When God Rested: The Joy of Creation and the Sabbath

Okay, verse 1 of chapter 2 reads, 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. 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 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. 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. A mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. And 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. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east 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, so two trees in the middle. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, oh I should say. There's a bit of an ominous note isn't there in the previous verse. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And then the story just presumes creation. The story of creation just continues to unfold. No comment, just that ominous word evil. We don't know what it's doing there.

And we don't know how evil or the possibility of evil has ended up in creation. Everything's been good so far. There's a short story, famous short story writer Anton Chekhov, who famously said that if you have a gun on the table in Act 1, it needs to have gone off by at least Act 4. This is the equivalent of the gun on the table. We know that this is where something's going to go wrong. All right, but no comment yet. A river flowed out of Eden to the water of the garden and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Paishon. It's the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah and where there is gold. The gold of that land is good. The delium and onyx stone are there. Lots of details and we don't always know what the world these details are all about. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It's

the one that flowed around the whole land of Kush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. Now we're familiar with a couple of these rivers. They still exist today. The Tigris, the Euphrates. The river Gihon doesn't seem to exist anymore, but there is a spring. Just outside the walls of modern-day Jerusalem that has for the last at least 3,000 years been called the Gihon Spring. I've been there. I've drank water from it. The water from that well flows into the tunnel that Hezekiah dug out. So in some way I would imagine that the author wanted us to remember the Gihon Spring that's outside of Jerusalem. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of

the knowledge of good and evil. You shall not eat from the day that you eat of it. You shall surely die. Now everything again up to this point has been life springing out of non-existence. Life, life, life, multiplication, life, life, life, life. And then there's that word evil just a few verses ago. And then a reference back to it. Don't eat this or you'll die. That is, you'll go back to the non-existence in some sense the darkness out of which you came. Then the Lord God said, It's not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its names. You have to imagine all of the animals of the earth that God has just

created lining up maybe single file, each individual representative being a representative of that species. And so tiger, lion, dog, and so forth. All right, so there they all are. And then this curious statement. But for Adam, there was not a helper fit for him. Okay, so God has this, he has this concern. Adam stands alone apart from all of creation. And so we need a helper for him, somebody that is his companion, that can be his companion. And so all of the animals lined up by species before him to be named by him. And he gets to know them and based upon his knowledge of them, he gives them a name. And you have to, it seems, imagine that in his understanding of each of these animals he was not able to find any kind of companion. And so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up

its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. I'm reminded right there of that scene in Shakespeare's The Tempest. A girl who's been raised by her father on a stranded island, never having seen anybody besides her father. One day a ship wrecks out on the sea and the survivor swim to shore on that lonely island. And the girl Miranda who's grown up on that island, having never seen another human being before, is hiding behind a tree and she sees a young, very handsome man come out of the waters and start walking around and she says, Oh brave new world that has such creatures in it. Only here it's Adam. On this island of existence having no companion, nothing, no one, none of the creatures to talk to, sees a woman that the Lord is bringing before him. And I can only imagine his thoughts. Then

the man said, It's not quite, oh brave new world that has such creatures in it, but it's close, it might be even better. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. It's a little bit stilted in English. The word man is the Hebrew word Adam or rather Adam. And the dust of the earth, the clay of the earth in Hebrew is the word Adam. So there's this correlation between the word Adam and that out of which Adam was made Adam. He was literally a dustling, a clayling, something made out of clay. And because she was taken out of Adam, but man himself was taken out of Adam. He was taken out of the clay and she's taken out of Adam. So it makes perfect sense in Hebrew. It's a little bit maybe wooden in English. Verse 24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his

mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. There's so much that we could talk about here. There are so many points that I feel torn in moving away from them. The nakedness without shame, the two becoming one flesh. The idea that mankind was made with reproductive abilities before the fall. That's been a point of controversy over the last few thousand years. But for the purposes of this particular Bible study, I want to focus really on the first couple of verses. The heavens were finished and all the host of them. There's that word finished. Really, really important and we'll circle back to that. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work. And he blessed the seventh day and made it holy. I want to focus on a couple of things

from these first few verses in chapter 2. First, I want to draw your attention to God's joyful rest on the seventh day, the Sabbath day. And then secondly, the blessing that he gives the seventh day. I might not get to the second aspect. It just depends on how the first part goes. Okay, focusing on God's joyful rest. Each day, God has said, let there be. Notice that he didn't command. He didn't say there must be. Instead, let there is an invitation. It's as if God is inviting what he creates to participate in creation. And then when creation responds, he compliments it with his highest compliment. He uses the word tov. It's good. Tov. It's tov. And the word good or tov is one of the two poles that really the entire book of Genesis, books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, revolve around good and evil. Tov and raw. Tov and raw. And so right here, he gives the highest compliment after he

creates something he calls it tov. And then he goes a step further and creates creatures who can themselves create after their own kind and take joy in their creations. Be fruitful and multiply, he says. Enjoy your existence. Let there be more of you. And God beams down upon his creation at the end of the sixth day. And then there comes the kind of rest you only know after a season of hard work, intricate care, the burden of an unrealized beauty. Once that which only your imagination could see now stands in front of you. As real as you, every bit is beautiful or more than you imagined. That kind of rest is what's being mentioned here. His rest is not the rest of total exhaustion. It's the rest of joy and peace. There are other places in scripture that speak of the days of creation. And I want to draw your attention to these. I want you to notice the joyfulness of God's creation,

the joy that God felt in creation. Really all of the heavenly host felt with creation. In Proverbs chapter 8, there's a beautiful meditation upon the joy of creation. And the text says, Before the mountains had been shaped before the hills, I, that is God's wisdom, I was brought forth. Before he had made the earth with its fields or the first of the dusts of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there. When he drew a circle on the face of the deep. When he had made firm the skies above. When he had established the fountains of the deep. When he assigned to the sea its limit. So that the waters might not transgress his command. When he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was beside him like a master workman. And listen to this, I daily was his delight. Rejoicing before him always. Rejoicing in his inhabited world. And delighting in the children of man. This is God's

attitude towards creation. Daily his delight. Rejoicing in it always. Rejoicing in this world. And delighting in the children of man or the creation of human beings. Then in the book of Job, there's beautiful poetry. When God is asking Job, where was he when God created everything? And then he asks these rhetorical questions. Has the rain a father? Who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth? Who has given birth to the frosts of heaven? The waters became hard like stone. In the face of the deep was frozen. Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? That's one of the constellations up there. Or loose the cords of Orion. Job, you're this little human being. Imagine trying to lasso. Orion. I spoke all of that into existence and rejoiced when I did. And then he goes on, do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane? Do you make him leap like

the locust? His majestic snorting is terrifying. He paws in the valley and exalts in his strength. He goes out to meet the weapons of war. He laughs at fear and is not dismayed. The horse doesn't turn his back from the sword. Upon him rattled the quiver, the flashing spear and the javelin, yet he runs on. With fierceness and rage, he swallows the ground before him. Ahmed, I've never outside of scripture seen a poetic image use so well, a metaphor like that. He swallows the ground before him. He can't stand still when he hears the sound of the war trumpet. And when that trumpet sounds, he says, aha! He smells the battle from afar, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. I mean, it's not like God just said, here's a horse. He contemplated it. I want a creature who looks upon danger and laughs. I mean, we're all, you know, we see a beautiful horse and look on its, consider its characteristics,

its qualities. And then we write poetry about horses. But God has this like poetic idea and then brings it into existence. I want that. All right, so one other portion in Job, listen to this. Where were you Job when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched the line upon it? Or what were its bases sunk? Who laid its cornerstone? When the morning star sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Where were you? Morning stars is a poetic reference to the angels. And then sons of God is, of course, a more explicit reference to the angels. In other words, you have to imagine that as God is creating each thing, there is, there is almost, you're almost imagining a stadium full of the highest creatures in existence, angels outside of God, the highest, most beautiful and powerful intelligent creatures, the angels, a stadium full of

them and they're watching God destroy darkness, ending the emptiness, filling it up, filling up creation, this universe with these stunning marvels and the angels with their hands over their mouths, as it was as it were, just at times just stunned into silence and then at other times shouting for joy, shouting for joy. That's the joyful, that's the joy that God took in creation. When I think about this joyfulness at the end of creation, I'm reminded of something that G.K. Chesterton said in his book called Orthodoxy. He said something, he was speaking to human beings and we tend to get over familiar with marvelous things and we get bored with them. We can watch, if we watch too many days in a row something that once took our breath away, we find ourselves at the end of it maybe shrugging our shoulders at a miracle and he says, he says, God never gets bored with his creation. Never, because he keeps on recreating the

world new every day. He does it again every single day and then he says, have you ever given a ride, a piggyback ride to a child about a two or three year old child? Get down on all fours and you go as a piggyback and the child is giggling, laughing up there and then you're totally exhausted and then you ask the child to please get down but what does the child say every single time? Do it again, do it again and so you try to oblige a couple of times but then you're 40 and 50 years old and you can't take much more and you just wish somehow this child would get bored with this and you try to make it as boring as possible but the child keeps on like a heavy taskmaster, do it again, do it again, do it again. Chesterton said, that's God every single day for how many eons has the sun rose in the east and then

set in the west and God each and every day can't seem to get enough of the glory of the sun rising in the east and so does he say I think I'm going to change it up today let's have it rise in the west and set in the east I'm getting kind of bored, let's shake things up no, do it again do it again, just do it the same exact way that you did it yesterday and a million, million, million days ago do it again and every spring comes and the flowers bloom and the little birds climb out of their eggs and does God one spring say let's reverse the whole process let's invent something new no, he doesn't invent anything new he reached perfection in creation and he says every spring as he has for thousands and thousands of years do it again and we shrug our shoulders at such marvels because we are older than our father and have God creates

out of an overflow of delight and joy he takes great pride in his creation sometimes we treat creation like it doesn't matter much we do have songs, for instance this world is not my home I'm just passing through my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue and you know we're imagining I like the spirit of the song but there's one distasteful side effect of it first of all we think heaven is out there we're gonna soar up there and stay forever up above the stars with God but that's the opposite of what the scripture says is going to happen is our destiny heaven descends down upon the earth thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven that's the last chapter the last two chapters of the bible heaven descends down upon the earth and that's where we spend the rest of our eternity is in a redeemed world God loves this creation God takes great pride

and joy in the creation of the sun the moon and the stars he takes great pride and joy in the ingenuity of your eye in your brain and your body he takes great pride and joy in the ocean the great sea monsters that swim through it and sometimes we just shrug our shoulders at these things I've said it before we'll say it again imagine one day that we woke up and found out that the wind was purple the wind was purple wouldn't we all bring our rocking chairs out on the deck and invite everybody we possibly could to come out and watch the wind as it whips through the trees this purple stream and look at all the varieties of purple that emerge from this course but because the wind is clear and you can't see it but you can hear it and you can feel it because it has invisible fingers that wrap around trees and make noises around the corners because

the wind is there but we can't see it it is colorless that seems to me even more fascinating than the wind being purple shrug our shoulders, yawn and go back inside and invite no one I want to have the capacity every day for surprise to look upon the miracle of creation and say like the psalmist said long ago oh lord, our lord how excellent is thy name in all the earth amen sometimes out of our, you know in our boredom we might maybe we concoct fairy tales which I like fairy tales but a fairy tale is this kind of imaginary world and you can do all kinds of things with an imaginary world you could turn, you could make in this imaginary world the wind purple and you could make up down and down up and you could do all kinds of things all kinds of crazy and wonderful things you can have a girl that she married fairy godmother blesses her and

she wears a beautiful dress and she goes with the ball and the prince falls in love with her but then everything turns back into a pumpkin at midnight and she runs away or you can have a prince that comes and wakes up the sleeping beauty with a magical kiss a rose that's somehow attached to the life of the child when the last petal falls something awful happens you can invent those kinds of worlds and when we're children we might for a little while believe in them but we pass a certain point and we stop believing in those kinds of those kinds of fairy tale accounts we even kind of condescendingly use the term fairy tale and equate it with something that's impossible and stupid maybe but just think about our world for just a minute think about it think about it think about it think about a child who has just heard the story of Cinderella and then let's say he happens to

ask dad or mom how are babies made how are babies born and then we try some kind of euphemism you know we hardly know what to say and you expecting mothers and fathers it's gonna come this question's gonna come more quickly than you imagined it's gonna come someday and you gotta figure out some way to answer this question usually it's in the form of euphemism you might say something like well mom and dad love each other and then the child poof into existence if you truly explained how the child came into existence that would be even more strange utterly strange than any fairy tale the child has ever heard that's the world we live in it's stranger than any fairy tale stubbornly persistently strange don't go to sleep on it open your eyes every day take joy in the life that God has given you we live in the fairy tale what did the poet say 100 years ago or so if trees

were tall and grasses short as in some crazy tale if here and there a sea were blue beyond the breaking pale if deep green hair grew on great hills if a fixed fire hung in the air to warm me warm me just one day through I know exactly what I should do but in darkness I lie speaking of the unborn child but in darkness I lie dreaming that there are great eyes cold or kind and twisted streets and silent doors and living men behind let storm clouds blow better to leave, weep and fight than all the ages I have spent in the empires of this endless night I think that if they should give me leave within that world to stand I would be good for all the day I got to spend in such a fairyland they should not hear from me a single word of selfishness or scorn if only I could find the door if only I were born and

it was good and it was good so God takes his rest on the seventh day the first creation account makes a point of featuring the number 7 and I apologize somewhat of a hard segue into the next point but I have to hurry my time is coming to a close God takes his rest on the seventh day the first creation account which is Genesis 1 1 through 2 verse 4 so don't think that chapter 1 is the first creation account and then we start all over new in chapter 2 or we kind of create a continuation of the story the first creation account actually takes up the whole first chapter and the first four verses of the second chapter and then a second telling of the creation begins and this time it's in more detail it's almost slow motion it's really it's focusing upon particularly the relationship between man and woman the first creation account features the number 7 repeatedly there are 7

words in the first verse in Hebrew not in English 14 words in the second verse God is mentioned 35 times which is 7 times 5 and the earth is mentioned 21 times 7 times 3 and the heavens are firmament that's one word in Hebrew Shama'im it's mentioned 21 times 7 times 3 and then the text says and God said that it is good that happens 7 times okay so there's an orderliness to to creation 7 being the number that's equated with perfection and the completed work of God alright now God took his rest on the 7th day so I would argue as many have you know for a long time that the 7 day week is based not upon other phenomena but upon strictly this text here in Genesis for instance our year 365 days is derived from the course of the sun the time it takes the earth to make a full orbit around the sun 365 days so we get our

year it's derived on the basis of the circle of the earth around the sun alright our four seasons are determined by the four constellations the four cardinal constellations that appear in the four seasons of the year so you have your four cardinal constellations Leo, Taurus, Scorpio and Aquarius when one of them appears that means it's spring when another one appears in the night sky that means it's summer fall when another winter so we have our four seasons based upon the appearance of those constellations our month is derived 30 days approximately is derived from the changing face of the moon so you have waxing and waning from the thin crescent moon all the way to the full moon that takes 30 days so we get our month based upon the moon we get our seasons based upon the constellations we get our year based upon the course of the earth around the sun or the movement of the sun and the sky where do

we get our week upon what heavenly body do we base our week well there is no basis for it out there it's purely derived from the Hebrew religious tradition of creation for instance not all cultures in the world had seven day weeks the romans had an eight day week ancient romans they had dais solis dais lune dais martis dais mercury dais jovis the neris and saturn those eight days that was their week the greeks had a ten day week a merah elio selenus aerios hermu deos afrodite and cronun that's the ten day week of the ancient greeks ancient japan each month had three ten day periods jojun chujun and jejun alright the french tried to do away with the seven day week because they thought it was too jewish and christian and so they were trying to set up a entirely secular government and they went back to a ten day week oh i forgot to mention japan didn't adopt the seven day

week in any of their culture until about the ninth century after christ when some travelers from china came and brought the idea and they seemed to have derived it from christian missionaries japan adopted it officially their emperor adopted it in 1873 so not all cultures have a seven day week it's very unique to the influence of the book of genesis ancient israel created the concept of the week based upon this genesis one account of creation and moses taught that god's fourth commandment was remember the sabbath day and keep it holy six days you shall work and do all your work but the seventh day is a sabbath to the lord your god let me make a couple notes real quick before i keep on reading this commandment six days shall you work and the seventh day rest we do tend to emphasize that seventh day rest rest god commanded you to rest but you notice that god is also commanding you to work

six days shall you work get all your work done in the seventh day rest alright so that commandment actually contains two sides work and rest on the sabbath day you shall not do work you or your son your daughter or your servants your livestock or the guest who's within your gates for in six days the lord made heaven and earth and sea and all that's in them and rested on the seventh day therefore the lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy this commandment seems to have curbed the human tendency to act as if we are determining our own life in the world taking a day off it's an acknowledgement that we were created it's an invitation to reflect every week upon our createdness remember your creator in the days of your youth remember that you are a creation Israel came out of slavery they would have worked every single day of the week they wouldn't have had a day off but

when they're set free God institutes a day of rest for Israel by New Testament times though there had so many restrictions grown up around the sabbath day placed on the sabbath that it became what seems to be the most anxious day of the week it was supposed to be a restful day but by the time you look at the life of Jesus and the people that are practicing the sabbath around them this is a day where everyone is very anxious so it its purpose seems to have been lost in some Jewish circles during this time some of the prohibitions around the sabbath where you're not allowed to light a candle or put one out you're not allowed to throw anything into a fire to be burned nothing can be built on the sabbath day but neither can anything be torn down there's no carrying of anything from place to place even as we see in the book of John even if Jesus commanded

you to carry your sickbed no journey of more than a half a mile was allowed no attempts at being healed there was also there was no sexual activity that was allowed on the sabbath and there was also curiously no allowance for writing or erasing I had a a Jewish acquaintance once and we just had some discussions about sabbath day restrictions and he told me that his family didn't drive cars on Saturday and the reason was was because in order to turn the key turn on the engine you have to create a spark that means creating a fire and that was restricted you can't create a fire so you can't turn on a car but he said but they made exceptions for emergencies for instance if an ambulance needs to come pick you up that takes precedence over the no fire commandment and so what he did personally to assuage his conscience because he drove every Saturday was to say that every Saturday was

an emergency and then he also had another work around for that commandment not to carry anything so his family taught him you're not allowed to have keys in your in your pockets nothing in your pockets don't carry anything with you no keys no wallet and he said I asked him how do you get around that and you're driving do you keep the keys in the car he said no you are allowed according to the teachings of our rabbi you are allowed to carry your clothing okay so you don't walk around naked that seems reasonable so make the key to the car a part of your clothing by using it as a clip on part of the tie so his tie had a clip on and he clipped on his key to his tie so it became part of his clothing anyway Jesus and the apostles understood the Old Testament teachings on the Sabbath in the same way they regarded Old Testament teachings on

blood sacrifice and priests and the tabernacle as a shadow of things to come a shadow meaning it's not the true rest the true Sabbath it's a sign pointing towards the true Sabbath it's a Colossians chapter 2 Paul says therefore let no one pass judgment on you and questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath these are a shadow of the things to come but the substance belongs to Christ and then the book of Hebrews goes on to say that the ultimate rest that God intended could not have been just instructions on what not to do on Saturday but was a sign pointing towards a true rest so he quotes Psalm 95 today if you hear God's voice do not harden your heart as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years therefore I was provoked

with that generation and said they always go astray in their hearts they have not known my ways as I swore in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest so what the author of Hebrews is looking at there he's saying if the Sabbath rest that the 10 commandments mentioned only referred to what not to do on Saturday why is the writer in Psalm saying that these people didn't enter into God's rest if rest just means don't do anything on Saturday why is the psalmist saying they didn't enter into my rest in fact these people died in the wilderness so the author of Hebrews goes on to say let us strive to enter into that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword piercing to the vision of soul and spirit, joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart

no creatures hidden from his sight were all naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account in other words the rest must have been pointing towards something that you couldn't just do on Saturdays it was pointing towards a more ultimate form of rest what was that rest well if you think about our situation and I have to do this very very quickly our situation is human beings are very performance driven we constantly seek approval not just from others but also there's a conscience and we can get caught in this rat race of on our own power trying to be good enough good enough for people, good enough for God constantly driven by this performance the Sabbath that the command was pointing towards was the true rest from all of those labors we would receive not our righteousness not on our own works but by the work of God it's pointing the Sabbath rest of the Old Testament

is pointing towards the end of God's work God's work in the new creation ends when Jesus says on the cross it is finished what was Jesus referring to there he's referring back to the texts that we read for our scripture text Genesis chapter 2 and when God finished his creation so Jesus is thousands of years later saying it is finished what is finished the new creation all of the creation that was going to be wrought by his sacrifice it was done it was over with he had done all of the work now human beings people could enter into the true rest all of the Sabbaths creation until Calvary we're all pointing to the true rest that the believer has in Christ we no longer have to be approved by our own work in the eyes of God we are made righteous in the eyes of God by the work that Jesus has done so a set of Jesus when he ascended into heaven

he sat down at the right hand of majesty he's entering into the rest and then remember Jesus said come unto me all you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest my yoke is easy my burden is light alright so there's two things take joy in the creation of God and find your rest in Jesus he's created he's made all things new be a new creature in Christ every day every day wake up and give God thanks for his creation don't take it for granted every day and then also ultimately though the world won't be enough for you you're only going to find your truest rest in the righteousness that Jesus gives you alright I want to pray and then we'll do some questions we only have five minutes though because I went too long Jesus thank you for your word thank you for this creation that you've given us it's fallen and there are many many terrible things

and many tragedies and sad things in this world but I pray that that would not obscure the creation and the joy that you took in it I pray that we would be reminded of your faithfulness by creation that we would be reminded of your mercy by creation Lord that we would not give up on this world that we would fight for it that we would fight for your righteousness your goodness your peace your joy in Jesus name thank you for the rest that we find in you in your righteousness Amen