Sermon III in the Genesis series
Sean C. Capparuccia
28 June 2026 – Trinity GMC
Hebrews 4:1-11; Psalm 95; Matthew 11:28-30; Genesis 2:1-3
The Sabbath in Gen 2 anticipates the eternal rest in Christ.
:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their host. :2: And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done; And He rested on the 7th day from all His work which He had done. :3: Then God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it, Because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
As we have seen, and will continue to see, the book of Genesis has spawned a lot of controversy. In the previous chapter we’ve seen controversy concerning the origins of the universe and life itself. In the beginning of chapter two, we run into a controversy concerning nothing more than a day in the week – the Sabbath.
First, a little word-play in order to understand where the Hebrew text is coming from. The Hebrew word for “seven” is sheba’; for “seventh” it is shebe’it; and for “the seventh” it is ha-shebiyiy [ha-sheb’-ee-ee”]; for “rest” it is shabbath [shaw-bath’]. And so, we plainly see a connection, a common root, for the words “seven,” “seventh,” and “rest.”
Last week we discussed the first six days of creation and what God either created (bara’)or made (asah’) on each of those days. I hope it has not been lost on you that we are talking about the seventh day here. Not the seventh millennium as though the first six days comprised 6,000 years; nor the seventh eon as though God’s creation up to this point had taken many millions of years. I’ve never read anyone who thought that God rested for a million years or so for the Sabbath. Even most interpreters who believe that creation took a long period of time do not apply their same reasoning to the seventh day. If we are to have a consistent interpretation of this account, we must assume that God is not all of a sudden changing the way He reckons time. “It was evening and it was morning, a day.”
The creative work of God is finished. The heavens – everything out there – and the earth – everything down here – “and all their host,” is finished.
Let us pause for just a moment and listen to the witness of Scripture in other times and places:
Nehemiah says, “Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee” (9:6).
From the Psalms we hear these words:
Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens:
praise him in the heights.
Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.
Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created.
He hath also stablished them for ever and ever:
he hath made a decree which shall not pass (Psalm 148).
And so, we see that by the seventh day, God was finished – the totality of all things in heaven and earth have been made and set in motion, even the angels, or the host, of heaven. I think perhaps we think of the angels as being far more ancient than humans, maybe just a little shy of eternal. Yet Genesis tells us that nothing existed prior to the beginning, and the heavenly host was created “by the seventh day.” I find it interesting that we are not told specifically when the angelic host was created, but we can deduce that it was within these seven days.
:2 Being satisfied with all that He had created and made, the Creator rested. Again, the original word is shabbath [shaw-bath] which means to cease; to desist; to rest. Hear it in the Hebrew.
way’kal ‘Elohim bayom hash’bi`i m’la’k’to ‘asher `asah
wayishaw-bath bayom hash’bi`i mikal-m’la’k’to ‘asher `asah.
By the seventh day Elohim completed His work which He had done,
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
And please understand that I in no way am trying to portray myself as a Hebrew scholar, I most certainly am not! But listening to languages is like listening to music. There is beauty in the notes just as there is beauty in the words. The “seventh day” is tantamount to the rest.
:3 way’barek ‘Elohim ‘eth-yom hash’bi`i way’qadesh ‘otho
ki bo shabbath mikal-m’la’k’to ‘asher-bara’ ‘Elohim la`asoth.
Then God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it,
because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
“God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31); and now He is finished. Keep in mind, too, that all along the way, throughout the creation process, God is separating this from that: heaven from earth; light from darkness; waters from waters; land from sea; plant from plant; animal from animal; and finally, man from the rest of creation. Now He separates this day from the rest of the days – He sanctifies it; He makes it holy. But what does this mean?
When God gave the Law to Moses, the Ten Commandments, we know that in the fourth Commandment, God said to “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8). “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and sanctified it” (Ex. 20:11).
To show just how consistent He is with Himself, in the wilderness, when God gave the Israelites manna to eat, He told them that He would send it down from heaven six days of the week but not on the Sabbath day. So they were to gather twice as much the day before the Sabbath, if they wanted to eat on the Sabbath (Ex. 16:25ff). And on this Sabbath God actually said, “…abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” The Sabbath day was to be hallowed; observed; respected. Exodus 31:14-15 says, “Therefore you shall keep the sabbath; for it is holy unto you: every one that defiles it shall surely be put to death: for whoever does any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days may work be done; but the seventh is the sabbath of rest, it is holy to the LORD: whoever does any work on the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.”
The big question is: does this still apply to God’s people today? First of all, we should note that the Law in Exodus was given to the Israelites. The law of the Sabbath was given at Creation. This same reasoning applies to marriage which Jesus brought out in Mark 10 when the Pharisees were questioning Him about divorce. What did Jesus say? That “from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female… therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate” (Mark 10:1-12, for full pericope). In other words, marriage applies to all people, not just Jews, or, the Church; it is a law of Creation. Just as is the Sabbath.
But it was for the benefit of man God set aside this seventh day for rest and worship (ex. 20:11: gen 2:2). We’ve all raised our children, and a few of you are raising your children now. Let me ask you, when you give a command to your child, or when you come up with the rules of your household, is it simply for some arbitrary reason that you do that? Do you sit down and say, “Well, I’m supposed to come up with rules, so… uh…. Clean your room every Monday”? I would hope that you have a reason for the rules you make and hope to enforce. And I would venture further to say that the rules you make are not just for your own benefit as the parents. “Clean your room every Monday so I don’t have to.” You make rules that will help shape, mold, encourage, strengthen, and give character to the child who is in your charge. You make rules for their own good.
Let us not confuse the laws of our nation – man’s laws – with the laws of God. Most of the secular laws are, I’m pretty sure, for no purpose other than to benefit the ones who make the laws. But God’s laws are not that way. If we really take a look at His laws, we will find that they are to help shape, mold, encourage, strengthen, and give character to His children. The Sabbath law is no different.
Our culture is on the verge of dying of exhaustion. Would anybody argue that? Even people who are retired are exhausted. Even people who don’t work for one reason or another are exhausted. And yet we somehow act like being busy is a badge of honor. As if constantly being on the move somehow makes us superior to those who rest. And here’s the strangest thing about it: with all of our modern technology we have so many time-saving devices that we should virtually have all the time in the world. But the truth is, we have less time, or at least less time for rest. It is truly a phenomenon. And when God finished, He rested on the seventh day. Imagine that day for just a moment. God resting. …. Now I want you to image God resting on this day with what He just created. The host of angels; the earth in all its fullness of vegetation; the seas teeming with life – porpoises jumping out of the waters, whales splashing; birds swarming through the air and among the trees; the animals of every kind walking around and eating from the shrubs and trees; and of course, Adam and then Eve (which we will talk about soon). God didn’t rest alone; He rested with all that He had just made, and they all rested in Him.
What we see here is the seed of what would later became part of the Mosaic law for the Israelites. This seventh day of creation is not the same as the Jewish observance, but it contains the seed. But we need to remember that here in the beginning, when everything was perfect, before the Fall of Adam, there didn’t need to be a Law. Adam and Eve had perfect free will, not a corrupted will that needed a Law to show them right and wrong. And so, this day, this sanctuary in time, was given to them as a gift. And so too, the Sabbath belongs to everybody, not just the Jews, or the Christians who came from the Jews, and everybody in the world would be better off to observe it.
Do you think God was tired after all that creating and making? Of course not! The “rest” in view here, as I said before, was a cessation from work – it doesn’t mean God took a nap. Nor does it imply that this was the end of God’s involvement in His creation as though He made it and then stepped back and watched it all play out. This would be the belief of a theist: God begun it then slipped back into heaven. Psalm 104:29 says that if “[God] hid His face, everything would be troubled; He takes away their breath, they die, and they return to their dust.” In God, specifically, in Christ, all things hold together (Col.1:16-17). For God to rest simply means He didn’t work anymore on this day.
We can agree with Calvin that the Sabbath has three distinct purposes:
It is a day to rest from labor. There are six days to labor, six days to toil, six whole days to plant and to reap. But one day is to be set apart for rest.
It is also a day to worship. “But we can worship any day of the week,” someone objects. To which I answer, to be sure we can, and I hope we do, worship the Lord our God in some form or another not only every day, but every moment of every day. But there is a day that God set apart to be worshipped corporately, and there is the difference. God wants His people, collectively, to come to Him in worship.
But He wants a people who comes to worship willingly- because they love God – not because they are compelled by the threat of excommunication or being in mortal sin. It somehow reminds me of the husband who doesn’t tell his wife that he loves her. He says, “You know that I love you. I married you. Why do I need to say it?” And she says, “Because I want… I need to hear it from your lips.” We go to church because we love Him whom we worship.
The Sabbath is also a foreshadowing of our spiritual rest in Christ. The Master said, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt. 11:28). Indeed, in Christ we do find relief from our spiritual toil, but in Christ we will most assuredly find our eternal rest.
In his book, “Stop, In the Name of God,” the last book he wrote before he was tragically murdered, Charlie Kirk dives deep into the idea of keeping the Sabbath. The Scriptures plainly teach us that God has created our world to operate through rhythms. There are seasons that pass very regularly; there are days and weeks and months which are plainly measured out by the perfectly designed rotation of our planet and and its alignment with the rest of the heavenly bodies. Plant and animal life operate through rhythms. Even day to day, our own human bodies have natural rhythms. The difference with humans is that we have the ability to disregard the natural rhythms and override them. Animals cannot do that; they must obey the natural rhythms. And we thank God that He gave us that capacity, and that is one way in which we are made in His image. But if we do it too much, we will find ourselves in trouble: physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. Kirk talks about these rhythms and the importance of staying on track with God’s design. He says that a society that operates without Sabbath becomes anxious, distracted, and spiritually fragmented. Therefore, he makes the case that disregarding the Sabbath is not only negative personally, but societally as well.
One of Kirk’s mentors, Dennis Prager, a Jewish writer that I rather like too, notes that without the Sabbath, people will very easily become slaves to work and money and the desire to keep “getting more.” And so, by keeping the Sabbath, we declare that God is the one who ultimately provides, not our own labor.
Law Fulfilled
But we are in Christ! We are not under the Law! Christians have differed on this since the beginning. There are some who maintain that we must continue to hold to the Old Testament’s teaching on the seventh day, and they say that Saturday is the seventh day and the only proper day to worship. Some have taught that Sunday as the day of worship was an invention of an anti-Christ to subvert the true Sabbath. We hold that the principle of the Sabbath is still in effect- that one day in seven we meet together – corporately – to worship God and to rest. Acts 20:7 says, “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them…” Remember that most of these early disciples were Jewish and were still observing the Jewish Sabbath from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Then they would meet as Jesus’ disciples on Sunday. As Christianity spread among the Gentiles, fewer Christians were observing the Jewish Sabbath and meeting solely on the first day of the week, the day that Christ was resurrected. And hence it was called Resurrection Day. And so we still keep the Sabbath, the day of rest, on the first day.
As Methodists, we hold that in Christ the ceremonial elements of the Law are fulfilled, but we still honor a day devoted to worship, mercy and rest which is in keeping with the original Sabbath in Genesis. We call this the creation principle. God created humans to need worship; to need rest; to find their delight in God; and to be free from endless labor which would become the norm due to greed and selfishness if there was not something in place to prevent it. Did we not see this in 19th century England? You should read some Charles Dickens! And so the Lord’s Day becomes the fulfillment of the pattern established in creation.
Jesus: Lord of the Sabbath
Jesus resolutely said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27); and, “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”(Mt. 12:8). Jesus in no way abolished the Sabbath, what He did was rescued it from the Pharisaic legalism. What was a gift to humanity, the legalists made into a burden, prescribing copious ways that the people had to observe it…or else.
Of course, the opposite problem to legalism is antinomianism which is the prevailing thought for our day. Antinomianism says, “We don’t have to do this, that, or the other; we are free in Christ.” This is the guy who says that he can worship on the golf-course – or by himself in nature – just as well as in church. Well, we all know you can’t, so don’t even try to argue it. As if God’s creation is God. That would be pantheism, by the way. I refer again to the spouse who doesn’t say “I love you.” It comes down to the supposed tension between faith and works, doesn’t it? Faith necessarily produces works, not the other way around. I think some authorities believe that by forcing obedience or, in this case, church attendance, then faith will appear. Maybe I’m a pessimist but I’ve never seen that. Works follow faith just as sanctification follows justification.
In the book of Hebrews, the author said, “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9). The Sabbath day, and its observance, points beyond itself to Christ, who is the ultimate and final rest.
Puritan writer John Owen wrote that Christians enter into God’s rest now by faith, but in glory will enter into it perfectly. When we observe our weekly Sabbath now, we declare that one day our sin will cease (shaw-bath); that our labors will end; that all we do by faith now will be sight.
And Richard Baxter, another Puritan from the 1600’s, wrote a marvelous treatise on the rest that is to be, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, saying in the everlasting rest, not the everlasting death, but the everlasting and eternal life! there will be no sorrow, no sin, no exhaustion, no pain.
And so, because of the promises of Scripture and the assurance of the Holy Spirit, we can live each day in its fulness. Some live as though they are waiting for death; believing that it is only on the next life that we will find peace. That’s not what Scripture teaches. In fact, Scripture plainly teaches that there is no death for those who are in Christ. Only life. And so each day is nothing but living into the eternity of which we are already a part. And every Lord’s Day is a foretaste of our eternal worship with each other in God’s presence. Christ’s death and resurrection made this possible. Because He died we don’t have to – we simply change address, move to another place. Our sins have been punished (atoned for) in Christ. We don’t have to “work off” our sins. And so to be absent in the body is to be present with Christ!
When we think, then, of Genesis as the foundation of our faith, we read these first verses in chapter 2 as a reminder that God created us to rest, and to rest in Him. It prepares us to understand that Christ offers us a rest beyond our comprehension if only we would avail ourselves of it. And we are taught that in heaven there will be an everlasting Sabbath – an eternal rest.
Beloved, are you weary? Are you worn? Are you heavy with burdens that you think beyond your control? Jesus says: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Our true Sabbath is not found on a calendar between Saturday and Monday; our true Sabbath is found in our Savior, Jesus Christ. I invite you, come unto Him.
I’ll leave you with these lyrics from a children’s song written long ago by Isaac Watts, that “father of English hymnody”
This is the day when Christ arose so early from the dead;
Why should I keep my eyelids closed, And waste my hours in bed?
This is the day when Jesus broke The powers of death and hell;
And shall I still wear Satan’s yoke, And love my sins so well?
Today with pleasure Christians meet, To pray and hear Thy word;
And I would go with cheerful feet, To learn Thy will, O Lord.
I’ll leave my sport (!) to read and pray, And so prepare for heaven;
Oh, may I love this blessed day, The best of all the seven!
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What think ye?