but had despised his statutes, and polluted his Sabbaths. Ezekiel 20:18-24. Thus the Hebrew people laid the foundation of their future ruin by violating the commandments of God in the wilderness, and, particularly, by the violation of the Sabbath of the Lord. SOSL 63.1

It was at the end of forty years of that rebellion and Sabbath-breaking that Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, makes his final appeal in behalf of the Sabbath. “Remember,” says he, “that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day.” Deuteronomy 5:15. In a former discourse particular attention was called to this passage. Doubtless there was the strictest propriety in alluding to their Egyptian bondage and their deliverance therefrom, as it is not at all likely that they could, as a people, in any proper manner, keep the Sabbath of the Lord in Egypt. But a comparison of this text with Deuteronomy 24:17, 18, shows, beyond all dispute, that this reference to Egyptian bondage is not designed to teach that the Sabbath is a memorial of their deliverance therefrom, but that it is an appeal to their sense of gratitude, and one, too, that would seem sufficient to move very hard hearts. SOSL 63.2

After this appeal in behalf of the Sabbath, no mention of the sacred institution appears in the Scriptures till we reach the time of David. 1 Chronicles 9:32. Some five hundred years thus elapse in which no mention is made of the rest-day of the Lord. Six books of the Bible in succession, which give us the history of this time, preserve a total silence so far as the direct mention of the Sabbath is concerned. No one argues from this that the Sabbath was not observed during this period; yet many persons, with the fact before them, plainly recorded in Genesis 2:1-3, that God set up the Sabbath in Paradise, will earnestly contend that inasmuch as that book makes no further direct mention of that institution, it was, therefore, totally disregarded from Adam to Moses! SOSL 64.1

One of the Psalms was written for the Sabbath-day, as its title in Hebrew plainly testifies. In verses 4, 5, it calls attention to the works of God as the proper theme for meditation on the Sabbath. The sacred day is designed to commemorate the greatest of them all, the creation of the heavens and the earth. See Psalm 111:2, 4. SOSL 64.2

Isaiah speaks of the annual sabbaths (of which, according to Leviticus 23, there were seven,) and the new moons, as things which were not pleasing to God in their observance, especially because of their sins. See chap. 1:10-14. But he speaks of God’s holy rest-day in terms of strong exhortation and earnest entreaty. If the people of God in their dispersion would observe it, they should be gathered to his holy mountain. If the Gentiles would observe it also, they should be joined with his people in the reception of his blessing. Isaiah 56. And he makes the further promise in behalf of Sabbath reformers, that if those who are now trampling the Sabbath beneath their feet, will turn away their feet from the Sabbath, and call it the holy of the Lord and honorable, and will honor him thus, he will honor them with a place in his immortal kingdom. Isaiah 58:13, 14. SOSL 64.3

When Jerusalem was threatened with destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, the Lord sent to that people, through Jeremiah, an offer to preserve their city from his power, if they would hallow the Sabbath day. He even promised that the city should stand forever, on condition, however, that they should not violate his Sabbath. Jeremiah 17:19-27. But they did not regard this gracious offer of the God of Heaven. Ezekiel informs us that they profaned the Sabbath of the Lord, and hid their eyes from it. Ezekiel 22:8, 26. And he further informs us how they defiled his sanctuary, and profaned his Sabbath; for they slew their children in sacrifice to their idols on that day, and then came into the sanctuary to profane it. Ezekiel 23:38, 39. It was thus that they treated the Sabbath in response to the gracious offer made them through Jeremiah. And thus wrath came upon them to the uttermost in the destruction of their city and the ruin of their nation. SOSL 65.1

After the Babylonish captivity, when a remnant had returned to their own land, Nehemiah found them again violating the Sabbath. He reminded them that the violation of the Sabbath had been the cause of their ruin, and earnestly entreated them to desist from this great transgression. With this solemn appeal of Nehemiah ends the history of the Sabbath in the Old Testament. Nehemiah 13:18. SOSL 65.2

The prophet Isaiah has given us a glorious view of the future kingdom of God. When the second Adam shall, with the family of the redeemed, possess the new earth, then shall the immortal saints assemble from the whole face of the earth, on each successive Sabbath, to worship before the Lord of hosts. Isaiah 66:22, 23. And Paul tells us of this final rest of the redeemed, that there remains a Sabbatismos, i.e., as the margin has it, “a keeping of the Sabbath,” to the people of God. Hebrews 4:9. The Sabbath was made for man in Eden. It has survived the dreadful deluge of sin that has almost drowned out piety and truth in the earth. It exists to-day as the subject of promise and of prophecy. It stands firm as the pillars of Heaven, and is established in the immutable authority of God’s unchanging law. And when an end is made of sin, and none but holy beings remain to possess the immortal inheritance, the Sabbath made for man shall still exist, and SOSL 65.3

“All flesh shall keep it with one heart.” SOSL 66.1