Contributed by Brett Ahern
Resting in faith and living in grace, we are highly favored by God. Through Jesus' life, death and resurrection, and our connection with God's Spirit, we've regained what Adam lost, restored to Eden's relationship with God.
As Jesus said about marriage, Eden is the ideal which He came to make real for His disciples (Matthew 19:1-8). Restoring marriage, which was from the beginning, He restored proper Sabbath observance, which was also from the beginning. Let's look at the only other institution God created in Eden, and see what the Sabbath has to do with resting in faith.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth, and all that is in them in six days. Completing His work, He rested the 7th day, blessed it and made it holy (Genesis 2:1-3). As long as they had adequate faith in God to obey one commandment, they lived a life of ease, in rest.
Disobedience brought the fall from this life of freedom. Kicked out of paradise, living in conflict was the new condition, one God called death. So living as if God is loveless and powerless, constantly working at balancing good and evil, stressed by life's challenges, is the condition of death.
The first 12 chapters of Genesis demonstrates this fully, before God begins restoring life to humanity through Abraham, founder of God's family, in Israel.
But Abraham's family wasn't ready and had to go through a greenhouse in Egypt, to prepare for their planting in the land of Israel. Like humanity's living death up to Genesis 12, Israel lived in slavery up to Exodus 12. Later Moses equates these two experiences as one, when in the 10 Commandments he gives both as foundational reasons for keeping the 7th day Sabbath (Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5).
With these two witnesses testifying of our lostness and brokenness, God brought the healing Savior. Completing His teaching ministry of restoring clarity to life with God, Jesus was crucified in such a way that God stamps His approval on His life.
Jesus rose from the grave as the weekly Sabbath ended on Saturday evening, to fulfill His prophecy of being in the grave for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:38-40). So the 7th day Sabbath is also linked to our salvation, the antidote to our dead lives, enslaved to sin. The Sabbath fully tells humanity's story: God created all, we disobeyed and lost it all and became enslaved to sin. But God sent a restoring Savior, raised from the grave, confirming our victory over death. At Jesus’ return, we will experience the completion of this, liberated from death with an eternal body (1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15).
Not surprisingly, God set up Christ's return to link it to the 7th day Sabbath. Running parallel to the physical creation, done in six literal days, is a Kingdom of God in humanity creation, running 6,000 years. We see this in Scripture's chronology, but also in God's description of His work as 1,000 years equaling 1 day (2 Peter 3:8), in a chapter explaining Jesus' return.
So after 6,000 years of this new creation process, God sends Christ back to bring the Edenic Sabbath back to earth, for a final “day” of 1,000 years of restoration and rest from evil (Revelation 20), before He Himself comes to join us (Revelation 21 – 22). During this time, all humanity will worship on the 7th day Sabbath, commemorating all four aspects of our fulfilled Sabbath life story (Isaiah 66:22-23).
Considering all of this, we can see how the 7th day Sabbath functions as a truth messenger, allowing us to live in His Presence. Observing it is designed to make these things so in your life. Your Creator, who delivers you from slavery to the world through Jesus' teaching, healing, crucifixion and resurrected life to live in full relationship with God, now and forever.
Your brokenness results from the world needing slaves to build its treasure houses, glorifying their “greatness” and living in defiance of all that is right. People lacking restful faith create community stress, making everyone’s lives around them a mess, breaking from restful faith as they strive for extreme security with stockpiles of ever-increasing resources. The resulting brokenness pays with compounding interest in our bodies, souls and spirits - poisoning families for generations.
Like God plagued Egypt, destroying its resources until they freed Israel; so too God will have to plague Earth. All slave kingdoms hiding as civilizations, cultures, corporations, governments, religions and families will be depleted of their weaponized resources, so they can't stand in the way of the coming Kingdom at Christ's return, which starts in Israel and flows out to the rest of humanity: God's family living with Him in Eden's Sabbath rest. This is life eternal!
To discuss further you can reach Brett at brettact2@earthlink.net.
