The Pharisees loaded the Sabbath with untold stupid laws and turned it into a day of fear and misery. Jesus now recovers it. For he is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the God of the seven days of creation. He was the one who created the world and who rested on the Seventh Day.

My good friend has a heart problem. Sometimes it races uncontrollably, and dangerously. He’s a very busy man, with lots of plates in the air. The doctor says he has to slow down: “There needs to be time each day when you end up saying to yourself, ‘What shall I do now?’” Times of boredom are highly recommended. Does he ever find such times? I doubt it.

Our pace of life is frantic, perhaps especially if you have some kids running around. And then there’s our mind. There’s a three-ring circus going on up there: action, anguish, anger, drama, dismay, debate, and more action. “When I lay me down to sleep” is exactly when the circus of the mind is unmasked, “with inward furies blasted.” It can take a while to find sleep, and when you wake in the night, it begins again.

Whenever do we find rest for our bodies and minds? Rest from our worries? Rest from our financial obligations and strains? Rest from relationship clouds and puzzles? Above all, rest from sin? From relentless nagging temptation? From failure? From guilt and shame? When will we be able to look at one another with a placid conscience? When will we be able to look full into the awful and holy face of God without flinching with the shame and guilt of a sin-stained soul?

Rest is right here. Right here in the first three verses of the second chapter of Genesis.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. (Gen. 2:1)

Moses pictures completed creation: light, firmament, verdant land, sun, moon, stars, birds, fishes, and the mighty creatures of the ocean deep, the land animals—domestic, wild, and swarming—as a mighty and splendid army, a great host arrayed before her general. And we, male and female in the image of God, are at the head of that array, made by God to enjoy, subdue, and govern it all for the mutual benefit of humanity and creation.

God finishes what he starts.

God was thus successful in his work. This is emphatic—both verses one and two begin in the original language with the verb “finished.”

How many times do we start something that we never finish: War and Peace, a home-project, learning German, or writing a piece of music? And we fail so often to complete far more important things: we pull out of a friendship, we give up on parenting, or even a marriage. Why do we fail? Sometimes because we lack the strength and ability: we thought we could write an EP, or build a greenhouse, but we just can’t. More often we get bored, or we simply lack the will to stick with what we promised to stick with. God set out to create the universe, with humanity as his leading image-bearers; and lacking neither the power, ability, or will, he completed his work.

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. (Gen. 2:2-3)

Work is good.

God worked. Work is good. We were created to work. Work is not the result of the curse any more than childbirth is the result of the curse. It is the difficulty and frustration of work that came as part of the curse, just as it is the pain of childbirth—of bringing a child into a world of war and disease and evil—that was curse-caused.

The great goal of many in the West is retirement from work: endless summers of eggs Benedict, country drives, and barge tours down the Rhone. Work is painful and frustrating. Who does not want to be freed from that? But our Maker works (“My Father is always at his work to this very day,” John 5:17), and he made us to work. Work is good, and it is sin to want to have no work and responsibility. To get old and frail in body and mind, where we can no longer do as much work, is a sadness. We should look forward to those new bodies that are promised to Christ’s people, so that we can get back to work! What we need is not the absence of work, but the redemption of work.

Yet on the Seventh Day of creation week, God stopped working, and rested. Work is good, yet work is not an end itself. It is done to make something good, to achieve something worthy, and then after completion there is rest and the enjoyment of what is made. It is very bold of Moses to say that “God rested,” and even to say that he was “refreshed” on that day (Exod. 31:17). The idolatrous mind, always hankering to belittle God, instinctively seizes at his phrase: “Who is this god who is so wearied by his exertions that he needs to rest? Is he really almighty and self-sufficient?” Genesis 2 doesn’t say that a tired god needed to stop. This is God’s way: he works, and then he ceases from work and rests.

God’s way: work, and then rest.

This is likewise to be the way of God’s image-bearers. For God “blessed the seventh day, and made it holy.” When God blesses, he turns his face towards someone or something, communicates his goodness to that thing, and bestows function. (Thus, God had blessed the birds and fishes, land-animals, and humanity [Gen. 1:22, 28].) The Seventh Day alone is blessed, to reflect the face of God and all his goodness. The Seventh Day will carry a special function: God makes it holy—distinct, life-imparting, and good.

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