Q:
Dear Pastor,
Why did God need to rest on the seventh day of creation?
A:
I see where you’re coming from: How is it possible that the creator of all things, the source of all energy and power, needs a rest? Well of course he doesn’t. The Bible reassures us, “He will never let me stumble, slip, or fall; for he is always watching, never sleeping” (Psalm 121:4, TLB.) If God took a snooze in a hammock, all life as we know it would cease. The sun’s lamp would go out; the atoms holding matter together would dissolve and every heartbeat would instantly silence. Jesus is the creator of all things (John, chapter one), and he holds the whole world in his hands (Psalm 95:4.)
The issue of the seventh day, like most subjects God left for us to understand through his text (the Bible), is all about us. Nearly everything God did and said, as the Bible repeatedly documents so profoundly, is written down for us to see as an illustration and an example. Study the life of Jesus and you’ll see a direct tutorial on spiritual warfare and the evoking of miracles. Study the Book of Acts and the organizational structure of a healthy church will begin to come forth. Using a Bible search-engine (like Biblegateway.com), plug in the phrase “Holy Spirit” and discover an in-depth character study on the third person of the Trinity; the mysterious Holy One we can easily get to know because he was sent to us by Jesus and, for the Christian, lives inside. God wrote and preserved a rich text for us—an owner’s manual on being human. He took the seventh day to rest because he knew we would be reading about it in the Bible. He also knew we would need a day off. God envisioned how our finite minds would reason: “If God needed a day to rest...then I know I do.”
In fact, God understands us so well that he even anticipated our refusal to rest! He surmised we would circumvent his rest-decree on grounds that we think we can handle a seven-day work regimen—that we would keep working right on through and into the next week in order to feel successful, empowered or justified. He anticipated our egos and ridiculous self-sufficiency (or even greed) and how it would lead us to exhaustion. God then created the Sabbath Day and called it “holy” to whoever would listen and value his statement. He chiseled it in stone and made it a holy law: “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 of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you” (Exodus 20:8-10, NASB.)
I adore this about God: the fact that he is aware of our problems, issues and sins. Nothing surprises him, astonishes him or shocks his perception of who we are and how we think. Through the Bible, he left explicit instructions on the mechanics of how to live the wonderful life he longs to give us on the earth. But there’s more: God sent Jesus and appointed to him four meticulous scribes (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) who documented his life. These testimonials now enable us to understand God in every-day life. God became a human so we’d have a living example to watch and learn. All of it...Jesus’ life and ministry...was for our benefit.
God rested one day a week to demonstrate this practice to us. We rest one day a week because we honor his Sabbath day. His love for us, through rest, now becomes our love for him.
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