Well, please turn with me this morning to Genesis chapter 2. Today we come to the seventh and final day of Creation Week. A day that stands out from the other six. On this day, God does not create anything new, rather, He acknowledges the perfection, the completion of His creation by the fact that He intentionally ceases to create. And then he blesses the seventh day and makes it holy.
Let's read it together. Genesis 2 verses 1 through 3. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.
So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Let's pray. Lord, the work of your hands amazes us. It's Perfection and beauty, display your glory, your power, your wisdom.
And our experience of creation is tainted by the fall. How much more glorious this world would have been. Had sin not entered in and corrupted what you said was good. Lord, we thank you that you have not only created the heavens and the earth. But you are also recreating us and this wonderful world in order to restore it to what you intended it to be.
Thank you that as we await that wonderful day of recreation. You have given us glimpses of what that day will be like. And one of those glimpses is the rhythmic recurring Sabbath rests of life in this world. Rests that look back to your creative power. And that anticipate the eternal rest that awaits us.
Oh Lord, help us to avail ourselves of the grace you give to us every day, but especially on this one day in seven that you have blessed and set apart. for the good of your creatures. Open our eyes now, Holy Spirit, we pray, that we might see. with delight the great truths you have recorded in your word. truths that shape us and change us and Conform us to the image of the one in whose likeness we have been fashioned.
You are a God who rests, so teach us to rest. rest. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We've made the point that every major doctrine in Scripture is found in seed form here in the opening chapters of Genesis.
And that is perhaps nowhere more evident than in this account of the seventh day of creation. It's such a brief description, only three verses, but in this brief description is contained a seed that will blossom and grow into a tree of immense proportions. This short little mention of God resting on the seventh day becomes the grounds. For not only the weekly structure of our life in this world. But it also foreshadows the nature of eternal life in the new heavens and the new earth.
A life that will be characterized not by sweat and thorns, not by futile, endless, tiresome labor, but one that will be characterized by an eternal rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I want us to briefly spend some time in Genesis 2 and make sure we understand what Moses is describing with regard to this final day of creation. But then I want to run the gamut of Scripture and observe how the seed planted in Genesis 2 blossoms and grows over the course of redemptive history. The point is this. We ought to value the sacred blessing of Sabbath rest.
Because it has characterized every week in this world and it will characterize every moment in eternity. Our first encounter with the concept of a weekly Sabbath rest is right here in Genesis 2, where we discover that Sabbath keeping is imitative of God Himself. God rested, and thus we are to rest. This seventh day is, in fact, man's first full day of existence. And on this day, God breaks from the pattern He had established on the previous six days by ceasing from His creative work.
Genesis 2:2 says, And on the seventh day, or by the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested. We might begin by asking: why does God rest? If God is all-powerful, if God never changes... Which would mean he isn't energetic one moment and exhausted the next. If God never sleeps, never slumbers, if nothing is too difficult for him, in what sense did he rest?
on the seventh day. Colossians 1:17 makes it perfectly clear that all things hold together by the power of God. If God for a moment stopped sustaining creation, it would cease to exist.
So, to say that God rested cannot mean that God became inactive. That he somehow stopped being God or stopped holding together the very creation he had just made. In what sense then did God rest? The word rested in Genesis 2:2 translates the Hebrew verb from which we get the noun Sabbath. The word can imply rest.
but it more literally simply means to stop. To to cease, to desist. And God never stops being God. He never stops holding all things together. What then did he stop doing that he had been doing on the previous six days?
Well, he stopped creating. Because everything that ought to have been made for a perfect world had been made. It was good, it was very good, it was perfect, it was finished. Therefore, God stopped making new things. He rested from his creative work.
Derek Kidner refers to this as the rest of achievement, not inactivity. Calvin says that what we have at the end of creation week is the world as God would have it be. There are no new kinds of things left to be made.
Now, certainly after day seven, we will see new things, but those new things are simply the multiplication of what God has already made, or the corruption through sin of what God had already made. God's world was created in perfection. Thus, God's rest is a rest of achievement and completion. An act of God finding sovereign satisfaction in the works of his hands. Like a man who's just finished all of his yard work and sits down on the front porch to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done.
But then God does something unusual. Verse 3 says, So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He blessed it and made it holy To make holy means to set something apart as sacred, to sanctify or consecrate something to the Lord, to declare a thing to be uniquely reserved for God and dedicated to Him and His pleasure.
Now, over the course of redemptive history, there will be many things that God will make holy, many things that He will set apart for Himself. He will set the people of Israel apart. He will set apart or consecrate to himself the temple and the furnishings of the temple and the priests that serve in the temple. In the New Testament, the church is declared to be holy, set apart for sacred use. The Lord's Prayer, which we just prayed, begins with a petition that the Lord's name would be hallowed.
made holy. Viewed and treated as a sacred, special, unblemished thing.
Now, what's interesting is that the very first thing in all of creation that God designates as being set apart unto himself. Is not man. It's not the heavens and their bold declaration of the glory of God. It's not the oceans or the mountains or the great sea creatures or the beasts of the earth. The first thing God sets apart as holy is the seventh day.
That would indicate, would it not, that this is a big deal.
Something very special and profound is happening. Why then did God bless and sanctify the seventh day?
Well, we've already noticed that the way in which God went about creating all things was to maximize his self-revelation, to put himself and his greatness on display before his creatures. He didn't need six days to create, and because of some. Physical limitation in himself. No, he took six days in order to make it obvious to us finite, limited creatures that God is amazing, that God can create light without a sun and sustain planets without a fully intact ecosystem. God created all things in such a way that it maximizes our amazement and wonder and worship of Him.
So, God is doing what He's doing during this creation week in such a way as to reveal Himself and His greatness to His image-bearers, to man. The seventh day is no different. When it comes to this last day of creation week, God does what he does on this day, not for his own sake, as if he needs rest, or as if he needs his own blessing. No, he institutes the Sabbath day. just like everything else during creation week, for the sake of his creatures.
He's revealing something of himself and his purposes to us by blessing and sanctifying the seventh day. God ceases from his labor. in order to show us What we, his image-bearers, are supposed to do on the seventh day. He wants his image-bearers to imitate him by doing as he does on this holiest of days.
So think with me. God ceases to create new things on the seventh day.
So that he can admire and bask in the perfection of what he has already made. How are we, as imitators of God, supposed to use this day?
Well, it's a day for us to stop and take notice of the works of God's hands. It's a day for us to be still. and know that He is God. It's a day for us not to produce and make profit, all of which are good things, but rather pause and acknowledge that we have no ability to produce and make profit apart from the sustaining sovereign hand of our Creator. It's a day to put our place in the universe into proper perspective.
and to put God's place in the universe into proper perspective. In other words, it's a day to devote ourselves entirely to worshiping our Creator. Calvin's description of the purpose of this seventh day is worth mentioning. He said, God did not command men simply to keep holiday every seventh day as if he delighted in their indolence. but rather that they, being released from all other business, might the more readily apply their minds to the Creator of the world in this magnificent theater of heaven and earth.
So, at his very first mention in the Bible, God declared that every seventh day was a sacred, holy day.
So holy, in fact, that he showed us how we ought to use this seventh day. The other six days were to be days of sacred labor. The seventh day was to be a day of sacred worship and rest as we imitate God's rest.
Now, I'm not ignorant of the fact that many people object to the idea of a Sabbath rest. As something that is morally binding. Many people, even Bible-believing Christians oftentimes, have objected to the perpetuity of the Sabbath, claiming that it properly belongs in the category of Old Testament ceremonial law and is thus not universally binding. It's not part of the moral law. And while I believe that we can identify certain aspects of Sabbath keeping that are ceremonial in nature at various junctures in redemptive history, such as the Sabbath being observed on Saturday before the resurrection and Sunday after the resurrection.
There still remains a universal and morally binding aspect of this Sabbath principle. that we dare not sweep under the carpet of Mosaic law. Even the Mosaic law acknowledges that the fourth commandment, to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, Is grounded in a universal principle established at creation.
So let's think for a few moments about Sabbath keeping as an act, not merely of imitating God, that's all well and good. But also as an act of obeying God, of submitting to the moral obligation He puts on his creatures. Exodus 20 lists the Ten Commandments, and in explaining the fourth commandment, it gives a reason for keeping the command. The reason Israel was commanded to keep the Sabbath holy was not because of some ceremonial or typological rule that was unique to the nation of Israel. Rather, the reason Israel was commanded to keep the Sabbath holy And consequently, the reason this fourth command transcends The Mosaic law is the fact that the Lord made heaven and earth and everything in them in six days and rested on the seventh.
Sabbath rest is a thing because God at creation, not at Sinai, made it a thing. The weekly rhythm of ceasing from labor one day in seven was established not only before Moses and the theocracy of Israel, it was established before the fall. This weekly rhythm is sacred because it's God's rhythm and has been God's rhythm literally since the dawn of time.
Some have said, yes, but there is no command in Genesis 2 to do as God did. to rest one day and seven. To which I would simply point out There is no explicit command. But there is most certainly an implied command in the fact that God made it holy. God set this day apart.
unto himself. And when God declares something to be set apart for himself, Friends, we are not free to do with that something whatever we feel like doing with it. It's God's. Not to be touched, altered. consumed, abused, neglected.
Or otherwise tampered with. It belongs to him. That's what making something holy means. And so the implied command of Genesis 2:3 is that if God has declared this day to be holy, we must acknowledge its holiness, its sacredness, its set-apartness. There is a command implied.
in Genesis 2.
Furthermore, we see evidence that the human race Knew that the seventh day was special by the fact that even before Moses and the Ten Commandments appeared on the scene, knowledge of the moral law of God. Including the sacredness of the seventh day, it was present and known on the earth. In fact, not many of the Ten Commandments are explicitly mentioned prior to Moses, and yet the human race seems to know intuitively that murder is wrong, stealing is evil, adultery is wicked, and so on. It's evidence of the universal nature of God's moral law. And then, one final evidence of the universal nature of Sabbath rest is seen in the earthly ministry of Jesus.
When confronted about his Sabbath observance, he said, the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Notice Christ did not say the Sabbath was made for Israel. It was made for man universally at creation.
So, Sabbath rest predates and transcends Moses and the ceremonial law of the Old Testament.
However, the law of Moses expounds for us in greater detail than Genesis 2 does what Sabbath rest is for and how we are to obey this important command. I've already pointed out that Exodus 20 grounds the fourth commandment in creation. This emphasizes the fact that remembering the Sabbath entails an acknowledgement of God as Creator. It's worship to God for his power, and sovereignty, and majesty, and kingship. Ezekiel reiterates this emphasis in Ezekiel 20, 20.
Which says to God's children, you are to keep God's Sabbaths in order that you may know that I am the Lord your God. Our focus on this sacred day is to be one of worship to God because He is God. Creator. Ruler. over every providence in our lives.
But interestingly, Deuteronomy 5, the other Place where the Ten Commandments are recorded grounds the fourth commandment in another act of God, namely his deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage.
So the emphasis in Exodus is on remembering God's sovereign place as creator of all things. While Deuteronomy emphasizes remembering God as the one who redeems his people from bondage, resting in God as redeemer. Ezekiel 20 also makes reference to this reason for keeping the Sabbath. Verse 12 says, I gave them my Sabbaths that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.
So we worship God as Creator. And we rest in God as Redeemer. This then defines the paradigm for properly remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It tells us what obedience and Sabbath keeping looks like: it's to be a day of worship and rest. Because God is a God who creates and redeems, a God who governs and saves, a God who ought to be feared and trusted.
We keep the Sabbath by resting in His providence and by resting in His redemption.
Now here's the thing. Outward compliance to God's rules without inward delight in God is not obedience. This is why discussions about the Sabbath often never move beyond arguments about what we can and cannot do on the Sabbath day. If someone in authority over me said, Eugene, Go walk across the Sahara desert barefooted. Eat nothing but bugs and lizards.
until you pass out from exhaustion or die from dehydration. I wouldn't much want to do that. And I would probably say something like, Um run that by me again. How far do I have to walk? Do I have to go barefooted?
Does it have to only be lizards and bugs? My questioning is a reflection of my lack of enthusiasm for the command. If, however, this authority in my life said, Eugene, I want you to spend every Monday for the next year on a five-hour date with your wife with no cell phone and you must try a new dessert every date. I would have no problem happily obeying that command.
Now what's the difference?
Well, it's obvious. I want to do the second command. I don't want to do the first command. The difference is my level of delight in the command. When God gave the human race a weekly Sabbath day, He gave it with the intent of it being their joy and delight, not their drudgery and their burden.
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, right? And so God would have us come to see the Sabbath as something to be delighted in, not dreaded. And if it is our delight Our questions concerning it will change. Instead of asking God, do I have to do that? We will be asking, God, do I really get to do that?
The truth is God's people often approach the Sabbath By asking, what is the bare minimum I must do to faithfully remember the Sabbath day? And the very framing of that question betrays an attitude of dread. and dismissiveness towards the sacred day. This posture of dread is not unique to post-Calvary Christians like us. It was a tendency even in the Old Testament covenant community.
God, through the prophet Isaiah, addressed this reticence to delight in God's Sabbath when he said in Isaiah 58. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight. And the holy day of the Lord honorable. If you honor it, not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly. Then you shall take delight in the Lord.
And I will make you right on the heights of the earth. I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Did you catch that? Yeah We honor the Lord with our time and priorities on the Sabbath, and it begins to affect our delight in the Lord. Remembering the Sabbath.
produces the fruit of delight in God. Why? How? Because God has uniquely blessed this day. Do you lack zeal for the Lord Christian?
Do you dread your God? Is your joy in Him less than it used to be? Then perhaps the best place for you to start at turning that around is to dedicate your Sabbaths to Him. to ensure that one day every seven is spent seeking him. Not making more money, not making progress on your overwhelming to-do list, not filling your cup with a hundred interests and hobbies that make you happy, but simply learning to delight in the one who created you and redeemed you.
Train yourself to delight. in the weekly rhythm of working hard for six days and resting on the seventh by foes focusing your mind and affections and soul on the greatness and the graciousness of God. Another prophet, the prophet Amos, describes the opposite of delighting in God and the blessing of Sabbath rest. In Amos 8, 5, he reproves Israel for their eagerness. to get the Sabbath over with so they can get back to what they really want to be doing.
Amos 8.5, When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale. that we may make the epha small and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances. In other words, leave me alone, God. Let me work.
Let me play. Let me sin without you always being my killjoy. The problem is that if that's our attitude, we're finding joy in all the wrong things. A life that dreads having to spend a day with God. Is a life that will soon ignore and then despise and then willfully oppose the things of God.
Let me say that again. A life that dreads having to spend a day with God. is a life that will soon ignore. and then despise and then willfully oppose the things of God. God intends this day to be the day we look forward to more than any other day.
Teach yourself to acquire a taste for it. Make this day A delight. Finally, Scripture presents the Sabbath as a foreshadowing. of the eternal rest. we will enjoy with God in the new heavens and the new earth.
This is the whole point of Hebrews 4. Hebrews 4 looks back to Joshua and the time of the conquest of the promised land and makes the point: if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. In other words, the Sabbaths we practice here in this life are wonderful and are intended for our good, but they are imperfect.
So Hebrews 4:9 says, There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. There's something regarding our rest that we're still looking forward to. The writer of Hebrews goes on to explain that this weekly rhythm of resting one day every seven. A rhythm that has continued by God's decree since the beginning of time. is simply pointing us to the eternal spiritual rest.
that awaits every redeemed soul in Christ. This world, this world, is a world of toil and sweat and misery. a world of thorns in farming and pain in childbearing. But Jesus Christ has come to put an end to sin's curse. To put an end to the toil and the futility that the fall has introduced.
Beloved, sin is a hard. Taskmaster. And every week we face the grim reality that we are sinners who do that which we don't want to do and don't do that which we want to do. And it's tiresome and wearying and heartbreaking. And it often drives us to ask with Paul, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?
And we might be tempted to think, I'll never be delivered. from the drudgery and enslavement of my sin. It's always with me and it will always be with me. Friends, if Christ is yours. And you were Christ's.
Your sin will not always be with you. There yet remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. There will come a day. When the dead in Christ will rise, and there will be no more pain, or tears, or sorrow, or suffering, or sin. The slate will be wiped clean for good, and you will sin no more.
Eternal rest. Unending eternal rest will be yours forever. God in His grace gives us a taste, a sip, a glimpse of that eternal rest every week. Do not harden your heart. and miss out on the sweet rest.
And delight of this unceasing weekly call to worship your Creator and rest in your Redeemer. You say, Eugene, I want to delight in this day. I want to take full advantage of the grace of God that He's laid up for His children on this blessed and holy day. How do I do that? Very simply.
Three things. You should look up. and worship your sovereign creator. Look up and worship. your sovereign creator.
Christian, you can rest in the power of the one who made heaven and earth. He can handle your life. He can handle your fears.
So look up and worship. Him. Secondly, you should look back. At the cross of Jesus Christ, and rest in the fact that He has finished the work, He has sat down on heaven's throne. Are you weary from Fighting sin day after day, week after week, year after year, look to the one who said, It is finished.
The debt is paid. Look back to the cross and find rest for your souls. And then lastly, you should look forward. To that great day when you will enter God's eternal Sabbath rest. God knew that day would come when He created the world.
God knew all that would transpire before that day would come. And so God has given us the grace of a weekly reminder. That in Christ we will experience the perfect rest of that day forever and ever and ever.
So until then, Christian. Enter God's rest by looking up to your Creator. by looking back to your Redeemer. and by looking forward to the hope that is yours in Christ. Let's pray.
Lord, we labor and are heavy laden. But you are gentle and lowly in heart. And your yoke is easy. and your burden is light.
So teach us to come to you. and find rest for our weary souls. I pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Yeah.
