Six Days and Then

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.  By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.  And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.  Genesis 2:1-3

So God made the heavens and the earth in six days and then he rested.  Why is that significant?  There is more here than just an account of creation; the days are symbolic of things.  For example: the sixth day is the day that man was made, and so six is the number that represents man (Rev 13:18).  Since God rested on the seventh day, and since there is no created thing which can be attributed to the seventh day, seven is considered the complete number.  You could think of it as God completing creation with himself.  The seventh day there is nothing but God.  Now as the days progress from the first to the seventh, you see that creation is progressively becoming more full.  It starts with just the heavens and the earth.  Then there was water, and then there was land.  God made vegetation and then animals.  And finally, the last thing God made was man.  He made man in his own image, which means that man is the most God-like of all creation.  So you see that creation becomes more full and progressively more like God.  And to complete it God rests.  I may be going out on a limb here, but I think this represents that God is the completion and finality of all things (except fallen things of course).

God says that he is "the Apha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (Rev 22:13).  We've seen how God is the last in the creation account, since he rested and sanctified the seventh day.  Now how is God the first?  In the beginning of John it says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning."  John is speaking about Jesus here.  Now think about what day of the week Jesus rose from the grave.  It was Sunday, the first day of the week (Jhn 20:1).  So God the Father made the last day (Saturday) holy by resting, and God the Son made the first day (Sunday) holy by rising.  God is the First and the Last.  Its why the Jews consider Saturday to be the Sabbath, and why the Christians consider Sunday to be the Sabbath.  Both days were sanctified by God, and both days should be remembered as such.  Also consider what day of the week Jesus died on the cross for the sins of man.  It was Friday, the sixth day of the week, the day man was made.

God is eternal.  Eternal literally means 'no time'.  When you think about that it makes sense to think that God is the beginning and the end.  God cannot be bound by a timeline, but he is the one that makes the timeline.  So he was before creation, he is now, and he forever will be.  That's why God answered Moses with the name Jehovah (Exd 3:14), which means 'I am who I am', or for short, 'I am'.  God simply is, and there is nothing that has not been made by God (Jhn 1:3).  So just as God made creation progressively fuller and progressively better, going from being "good" to "very good", and completing it with his perfect self resting, we should become progressively more like God by becoming progressively more like Christ.  It is the doctrine of progressive sanctification, which is the result of faith in Jesus.  We are called to be holy as God is holy (Lev 11:44-45, 1Pet 1:15-16) and grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2Pet 3:18).  And by the work of the Holy Spirit we can do exactly that.  Basically, as the Spirit of God fills us, we become more and more like God.