Jesus
in Genesis: The Sabbath
Thus
the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And
on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the
seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then
God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested
from all His work which God had created and made. Genesis 2:1-3
Introduction
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Originally God alone existed. He was known to Himself alone. And had first to call into being a creature, before any extraneous knowledge with regard to Him became possible. Creation therefore was the first step in the production of extra-divine knowledge.[1]
In order of sequence, Genesis begins with our focus on God, then the heavens and the earth, next the earth, then man, a garden, and two trees. The subjects covered in Genesis 2, as we move from the general to the particular, include: God making man (2:7), planting a garden (2:8), placing man in it to cultivate it as well as guard it from intruders (2:15), ascribing Adam’s diet while entering into a covenant with him as humanity’s representative (2:16), having Adam catalogue the birds and animals (2:19-20, forming a woman from Adam’s rib (2:21-22), and performing a wedding between the man and the woman (2:23-25).
Seeing
Jesus in Genesis
If
you have ever been asked by a fellow Christian how you managed to get such and
such a teaching from a text in the Bible, then you will know why so many people
fail to see Jesus in the Old Testament. They want to see a “proof text” that
specifically shows Him by name. However, we have already shown that by using
Scripture to interpret Scripture, we can easily see
Jesus in Genesis. We also referred to this as Truth interpreting Truth, or in
terms more in line with what we’re looking at, letting the Word (Jesus)
interpret the Word (Scripture) for us. This view sets us free from quenching
the Spirit by our using the Bible as a series of proof texts.
An
example of this may be those who isolate and use obscure texts of Scripture as
a mandate for persons to be immersed in water as a proxy for people who have
already died and have already gone either to heaven or hell. “Otherwise, what
will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why
then are they baptized for the dead?” (1 Cor. 15:29). Where’s the command here
for either immersion itself or immersion on behalf of the dead?
Then
there are those who use proof texts to promote their idea that we are damned to
hell if we are not baptised. They do this by isolating texts from the rest of Scripture,
such as, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16a). And what
about the fate of infants who die without baptism or professing Christians who
die without baptism? They use texts in isolation, such as the following, “Repent
and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38a, NIV). This includes those who would turn
water baptism into a person’s profession of faith rather than the application
of the sign and seal of God’s covenant promise to believers and their children.
Many
divisions among Christians have their origins in the misuse and misapplication
of proof texts. Sects and cults abound because of proof texting. Again, it is
good to be able to point to a portion of Scripture that teaches a particular
doctrine. However, every doctrine of Scripture must be scrutinised by the
checks and balances of the whole counsel of God. Now, with that said, the irony
is that now we need to use a proof text to illustrate that this teaching is Biblical.
“For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts
20:27). Robert Reymond says that the “whole counsel of God” has to do with “keeping
with the emphases and balances of Scripture.”[2] The checks and balances must
be applied to so called prooftexts.
The Westminster ‘Divines’ believed in the principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture (Sola Scriptura). Therefore, every text of Scripture must be viewed in light of every other text of Scripture. Every doctrine in the Scriptures must be viewed in light of every other doctrine in Scripture. They believed that every doctrine taught in the Bible is a component of the whole of what the Bible teaches.[3]
Sola
Scriptura (Scripture Alone) must not be confused with Biblicism, which is the
belief that people do not need the help of external sources to interpret the
Bible. This can often result in, e.g., things like refusing blood transfusions.
Again, this happens when texts such as “abstain from … blood…” (Acts 15:29 and
all its Old Testament antecedents) are misapplied. For the Biblicist, if there are
no proof texts for it, much of modern medicine and medical technology is to be eschewed.
However, Scripture Alone has nothing to do with the refusal of organ
transplants etc. simply because none are seen in the Bible.
Like the committee at the Westminster Assembly, we need to recapture holistic Biblical thinking, i.e., taking the Bible as a whole and not simply a catalogue of proof texts. Biblical Theology helps us to do this. AA Hodge wrote,
The committee at first wrought at the work of preparing the Confession and Catechisms simultaneously. “After some progress had been made with both, the Assembly resolved to finish the Confession first, and then to construct the Catechisms on its model.” They presented in a body the finished Confession to Parliament, December 3, 1646, when it as recommitted, that the “Assembly should attach their marginal notes to prove every part of it by Scripture.” They finally reported it as finished, with full Scripture proofs of each separate proposition attached, April 29, 1649.[4]
Says Geerhardus, “Biblical
Theology relieves to some extent the unfortunate situation that even the
fundamental doctrines of the faith should seem to depend mainly on the
testimony of isolated proof-texts.”[5] Though
it is good to point to a text in Scripture that clearly teaches any particular
doctrine, when it comes to seeing Jesus in Genesis, we must view the Bible as a
whole rather than a source of our favourite proof texts, lest we become like those
men on the road to Emmaus who missed seeing Jesus in the Old Testament, “Then
He said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the
prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to
enter into His glory?’ And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded
to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:25-27).
The Dutch American theologian Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949) is credited with being as the father of Reformed Biblical Theology. He helped set us free from obsessive proof texting by instead showing us how Scripture interprets Scripture. He did this by emphasizing the historical unfolding of God’s redemptive plan through Scripture. If we are to see Jesus in Genesis, we must have in full view the Creator’s plan of redemption through Jesus Christ.
Seeing
Jesus in God’s Plan of Redemption
Genesis
2 begins with the words, “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host
of them, were finished” (Gen. 2:1). Before we try to answer the obvious
question, when, as in when creation first took place, let us first acknowledge
that it is God’s work of creation that was finished, not His work on earth. “But
Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been
working” (John 5:17).
With the Father and the Spirit, when the Word had completed His creation work, He could’ve just as easily said, “It is finished!” When the Word had completed the work that His Father had given Him to do on earth by going to the cross, we are told, “So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit” (John 19:30). With Philipp Bliss we sing,
Lifted
up was He to die;
‘It
is finished’ was His cry;
Now
in heaven exalted high:
Hallelujah! what a Saviour!
Thus,
if we were to consider a brief history of man, we could say that our story as
human beings begins with the first man Adam breathing in to receive his spirit from
God and ends with the last Man breathing out to return it to Him. However, this
end of man was merely the Word, who became flesh, resting on the sabbath after
completing His work on earth.
“For
as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so
will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”
(Matt. 12:40). It is upon His resurrection from “the heart of the earth” that
the promised new earth or (re)creation begins, which of course, is foreshadowed
by God forming man from the dust. Also, let us not overlook the connection between
“Jonah in the belly of the great fish” and the resurrected Jesus eating fish to
prove it was He who had been in the belly of the earth! “And while they still
did not believe it because of joy and amazement, He asked them, ‘Do you have
anything here to eat?’ They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it
and ate it in their presence” (Luke 24:41-43, NIV).
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Jesus
used Jonah in the belly of a fish to foreshadow Himself in the belly of the
earth. “And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land”
(Jonah 2:10, NIV).
It was as if the grave had swallowed something alien to it, something poisonous, something it couldn’t hold down, but notice where Jesus was, after God had commanded the earth to as it were vomit the Word onto dry land. “Jesus stood on the shore” (John 21:4a). And who was it that came to Jonah on the shore? “Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time…” (Jon. 3:1). Yes, it was the Word who came with the Word to Jonah, yes, and to Peter son of Jonah.
Seeing
Jesus in the Sabbath
Though
there had been a bit of numbering for Bible chapters and verses over many
centuries before it, it wasn’t till the first Bible in English was published that
the system of numbering entered popular acceptance and use. This was the Geneva
Bible, first published in 1560.
Having
noted that numbered chapters and verse were not in the original manuscripts, it
is interesting to note that Genesis 2 begins with God finishing His labours
then resting from them. “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had
done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done”
(Gen. 2:2).
Now,
we take note that humans were formed on the sixth day (Gen. 1:26-31). Eve was
formed from Adam’s rib on the latter half of the day. This was after Adam had
named the birds and animals. Therefore, Adam and Eve spent their honeymoon
night together, knowing that they wouldn’t have to go to work the next day. Their
first whole day together was going to be on the Sabbath, the day of rest. The
word Sabbath means rest, not seven. They were to rest in God on their first day
of their week.
This
is where some Christian groups and cults go wrong by insisting that the Sabbath
day is always at the end of the week as it was for Old Testament Israel. However,
if we look for Jesus in the Sabbath, and see the connection between Adam and
Jesus, we will begin to see how the day changed from the end of the week to the
beginning. In Hebrews 4, the writer refers to the first Sabbath day, “And yet His
works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere He has
spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘On the seventh day God rested
from all His work” (Heb. 4:3-4, NIV). Then he goes on to say, “For if Joshua
had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There
remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters
God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His” (Heb. 4:8-10,
NIV). Says Rowland Ward,
The emphasis in the fourth commandment is not so much on the sequence of days, as if the moral content includes the last day of the week, but on the meaning of the sabbath itself. Nowhere does the Old Testament tell us: Keep the seventh day of the week, but tells us to keep the weekly sabbath. Whether the sabbath follows or precedes the other six days of the week, it is still the seventh day in relation to the other six days.[6]
Every
Sunday when Christians meet together for worship we are entering into God’s
rest – just as Adam and Eve did on the first day of the week, their first full
day after their creation. Jesus is the firstfruits of the new creation, i.e.,
this creation which is now in the gradual process of being purged of sin and
its effects. “For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The
last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:25-26).
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Rowland
Ward comments on the change of days from the last to the first day of the week,
On the day of his resurrection Christ appeared to his disciples, and likewise a week later (John 20:19,26). After his final parting from them, marked by the Ascension, he poured out the Spirit. This event occurred on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, and also fell on the first day of the week… It is in light of such principles that the true significance of the New Testament emphasis on the first day of the week is seen. The significance of Christ’s honouring of the first day of the week is as great as the divine example provided in Genesis 2.[7]
Notice what day it was when the Word came to John, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last’” (Rev. 1:10-11a). Westminster Confession of Faith 21, chapter 7 says,
As it is of the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, He hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto Him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath.[8]
Thus, God built the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, into nature. Why? It is for Jesus. It is all about Him! It is His day. It is the day when we as it were down tools to meet with Him, just as Adam and Eve were to do in the garden, they were to rest from their labours, i.e., they were to enter into Word’s sabbath rest each Lord’s Day.
[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical
Theology: Old and New Testaments, (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, Scotland,
1948, Reprinted 1985), 4.
[2] Robert L. Reymond, A New
Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, (Second Edition – Revised &
Updated, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 1998), 917.
[3] Neil Cullan McKinlay, Growth
Enhancer: Enlarging Westminster Shorter Catechism, (Weemac Publishing,
Brisbane, 2025), 8.
[4] AA Hodge, The Confession of Faith, (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh,
Scotland, First published in 1869, reprint 1978), 20.
[5] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical
Theology: Old and New Testaments, (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, Scotland,
1948, Reprinted 1985), 17.
[6] Rowland S. Ward, The Westminster Confession of Faith for the Church
Today, (Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia in Melbourne, 1992), 149.
[7] Ibid., 152-3.
[8] Book of Forms, Reformed Churches of Australia, (Reformed Churches Publishing House, Geelong, Victoria,1991), 168.
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