After the water pouring ceremony, when the Israelites took down their sukkot on Sukkot’s seventh day, time flowed naturally into the Eighth Day’s holy assembly. In Genesis 1-2:3, the same pattern appears, with time coursing from the activities of the seventh day into the eighth and what follows. On the seventh day, God ceased dividing, ordering life, and restoring functionality¹ to His good creation and took up residence in the heaven-earth sphere. He rested upon His throne, ruling with His life-giving and life-sustaining words, establishing security and stability in the ordered cosmic system of His garden home. This sacred space and time of God’s Sabbath reign, where He sits rested, enthroned with His co-regents, who tend and keep the garden’s sacred space, was intended to continue every day thereafter, extending His Sabbath rule into eternity. This blog explores the seventh day without end as the new beginning of humanity and creation’s restored order.

The rising and setting of the sun and moon order our existence. The Creator and Maker set time in motion on Day 1, Day 4, and Day 7 of the Genesis account of His reordering the heavens and the earth.   On Day 1, God spoke light, establishing it by naming it “day,” dividing it from the already existing darkness, which He called “night.” On Day 4, God set lights in the sky to divide the day from the night and to govern both day and night. (On Day 6, God created humans to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over all living things by maintaining the good, Gen. 1:28.) Each 24-hour day began with night and ended with day, its evening (initiating its “night”) and its morning (starting its “day”). At the end of the sixth day, the heavens and the earth and all their hosts were complete, for God viewed them as very good (capable of performing their purpose). And so, just as God had blessed the living creatures and humanity on the fifth and sixth days to be fruitful and multiply after their kind, God also blessed the seventh day with life-giving abundance flowing out of His temple garden sanctuary. He sanctified or set apart the seventh day from the other six days by ceasing from His work of establishing an operating system that countered the chaos of tohu and bohu (Gen. 1:2) and resting (residing and reigning) upon His throne.

This reflects the ancient Near Eastern cultural thought, wherein God subdued chaos and restored the heavens and earth to their proper function and rested (nuah) on His throne in His newly built temple. This act established His reign, filling His home with His glory² (See Blog 86). The divine activity of the first six days’ evenings and mornings served the purpose of the Sabbath as God’s dwelling, which does not emphasize an evening or morning. In other words, the seventh day was not defined by time but by light without end, God inhabiting and ruling from sacred space. His resting upon His throne, reigning with His image-bearing priests, is what God continues to do every day thereafter. Thus, the Sabbath serves as the founding control center of the new beginning, maintaining the ordered sacred space of heaven and earth under the King’s triumphant reign.

As Israel’s King, Yeshua spoke of “being Lord over the Sabbath,” and the activities He performed on the Sabbath exemplified His sustaining the functionality of heaven and earth, the very good status of everything operating as God intended. He healed humanity so we could fulfill the image-bearing purpose for which He created us. Yeshua did the work of God, a King reigning on the Sabbath, guarding sacred space and time from non-order, calming sky and sea, imparting His wisdom, and allowing His fountain of life to flow forth to subdue unbelief and uselessness. We who believe in Him and have been baptized (resurrected in Him) continue in a liminal space with Him, the “now and not yet” wilderness, awaiting His subjugation of all enemies (the last enemy is death) under our feet and His choice of inheritance for us (Psa. 47:3). Having subdued our iniquities, Yeshua will transform our lowly bodies to conform to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Phil. 3:21). Yeshua’s Sabbath work did not reflect a state of relaxation but rather the sustaining of order and life, with all things fulfilling their created purpose. When we, as Yeshua’s followers, observe the Sabbath, we work (believe) according to God’s wisdom, which maintains ordered sacred space for our transformation into the everlasting inheritance, a work that flows with His life into all the earth.

The perpetual Seventh Day defines humanity’s purpose. The answer to “What is man?” is given in Psalms 8, connecting it to YHWH’s initial reordering of the heavens and earth when He gave us dominion over the works of His hands, placing all things in subjection under our feet, crowning us with glory and honor, though it is now not yet. Through Yeshua’s death, He destroyed him who had the power of death (the devil) and released the seed of Abraham from bondage to death, bringing many sons to glory, shining with the light of His Presence, the fire of His Holy Spirit (Heb. 2:6-18).

At the end of the biblical narrative in the Book of Revelation, John makes interesting comments about the beginning of enduring life with God that connect to Genesis 1. The new temple, filled with the glory of God, comprises two beings: “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb,” who live in the new Jerusalem from heaven. “And the city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb was its light” (Rev. 21:23). He adds a brief note in verse 25, “there shall be no night there.” The activity of the Day, the light of the Lamb working in the Day, is the same glory of His holiness that filled the Tabernacle in the Camp of Israel, where nothing enters that defiles or causes an abomination (worship of other gods) or a lie, for only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life live there. The seventh Feast of YHWH, the life-changing Sukkot, makes the Eighth Day possible.

Takeaway:
The telos of God’s reordering of Genesis 1 was that God would reign on earth through a mediating priesthood, granting humanity access to His life-sustaining wisdom. YHWH’s seventh-day enthronement and glorious reign within sacred space and time naturally transition into the eighth, the new beginning of life in His kingdom. We cannot experience the eighth day without the seventh day. Living without God is death. Living without end requires the knowledge and wisdom of God, the Light of life to shine upon us continually.

Fun Factors:
Psalm 8 has 315 letters, 3 × 105, in 77 words, 4² + 5²  + 6², totaling 21243, 3 × 73 × 97, 3(3² + 8²)(2⁴ + 3⁴) and Hebrews 2:4-6 has 164 letters, 8² + 10²,  in 31 words, totaling 24491, 19 × 1289, 19(8² + 35²), signaling God’s restoration of Israel’s vocation through Yeshua’s ordering sacred space and time for all the earth within the complete holyday cycle of light, subduing and filling it with life.