God Made The Seventh Day Holy

The Day of Rest
Biblical Teaching About Time
—An online book about rest and worship—
By Dr. Al Franzmeier

Chapter 3
The Seventh Day Is Holy
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This is the conclusion to the third chapter in which we began a study of the Biblical concept of time and rest. In my previous Blog we looked at the origin of the seven-day week. Let's finish that study.

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God made the seventh day holy
The seventh day brings God’s blessings to his faithful people.  It is a day set aside by him so that he may bless his them.  It is a holy day.  The Hebrew verb for “make holy” is Qadash.  It means to separate or set aside for God’s purposes, sanctify, hallow.  The seventh day is set aside for God’s purposes.  On this day, God wants his people to rest from their labor, to rejoice in his presence and to renew their relationships with one another.  This is God’s day.  It is holy.

Consider some examples of how people, as well as days, are set aside for God’s purposes.  The most obvious holy men in the Old Covenant were the priests:

“… priests are holy to their God.  Regard them as holy, because they offer up the food of your God.  Consider them holy, because I the Lord am holy – I who make you holy” (Leviticus 21:7-8)

Because they were holy, their bodies must be clean, their hair must not be shaved, their wives must be virgins at marriage and they themselves must have no defects.  Many other rules and regulations from God controlled their lives.  “Keep my commands and follow them,” said the Lord.  “I am the Lord.  Do not profane my holy name.  I must be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites.  I am the Lord, who makes you holy and who brought you out of Egypt to be your God.  I am the Lord,” (Leviticus 22:31-33).

By word and by example the priests were constantly to remind God’s people that he is holy and that they too were to be holy.  In fact, God’s original intention was that all of his people would be priests.  At Mount Sinai he said to them: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.  Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). This promise, says the Apostle Peter, is being fulfilled by New Covenant believers in the spiritual house, the holy priesthood that offers spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  Of them the Apostle writes: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:4-10).


The Seventh Day
The Sabbath must always be on the final day of the week, the seventh day.  Seven is a sacred symbolical word of power throughout the Bible, because it is related to God and His day of rest.  The Hebrew word for seven is Sheba.  The priests, the high priest’s garments and the altar were all set aside for God’s purposes by ceremonies lasting seven days.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread and Passover celebrated the Exodus for seven days starting on day fifteen of the first month, Abib (March-April). During this feast, the first sheaf of the barley harvest was brought before the Lord.  The Feast of Weeks (Hag Shabu’ot), literally, the Feast of Seven-Periods followed the Passover.  This Feast began on the day after seven full weeks, the fiftieth day.  It was also called the Fifty Days (Hamishim Yom) Feast.  The Greek word for this feast is Pentecost (fifty).  It marked the early wheat harvest at about the sixth of Sivan, near the end of our own month of May.  After the beginning of the Christian era, Jews celebrated God’s giving of the Torah on this festival.

Christians remember Pentecost as the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the assembly of believers in Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul calls Christ the “first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). The tie in to the Old Covenant Feasts of Passover and Weeks thus becomes obvious.  The first sheaf of the barley harvest belonged to the Lord as a token that all the harvest was his and was dedicated to him by his people.  In turn, the resurrected Christ is the sheaf, the guarantee, of the resurrection of all God’s redeemed people.  When all things are completely fulfilled, God’s people will celebrate before him.  In that sense, the Feast of Weeks is a symbolical picture of the coming resurrection.

Menorah (Hebrew for “candlestick”, from the verb Nor – to give light) was the name for the sacred lamp in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple.  It had one main stem with six lateral stems, making seven.

Earlier the patriarch Abraham, with seven ewe lambs, sealed an oath before Abimelech that he had dug a certain well.  The place was called Beersheba, a word that can mean well (Beer) of seven (Sheba) or well of the oath (also Sheba, cf. Genesis 21:22-34). So too, Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, served his uncle Laban for seven years for Rachel and seven years for Leah (Genesis 29:18). These are examples of an ancient traditional respect for the number seven.

God rested from all his work of creating
On the seventh day of every week, God’s people must rest.  To rest is to desist from work.  God rested, but note that His is an eternal day of rest.  Unlike the other days, Day Seven has neither evening nor morning, neither beginning nor ending.  So this day became a sign of the cessation of tension, tribulation and trials toward which God is leading His people.  It gathered together all the promises and blessings of the other six. In that sense God spoke about “the land” promised as rest.

The first generation to leave Egypt did not trust in the Lord.  They rebelled and he was angry and solemnly swore: “Not a man of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your forefathers” (Deuteronomy 1:34-35; Numbers 14:30). Later, the land was called the “resting place.”

You are not to do as we do here today, everyone as he sees fit, since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 12:8, NIV).

“Resting place” is a noun derived from a verb meaning to rest or settle down (Nahat).  God put Adam into the Garden of Eden.  The verb for “put” (Yanach) is related to Nahat and implies security as well as rest. In the same way, after the flood, the Ark rested on Mount Ararat.  Noah (his name Nuach means ‘rest’), his family and all the animals in the Ark were now safe and secure.

The second generation of Israelites fleeing Egypt, born in the wilderness, did not duplicate their parents' mistrust.  They trusted the Lord and God gave them rest. 

The LORD gave them rest (Nuach - Noah) on every side, just as he had sworn to their forefathers (Joshua 21:44, NIV)

The Biblical history of God’s people is one of sin and rebellion. As a result they lost the promised blessing. God took away their security and their safety. Nehemiah described it succinctly.

But as soon as they were at rest (Nuach), they again did what was evil in your sight. Then you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they ruled over them.  And when they cried out to you again, you heard from heaven, and in your compassion you delivered them time after time.  (Nehemiah 9:28, NIV)

In fifth century B.C. the Jewish leader Nehemiah, personal attendant to King Artaxerxes of Persia, with letters of recommendation from his ruler, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.  Under his leadership, the returned settlers reaffirmed their commitment to the LORD’S covenant.  They promised to abstain from foreign marriages, observe the Sabbath again and support worship of the temple.  In so doing they believed that God would grant them rest, but rest in its fullness never came.  By the time of the birth of Jesus, the people were once again under the domination of a pagan, foreign government.

The curse spoken long ago upon the faithless Exodus generation remained: “How long will this wicked community grumble against me?  I have heard the complaints of these grumbling Israelites.  So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very things I heard you say: In this desert your bodies will fall – every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.  Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun” (Numbers 14:26-30).

The Jerusalem Temple liturgy reminds the worshipers of this.  God’s Sabbath-Rest is yet to come.  For now, believers must humbly return to the LORD with a prayer that one day he will mercifully grant them his rest. The promise of entering the LORD’S rest still stands, however. The message of the New Testament is that Jesus, the Son of God, is the great high priest who has gone through the heavens to offer himself as the one and final sacrifice for the sins of all people.  When he returns, he will bring salvation and final rest to all believers.

In that day, God’s promise given through the prophet Jeremiah will finally come to pass: “Do not fear, O Jacob my servant; do not be dismayed, O Israel.  I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid” (Jeremiah 46:27).