God Rests

by Erik Jones

Genesis 2:2

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

After the six momentous days of re-creation (review what God created on each of these days in Genesis 1:3-31), God ended His work on the seventh day and rested (ceased from His work). We should note that God did not rest from His work because He was exhausted and tired. God is not flesh (John 4:24), and He does not experience fatigue (Isaiah 40:28).

God rested for three major reasons:

To show that His physical creation was complete after the creation of human beings.
To set an example for human beings that a weekly day of rest is necessary.
To establish the spiritual institution of the Sabbath day. (We will cover the institution of the Sabbath day in tomorrow’s Daily Bible Verse Blog.)

There is one more point we should note from this verse. Some teach that the days of creation we read about in Genesis 1 were actually long periods/epochs of time, not literal 24-hour days. Those who teach this typically subscribe to the theory of theistic evolution, which attempts to synchronize Darwinian evolution with a belief in God.

It is argued that God created the building blocks of life and then set in motion the evolutionary processes that took place over millions or billions of years to accomplish creation. So, for instance, proponents of this belief would teach that the fifth day (Genesis 1:20-23) occurred over millions of years as sea and avian life evolved from simple to complex life-forms.

This idea is false. Genesis 2:2 proves that the days of creation were literal 24-hour days. If the days represent epochs of millions or billions of years, then that would imply that the seventh day of rest would be an epoch of time also—meaning God would have been resting and inactive for millions or billions of years. This makes no sense and doesn’t fit with the chronology of Genesis, which reveals God planting a garden (Genesis 2:8) and working with the first created human beings shortly after the creation week (verses 16-25).

Exodus 20:8-11 makes it clear that the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest correspond to our seven-day week with its literal, 24-hour days.

To learn more about the rest that God wants you to experience every week, read “The Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day.”

Tomorrow on the Daily Bible Verse Blog: “God Creates the Sabbath.”