Day Seven of Creation is the climax of both Genesis Creation accounts. In it, we see the Creator God Heaven and Earth take his place at his throne, within the temple that he himself built. His temple is in time. His temple is in all of space.
Genesis 2:1-3
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
God rests.
In the Ancient Near East, rest for gods had a very specific understanding. Gods rest only happens in a temple, and always happens in a temple.
1 Kings 8:2, Ezra 3:4, Ezekiel 43:25-25 show a seven day structure in preparing a temple, just as in the Creation. Other cultures also described their gods as taking seven days to prepare their temple. A liturgy for a temple generally took seven days, everything leading up to the house of rest for God.
At the end of creation in the Babylonian Epic Enuma Elish, a temple is built for Marduk, and he is crowned king of the gods. Almost every other creation epic from the ancient world ends in a similar way. After the creation of humanity, the gods put their new people to work to serve and feed them. A temple is built by the hands of humans for the gods who created them. Sacrifices are made from the food the humans produce so the gods can eat. Humans are servants for the gods needs and subjects to worship them to fulfill the needs of their egos.
But the Creator in Genesis has no needs. He builds his own temple. Mankind does not serve his needs, because he has none. Male and female are created, not to produce for God, but to rule on earth as God’s representatives, in his image, for his glory. Man and woman are priests of Sovereign God to all of Creation.
This idea of rest is not just the ceasing of work, when God has an opportunity to kick his legs up and watch TV. God rests because his Creation is “very good”, all is functioning as it should, and God can now take his place at headquarters and rule his functionaries according to their functions. We see a similar use of the word when God tells Israel he will give them rest from their enemies in Deuteronomy 12:10 (Josh 21:44, 23:1). This means life goes back to normal, all functioning as it should. In the same way, God creates for himself a place of rest on the seventh day. All functions have been determined and run as they should. None oppose him.
GENESIS 1 IS A TEMPLE TEXT, GIVING PURPOSE AND FUNCTION FOR ALL OF CREATION TO GLORIFY THEIR CREATOR
We understand God's role as Creator as the one who creates function, assigns functionaries, and has the authority to give purpose to void. Therefore, God's role as Creator has not ended. He continues to create as he sustains and gives purpose and direction to all life. Immanuel Kant first proposed the fallacious idea of God as primary or secondary cause. In essence, If God is Creator of the material world only, his job as Creator has ended for all time at the end of Genesis 1. This leads us to Kant’s idea that the natural world has its secondary God created functions, but God’s primary actions exist only in the miraculous. God exists in the gaps. He created the material world to work, and this we can study and test and know, but it really isn’t part of God’s realm anymore. By this understanding, God exists in the supernatural realm, in the realm of the unexplained and mysterious.
But If Genesis 1 describes God as Creating and blessing the functions of his temple, then this story is only the beginning of his work as Creator. The Hebrew people did not share our new Greek idea of a separation between the supernatural and natural realm. All of the world belongs to God, and everything that happens is his doing. Humans may cultivate the ground and plant seeds, but it is God that makes the plants grow. They understood that the rains were part of the process, but they also understood that no amount of irrigation would make a plant grow if God did not ordain it so.
When a prayer for provision is answered, I thank God for his work. When I am provided for every day by the production of my own work, though I did not ask or pray for it, I thank God for his work. When I pray for healing and am healed without explanation, I thank God for his work. When months of physiotherapy and the natural healing processes of my body bring me to health, I thank God for his work.
GOD IS ALIVE AND ACTIVE IN OUR WORLD, IN OUR EVERY BREATH, IN OUR EVERY MOVEMENT.
IN THE EXPLAINED AND THE MYSTERIOUS, ALL IS THE CREATOR’S, AND ALL THINGS ARE HELD TOGETHER BY THE CREATOR.
So where did God rest?
In all of space, in everything that he created. Creation is the story of God creating for himself the sacred space. Within his temple, the cosmos which he created, he takes his rest.
This could only exist in a religious understanding where Yahweh God is the highest being of ultimate sovereign authority. In a polytheistic framework of many gods vying for authority, all of Creation could not be a temple, because there were too many gods to inhabit it. Each needs their own temple, their own centre of operations from which to govern in their realm of authority. In Genesis, any temple built for any other god would only be trespassing in the only true temple of the only true authority.
The tabernacle and temple of ancient Israel was understood by the Israelites as formed to reflect the cosmos, to be a reflection on earth of God's true temple in heaven. Hebrews 8 and 9 articulates this Jewish idea very clearly.
1 Kings 8:27
“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!
Isaiah 6:3
And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
The seven days of creation can be understood as seven literal 24 hour days in which God blesses and then fills the temple he has constructed. A close example in scripture to this is Exodus 40, where Moses examines and blesses the temple, and then the temple is filled by God's presence. The construction of the material of the temple occurred in Exodus 35-39. Genesis 1 does not concern itself with the material creation, only the inauguration.
THE FUNCTIONS OF CREATION WERE MADE BY GOD FOR HIS REST – HIS GLORY AND HIS RULE.
THE SEVENTH DAY IS GOD’S TEMPLE IN TIME, CREATED BY HIMSELF FOR HIMSELF
THE COSMOS IS HIS TEMPLE IN ALL OF CREATION, MADE BY HIMSELF, FOR HIMSELF.
Without a congregation, a church building has no purpose. During the construction phase of the building, it is nothing but a purposeless mess. It only becomes a church when it is fully built and inhabited by people. Even then, it is when the congregation enters the liturgy of gathering and the celebration of the year together that time has its meaning in the church. (It doesn't matter if your understanding of church includes the Christian year or liturgy. To the Jewish people, both were very important.) The material that makes the building, the people that make the congregation, and time all existed before the church became a church. The gathering of the people in their place and their practice of community together gave the church purpose.
Sabbath is not an epilogue to the creation account. It is the purpose. It is the climax. God was creating a place for himself. God communicates the function of all of creation in the seven days as his temple, his dwelling place. Once all of creation is complete, it can enter into God's rest, God's perfectly balanced intention.
God alone creates his own temple.
He has no predecessor.
He has no successor.
None oppose him.
All of Creation heeds his word.
He assigns purpose, and his purpose is good.
From that which has no form, he creates function and design.
Man and Woman serve the Creator as his ambassadors to Creation.
(Next – Man and Woman as Priests in the Temple Garden)
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