8. Did God bless and sanctify the seventh day while He was resting upon it, or when His rest on that
day was past?
Answer
"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." Gen. 2:3.
NOTES-God blessed and sanctified the seventh day then future, answering to the day on which
He had just rested. The acts of blessing and sanctifying involve the idea of a future use of those things
which are blessed and sanctified. Past time cannot be used. It is gone for ever. The blessing and
sanctification of the day therefore, must have related to the future-to all the future seventh days.
In Joel 1: 14 we read: "Sanctify [i.e., appoint] you a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders
and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord." Wherever used in the Bible, the word
sanctify means to appoint, to proclaim, or to set apart, as in the margin of Joshua 20: 7; 2 Kings 10: 20, 21;
Zeph. 1:7. So when the Sabbath was sanctified, as the last act by which it was made for man, an
appointment, or proclamation, of the Sabbath was given. See Ex. 19:23.
"If we had no other passage than this of Gen. 2: 3, there would be no difficulty in deducing from it
a precept for the universal observance of a Sabbath, or seventh day, to be devoted to God as holy time, by
all of that race for whom the earth and its nature were specially prepared. The first men must have known
it. The words He hallowed it can have no meaning otherwise. They would be a blank unless in reference to
some who were required to keep it holy."-Lange's Commentary, Vol. I, page 197.
Upon how many of the human race did death pass as the result of Adam's transgression?
Does it matter what one believes, so long as he is sincere?
Whose example are we urged to imitate?
Is there a specified time for the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary?
What place has the Sabbath in the work of salvation?
When was the union of church and state formed from which the Papacy grew?
What does the Psalmist say of these chariots?
Questions & Answers are from the book Bible Readings for the Home Circle