What is the pinnacle of creation?

Recently, I received a gift that had that infamous “some assembly required” sticker on the box.  For my enjoyment, my family had given me a patio set.  When I opened the package and began assembling each piece, I realized that there would be a few hours of work ahead of me.

Slowly but surely, things took shape.  And when it was all said and done, I looked at my gift and was quite pleased.  It was done!  It was complete!  The cushions were on, everything was sturdy, and there were no left over pieces!

But it wasn’t complete.

When God created the heavens and the earth, there is this idea that on the sixth day, when God made man and woman, they were the pinnacle of creation.  Six days God created, and on the seventh day he rested.  So isn’t the high point, the final piece de resistance of creation humanity?

I used to think that everything had built up to this moment – God making humanity in his own image, male and female.  But then it struck me: the goal of creation is never the completion or final piece de resistance, but something more profound: enjoyment and rest.

When God created humanity, he made us to enjoy the pinnacle of his creative work and glory – the Sabbath.  This seventh day was to be one set apart, a day where God himself rested from his work and enjoyed his creation.

Before humanity ever got to enjoy that Sabbath rest, we are told that they sinned.  They failed to enter into his rest.  Creation did not experience its full intention: Sabbath rest in God’s presence (Hebrews 4:1-6).

In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews says that God’s people failed to enter that enjoyment and rest with God because of sin and unwillingness to receive God’s presence and promise by faith.  “Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people,” we are told in Hebrews 4:10.  Sabbath isn’t merely about a day, but about coming into God’s presence as forgiven people where we enjoy and delight in the culmination of his work by resting from our own.

When I got the patio set out on the deck and was able to sit with a cup of coffee and a good book, the sun shining down on me, I had reached the goal of the patio set.  Complete enjoyment.  Rest and delight.

This Sunday, make it your aim to enjoy God’s Sabbath rest.  Come and worship.  As C. S. Lewis put it so well: “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”*

You were made to enjoy and rest in God’s presence.  So let’s join together this weekend in praise of our great God!

 

See you Sunday,

~Pastor Andrew

 

*C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), 95.