Corie Ten Boom, “If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.”
There is good evidence that we are living in the most work obsessed culture to ever exist. The Japanese have a term that basically translates to “death by overwork,” where people die of stroke, heart attack, or starvation due to their work habits. This term emerged when an increasing number of Japanese professionals were dying mysteriously or suddenly. Studies showed that in 2011 alone, there were 30,000 suicides, and they believe 10,000 were due to overwork.
Yet, Americans work 137 more hours per year than the Japanese, 260 more hours than the British, and 490 more hours than the French.
We work more hours on average than any other country in the world.
It is not just that we work more. We often idolize our work and its twin sister busyness. Busyness has become a virtue. There is a level of hurry and distraction that is an epidemic and constant.
Some of us don’t have a problem with overwork, but it is the pursuit of pleasure. The next thing to go chase, or to fulfill you, or to try out. It’s the incessant need to be in the know, to see that post, to share that reel, or to watch that new show.
If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.
Our solution includes things like naps, therapy, a “day off,” vacations, self-care, and the Calm app. But nothing seems to crack to code to our exhaustion.
John Mark Comer explains: “When our innate human restlessness collides with the digital age, the result is a culture-wide crisis of emotional health and spiritual death”1
Really, what we have is a distorted view of time.
In his book How to Inhabit Time, James K.A. Smith describes a curious condition called discronometria. He says this:
“When the human cerebellum is injured or ill, whether through trauma or disease or genetic inheritance, a curious condition can arise, Discronometria, and it is an inability to keep Time. Lacking a reliable internal clock, the person suffering from Discronometria becomes lost in a temporal fog. They're like any sense of the passage of time, the psychological TikTok that guides us in a day a minute. It feels the same as an hour, hours bleeding to a blur. So, part of the brain is damaged, and a person cannot orient themselves in time.”2
He goes on to say that we are plagued by a sense of spiritual discronometria. What is the solution to this?
Over several posts, I want to argue for the biblical warrant for the Sabbath and how it is a gift to humanity in the midst of an overworked, exhausted, and anxious culture.
Biblical Theology of Sabbath Rest
Sabbath as a Creation Ordinance
The word Sabbath means to stop, rest, or cease labor.3 Although simple in definition, the concept of the Sabbath is one of the most multifaceted concepts presented in the Scriptures. Shabbath is found in every section of the biblical texts, with forms of the word occurring 104 times. We are introduced to the concept of the Sabbath at the conclusion of the creation narrative in Genesis 2:1-3. It states,
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Genesis 2:1-3 concludes what scholars call the creation narrative, which begins in Genesis 1:1. God creates all things within this narrative, displaying his unparalleled power and unrivaled existence.
As God creates, He progressively builds an environment where humans can exist and demonstrate rule and dominion. God sets foundational, timeless principles within these seven days of creation. Any principle God established prior to the fall is called a “creation ordinance.”4
One of these timeless principles occurs in the concluding piece of creation as God rests. When God rests, He builds a rhythm into the fabric of creation. It is a piece of his design to be emulated, as I will seek to prove. However, the concept of rest is highly misunderstood. Unpacking the meaning of this word will bring clarity to what it means to rest according to how God designed it.
Rest in the Creation Narrative
The Book of Genesis is a book of beginnings. Many of the concepts woven throughout the Scriptures find their origin in Genesis. The idea of the Sabbath is no different. In Genesis 2:1–3, we see God come to the seventh day, complete his work, and rest. These three concepts are interrelated, piecing together a picture of Sabbath rest.
It should be noted that the word “Sabbath” is absent from these three verses. However, this does not mean that the concept is nonexistent. One of the first clues into God’s design for sabbath rest is the correlation between the number seven and rest.
In the creation narrative, the number seven has two primary meanings. One meaning is the linear journey, or order, of creation. In other words, to get to seven, one must start at one, progress to two, and so on. The second meaning is what occurs when seven is reached, which is completeness or fulfillment.
Seven represents a full and complete world, one that is finished. Tim Mackie tracks the literary design of the creation narrative, pointing out the rhythmic cadence of sevens intentionally placed within the passage. This is seen in examples such as seven words in the opening sentence of Genesis, the seven paragraphs in Genesis 1:1-2:3 marked by “evening and morning,” and the, most apparent, the seven days in which God created the world. There is no doubt that this pattern is intentional, as the author wants the reader to recognize that seven represents both a complete and finished product and a journey to that completeness.5
The seventh day of creation represents a journey of work that is complete, that is done, introducing a 6-1 rhythm of work and rest into creation. The introductory formula of “then God said” is absent, and the closing clause of “evening and morning.”6 The abruption of rhythm, coupled with the declaration that the word is “finished,” signals something new.
God’s work, once undone, is now complete. There is nothing left to be done.
When God stops working, it represents that the world is in stable order and complete shalom. One writer states, “God’s cessation is the divine endorsement of creation.”7
What This Means For Us
Theologically, this has profound significance for humanity. On the seventh day in the fullness of creation, God intended his image-bearers to experience life in unbroken shalom. When the work was finished, God sought to enter into a relationship with humanity. This, as Karl Barth notes, is the deeper meaning of rest.8 Rest does not mean that God was tired or needed a break. Rest is rooted in the very fact that his work was complete. God delighted in what he saw after repeatedly declaring his creation as “good.”
The connection between seven, completion, and rest is seen in that He rests only on the seventh day when His work is fully complete. This seventh day was declared holy, set apart by God.
Only three things were declared holy in the creation narrative: Animals, humans, and the seventh day. One of the things that comes with this blessing upon the animal and the human is the ability to bring forth life. These two creatures possess a life-giving capacity. When God blesses the seventh day, there is the suggestion that this day, a shadow of the Sabbath day, has a life-giving capacity.9
Humans were made to rest in the fullness of God as God rested in the shalom of his creation. One way God sought to accomplish this is not only by blessing the seventh but by declaring it holy. It is striking that this is the first instance in which something is declared holy in the Scriptures.
In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Hershel speaks about this when he talks about the uniqueness of God setting apart a day as holy. In contrast to the deities in other religions who occupy space or temple, God declares a space in time as sacred.10
God does not reside in a single space but has declared a specific time holy. There is no special pilgrimage or even a particular temple to meet with God. God carved out a day.
In the creation narrative, God sets the foundation for sabbath rest. He establishes a pattern of work and rest followed by virtually every culture in the world, known as the “workweek.” But there is something much more theologically rich than a pattern of vocation.
God creates a space in time where His creative power is displayed, his work is complete, and humans are welcome. In this space, a conglomerate of completeness, wholeness, and rest, God’s presence dwells, which is the deepest longing of the human soul. These concepts are a shadow of the temple of God, the promised land of the Israelites, and the coming Kingdom of God where God dwells and humans are at peace with Him. It is from this foundation that the Sabbath is expanded upon.
In part two, we’ll examine the sabbath in the context of God’s people, The Israelites.
John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time
Bryan C. Babcock, “Sabbath,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
David W. Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2013), 163.
Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, Seventh-Day Rest, The Bible Project
K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, vol. 1A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 176.
Bruce Riley Ashford and Craig G. Bartholomew, Doctrine of Creation: A Constructive Kuyperian Approach, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020), 165.
Ibid, 167
Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987), 36.
Abraham Hershel, The Sabbath, (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Grioux: 1951), 14.