The Bible says that God rested on the seventh day of creation. What do we think He did? Did He “go to church?”

I have recently been listening intently to a certain teacher on television who is really painting a new picture for me. It’s totally bigger and more detailed than what I’m going to address here. I just want to talk about the whole day of rest concept and why we need it.

Gary Keesee states man was created on the sixth day, which meant he began to live in the seventh day. Makes sense. He wasn’t created while God was doing all the work of creation. God created the whole environment of earth, the land, the trees, the animals, etc. Everything was made ready for the man before he ever was created. After God made the man, He gave him something to do…till the garden which was already provided. After God made Eve and told the two of them to fill the earth and subdue it, then God rested on the seventh day, not because he was tired, but because he was DONE.

I have been asking questions about how we are to live on the seventh day for a long time as I watch church people scurry around on Sundays, doing all sorts of things, including going to church twice in the day. It all just seems to me like a lot of WORK. Especially for the pastor! And then there’s the poor restaurateurs who we keep working so they don’t have the day off, because we all go out to eat on Sunday!

There used to be a time, when on Saturday, I would prepare our Sunday dinner so that we wouldn’t have to keep those restaurateurs working, but they went ahead and worked anyway. I really did enjoy doing that. When we got home from church, it was a quick reheat. You might call that leftovers, but I call it smart! These days, I don’t make such a production of it, though sometimes I think I should. We just kinda eat whatever is in the fridge, or I might cook on Saturday for Sunday. These days I try to just use up what we have in the fridge and build a meal around that.

Back to the day of rest. Gary Keesee says we were created to actually LIVE in the day of rest, using the scripture from Hebrews 4:9, “there remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” God set the day apart so that man would think about Him and refrain from his own labors already having provision made for him.The Old Testament law established that the people of God should not work on that day. They were to gather enough on the day before the Sabbath (for them, the Sabbath was Saturday) to provide for their day of rest. I concur with that. We should be doing that. That goes along with me cooking the meal on Saturday for (our Sabbath on) Sunday.

My point in this post (apart from Keesee’s teaching) is that man NEEDS a day of rest from his labor routine! Not only physically, but mentally. God knew this because He made us. We need refreshing that only comes from Him, and we need some time to play, I believe. The high amount of stress in our society makes this all the more necessary. I rest from even thinking about work on Sundays and turn my thoughts to Him and learning about His Kingdom, even if I am not in church, which is becoming quite normal now during this shutdown.

Gary Keesee has lot more to teach about the day of rest, but you can go get resources from his website. He’s a great teacher.