Work and Rest in Rhythm
And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”—Gen. 1:28 (ESV)
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”—Matt. 28:18-20 (ESV)
[I am grateful to Nancy Guthrie’s Even Better Than Eden, ch. 6, for the insights in this post.]
In my last post, we talked about the blessings and challenges of establishing a weekly Sabbath rest. However, the Sabbath is not just about resting. It is only 24 hours of reprieve in our normal lives of work. How, then, do we think about work and rest as complementary, not opposing, ideas?
As with all things, it is good to go back to the beginning to understand how work and rest complement each other. Yes, all the way back in Genesis! So let’s go take a look.
The Original Call to Work
The first thing we need to remember is that God works. He makes plans and executes them (Eph. 1:11). He prepares good works for us to do (Eph. 2:10). He is busy sustaining life here on earth, even down to feeding birds (Matt. 6:26) and noting when they fall (Matt. 10:29). From great acts to small, our God is actively working.
As image bearers, we see that God designed humans to work too. The mandate to work (Gen. 1:28) is given before the fall. It was God’s intention that Adam work and keep the garden (Gen. 2:15). This was not reserved for Adam as male, but for mankind as humanity, male and female.
Like God, we are created to work. Unfortunately, sin has made that work so much harder. Genesis 3 describes specific ways that we will be impacted in our work in very particular spheres. Women will experience more pain in the work of bearing and rearing children and marital difficulty (v. 16)—touching the home relationships that she will care for. Men will experience frustration, “thorns and thistles” that thwart their hard work and efforts (v 18-19). Pain and death is a common denominator for both.
Work for us in our post-fall world is no less difficult. But that doesn’t make work evil. In Christ, we are invited to work at whatever we do with all our might (Eccl. 9:10) for His glory (Col. 3:17), even in our eating and drinking (1 Cor. 10:31). He intends that while we wait, we are to multiply what He has given us, like the servants in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30), not to earn our salvation but out of confidence in it.
What work are you called to in this season of your life? How might seeing your current circumstances, even if it is unrecognized, mundane, or repetitive, a way to express our gratitude and joy in our salvation?
The Original Pattern of Rest
Not only are we to image God in our work, God intended us to image Him in our rest. In Exodus 20, God caps off the fourth commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy with verse 11: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Though God does not need sleep (Ps. 121:4), He does rest. This suggests that these are two different things. We can sleep but not rest. We can rest without sleeping. This is possible when we find our rest in Christ alone.
So why does God rest? Most commentators believe that God rests not because He is tired or weary (Is. 40:28) but simply to celebrate the good work of His hands. He looks at what He has created over the past six days—including man and woman—and celebrates. Likewise, as we imitate God, the Sabbath day is for celebrating the good work God has done through us during the work week.
Have you stopped to celebrate what God has helped you to accomplish during your week? Instead of looking at the never-ending to-do list, pause to think about all the ways God has helped you to faithfully love and serve others or carry out your responsibilities—and thank Him for His sustaining grace to do so.
Slavery and Rest
When the Ten Commandments are issued a second time to the next generation after their forty years of wilderness wandering, it is interesting that though much of it is the same, there is a slight shift in regards to the fourth commandment. In Deuteronomy 5:15, instead of pointing to the work of creation, it reads: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”
In this instance, the Sabbath day also has a second purpose. Besides celebrating what we have done, it is also to celebrate what God has done. Just as He rescued the children of Israel from the hand of the Egyptians, He has brought us out of slavery to sin through the work of Christ on the cross.
For many of us, work can feel like enslavement. I felt that even as a mom. There were times in my season of mom burnout that I felt like one! I worked long hours with no pay on a relentless schedule.
Even if we are paid, there are jobs and seasons within those jobs that feel particularly difficult. The Sabbath, then, is such a gift to us. It truly was made for our good. It is not intended to be more work (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath day is for celebrating our rescue from the slavery of sin—a new kind of freedom.
If a full day Sabbath is not possible for you right now, what are some ways you can pause in your daily work to receive refreshment for your soul? Think of and plan for three pauses in your workday: morning, afternoon, and evening.
Sabbath Keeping: Is it For Today?
One of the reasons why Sabbath naysayers argue against the keeping of the Sabbath is that it is part of the law. Paul clearly points out in Galatians that keeping the law does not save us. In addition, Jesus and the Pharisees come to heads over this very topic often. As modern readers of the Bible, this can be confusing: do we keep the Sabbath today or not?
I’d like to say: yes. Let me explain why.
When God gives the Ten Commandments to the nation of Israel, He is laying down His moral law. This law is for all those who would call Him their Lord—including those of us grafted into the nation of Israel through Christ.
This law shapes us even today. We would not think of overlooking the law not to commit murder or steal. Likewise, we cannot skip over the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath.
What often mixes us up is God’s civil and ceremonial law. In Exodus 20:22-23:33, God lays down a different type of law that details the ways the nation of Israel is to flesh out the moral law. This is law that is appropriate to that season of the redemption story. It is no longer appropriate now that Christ has come and has perfectly fulfilled all those laws on our behalf.
Have you automatically written off keeping the Sabbath because we are now on this side of the cross? How might remembering that the fourth commandment is part of God’s moral law, not His civil and ceremonial law, help you to reconsider your stance?
Jesus’ Work and Rest
Though Jesus often butt heads with the religious leaders over the Sabbath, He did still keep it. What they often argued about circled around the many man-made laws, even above and beyond the Sabbath laws God set out in his civil and ceremonial law. Why did they make so many?
Perhaps, as some commentators observed, because the pain of exile—70 years, one for each of the Sabbath years they failed to observe (2 Chr. 36:20-21), they were determined not to repeat that again. Perhaps, as fallen human beings, they, like us, swing to the other extreme and become overly fastidious in keeping the law.
Whatever the reason, they clearly missed the heart of it (Mark 2:27). In Jesus’ day, obsessive Sabbath keeping had become a burden instead of being a day for rest. Ironically, they were worried they were not resting enough!
So Jesus angered them as He seemed to flout what they thought was the ways of righteousness. But He wasn’t. He actually came to offer them the rest for their souls from all these burdens.
In fact, Jesus’ greatest work is not His miracles. It is the bearing of our sins on the cross, once for all restoring man to God. For those who are willing to lay down their own efforts to work and earn their salvation and rely wholly on His, they are set free from this burden.
On Good Friday, when He breathed His last, He says “It is finished!” He has done His work.
On Holy Saturday, the day when all the rest of the nation were observing not only the Sabbath but the Passover, He rested from His work of re-creation. He too rests from His labors, freeing His people from slavery to sin through the sacrificial death of the Lamb of God.
On Easter Sunday, Jesus rises from the dead. The second Adam is the “firstborn” among his brothers. In this new era, we now celebrate this day and commemorate His victory over death.
How might looking at Jesus’ work as a work of re-creation provide us a reason to celebrate on Sundays? How might remembering Jesus’ work as our rescue from slavery encourage us to rest in His labors and not our own? How might Jesus’ work help us to rejoice and celebrate each week as we rest in Him?
Our Work and Rest
Now we, on this side of the cross, as children of God, brothers of Christ, eagerly anticipating what Jesus Himself experienced, we have been given a commission. We are to likewise “be fruitful and multiply”—by making disciples.
This is the heart of whatever we do. Whether we work outside the home or in it, God calls us to build His Kingdom, each of us playing our part in the body, each of us a living stone and living sacrifice.
For six days of the week, we labor towards this end. And on the seventh day we rest.
As already mentioned, this is hard work, even though it is good, made harder by sin.
We fight against our sinful pride, believing it is up to us to hold all things together. Resting helps us to remember our rightful place in the scheme of things.
We fight against our limited resources. Sin tempts us to believe that we don’t have limits. Rest reminds us that we do. When we both work hard and rest faithfully, over and over, it helps to curb these false beliefs that can derail us and lead us into the pit of pride and the pain of burnout.
Every time we accept rest as a pathway to experience His grace instead of looking at it as a duty or ritual, our hearts are restored to God and reoriented to the real purposes of our work. After we pause to rest, we can re-enter into our work, physically invigorated, spiritually refreshed, and ready to serve in love once again.
As we do the hard work of our work during the week and then faithfully practice the hard work of rest—resisting the lies, fears, and instead walking in faith that He will care for us even as we are not working—we practice something beautiful. In my own experience, this rhythm is what helps me to endure for as long as the Lord has me here on earth.
As I rest in Him, abide in His presence, I am able to take the time to fuel my soul with His Word. This, in turn, allows me to reflect on the ways I need to grow—both in sins that I need to address as well as good works that I can do. My values are slowly re-tuned to His. Rest provides me time to also think and plan on how that is going to actually happen.
Then when the work week comes, I labor towards those ends He calls me to. I seek to make the most of every opportunity, to steward my time, resources, and energies towards Kingdom ends. As a human, this can be tiring, so when the seventh day comes around again, I am ready to rest, replenish, and refresh.
How might understanding the interplay between work and rest help you to see this practice of rest in a new light?
Practicing this work-rest rhythm is one way we reflect the pattern God established that first creation week, made more meaningful through the work of Christ in our re-creation. In our last post in this series, we will see how this is a pattern not only of the past, but a pattern that points us to the future.
