Or, Why We Rest and Revel One Day Every Week
Scripture: Genesis 2:1-3
Date: May 3, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Some things are so significant that it takes time for us to let them sink in. Until we stop what we’re doing and think about what just happened, we might miss the lesson or we might fail to appreciate it or be appropriately amazed. It’s impossible to grasp the glory of a new baby’s life before the nurse determines the Apgar score. It would be deficient to celebrate a 50 year anniversary with a five-second slide show.
Day seven of creation week is such a standstill. God has finished His work and now looks back over all His completed work. Man has opportunity to catch his breath and the importance of the Creator’s work now has time to sink in.
Genesis 2:1 is a perfect example of an unfortunate chapter break, and the first example in Scripture to boot. The first three verses in chapter two cap creation week, describing the events—or lack of events—on day seven of the first week. Not only does the content of this paragraph belong with chapter one, but 2:4 begins a new major heading in the book with Moses’ use of the keyword “generations” to divide his book.
We could spend many more weeks talking about man himself and his mandate, about male and female, human sexuality, marriage, and family, about stars and sea creatures (think what’s been shown in the “Blue Planet” series) and plants and animals (“Planet Earth”). Yet the entire 168 hours of the creation account could fit on one printed page so we should keep moving. Besides, we have the rest of the Book to learn from, too.
This paragraph finishes the first week. The outline for the passage is straightforward and the implications shape the cycle of life.
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. (Genesis 2:1-3)
Contrary to modern scientific theories, God’s work was done by day seven.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (verse 1)
Moses could not have made it any clearer that creation was completed. The point is repeated no less than seven times.
All creation was complete. Similar to Genesis 1:1, the phrase the heavens and the earth refers to the entire universe. The phrase and all the host of them seems to refer to the entire army of creatures that obey their Creator-Commander and fill the heavens (such as the birds—lower heavens, and the stars) and the earth (such as animals and man). The universe has been fully formed and sufficiently filled for man’s advantage. Everything that was made was made by God by day seven.
”Those who believe in naturalistic evolution look in the processes now observable in nature for the key to the origin of the cosmos. This is based on the assumption that the processes which they believe brought the world into being are still going on” (Ferguson, 32).
”The present processes of the cosmos are not process of creating and making, and therefore it would forever be impossible for [man] to understand the origin of things apart from divine revelation” (Morris, 80).
It’s why we need and love Genesis.
There is nothing new under the sun, and that’s true at a couple levels. We are living in a closed system which means that matter is not added or subtracted even though it may change form. Inventions are new only in the sense that they are new ways to organize or arrange old things. Dominion takers may discover things they didn’t know about, but those things were part of God’s original creation. Creation is complete.
The subject changes from the creation to its Creator. Moses refers to God 10 times in verses 2-3 (by proper noun or by pronoun), emphasizing that God is the central figure.
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. (verse 2)
Two key verbs come forward in verse two: God finished and God rested . The first verb finished reiterates the point of verse one. The second verb rested is more interesting. What does it mean that God rested? Was He tired? What was He doing the previous nights? Was He resting then? Does the story itself give us any or enough clues? Yes.
The verb sabat is the root of “sabbath.” It means to cease work, to rest. But again, what is this “rest” for? Recovery? Relaxation? Other?
If rest refers only to the fact that He stopped, it adds nothing to the verse except redundancy with “finished.” Synonyms are more than allowed. “Image” and “likeness” in Genesis 1:26 mostly overlap in meaning. Is there anything more than emphasis in 2:2?
We also know that God did not rest from sustaining the world. “If God should but withdraw His hand a little, all things would immediately perish and dissolve into nothing as is declared in Psalm 104:29” (Calvin 103-4). Jesus told the Jews that His Father is always working (John 5:17) and by that Jesus meant, and assumed His hearers agreed, that God constantly holds all things together. God rested in one way and not another. Again, in what way did He rest?
Nothing in the previous six days suggests that God was stretched by the work, let alone exhausted. He did not rest because He was tired or worn out. He did not need to regain His strength.
The following verse explains that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day because He rested. The rest is celebrated. That rest, therefore, must be more than a siesta.
The task God assigned to man—to subdue the entire earth—requires work. Work is celebrated in days one through six. Yet none of those days are blessed. What makes this rest so special?
The only possible explanation is that this rest, this blessing of day seven, this setting apart an entire day, was a special stop of work to linger and revel in all God’s work. God rested because He was satisfied.
The whole day receives a special place in the week.
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. (verse 3)
Previously God blessed creatures such as the birds and fish (1:22) and then men and women (1:28). Those blessings are connected with power for procreation. But now God blesses a day. That God blessed the seventh day means that He honored it and conferred His favor on it. He assigns special joy to a time.
Not only did He bless the seventh day, but also He made it holy . This is the first time anything is called holy in Scripture. It is the typical word for “set apart,” “sanctified,” “hallowed.” In Genesis 2:3, it must refer to more than moral purity, since unrighteousness hadn’t ruined anything yet. It means, therefore, that the day was special, it was distinguished.
God sets apart the seventh day and makes it especially something devoted to Himself. The day God rested, the day when there was no work to be done except for focus on the Creator, and NOT the day men were created, is blessed and set apart. Man may be the crown of creation but God is the Hero of the story.
The concluding phrase, “there was evening and there was morning” is not found in this paragraph, though the first week is finished as “seventh day” is repeated three times.
There are at least a few implications I believe Moses wants us to understand from the story that he does not explicitly spell out here in Genesis two.
Specifically, the cycle of six days of work and one day of rest is established by God Himself. Every seventh day has been especially set apart for rest.
A bow always strung will break and a man always working will not be an image-bearer, first because without rest he isn’t reflecting God who rested and second because he needs a time to rest to reflect on God.
In Genesis 2:1-3, no formally defined requirement to observe the Sabbath is given. However, Genesis 2:1-3 does clearly demonstrate the principle that was formally ratified for Israel in Exodus 20.
So a question: was Israel already observing the Sabbath by the time Moses wrote Genesis?
Exodus 16:22-30 suggests that, yes, Israel was already observing the Sabbath before the 10 Commandments were given in Exodus 20 and particularly the Fourth Commandment in verses 8-11. While they were in the wilderness, they gathered twice as much manna on the sixth day and on the seventh day there would be none.
This sabbath rest is no more limited to one nation than being made in His image or defining the standard of days and weeks.
Moses will explain that keeping the Sabbath day holy is a part of Israel’s corporate identity. God ratifies the principle of rest as an official law. But from the beginning, one day a week, specifically, the seventh day, was set aside.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)
Taking a day to honor God is a human practice, not just a Jewish one, or even now only a Christian one. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man,” not that the Sabbath was made for Jews. Of course only believers are able to understand the significance, only we understand Who it is that we’re pausing to consider. Genesis two doesn’t establish the Sabbath proper but instead the sabbath principle. The practice itself is part of what it means to be human and part of what we do as image bearers.
The “rest” God delights in is not man’s laziness, “but rather that they, being released from all other business, might the more readily apply their minds to the Creator of the world” (Calvin, 106). We revel as we enjoy, sometimes in a lively and noisy way, all we have from our Creator.
Not only is it right, it is necessary. The emphasis at this point in the story is on God’s rest. But certainly there is immediate application for the image-bearers He created the previous day. Adam and Eve were present on day seven for the first day of rest, and they would have spent the day enjoying God’s creation and enjoying their Maker.
This means image-bearers reflect their God not only by taking dominion, but by stopping their dominion taking at the right time. Men reflect God’s image by resting and reveling directly in God as well as by working for and in imitation of God.
On one hand, setting aside one day out of six is not much. On the other hand, setting aside an entire day every week demonstrates that God is the most important.
”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 ride 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.”
(Isaiah 58:13-14)
As image-bearers, stopping work to revel in God is as important as working in relationship to reflect God. Do you want relationships and responsibilities to be blessed? Rest before God. The cultural mandate has hours of operation, Open six days a week. The other day is not your time to do with what you want.
Adam and Eve enjoyed God through His gifts and then contemplated the Giver. For most of us, we are only coming to enjoy after contemplation. This isn’t necessarily bad, except when it causes us to be suspicious of, or even to prohibit, the enjoyment by our kids until we’re satisfied with their contemplation.
There is too much to revel in to revel in a hurry only. Yeast causes bread to rise as it sits, not by extra kneading of the dough. So a sabbath is fruitful for:
The sabbath is not a burden but a blessing. It was not originally about restrictions but a call to active reflection.
God did not bless the seventh day and make it holy for sake of idleness. It is not a day “of joyless constraint, or irksome penance, but a day of positive happiness to man. The grand scope of its observances, is to bring the creature into nearer communion with the Creator” (Bush, 47).
”When we keep Sabbath by resting from our labors, we acknowledge that our life…is sustained by God. We rest from our labors because we know that our hope is in the Lord, not in our labors.” (R.J. Wilson, Gospel Virtues, quoted in Waltke). The cycle of life, including a day of resting revelry, is a gift from God.