In it He rested from all His work: Though God rested on the seventh day of creation, He did not institute the Sabbath or show us His rest for His own sake. In our modern world of four or five-day workweeks and generous vacation time, surely more “leisure time” can be given to the work of the LORD.Ĭ. “He who idles his time away in the six days is equally culpable in the sight of God as he who works on the seventh” (Clarke). But we are also commanded to work six days. Though we are free from the legal obligation of the Sabbath, we dare not ignore the importance of a day of rest. Yet Christians do not lose the Sabbath every day is a day of rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:16-17 and Galatians 4:9-11 make it clear that Christians are not under obligation to observe the Sabbath today because Jesus fulfilled the purpose and plan of the Sabbath for us and in us (Hebrews 4:9-11). God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: God sanctified the seventh day because it was a gift to man for rest and replenishment, and most of all because the Sabbath is a shadow of the rest available through the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are on a seven-day cycle because God is on a seven-day cycle.ī. Though some through history tried to change the seven-day week (a ten-day week was attempted during the French Revolution), those attempts have come to nothing.

The seven-day week is permanently ingrained in man. He rested to show His creating work was done, to give a pattern to man regarding the structure of time (in seven-day weeks), and to give an example of the blessing of rest to man on the seventh day. And He rested on the seventh day: God did not need rest on the seventh day because He was tired. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.Ī. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.

Shadows of Eden by Timothy F. Bone