Resting in Sustenance
Notes
Transcript
Genesis 2:1-3 ESV
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 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. 3 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.
We have spent a lot of time in the New Testament lately. In fact, we spent the entire winter in the New Testament, spending every week working through the narrative of the birth of Christ in the Gospel of Luke in December, and then working through the narrative surrounding the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew in the weeks leading up to Easter.
Thus, I figured that everyone was ready for us to switch back to working through the Old Testament. And in fact, that is what we are going to be doing for the foreseeable future as the next two series’ of sermons that we will be working through will be from the Old Testament.
And I figured that here in the first of our two series, which, by the way, will be the longer of the two series, that we could go way back, that we could go real Old Testament and study some material from the very beginning, from the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis, looking carefully at every verse in chapters two and three of the book.
Those events which we will look at are events that I am sure all of us are very well aware of, especially those events found in chapter three when we will look at the fall of man into sin; but for now, in chapter two, we are going to be looking at God’s special relation that He holds with His creation.
And indeed, God does hold a very special relation with His creation. You see, while many view God as far, distant, removed from His creation, the opposite is true.
Yes, God is extremely interested in His creation, He is not far removed, letting that which He has created do its own thing while He just kind of passively observes and supervises.
No, God is extremely involved with His creation, actively sustaining, and governing it, ensuring that His glory is accomplished through it and that His purposes always come to pass in every realm of that which He has created.
And in our reading for today we see the great interest that God has for that which He has created as we observe Him blessing His creation with a very peculiar blessing.
We begin our reading for today and this exposition of the second and third chapters of the book of Genesis by looking at the first verse of this second chapter, which reads:
Genesis 2:1 ESV
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
This chapter begins with the word “thus”, which signifies a result or consequence of something, or, even better in this context, it is used to introduce a logical conclusion. Thus, the word “thus” signifies a conclusion to what was said before it.
Now, we are in the first verse of the second chapter, therefore in order for us to understand the “thusness” of what is being said here, we need to look back to the first chapter of this book.
Chapter one, as I’m sure all of us know, speaks of God’s intention to create, which is then made manifest in Him creating. “In the beginning” the first verse of the Bible tells us “God created the heavens and the earth”.
And then the rest of that chapter proceeds to tell us how God, in the span of six days, created everything that is created. Then that chapter ends by saying that after God had finished creating on the sixth day that He saw everything that He had made, and it was very good.
Now, with that information going in, we come to the first verse in the second chapter which tells us “thus” or, “in conclusion” “the heavens and earth were finished”.
Now, we mentioned last week as we were concluding our extended Easter series that when the Bible mentions the heavens and the earth that it signifies everything that there is. Thus, we speak here of everything that there is.
But another interesting word that we see in this verse is the word “finished”. The heavens and the earth and all the host of them, everything that there is and everything that is in it, our text says was “finished”.
What this signifies is that the heavens and the earth and all the host of them, everything that there is, was fully made and thus were expanded or created no further. The act of creating was over, from this point on, anything that comes, comes because it has been reproduced by that which has been created.
Now, in the course of history, this was a very big deal. It signified the end of something and the beginning of something else, and we see this highlighted in verse 2, which reads:
Genesis 2:2 ESV
2 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.
Now, some of those who try to dispute God creating the heavens and the earth in six days will try to use this verse as a supposed proof that it took God seven days, rather than six to create.
They say that when they look at a verse like this which reads “on the seventh day God finished” that it refers to God still actively creating and that He thus had not finished His work of creating until after He had created some more on the seventh day.
And the Bible translation that I use, the ESV, is my favorite Bible translation, but Bible translations like the ESV, the King James, the New King James of this verse do almost make it sound like God is still working at creating on the seventh day.
Now, that is most certainly not what the translators of those specific translations mean to convey, but it almost sounds like it. For that reason, I prefer other translations like the NASB when it comes to this verse, where, instead of saying “on the seventh day God finished His work”, it says, “By the seventh day God completed His work”. These say the same thing, but they do sound quite different.
But the point is that by the time that the seventh day had come, God had created everything, He had created the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them. Because that was the case, our text says that God “rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done”.
Now, this rest that is spoken of is not in reference to God needing rest because He was somehow fatigued. It’s not like God said, “Wow! That was hard! I’m glad it’s over! Now, time for a nap!” Obviously, God does not get fatigued.
Neither does God rest on the seventh day to give us an example to live by. It’s not like God was trying to show us how it’s done by saying, “Look, don’t work every day, take a day off. I’ll show you how by Me taking a day off Myself”. No, God doesn’t take days off.
No, what this rest indicates is that on the seventh day, God had ceased creating. He had created no more.
But like I said, God never stops working. You know, you and I may do that, we may work really hard on something and then rest, sit back, and enjoy whatever it is that we worked really hard for.
Which there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the fruit of your labors, but God isn’t like us.
But like I said earlier on in this message, some people actually do believe that God is like us. Some people believe that God worked to create the heavens and the earth and all the host of them and now sits back and leaves the maintenance of His creation to us, as though we have that kind of power.
But like I also said earlier, contrary to that false line of reasoning is the reality that God is extremely interested in His creation, and that interest is shown in actively, sovereignly governing and maintaining His creation.
In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel, we read of how Jesus healed a man who had some kind of physical infirmity at the Pool Bethesda, and how He had done so on the Sabbath. When some Jews had confronted Jesus over the matter, they said that He had broken the Law of Moses by healing, and thus working on the Sabbath.
But the response that Jesus gave them was one that absolutely infuriated them when He said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working”.
And the reason why that statement infuriated them so much is because while people need to cease from their labor, God does not, indeed, He cannot. Thus, Jesus in a roundabout way said, “God never stops working and I am God, therefore, I am not going to stop working”.
You see, God may have ceased from His creating work on the seventh day, but since then God has worked to sustain His creation and to redeem His elect portion.
God has never ceased, or rested from His work, for the work of God is to be God and thus for God to cease from His work means to cease being God, which God cannot do. Rather, on the seventh day, God ceased His work of creating and since then He has worked to sustain and govern what He has created.
Now, this is actually a very big deal. That on this particular day God had ceased creating and began sustaining and maintaining is a very monumental thing. It was for this reason that God specially marked out the seventh day, and we see God marking out this day in the last verse from our reading, verse 3, which says:
Genesis 2:3 ESV
3 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.
We start this verse with the word “so” which, like the word “thus” back in the first verse of our reading speaks of a conclusion; but here it speaks of a result which comes from that which was previously spoken of.
So, because God had ceased creating on the seventh day, our reading tells us, that because this was the case, God “blessed the seventh day”.
Now, when God blesses something or someone that means that God actively favors that thing or person and does so in a noticeable way. But even more than that is that the recipients of God’s blessings receive His blessing freely.
What this means is that God is under no constraint to favor this person or this thing as if He is obligated to do so because it met a certain condition and now God gives this person or this thing what He owes it. But rather, God blesses what and whom He wills to bless because it is His good pleasure to bless.
It's not as though God said, “Well it took me six days to create everything, so now I am obligated to favor the seventh day”. If God wanted to, He could have created everything in a single day, or in an hour, or in a second. But God had willed to create in six days and to bless the seventh day in accordance with His own good pleasure and that alone.
Thus, God blessed the seventh day in accordance with His own good pleasure and in so doing, He declared it to be the special object of divine favor and a blessing for His creation.
And as God blessed the seventh day, He then made the seventh day “holy”. Herein we see the particulars surrounding how God had blessed the seventh day: God blessed the seventh day by making it “holy”.
For something to be holy it means that that thing has been set apart by God for His own purposes. And as God created on days one through six, now we see the seventh day as being different from days one through six as God now makes the shift to focusing solely on sustaining that which He created.
What makes the seventh day holy is that God had willed to make that day holy. Once again, God is never under any obligation to anything whatsoever. He does what He does because that is what He wants to do.
In other words, just because it was on the seventh day that God willed to shift to sustaining His creation from the actual act of creation, that did not mean that God was obligated to make that day holy. No, God made the seventh day holy simply because He wanted to make it holy.
And what that seventh day serves as a reminder of is that God is benevolent, that God cares for what He has created, that God uses what He has created for His own glory. What it reminds us of is that He is all that we will ever need, both now and for all eternity.
And even now, for us thousands of years after this, for we who have been fortunate enough to live in this era where God has given us His full revelation through His Son Christ Jesus do we recognize and celebrate the full provision that God gives to us not only materially, but also spiritually.
As we come to the Lord’s table, what we celebrate is that God has given His elect people full sustenance through the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.