November - December 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel
The First Holy Thing
by: Kenneth Westby
In the Holy Bible, what is the very first holy "thing"
mentioned? Is it holy ground; holy altar; holy vessel;
holy water; holy oil; holy people; holy temple; holy
mountain; holy apple. No, the first holy thing mentioned
is a day.
In the history of the world the first thing labeled "holy"
is a day. Not any day, but one specific day in seven-the
seventh. Isn't it surprising that a specific segment of
time is the first holy object? Why would a day
be the first thing to receive the quality of divine
holiness? Is there not some mystery in this?
Holiness is derivative. Biblically, there is only one
source of holiness-God. Nothing in creation is inherently
holy, but any part of it can, by God's dictate, be made
holy. He can set apart or sanctify a thing, a place, a
people, a time as holy. The very first mention of
holy in the entire Bible is at the presentation
of the crowning capstone to the creation week.
The climax to creation isn't some final thing God"made,"
it is what God himself did with his own life.
The crowning glory of creation is what the Creator
personally did --- in full view of his creation.
By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been
doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his
work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy,
because on it He rested from all the work of creating that
He had done. (Genesis 2:2-3 [NIV throughout]).
How significant is it that of all the created order-great
objects in space, an earth of continents and oceans filled
with living things, and man and woman-the first mention of
holy is applied to God's use of specific time? We might
have expected God first to create a holy place for a holy
shrine (a cathedral like St. Paul's in London or
St. Peter's in Rome would have looked good in Eden), or a
holy mountain, or a holy rock for the holy garden. As
Abraham Joshua Heschel notes, "When history began, there
was only one holiness in the world, holiness in time."
There is much to be learned from beginnings and biblical
"first mentions" --- they frequently establish principles,
templates, or precedents for what follows. The creation
account is pregnant with such pattern establishment.
If we can learn anything about God it must come through
His self-revelation. If He doesn't disclose it, we don't
know it. The Bible contains Yahweh's sovereign
self-disclosure and provides our sole insight into knowing
Him. Pondering His works and actions gives us knowledge of
what He is like, His purposes, His judgment, His
character. Seeking God's will and obeying His instructions
bring us into yet deeper, profoundly personal knowledge of
Him.
Three Things God Did
What can we learn about God's making the seventh day holy?
Yes, He "made" the Sabbath, but the story is in "how" He
did it. Notice the three things God did on the seventh
day: 1) He rested; 2) He blessed it; 3) He made it
holy. The reason given for why He did actions number two
and three (blessed it and made it holy) is action number
one: "because on it He rested from all the
work of creating that He had done."
The blessing and hallowing of the seventh day draws
attention to it and imbues it with a holy purpose as a
result of something special God did with the day. He
rested not because He was tired-God doesn't get tired-but
to set an example that pointed man in the direction He
wanted him to go.
What is important in the account is what God did:
He rested. The Bible is first a God-centered account of
the Creator and His creation. What matters most is
God-what He has done, has said, is doing. This is not an
easy concept for self-centered man to receive. We have a
man-centered worldview tattooed to our brains which keeps
God out of our picture.
Religions feebly attempt to put God into man's picture. A
noble enterprise, but it misses the point: God
is the picture. What He is like, what He says, what
He does, and what He wants of us isn't just important, it
is all important.
Imago Dei & Imitatio Dei
Mankind is unique in all creation for Adam was made
imago dei, to echo the Latin of the Church
Fathers, in the "image of God." We are separated from all
living things by a divine mark upon our kind. Human beings
are sacrosanct because of the divine mark we indelibly
bear. In fact, the entire earthly creation was made for
the expressed benefit of God's image bearers who were to
rule over it just as God rules over his responsibilities.
Animals, void of the divine image stamp, can have no
awareness of a "holy" thing (much less respect for the
carpet!). The divine image bearers, however, need to be
very concerned about what is holy. The first holy thing is
still in view.
Being made in imago dei gives us insight into our
ultimate purpose: to grow up into the full likeness of our
Father/Creator. We are called to become a son or daughter
of His Majesty, mirroring the divine character and
devoutly following His instructions and example. Jesus
Christ was just such a son. Jesus, as the firstborn Son of
God, the Second Adam, the perfected and exact image of the
heavenly Father, is our example to follow in taking on the
divine nature. Jesus was and is what the human race was
destined be from the start-"in the image of God."
If we are made in the image of God it follows that we
should engage our lives in an imitatio Dei,
"imitation of God." If we are made like God, it
follows that we should act like God. It is
possible for a human to imitate him in every way: To let
His character become ours; His love to become the pattern
for our love; His way of meting out justice to become our
way; His judgment to become our own. But, how do we then
imitate the Creator's act of making the first holy thing?
We look at the way Jesus imitated his Father.
Imitatio Dei was Jesus' modus
operandi. "I tell you the truth, the
Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he
sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does
the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and
shows him all he does," (John
5:19-20a). Christ imitated God. What He "sees" His
Father doing becomes His guide for what He does. This
would include the Father's personal example as well as
the instructions and commandments given from the
beginning. Did this include Christ"s observance of the
Sabbath? Evidently. He was so faithful to His Father in
this area of worship, so consistent in His Sabbath
observance that the historian Luke records it as being
habitual (see Luke 4:16).
Jesus' imitation of God was precise and total.
"For I did not speak of my own accord, but the
Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say
it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So
whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to
say." (John 12:49).
Not only did He follow God's commands, He followed His
intent, His spirit, His heart-the"how" in Jesus' "how to
say it" is just as important as the "what to say." Jesus
said, "I always do what
pleases him," (John 8:29b).
Mankind's First Opportunity to Imitate God
Just as God separated Adam and Eve from the rest of
creation by making them in imago Dei, He
separated the seventh day from the other days of the week
by a divine action. He rested. The verb "to rest" is
sabat (Heb), meaning "to stop,
cease." The noun form is sabbat
from which we get our word "Sabbath." The seventh day came
to be named by what Yahweh did on the first one-He stopped
his work and rested in peace with his image bearers.
God is the divine Exemplar for human kind and He
manifested himself in refraining from work and in
resting. He rested from His work for the purpose of having
peaceful fellowship with those He had just made in His
image. He was celebrating His creation with His
family. This is why He blessed this time and made it
holy-the first holy thing.
Our first parents were alive at the moment God took this
deliberate action. They saw it. By witnessing God
resting, this now became mankind's first opportunity to
imitate Him. Having just been made in God's image only
hours before, man could now take his first step to imitate
his Maker, to validate, as it were, His created design.
That first Sabbath, I believe, went very well. It was
celebrated as all Sabbaths should be celebrated-in joyful
fellowship with God. Consider the picture: God and His son and
daughter at peace, without sin, in an absolutely beautiful
paradise. There was a lot to be happy about on the first holy
day.
That first Sabbath, as biblical canon develops, becomes
the template for the Kingdom of God and the Plan of God:
Man and God in fellowship in a paradise-like world, at
rest without the slaveries and miseries of sin. We don't
know how long it took for Adam and Eve-and their new found
serpentine exemplar-to mess up the harmony, but it
probably happened by the following Sabbath. The next
picture we have of God is His arrival near sundown
(perhaps at the beginning of the second Sabbath) walking
on His way to fellowship with His beloved children. This
time the picture has changed. Some time after the first
Sabbath Adam and his wife ceased any imitation of God, set
aside His example, and disobeyed His instructions. This
Sabbath they didn't want fellowship, they wanted to hide.
The First Holy Thing
Adam's behavior didn't alter mankind's one purpose, one
calling: To Imitate God. But it did illustrate the
difference between God and man. God is holy. Holiness is
defined by God. Holiness is the nature of God. For us to
imitate God we must take on His holiness.
Peter, the apostle of Christ, expresses it clearly:
"But just as he who called you is holy, so be
holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I
am holy,'" (1 Peter 2:15). This is
not a new concept as is evident from Peter's quote from
the Holiness Code in Leviticus. It has been God's intent
from the beginning.
Mankind must respond to His Creator, either in obedience
or opposition. Human history since Eden is largely a sad
chronicle of opposition to God's example and
instructions-including His example of resting on the
seventh day. The holiness of God is shunned. The holy
things of God ignored or even desecrated.
The first holy thing of God given to man was a special
day-the seventh-made holy by God's blessing and example.
His holy presence permeated the day. His example and
teaching would, if followed, lead His children to become
holy as He is holy. Here we discover the purpose of the
Sabbath: To fellowship with and worship our Creator, and
learn from His Word the path to becoming like Him. To do
this we must cease/rest/pause from all other activities,
important though they may be, for none can equal this
divine appointment.
The written creation account that has come down to us must
have been prepared by God Himself as there were no human
witnesses until the sixth day (it is doubtful that Adam
was taking notes thereafter.) The first chapters of
Genesis are the most magnificent, weighty and elegantly
crafted portion of all Scripture. The words are weighed
and fitted with a godly precision. This is the most
important record of what God did in the beginning. It is
true history. And not by accident, the Sabbath event caps
creation. At some later time the account was given to men
to preserve and copy.
Yahweh is the One who gives the rhythm and step of the
creation week. He is the one who designs time, inhabits
eternity and establishes the seventh day for a special
purpose. He began what is now the ever-present rhythm of
sunset, sunrise and of "six working-days" followed by a
"seventh [Sabbath] rest day." These were deliberate
actions of the Creator to indicate the Sabbath's
universality-giving clear evidence that every human being
who lives with sunsets and sunrises-Jew and Gentile-is to
engage in imitatio Dei, "imitation of God," by
resting as God did.
Moving Godward
Both man and the Sabbath were created by God at almost the
same time. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man (Mark
2:28) and we can see that by the very order of creation;
man was made first then, a few hours later, the
Sabbath. The Creator enjoins the Sabbath upon all humanity
in two ways: by His own example, and by His direct command
through Moses. The former has by far the greater appeal
and authority-especially for those engaged in an
imitatio Dei.
The sixth day was man's beginning. The seventh day was the
beginning of God's spiritual work of making man holy as He
is holy. The beauty of the Sabbath is that by
participating in God's rest we can enjoy the divine gift
of freedom from the labors of human existence and thus
acknowledge God as our Creator. If we share His rest now
we can look forward to sharing His rest forever. The
goodness and genius of God leads us in one direction:
Godward (see Romans 2:4).
The first holy thing, the Sabbath, is the Creator's gift
to move us Godward-toward becoming holy as He is holy.
"Make every effort to live in peace with
all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see
the Lord," (Hebrews 12:14).
TSS
November - December 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel
|