Remade

When John called the attention of the world to the Sabbath of the fourth commandment in Revelation 14, he did more than simply alert humanity to the correct day of worship. And he did more than point out that Jesus is the Creator of the world and that a gracious God has given earth’s inhabitants a day away from the demands of the secular world. The Sabbath stands as a memorial of God’s creative power.

It also serves as a reminder of God’s power to re-create. Sin stands as a barrier between human beings and God. Jeremiah wrote that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The verse can be translated that the sinful human heart is deceitful above all things and incurable. Sin is a terminal illness for which there is no earthly cure. Following his disgraceful sin, David prayed a sincere and heartfelt prayer, in which he appealed to God for mercy in the wake of his immoral behavior.

“Have mercy upon me, O God,” he wrote in Psalm 51. “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” He went on to say, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:1, 2, 10). David knew that without God intervening to forgive, cleanse, and remake him, he would be a lost man. The god of evolution could offer David no help.

He needed to be remade, re-created.

Only the Creator God could do the work necessary in David’s experience. Paul expressed a similar sentiment when he wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “The Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28) is alone able to restore in fallen humanity the image of God. The Sabbath-keeping Christian is doing more than observing a day. He or she is entering into a saving relationship with a God who gave us not just a day —but His Son, that we, through Him, might be remade.