CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 2:2. Rested] “Kept sabbath,” i.e. “observed a sacred, festive quiet.” A good worker does his work well, and leaves off when he has done. The very crown of his work is the pleasure he takes in it when complete. Such is God’s rest; and hence He graciously seeks for intelligent companionship therein: Hebrews 3-4.
Genesis 2:3. Created and made] “Made creatively, i.e., perh. by making it anew out of chaos” (Dav.).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 2:1-3
THE DIVINE SABBATH
The Divine Artificer with intelligence and delight completes his work. In the calm majesty of His repose He contemplates it. What a scene must have spread before his eye! The created minds who could comprehend but a part, would be overwhelmed at the splendour, variety, and order. How perfect must it have shone forth before the Divine eye that saw all arrangements, and knew the relations of the universe! As none but He could paint such a picture, so He must have been alone in his delight. This was God’s Sabbath. See in it:—
I. The Divine completion of His creative work. “The heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them.” The Bible teaches that creation ended with the sixth day’s work. As it was itself a series of separate, distinct acts, so in itself the series was complete. According to this cosmogony there were no further creations. Individuals may be born and die. According to the laws impressed upon the vegetable and the animal worlds there may be the development of the individual from the parent, but it will be after the parent’s kind. Races and species may die, become extinct; but, if so, they go to a grave whence there is no resurrection. Whatever may be the truth underlying the words of the ancient record, it certainly is not development of species, either by natural or any other selection. Science and Bible are not opposed, but the peculiar form of the present day’s theory is not that of the Scriptures. This fact is in harmony with:—
1. The disclosures of science in its history of the earth’s crust. The evidence, as yet, is beyond comparison in favour of no resurrection of an extinct species, nor post-Adamic creation of a new species.
2. The history of the world as the record of moral and religious special acts on the part of God. Human history is not that of a physical world. Events since the creation have ethical meaning. The theatre for the great drama of human life was completed in creation. Since that God’s action has been the working out of the successive scenes.
3. The brief references in the other sacred writings to the physical activity of the Creator. He is not represented as creative, but as destroying, and purifying by fire. Thus we find corroborative evidence that Divine interference in the physical world is not in the form of creation.
II. The Divine contemplation of His creative work. At the close of His work all things pass before the eye of God. Everything was now complete. Everything was in subordination. Everything was ready for the higher and more glorious exercise of the divine activity in providence and grace. All was prepared for the kingdom of probation, by which the last created of the world was to be tried, disciplined, and perfected. We may learn here:—
1. Evil has no natural place in the universe.
2. Matter is not necessarily hostile to God. The Bible, in this picture of Divine contemplation, cuts away the ground from certain forms of false religion and philosophy. Divine life is not the destruction of matter, nor the rising out of the region of the sensuous; but so restoring the harmony, that God may again look upon the world, and say it is “very good.”
3. The present condition of things, so changed from that which God first looked upon, must be the result of some catastrophe.
III. The Divine Rest after His Creative Work. The rest began when the work was done. The contemplation was a part of the Sabbatic blessedness. The Sabbath:
1. It was a season of rest. It does not imply that there was weariness, but cessation from creative activity.
2. The rest was blessed by God. As He saw His work good, so He saw His rest good.
3. There was an appointment of a similar blessed rest for His creatures. “He sanctified the seventh day.” It is not for us to discuss the relations of God to labour and repose. The fact may be beyond our comprehension. It has lessons for us:—
1. There is a place and time for rest.
2. The condition on which rest may be claimed is that men work.
3. This rest should be happy. Much of the modern idea of a Sabbath is not that which God would say was blessed. The Sabbath is not a time of gloom.
4. This rest should be religious.
5. This rest is unlimited to any particular portion of the race. (Homilist.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 2:1-3. The Sabbath:—
1. A day of rest.
2. A day for contemplation.
3. A day of peculiar sanctity.
4. A day Divinely set apart for the moral good of man.
The Sabbath:—
1. Its antiquity.
2. Its utility.
3. Its prophecy.
The finished Creation:—
1. Should attract our attention.
2. Should excite our admiration.
3. Should evoke our praise.
4. Should lead us to God.
The “host” of them:—
1. As an army Creation is large.
2. It is orderly.
3. It is independent.
4. It is triumphant.
5. It is well commanded.
6. Let no man be found in conflict with its laws.
Were finished:—
1. The work of God is progressive.
2. Concentrated.
3. Productive of result.
4. Completive.
5. Learn to finish the good works we commence, to bring them to perfection.
The Sabbath:—
1. Just in its command.
2. Beneficial in its results.
3. Imperative in its delegation.
Though God ceased from His works of creation, He ceaseth not from His work of Providence.
The worship of God ought to be man’s first care.
God desires His Sabbath to be sanctified:—
1. By secret communion.
2. By study of the Scriptures.
3. By public worship.
The law of the Sabbath:—
1. Beneficial.
2. Universal.
3. Perpetual.
Rest:—
1. Not indolence.
2. Not culpable.
3. It should be contemplative.
4. It should be sacred.
5. It is Divinely warranted.
Absolute and perfect is the frame of heaven and earth, as it cometh out of the hand of God.
Jehovah hath His hosts in heaven and earth, many and mighty.
God’s hosts should keep order in every part, and be subject to their Lord.
The seventh day bringeth God’s perfect work to the well-being of creation.
The seventh day is God’s creature.
God rested from creation of kinds, not from propagation and providence.
Reasons for the Sabbath:—
1. God’s rest.
2. God’s blessing.
3. God’s contemplation.
4. God’s sanctification.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Six Days! Genesis 2:1. Conceive of six separate pictures, in which this great work is represented in each successive stage of its progress towards completion. As the performance of the painter, though it must have natural truth for its foundation, must not be considered or judged of as a delineation of mathematical or scientific accuracy; so neither must this pictorial representation of the creation be regarded as literally and exactly true. As these few verses are but a synopsis or conspectus of Gen I., so the pictures in that chapter are but a brief description under the symbol of days of a work stretching over thousands of years
While earth throughout her farthest climes imbibed
The influence of heaven.
Sabbath! Genesis 2:2. Six days had now elapsed since the work of creation was commenced, but the dawn of Sabbath was the first which had shone upon the earth as finished, and occupied by man. This completes the pictures of the young world. God hangs this on the palace walls of truth as the seventh painting; and on its imperishable canvas, traced with indelible hues, one sees man keeping a Sabbath in Paradise. What an image of blessed tranquility and rest! This was the great day of the earth’s dedication to the service of God. The earth became holy ground, and must not be polluted by any profane act. And thus paradise and the Sabbath are coeval. They stand together on the same page of the Bible. They are seen shining like twin stars in the morning sky of the world—blending their lights in one like those binary stars in the material heavens.
There is no day so glad as that,
God’s holy day of rest.
There is no day so sad as that,
Unhallowed and unblest.
Sabbath! Genesis 2:2. Some one has said that a world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile—like a summer without flowers—like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week. And yet, if there is to be the Sabbath joy in the day, there must be the Sabbath spirit in the heart. It is the heart at rest which makes the Sabbath a joy; and there can only be a true Sabbath gladness in those hearts
Where Gospel light is glowing
With pure and radiant beams,
And living waters flowing,
With soul-refreshing streams.—Wordsworth.
Sabbath! Genesis 2:2. On the sides of an English coal mine, limestone is in constant process of formation, caused by the trickling of water through the rocks. This water contains a great many particles of lime, which are deposited in the mine, and, as the water passes off, these become hard, and form the limestone. This stone would always be white, like white marble, were it not that men are working in the mine, and as the black dust rises from the coal it mixes with the soft lime, and in that way a black stone is formed. Now, in the night, when there is no coal-dust rising, the stone is white; then again, the next day, when the miners are at work, another black layer is formed, and so on alternately black and white through the week until Sabbath comes. Then if the miners keep holy the Sabbath, a much larger layer of white stone will be formed than before. There will be the white stone of Saturday night, and the whole day and night of the Sabbath, so that every seventh day the white layer will be about three times as thick as any of the others. But if the men work on the Sabbath they see it marked against them in the stone. Hence the miners call it “the Sunday stone.” How they need to be very careful to observe this holy day, when they would see their violation of God’s command thus written down in stone—an image of the indelible record in heaven!
Heaven here: man on those hills of myrrh and flowers;
A gleam of glory after six days’ showers.—Vaughan.
Sabbath-symbol! Genesis 2:3. It is, writes Chalmers, a favourite speculation of mine, that—if spared to sixty—we then enter upon the seventh decade of human life; and that this, if possible, should be turned into the Sabbath of our earthly pilgrimage, and spent sabbatically, as if on the shores of an eternal world, or in the outer court (as it were) of the temple that is above—the tabernacle in heaven. For
“Sabbaths are threefold, as St. Austin says,
The first of time, or Sabbath here of days;
The second is a conscience trespass free;
The last the SABBATH of ETERNITY.”—Herrick.
Sabbath-rest! Genesis 2:3. Like the pilgrim, the Christian sits down by this well in the desert—for what to him is the Sabbath, but a fountain in a land of drought, a palm-tree in the midst of the great wilderness—and as he drinks of the refreshing waters of this palm-shaded fountain, he is reminded of that rest which remaineth for the people of God. When, as Cumming says, that last Sabbath comes—the Sabbath of all creation—the heart, wearied with tumultuous beatings, shall have rest; and the soul, fevered with its anxieties, shall have peace. The sun of that Sabbath will never set, nor hide his splendours in a cloud. Our earthly Sabbaths are but dim reflections of the heavenly Sabbath, cast upon the earth, dimmed by the transit of their rays from so great a height and so distant a world. They are but
“The preludes of a feast that cannot cloy,
And the bright out-courts of immortal glory!”—Barton.