Is the Sabbath a Creation Ordinance?

Many argue that observation of the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. ^[1] This view is (in my opinion) on very shaky ground. Nobody should even try to argue that it is an explicit creation ordinance, in the same vein as “be fruitful and multiply.” A command to “work six days and rest the seventh” is not mentioned anywhere in Genesis.

The sole basis for calling the Sabbath observation a creation ordinance comes thousands of years after Adam and Eve, even if you are a young-earther. It is in Exodus, when the fourth commandment (the Sabbath commandment) is given, and the reasoning is tied to creation:

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Ex. 20:8-11)

Of course, even before diving deeper into the question, the argument takes at least a glancing blow when we read the parallel version of the decalogue in Deuteronomy 5:12-15, when the explanation for the fourth commandment is tied not to creation but to the rescue from slavery in Egypt, and later tied more specifically to the provision of manna in the wilderness.

Leaving aside the Deuteronomy problem, the Exodus version might indicate it was a creation ordinance, or might mean that the creation account was simply used as an analogy.

Keep in mind there are some substantive theological stakes involved. If the Sabbath day pattern was an instruction given at creation, there is no debate about whether or not it is a timeless commandment. Any such debate would end before it started. However if it was not a creation ordinance, then the debate continues: was it a commandment made to signify the old, Mosaic covenant with Israel, or was it a timeless commandment but not, explicitly anyway, in place from creation?

The point I will try to make in this short post is that there is no strong argument that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, and so the debate about its cessation is, unfortunately unresolved. It would be a neat solution if we could trace it back to creation--but I have already given the only argument for doing so, and it is not very satisfying. Calling the Sabbath a creation ordinance is, I'm afraid, wishful thinking.

Let's look at why I think so. And let's do so by looking at what is actually in the bible--what it actually says, not what we want it to say to fit a particular school of theology.

It is good to start with the creation account, and the well-known fact that the seventh day is never formally terminated by the "evening and morning" pattern of the first six. This is consistent with the view that Adam and Eve, before the fall, did not enjoy the seventh day off (the next day after being created) only to go back to work on the eighth day. Rather it appears to me that they were in a state of continuous rest for however long it was between the seventh day and the fall. Whatever work they had, such as tending the garden, was not labor in the way we think of it, and would have required no physical or mental rest. That need came only after the fall. ^[2]

Before the fall a day of rest, as in rest from labor, was not needed. After the fall it would certainly be desired. But nowhere, before or after the fall, do we read any indication that Adam followed the pattern working six and resting the seventh.

Keep this in mind: There is no mention in scripture of the Sabbath being kept by anyone prior to its introduction in Exodus 16. Here is the very first mention the sabbath in the bible: ^[3]

Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. (Ex. 16:23)

There is no indication here that the Jews were being reminded of a lost practice of observing the Sabbath. No, the text reads as the initiation of the Sabbath. For further evidence we read from the prophet Nehemiah:

¹³ You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, ¹⁴ and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. (Neh. 9:13-14)

Here again is the indication that the Jews of the exodus were the first humans to know of the Sabbath. ^[4]  And so, in my view, it is very hard to designate the Sabbath observation as a creation ordinance.

As I mention earlier, failure to prove that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance leaves us with a debate about the continuance of the observation. There are, in my opinion, two serious views:

1. Observation of the Sabbath never ended, it continues to this day ^[5]

2. Observation of the Sabbath was a a symbol of the Mosaic covenant, a holy reminder that they had lost true rest in God and would have to make do with a type. ^[6]

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^[1] See, for example, this Founder's Ministries post.

^[2] I'll speculate that an oft-stated purpose of the sabbath, i.e., a divinely-wise healthy, restful restoration, is no doubt true but probably not the primary reason. The sabbath was not made first and foremost to recover from work or even as a "go to church" day. It was meant to give Israel a taste what was lost at the fall and what it would take a savior to restore: endless rest in the goodness and mercy of God.

^[3] The context of the very first mention of the Sabbath is the collection of manna. For whatever it is worth, the first mention of the Sabbath is more aligned with the introduction of the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy than in Exodus.

^[4] And the special mention of the Sabbath against the backdrop of generic commandments indicates a "one of these things is not like the others" quality of the fourth commandment.

^[5] Which leads to further debates, which often devolve into rank absurdity, hypocrisy, inconsistency, and self-righteousness, as to how one properly observes the Christian Sabbath.

^[6] This view can be purely practical: "The Sabbath is over, deal with it" or it can be pietistic: "Observation of  the Sabbath is over now that the type has become the reality: because of the finished work of Christ we are once again in the eternal  rest of God." Note that this view does not preclude treating the first day as holy, and engaging in something indistinguishable from Sabbath observation, but it justifies it as tradition and worship, not as obeying a commandment.