The 7th Day

Hear the words of the author of the book of Hebrews.  At the beginning of the fourth chapter they read, Since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it . . . But we who have believed do enter that rest.  Following this we are told, He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.

For the child born of God, there eventually will come faith; but at some time later, FAITH will need to be expressed.  It takes but a small amount of faith for one brought up in the tenets of Christianity, to believe that we can ask God to cause us to be born of His seed – and it will be done.  However, this is not the same caliber of faith that is needed in order for the believer to enter His rest. 

There was a day when God, after creating everything but one thing, said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.  It was done.  The evening and the morning were the sixth day.  All of creation was finished.  And on the seventh day God rested from all His works.  Do you know what?  I believe that when God entered His Rest, surely He entered it to stay.  And no power in the universe will ever bring Him out from it.  I believe that when our God came into His rest on the Seventh Day, that He entered an eternal rest.  I’m sure that this is why the scriptures never speak to us of an eighth day.  It is because He is forever at rest in the Seventh Day.  Do not even the days of the week become a witness to us in this matter?  In the world in which we live there runs seven days – one right after the other.  However, when we get to the end of our seventh day, it does not become eternal, as does our Maker’s seventh day.  Instead we begin all over again with day one.  And so, round and round we go.  Solomon knew of this concept: One generation passes away, and another generation comes.  The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose.  The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. And such are the seven days of the week.

So what’s new?  This is what’s new.  One day we are going to join our King and Creator in that eternal day of rest.  But actually we will be quite busy – and loving it; for His rest you see is going to be within us.  Still there is more good news – this being that we do not have to wait to leave this world in order to enter God’s rest.  In the fourth chapter of Hebrews we are informed both in verse one and verse six that we have been invited even now to join our Lord and Saviour in this Rest.  In fact, our Father in heaven really doesn’t appreciate taking no for an answer.  After all, His Son had paid a tremendously heavy price, so that every believer can even now come to abide in His Rest.  So why is it that we choose the alternative?  The alternative is slave labor – hard and cruel punishment put upon us by the enemy of our soul.  And his favorite weapon is the lie.  By way of the lie he causes us to worry; he causes us to fear; through his deception we are convinced that we are useless, inferior, undesirable, and the list goes on.  To live day after day, and to struggle beneath the weight of all of his lies, becomes tremendously hard work.  This is the exact opposite of the life-style that we have been called to live.

In the book of Hebrews, chapter seven, verse five, we read that those who have come to make up the Hebrew nation have all come from the loins of Abraham.  If this is true, then every man, woman and child, that has ever walked upon our globe, have all come from the loins of Adam.  Adam unarguably was created in the sixth day; and so weren’t we all?  It could then be that on our darkest day, every one of us chose to eat of that tree.  Still, the point I’d like to make is that man was created of God in the last day of the works of His hands.  Yet it was never the will of the Almighty for us to remain in that day.  Instead He has called for us to cross over into the Eternal Rest of the Seventh Day.  And in this do we rise to the highest heights of the New Covenant of our God.  It is for this that the Son had died – so that Eternal Life in Him would be ours, even as it is His.  Now we have become abandoned unto Him – our very Life being hidden away in His own.  From the day of the flesh to the Day of the Spirit has He brought us.  The work has been done.  Now all of the universe is made glad – and to this will there be no end. 

J. Pecoraro