By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [ceased from action] from all his work.We think 'a day of rest' is to help us recover from the week we've just had and preparing us for the week to come; people enjoy counting down to the weekend and are happy once they've got past Humpday (aka Wednesday)! But God rested, not to recover from his work, but to enjoy the results of his creation. God blesses the seventh day and makes it holy.
But 'rest' is more than just ceasing from action; after the Fall (Genesis 3) 'rest' becomes an expression of the hope of salvation (entry into the promised land for Israel and entrance into the kingdom of heaven for Christians):
- Psalm 95:11 - "So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.”" Rest here means the promised land, a physical place.
- Hebrews 4:8-11 - "8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works,[a] just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience." Rest here means to cease our efforts to gain salvation to through our own works and rest in Christ's finished work on the cross.
We should rest as it is important physically, but more importantly it's a foretaste of what we were created for - to be with and rejoice in our God and Saviour.
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