Destined for Holiness

We have to ask this question, why did God create man in the first place? Why are we here? Why does God bother to set man on this planet? Well, we notice in Genesis 3:2 the following words, “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which he had created and made.”

Now, you would think that if the sixth day is the pinnacle of this seven-day period of creation; that if the sixth day is the ultimate day of creation, the day where the crowning act of glory is brought to pass with the creation of man in God’s own image, that that would be the day that God would bless and hallow and sanctify. But that’s not where the Old Testament places the accent. The blessing, the consecration, the hallowing takes place on the seventh day.

Now, what does that mean? With this structure of seven days, the goal of creation is not simply the existence of me, but the goal, the ultimate goal of creation is Sabbath holiness, that man is created for holiness and for rest. That is to say that the future of humanity, the destiny of man is found in holiness and in rest. Not that our future is moving towards taking a nap, but rest from uncertainty, rest from inner turmoil, rest from the elusive pursuit of peace, rest from what the existential philosophers call that built-in problem of anxiety that plagues human existence.

Man was not made for restlessness, but he was made for that inner peace and stability that comes from the fulfillment of man’s nature as it relates to God. There is a link between rest, that is freedom from anxiety, freedom from this haunting, loneliness, this awful, empty feeling of anxiety that buffets us every day. There’s a link between that rest, that Sabbath, and the purpose for which we were created, which is holiness. Again, we were made in the image of God and we were made to have fellowship with God. And we were made to mirror and reflect the character of God. In a word, we were made for holiness.

Now, we go back to the text and we see that the New Testament makes much out of the institution of the Sabbath in creation; that the Sabbath day is not something that just pops up later on in Israel’s history at Mount Sinai where the law is delivered and God requires that one day in seven be set apart and consecrated for religious devotion and cessation from worldly activities. But the New Testament, particularly the author of Hebrews, sees more in this institution of the Sabbath day; that the Sabbath that we celebrate even today points to the future destiny of the created world, that every Sunday or every Sabbath day there’s a sense in which we are to stop from our normal activities, stop from our labor, come into the presence of God, worship that God, contemplate that God, and then think of the promise of the future that has been stored up for us.

There is a Sabbath rest that awaits the people of God. The destiny of the Christian is Sabbath holiness, the end of human anxiety, the end of human conflict, the end of warfare as we enter ultimately into the peace and permanence and stability for which we have been created. But that can’t happen until all remnants of sin are removed. That’s why we look to heaven, to our future sanctification and glorification whereby we will in fact have the mirror restored and we will live in harmony and in beauty and in holiness, in the presence of God, in our future Sabbath. Man’s ultimate joy, his ultimate fulfillment is found in the seventh day, in the pursuit of holiness, in the pursuit of the glory of God.

To glorify God, to manifest His greatness, to mirror and to reflect His character, that is the reason for our existence. That’s man’s raison d’être, that’s the reason why God placed us here, so that we see that the world was not created just for man. It doesn’t end on the sixth day, but it’s the seventh day that God blesses and hallows. It’s that day He sanctifies to tell us that our origin and our destiny is in holiness.