The Sabbath A Perpetual Sign—Part 4

By Joseph Bates (adapted)

The Spirit of God directed Moses to write that God “blessed the seventh day” of creation, “and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested (Hebrew: shabath) from all his work”. This shows that the Sabbath has existed from that very day.
(Genesis 2:2-3). See also Exodus 5:5, 16:30, 23:12, 31:16-17, 34: 21 for uses of shabath.

The Bible is just as clear that the “Sabbath” was created on the seventh day, as it is that “man” was created on the sixth day.

Wouldn’t it be absurd to try and prove that Adam was not created in the beginning, but that He came into existence at Sinai? And yet that is just as logical as trying to

say that the Sabbath didn’t exist until about 2,500 years after it was created.

It follows then that the weekly Sabbath was not made for the Jews only, but as Jesus says, for “man”. (Mark 2:27). The Jews didn’t exist until nearly 2,000 years after the creation of the Sabbath.

Rev. Herman Humphrey says in his essays on the Sabbath, “That He [God] instituted it when He rested from all His work, on the seventh day of the first week, and gave it primarily to our first parents, and through them to all their posterity; that the observance of it was enjoined upon the children of Israel soon after they left Egypt, not in the form of a new enactment, but as an ancient institution which was far from being forgotten, though it had doubtless been greatly neglected under the cruel domination of their heathen masters; that it was re-enacted with great pomp and solemnity, and written in stone by the finger of God at Sinai; that the sacred institution then took the form of a statute, with explicit prohibitions and requirements, and has never been repealed or altered since; that it can never expire of itself, because it has no limitation.”

God refers us back to the creation for proof that the seventh-day is the Sabbath: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh.” (Exodus 20:11).

Here we have the law of God, and the Word of Jesus telling us that the Sabbath was made for man.

Paul says, “there is no respect of persons with God.” (Romans 2:11). And Isaiah shows us Jews are not the only one blessed by keeping the Sabbath:

“Blessed is the man (aren’t Gentiles “men”?) that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it. . . . Also the sons of the stranger, (who are these if they are not Gentiles?) every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, (Does He mean me? Yes, it includes every Gentile in the universe, or else He respects persons!) even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; for my house shall be called an house of prayer for all people." Isaiah 56:2,6-7