We live in a busy, fast-paced world. We can shop, eat, and work any hour of the day.

Most of us live with constant access to the internet, and if you're like me, you're

constantly checking your phone for news and updates. There's always a new deadline, a

new urgent request, a new problem to solve. One day, bleeds into the next. Life can be

hectic, and it can be exhausting. And then we get to the Bible, and there's an idea,

a theme that you may have heard of, but if you're like me, you might not know a lot about.

It's the idea of the Sabbath. At its most basic, it's that you stop. The word Sabbath

means stop. The word Shabbat and Hebrew. There are actually other words for rest, like in

English, we think of like laying down and relaxing and being rejuvenated. To do those

things, you have to Shabbat, but the word Shabbat, its basic meaning is to cease from, to stop.

I'm John Collins, and this is the Bible Project Podcast. Now the Hebrew word Shabbat is where

our English word Sabbath comes from. And you may have heard of people observing a Sabbath day,

an entire day of stopping from your work, or you might have heard of people taking sabbaticals,

long breaks from their work, but this practice comes from a much larger theme in the Bible.

The practice of Shabbat is just one way to think about something way bigger going on,

which is about this design of time, all culminating in a seventh day. God creates the heavens

in the earth in six days, and on the seventh day, he stops. He enters his creation and he rests

in rules. And humans are there with God to rule and rest with him on the seventh day.

The seventh day is like a multifaceted gem. And as the concept develops through the stories of

Ibal, we're going to discover in different story after story that there's going to be different

ways and angles and facets that get you to the core. One of the main facets is the fabric of

creation, as leading towards a great goal where humans imitate God and join him in ceasing

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