The Sabbath as Rest and Hope for the People of God (eBook)

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Creation

The Bible introduces the Sabbath at its beginning. We first meet the Sabbath in the account of God making heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1–2:3). Strikingly, it is God who, in a sense, observes the first Sabbath (2:3). In this chapter, we are going to look, with the help of the New Testament, at what Genesis says about that Sabbath. We will make the case that God intends all human beings to observe a weekly Sabbath as a day of holy resting. We will then see that the Sabbath is a window into what God intended for the world at its creation. In this respect, the Sabbath is eschatological—that is to say, it points to the goal that God had for creation from the very beginning. Although the fall of humanity into sin appeared to thwart that goal, our fall in Adam actually prepared the way for its fulfillment in the last Adam, Jesus Christ. The Sabbath, then, draws together the great concerns of the Bible—creation, redemption, and the glory of God in Jesus Christ.

God Works, God Rests

In the creation account, God makes the world and everything in it in six days. A seventh day follows that is set apart from the previous six in some important ways. Genesis 2:1–3 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, and 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 that he had done in creation.

These verses conclude the account of God’s creating the world that started in Genesis 1:1.1 We may now look at what they tell us about God and the creation and then further reflect on their message in light of Genesis 1:1–2:3 as a whole.

First, it is clear that the work of creation is completed—verse 1 reads, “the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them” (cf. 1:2, 30). This work was done in six days, so the seventh day will be different. It is not a day of work for God, but rest—verses 2 and 3 say that he “rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” and that “on [the seventh day] God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Though the word “Sabbath” does not appear here, a related word does. The Hebrew verb translated “rested” (shbt) in Genesis 2:2–3 is related to the Hebrew noun translated “Sabbath” (shabbat). There is, therefore, an implicit connection established between God’s rest and what later revelation will call the “Sabbath.”

Further, the beginning of Genesis shows us that this day is set apart from the previous six days in at least two more ways. In the first place, it is a day that “God blessed” (2:3). Earlier, God is said to have “blessed” the birds and the sea creatures and to have “blessed” Adam and Eve at their creation (1:22, 28). In each case that benediction is followed by the command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill” (1:22, 28). Thus, when God blesses the seventh day, our expectation is that this day will be marked by fruitfulness and fullness appropriate to that day.

In the second place, God “made [the seventh day] holy” (2:3). This is the first time in Genesis that God is said to make something “holy,” and it means that this seventh day was deemed different from the other six days. What distinguishes the “holy” seventh day is that it is set apart for purposes of worship.2

The resting in view on this seventh day is therefore a holy resting. To be sure, it is a day marked by the cessation of God’s work in creating the world and everything in it. But that cessation is only the penultimate characteristic of the day. The ultimate characteristic of the day is worship, a worship that is tied to fruitfulness and fullness.

The Sabbath: God’s Ordinance for Human Beings

This observation raises the question, “What kind of worship is in view, and by whom?” The answer of Genesis is, “Humanity’s worship of the God who made them.” Human beings are unique within Genesis 1:1–2:3 as those said to be made after the “image” and “likeness” of God (1:26), after God’s “own image, in the image of God” (1:27). As such, people are uniquely capable among all the creatures mentioned in Genesis 1:1–2:3 of fellowship and communion with God.3 Thus, the worship for which God provides in Genesis 2:1–3 is given so that his image bearers may have fellowship with him. Strikingly, then, “humanity . . . is not the culmination of creation, but rather humanity in Sabbath day communion with God.”4

Genesis 1:1–2:3, in fact, presents a twofold imitation of God on the part of his image bearers. First, God creates human beings to work (1:28–30). In part, people express the image of God as they labor in their various callings. The God who exercises dominion over the works of his hands calls humanity to “have dominion” over the earth and all the animals in it (1:26). The God who fills the world that he has made calls human beings to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (1:28). Thus, humans will exercise dominion as they are faithful to marry and produce offspring (see 2:23–25). But it would be a mistake to say that Genesis 1:1–2:3 conceives no higher human imitation of God than labor. As human beings imitate God at work, so also are they to imitate God at rest. As God made the world and everything in it within the space of six days and rested on the seventh day, so are human beings to engage in six days of labor and one day of holy resting.

In sum, God intends for human beings to imitate his rest by taking the weekly Sabbath to rest from their labors and devote the whole day to his worship. The word translated “bless” (barak) in Genesis 2:3 “is normally restricted to living beings in the [Old Testament] and typically does not apply to something being blessed or sanctified only for God’s sake.”5 Thus, God does not bless the seventh day for his own sake but for humanity’s sake. He is setting apart this one day in seven to be a regular day of rest in the weekly cycle of human existence. He is, in effect, commanding human beings to observe the Sabbath. Further, we have noted above that the word translated “made . . . holy” (qadas) frequently relates to the worship of God in the Old Testament.6 This clarifies that human beings are to observe this seventh day as a day devoted to such worship. As it is dedicated to the worship of God, the Sabbath promises blessing to human beings who comply with this divine command.

Exodus 20:8–11 confirms our findings from Genesis 2:1–3. Here, God draws an explicit parallel between his creating the world in six days but resting the seventh and human beings working six days but resting the seventh. Exodus reads:

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 to the Lord your God. . . . 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.

Thus the basis for the weekly Sabbath, according to Exodus, is God’s resting on the seventh day of Genesis 2:1–3.7 This relationship between God’s resting and the weekly Sabbath is precisely what we have observed in Genesis itself, where this relationship implicitly grounds the Sabbath command as a perpetual ordinance for human beings.

In addition to this confirmation from Exodus, the New Testament provides indirect testimony to the Sabbath as an ordinance for humanity established at the creation. Early in Mark’s Gospel, we read of a series of incidents in which Jesus comes under criticism by the religious authorities (Mark 2:1–3:6). One of these incidents takes place in “grainfields” through which Jesus and his disciples are traveling on the Sabbath (2:23). The Pharisees accuse Jesus of “doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath” (2:24). But he defends his disciples’ activity as proper to the Sabbath day and then proceeds to clarify the true nature of the day. As he does so, he tells the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (2:27). Here, Jesus makes at least three points that bear on our study of Genesis 2:1–3. The first is that the Sabbath is not unique to the Jew, nor is it exclusively intended for any other subset of the human race. Rather, it is something that pertains to human beings as human beings (“man”).8 The second point that Jesus makes is that the Sabbath “was made” for man. The passive voice here points to divine agency—it is God who made the Sabbath for human beings, and thus the Sabbath is a divine ordinance. Third, God instituted the Sabbath as a help to humanity (“for man”). The Sabbath is intended to promote and to further the purposes for which God made human beings. Although Jesus does not explain those purposes or how the Sabbath advances them...