Pastor Zach's Blog

The Sabbath: More Than Just a Day

June 21, 2021 at 5:15 am 1 comment

One of the interesting features of the creation account comes when God rests from His work on the seventh day:

By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. (Genesis 2:2-3)

This is history’s first Sabbath day, practiced by God Himself. But this seventh day breaks a pattern that is found in days one through six. Each of these days are described as having “evening and morning”:

And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. (Genesis 1:5)

And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day. (Genesis 1:8)

And there was evening, and there was morning – the third day. (Genesis 1:13)

And there was evening, and there was morning – the fourth day. (Genesis 1:19)

And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day. (Genesis 1:23)

And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

On the seventh day, however, there is no “evening and morning.” God simply rests.

Though there is no reason to believe that the seventh day is any different than any of the other six days per se, the break in the pattern seems to indicate that this day is special. There is something more to this day than just a day.

The preacher of Hebrews speaks of this first Sabbath when he says:

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His. (Hebrews 4:9-10)

The preacher of Hebrews seems to be picking up on the broken pattern for the first Sabbath day. Though it may have been just a day, there seems to be something about it that lingered, something about it that transcended evening and morning, something about it that, as the preacher of Hebrews puts it, “remained” right up to the present day.

When God set a pattern of work and rest, He was not just setting a pattern, He was making a promise – a promise that rest does not merely need to be confined to one day between one evening and one morning. This is what the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day forgot. They became so obsessed with keeping the Sabbath day, they forgot that the Sabbath was not just meant to be a day, but a gift for anyone whenever they needed it. As Jesus puts it, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

These past fifteen months have been brutal and exhausting for many people. Summer officially began yesterday. My prayer is that you’ll take advantage of God’s gift of a Sabbath during this season of time off and fun. Get some rest with family and friends. The Sabbath is God’s gift to you. And it remains for you.

It’s a gift worth using.

Entry filed under: Devotional Thoughts. Tags: Command, COVID, Creation, Gift, Promise, Rest, Sabbath, Vacation, Work.