On the First Day Light!

It seems God in his wisdom did not give the First Day of the creation all the glory that belongs with his creation of light. The Church has come to make too much of the fact that light was created on the First Day of the week, to the extent it worships light rather than God. God saw fit, it seems, to make the day of the creation of light, the First Day, to share its glory with the Fourth Day. In the end it was on the Fourth Day that the light received final dignity. The light-bodies were to again share distinctive ruling honours, all having received but a part time task. The First Day can boast nothing any of the other creation-days cannot.

Only the Seventh Day received particular and undivided “blessing” and “sanctification”; only it, being the day of God’s resting, finishing; only it, being directly and first in mind, the day of God’s attention and Commandment.

Actually the first six days of God’s creating are also the subject of His Commanding, but secondarily, and dependent on God’s Commanding of the Seventh Day.

The idea of man’s “natural” need to rest “one day in seven” is wilful worship. Man can go without rest altogether, whether master or slave. Sloth - if the ‘need’ were “natural” – could have chosen to rest one in ten days or whatever, depending on what suits best “natural” inclination. In our times people take rest two days in seven because it best answers the requirements of modern lifestyle. The “natural principle” of “one day in seven” has nothing to do with God’s Law to rest “THE Seventh Day” and to work the other “six days” of the week.

Why man in God’s Law is obliged to work the other “six days” of the week, is to let human endeavour answer God’s six days’ work of creating the ‘physical’ cosmos. Man’s work must follow track of God’s work, leading up to the Seventh Day of God’s work only, and of the creation’s total unemployment.

For six days God “said ... and it was...” as though creation re-acted. On the Sixth Day God for the first time uses his hands so to speak. Nature’s ‘part’ in man’s creation is minimized to the – created - availability of the ‘dust’ for his forming. “It was” not just ‘naturally’ like upon God’s creative word of the days before. But only the activities of the Seventh Day leave nature or creation empty handed, completely passive, totally devoid of contribution to, or participation in, the Works of God of that day, the Seventh Day.

First Day: “and it was...”, heavens, earth and light

Fourth Day: “and it was...”, light-bodies

Second Day: “and it was...”, waters above and waters beneath

Fifth Day: “and it was...”, birds and fishes

Third Day: “and it was...”, continents and plants

Sixth Day: “and it was...”, animals. Then Man.

See study, “Days of Genesis 1 in Genesis 2 and 3”, where I show the sixth day was the day of man’s creation only.

These were the order to God’s ordering, and therefore: Man, go to work on these six days of your creation! Begin, after the Seventh Day! For on the Seventh Day, worship Me, and cease your doing; I give you Rest before I command you duty, and demand your duty.

For six days then, God “said ... and it was...”; but on the Seventh Day, He worked so much more! On the Seventh Day, God “blessed the Seventh Day”; “sanctified the Seventh Day”; “rested the Seventh Day”, and “thus”, “on the Seventh Day”, God, “finished” — “all the works of God” . These works of the Seventh Day of God, are the works of “the exceeding greatness of His power” – His works verily for God impossible had He not acted in and through, and by and for the sake of Jesus Christ. “The Sabbath was made for man — for this Son of Man, first of all.

God commands man’s working days to the order of the first six days of His creating – they are not for man to choose as ‘necessity’ might demand. And man’s rest-day God commands to the order of His completing, His perfecting and His rest of the Seventh Day – a completing and a perfecting and a rest not only of God’s works of the previous six days, but on, of and belonging to this day itself, to this, His for that very purpose, holy Sabbath Day.

It must be clear from this the First Day to God’s creation-order – the First Day of the week – is not the first in rank, but in equity, and the last in equity, the Seventh Day, not the last in rank, but the first. For all first six days must share, and give of their glory one to another – the Seventh only all its glory, to God.