Sword & Trowel 2015: Issue 1
that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.’ Here is the sabbath principle, where a day is perpetually made a blessed day, sanctified by God, meaning that it was set apart and declared to be special and holy. It became a day of favour, of privilege, and clearly a commemoration of creation.
Dedicated to worship God obviously did not do this for
his own benefit, for he does not dwell in time as we do, and needs no rest. The day was inaugurated for man’s benefit, to be a day of rest from ordi- nary labours, dedicated to worship. If Adam and Eve had continued in blissful life cultivating the Garden, there would have been a sabbath rest every seventh day. In the event they fell, but God’s creational ordinance continued, and we must assume that the earliest generations of mankind, certainly the godly, kept the sabbath ordinance as a memorial of God’s creation.
It was made written law from the time of Moses in the fourth com- mandment, being firmly linked to the original creation ordinance by the words, ‘Remember the sabbath day,’ as though to say that it had always existed. It was an obligation from the very beginning for man to reflect and to have this day set aside for God, and so it continues throughout time. When the apostles, surely by direct inspiration, began to meet for wor- ship on the first day of the week (the day of resurrection), the day was changed from the seventh day of the week to the first, but the sabbath principle remained.
page 36 The Garden of Eden
Some years ago a prominent pas- tor came to see me, and during conversation suddenly said, almost defiantly, ‘I am not a sabbatarian.’ He rejected with some derision the no- tion of a sabbath principle, and the ongoing obligation of the fourth com- mandment. What a great shame for himself and for his church, because it is a creation ordinance for the benefit of God’s people. At the time of Mo- ses it acquired a significance which went beyond creation, including the commemoration of deliverance from Egypt. Redemption became a great part of it. In the New Testament, when the day changed to the first day of the week, it further acquired the commemoration of Calvary and the resurrection, an even greater redemp- tion. Proceeding to Genesis 2.4 we read
– ‘These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth.’ Modern versions tend to lose the word ‘gen- erations’, using alternative words such as, ‘this is the history of’, or ‘this is the account of’, but ‘generations’ is best. It is particularly important be- cause this phrase is used ten times in Genesis, each occurrence introducing a fresh section of the historical record. Later we find, ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam,’ where the immediate descendants of Adam and Eve are chronicled. However, the first time it is used (Genesis 2.4) it reads, ‘These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth,’ meaning that the first section of Genesis records mainly what the earth (treated as if it were a parent) brings forth. People who have no respect for the Bible have claimed that Genesis 1 is
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