THE MEMORIAL OF CREATION AND REDEMPTION.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
“THE works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. His work is honorable and glorious; and His righteousness endureth forever. He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered.” Ps. 111: 2-4. Literally, “He hath made a memorial for His wonderful works.” By what means has God made His wonderful works to be remembered?—By the Sabbath day; for when God had finished the heavens and the earth, and all their host, “He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 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: 1-3. The Sabbath was given to man to be a continual reminder of God’s wonderful works. Therefore He says: “I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord which sanctify them.” Eze. 20:12. It is so self-evident that the seventh day of the week, commonly called Saturday, is the Sabbath here spoken of, that we shall not here take time to dwell upon that. Sabbath means rest; it is God’s rest that we are to enter into;4and the seventh day is the Sabbath—the rest—of the Lord thy God. Nothing in time or eternity can ever change the fact that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh day; and therefore the Sabbath of the Lord can never be changed. Men may make another sabbath for themselves, as they have done; but this is but a part of the working whereby they have made other gods for themselves. Nevertheless there is really only one God, and only one Sabbath. This seventh-day Sabbath is the sign and seal of redemption. Thus: It is the memorial of creation, but not of creation as it now appears. God did not rest from His labors until He “saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” The Sabbath commemorates a perfect, new creation. The Sabbath and the New Man.
Now we have only to remember that that new creation which God surveyed and pronounced very good, included man. There was a new heaven and a new earth, and a new man. The Sabbath, therefore, is the sign that a perfect, new man has been created; and so it is the sign and seal of a new man in Christ; for “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.” The Gospel restores man to his original perfection, and the Sabbath is the assurance that God, who made a perfect man in the beginning, can still do it. “We which have believed do enter into rest.” Heb. 4: 3. The rest here referred to is God’s rest, as the verse itself shows, and that is the Sabbath, the seventh day. See the commandment, and also the verses immediately following Heb. 4: 3. God spoke in a certain place on this wise: “And God did rest the seventh day from all His works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into My rest.” The Israelites that came out of Egypt “could not enter in because of unbelief.” Belief justifies, makes righteous. So we are not required to keep the Sabbath in order to become righteous, but Sabbath-keeping is the natural, inevitable result of perfect, complete redemption—the finished work of God. When we accept God as the Creator of all things, as our Creator, then we rest in His finished work, the work which was finished from the foundation of the world; and the sign that we do thus accept Him is the keeping of His rest—the seventh day. E. J. WAGGONER.