Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. Today on the podcast, we continue a series on the theme of seventh day rest. God created the cosmos in six days and on the seventh day stopped and settled into his creation to rest and rule with his human partners in a day that has no end.

The seventh day rest is what we all long for and it's what God promises to recreate and to start this recreation project teaches one family, the family of Abraham, and he wants to give them the rest that was lost and let them bring that rest to the whole world.

So today on this episode, we're going to look at Israel's sacred days, their feasts and festivals and surprise. There's seven of them.

What we're going to see is that Israel's ritual calendar on a yearly basis and then on a seven year cycle and then on a seven time seven year cycle. These are all ways that Israel is to reenact and symbolize this same basic storyline.

That is the story of God's desire to partner with humans to bring creation to a state of rest. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

We're talking about the Sabbath. Or are we talking about the Sabbath? Yeah. The Sabbath is one of the things we're talking about. One of the ways...

It's the way we got into the conversation. The ideal of the seventh day is talked about in the Bible, but there are many other stories and themes and whatever time periods of seven that point to the same idea.

The seventh day, the day of completeness.

They've completeness when creation is filled with God's presence and power when creation responds by generating abundance and humanity can rest and rule in God's presence and trust that everything's going to be okay.

It's the genesis one and two ideal that was never fully realized.

There was a taste of it. Yes, a lost opportunity. Yeah, that's right.

This blessing of the seventh day was then offered Abraham who then... In a seven-lined poem.

And he, Abraham's family, ends up slaves in Egypt. Yes. Not seventh day rest. No. Slavery and oppression. That's right.

And death and disorder. Back to darkness and disorder. Yes, in this case, it's the powers. The gods of Egypt and Pharaoh together bringing death and darkness onto the family of Abraham.

And so just like in Genesis 1, God brought life and order out of darkness.

Out of darkness. Out of the dead darkness. In ten words, ten acts of speaking.

So in the Exodus, God speaks ten acts of judgment onto Egypt and Pharaoh and its gods.

And he brings them out of darkness? Yes. And the tenth all begins at night.

It's as if the ten words, uncreat or de-create Egypt, back to the dark night of death.

And then God provides light. He starts redoing Genesis 1, but just for the family of Israel.

And so then Israel now is in the wilderness. And they... It brings them, gives them light and takes them through the waters. That's true. Yeah.

To the dry land. Yeah, we're supposed to be seeing all this Genesis 1. Correct. Replay.

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