A day unlike any other Genesis 2:3

Where does the idea of a 7-day week come from?  This may sound like a trivia question, but it’s not.  I think it’s one of those foundational questions that every human needs to answer.  Really

. 

We know how we got years.  You can watch the movement of the sun, and it changes with the seasons, and then it repeats. 

Months have to do with changes in the moon that repeat at regular intervals. 

But there is nothing in nature that corresponds to a 7-day cycle.

If you look it up, the answer commonly given is that the 7-day cycle came from the Babylonians and the Sumerians.  But that only means that that’s where the oldest mention of that is found.   It doesn’t explain why they would invent it.

They speculate that this had to do with the phases of the moon, but the moon’s phases are not always 7 days.  It can be 8 days.  And the Babylonians would add a day or two at the end of the month to match the moon’s cycle, but then it’s not a 7 day week.

It had to have started before then.  Like at creation.

There would not have been a seven-day week if God had not created the world in 7 days.  No, I can’t prove that, but there is no other explanation out there.

But that’s not the point of this lesson.

Genesis 2:3 says that  “. . . God BLESSED the seventh day and SANCTIFIED it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

The 7^th day is BLESSED    and SANCTIFIED, whatever that means. 

God told the Israelites in the Ten Commandments:  Exodus 20:8      “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.  And in verse 11:   “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

The command in the Ten Commandments was to REMEMBER the sabbath day to KEEP it holy.  It already was holy.  They were to REMEMBER that and KEEP it that way.

Some people say that the sabbath is just a Jewish thing.  Ezekiel 20:12      “. . . I gave them My sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them.

They were God’s chosen people at that time, and to them alone God appeared and gave them His laws.  But the sabbath did not begin when God gave His laws to Israel.

SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TODAY?

I have come to the conclusion that the sabbath day is a big deal to God, even today.  Christians disagree.  Let me explain.

The sabbath is more important to God than most people think.

We know that God judged the nation of Israel in the 6^th century BC, and in 586 BC most of what was left of the nation was taken into captivity to Babylon.  Throughout the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, God lists the ongoing sins and acts of rebellion Israel had done over and over again for centuries before God finally judged them.

But buried in the book of Jeremiah in the midst of all the gloom and doom, God makes the following statement:  Jeremiah 17:24      “But it will come about, if you listen attentively to Me,” declares the LORD, “to bring no load in through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but to keep the sabbath day holy by doing no work on it,     25      then there will come in through the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this city will be inhabited forever.

If they had only kept the sabbath, they would have been spared God’s judgment. 

In Jesus’ day, many if not most of the clashes between Him and the Jewish leaders were over the Sabbath.  It wasn’t over whether or not to keep the Sabbath but what that meant.  I had a doctor in the hospital who told me that if the sun set on a Friday night while he was driving home, he would have to stop the car and walk home.  Now that makes no sense to me at all.  God may be pleased that this man is doing this to honor Him, but I think God would say that he’s missing the point. 

So again, what does this all have to do with Christians today?

The book of Malachi says: I am the Lord, I change not.  If God liked something back then, I think He would still like it today.  If something really displeased Him then, I think it would still displease Him today.

Yes, some things have changed.  Jesus offered a sacrifice to replace all sacrifices.  The mandate for Israel to destroy the Canaanites is past.  There are no more Canaanites.  And there is no longer a nation that is governed by the laws of the Old Testament.

 

Now the Church early on believed that Sunday was the Sabbath day for Christians.  Some Christian groups still follow the Sabbath on Saturday, but churches have been meeting on Sunday from almost the beginning.

Our country used to honor Sunday.  There’s a line in the Constitution about the Presidential veto, that the President has ten days to veto a bill, excluding Sundays.  Businesses were closed on Sundays for most of our history as a nation.

I spent most of my career as a meat cutter.  I went to school for the ministry, thought meat cutting would be just a temporary job, but spent almost the rest of my life doing that.  When I started in the meat business, most stores were open on Sunday, mine wasn’t, but meat could not be sold on Sundays.  But then it could, and work was voluntary, paid at overtime rates. 

Then it became mandatory, and then at premium pay, not overtime, and now it is just another regular day of the week.  Sunday is now the biggest shopping day of the week. 

Sunday, the sabbath, whatever day it is, is forgotten.  I tell Christians not to shop on Sundays, because people have to work on Sundays to take care of them.  My last two meat cutting jobs, I had to work every Sunday, and I didn’t go to church for 7 years. 

I mentioned in a previous study that I think God is not pleased with us as a nation over the practice of abortion.  I think our lack of reverence, if I may use that word, for Sunday, or Saturday, or the Sabbath, is something that displeases God.

I know some of you who get these lessons will say God doesn’t deal with nations like this anymore.  It’s all just individuals.  And the Sabbath is just a remnant of a previous time.

I know what Romans 14 says about how some Christians keep a day and some don’t, and it doesn’t really matter if they do or don’t but just what they think about it.  I don’t know if we have enough information to say that the days in mind here included the sabbath or not. 

Christians are concerned about winning the lost, and when we do win them, we would like them to go to church, and that’s not going to happen for a lot of them, because they have to work.  I would suggest, for that reason alone, let’s make Sunday a day of rest again, and do our shopping and eating out during the week.