To live is to experience change. From the beginning, God’s perfect Creation included cycles and seasons (Gen. 1:14, 2:3). The weekly Edenic cycle that culminated in a seventh-day Sabbath thankfully punctured through to the post-Fall era and apparently will continue indefinitely in the new earth (Isa. 66:23). Even after sin, our lives continue to flow accord- ing to cycles of all kinds: environmental, biological, relational, familial, emotional, and even political (Eccles. 3:1–8). God knew that a static life would be so banal as to be unbearable, so He ordained rhythm and change to be integral to His creative order.
Changes can be unexpected or anticipated, positive or negative. They elicit from us a spectrum of responses that range from joy to sorrow and everything in between. This lesson explores how individuals are suscep- tible to life’s phases, especially in the context of families.
Job’s life illustrates radical and unexpected change. Joseph’s life falls into the same category. Though their respective families were significantly transformed in tragic ways, the end of Job’s and Joseph’s stories displayed a God of redemption and restoration. Narratives such as these offer us hope in God’s providence and inspire us to remain faithful through phases of difficulty.
Our relationships and the specific kinds of interactions they engender also play a key role in our lives. Consider the immeasurable influence parents have on children. The course of our lives is often set, whether for good or for bad, by those first family relationships. If our early family life has been less than ideal, healthy relationships can help undo past negative influences. Meeting Jesus later in life can revolutionize a life to the point that a person is called a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17, ESV).
From all this reflection, a quasi law of influences emerges that states that all interactions we have with others can be for good or for evil. This realization should cause us a measure of pause before we impulsively or flippantly engage family, friends, or strangers. We are making a difference in their lives whether we are aware of it or not.
Part II: Commentary
Illustration
Being around young children, one quickly realizes the difficulty of com- municating time intervals. My wife and I faced this challenge raising all three of our daughters. How do you answer such questions as “How long till my next birthday?” or “When can we go to the park again?” when time intervals are not fully grasped? I’d answer my youngest, “We’ll come back in a week,” and she’d say, “How long is that?” We soon discovered that “Sabbaths” were the answer to our dilemma.
Cyclic Sabbaths in our home were filled with a sundown Sabbath candle ceremony, Sabbath School, church, potluck, and friends. This created a memorable time reference for our children so that we would answer time questions in Sabbath units (e.g., “We’ll be at Grandma’s in three Sabbaths”). This worked like a charm. In addition, I was pleasantly surprised that our family Sabbath “trick” was embedded into the language of biblical Greek. -
Not too commonly known is that the Greek sabbaton in the New Testament refers not only to the seventh-day Sabbath but also can denote a week (Matt. 28:1, Luke 18:12). In fact, there is no Greek word for “week” in the New Testament other than sabbato-n. I admit I was rather excited that our family’s substitute of “Sabbath” for “week” was biblical!
God’s weekly Sabbath turned out to be our children’s first clock. The Sabbath is more than just another day that pops up every week. It is a spiritual reference point in time by which to calibrate the rest of our lives.
As an important side note, there is at least one translation of the Bible (A. E. Knoch’s Concordant Version), and a few Christian ministries, that do not recognize sabbato-n as referring to the week. This practice may seem inconsequential at first, but it leads to a textual argument for calling “Sunday” a “Sabbath.” In keeping with this line of thinking, Matthew 28:1, consequently, uses the expression “one of the Sabbaths.” Thus, the first day of the week, Sunday, is called a sabbath. Only context can determine whether “Sabbath” or “week” is intended. Thankfully, just about every recognized English translation renders sabbato-n correctly as “week” in Matthew 28.
For those grammatically inclined,-the phrase in question, in Matthew 28, literally reads mian (first) sabbaton. But there is no gender agreement between mian, which is feminine, and sabbato-n, which is neuter; there- fore, “first” cannot modify sabbato-n but instead modifies the assumed feminine noun hemera (day). This syntactical construction is similar to our saying, “I’ll see you on the fourth.” The word “day” is assumed. Therefore, reading the text as “the first day of the week,” as opposed to the awkward and ungrammatical “the first day of the sabbaths,” is clearly the accurate translation.
Theological Insight
It has been observed that the way the Sabbath cycle originally began illustrates an interesting key principle of the gospel and of the character of God. Usually, we think of the Sabbath as the end point to a long busy week and, thereby, reinforce a work-rest cycle in our own thinking. The Sabbath commandment certainly is framed as such (Exod. 20:9, 10). However, from an Edenic perspective, the cycle is reversed. It is true that God worked all week and then rested, but humankind was not created until the sixth day (Gen. 1:27, 31). Basically, within hours of being cre- ated, Adam and Eve entered into the Sabbath. Their first full day was a Sabbath day of rest. For them, the Sabbath was hardly a rest from a long arduous workweek. Their work didn’t begin until after they had rested, and therefore a rest-work cycle is a more nuanced representation of the Sabbath cycle. God worked during Creation week, and humans rested in His works . . . and afterward, they went about their own work (Gen. 2:15).
The theological parallels are plain. God accomplished the works of salvation through the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ; we rest from any of our own “works” in honor of Christ’s saving achievements (Heb. 4:9–11). Once that salvific rest is fully experienced and embraced, our own works of loving and gracious obedience can follow. How wise of the Creator to weave an analogy of the plan of salvation into the fabric of time through a weekly Sabbath.
Reflection
The lesson brings out two broad themes titled “The Unexpected” and “Interactions.” A fruitful discussion for the class may be to ask: What “interactions” in Joseph’s family create an environment in which the brothers’ behavior is actually not that “unexpected”? The concept of parental favoritism emerges as a generational problem, or cycle, among the patriarchs—one that had devastating family consequences. “Now Israel loved Joseph.” We wish the text would have ended there, but sadly it continues, “more than all his children” (Gen. 37:3). We wish the brothers were ignorant of their father’s favoritism, but they weren’t: “And when his brethren saw that their father loved him [Joseph] more than all his breth- ren, they hated him” (Gen. 37:4). Jacob was most likely influenced by the favoritism he received from his mother and saw in his father toward Esau (Gen. 25:28).
All the pain, jealousy, and guilt created by this family’s dysfunctional dynamics stand as a continual rebuke of family favoritism. If Jacob would have identified and broken with the partiality displayed in his own upbringing, he possibly could have spared his own family such tragedy. God, in contrast, is the quintessential Father who “shows no partiality” (Rom. 2:11, ESV). Even though Jacob’s family was a mess in many respects, this same Father God was able to bring about one of the most miraculous and enduring stories of triumph. There is hope for us yet and for our families.
Part III: Life Application
It is easy to think that the way things are now is the way they will be in the future. Job and Joseph woke up on their fateful mornings just as they had every other day. But everything changed in a moment, as it can with us. Being prepared can determine whether life’s changes work for our good and spiri- tual maturity or whether they crush us and throw us into a spiritual tailspin. So ask your Sabbath School class what we can do in the present to respond in a godly way to inevitable change. Here are some ideas linked to the lesson:
Get into a rhythm. This expression is used when something becomes so familiar and regular that we do it without thinking. Job prayed the moment his life changed forever. No doubt Joseph did too. The rhythms of life can become manageable when we’ve already adopted a rhythm of prayer with God.
Sabbath renewal is never far away. Just as prayer is untouchable by outside forces (you can pray in a prison), the Sabbath can never be taken from you. The Sabbath is secure behind the unassailable bars of time.You can be sure of a rendezvous of rest with Jesus every Sabbath day no matter if the world is imploding all around you; that is, you can have this assurance if you have gotten in the habit of spending the Sabbath with Jesus now.
Be the transitional character that Jacob wasn’t. We often take the family baggage we received from our parents and unintentionally pass it right along to our own children. Instead, with God’s wisdom and transforming power, we can be what family therapists call a transitional character—“one who, in a single generation, changes the entire course of a lineage. The individuals who grow up in an abusive, emotionally destructive environment and who somehow find ways to metabolize the poison and not pass it on to their children. They break the mold.”—Randal D. Day, Introduction to Family Processes (New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2010), p. 116.
Learn your Bible stories. It may seem simplistic, but it is still too easy to think that our lives should somehow go more smoothly than the lives of the patriarchs, prophets, and disciples (and the life of Jesus, for that matter). The more time we spend in the Bible, the more our perspective will change and the less we will think some “strange thing” is happening to us in times of difficult change (1 Pet. 4:12).
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Part I: Overview
To live is to experience change. From the beginning, God’s perfect Creation included cycles and seasons (Gen. 1:14, 2:3). The weekly Edenic cycle that culminated in a seventh-day Sabbath thankfully punctured through to the post-Fall era and apparently will continue indefinitely in the new earth (Isa. 66:23). Even after sin, our lives continue to flow accord- ing to cycles of all kinds: environmental, biological, relational, familial, emotional, and even political (Eccles. 3:1–8). God knew that a static life would be so banal as to be unbearable, so He ordained rhythm and change to be integral to His creative order.
Changes can be unexpected or anticipated, positive or negative. They elicit from us a spectrum of responses that range from joy to sorrow and everything in between. This lesson explores how individuals are suscep- tible to life’s phases, especially in the context of families.
Job’s life illustrates radical and unexpected change. Joseph’s life falls into the same category. Though their respective families were significantly transformed in tragic ways, the end of Job’s and Joseph’s stories displayed a God of redemption and restoration. Narratives such as these offer us hope in God’s providence and inspire us to remain faithful through phases of difficulty.
Our relationships and the specific kinds of interactions they engender also play a key role in our lives. Consider the immeasurable influence parents have on children. The course of our lives is often set, whether for good or for bad, by those first family relationships. If our early family life has been less than ideal, healthy relationships can help undo past negative influences. Meeting Jesus later in life can revolutionize a life to the point that a person is called a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17, ESV).
From all this reflection, a quasi law of influences emerges that states that all interactions we have with others can be for good or for evil. This realization should cause us a measure of pause before we impulsively or flippantly engage family, friends, or strangers. We are making a difference in their lives whether we are aware of it or not.
Part II: Commentary
Illustration
Being around young children, one quickly realizes the difficulty of com- municating time intervals. My wife and I faced this challenge raising all three of our daughters. How do you answer such questions as “How long till my next birthday?” or “When can we go to the park again?” when time intervals are not fully grasped? I’d answer my youngest, “We’ll come back in a week,” and she’d say, “How long is that?” We soon discovered that “Sabbaths” were the answer to our dilemma.
Cyclic Sabbaths in our home were filled with a sundown Sabbath candle ceremony, Sabbath School, church, potluck, and friends. This created a memorable time reference for our children so that we would answer time questions in Sabbath units (e.g., “We’ll be at Grandma’s in three Sabbaths”). This worked like a charm. In addition, I was pleasantly surprised that our family Sabbath “trick” was embedded into the language of biblical Greek. -
Not too commonly known is that the Greek sabbaton in the New Testament refers not only to the seventh-day Sabbath but also can denote a week (Matt. 28:1, Luke 18:12). In fact, there is no Greek word for “week” in the New Testament other than sabbato-n. I admit I was rather excited that our family’s substitute of “Sabbath” for “week” was biblical!
God’s weekly Sabbath turned out to be our children’s first clock. The Sabbath is more than just another day that pops up every week. It is a spiritual reference point in time by which to calibrate the rest of our lives.
As an important side note, there is at least one translation of the Bible (A. E. Knoch’s Concordant Version), and a few Christian ministries, that do not recognize sabbato-n as referring to the week. This practice may seem inconsequential at first, but it leads to a textual argument for calling “Sunday” a “Sabbath.” In keeping with this line of thinking, Matthew 28:1, consequently, uses the expression “one of the Sabbaths.” Thus, the first day of the week, Sunday, is called a sabbath. Only context can determine whether “Sabbath” or “week” is intended. Thankfully, just about every recognized English translation renders sabbato-n correctly as “week” in Matthew 28.
For those grammatically inclined,-the phrase in question, in Matthew 28, literally reads mian (first) sabbaton. But there is no gender agreement between mian, which is feminine, and sabbato-n, which is neuter; there- fore, “first” cannot modify sabbato-n but instead modifies the assumed feminine noun hemera (day). This syntactical construction is similar to our saying, “I’ll see you on the fourth.” The word “day” is assumed. Therefore, reading the text as “the first day of the week,” as opposed to the awkward and ungrammatical “the first day of the sabbaths,” is clearly the accurate translation.
Theological Insight
It has been observed that the way the Sabbath cycle originally began illustrates an interesting key principle of the gospel and of the character of God. Usually, we think of the Sabbath as the end point to a long busy week and, thereby, reinforce a work-rest cycle in our own thinking. The Sabbath commandment certainly is framed as such (Exod. 20:9, 10). However, from an Edenic perspective, the cycle is reversed. It is true that God worked all week and then rested, but humankind was not created until the sixth day (Gen. 1:27, 31). Basically, within hours of being cre- ated, Adam and Eve entered into the Sabbath. Their first full day was a Sabbath day of rest. For them, the Sabbath was hardly a rest from a long arduous workweek. Their work didn’t begin until after they had rested, and therefore a rest-work cycle is a more nuanced representation of the Sabbath cycle. God worked during Creation week, and humans rested in His works . . . and afterward, they went about their own work (Gen. 2:15).
The theological parallels are plain. God accomplished the works of salvation through the saving life, death, and resurrection of Christ; we rest from any of our own “works” in honor of Christ’s saving achievements (Heb. 4:9–11). Once that salvific rest is fully experienced and embraced, our own works of loving and gracious obedience can follow. How wise of the Creator to weave an analogy of the plan of salvation into the fabric of time through a weekly Sabbath.
Reflection
The lesson brings out two broad themes titled “The Unexpected” and “Interactions.” A fruitful discussion for the class may be to ask: What “interactions” in Joseph’s family create an environment in which the brothers’ behavior is actually not that “unexpected”? The concept of parental favoritism emerges as a generational problem, or cycle, among the patriarchs—one that had devastating family consequences. “Now Israel loved Joseph.” We wish the text would have ended there, but sadly it continues, “more than all his children” (Gen. 37:3). We wish the brothers were ignorant of their father’s favoritism, but they weren’t: “And when his brethren saw that their father loved him [Joseph] more than all his breth- ren, they hated him” (Gen. 37:4). Jacob was most likely influenced by the favoritism he received from his mother and saw in his father toward Esau (Gen. 25:28).
All the pain, jealousy, and guilt created by this family’s dysfunctional dynamics stand as a continual rebuke of family favoritism. If Jacob would have identified and broken with the partiality displayed in his own upbringing, he possibly could have spared his own family such tragedy. God, in contrast, is the quintessential Father who “shows no partiality” (Rom. 2:11, ESV). Even though Jacob’s family was a mess in many respects, this same Father God was able to bring about one of the most miraculous and enduring stories of triumph. There is hope for us yet and for our families.
Part III: Life Application
It is easy to think that the way things are now is the way they will be in the future. Job and Joseph woke up on their fateful mornings just as they had every other day. But everything changed in a moment, as it can with us. Being prepared can determine whether life’s changes work for our good and spiri- tual maturity or whether they crush us and throw us into a spiritual tailspin. So ask your Sabbath School class what we can do in the present to respond in a godly way to inevitable change. Here are some ideas linked to the lesson: