The Seventh Day

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all the work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." (Genesis 2:1-3)

I get a picture, from these passages, of God sitting back and admiring His handiwork. I get a picture of a day that has a hint of celebration in it; perhaps I get that because of the fact that God "sanctified" that day, which seems to make it a special day above all the previous six before it.

All of this tells us a bit more about our Creator. It tells us that He likes to work hard, and it tells us that He enjoys His rest. We are similar in that; thus another clue as to what being made "in His image" entails. We, who are made in His image, are bidden by Him to also rest on the seventh day. We are to work, but then we are to rest. As God rested from all of the work of His own hands, so He commands us, His creation, to also rest from the work of our own hands. For He has made the seventh day holy, set apart, for His own purposes. So are we to do likewise. Only it has not been set apart for our own purposes, but His.

Centuries later, when God chose a people to be called by His name, one of the things that identified them as belonging to HIM, was their observance of this sanctified seventh day. This, among other things, set them apart from all the other people in the land. They themselves were to be sanctified even as this day was sanctified; holy even as He is holy. What, then, does being sanctified mean?

The Hebrew word "qadash" is translated as: to consecrate, to set apart, to make holy, to dedicate, to be hallowed; to regard or treat as sacred or holy. God sanctified the seventh day and made it holy as He is holy; He set that day apart, made it distinct from the previous six, and made it a day in which He rested. Thus He sanctified it for His own use; for His own purposes.

Thus, on the seventh day, people who have been called by His name, who have been set apart for His purpose, observe His desires above their own, and are obedient to not only rest, but to give thanks for His provision, both of work and of rest. They are obedient to keep "holy" the seventh day. Thus, we are identified as worshipping Him as He desires that we worship Him: with our obedience.

Man sometimes wants to take the things of God and turn them into legalities; so that when men gather to worship God on Sundays they do it with a sense of obligation, or of "appearing" to be holy, rather than observing that day in obedience to God with a heart filled with thankfulness and worship. We are to guard against that hypocrisy, for God knows our hearts. He knows in what manner we are gathered together. He calls us to worship Him "in Spirit and in Truth." Anything else is false and unacceptable to God.

But, when our hearts are right, and when we have understanding and knowledge about God, as gathered in bible studies such as this, we understand that the reason we gather has nothing to do with pleasing man, but only with pleasing our GOD.

There is so much to be said about the seventh day, and also about rest. We will consider the word "rest" tomorrow.