1. Kline: "Within the first three day-frames is described the origin of three vast spheres over which rule is to be exercised. Then in day-frames four through six the rulers of each of these spheres is presented in proper turn, each arising at the divine behest and ruling by divine appointment. But the rising chain of command does not stop with the six days; it ascends to the seventh day, to the supreme dominion of him who is Lord of the Sabbath" (30).
2. The great pageant of the creature-kings, it's the parade of lords to the palace for the enthronement of the Great King. From him (Alpha), to him (Omega), through him. Sabbath-crowned week in which his Omeganess is underscored. It is not only ~from~ him, as if he had created the world for someone else's glory and pleasure. But it is also not only ~to~ him, as if he had commissioned this great work for himself but had engaged a creator to bring this about. (This was the Gnostic heresy.) Finally, it is not only ~through~ him, as if he were the means but not the source and end of our existence (Deism).
3. The Sabbath institution in creation was a sacrament. It both anticipated the expectation of future glory-rest after a successful probation and presented that rest in a tangible way. Like Jesus, Adam was sinless but not justified in the sense of a judicial verdict. As the covenantal representative, Adam had to "fulfill all righteousness," a positive as well as negative command. By obeying the Sabbath, he was acknowledging along with the creature-kings below him that Yahweh was the Alpha and Omega, the Great King enthroned in his World-Temple. The Sabbath ~is~ anchored in creation, but in the Covenant of Works. If Adam, the federal head, will perfectly obey God and depend exclusively on his Creator, he will win the right to eat from the Tree of Life. Ending his probation--and therefore that of the race--he would possess everlasting and indestructible life without the possibility of falling into sin. In other words, he would enjoy God's Sabbath rest. After the fall, however, this Creation-Sabbath, like the Tree of Life and the Edenic holy land in general, is guarded by a dispatch of heavenly warriors. From that moment on, God would have been justified in swearing in his wrath concerning the entire race, "They shall never enter my rest." But instead, even at the very moment of judgment, he extends the invitation into the Covenant of Grace, escaping the sentence of the Covenant of Works. They were finally allowed to eat from the Tree of Life, but not while they had breath in this life. From then on, those who called upon the name of Yahweh were people of hope, bound to Yahweh’s oath.
B. Sabbath Place
1. The "Holy Land." Paradise. Noah's Ark. The Tabernacle making the camp of Israel "holy land" as they traveled. Later, when they would go into battle, they would carry the Ark of the Covenant, God's iniature "Holy Land," the earthly location of God's everlasting rest.
2. But this Sabbath rest must first be distinguished from popular images. In much of Greek and therefore Western thought generally, the principle of rest is basically reduced to the absence of motion. This was especially true of the Stoics, who believed that the highest form of life was eternal bliss or ~apatheia,~ from which we get the word "apathy." For the Stoics, apathy was a virtue for which we should strive. To do something from desire, whether fear or love, was weak. One must act out of duty alone, striving for that state of eternal bliss which is so often clouded by our involvement in this transitory, ever-changing, temporal realm of history and passion. Do you get the picture? Eternal, heavenly bliss. Not quite Nirvana, the cessation of all awareness, but far from the biblical picture. The heavenly goal, according to Scripture, is not bliss--the transcendence of feelings, passions, or desire. No wonder people today find the subject of heaven so boring and unappealing! Nor is it an unchanging realm of pure spirit. Rather, it is a new heavens and a new earth wherein God alone is King and his subjects are his friends; no, more than that: his family. It is the radical transformation of ~this~ world, not the transfer from this world of change, motions, and materiality for a realm of eternal sameness, apathy, and airy spirituality.
3. Once God finished the World-Temple, he rested. Not because he was tired, but because he was enthroned. It is a royal event with all of the pomp and ceremony. The same was true in the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus 39:32-43.
C. Sabbath People
1. A holy people who will enter his rest, acknowledging his sovereignty and his cosmic enthronement over the entire World-Temple; who will acknowledge their sinfulness and their treacherous rebellion as creature-kings, forsaking their insurrection and declaring loyalty to the Great King who has saved them from bondage and suffering. Will they find rest in Yahweh alone? Or will they, like Adam, seek other prophets, priests, and kings? Will they listen to the voice of others and seek satisfaction in their own wisdom and efforts? Above all, will they believe the promise: the promise that God will wipe away their sins and make them his dwelling place in this world of hostility to his very existence? Thus, in v. 20, we read of the time "when God gives rest to your kindred, as to you, and they too have occupied the land that the LORD your God is giving them beyond the Jordan...."
2. (READ Deuteronomy 1:34-40) Like Seth, Noah, and Abram, Caleb is one covenantal heir in his line who is still loyal to the Abrahamic covenant of grace. The church has been reduced to such a slender thread, but God is faithful to his promise. Young Joshua will be his assistant and he will eventually lead the conquering Israelites into the land.
3. The faithless generation had complained endlessly about their own condition. But then they would try to question God's care even at a deeper level: What about the children? God didn't even care about the little ones! The Canaanites live well. They're kids are healthy, fun loving, well rounded. They're good people and Baal seems to work for them. Well, here Yahweh declares that the children--you know, the ones you were so worried about God caring for--will actually inherit the promise, while you will die in the wilderness. These--the very ones you charged God with ignoring--will enjoy the inheritance that is now taken away from you. So God told Moses to take the people, here on the verge of the Promised Land, back into the wilderness until they died off. They were to go back the way they came, in the direction of the Red Sea. Instead of going forward in hope toward the Promised Land, confident in Yahweh’s powerful arm of salvation, they were to go back the way they came, in the direction of bondage and suffering.
B. Day of the Lord: judicial verdict ("It is good") followed by rest. Each of these intrusions of the Day of the Lord follows this pattern, but in a context of human sin and rebellion, the judicial verdict is different and therefore the rest is constantly forfeited. How will sinners ever be able to enter into the Seventh Day rest if the only verdict possible concerning their six days of labor is "guilty"? "It is good." "It is very good." "It is finished." He who declared in the beginning, "Let there be!" now, hanging from a scaffold constructed by those he made in his image, cries out, "It is finished!" It is the rest of the King on his throne: That is his Sabbath enthronement. It begins not on Easter morning, but on Good Friday. And it is not weariness, but enthronement.
~Enter God's Sabbath Rest Deuteronomy. 1:34-45
"There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries" (Brutus, in Julius Caesar, IV, iii)
Still the preamble.
What Is God's Rest? The Concept of "Sabbath"
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