ONE ASPECT of the theme of the Sabbath's being made for man and not man for the Sabbath is of utmost importance and has not yet received the attention it requires: The Sabbath has a vital role in the plan of salvation.
The Sabbath fulfilled a vital function for man in Eden. The essential nature of the Sabbath as a day of rest, contemplation, commemoration, and worship for man in Eden is described by Ellen White as follows.
"[Man] needed to lay aside his own interests and pursuits for one day in seven, that he might more fully contemplate the works of God and meditate upon His power and goodness. He needed a Sabbath to remind him more vividly of God and to awaken a gratitude because all that he enjoyed and possessed came from the beneficent hand of the Creator." --Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 48.
But whereas the Sabbath had a vital function for man before his fall, after the Fall the Sabbath be came even more important. Its purpose was enlarged. For postfall man, for man under bondage to sin and death, the Sabbath be came a sign of the power of salvation. It has a definite role in aiding man's salvation. This, too, is part of the meaning of the theme of the Sabbath's being made for man.
In order to see this function of the Sabbath in ancient Israel we need to look at the context of Genesis Creation. The story of Creation was placed by its author as a kind of protology in the form of a prologue before the historical drama that unfolds in the ensuing pages of the Bible. I believe that it was written just prior to the Exodus experience of Israel from Egyptian bondage when God was about to rescue slaves in order to forge them into the nation Israel. This whole saving mission was to be an act of God.
The Crucial Question
Moses was faced with the problem of who God really is, just as the Hebrew slaves were faced with this problem, and the Egyptian Pharaoh. One of the primary functions of the Creation story for the emerging nation Israel was to tell the enslaved Hebrews "who" really this God of Israel is and what He is able to do! They asked, "By whom and by what power can we be set free from the bondage and oppression in which we find ourselves?" This is the crucial question of human existence. Modern man also asks the question of the security of existence. He too wonders whether man can find security in God, whether there is even a God or, in Martin Buber's words, whether there is a Thou with whom the I can identify and exist in a vital, life-giving I-Thou relationship.
Into this searching for the security of human existence comes a fitting message: God is the supreme and unique Creator who has spoken the world and everything in it into existence through His effortless and all-powerful word. What is the existential meaning of this message in the historical situation of the enslaved Hebrews?
"Sons of the fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, do you hear who the God of your fathers really is? He is the Creator of the world, He is the Maker of all that is, He is the One who made the forces of nature. He is the One who planned everything in the physical realm. He is the One who inaugurated the historical process. Israel do you hear, do you understand? Your God, the One who is calling you out of slavery into the land promised to your forefathers, is the God of creation who made the forces of nature and therefore can use these forces to set you free.
"The God who will lead you forth by mighty deeds in history can do so because He is the very God who inaugurated the historical process in His mighty creation. On this basis you can under stand that He will demonstrate His recreative power in setting you free from slavery and bondage, to put you on the map of history. Have courage. It is the Creator- Lord who will be your Redeemer by exercising His recreative power."
These are words of comfort, of hope, and of salvation. This is one of the messages of Genesis Creation given to the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt and appropriate for enslaved man today. The Sabbath as a climaxing part of that Creation story becomes more than a day of commemorating and celebrating Creation; it becomes also a day of the worship of the Redeemer who made slaves literal and spiritual into a free people by His recreative power.
This indeed is a message of salvation. Genesis Creation with the Sabbath as the climax of the Creation account takes on even more significance once one actually witnesses God's mighty rescue mission of salvation in man's lives. The Sabbath, then, is more than a day of commemorating and celebrating Creation and Creator, it is a day of adoring worship of the Redeemer-Lord who makes slaves into a unique, free people through His recreative power.
In the long years of the wilderness wanderings the Israelites, who in Egypt had to a great extent lost knowledge of the sacredness of the seventh-day Sabbath, learned through the ever-repeating miracle of withholding manna every seventh day and the miraculous preservation of the double portion that fell on Friday (see Prophets and Kings, p. 181), that the Sabbath day is a day of great significance for salvation and spiritual growth.
This one-seventh portion of the weekly cycle was to be a day of healthful rest from everyday work. It was to be a day of communion with God, and also a day providing time for contemplation and worship, with the aim of bringing about spiritual growth. God has set this day aside for man, because without the benefit issuing from the proper use of the Sabbath God's people will again be en slaved physically and spiritually. But with the proper use of this day the believer will experience healthful rest from the cares of everyday life, and most of all he will grow in grace and perfection.
Lack of Recognition of Vital Role
One of the reasons why we do not make adequate advances in our Christian experience is our lack of recognizing the vital role that the Sabbath plays in spiritual growth, sanctification, and perfection. Making the Sabbath into a day in which the continual recreative powers of God can be active through the blessing that comes to man by proper observance of this day means that proper Sabbath observance begins on Sunday, the first day of the work week.
How can the Sabbath be a day of healthful rest and special communion with God when the physical energies are exhausted during the week so that the Sabbath hours are needed for physical recuperation? The physical must not be allowed to encroach upon the spiritual. Balance in one's activities during the six working days is essential for the receiving of the full Sabbath blessing.
One may ask, But isn't the Sabbath a day of rest? Surely it is a day of rest. But let us note that the Lord did not rest on the Sabbath because He was physically exhausted and tired. He had created by the effortless and all-powerful word and was not tired and worn out. In Creation God sets us an example that we are not to exhaust ourselves in temporal labor during the six working days, be cause the rest on the Sabbath is a rest from the mundane concerns to give us special time "to engage in His service" (Testimonies, vol. 6, p. 354).
To use the Sabbath merely as a day to recuperate physically is to abuse the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made to enrich man's spiritual life and to bring to fulfillment the whole goal of human existence, namely to restore in man the image of God, to let him partake of the spiritual life forces with which the Sabbath is blessed and thus to enable him to grow in sanctification and holiness.
As we recognize more and more the vital function of the Sabbath for spiritual advancement and Christian perfection, as we receive the Sabbath as a day signifying Christ's creative and redeeming power, as a day vital for our spiritual growth, as a day that restores through Christ the lost peace of Eden in the restlessness of this world, as a day of eschatological significance (Isa. 66; Heb. 4), this day will be a day of extraordinary delight and joy and will prove to fulfill the function of much-needed sanctification and holiness and perfection.
"If you cease to tread the sabbath underfoot,
and keep my holy day free from your own affairs,
if you call the sabbath a day of joy and the Lord's holy day a day to be honoured,
if you honour it by not plying your trade,
not seeking your own interest or attending to your own affairs,
then you shall find your joy in the Lord,
and I will set you riding on the heights of the earth,
and your father Jacob's patrimony shall be yours to enjoy;
the Lord himself has spoken it." Isaiah 58:13, 14, N.E.B.*
The Lord wants us to find our joy in Him. He wants us to experience our inheritance in peace and give us the undisturbed possession of Canaan. The promise to everyone who keeps the Sabbath holy is to set him riding upon the heights of the earth, to release Sabbath observance from being a burden, to liberate him for a meeting with the Lord.
Such meeting with the Lord brings about our continual spiritual growth, our sanctification, our holiness, our perfection. May we recognize the Sabbath to be the day in the weekly cycle especially set aside for remaking us into the image of God.
Concluded
* From The New English Bible. © The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 1970. Reprinted by permission.
