Exodus

Why Creation Matters, Part 4: The Sabbath

March 12, 2026 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: From the Beginning | Part 3: The Flood 

Moses gives us one more application of Creation that I’d like to note. One of the Ten Commandments, the fourth, makes a direct reference to the creation as a basis for application to how we live. I note that two of the commandments—the second and the fourth—receive considerably more column inches than the others. (Not that any of the ten are “less” important than the others, of course.) The second, which forbids graven images, protects the holiness of God; since God is unlike any of his creatures, to make an image of him is to represent him as less than he actually is.

Does the fourth commandment do something similar? God says that his people are to honor the Sabbath—because he did. Interestingly, there is a second recounting of the Ten Commandments over in Exodus 31, where God says something that ought to get our attention. He says there that by resting on the seventh day, God “was refreshed” (Ex 31.17).

Now, God doesn’t get tired; he’s omnipotent. And creating the universe, even in just six days, was not at all taxing for him. But when he finished his astonishing work, since he had created time as well as space, he took some of that time to sit back and enjoy—take pleasure in—what he had created. We know, because he created sunsets, that he enjoys the beauty of sunsets; we know, because he created flowers, that he enjoys the beauty of flowers.

One of God’s attributes is aestheticism.

And because we are in his image, we should take the time to sit back and enjoy a job well done.

Aaaahhhh.

Is there more to it than that?

I note that in Israel, violating the Sabbath was a capital offense (Ex 31.14). Does God kill people for being insufficiently aesthetic?

I suppose, given enough time and thought, I could try to make a case for that, but I don’t think it’s necessary; these passages add further depth to the significance of the Sabbath.

God calls this practice “a Sabbath of rest” (Ex 31.15). We’ve noted that he was not tired at the end of the Creation week, so the seventh day did not serve as recuperative for him. But he knows that we, his people, whom he loves, do get tired, and as he provides all our other needs, he provides our need for proper rest and recovery from exertion. He goes further than that; he commands it. We must rest, as a sign of our relationship with our Creator God.

Work/life balance. It’s a thing.

We think we show our love for God by doing all the things. Well, if we love him, we do obey him. But we don’t show love for him by abusing ourselves in his service; we plan regular times of refreshment, of enjoying his presence and the beauty of where he has placed us in his created world.

Which brings us back to aesthetics, doesn’t it?

Some years ago I was blessed to visit in the home of a Messianic Jewish family in Arad, Israel, on a Friday evening. We gathered around the table for supper, joined hands, and sang their traditional song:

Shabbat shalom!
Shabbat shalom!
Shabbat shalom, shalom!
Shabbat shalom!

We smiled, and we circled the table, and I experienced newly the joy of entering into God’s Sabbath rest, receiving it as a precious gift, and delighting in it for itself alone.

How much we 9-to-5 commuters abandon, and unnecessarily.

I don’t have room here for a thorough discussion of Sabbath theology; there’s a lot more to it, and there are whole books on the topic, from both sabbatarian and non-sabbatarian perspectives, and in each of these directly opposing views there are strengths and motivations to appreciate. Suffice it to say that it is a deeply important concept—and the reason it is important is that it is rooted in the doctrine of Creation.

If we have no Creator, we have no provider; we have no meaningful beneficence; and we have no assurance that there is one who loves us perfectly, knowledgeably, and wisely for time and for eternity.

Rest.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Immanuel, Part 2: Covenant

December 9, 2024 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Creation

God begins our story by emphasizing that he wants to fellowship intimately with us. The book of Genesis contains many indications of that idea not mentioned in the previous post—his fellowship with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob most notably, a story punctuated with the building of altars and the offering of sacrifices that speak of such fellowship, and indeed of love.

As we move into Exodus, the theme continues.

God has promised Abraham that he will give his descendants a certain land—the land God has directed him to, and on which Abraham has already walked—the land of Canaan. As Exodus opens, Jacob (Israel) and his handful of descendants have left the land of promise—because they were in danger of starving in the famine—and have relocated to Egypt, at the clear providential direction of God through Jacob’s son Joseph. And under Joseph’s protection, they flourish there.

But dark times come. A new Pharoah arises, who knows nothing of the centuries-old stories of Joseph, the savior of Egypt, and who sees Jacob’s descendants as simply a supply of free manual labor.

So the Israelites become slaves—toiling under merciless taskmasters, and for free.

But God sees, and he hears their cries, and he raises up Moses, providentially raised in Pharaoh’s very courts, to take a message to Pharaoh:

Let my people go.

Did you hear that?

My people. Mine.

Family. Intimacy. Love.

And through a series of plagues, which are clearly direct attacks on and defeats of Egypt’s many gods, the LORD brings his beloved people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea to Sinai, where he meets with their leaders—face to face with Moses—and enters into a covenant with them. That covenant is rich and multifaceted; he is their Lord, their King. But he is also their Husband.

He marries them.

And during an extended period with Moses on the mountain, he gives extensive instructions for a Tabernacle, a tent where he will dwell among them. When Moses returns down the mountain, his face shines with the intensity of his fellowship with God.

And with the energetic cooperation of the people, skilled and gifted craftsmen build the tent to the exact specifications God has given. They call it “the Tent of Meeting,” because in that simple edifice both Moses and the high priest can meet with God. The Tabernacle is set up in the very middle of the camp.

And as the crowning element of this marriage ceremony, the visible light of God’s presence, the pillar of cloud and fire¹, descends and hovers over the tent, directly over the Holiest Place, the section of the tent where the Ark of the Covenant is placed.

This Ark is a gold-plated box containing the Ten Commandments—the marriage license, if you will—and Aaron’s rod, the symbol of priestly authority. Its solid-gold lid, the Covering or Mercy Seat, features images of two cherubim facing each other, and God says that he dwells there on the Mercy Seat, between the cherubim. It is there that the high priest, once a year on the Day of Atonement, sprinkles the sacrificial blood that will cover the sins of the people for another year.

God dwells among them.

He has married them, and now they move in together and set up house.

Next time: the theme continues.

¹ In my loosely held opinion, there were not two pillars, one of “cloud” during the day and another of “fire” during the night, with daily transitions from one to the other. Rather there was a single bright white pillar, which looked like a bright cloud during daylight hours and then, with darkness, appeared more luminescent, like fire. The cloud is referred to as a “pillar [singular] of cloud and of fire” in Ex 14.24. This seems consistent with Solomon’s statement that the Lord “would dwell in thick darkness” (1K 8.12 // 2Ch 6.1; cf. Ex 20.21; Dt 4.11; 5.22).

Part 3: Marriage | Part 4: Turning the Page | Part 5: Forever

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Integrity Matters, Part 1: Two Commandments

November 1, 2021 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Everybody knows about the Ten Commandments. Not everybody knows what they are, and nobody obeys them perfectly, but the term is pervasive as an expression for Doing Good.

It’s been often observed that the commandments come on two tablets—not just literally (Ex 31.18), but logically as well. Commandments 1-4 address our relationship with God, answering to the Great Commandment (“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” Mt 22.36-38), while commandments 5-10 address our relationship with other humans, answering to the Second Commandment (“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” Mt 22.39). And within that second table, many have noticed that the last 4 seem to be related:

¹⁴You shall not commit adultery.
¹⁵You shall not steal.
¹⁶You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
¹⁷You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Ex 20.14-17).

Adultery and coveting (especially coveting your neighbor’s wife) seem of a piece, bookending the prohibitions on stealing and lying, or “bearing false witness.”

I’d like to spend a post or two on these last-mentioned two as connected. Stealing, I’d suggest, is really just a form of lying—which is why the two so often travel together.

Stealing, as we all know, is taking something that doesn’t belong to you. We know instinctively that that’s wrong, but it’s worth our time to think systematically through the reasons why.

Like all the other sins listed in the Second Table, stealing is failing to love your neighbor, since you’re depriving him of something that he has earned:

⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law (Ro 13.8-10).

But when you do that, you’re engaging in a whole list of lies. You’re saying that
- Your neighbor is not in fact in the image of God, deserving your respect;
- What you’ve taken really and rightly belongs, or should belong, to you;
- God, your abundantly generous heavenly Father, hasn’t given you everything you need;
- You need more—and God doesn’t care enough about that need to give you what you need in a legitimate way;
- If you’re a believer, you’re saying that you haven’t taken off the cloak of ungodliness and put on the cloak of righteousness (Ep 4.17-25). You’re saying that God hasn’t fundamentally changed you from your unbelieving days. As a believer, you’re living as though you’re still by nature a child of wrath (Ep 2.3). That’s like being a square circle—it doesn’t make any sense at all.

So when you steal, you’re lying, in multiple and obvious ways. It’s no surprise, then, that Paul mentions both together:

²⁵So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. …²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy (Ep 4.25-28).

Note his requirement that thieves work “honestly” with their hands, in contrast with the lying way they had “worked” before.

When you steal, you’re not telling the truth, and you’re not living the truth. And there’s nothing good down that road. Since you don’t like it when other people do that to you, how can you possibly excuse it in yourself?

In the next post I’d like to look at an incident of lying and stealing in the Bible.

Part 2: Case Study

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