God’s Word for You
Genesis 2:3 The Sabbath day
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, August 16, 2026
3 So God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
God’s will here was to reserve a special day, not only once, but for all time, to be set apart for a holy purpose. That purpose for man is to worship God, to meditate and proclaim his word, and to receive those special gifts that he gives through the Sacraments.
While the Third Commandment itself was not given until the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai many centuries after this time, and even many centuries after Noah’s flood, we already see the ancient believers gathering together to hear the word of God and establishing the worship of God. We see in Genesis 4 the giving of sacrifices (4:3-4) and also preaching and praying, which is what is meant by “calling on the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26).
Martin Chemnitz teaches that the old theologian Thomas Aquinas was in error when he said that “‘the first patriarchs created the idea of sacrifices without any definite word of God purely by the dictates of their own reason.’” For in Hebrews 11:4 it is written, “By faith Abel offered a sacrifice to God,” and Paul reminds us that “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). God’s commands about sacrifices in Leviticus did not invent sacrifices, but regulated them, limited them, and pointed out the significance of each one.
Now, the Sabbath that God instituted on Mount Sinai was for the Jews, and it was to be in force only until Christ came. Colossians 2:16-17 tells us: “Do not let anyone judge you… with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” So the regulations of the sacrifices and the holy days of the Hebrews were completed and fulfilled by Christ. But what God instituted on the seventh day of creation week was for all people for all time. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10). We enter into that rest through faith in Christ. We are free to set aside time to worship on whatever day of the week we please, and the wisdom of the early Christian church was to choose Sunday, the “Lord’s day,” commemorating the resurrection on Easter Sunday, as their day of worship (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10).
When God set the day apart as holy, that means that he set it apart for purposes that were not everyday or ordinary. This shows us that God wanted a sacred use for this day, the worship of God.
Had Adam not fallen into sin, he would still have had the Sabbath day as a special sacred day. On other days, he would have obeyed God’s command to work the land and to take care of it (Genesis 2:15); he would have tilled the yielding soil or tended serene, shallow paddies of rice. He would have seen to the simple needs of the cattle and sheep, the goats and the other animals that naturally desired his leadership. But then on each seventh day he would have prayed and given God thanks, and he would have instructed his family in God’s holy command, perhaps gathering before the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, to remember God’s warning and word. Then together they would have made sacrifices from the flocks and fields, which we see his children doing (Genesis 4:3-4), and they would perhaps have even sung songs together just as we see music becoming an important part of human life later on, with musical instruments first fashioned by the sixth generation of mankind (Genesis 4:21) but sung music surely appearing much sooner.
By setting aside the seventh day as holy, God gave them a calendar; a desire to mark the weeks as they went by, Sabbath day by Sabbath day. God had also given them a way to offer a sacrifice, which was through the use of flame. Fire was no accidental discovery of grunting cavemen. Its make and use was not stolen by Prometheus. It was a gift to Adam and his wife.
The Christian sets aside a sacred day of worship. This is especially to receive the blessing of the greatest sacrifice, the sacrifice that was not made by us but for us, the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus our Savior on the cross. It was the sacrifice that ended sacrifices for sin (Hebrews 10:18, 10:26). For this we thank and praise our Savior. We show this praise by remembering the meaning of the Third Commandment in the Small Catechism, that “we do not despise preaching and his Word, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it.” In the Large Catechism, Luther teaches, “We should devote the observance of holidays to learning God’s Word. The special office of this day, therefore, should be the ministry of the Word for the sake of the young and the poor common people. However, the observance of rest would not be so narrow as to forbid incidental and unavoidable work.”
Christians show their faith when they obey the first two commandments, to be sure, but the Third Commandment gives us a time to carry out public ministry. Through it God causes, preserves and increases our inner sanctification as we are set apart by the Holy Spirit for a sacred and holy purpose, to serve God with our lives and to bring up our children in God’s word and in God’s way. For all of the ways we stumble and make mistakes along the way, our Lord Jesus has already won for us the forgiveness of our sins. He picks us up, brushes the dust off, and sets us once again on his holy way. How can we keep our way pure? By living according to his word (Psalm 119:9).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.