Rest

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. Genesis 2:1-3 ESV

The seventh day of creation was always confusing to me. What does it mean for God to rest? Does He get tired? And how is this related to the ancient Israelite practice to keep the sabbath by resting on the seventh day of every week? It would get even more confusing when I read Psalm 95:11 and God says: “Therefore I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.” What is His rest? What does it mean that those who did not obey Him during the wilderness wanderings shall not enter it and how is that connected to what He did on the seventh day? Finally, what is God doing in the present to take His people forward into His rest in the future? As the letter to the Hebrews says in reference to Psalm 95, “there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God.” Though the writer speaks of this as a future reality, the writer also speaks of it as a present reality for those in Christ. These are all questions that have arisen in me over the years as I have read through the scriptures.

To begin with, I want to address the words “rested” and “finished” in the account of the seventh day of creation. The word for rested is the Hebrew word shabbat meaning “to cease from” and the word for finished is the Hebrew word kâlâh meaning “to be complete.” Therefore, the first basic concept we learn from this passage is that after having brought order and abundance to the entire cosmos, God stopped on the seventh day and thus creation was complete. That is literally what it says: “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” (v. 2). Though this is the basic meaning of this passage, I would argue based on what we know from the whole of scripture this cannot be all that is being communicated in this passage. As we have already seen, the Hebrew writers believed the idea of God’s rest was much more profound than simply Him stopping on the seventh day. His rest was something for His people to participate in.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

(Exodus 20:8-11 ESV)

God Rested

Though this is a reference to the creation account, Moses uses a different word, nuach, rather than shabbat to speak of God resting on the seventh day. In doing so, he is giving us a better understanding of what it meant for God to rest on the seventh day. The word nuach appears several times in the Hebrew bible, like in Genesis 8 when the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat. In fact, Noah’s name Nôach means rest and is closely related to the word nuach. To take it even further his own introduction into the story makes the claim that “when Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Nôach, saying,” Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Genesis 5:29 ESV). This passage begs the question, is rest what was lost when humans were exiled from the Garden? Let’s explore a handful of other passages that use the word nuach to help develop the meaning.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

(Genesis 2:15 ESV)

“The locusts came up over all the land of Egypt and settled on the whole country of Egypt, such a dense swarm of locusts as had never been before, nor ever will be again.”

(Exodus 10:14 ESV)

“So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. And he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. And as soon as the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied. But they did not continue doing it.”

(Numbers 11:24-25 ESV)

As you can see, nuach is primarily connected to the idea of taking up residence in. To come and rest onto/into a place. To settle. To make a place your dwelling. In the Hebrew Bible, resting and settling in or taking up residence are closely related. Imagine working over the course of a year designing and building a house. You take all the raw materials, the lumber, the bricks, sheet rock, etc. and you create a beautiful house for you and your family to live in. After the house is finished, you rest from your work in building and you and your family take up residence within it as the ones who will sustain and care for it. This is the idea of nuach as Moses presents in Exodus 20.

There are other uses of the word nuach that further develop its meaning. For instance, in 1 Kings 5 Solomon says,

“But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side. There is neither adversary nor misfortune. And so I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord said to David my father, Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, shall build the house for my name.” (1 Kings 5:4-5 ESV)

The context in this passage suggests that nuach is referring to peace from the nations surrounding Jerusalem, meaning Solomon can now take up his throne and rule his kingdom with no direct opposition. Solomon turns a word that means to settle in into a metaphor for a time of peace. It is in this passage that you can see the overlap of meaning between the words shabbat and nuach. War stops resulting in peace and therefore rest.

To take it even further Solomon then makes the claim that now that he has been given nuach on all sides of his kingdom, the LORD can now come and dwell in their midst. It is here you can see that rest and God’s presence are also connected. In response to Moses’ intercession the LORD said,

“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest (nuach).” (Exodus 33:14 ESV) Another word in connection with this theme is used when Solomon is dedicating the temple he just built for the LORD to dwell in. He says, “And now arise, O Lord God, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.”

(2 Chronicles 6:41a ESV)

Psalm 132 also speaks of the temple in this way saying,

“For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it. “I will abundantly bless her provisions; I will satisfy her poor with bread.”

(Psalm 132:13-15 ESV)

The word here is Menuchah and means a “place of rest.” In both 2 Chronicles and Psalm 132, the claim being made is that the LORD's resting place is the temple in Jerusalem, the place where His glorious presence has become manifest on the earth by dwelling in the midst of His people.

Even more, His resting place was also considered to be the place where He is enthroned as King. In the Psalms and the Prophets He is said to be enthroned above the cherubim, which as we have seen are in the Holy of Holies in the Temple! (1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15; 1 Chronicles 13:6; Psalm 80:1; Psalm 99:1; and Isaiah 37:16). This is in direct correlation to what the LORD said to Moses.

“There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.”

(Exodus 25:22 ESV)

Later in the story it says,

“And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and it spoke to him.”

(Numbers 7:89 ESV)

The LORD is enthroned in His resting place, above the cherubim, where He dwells in the midst of His people to rule over them as their King.

Now back to the phrase “My rest” in Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4. Though the English translation is the word rest, it is the word menuchah which as we have discovered means resting place. And in the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s resting place refers to His presence in the Most Holy Place, a shadow of the heavenly realm. What’s interesting, though, is that when God said this, He wasn’t referring to His temple or heaven. He was referring to the promised land. The land He promised to give Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:8). A “land flowing with milk and honey.” A perceived problem arises, however, when we realize they did actually enter the land and take possession of it. The entire book of Joshua explores this. However, if you read the book of Judges and the psalmist’s reflection in Psalm 95, you find though they entered the land locationally, they never experienced it as God's resting place. After they entered the land, they began to trust in themselves and their Canaanite neighbors. They worshipped the gods of their neighbors, the dark spiritual powers behind money, sex, and military power which led to the oppression of the vulnerable in their communities. This idolatrous rebellion resulted in their exile to Babylon under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. A far cry from what Moses said they would experience if they remained faithful to their covenant with the LORD.

“For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.”

(Deuteronomy 8:7-10 ESV)

However, this is what Moses said would happen to them if they were to become unfaithful to the covenant.

“You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it. You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity. The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground. The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.”

(Deuteronomy 28:38-43 ESV)

Israel’s proximity to God determined the fruitfulness of their land. Therefore, to enter His menuchah would mean they would know and experience His heavenly presence personally in their midst, on the earth, as their Creator and King Who, through His life-giving presence, would bring about more abundance in the land than they could through their own effort. God would then sustain their life as His people, a kingdom of priests (representatives) and a nation set apart

for the purpose of being a conduit of His blessing to all nations. For humans created in God’s image, being in His presence meets the one need under which all other needs are met.

Now let us go back to the seventh day.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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.”

(Genesis 2:1-3 ESV)

There is one subtle detail from this passage I have yet to point out that I believe connects these ideas of rest together and thus communicates a profound truth about the original state of creation and God's intentions for where it all was headed.

Up until this point, each verse regarding the days of creation ends with the statement “and there was evening and there was morning, ______day.” If you notice, this is not so on the seventh day. God completes His work and stops and the seventh day is left open-ended. Narratively speaking the seventh day does not end with an evening and a morning to the next day. It is as though the author wants the seventh day to be viewed as the complete state of creation. God takes the earth in a state of disorder and emptiness to a place of divine rest. A place of safety and stability. A place of peace and abundance. A place where life can flourish. The seventh day is the culmination of creation. Genesis 1 is not just communicating a consecutive description of the events, but showing how in the beginning God intended for His purposes in creation to begin at the moment of its completion. He then blesses the seventh day, which up until this point has meant to be endowed with the ability to be fruitful, and declares it to be set apart. Sacred time. Therefore, the seventh day was to be the perpetual reality in which humans existed as God’s presence sustained their lives forever. The resting reality. The age in which God is on His throne ruling over His creation through His crowned representatives (Genesis 1:26-27; Psalm 8). The seventh day is not just the seventh day. It is the ideal state of creation in which God's own personal presence is enthroned over it all, causing it to function exactly the way He intended it, under His Kingdom rule.

Creation would then bring forth its abundance, not because of the painful toil of humanity, but through the reigning, life-giving presence of its Creator. Therefore, to enter His rest is to enter an age where creation is complete, eternal life is accessible, and God reigns with humanity as they dwell together in perfect unity.

Israel’s Sabbath Festivals

To understand the Sabbath Festivals, we first need to explore an earlier story in Exodus 16. After about 400 years of Egyptian slavery, Abraham’s descendants are rescued by God to take them to the land He promised to give them.

“Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

(Exodus 3:7-8 ESV)

Notice He says “I have come down.” God, though separated from humans due to sin, desires to dwell with a people who live in His kingdom and participate in His reign therefore, He is not just bringing them to a “good place” but to Himself. As the storyline suggests, the land isn’t inherently good. Its abundance comes from God’s own life filling the land with the abundant fruitfulness necessary for His people to flourish. God being present is the only necessary component for a truly good and blessed human experience.

“I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.”

(Exodus 29:45-46 ESV)

As we have already seen, there was a place in the beginning, the Garden of Eden, where God and humans dwelled on the earth in a perfect, unified, eternal life-giving relationship. However, due to sin, the humans were driven from the garden, fracturing the relationship and forfeiting God’s provision of eternal life. Heaven and Earth became two separate realities in conflict with one another and God’s rest was no longer found on the earth.

The storyline continues exploring God’s faithfulness to the humans He made in spite of their sin. God calls a pagan man out of Babylon and then His descendants into a partnership with Him to be the means by which He would bring all other nations back from exile into the eternal life- giving relationship that was lost. As He leads them to the land, He promised to give them, He sets in motion a pattern of regular Sabbath (stop/cease) days and years (Exodus 23:10-12; Leviticus 25:1-22) to teach them the significance of His presence among them as the Creator, Sustainer, and Provider of all good things (James 1:17) and instill in them the hope of entering His Rest forever. Therefore, the Sabbath festivals looked back to the seventh day as a model of the complete state of creation, under God’s control, to point forward to the hope when all things would be in subjection to God (1 Corinthians 15:25-28) and His Chosen heir of all things (Ezekiel 37:24-28), Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2), the reigning King over all creation (Matthew 28:18; 1 Timothy 6:14b-16) and true Image (representation) of God (Colossians 1:15).

“Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

(Exodus 15:22-25a ESV)

Israel is only three days from the Red Sea crossing as they get thirsty and realize there is no water. When they finally find water, it’s bitter and undrinkable. Out of frustration and weariness

the Israelites grumble over the lack of water and God hears their grumbling and provides them a way to make the water sweet and drinkable. Then it says,

“There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.” Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.”

(Exodus 15:25b-27 ESV)

In chapter 16 they set out from Elim and exactly one month from their departure from Egypt “the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”(Exodus 16:2-3 ESV)

The LORD again hears their grumbling and said to Moses,

“Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”

(Exodus 16:4-5 ESV)

The Israelites were told to gather the bread daily as much as needed to prepare and eat it, but leave none for the next day. Then, on the sixth day, they were told to gather twice as much as they gather daily. Why? “That I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.” This is a “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” moment for the people of God. Will they trust in His provision and wisdom, or will they trust in their own? Remember this test is about doing “that which is right in His eyes.”

“On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.” (Exodus 16:22-30 ESV)

The people of Israel were taught from the beginning the necessity of regularly stopping to acknowledge their Creator. The first six days were about their own work and toil, but the seventh day was about resting in the complete work and provision of their God. So then, the manna story becomes an interpretive framework in which all future Sabbath practices find meaning.

When you finally get to the Sabbath commands, you find that there are three Sabbath festivals centered on cycles of seven. The first was a cycle of six days of work and then rest on the seventh day, patterned after the creation account.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

(Exodus 20:8-11 ESV)

The second was to be observed every seven years.

“The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.” (Leviticus 25:1-7 ESV)

This festival expanded on the idea of rest by commanding that not only would the people rest from their work but they were to let the land rest as well for the entire seventh year so that in that year they would live solely off the provision of God. This would’ve taken an extreme act of trust, knowing that a field left unworked would become a wilderness and no longer bear fruit. If there is one lie the evil one has been telling for centuries, it’s that meeting our needs solely depends on our effort and hard work.

The third festival was a seven times seven year festival. Forty-nine years. The year of Jubilee. This festival was celebrated beginning with the day of atonement in the fiftieth year and built even more on the seven-year sabbath only in this celebration there was a proclamation of liberty throughout the whole land. A call to clear all debts, free all Hebrew slaves, and release the land. The year of Jubilee would have been a complete economic reset (Leviticus 25:8-28).

The Israelite Sabbath cycles were about a regular practice of inconveniencing life to stop and trust that God is the true provider of all sustenance in the anticipation of the future age when God and humans will dwell together in perfect unity. The age when all needs will be met and there is stability, abundance, peace, and most importantly, rest.

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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.”

(Genesis 2:1-3)