On the other hand, when — what Israel was commanded to do on the Sabbath would have been done normally by Adam and Eve; therefore, no command would have been needed. For example, they didn’t go out of their dwelling place. They didn’t leave the garden until after sin entered. They didn’t bake or boil. We don’t have any record of them ever using fire in their Eden home. We can assume they ate their food fresh from the garden. They didn’t do any work. They didn’t have to work until after the fall and after they had sinned, and they had to cultivate in some way that created labor, whereas before that such cultivation was not laborious but was pure delight. They didn’t carry a load because there was nothing to carry anywhere. They didn’t have to store their crops for winter or store things because they might decay. That wasn’t how it was. There’s no indication that they ever needed to build a fire. They didn’t even have any clothes, so they must have been in a temperate climate. They didn’t buy or sell. There wasn’t anything to buy and nobody to sell it. And they didn’t do to what was their own pleasure, because their pleasure was God’s pleasure. And they did rest, because there was no work to do. And they did celebrate because all they did was live with delight, and so they delighted in the Lord in the fullest and purest and highest sense. So in a sense, I think he’s right. You can say that the Sabbath is a little bit of a throwback to what Eden must be like. And in so doing that, it again faces us with the reality that we are a long way from Eden. Ratcleff says: “The Sabbaths of the Old covenant appear to be mini-rest stops, like a pretend game,” he says, “where Israel behaved like Adam and Eve on that first seventh day; the difference being that Adam and Eve were in open fellowship with the creator. The Israelites, on the other hand, didn’t even desire such fellowship.”
And also within the Sabbath idea were indications of a future hope. Sabbaths did point back to creation. They pointed back to a perfect environment in Eden. But they also pointed forward, and they pointed to the restored paradise when tired souls would be refreshed in the glorious kingdom of Messiah. Can’t you imagine that the Jews in their rest would say: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the day would ever come when we would have nothing but rest, and we could rest from our struggles with sin, we could rest from our struggles with temptation, we could know perfectly, we could live in perfect delight, perfect peace, perfect harmony, perfect joy with God?
And I think Sabbath was about history, but it was also about hope. Because there you are on the Sabbath and you’re remembering something of the rest of Eden, and what it must have been like for Adam and Eve in the perfection of that Eden before the fall, and you are realizing in the sort of the emptiness of that Sabbath when all the earthly things are set aside, you are realizing how far you are from that Sabbath of Eden, and how far away you are from God, and how much you break his law, and how profoundly sinful you are. And at the same time, you’re looking forward and you’re longing for that true Sabbath, that day when the real rest and delight and joy will come, when sin is conquered and the curse is reversed, and paradise lost is paradise regained. Sabbath gave them reason not only to look back, but it gave them reason to look forward to await the time when they could return to the wonderful land of their fathers. They could return to the land of milk and honey. And a time when maybe, as the prophet said, the desert would “blossom like a rose,” and the King would be here and the great prophet would come, and righteousness would dominate and peace, and they would enter into their final rest.
So, you see, the Sabbath was really at the core of Israel’s life. And keeping the Sabbath — and I’ll end with this — keeping the Sabbath was the test of love to God. It was the test of loyalty to God. It was the test of obedience to God. It was the day when you could do an inventory on your life. It was never inaugurated before the Mosaic Covenant, but it was at the core of that Mosaic Covenant. And it was time to contemplate, time to contemplate. And what would they have contemplated? They would have looked back to the Abrahamic Covenant. And they would have said: You know, in the Abrahamic Covenant, we were promised blessing, we were promised the land, we were promised prosperity, and all we had to do was obey God. And then God gave us his commands. And whether you took the two or the ten or the many, we can’t keep those commands, and we’re in a desperate situation. And every time we have a Sabbath, we have to sit and think about that, and we can remember the paradise of Eden, and we can long for the paradise of the future.
But the fact is in the middle here, we need forgiveness. Do you know what? There was no forgiveness in the Mosaic Covenant. It wasn’t a covenant of forgiveness. No forgiveness, no mercy, no grace, no enablement, no help. Just condemnation. In the midst of that, they had to cry out to God for mercy. And God would hear their cry and save them by the terms of the New Covenant, the sacrifice of Christ. But under the Old Covenant, loyalty to God was marked by observance of the Sabbath as the sign of conformity to the law of God. And the true Jew not only kept that day to conform to the law, but he kept that day to contemplate his condition, and his devotion to God.
Now that brings us to the next question. How does this apply to us in the church? And we will see that transition next time.
Lord, what a wonderful day we have had today, and your word thrills us. We thank you that you didn’t leave us under the terms of the Old Covenant, but that there is the New Covenant; the only covenant that can save, the only covenant that provides forgiveness of sins. The New Covenant in Christ, who died for us, that you might forgive us all our sins and provide for us in Christ a permanent relationship to yourself and an entering into the true rest. We thank you that the New Covenant is a better covenant, because it provides three things — forgiveness, salvation and eternal relationship with you — that the Old Covenant could not provide. It promises us paradise regained. We thank you for it. Lord, continue to direct us to be obedient and grateful for all that you have done for sinners. We pray in our Savior’s name. Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
