The Sabbath and Its Blessing
By G. W. Wells
GREAT blessings are involved in the observance of the Sabbath, and God desires it to be to us a day of joy. The Sabbath was instituted at the close of creation week. In the very beginning of human history, yea, when our first parents were less than one day old, God gave them—and in them the entire race—the Sabbath, that by its weekly recurrence they might always remember Him as the Creator. Heaven and earth were filled with rejoicing. “The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Job 38:7. The Sabbath of the Bible is a divine institution, having for its foundation the blessing and the command of God. He “blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it,” and He has never taken this blessing from the seventh day. “For Thou blessest, O Lord, and it shall be blessed forever.” 1 Chron. 17: 27. God has never sanctified another day as a weekly Sabbath. He who would obtain the fulness of joy, God’s Holy Spirit as witness within, and a consciousness of sweet rest and peace in following the blessed Master, would do well to remember that it was He who rested the seventh day, it was the seventh day that He blessed and sanctified. When the law was given by the voice of God, the observance of the Sabbath was enforced by the fourth commandment. The reason for its observance, as well as the date of its sanctification, is clearly stated. The Lord made heaven and earth in six days, and rested the seventh. “Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” The seventh-day Sabbath, then, is a standing and enduring memorial of God’s act of creation, and God designed that by its observance a knowledge of Him as the Creator and personal Saviour should be preserved. “Hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.” Eze. 20: 20. The Sabbath of the Lord “was made,” the Saviour said, “for man.” It had a real existence before sin, before the sacrificial services, yea, before the law which regulated the sacrifices and offerings was appended. Therefore, when that sacrificial law was nailed to the cross, the seventh-day Sabbath still remained in full force. Not so with the sabbaths of the Jews. That law of ceremonies gave them their only force; and when that ceased, they were abolished. You will mark the distinction made in the Scriptures between God’s Sabbaths and the holy days, or “the new moon,” or “the sabbath days; which are a shadow of things to come.” God assures us, by the prophet, that these latter shall “cease.” Hosea 2: 11. As to His Sabbath, you may judge of its perpetuity after reading Isa. 66: 22, 23, where we are informed of its existence in the new earth. Please read Lev. 23: 24, 27, 32, 39, 40, 38; Ex. 20: 10; Isa. 56: 4, and note the language,—“My Sabbaths” and “her sabbaths.” “Her sabbaths” are associated with “her feast-days, her new moons,” and are “her solemn feasts.” Hosea 2: 11. “My Sabbath,” we have seen, is embodied in the Decalogue, that law of which the Saviour said, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one title of the law to fail.” Luke 16: 17. By His coming, Christ did not destroy that law, or lessen one obligation to obey it. He clearly teaches this in Matt. 5: 17-19. We8may safely affirm that the apostles did not disturb what their Lord came to “magnify” and make “honorable.” The fact that those who had been under His teaching during His ministry “rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment” after His crucifixion, and resumed labor on the first day of the week, shows clearly that they knew nothing of a change. The fact that an apostle writing a number of years after the crucifixion, states that “the Sabbath was past” when the “first day of the week” came (Mark 16: 1, 2), is conclusive that no instruction had been given him with reference to a change of the Sabbath day. The fact that God has never sanctified the first day of the week shows plainly that it is not sacred time. The fact that He has never required us to rest on that day shows that its observance in place of the Sabbath is clearly making “void the commandment of God” to keep “the tradition of men.” That sanctified time exists in the gospel dispensation, or, in other words, that there is a day which belongs to God, is clear from Rev. 1: 10. That the Lord’s day is the Sabbath is plainly taught in Isa. 58: 13. The most precious blessings are promised to those who keep God’s Sabbath. Isa. 56: 1-7. And it is worthy of note that this promise pertains to a period when God’s “salvation is near to come,” and His “righteousness to be revealed.” “Also the sons of the stranger” (the Gentiles) are included in the promise, “every one that keepeth the Sabbath,” and those who “love the name of the Lord, to be His servants.” Of them it is said: “I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.” “Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer.” “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.” These promises are for God’s people today. They are for us. “The Sabbath was made for man.” Are you keeping it? Will you keep it, and delight in the Lord?