History of the Sabbath and first day of the week

by John Nevins Andrews

Thus the seventh day of the week became the rest-day of the Lord. How remarkable is this fact! “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary.”[13] He needed no rest; yet it is written, “On the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.” Why does not the record simply state the cessation of the Creator’s work? Why did he at the close of that work employ a day in rest? The answer will be learned from the next verse. He was laying the foundation of a divine institution, the memorial of his own great work.

“And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” The fourth commandment states the same fact: He “rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”[14]

The blessing and sanctification of the seventh day were because that God had rested upon it. His resting upon it, then, was to lay the foundation for blessing and sanctifying the day. His being refreshed with this rest, implies that he delighted in the act which laid the foundation for the memorial of his great work.

The second act of the Creator in instituting this memorial was to place his blessing upon the day of his rest. Thenceforward it was the blessed rest-day of the Lord. A third act completes the sacred institution. The day already blessed of God is now, last of all, sanctified or hallowed by him. To sanctify is “to separate, set apart, or appoint to a holy, sacred, or religious use.” To hallow is “to make holy; to consecrate; to set apart for a holy or religious use.”[15]

The time when these three acts were performed is worthy of especial notice. The first act was that of rest. This took place on the seventh day; for the day was employed in rest. The second and third acts took place when the seventh day was past. “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work.” Hence it was on the first day of the second week of time that God blessed the seventh day, and set it apart to a holy use. The blessing and sanctification of the seventh day, therefore, relate not to the first seventh day of time, but to the seventh day of the week for time to come, in memory of God’s rest on that day from the work of creation.

With the beginning of time, God began to count days, giving to each an ordinal number for its name. Seven different days receive as many different names. In memory of that which he did on the last of these days, he sets that day apart by name to a holy use. This act gave existence to weeks, or periods of seven days. For with the seventh day, he ceased to count, and, by the divine appointment of that day to a holy use in memory of his rest thereon, he causes man to begin the count of a new week so soon as the first seventh day had ceased. And as God has been pleased to give man, in all, but seven different days, and has given to each one of these days a name which indicates its exact place in the week, his act of setting apart one of these by name, which act created weeks and gave man the Sabbath, can never—except by sophistry—be made to relate to an indefinite or uncertain day.

The days of the week are measured off by the revolution of our earth on its axis; and hence our seventh day, as such, can come only to dwellers on this globe. To Adam and Eve, therefore, as inhabitants of this earth, and not to the inhabitants of some other world, were the days of the week given to use. Hence, when God set apart one of these days to a holy use in memory of his own rest on that day of the week, the very essence of the act consisted in his telling Adam that this day should be used only for sacred purposes. Adam was then in the garden of God, placed there by the Creator to dress it and to keep it. He was also commissioned of God to subdue the earth.[16] When therefore the rest-day of the Lord should return, from week to week, all this secular employment, however proper in itself, must be laid aside, and the day observed in memory of the Creator’s rest.

Dr. Twisse quotes Martin Luther thus:

“And Martin Luther professeth as much (tome vi. in Gen. 2:3). ‘It follows from hence,’ saith he, ‘that, if Adam had stood in his innocency, yet he should have kept the seventh day holy, that is, on that day he should have taught his children, and children’s children, what was the will of God, and wherein his worship did consist; he should have praised God, given thanks, and offered. On other days he should have tilled his ground, looked to his cattle.’”[17]