Hey, does God need to rest? I mean, was creation so exhausting he had to catch his breath? I don't think he needs to rest. Of course not. Then, why is rest such a big deal on the seventh day?
And why is the seventh day going to be what we talk about all day today? Oh my goodness.
Well, let's find out what the Sabbath is all about here. And we're the league.
Well, yes, indeed, this is More Than Ink. I see Dorothy and I see Jim. And we're sitting across the table from each other, and we are excited because last week, as we started into the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the book of beginnings, we also finished the first chapter, and we got a lot done in the first chapter of Genesis.
Well, God got a lot done. Yeah. It's amazing to me that after all of those, you know, turning the pages, there was morning and evening on all the numbered days, and then we finished up with the last verse in chapter one. It said, God saw everything that He'd made, and it was very good. Yes, so we worked our way through those six days of creation, and now today we come to the seventh day.
And we'll talk a lot about that today, but the six days of active work, he made everything, everything. And now, chapter two, we do a seventh day. It looks kind of like a week. It has a morning. Yes.
But doesn't have an evening. Yeah, well, we'll look at that right now.
So join with us if you want to in chapter 2 of Genesis for reading out of the ESV version of the Bible. And let's see what happens on the seventh day of creation. I'm going to read. Yeah, why don't you do it?
Okay, I want to go all the way through verse 4 because that's kind of the chunk of this passage.
Okay, so verse 1. 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. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Yes. That's kind of a bracketing statement, isn't it? It begins with heaven and earth and ends with earth and heaven.
Yeah, yeah. And it is really kind of fascinating. I asked this question last time, and I said, you know, the question that we're often I don't know, distracted by is a day of creation a day of creation like 24 hours? And I challenge you to think about the fact that maybe God's telling us more about the creation of the universe than just to ask how many hours there are in a day. Because he deliberately, you've got to look at this.
God can do this any way he wants to. And he could have snapped his fingers and had the earth come into existence. And we would just have one verse in Genesis saying God snapped his fingers and everything's here. Everything is. But he says, no, I'm going to do it in these stages, these six days of working.
And particularly with this seventh day of rest. And that's a fascinating inclusion because who would think that if you're going to talk about the creation of the universe, you would also include a day where you're not doing anything. Isn't that odd? Isn't that good? Right.
And you already pointed out that this day has a beginning, but it doesn't seem to have an end. And it comes right after that statement: God rested and everything was very good. There's just this implication of. Ah, satisfaction. Right.
Everything is good. Right. And, you know, while you were talking about day, where we stopped in verse 4, it says this is the way it was created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
So, you know, there it is. There's another use of the word day, yeah, sphere of time, not just a 24-hour period. But clearly, God is going to use this as a template for how we live our lives. And we'll probably dip into that a lot today because I mean, we all to this very day we have seven days in our week, and here it is, seven days in a week. And we do take the weekends off more than one day.
But it is a rhythm of life that God's saying you need to do because that's what I did. And we're made in His image.
So we probably have a whole ton of passages to reference to this, but this is not just a slight thing. This is a really big, big deal.
So I would urge you, listeners, to take your concordance and look up the word Sabbath. Yes. Because the Sabbath, as it's used. Here in this first passage in Genesis is the verb, right? The verb to rest.
But later on, it's going to be referenced as a noun to the nation of Israel. The Sabbath. The Sabbath. The rest. Yeah.
Right. So we don't have time to track that development. But if you look in your concordance, you will be able to track that for yourself. Yeah, I would also suggest to add to the word Sabbath, add the word seventh. Because that ends up showing up.
I mean, like, for instance, let me read you a part of Exodus 16, verse 29. See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath, therefore, on the sixth day, he gives you bread for two days. Remain each in your place, and let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.
So the people rested on the seventh day. That was when they were in the desert and they were collecting manna.
So, so clearly, seventh comes up an awful lot, as much as Sabbath does. And you'll get a pretty complete picture about this rhythm of life, this six days and this seventh. And he says, You do this because.
Well, that's what God did. Right. And it's kind of the seventh as the mark of the cycle is complete. Right. Right.
This is the turning of the page place, right? We're going to pause before we start again. Yeah. And it's so important that it shows up in the Ten Commandments.
Well, yes, God actually institutes it right there. And he's very clear: the Sabbath is a gift. Remember, at the time the Ten Commandments were given, or the original words from God, that they were newly released from being slaves. They weren't allowed to rest, right? Who had their slaves rest?
Who had a weekend? Right. So God gave them this gift and said, Keep this holy, right? I've given this to you to be set apart and used in a particular way.
So we're going to see kind of the seeds of that here in this first passage about Sabbath. And it's probably important at this point, too, when the Sabbath was a key issue in Jesus' ministry, right? He was constantly doing things on the Sabbath that rubbed the noses of the religious leaders. On purpose. Right.
And he said, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, right? The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
So when you're tracking down your concordance track of Sabbath, Pay particular attention to where it shows up in the gospels in the confrontations that Jesus had with the religious authorities who had rendered the Sabbath a little God in itself.
Something to a day to be worshipped, not a day on which to worship. Right. And the passage you quote, I've got it right here in front of me. Let's look at it more carefully. This is in Mark 2.
And in Mark 2, they were going through the grain fields and they were plucking grain to eat for themselves. This wasn't a harvest necessarily. This was, you know, they were feeding themselves.
So let me just pick this up because this is such an amazing statement. Mark 2, I'm going to start in 23. One Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, Hey, look, why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath? Because you're not supposed to harvest.
So he said to him, Jesus said to him, Have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God, the temple, in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and he ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat. And also gave it to those who were with him. And then he said to them, and listen to this carefully: the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And if you think that was a lot, his closing statement: so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
So the Sabbath was a big deal in the life of Israel. They got it, they got it from the Exodus, they understood it from the Ten Commandments. It was a rhythm of life that they needed to do. It was so much so that when Jesus comes on the scene as the Messiah, you know, God in the flesh, he's saying, you know, I'm the one that's in charge of the Sabbath thing. And I might be kind of...
Changing your thinking on it a little bit because man is not, man, man is the Sabbath made for man and not the other way around. Right. Okay, a gift. We probably need to go back to the Genesis text at this point because the Sabbath runs all the way through the scriptures. It's really important.
You mean like the Old Testament?
Well, like here's the pattern, right? Here is God Himself resting, which is that passage to which every other passage about the Sabbath refers or comes from.
So, you know, just as a good Bible study student, if you look at these four verses, you need to notice the things that are repeated. Right? And I tried to do it when I read him, right? But it's three times his work that he had done, his work that he had done, his work that he had done, right? Finished, finished, finished.
There was nothing more to add, and it was very good. And so God calls that day. In verse three, he says, it's blessed. The seventh day, and he made it holy. Holy right, right.
Set it apart as special. It has an intended purpose that's different from the other.
Well, let's zero in on the holy comment because we kind of religiize that word and we really don't get the idea of it. When he says he makes it holy or other passages or other translations, they'll say sanctify, it means to set it apart is not like everything else. Right, it's different. It's different. Just like I set apart certain tools to do certain jobs and stuff like that.
And we set aside certain things in the kitchen to keep them clean so they don't get dirty. I mean, you set it aside for a particular purpose.
So when we talk about holy, really in the simplest form, what he's saying is that you know you get your seven days in the week. That seventh one, that seventh one is not going to be like the others. It's going to be set apart for something really special. Because God said this day as a blessing. It's a blessing.
He called it a blessing.
So he, huh? He sat down, held still, and appreciated or enjoyed what had been accomplished. Right, right. Because there was nothing more to do. Yeah, exactly.
I know lots of people who cannot sit still, right? And to be able to say, enough is done, I can sit still to do nothing is a really important idea. Yeah, and that's actually the nature of the blessing. It's rest. Right.
Right? So you have undivided attention to do something else, and it's an ability to enjoy what's been done. I think the enjoyment is really, it's just all over this passage. It says, God blessed that seventh day and made it holy because on it, he... Held still from everything that he had been doing, right?
Everything had been initiated, it was all up and running. Everything was done, now we can appreciate it, right? Yeah, right. And that's, you know, if you think about it, God doesn't really need rest himself.
Well, he wasn't resting because he was tired, right? Right. But what he's trying to say is that you're made in my image. And when you establish your life, I want you to realize you need this rhythm of rest and you need this rhythm of working hard. That's okay.
But then you need to stop and you appreciate. But the equivalent idea I think about is farmers. Farmers today, you know, and I've known some farmers, they work awfully hard. They work, I mean, they work seven days a week and they know that their crop can fail if they're not on top of things.
So they're really tempted to just really put out seven days a week. It's hard. That seventh day to rest is really, it has much as much to do with resting as it does trusting that everything will be okay if you get away from it. And even for Israel, that was the case too, from year to year and from day to day and week to week. They, you know, they might not be able to eat if they ignore one day when the grasshoppers come in or something.
But so, so resting is as much about trusting God as it is about just not working, and that's really what we're talking about. It's about taking the work that you do with your hands that you force and you try and control your future, and you lay it down and you say, God's got it today.
Well, there's a blessing in holding still to appreciate what has been done. You know, and I think implicit in this passage is that God held still because everything was ready for the fellowship that was going to come with the human beings he would create. Everything is in place. Every process has been initiated. The whole place is ready.
Yes. And now we come. Yeah. Now we come to the enjoyment of the relationship between God and man. Right.
So I brought this up before, too, about the creation, since there is a creator rather than it being a random event. Since there's a creator, that means there's a purpose. It strongly implies there's a purpose. And you know what the purpose is? The seventh day.
The purpose is so that man and God can have fellowship. And it's almost the same thing as like a bride and a bridegroom, where the bridegroom goes off and he builds a house, he sweats, sweats, sweats and gets it all ready. And then he marries her and brings her back and brings her the house.
Now we can rest and we can live here together. That's very much the image here as well.
So God has a purpose in creation. It's fellowship with his creation of man. That's the seventh day. And that's why the seventh day doesn't have a close in the thing here, is because in this narrative, God says, now we can have the long day, which is fellowship between man and God.
Well, okay.
So building on that, it's because he's He's created these human beings who need this environment. God didn't need this environment, but He's created this place that is perfect for us to enjoy. Right. And we're going to see in a minute when we read a little farther in the passage that there is purpose in dwelling there, right? We were placed in the garden to cultivate and keep it.
Yeah. But we haven't quite got there yet in the narrative. We're just leaning into God, having prepared. Everything. But I just don't want you to miss the fact we talked about enjoying the moment of the seventh day.
That's really God's purpose in this entire story. The beginning, you know, you ask, who is man? Who is God? Yeah. Why did God make man?
All this kind of stuff. It seems as though God has created man for fellowship with him, and he has set aside, apart from all the other six days of the work week, he set aside a time to fellowship with man, to enjoy one another. And in just a second, we're going to see in this. Kind of parallel idea about this bridegroom building a house. God's going to actually provide a place for that fellowship to take place.
And that's coming up in a second.
So before we kind of move away from this, let me just add one thing. And that is I came across Psalm 92 today, which is a Psalm of David that is actually labeled a Psalm for the Sabbath. And it begins, it's good to give thanks to the Lord. And then the rest of the Psalm is kind of a meditation on the good things God has done for the benefit of man.
So if you're just casting around going, well, okay, what does it mean for me to enjoy the Sabbath?
Well, go to Psalm 92. Work your way through that. It's good to give thanks and to just enjoy all of his works that he has done for our benefit. Yeah. And I might mention one other thing.
This comes up in Exodus 31. It's just before the horrible golden calf incident. But the whole idea about the Sabbath is being reiterated. But there's a purpose behind the Sabbath that's connected to this holy word that's being set apart.
Well, the day, the Seventh day is set apart. But in the process of doing that, mankind himself is being set apart. From the natural six days.
So listen to this language because this is great. This is from Exodus 31. The Lord said to Moses, You're to speak to the people of Israel and say, Above all, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath because it's holy for you.
So, in a real sense, in the same way that we're. In the holy part of it, we're setting aside this day. God is saying to Israel, I'm setting, I want you to set yourself aside for this day as well. It's like a reservation has been made in a restaurant, and here's the table, and here's the two chairs, and I want you to pull away from that stuff and completely set yourself apart for our relationship. I sanctify you through the Sabbath.
Oh, that's really cool. Really, really cool. Yeah. We need to press on. Yeah, yeah.
We can just good to just breathe in the Sabbath. Yeah, another thing. I do. This just occurred to me. The whole rhythm of the Sabbath rest also applied to a couple other things.
Like if you got yourself a slave, a Hebrew slave, because you would do this, this was like indentured servitude, to pay off a debt.
Well, once you did that, and someone was working in your household for you to pay off a debt, you could only keep them for six years. On the seventh year, you had to let them go, and you couldn't sell them. You just had to let them go.
So there was this kind of six-and-one rhythm in that. Also, in the fields. Yeah, he says for six years you'll work the fields, you'll till the fields. But on that seventh year, just let it go fallow.
Now, if you talk about trust, are you going to be able to feed your family if you don't plant a crop this year? I mean, it's really kind of scary. The sad side to that whole story is that it looks like Israel almost never did that. In fact, that's why they went into captivity to Babylon, was because they did not do every seven year donation. They did land rest.
Right. Yeah. Right. So God sent them into captivity one year for every year they didn't do it. You know, since you cited that Exodus passage, I believe that it also says, very near around there, that your slaves also get to rest.
They do. And your animals get to rest. And your animals get to rest. So, you know, this is, ooh, this is big. Yeah.
So don't neglect it. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah, I want to say more things, but we don't have the time.
Let's just read the rest of the part of the chapter that we want to deal with. Because we had this big opening statement, right? And this in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Boom.
Now we kind of take a breath and start into the story.
So remember, we said. He set it aside for fellowship with man. Here's the place that'll happen. Here's the story.
So, picking it up in verse 5: when no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land, and was watering the whole face of the ground. That's a big sort of parentheses there. Then. The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. Oh, let's stop there for just a second.
Okay. Anyway, didn't we already create man in the last chapter?
Well, we've kind of doubled back. Yeah, this is.
Now we're zooming in for more details. This is a recapitulation of the sixth day.
So lots of stuff happens on the sixth day.
Well, other animals, but just the creation of man on the sixth day.
Okay, but there's a huge change here, and we didn't even point it out in verse 4 is where it first occurred, that all along we've been referring to God as just God. Right. It's kind of a generic. The lyric term for deity. Just Elohim.
Right, right. All of a sudden, in verse 4, we have the Lord God in our English translations.
Now, Lord should be all in capital letters in your English translation, which means that indicates the personal name of God. And the covenant, the promise-keeping God. There was no covenant yet. Right, but that's how it's viewed all the way through. But Yahweh, the God who says, I am that I am.
I am who I am, right? And from this point forward. He is the Lord God. Right. And before this, it wasn't.
It was just Elohim made, Elohim made.
So now we have a personal God, a personal relationship. I think that's the point. A personal God that we later see is also a promise-keeping God, a covenant God, a God who's connected in a unique way with mankind. And who creates this. Man in his image and likeness out of the very dust of the ground.
I mean, the word that uses there formed the man out of the dust is the same word used when a potter is working with clay. Yeah, it's the same stuff. Yeah, Isaiah really unpacks that really nicely. And we know scientifically that's true. The chemicals in our body, you can find them.
We are chemically the stuff of the earth. Yeah, yeah. But just assembling the stuff of the earth doesn't make a man. No. What makes the man?
So God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And there's a little trickery in the words there, actually. And he becomes. A breathing conscious. Creature.
Yep, a living creature. And scientists know this. You can throw chemicals together, but it's not going to live. Right. Well, that's been a very long process, right?
Can we make it? Can we make life? And even to this very day, scientifically, that's the biggest problem in evolution. No one has figured that out, how you throw that stuff together. But what I like is that when he says he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, you know, the word in Hebrew for breath and for spirit is identical.
So, in a real sense, what God is saying, I can put the chemicals together, but it's not until my spirit is put into them that they're actually living, that they have life and breath. Yeah. Oh my goodness.
And verse 8. The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that's pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't don't don't Oh, it does, but this is a little foreshadowing here that mmm, there's some evidence of.
A place of choosing between good and evil. Yeah. But it is a place that God has made for man. You know, and we don't really know the name of the garden. All we know is the garden is in a place called Eden.
Right. That's all we know. But it is, when you use the word garden, it's a tended place. It's not a wild place.
So that it strongly implies that this is a place that God put together that would really suit man. It's like you're going to love it here. You're going to love it here. It's a defined place, right? This is the garden as opposed to this is everything that grows.
Right. This is a special place. This is a special place. Maybe it's walled in. Actually, we're going to see later they did have a wall and a gate.
Yeah, yeah. And the idea of a garden is something that's nurtured and it's particularly made for beauty. And the idea of the trees, too. Trees in the ancient world was food that you didn't have to plant and sustain. It just popped out there.
It's freebies. Trees are freebies' food.
So it's just a really elegant. Beautiful, wonderful place that has this curious couple of trees in the middle: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So, trees actually are a really important theme all the way through the Bible. It really is. Here we have them introduced, but I'll just point you, point out to you, you students, get your concordance and look up the tree of life. Yes, you'll find it in three books. Yes, here in Genesis.
In Proverbs and in Revelation. The beginning and end. It's where the start of the story comes, and it's there at the end. And the tree of life is very visible and very present in Revelation.
So we don't have time to unpack that at the moment. Maybe we'll circle back to it. But it's so important. Yeah. It's the centerpiece of this garden.
Yeah. Yeah. And the centerpiece for the purpose of mankind. That we'll see. But this troublesome tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that's going to come up in the next chapter.
And why is that there?
Well, we'll talk all about that when we get there. We'll get there. You already know. But the bottom line here for today is the fact that God has created a wonderful place, a place for fellowship with man, a place really suited for man, a place that's. That's trimmed up and made proper for man.
It's got a lot of free food hanging from trees. It's the best thing ever. This is a great situation. Done it all. Freebies.
God has put it all in place. He has initiated every process. He has set everything in order and in motion. Right. To the very point of actually giving man life itself.
Everything that man benefits has now come from God, and that's what God's point is. We're ready to enjoy it with Him, in company with Him.
So, this is really the fulfillment of the Sabbath idea. We're seeing the Sabbath itself unfold as God makes a place for man and a place for God to visit with Him and for them to have fellowship. It's the best thing ever. And interestingly enough, at the end of Revelation, at the end of all things, that again is the intended destination, in a sense, if you will, to go back to Eden, the place where God intended to have fellowship with man. Oh, it's so, so beautiful.
The beginning part of Revelation 22 is where you want to go. We don't have time to read it. We got 30 seconds left. But I'll read this because this is a great way to close it. The writer of Hebrews in chapter 4 says, So then there does remain a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
You know, he says Joshua brought them into the promised land, and that wasn't it. But there still remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
So God's intended purpose for mankind. The very beginning was this Sabbath rest. And we'll talk a lot more about that.
So, anyway, I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we barely scratched the surface today. But next time, we'll see where it goes.
So, we'll see you next week here on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Well, wow, I am breathless. We'll be talking about rest. Yeah. Yeah. How come we're so tired talking about rest?
But it is a wonderful intention for God and his creation of mankind. Rest and fellowship with God. Cool. We'll talk more about that. Come back.
Bye. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
