Sermon Tone Analysis

The Seventh Day of Creation is a Day Like No Other

I enjoy sleep.

Do you?

Its quite an odd thing when you think about it.

You and I turn into helpless lumps with our mouths wide open for a recommended eight hour.

We all know that, but did you know that:

12% of people dream in B&W only

1/3 of our lives are spent asleep

The record for going without sleep is 11 days, but this isn’t recommended as people have died from lack of sleep.

Sleep is a great equalizers.

Everyone needs it.

God rests on the seventh day of creation.

Even though God does not sleep—nor does he need sleep—he rested on the seventh day.

It is unlike all the other days, and this is evident for a few reasons: 1) there is no creation occuring on this day; 2) God blesses and makes the day holy; 3) there isn’t a corresponding day.

God rests

God rested.

Verses 2 and 3 each state that God rested: Verse 2 says, “he rested … from all his work,” and verse 3 adds, “[he] rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

Why did God rest?

Certainly not from fatigue.

Omnipotence needs no rest because regardless of the amount of power that goes forth from him, his power is not depleted one whit.

His omnipotent creating power is infinite.

God did not need a breather.

Actually the word “rest” means “to cease from.”

God simply stopped his creating activity.

In fact, though God rested (ceased his creating activity), he still worked.

Jesus said exactly that when he healed a crippled man on the Sabbath: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17).

God rested from creating but works in sustaining the world by his power, governing it by his providence, and insuring the propagation of its creatures.

In fact, if he stopped working, everything would dissolve into nothing.

God’s rest was one of deep pleasure and satisfaction at the fruit of his labor.

This joyous rest of the Creator certainly extended to Adam and Eve in paradise as, in their state of innocence, they lived in blessed peace with their Creator.

And this original rest was the beginning of a type of the rest that was lost at the fall but will be restored through redemption and its final consummation.

God blessed.

God took such pleasure in the seventh day that he blessed it—“So God blessed the seventh day”—which means that he made it spiritually fruitful.

We know that the two preceding blessings in the creation account, first on living creatures and then on Adam and Eve, bestowed fertility because in both instances God said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (1:22, 28).

The meaning here is essentially the same but in the spiritual realm.

“God’s blessing bestows on this special, holy, solemn day a power which makes it fruitful for human existence.

The blessing gives the day, which is a day of rest, the power to stimulate, animate, enrich and give fullness to life.”

The seventh day is one of perpetual spiritual spring—a day of multiplication and fruitfulness.

This would become of great importance and benefit to God’s people.

God made it holy.

So God ceased from his creation labors on the seventh day, pronounced it “blessed” (spiritually life-giving), and then “made it holy.”

The seventh day was the first thing to be hallowed in Scripture.

It was therefore elevated above the other days and set apart for God himself.

This blessed and holy day has no end.

There is no morning and evening.

It has existed from the completion of creation and still is.

God still rests after the great event.

Why did God rest?

It wasn’t because of fatigue.

The word rest means “to cease from”.

God ceased in creative action, but he words even to this day.

says: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” when Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath.

My Father is working until now, and I am working

God’s rest was one of deep pleasure and satisfaction at the fruit of his labor.

This joyous rest of the Creator certainly extended to Adam and Eve in paradise as, in their state of innocence, they lived in blessed peace with their Creator.

And this original rest was the beginning of a type of the rest that was lost at the fall but will be restored through redemption and its final consummation.

R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 43.

God blessed

God blessed animals and Adam and Even, and yet he also blessed this day.

The blessing to animals and humanity was one for fertility and life.

The blessing of the seventh day is essentially the same, but with a spiritual emphasis.

The blessing of rest is by which God stimulates, recharges, enriches, and gives fullness to life.

God made it holy

The seventh day is set apart and above all the other days.

To make something holy is to set it apart for a specific use.

Sabbath Rest Throughout the Old Testament

For the Israelites, the seventh day, the Sabbath was one of complete rest.

Work was forbidden.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 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.

11 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.

The rest was a covenant sign and celebration.

Sabbath as a Covenant Sign

The Sabbath and its ritual observance became the preeminent sign of God’s covenant with Israel.

After the tabernacle was built, the Sabbath was regarded as the sign of the covenant between God and his people: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, “Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you” ’ ” (, ).

And again, “The people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever.

It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel” (31:16, 17a).

No other people had the Sabbath.

None but Israel had this blessed law, enforced by the gracious threat of death should one fail to keep it.

God meant them to be his people.

So the Sabbath persisted through the centuries as a covenantal sign and grace for God’s people.

[1] R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 45.

Sabbath as a Celebration

To this day, Sabbath is —despite what we see as hard regulations

The Sabbath was also a day to remember and celebrate redemption.

In Deuteronomy’s extended version of the Fourth Commandment, Moses adds, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (5:15).

In Egypt Israel had been cruelly overworked, even forced to make bricks without straw.

And Pharaoh only let them go when God wrought his mighty deliverance at the Passover.

With their redemption from Egypt came the rest that had not been theirs for hundreds of years.

So on the Sabbath, as they rested, they were to reflect on their miraculous redemption.

These two versions of the Fourth Commandment give the twofold meaning of the seventh day for Israel: 1) the celebration of God as Creator, and 2) the celebration of God as Redeemer.

The Sabbath’s purpose was to grace God’s people—to grace their bodies with the rest of the Genesis rhythm and to grace their souls with Heaven’s rhythm, providing Israel with respite from their labors so they could focus on God and gratefully celebrate him as their Creator and Redeemer.

[1] R. Kent Hughes, Genesis: Beginning and Blessing, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 44.

Christ, Our Sabbath

Present rest.

Since the “seventh day” has no closing refrain—no “And there was evening and there was morning”—the seventh day has no end and is eternal.

And this Sabbath rest is taken up in the New Testament and interpreted in the context of Jesus as one greater than Moses.