Rest Finishes the Work

How many days did it take God to finish his creation?

Not six, but seven.

Genesis 2:1 tells us that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and yet, Genesis 2:2 says that it was on the “seventh day [that] God finished his work that he had done.”

If everything was made by the sixth day, what was left to finish on the seventh?

“ … and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” (Genesis 2:2)

God finished his work by resting from his work. The work was not finished until it was completed with rest.

Sabbath isn’t what you earn when the work is complete.

Sabbath is what completes the work.

It is the act of dropping the paintbrush that turns the perpetual process of creation into a piece of art.

This is why God didn’t tell Israel to take a “day off” if they finished all of their work. He instituted the Sabbath as a nonnegotiable day of rest, no matter how much progress they made in the first six days (Exodus 20:8).

When God commanded Adam to work the land, he was not assigning a project with a deadline. He was sending him into a perpetual vocation of cultivation (Genesis 2:15).

The work is finished, not by coming to the end of our list, but by entering into God’s rest. Through the Sabbath, we hit “STOP” on our perpetual vocation and enter into the satisfying completion given by God.

“For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” (Hebrews 4:10)

Jesus’ cry on the cross, “It is finished,” is the expansion and reissuing of the Sabbath invitation (John 19:30). Because Christ has completed the necessary work for our souls, we live in the Spirit of the Sabbath seven days a week.