1 - Who Has the Authority to Sanctify?
Updated: Sep 1
The Sabbath, Creation, and the Question of Human Authority
Most discussions about the Sabbath begin with a familiar question:
Saturday or Sunday?
But perhaps that isn't the first question we should ask.
Perhaps the more fundamental question is:
Who has the authority to make something holy?
Go back to the beginning.
Before there was Israel.
Before there was Moses.
Before there was Sinai.
Before there was a Jewish nation.
Before there was a Christian church.
There was Creation.
Genesis tells us:
“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”— Genesis 2:2–3
Notice what happened.
God rested.
God blessed.
God sanctified.
The seventh day did not become holy because human beings voted on it.
It did not become holy because Israel chose it.
It did not become holy because a religious institution later designated it.
God sanctified it.
And then, thousands of years later, when God gave Israel the fourth commandment, He didn't give a new reason for the seventh day.
He pointed them backward:
“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.”— Exodus 20:11
The reason for the Sabbath is Creation.
That should make us pause.
God creates. We don't.
This takes us to an even deeper biblical distinction.
Human beings can make things.
We can build.
We can manufacture.
We can rearrange materials.
We can organize.
We can imitate.
But everything we make ultimately depends upon something that already exists.
God is different.
God is the Creator.
The Hebrew Bible uses the remarkable verb bara for God's creative activity. We shouldn't reduce bara to a dictionary definition of “create something from nothing” in every occurrence—the theology of creation comes from the larger biblical context—but Genesis deliberately presents God as the One from whom creation originates.
God creates.
Everything else is dependent upon what God has already created.
And that distinction matters when we begin talking about authority.
Because the creature cannot become the Creator.
And then we encounter the Sabbath
The Sabbath is not merely a day on a calendar.
Genesis says God blessed it.
Genesis says God sanctified it.
The Sabbath therefore becomes connected to something only God can ultimately accomplish:
sanctification.
And Scripture makes that connection explicit.
God tells Israel:
“I also gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them.”— Ezekiel 20:12
Did you catch that?
The Sabbath is a sign.
And what does the sign point toward?
“I am the LORD who sanctifies them.”
God doesn't merely say:
“Remember the day.”
The Sabbath points to the God who sanctifies.
And suddenly the Sabbath becomes a Gospel question
Because what is righteousness by faith?
It is not:
“God started the work, but I need to finish it.”
It is:
“God has done what I could never do, and I trust Him.”
God creates.
God sanctifies.
God recreates.
God gives.
I receive.
That is why the biblical concept of Sabbath rest is so profound.
The Sabbath becomes a picture of dependence upon the Creator rather than confidence in the creature.
And Hebrews 4 takes that idea even further:
“There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”— Hebrews 4:9
The writer takes us all the way back to God's rest at Creation and then connects that rest with faith:
“For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.”— Hebrews 4:10
Now we're no longer talking merely about which day people attend church.
We're talking about where righteousness comes from.
Now look at Revelation
This is where the question becomes breathtaking.
Revelation 14:7 gives the final gospel proclamation:
“Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”
Why does the final call to worship emphasize the Creator?
Why does Revelation deliberately bring Creation language into the final controversy?
And notice how closely that language echoes the fourth commandment:
“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea…”— Exodus 20:11
Revelation says:
“Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea…”
The language points us back to Creation.
And the issue is worship.
So here is the question I can't get out of my mind:
If God is the Creator…
If God is the One who blessed the seventh day…
If God is the One who sanctified it…
If the Sabbath is a sign pointing to the God who sanctifies…
And if Revelation's final gospel calls humanity to worship the Creator…
What happens when created beings claim authority over what the Creator Himself established?
I'm not asking that as a rhetorical accusation.
I'm asking it as a biblical question.
Because there is a profound difference between saying:
“We prefer another day.”
and saying:
“We possess the authority to designate another day as holy.”
Those are not necessarily the same claim.
And if a human institution ever claimed authority to alter something God Himself sanctified, then the question would become much larger than Saturday versus Sunday.
It would become a question of:
Authority.
Worship.
Creation.
Sanctification.
Righteousness by faith.
And ultimately:
Who do we trust to do the work that only God can do?
The counterfeit question
This is where we have to be very careful.
We shouldn't begin by declaring:
“Therefore the Sabbath is the seal of God and Sunday is the mark of the beast.”
That conclusion needs to be demonstrated, not assumed.
But Revelation unmistakably presents a final conflict involving:
worship, authority, the Creator, God's commandments, and a counterfeit system.
So perhaps the question we should investigate isn't simply:
“Which day is correct?”
Perhaps the deeper question is:
“Whose authority are we recognizing?”
God's authority?
Or human authority?
God's creative work?
Or human substitutes?
God's righteousness?
Or our own?
God's rest?
Or our own works?
And perhaps the Sabbath is significant precisely because it brings all of those questions together.
Maybe the Sabbath was never merely about a day.
Maybe it was always about God.
The God who creates.
The God who rests.
The God who blesses.
The God who sanctifies.
The God who recreates.
The God who gives righteousness.
And the God who, in the final hour of earth's history, calls humanity once again:
“Worship Him who made…”
That is a question worth asking.
Who has the authority to sanctify?
And perhaps the answer has been sitting in Genesis 2 all along.
Our next blog post will answer the question:
*Original artwork created with ChatGPT (OpenAI) for BornSaved.org
Comments