“Time has a doxological rhythm. This emphasis on worship is explicit at the week’s center. The fourth day is central to the temporal pattern, because here the heavenly bodies are introduced with their purpose: They “separate the day from the night” and function to tell of “signs and festivals, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14).

God delegates created light to the heavenly bodies so that the march of time is measurable in days and years. More importantly for the hymn’s purpose, however, is how time’s forward march is tethered to “festivals,” Israel’s seven religious feasts on which they would celebrate the gifts of their Creator and rest from their labors.

These harvest feasts and pilgrimages would celebrate the Creator’s goodness in providing food and afford households the opportunities to compare their crops and yields, identifying people who were in need, and share their bounty accordingly.

They would remind Israel that the Creator owns his creation, so the gifts of its fruitfulness should be shared with “the poor and the sojourner” rather than hoarded by the cleverest and most ruthless (Lev. 23:22). But these same feasts would point also to God’s rescue of Israel from sin and slavery so they might be free to worship him: “Let my people go, that they may serve me” (Ex. 8:1).

The seventh day introduces the first of these feasts, the Sabbath (Gen. 2:2; cf. Ex. 20:8–11). This day is the reason for the numbering of the creation week’s days in the first place, tying them together into a collective portrait: a miniature liturgical calendar that gathers up the whole cosmos and sets its daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rhythms, thereby leading it into the blessing of God’s presence.

It is the Sabbath that unifies the other days, since they count down to it. So, too, Israel’s festal calendar counts from one feast to the next (cf. Lev. 23), and the years count to the year of jubilee, in which all things are given rest and a new beginning (Lev. 25:8–55). The Sabbath comes first in the ordering of the feasts in Leviticus 23 because it is archetypal, showing how every religious feast is rooted ultimately in the Creator’s bountiful provision in creation, which looks forward to something greater (cf. Heb. 4:9–10).

Like creation itself, time is for the benefit of God’s creatures and their daily existence, but it also points beyond itself to the Creator and the end of time in his eternity. Creation’s doxological rhythm should culminate in gratitude that shares the bounty of the Creator’s generosity, and gives all God’s people the rest they need to worship him.

Much like a hymn or a call to worship, creation’s doxological rhythm orders and governs Israel’s worship, and especially its religious calendar. By that same token, it shows how God opens time to himself so that he may meet his creatures there and have time for them.

Creation is not trapped by time, so creatures don’t need deliverance from it. Rather, created time is part of God’s hospitality. The seventh day brings time to rest in God’s rest, a sign of how time is supposed to be ordered and inhabited for the flourishing of God’s creatures. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), on account of which it is “a delight” (Isa. 58:13).

When God met Israel in their annual cycle of feasts, this reminded them of his provision in and with the rhythm of created time: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22). Time is a fit vehicle for God’s fellowship with creatures.

As Israel ordered their lives by the calendar the heavenly bodies regulated, they ordered their earthly lives with the hospitable, doxological rhythm of heaven. For this same reason, many churches observe a liturgical calendar that structures the year by festivals and days to remember the Creator’s presence with his creatures in time.

Such practices embody the biblical sense that God creates time with purpose, meaning, and order, all of which invite and regulate our worship for our good.”

–Tyler R. Wittman, Creation: An Introduction, ed. Graham A. Cole and Oren R. Martin, Short Studies in Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025), 17-20.