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Prophets and Kings
God has declared that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.
When “the heavens and the earth were finished,” He exalted this day
as a memorial of His creative work. Resting on the seventh day “from
all His work which He had made,” “God blessed the seventh day, and
sanctified it.”
Genesis 2:1-3
.
At the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the Sabbath institution
was brought prominently before the people of God. While they were
still in bondage, their taskmasters had attempted to force them to
labor on the Sabbath by increasing the amount of work required each
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week. Again and again the conditions of labor had been made harder
and more exacting. But the Israelites were delivered from bondage
and brought to a place where they might observe unmolested all the
precepts of Jehovah. At Sinai the law was spoken; and a copy of it, on
two tables of stone, “written with the finger of God” was delivered to
Moses.
Exodus 31:18
. And through nearly forty years of wandering
the Israelites were constantly reminded of God’s appointed rest day,
by the withholding of the manna every seventh day and the miraculous
preservation of the double portion that fell on the preparation day.
Before entering the Promised Land, the Israelites were admonished
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by Moses to “keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it.”
Deuteronomy 5:12
.
The Lord designed that by a faithful observance of the Sabbath com-
mand, Israel should continually be reminded of their accountability to
Him as their Creator and their Redeemer. While they should keep the
Sabbath in the proper spirit, idolatry could not exist; but should the
claims of this precept of the Decalogue be set aside as no longer bind-
ing, the Creator would be forgotten and men would worship other gods.
“I gave them My Sabbaths,” God declared, “to be a sign between Me
and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.”
Yet “they despised My judgments, and walked not in My statutes, but
polluted My Sabbaths: for their heart went after their idols.” And in
His appeal to them to return to Him, He called their attention anew
to the importance of keeping the Sabbath holy. “I am the Lord your
God,” He said; “walk in My statutes, and keep My judgments, and
do them; and hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between
Me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.”
Ezekiel
20:12, 16, 19, 20
.
In calling the attention of Judah to the sins that finally brought
upon them the Babylonian Captivity, the Lord declared: “Thou hast ...