The Seventh Day

After the six days of Creation that we read about in the first chapters of Genesis, we read that “on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made” (Genesis 2:2-3).  As I think about it, to me it is odd that the Lord would rest—surely a glorified, immortal, perfect Being does not get tired or need rest in the same sense that we do.  Our bodies get tired and demand rest because we are mortal, but when we are resurrected I can’t imagine that we would still need rest or sleep or anything like that.  Not to mention the fact that “all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men” (Alma 40:8).  So why would God “rest” on the seventh day of Creation?  It would seem that the only logical explanation is that He did it for us: God wanted to provide an example of resting on the 7^th day.  From the very beginning clearly the idea of the Sabbath was important to the Lord.  The other commandments would come later, but the Sabbath was introduced first.  Surely this indicates the importance of the law in the eyes of the Lord. 

                The LDS Bible Dictionary says that the Sabbath Day serves as “a constant reminder to the individual of his need for spiritual sustenance” (see here).  It would seem that the Lord wanted to give us a pattern in the Creation account: man is to labor for six days and then rest for a day.  It wasn’t just that we need physical rest only; rather we need to commune with our Father in Heaven and receive spiritual nourishment.  Perhaps part of what we can learn from the fact that the idea of the Sabbath was introduced in connection with the Creation account is that each Sunday we should reflect upon the great things the Lord has done for us, especially in the last six days.  Just as God reflected on His work on the seventh day, so we too should reflect upon the hand of the Lord in our own lives and how we have seen that in the prior week.  

The Sabbath Day came before the Fall and will continue at least until the Second Coming of the Lord.  While we don’t have an account of the early Patriarch’s keeping the Sabbath Day, surely they did.  The renewal of the commandment to observe the Sabbath Day was given in D&C 59 in our dispensation, so we know that the Sabbath was more than just another requirement in the Law of Moses; it came before and continued afterwards.  It is to be a “perpetual covenant” for us throughout mortality.  And who knows—maybe we’ll get to rest on the seventh day in heaven too.