According to the Bible, God spent six days creating everything and on the seventh day he rested. It is not that God was tired from all his activities and needed to rest, but that he was finished with the work of creation. As he finished each day he would look at what he had done and say that it was good. [Like at the end of each day when I finish working on a cabinet for the upstairs kitchen, I look at it and think, "Good job!"] He also said that it was evening and morning of the given day. [Interesting that each day begins at evening.]
By resting on the seventh day he set it apart from the others. He also blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. The seventh day is also different in that he didn't say that it was evening and morning the seventh day. Thus in a sense the seventh day, the day of rest, continues until now. As a reminder of this rest, God instructs us to work for six days and then take a day of rest. It is to be a day different from the others. It is to be a day that provides special time with God.
There is another aspect of work and rest we should look at, which involves religion. Without exception all religions of the world find humans working to earn favor before God or gods and be accepted by them. Those who believe there is a God or gods may spend their whole life working, hoping that when they die the good they did will exceed the bad and God will accept them into life with him after death. The question is, "How much good is required to offset the bad?" But God tells us that is the wrong question to ask. There is no amount of good that is enough because when we do wrong, which is sin, we must die. We must give our life for our sin and as a result the best we can hope for in the next life is eternal death not life with God. All this work humans do to win favor with God or the gods does not result in rest after death. Is there no hope?
The Bible tells us that God sent his Son to earth with a work assignment. He was to be born of a virgin with God being his Father so as to be without sin, was to grow up and live as a perfect man free from sin, take upon himself all of our sins, and die in our place on the cross. His work was to become a perfect sacrifice on our behalf, to give his life in our place so that through his death we can have eternal life. On the cross, just before Jesus died he said, "It is finished." Just as the work of creation was finished, provision for salvation was now finished.
Jesus came and finished the work we were trying to do to be accepted by God. As we believe in his finished work on the cross we enter our day of spiritual rest. In Jesus Christ we now rest from our labor. We now have hope. True Christianity is not a religion, where we work to try to become acceptable, but a relationship. That is why Sunday is so special for me. It is a day that I rest from physical labor and reflect on my spiritual rest and worship and enjoy God. God worked and rested and now we can find rest. Let us not fail to enter his rest because of disobedience.
