2316.—The Sabbath in the Beginning.
By W. S. K.
Did God command Adam and Eve to keep the Sabbath? What Bible record have we that the Sabbath was kept by any people or persons before the time of Moses? W. S. K. 1. Genesis is not a book of law, being simply a very brief record of God's providential dealings with His people for twenty-five hundred years. We find no prohibitions, "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and as to the matter of that, every other command of the Decalogue. On the other hand, we do find that the transgression of all these commandments was counted sin. The apostle Paul tells us, Rom. 3:20, "By the law is the knowledge of sin;" Rom. 4:15, "Where no law is there is no transgression." Therefore the law was in force during that time. 2. The record is that God rested, blessed, and sanctified the seventh day. Gen. 2:2, 3. "Sanctify" means to set apart. For whom was it set apart? Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man." Mark 2:27. Therefore when God set apart that day in the very beginning, He set it apart for man; so Lange, the great commentor, declares that God must have commanded it then. This, too, is shown by Gen. 4:3, "And in process of time it came to pass." The margin for "in process of time" is "at the end of days." The only cycle of days that is given us thus far is the weekly period. As God later commanded in the law, sacrifices on the Sabbath day, so Cain and Abel brought their offerings to worship on that day. 3. One of the very first things that Moses did when he went down into Egypt to that poor nation of slaves, who had almost utterly lost the knowledge of the true God in the surrounding idolatry, was to bring them back to a knowledge of the Sabbath. They began keeping the Sabbath, and therefore Pharaoh finds fault with them in these words: "Behold the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens." The root word for "rest" is sabbath. He made them sabbatize, keep the Sabbath. This was many days before the children of Israel came to Sinai; and even before they came to Sinai they began to keep the Sabbath as the Lord taught them, by the fall of the manna, as recorded in Exodus 16. Note what Moses says, that God gave the manna "a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My law, or no." Verse 4. In the instruction which Moses gives them he does not declare that He is giving them a new law at all, but mentions it as a fact already well established, "to-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Verse 23. The 26th verse, "the seventh day, which is the Sabbath;" it is a recognized, established institution. Some of the people did not keep it. The reproof comes from the Lord, verse 28, "How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws?" All this before the law was spoken from Sinai. When God gave the law there, as recorded in Exodus 20, He gave the same reasons for the Sabbath as at the time when it was instituted, as recorded in Gen. 2:3, in the very beginning. There are a hundred other considerations that have a bearing on the question which confirm the statements made in this note. Read the pamphlet, "The Lord's Day the Test of the Ages," and see how the Lord has guarded His Sabbath at the beginning and the close of every dispensation. One thought further: It does not make any difference to God whether any one ever keeps His commandment or not. It does not lessen the holiness of the command nor the necessity; the Lord does not do unnecessary things; all that He asks of His people is for their good.