This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 9: “Rhythms of Rest”
This week’s Sabbath School lesson illustrates Adventism’s mastery of creating a narrative without any biblical support or hermeneutical integrity. The lesson’s weaving of Adventist assumptions and the great controversy worldview to create an artificial argument for keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is classic Adventism. This narrative and the resulting obligation sound spiritual, but they destroy the heart of Scripture: God’s sovereign faithfulness to His own word.
This week’s lesson makes a case for the Sabbath being about humanity’s benefit, but it goes beyond Scripture and fails to discuss the framework that gives Sabbath any context at all: God’s conditional covenant with Israel.
Starting with Genesis
The lesson tries to avoid calling the seventh day of creation week the “seventh day of creation”, but it says this in Saturday’s lesson:
But then, after all of this active creating, God turned His attention to something else. At first glance, it did not seem as spectacular as leaping whales or dazzling feather displays. God simply made a day, the seventh day, and then He made it special. Even before humanity would dash off to our self-imposed stressful lives, God set a marker as a living memory aid. God wanted this day to be a time for us to stop and deliberately enjoy life—a day to be and not do, to celebrate the gift of grass; air; wildlife; water; people; and, most of all, the Creator of every good gift.
So, which is it? Did God CEASE on the seventh day because His work was done, or did He make a day and make it special? Genesis 2:1–3 says this:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
We might argue that throughout creation week, God made days: “And there was evening and there was morning, the [first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth] day.” On the seventh day, however, that pattern changed. There is no mention of evening and morning! The margins that identify the six days of the week are completely missing on the seventh day. It is a “day” without a beginning or end. It was the day God rested, or ceased from His work.
He did not “make a day”. Those had been made during the fist six days, when He placed the sun, moon, and stars in the sky to rule the day and the night. Nor did He create the Sabbath. In fact, the word Sabbath is not mentioned in Genesis at all. Furthermore, there was no command for Adam and Eve to rest on the seventh day. Nothing in all the book of Genesis suggests that humanity was expected to keep a day.
Rather, on the seventh day—a day without margins, without an evening or a morning—God’s finished work existed complete. God was finished with His creating, and He ceased from His work and declared His finished work to be very good and sanctified it, or set it apart for holy use. All that God had made was for Him, and it was hallowed and sanctified. It was God’s finished work.
God did not resume work on the next day, nor did Adam and Eve stop communing with Him on the first day.
The lesson makes the point that God gave Adam and Eve a day when they could commune with Him. The author states:
God made rest and created a space for community where humanity (in those days the core family of Adam and Eve) could stop their day-to-day activities and rest side by side with their Creator.
This idea is nowhere in Scripture. Adam and Eve, sinless and spiritually alive with the very life of God, had no separation from Him. They didn’t need a day to commune with Him because they were intimately connected to Him at all times. They had no life apart from communion with Him. Nothing suggests that they needed to stop any “day-to-day activities” to commune with God!
Their communion with God was broken the very day they sinned. Furthermore, after they sinned they didn’t need a day to remember Him. They needed His forgiveness and their own repentance in order to be reunited with Him. Their sin separated them from God, but He promised them He would send a rescuer, and He clothed them with skins and gave them a means of acknowledging Him through sacrifices. Only repentance and forgiveness could restore their fellowship—and a day had nothing at ALL to do with that fellowship.
God has never required the keeping of a day for the purpose of communing with Him. He required Sabbath-keeping of Israel as a way to remember His covenant with them, to remember that He was their sovereign Creator and Savior, but Sabbath for Israel was not about a day of worship. It was about a day of rest, of staying in their tents, and watching God bless them beyond anything the pagans around them could imagine—and no one would be able to credit Israel with their success. Even Israel would have to acknowledge that it was their GOD who accomplished their success!
Sabbath in Israel
God first commanded Sabbath-keeping in Exodus 16 when He gave Israel the manna—one month before the giving of the covenant on Mt. Sinai. When God gave the manna and His commands that Israel gather double on Friday and none on the seventh day, He gave Israel two signs of His own provision for them: He gave them the shadow of the Bread of Life and of rest in Christ TOGETHER. God’s provision for Israel was complete; His provision for their bodily nourishment and for their spiritual rest were both supernatural and entirely from Him.
The lesson makes it all about Israel—about God’s commands for them. Furthermore, the lesson, in keeping with Adventism’s doctrinal teaching, defines the Sabbath as a “memorial of Creation”. This idea, actually, is blasphemy.
The Sabbath was always a shadow of the LORD, not of His creation! In reminding Israel of His creating heaven and earth when He gave the covenant to Israel, He was reminding them NOT of this world and of themselves and their origin—He was reminding them of HIMSELF. It was always a shadow of HIM, not a sentimental gift reminding them of how special they were because God made them. It was not about remembering CREATION per se; it was about GOD who sovereignly created and reigns over all things.
Furthermore, God did not merely identify Himself as the Creator to Israel in the fourth commandment, as Adventism argues. They say the fourth is the only commandment that identifies the Creator who gave the day, and therefore Sabbath is the eternal remembrance of creation for all people because the Creator commanded it.
Adventism never teaches that the Ten Commandments do not begin with Exodus 20:3 but with Exodus 20:1:
And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:1–3).
The Ten Commandments begin with God identifying Himself to Israel as the One who delivered them from slavery. This identification of God as their Redeemer applied to every one of the Ten Commandments. God didn’t wait until the fourth to identify Himself: He identified Himself when He introduced these very “words of the covenant” (Ex. 34:27, 28).
The Sabbath is not primarily about creation nor about everyone being commanded to keep a day in remembrance of the week of creation. NO! It was always a day on which they, the children of Israel, were to rest. It was the sign of their covenant with God, not a perpetual reminder of Creation. The idea of its being a reminder of creation is NEVER suggested anywhere in Scripture!
This is what Moses wrote in Exodus 31:12–17:
And the LORD said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’”
In other words, the Sabbath was the sign God gave Israel of His covenant with them. Just as in all ancient near east covenants, the sign of the covenant was placed in the center of the covenantal agreement between a suzerain and a vassal king. The Sabbath was that sign for Israel. Furthermore, it was to remind them of GOD. The day was holy to them because it was the sign of God’s sovereignty over them. It was to remind them of His finished work when the world was unspoiled, and it was a reminder of GOD’S rest—not of Adam and Eve’s rest—that marked His ceasing from creation.
Furthermore, in Hebrews 4:1–9 we see that there remains a Sabbath rest for God’s people—a rest they never entered because it was not about physical rest or remembering creation. Israel never entered God’s rest, according to Hebrews 4, because they never rested in GOD’s rest. In fact, Hebrews 4 explains how one enters God’s rest. Because the seventh day never ushered Israel into God’s rest, God set a new day, TODAY. TODAY if you hear His voice, enter His rest!
Furthermore, the “sabbath rest” that remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9) is not Sabbath-keeping. The word there is unique in all Scripture: Sabbatismos. It means a “Sabbath-like rest”. When we enter God’s rest TODAY, we trust Him.
We acknowledge our sin and trust Jesus’ finished work on the cross that propitiated for all our sin, and when we trust Him, we are born of the Spirit and sealed not by the Sabbath but by the Holy Spirit who is a guarantee—He will never leave us (Eph. 1:13-14)!
Conclusion
The seventh-day Sabbath was not given at creation. It was never intended to remind us of CREATION but to remind us of God’s REST at the end of His work of creation. It was intended to foreshadow the finished work of God in Jesus on the cross when He cried, “It Is Finished!”
The seventh-day Sabbath was given only to Israel, and nowhere in the New Testament is it commanded for Christians. Nowhere in the lists of sins in the epistles for the church is Sabbath-breaking ever mentioned.
The Sabbath was the sign of the temporary, conditional covenant which God gave to Israel 430 years after Abraham until the Seed would come (Gal. 3:17–20). After Jesus came and fulfilled the law, filling every command full of meaning—including the Sabbath—He gave His disciples a new “remember”: remember Jesus when you eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Supper.
The sign of the new UNCONDITIONAL covenant is the Lord’s Supper when we declare His death and resurrection until He comes.
This week’s lesson is entirely an internal narrative based on Adventism’s EGW-shaped hermeneutic. The way it is described is not found in Scripture, but they use this narrative to bind the consciences of Adventists and keep them in slavery to a created thing—time—instead of seeing that it foreshadowed the very reality of God the Son!!
Adventists, then are honoring an idol—a created thing that was a temporary requirement under a temporary covenant that was fulfilled and made obsolete with the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus!
I plead with any Adventist who might read this: go to the book of Hebrews and read it, one chapter at a time, and ask God to teach you what He knows He wants you to learn. Take your eyes off of the created thing and raise them to the eternal God the Son who forever fulfills all the old covenant shadows of the law. Fall at the foot of His cross and confess that you have sinned against the mighty, sovereign God who did everything necessary for your salvation, and you have to do NOTHING—not even to observe a day—except to believe in the finished work of the Lord Jesus (Jn. 6:29; 5:24).
Acknowledge Him as your own Lord and Savior. Receive His Life and Spirit, and LIVE! †
For further study, here are some links:
- Does the Manna Support Sabbath Keeping?
- Sabbath Arguments and Answers
- Does The Sabbath Continue In The New Covenant?
- Why Is Jesus The Lord of the Sabbath?
- May 4–10, 2024 - May 2, 2024
- We Got Mail - May 2, 2024
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024