Behold God’s Completed Work - Genesis 2:1-3
Do you ever find yourself struggling to stop working? Stopping not only your primary job (how you earn a living) but your other labors as well: around your home or property, with your family, with your possessions and finances? Even when you leave the office, there is still plenty of work to do. Much of parenting is work. You mothers and fathers of little ones can testify to that! Everyone needs to stop and rest, but doing so can be difficult. It can also be difficult to stop what we do for entertainment or recreation.
There is always new content to read, new social media posts to scroll through, new things to listen to or watch or experience. Why put off until later what you can enjoy right now? So much work to be done, so much fun to be had, and then we hear this claim that Sunday, the perfect day to squeeze some more work or some more recreation, is a day for holy rest. We have trouble with this.
Some of us feel we must always be accomplishing. We obsess over our to-do lists. Others of us over-indulge in what we enjoy, probably in attempts to distract or medicate ourselves. Maybe you find yourself swinging like a pendulum from one to the other, but both reveal the same deficiency. Our fears, doubts, or anxieties about resting from all the normal things reveal a lack of faith.
We naturally lack the faith necessary to stop for a while to look to and rest in God. Why did the composer of Psalm 46 write, “Be still, and know that I am God:” because, like the ancient Israelites, we naturally look elsewhere for strength and security and rest. And yet Hebrews 11 in the NT says, “Without faith it is impossible to please [God]. Anything that does not come from faith is sin, Romans 14 says, and God is a just judge.
But He is also merciful. God has dealt justly with our lack of faith through the person and work of Jesus Christ. In John 3 in the NT, Jesus speaks with a Jewish teacher named Nicodemus, and Jesus tells him, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” In other words, you must be born again to recognize God’s rule over you and submit to His rule. Nicodemus replies, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answers, ”That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Jesus then tells the man, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Being spiritually born again is the Holy Spirit’s work. God opens the eyes of our hearts that we may see our need for forgiveness and place saving faith in Jesus Christ. This work of the Holy Spirit precedes true faith. We are dead in our sins until God makes us alive in Christ and able to exercise true faith.
So, we should trust in Jesus, and we should stop and look to God for rest. When we do, what we will find is not the rest we hope to find in our work, not the rest we hope to find in our recreation, but the lasting and sufficient rest our souls need, rest which we were designed by God to pursue and enjoy. But why do we find this unique rest when we stop and look to God?
These first verses in Genesis 2 tell us two things. You can find them listed on page 6 in the WG. When we stop and look to God, we begin to be transformed by the knowledge that: 1. God has completed a marvelous work for His glory, and that 2. Beholding His marvelous work is essential to our being. In other words, it is necessary.
When we stop and behold God’s completed work as He designed, we come to see, more and more, just how necessary it is for our lives. Now look again with me at verse 1. Moses states, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” This is a summary of all God did in chapter 1.
“The heavens and the earth” refers to the whole universe, and “all the host of them” includes everything God made to fill the universe: everything in space, everything on earth, in the air, in the water, and on the land. Notice that Moses begins verse 2 by saying, “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done.” This could be interpreted as saying that God was still working on Day 7, but the meaning here is that by the seventh day God had completed all He intended to do. When the seventh day came, it was all done, therefore, the end of verse 2, “He rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” We shouldn’t conclude that God needed rest in the way that humans do. God was not tired. The Hebrew in verse 2 literally states that “God ceased from all his work.” He stopped. You’ve probably heard the phrase “cease and desist.” When one party takes legal action to stop another party from doing something, a cease and desist letter is often sent.
For instance, if someone uses a company’s logo or slogan without consent, a letter would be sent. When this kind of letter goes out, the message is not, “Would you mind taking a short break from doing this?” Rather, the message is, “Stop immediately and permanently or face consequences.”
For six days, the triune God labored. On day 7, there was no labor. Period. In six days, He completed a marvelous work for His glory. It was everything it needed to be. There was nothing to add to it, and nothing needed to be taken away from it.
I should note that grammatically, the emphasis in verses 1 and 2 is on God’s ceasing. Moses stresses that God stopped because it was finished according to His evaluation and His alone. But look at God’s action in verse 3. God goes one step further on this unique day.
“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.” This is fascinating. Notice this difference in verses 1-2 in contrast to verse 3: verses 1-2 highlight the completeness of God’s creation, verse 3 highlights this additional response by God to the completeness. Verses 1-2 are clear that God’s completed work was glorious. But verse 3 tells us that going forward, the day would be special. It is a blessed day. The seventh day was set apart by God from the other six. He declared that day to be different from the others, and we come to understand how in the fourth commandment stated in Exodus 20. There, Moses writes, “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath,” literally, a “ceasing from your efforts” to the LORD your God.” Moses goes on to say, “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.” Put differently, “Cease from your work and allow those under your authority to cease working as well.” Moses then says, “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” Stop working, and rest in God.
The Ten Commandments summarize God's moral code. Resting on the Sabbath day is on a list above murder, adultery, and theft. You see, stopping and resting in God is a moral issue because we do it by faith. It has to do with trusting and honoring God. How we treat the day reflects our view of God and thus our relationship with Him. This is why it is more than a suggestion; it is a command. God consecrated the sabbath day.
We remain morally required to observe it, just as we are to abide by the rest of God’s moral law. And remember, His moral law is outlined for us not to constrict us, but to free us, that we may truly live. It is a blessing, not a burden. We get to rest wholly in God.
On a different note, think about what the first man and woman were doing on the seventh day. They were created on Day 6. How did they spend their first full day on the planet? Did they go to work? No. They went to worship. They marveled at God’s completed work
along with their Creator. Our original ancestors, our first parents, spent their entire first day worshipping God and resting in Him, no doubt astonished by all He had done. This is speculation, but I imagine that walked around and observed it all. I expect they were seeing much of it for the first time. Each sabbath day should be much like that for us.
To spend the Sabbath day in this way is God’s design for humanity. God completed a marvelous work for His glory, and beholding His marvelous work is essential for human beings. It is the decree of God for us. We must stop and behold His completed work because He made us to do so. It’s not that we ought to stop. We must.
The French Revolution took place right at the end of the 18th century, and many of the policies born during that revolt were aimed at the dechristianization of France. Great efforts were made to eradicate Christianity in that nation all together. Interestingly, one policy abolished recognition of the Sabbath day. As a result, their work week was stretched through the installation of a new calendar. But the people in power soon learned that working folks could not bear the strain of the longer work week. People were breaking down and So they quickly returned to the week laid out in the creation narrative of Scripture.
Do you recognize your need to stop on the Lord’s Day and spend the day marveling at God’s completed work? Of course, the “completed work” of God has taken on an even fuller meaning in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, hasn’t it? Hebrews 10 says, “when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God...For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but when I was growing up, my daddy would give me a task and then he would leave me to it and come back later to see my progress. I later began to understand that this was part of teaching me how to work. And when he came back, there would only be one good reason to be sitting down, and that is if the work was done. The Lord Jesus Christ sat down at the Father’s right hand because His work was done.
At His death on the cross, the apostle John wrote that just before Jesus breathed his last, “He said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
Of course, He needed to rise from the dead and ascend to heaven, but Jesus put in the brutal work of suffering for our sins. Jesus did the labor of redeeming His people.
Jesus took on the toil of satisfying the righteous demands of God for those He would save. My friends, our God has most certainly completed a marvelous work for His glory! And the writer of Hebrews also says that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” This is an eternal rest. It is a rest from the suffering and trials of this life.
In Revelation 14, as the apostle John describes the end-time vision given to him by God,
he says, “I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors.” From all their troubles and pain. When we stop and behold God’s completed work on the Lord’s Day, He restores us for the week that lies ahead and He encourages us with greater understanding of the eternity that lies ahead, the eternity that is ours in Christ Jesus! Beholding and resting in His marvelous work is essential to your being.
As we think about the Sabbath, many questions arise. “What does this mean for my Sunday? What can I do or not do?” Those are good questions. Mark ch. 2 gives us some interesting insight. And as we go to the Lord’s table this morning, I urge you to think about this. John says, “One Sabbath [day] [Jesus] was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. [24] And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” [25] And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: [26] how he entered the house of God....and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” [27] And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. [28] So the Son of Man [that is, Jesus] is lord even of the Sabbath.”
It is so difficult to make this a day wholly devoted to worshipping and resting in Jesus. You could be so strict in what you do or don’t do that you become legalistic. You could be so flippant that you don’t restrain yourself enough. We should all think and pray about this, but understand: the Sabbath was made for man, and Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.
Do you know Him? Have you turned from your sin and trusted in Him, and do you look to Him each day, and in a very special way on this day, the Lord’s Day? He offers you unparalleled rest for your souls. Behold His completed work by faith.
Let’s bow in prayer.