Eight Days
The Beginning

   Christians have sometimes been accused of holding to the irrational belief that God created the universe and everything in it in seven days. Any Christian that believes that is wrong indeed! On the contrary, it is very obvious from the first two chapters of the Bible that God completed the work of forming and filling the heavens and the earth in SIX days, not seven! The seventh day makes all the difference in the world. Let's look at how God's work on those first six days relates to the seventh.
   "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, `Let there be light'; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night." God's initial work of creation was to bring light out of darkness. His priority would be the same on the seventh day.
   At the start of God's creating work the earth was "formless and void." Therefore the first three days of creation God brought form to the earth through acts of separation. The first day He separated light from darkness, day from night. The second day He made an expanse to separate the "waters" above the earth from the waters on the earth. The third day He separated the waters of the earth from the dry ground. The next three days He brought substance to fill the void. On the fourth day He created the sun, moon, and stars to fill up the day and night distinction. On the fifth day He created birds and fish to fill up the waters above and the waters below the expanse. And on the sixth day He created the beasts, creeping animals, and mankind to fill up the dry ground that He had separated from the waters. So in six days of creation God brought form out of the formless, and substance out of the void. He would follow the same design on the seventh day.
   After creating light, "God saw that the light was good." After separating the land from the seas, "God saw that it was good." Seven times over the course of six days God looked at the work of creation and saw that it was good. He was pleased with His own work. The same would be true on the seventh day.
   Every day that God created life, He made it to multiply. The plants and trees would yield seed after their kind. He commanded the birds and fish and land animals and man to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth after their own kind. God's desire for abundant and profuse life continued into the seventh day.
   After the Bible records God's work on the first day of we read, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." Most of us would usually count days in terms of one "morning and evening" rather than one "evening and morning." But by Jewish reckoning the day starts at dusk and proceeds through the night into to the morning and following day. (See, for example, Daniel 8:14, 26) That is the pattern for measuring days that God revealed to them in the Scriptures. "And there was evening and there was morning, a second day... There was evening and there was morning, a third day... There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day... There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day... And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."
   But then as we reach the seventh day all the patterns appear to be broken. "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." (Genesis 2:1-3) God does no forming nor filling, He does not look upon any of His work and declare it to be good, there is no mention of multiplication of life, and there is no evening or morning. How can this be if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever?
   The answer in noting that unlike the first six days there is no signal that the seventh day came to a close. There is no "evening and morning, the seventh day." Indeed, that is because there is more to the story of the seventh day.

The Seventh Night

   God had made man on the sixth day. The more detailed account of this comes in Genesis 2. God placed man in the garden of Eden. Amongst His creation God caused the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to grow. The Lord commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." God formed woman from man and gave her to his as his wife. The heavens and the earth were completed along with all their hosts.
   After God finished His work of creation as recorded in Genesis 2, the next thing we read is about the fall of man. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of which God had forbidden them. Thorns and thistles began to infest the ground. Woman's pain in childbirth greatly increased. The serpent was forced to crawl on his belly and eat dust. Death would overtake every living thing. Man's rebellion had brought a great darkness of night over all creation.
   Yes indeed, by eating of the tree man had come to know good and evil, but only in a chaotic manner. He could not rightly discern which was which. He began to call good "evil", and evil "good." (Isaiah 5:20) Even if he did know the difference he would love the evil more than the good. (Psalm 52:3) But God was not taken by surprise, and He knew exactly what He would do, because it was what He had been doing from the beginning.
   God began making acts of separation. He separated a man, Abraham, from his idolatrous culture and told him to go to a new land. God separated Ishmael, Abraham's natural son in the flesh, from Isaac, the son of God's promise to Abraham. God separted Isaac's twin sons before they were born saying, "The older will serve the younger." (Romans 9:10-13) God henceforth expected the descendants of Jacob to be a people set apart for Him. Then the Lord sent Moses to the people of Israel to give them the Law of God. The Law drew lines between good and evil. To love and reverence God and to love the people around us is good. To follow idols, to ignore God, and to be unloving to people is evil.
   Thus God provided form for man to see the wide expanse between good and evil, but one major problem remained. Below that expanse the land was teeming with evil, but above the expanse the realm of good was void. "The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one." (Psalm 14:2-3)
   The world still dwelt in Adam's night, but not without hope. God told His people that His work was not yet finished. A new light was coming. "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them." (Isaiah 9:2) Someone would come to fill the void of goodness in humanity. "Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights." (Isaiah 42:1)

The Seventh Morning

   One night a child was born, with a bright star shining above Him. (Luke 2:8, Matthew 2:9) He was to be the Light of the world. As the child grew and began to teach, He frequently offended the religious teachers when He healed people on the Sabbath. They claimed that the Law required people to do no work at all on the seventh day, even a work of healing. Jesus exposed their lack of understanding about the Sabbath when He said, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working" (John 5:17), and "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) God had made the Sabbath as a day for the healing and restorating of creation, not as a day of doing nothing.
   The Law given by Moses had formed clear distinctions between good and evil, but grace and truth were now filled up with substance in Jesus Christ. He was perfectly righteous, and when the Father looked upon Him, God saw that He was good. Adam, the first man God placed upon the earth, had rebelled against his Maker. But now the Lord had sent Jesus of whom God declared, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." (Matthew 3:17)
   Yet even as the bright morning star began to usher in a new dawn, many people retreated into the darkness for fear of the light, for their deeds were evil. They became so offended at the brightness of His goodness and glory that they struck out to kill Him and extinguish His light. It appeared that another night had fallen. Only later His disciples would understand the lesson He had taught them about His reproduction of life, "I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24) The children of God are not those merely born of the flesh. Jesus was the sheaf of firstfruits, the firstborn of a new creation, and God was well pleased with Him. But the way for Him to be fruitful and multiply life in the Spirit was to die to the flesh.

Today

   Therefore, there remains a day, called "Today", in which God invites us to enter His rest. We enter it by coming into the light of day and confessing our sins, and by believing the good news that in Jesus we are born after His own image and rescued from the corrupted image of our father Adam. We rest from our own works, and trust that the work God accomplished on His Sabbath is where we find eternal refreshment.
   Yet we must not take God's offer of rest lightly, because Today will not last forever. God must bring Today to a close by destroying by fire anything that is not good in His sight. He has already formed a chasm that no one can cross between heaven above and hell below. On the Day that is coming Jesus will do one final act of separation, putting the righteous who followed Him at His right hand, and the wicked who disbelieved Him at His left hand. Those He casts below the expanse will find that the flames have dried up all the waters, so that there is nothing left to quench the tongue. (Lk 16:24) Those above the expanse will drink freely of Living Water and shine brightly in the heavens like stars for ever and ever.

The Eighth Day

   Beyond that final period of great darkness, God's people look forward to one more day to come. God will again do a work of creation. The heavens, the earth, and our bodies will all be made new (Rev 21:1, 1 Cor 15). Throughout the Bible, the eighth day represents a day of new creation. All newborn boys in Israel were to be circumcised on the eighth day (Gen 17:12), symbolizing the new life of God's covenant people after their flesh was cut off (Col 2:11-12). Likewise, all of Israel's livestock was dedicated to the Lord on the eighth day (Ex 22:30). The Feast of Tabernacles portrayed man's sojourn in earthly tents for seven days, followed by entry into their permanent dwellings on the eighth day (Lev 23:33-43).
   There is no ninth day because the eighth day will not come to an end. There will be no more night. God's people will continually live in the light of His glory forever (Rev 21:22-22:5).