Previously: sabbath and the law of love
The Sabbath was hallowed — made holy — by God as a day of rest since the creation of the world, which was about 2500 years before the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.
The Hebrew word for “hallowed,” Strongs H6942, means that it is set apart and separated, and if we are talking about a hallowed day, then that means it is set apart and separated from the rest of the (common, ordinary, or profane) days.
The Ten Commandments did not inaugurate a day of rest; the command was to remember to keep the day of rest — which had already been inaugurated — holy (hallowed, set apart from the common). The Hebrew word for “keep” (Strongs H8104) means to observe or celebrate, to guard, to preserve, and to give heed to.
Now this is something interesting, while we are still in Genesis, that my daughter helped me to see. We were talking about the first promise of the Redeemer which appears in Gen 3:15. She pointed out to me that in the punishment meted upon the woman (the man and woman were not cursed; only the ground was cursed if you read this passage carefully):
To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;
Yet your desire will be for your husband,
And he will rule over you.” Gen 3:16
That the word translated “pain” in the above passage, really is in Hebrew, “toil,” and is in fact the exact same word the Lord uses in the next verse pronouncing the punishment upon Adam:
Then to Adam He said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,
And have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.” Gen 3:17
In other words, the punishment meted out upon both the woman and the man is the same: work, sorrow, labor, painful toil. Now how wonderful is the Lord our God, who, before man ever sinned on the earth, sanctified the Sabbath day and hallowed it as a day of REST for all creation throughout our generations! It is a pure gift of grace, that God would gift us with a respite, a rest, from the work and painful toil that we earned for ourselves as a result of sin and disobedience! It is such a cruel deception of the enemy that he would take God’s gracious gift of rest, the Sabbath, and turn it around in men’s minds as a hated, obligatory chore! No wonder Jesus told us that the Sabbath was made for man!
Continued: the seventh day of rest
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