“Thus the heavens and the earth were
completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work
he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God
blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the
work of creating that he had done.”
Genesis 2:
1-3
When we
study the book of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we find that everything in all
creation was established before God formed mankind. God declared that man was
to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock,
over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. He
commanded Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it. They were to have
dominion over God’s creation.
However, the
Sabbath was not created before man was formed, but rather it was established
after God created man. Man was not
created to have dominion over the Sabbath, but instead the Sabbath was created
for man! This is precisely what Jesus
told the religious leaders of his day in Mark 2:23-28:
“The
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
The Sabbath
was established for our benefit, not our dominion. It was not something created
for us to control or manipulate. The religious leaders of Christ’s day had
buried the beauty of the Sabbath under a pile of man-made rules and
regulations. In Luke 13:14, we read about how distraught they had become when
Jesus ignored their attempts to harness and use the Sabbath day for their own
interests and healed a woman contrary to their man-made regulations:
“Indignant because Jesus had healed
on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for
work. So come be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”
However,
their false reverence for the Sabbath was exposed when Jesus rebuked them for
untying their ox and leading them to water on the Sabbath, while criticizing
the good He had done for the woman who had been crippled for 18 years.
“If any of you has a sheep and it
falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?
How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! There it is lawful to do good on
the Sabbath.”
Matthew
12:11-12
The
Sabbath was established by God for our good, our rest and renewal, but it was a
principle that extended beyond just people.
Pastor Scott
Burr
http://faithandworshipseries.blogspot.com/
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