Jesus Revealed in Doctrine THE BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Gen. 2:3.
It was God who set aside the seventh-day Sabbath in the beginning in honor of Creation. Evidently the Creator realized the importance of having His creatures remember His creatorship and His creation every week. The Sabbath is in honor of the birthday of the world. You can't change anybody's birthday. When someone comes along with a pseudo-Sabbath, or another day to take its place, they are obviously false, because no one can change anyone's birthday, not even Abraham Lincoln's or George Washington's! We can change the official memorial holidays, but have we changed their birthdates? Of course not. We can decide to have our holiday on a different day, that's all. And why do we do this? Because Washington and Lincoln obviously don't mean that much to us anymore. We are more concerned with having a day off than with honoring Washington and Lincoln. Isn't that true? Why, I can prove it to you. On the last celebration of Lincoln's or Washington's birthday, how many of you sat around reading about Lincoln or Washington and meditating on them?
When you forget about the person whose birthday you are supposed to be celebrating, as time goes by you can find it easy to change it into simply a holiday. Don't miss this in relationship to the Sabbath. God Himself couldn't change the Sabbath, as long as it continues to be memorial of what it is, because to change the day that was set aside in honor of Creation would be impossible even for God Himself.
But God is interested in sanctifying a people, not just a particular day (Heb. 13:12). People begin to experience sanctification the moment they are born again as new creatures in Christ. We can be thankful to the Creator for not only our first birth but the new birth as well. Thus the Sabbath becomes a reminder not only of the fact that God created us in the first place but of our redemption, through the blood of Jesus. The Sabbath has been given to us as a sign of our sanctification (Ex. 31:13; Eze. 20:12). We have been set apart for a holy purpose. The Sabbath is more than a matter of law. It is a matter of Christian life and experience.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Gen. 2:3.
It was God who set aside the seventh-day Sabbath in the beginning in honor of Creation. Evidently the Creator realized the importance of having His creatures remember His creatorship and His creation every week. The Sabbath is in honor of the birthday of the world. You can't change anybody's birthday. When someone comes along with a pseudo-Sabbath, or another day to take its place, they are obviously false, because no one can change anyone's birthday, not even Abraham Lincoln's or George Washington's! We can change the official memorial holidays, but have we changed their birthdates? Of course not. We can decide to have our holiday on a different day, that's all. And why do we do this? Because Washington and Lincoln obviously don't mean that much to us anymore. We are more concerned with having a day off than with honoring Washington and Lincoln. Isn't that true? Why, I can prove it to you. On the last celebration of Lincoln's or Washington's birthday, how many of you sat around reading about Lincoln or Washington and meditating on them?
When you forget about the person whose birthday you are supposed to be celebrating, as time goes by you can find it easy to change it into simply a holiday. Don't miss this in relationship to the Sabbath. God Himself couldn't change the Sabbath, as long as it continues to be memorial of what it is, because to change the day that was set aside in honor of Creation would be impossible even for God Himself.
But God is interested in sanctifying a people, not just a particular day (Heb. 13:12). People begin to experience sanctification the moment they are born again as new creatures in Christ. We can be thankful to the Creator for not only our first birth but the new birth as well. Thus the Sabbath becomes a reminder not only of the fact that God created us in the first place but of our redemption, through the blood of Jesus. The Sabbath has been given to us as a sign of our sanctification (Ex. 31:13; Eze. 20:12). We have been set apart for a holy purpose. The Sabbath is more than a matter of law. It is a matter of Christian life and experience.
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