Made it Holy

DEVOTION

GENESIS

MADE IT HOLY

Gen 2:1-3

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 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.

NIV

So that is that, all of it is done, the light, the darkness, the water and the land, all the universe including the sun and the moon,  the plants, all marine life, all the wild kingdom, and man. In retrospect regarding the creation of all the was created and all the evidence that modern man as gathered of bones and fossils from around the world is this creation story more credible then the suggested evidence pointing toward man having  evolved over millions of years from some ape like species? What are we to do with all those charts, those pictures showing the stages of the homo genus? Yet there is also a great number of scientific study with enough evidence that many who might have thought Darwin’s theory was on the right track, are now finding there really is not enough evidence linking one species to another. So we are back to what is the truest form of evidence, the Word of God, the creator of all that is created. We have to believe this is the way it was, as those who are trying to disprove it cannot really do so with any empirical or verifiable evidence. Therefor after God did all that he did and after his making man, God said  all this was very good and he was finished with his creating. So he stopped or as the word rested implies. He desisted, he ceased from creating. It never is to imply that God sat down and rested because he was tired from all the work he had done. This makes so much sense, that God simply stopped creating anything else, but he never just sits around doing nothing. Now that opens up a whole can of worms. Because we were created in his image, in his likeness, to resemble him, his character, his mannerism, his ways, his thinking and such, does that also mean we should never just sit around to do nothing? We have to think about the words of Jesus even when he was just a young man, when question. He asks his parents why were they searching for him, did they not know he had to be in his Father’s house or about his Father’s business, depending on which way the Greek is translated. In either case we also know that Jesus told his disciples he had no place to rest his head, which was to say he too never rested, doing nothing, but was always about doing the work he was to do, bring salvation to the world. But we also know that God establish a rule, a command that we should labor six days and on the seventh not labor but keep it Holy just as he has done after his six days of creating. So how do we deal with that? Who of us actually works six days a week? Most of us in reality do not work more the five and some work less while maybe a few work all seven, but not all day long, just a few hours out of the day. If we are to live by the commands of God then should we not work six days and then rest from our work and keep the seventh day holy? Then we also have to consider, as we read ahead, that God told Adam because of his disobedience he would have to toil, or work hard for his living, all the days of his life. So does that mean we too should work all the days of our lives, six days a week? It sure seems we have surely changed things to fit our own thinking and desires. How do we keep the seventh day holy? It seems we have set aside Sunday, the first day of the week as our Sabbath day although God rested on the seventh, not the first day of the week. But we say it is because Jesus was resurrected on the first day of the week, right after the Sabbath day of the Jews was over. Nevertheless, how do we keep whatever day we say is the seventh or the first, holy as God intended it to be holy? God said he would make it holy, consecrated, sanctified, dedicated, hallowed, set apart. How do we do that? How do we make one day a week set apart from all the other days, whatever day that is. As a society of Christians, we generally consider that to be Sunday, the day we go to church for an hour or so and then head out to a restaurant and from there get some shopping, or mow the lawn, or whatever else we have to get done before returning to work on Monday. By going out to eat or shop are we causing other to have to labor on Sunday? Maybe they are unbelievers anyway, and it doesn’t matter, but maybe they are. But then in our modern era, some of us believers need to work on Sunday because of our particular job requirements. So how do we deal with keeping the seventh day holy? Is this just regarding our labor for our sustenance? This might be the case as with the gathering of manna God provided for the children of Israel. They had to gather each day, except on the day before the Sabbath, they could gather two days’ worth. So this keeping one day a week free from physical labor to support our lives would seem to be the intent here. But does that keep it holy? Does that mean we could mow our lawn, or go fishing, golfing, or some other form of recreation? Does that mean as long as we do not labor for our sustenance we are therefore refraining from our labor and thus setting that day apart? But then those of us who only work five days, or part-time for that matter, have more than one day of which we are not laboring for our sustenance. Then we have this whole idea of retirement. Stopping altogether from our labor. Does that mean we are in disobedience to the command of God? Maybe we should use Jesus as our example and consider the work he did. Maybe this is more about a spiritual matter then a physical one. Maybe we just labor six days a week spiritually, always being in our Father’s house, or about his business. But that does not dismiss all the commands of God regarding the fact we are to labor all the days of our lives, toiling the ground for our needs. So how are we to keep the seventh holy?