Well, good morning. I hope you had a happy new year.

I get older and I realize I can’t stay up as late as I used to.

We had some folks over and it was like 10 o’clock. I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t make it another two hours. But I did it. I did it. I’m old. No, I’m not that old. I’m 29. It’s not bad. It’s not bad. Yeah, yeah, just right. Right, right.

If you would turn with me to Genesis chapter 2. I said last week we were going to turn to Matthew this week. I fibbed, I guess, because I want to do something different out of Genesis again. So we’ll be in Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. If you’d like to turn there with me in your Bibles.

Genesis 2, 1 through 3. It says, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished. And all the hosts of them.

And on the seventh day, God finished His work that He had done. And He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Because on it, God rested from all His work that He had done in creation.

I was talking to a pastor friend of mine who lives in Seattle, Washington. He’s part of a church up there. It’s been going about five years. It’s doing well. He has a three-month-old and a toddler. And so I was joking with him. And I said, So you getting any sleep? And he said, Oh yeah, they sleep great. We get a solid eight hours every night. And I sarcastically told him that I was happy for him. Because that’s never been my experience ever. It hasn’t been my experience with Darcy or Dawson. I got kicked out of my own bed this past week by Dawson. It was like, Just forget it. I’ve got to go upstairs. So often, I think we go through days not rested well because of our kids. But you know, you still love them anyways. So that’s the experience.

Last week, we talked about faithfulness to God. What does it mean to be faithful to God in a new year? And what we said was, The only way we can really be faithful to God is obedience to God. And really, the only way that we obey God is if we love God. Jesus said, It’s only the one who loves me. That obeys me. So we have to continually remind ourselves of how much we love God because He first loved us. And that feels obedience to God, not just for a new year, but for our lives. And I want to add to that this morning. If we don’t rest well in the Lord, we’re not going to live well for the Lord. In the very same way that when we don’t get sleep at night, it affects our relationships. It affects how we work. It affects everything. So. So it is, friends, in being a Christian and following Jesus. When we don’t know how to rest in Him, we’re not going to live well for Him. So what I want us to do this morning is consider really a biblical theology of Sabbath rest. What is Sabbath rest? And how does Sabbath rest enable us to live for the Lord? So entering the Lord’s Sabbath rest. Verse 1 again, it says, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day, God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, it closes out the creation account. And from the creation account, we learn that God created day and night. He says that’s good. He creates heaven. He calls that good. He separates dry land from sea. He says that’s good. He creates vegetation and plants and fruit trees bearing fruit. He says that that’s good. And God sets the moon and the stars in place for signs and seasons. He says that’s good. He creates life forms in the water, birds for the skies. And He says that’s good. He blesses them, commands them to be fruitful and multiply, creates livestock. And He says it’s good.

Last, He makes man. And uniquely, God makes man. He makes man in His own image. And to man, He says, have dominion over the earth. Live in it. Subdue it. Cultivate it. Populate it. So God’s creation, the substance of it, the beauty of it, we’re called to do those things, to cultivate, enjoy it, and labor in it. And this is a good thing. And at the end of verse 31, it says, God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And picking up in 2.1, it said, God finished His work. God finished His work. God had done all that He intended to do. There was nothing else for Him to create. God masterfully constructed the full breadth, the full width of the heavens and the earth according to His perfect design. And then He says last again, this seems to be the thing that Genesis chapter 1 is screaming at us, everything God did, it was good. Everything God’s done is good. And then He rests from His work. Now what does it mean for God to rest? Well, God’s not tired, unlike us. He doesn’t fatigue. He isn’t worn out. The Hebrew word there, it literally just means to stop. It means to be inactive. It means to refrain from. So God doesn’t get tired. The prophet Isaiah says God doesn’t faint or grow weary. So God’s not resting because He needs it. Here’s what God’s doing. Just as much as God graciously provided the good world we’re supposed to live in, He’s also graciously providing for us a necessary pattern for how we’re to live in that good world. Even Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not man, for the Sabbath.

But have you ever wondered or paused to consider why did God create the physical world in the first place? Does God get bored? Is God lonely? What’s He doing? God’s not bored. God’s not lonely. God is perfectly satisfied in the fellowship of the truth. Trinity, perfectly glorified in the fellowship of the Trinity. Then why did God create the physical universe? And if it’s so good, why does He institute a rest from it right after making it? A mandatory stop. That seems to be an odd thing to impose at the very genesis of creation. Like, I want to enjoy it. I want to do this. Let’s have fun in this new world God has made. But that’s not what happens. Sabbath rest then must be awfully important to God. And notice, please, sin has not entered the world. Sin has not wrecked humanity. It hasn’t brought disorder or chaos upon God’s perfect world. Yet joining God in Sabbath rest is both necessary and good in paradise. So the refraining from the not working, it was not chiefly instituted to give us physical rest, though we need that sometimes. It was not instituted as a detox from the physical world, like physical stuff’s bad and I need time away from that. It was not instituted as a detox from the physical world, like purified. Not at all. Friends, these were good gifts in a pre-sin world.

So, if true Sabbath rest was to be had in a sinless world,

don’t we stand in need in a sinful world of understanding what Sabbath rest is and knowing how to enter it with the Lord? We do. So I want us to grab two glorious truths that Sabbath rest brings to our remembrance. The first thing is this. We enter into Sabbath rest because it reminds us God is glorious over His glory. God is good creation. God is glorious over His good creation. And when you think about the created world, it’s just that, it’s created. God made it. God designed it to do this, to manifest His glory to us, to put on display to human beings how great He is. That’s why. The Bible’s very clear about it in multiple places. In Psalm 19, the psalmist says, the heavens declare what? The glory of God. The sky above proclaims your handiwork. In Revelation, Revelation chapter 4, verse 1, the apostle John sees this vision. He says,

Now John tells why.

That’s why God’s been good. He’s done everything for His glory. And then all the way back in Ecclesiastes, here’s what the writer says. I perceive that whatever God does endures forever. Nothing can be added to it. Nor anything taken from it. God has done it so that people fear before Him. So God has created this good universe so that we would see His people, who are uniquely made in His image, able to perceive in ways that animals cannot, that this God is glorious. Our task of living here, working here, enjoying God’s good creation, in it and through it, we’re mindful of this. It doesn’t stand on its own. There was a glory, a glorious creator who made this to show us who He is. And the examples are many, aren’t they? And I think it’s things we take for granted.

Like mangoes. Have you ever had a mango? They are wonderful. Or a banana. Or fresh pineapple. There’s pineapple. There’s fresh pineapple. There’s food that we eat. Now who designed the taste of that food? And you think, well that’s kind of silly to think about. It’s not silly to think about. God took time, He made that for our enjoyment so we could say, man, isn’t God glorious to design and create that? I love going on trips to see my mother-in-law because she lives out in rural Kentucky and it’s just beautiful rolling hills and you see these wonderful scenery and it’s an opportunity to say, man, that’s beautiful. God, you created that for your glory. Look how creation screams about the glory of God. And I think it’s true in labor. I think oftentimes you hear people say, oh, I hate my job. I hate my job. I don’t like what I do. It’s boring. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s the thing though. Any job has dignity because it’s work. And if God’s given you work to do with your hands, it’s a blessing because He’s letting you subdue, He’s letting you cultivate in His earth. And if you do it with all your heart and to His glory, it really matters. Now on the flip side, you can find your identity in your work. That’s also wrong because God didn’t create that good thing for you to find your identity in it. Rather, in that good thing, you say, thank you, Lord, for the capacity to do this and for the means to be able, to carry out this labor that I love. I think you could take it even as far into man-made things, like an automobile. How often do we get in cars? You don’t even think about you’re just hitting this button and you’re just going 60 miles an hour. You say, well, man created the car. Well, no. God gave man the understanding to take his raw materials and put a car together. So you should not be able to look at anything in the universe, in creation, and not say, God, you are a glorious God.

But here’s the trouble and the problem, though, friends. I’m a sinful man. And we are a sinful people. We lack, apart from grace, the ability to interact with God’s good creation with all the elevated faculties that we have and end up glorifying God for them. Here’s what we’re happy to do. We content ourselves with little g, God’s. We take off the throne of our hearts the glorious creator. And in his place, we put just the good creation. And Paul in Romans chapter 1 says it very well.

He says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God, it’s plain to them because God has shown it to them. How? For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived every day. Ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse. So God has made his glorious reality as the God of all plain to us in his creation. Friends, what’s that mean? It means this. You and I need time and time again to accept God’s invitation to enter into Sabbath rest lest we forget we were not created to find purpose and satisfaction in any good thing in the world. We were not created to find satisfaction in anything that we can do, anything that we can have. We were created for this one thing, this one thing only by which we rightly see all things, by which we’re satisfied in all things. The reason that everything was created and that’s just this one thing for the glory of God. That’s why we exist. And you hear so many people want purpose. What’s my purpose in life? I want purpose and looking for why you exist. It’s very plain. You exist to know God and in knowing God, see how glorious He is and be satisfied with that.

As good as the created world may be, it will never replace knowing the glorious God over it all. God is inexpressibly kind because He gives us the good creation, but then He calls us with Him into a deeper fellowship to know Him personally. God is interested in bringing Himself limitless glory and bringing us into the world. He has people limitless joy in knowing how glorious He is.

In Nehemiah, when the Israelites are coming out of Persian captivity, these formerly Sabbath profaning people who didn’t care about God, didn’t want to rest in that truth, the only one of the good things, see what they say when they’ve repented and come to their senses.

In Nehemiah 9.6 it says, You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them, and the host of heaven worships you. So there is then an acute awareness in Sabbath-keeping man, woman, person, that God is glorious.

I don’t like to eat and not pray. Part of it is because I was raised that way and I’m thankful that my parents raised me that way, but I don’t like to eat and not pray before because it assumes a lot.

It assumes I had rights to that food. It assumes that food stands on its own. It assumes there wasn’t someone who created and made that food and designed it for my own good. So I think it’s awfully arrogant and thankless to just eat and not pray. So I’m not giving you a law, like if you eat and you don’t pray, it’s wrong. I’m simply saying it’s a pattern of resting in the Lord and remembering Him. Friends, it’s good to find reasons to pray. And let me say on the same token, I think it assumes a lot when we have a hit and miss casual relationship with the church. And let me explain what I mean. And I’m not, this is like, oh, the pastor’s beating everybody over the head so we’ll keep coming to church faithfully for the next year. That’s not what I’m doing. It’s really not what I’m doing. What I’m doing is, I’m asking you this question. When it comes to Sunday or the Sabbath or resting with the people of God, when we don’t desire to come, here’s what we’re saying. There’s something good out there that’s better than remembering the glorious Creator over it all in here with God’s people. And it’s not just about showing up on Sundays. That is so important. But that trickles into the rest of your life and wanting to know the Lord and your own, wanting to love other believers and do life. So it trickles into everything else. But friends, I do want to say to us at the beginning of the year, let’s be refreshed and ask the Lord to give us a heart to desire to worship Him and be in His presence together, to be changed by Him. I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about a desire to be close to God with the people of God so we don’t lose that wonderful reality that God is glorious.

See God in all that you do. Let it drive you to worship. And after that, get near to the Lord and worship Him alone. It’s why we exist. It’s why you exist.

Verse 3. It says, So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation. So to say that God blessed it, it means that it’s now, it’s now unique in quality and feature from the other days. The Sabbath has upon it God’s divine favor according to His divine choosing. So there are three things that God blesses in the Genesis account. He blesses the multiplication of creatures. He blesses the multiplication and dominion of man. And last, God blesses rest.

So of those three things, that must mean this rest is very special. It’s very important to Him. And it says that God makes it holy. And we’ve talked about this a little bit before. But to call something holy means that it’s consecrated. It’s called out. It’s different. It’s higher. It’s clean. So God sets apart the Sabbath day from being an ordinary common day. And He consecrates and sanctifies it to Himself. Yes. But He doesn’t just do this for Himself. God also, He also blesses and sanctifies the Sabbath for whoever would enter into it. They would be sanctified and blessed. Because remember, this was not a pattern for God. God for Adam and Eve and for humanity. He was showing them, by the way He did it, what a pattern of life looked like that honored Him. So this is for us. Second reason that we need Sabbath rest, it reminds us that God is faithful to provide for, and preserve His people.

It reminds us that God is faithful to provide for and preserve His own people. I want to look back at Exodus chapter 31, verse 12. And this is where God is giving the law to Moses. And here’s what it says, And the Lord said to Moses, You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, Above all, you shall keep My Sabbath. For this is a sign between Me and you, and throughout your generation, that you may know that I, the Lord,

sanctify you. And it goes on to say, You shall keep the Sabbath because it’s holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. So how big of a deal again is this Sabbath rest to God? And then in the Deuteronomy account of this, it says, You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God, God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. So in Exodus, God says, Here’s why the Sabbath exists for you. It exists for you as a sign between Me and you that I’m the God who’s going to make you holy. I’m going to sanctify you and make you right. Now, what kind of humility should that induce in these people? Out of all the people on the face of the earth, God says to the Israelites, I’m pledging right now, if you enter into My Sabbath, the rest of you obey Me, I’m the God that’s going to renew you, make you a sinless people, though you live among a godless people. I’m going to make you right with Me. God is inviting them. Think about this. God’s inviting them into His space and out of their space, the pattern of a sinful world. And in Deuteronomy, Moses says, Hey, this is another reason why God says we need the Sabbath. Because we’ve got to remember over and over again that God provided for us in Egypt. Remember our harsh oppressor. Remember the cruelty. Remember the tyranny. And God with His limitless provision and power, what did He do? He did what only He could do. He saved us. He called us His own. He pledged Himself to us to be our provider. So why does the Sabbath exist then? Well, one, to renew us and make us new and holy like God. And two, to remember God has limitless provision and that limitless provision is always over our lives for everything that we need. That is an incredible offer God is making the Israelites and truly that God is making us this morning.

Yet, the dreadful response of the hearts of so many of those Israelites is found in their actions. What happens? And Stephen the martyr recounts it in Acts chapter 7, 38. He said, speaking of Moses, this is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai with our fathers. Moses received living oracles to give to us and our fathers, they refused to obey him. But they thrust him aside and in their hearts, what did they do? They turned back to Egypt saying to Aaron, make gods for us who will go before us. And as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what was to become of him. And they made a calf in those days and offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing. They weren’t rejoicing in the idol, which is actually very ironic, the thing that they were supposed to worship. What does it say they’re rejoicing in? The work? The works of their hands. That’s what they’re rejoicing in. And I think it’s very easy for us on this side of history to look back and condemn them because it is shocking. Is it not appalling that God’s offer of blessing and provision that they say, I don’t want anything to do with that. They couldn’t have wanted anything less to provide for themselves. They wanted that more than anything. They didn’t want God’s blessing. They wanted their own hands. They wanted their own intellect. They wanted their own resource. They didn’t want God’s Sabbath rest. So many of them didn’t want God’s promised land in their heart. I want to go back to Egypt. I liked life there when I did my own thing as a slave. And that is appalling.

But friends, could I ask you if we were honest with ourselves this morning, would we not have to admit

we do the same thing all the time? We falsely imagine that our own labors and our own time and our own toils would be enough to take care of ourselves as if we have the power to take care of ourselves and it’s not God’s providence allowing everything in our life. We let fear, we let anxiety speak louder than the gracious Word of God to be our blessing and our provision. We are so prone to doubt what I cannot immediately see, what I cannot immediately feel. We doubt the Lord and we look at our own hands and we look around us instead of waiting and looking up.

And I know, hey, we’re all in different places this morning. I don’t know what we could be dealing with. And I try to list it. We’d be here all day. Could it be a physical ailment? Could it be anxieties of a variety of kind? Could it be spiritual drought? Could it be relational turmoil? Could it be a financial burden on your back? All these things and more. And I’m not saying to you, just say that God is your provision and everything’s going to be rosy and gray and you’re going to be able to leave and everything’s going to be fixed. That’s not what that means. What it means is that God intimately loves you and He cares for you and He’s going to provide what you need and even the season of drought and suffering, He is allowing it and He’s working it for your good. Psalm 23. Hear this in faith.

The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want.

There’s true provision. There’s true provision. There’s true blessing when we accept the Lord’s invitation to enter His Sabbath rest. And I don’t want you to think either we’re talking about physical provision over here and sanctity, holiness over here. They’re one and the same. If you’re not willing to trust God in the moment with your temporal, physical needs, you’re never going to get around to trusting God, the eternal soul. And if you have no interest in being made holy, being made right before God, why are you going to give up these few little moments you have to have pleasure and live by your own rule and do whatever you want? You’re not. So we’ve got to do then what Adam and Eve did not do, what the Israelites were not willing to do. Surrender both body and soul to the Lord and say, Lord, I’m Yours. I’m trusting You with all that I am, with all that You have. Lord, have Your way.

And it reminds me of Jesus in the boat with the disciples.

The storm’s raging and the disciples are freaking out. Getting ready to die. And Jesus is asleep on a pillow. And they say, Jesus, this is the dumbest thing you can say, Jesus, don’t You care that we’re perishing? Don’t You care?

You see, it’s not wrong that they went and approached Jesus. That’s not what’s wrong. They approached Him in a spirit of disbelief and fear. That was what was wrong. And what does Jesus do? He says, peace, be still. And He says to them, where is your faith? Where is your faith?

Now, I believe that none of us in this room have made a golden calf and say, hi, look what I’ve done.

But I wonder if sometimes we work a little bit more than we should because we don’t really trust the Lord to fill in financial gaps. And again, I’m not giving you a law. Like, you can’t work past 40 hours. I understand. I understand there are times when we have to work more than we want. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying as a disposition, do we sometimes do not what we should. We do what we do because we’re fearful and we’re anxious at the neglect of our own spiritual health and at the neglect of our families at home. Do we oftentimes lose sleep because we think laying in bed worrying and being chock full of anxiety is going to fix something? It’s going to fix nothing is what it’s going to do. And I will readily, I will readily admit I’m the chief offender at that a lot of times. So it’s not noble to overwork. It isn’t noble to fret and worry, to take matters into your own hands. In the presence of a trustworthy God, it is as Oswald Chambers said, it’s just rude.

Never neglect God’s offering of a true Sabbath rest.

So Adam and Eve had Sabbath rest and they walked away from it. The Israelites had Sabbath rest. They didn’t want it.

And those things were good, but friends, remember we’ve talked about types. Something in the Old Testament points to something better.

Sabbath rest we see in the garden and in the law of Moses. There’s something better. There’s something better.

Entering Sabbath rest is impossible apart from receiving in faith the person and finished work of Jesus. Because here’s the thing, if you don’t know Jesus and you don’t trust in Jesus, you know what we’re going to do? You’re going to go through life constantly scraping and clawing to find purpose in a lot of good things. And you’re going to go from one petty amusement to the next petty amusement. And you’re never going to know what it means to be satisfied in God. And you’re never going to know what it means to, to really be provided for and know that God loves you and nothing can change that and no one can touch you apart from His say. So you’re never going to really feel loved and cared for. You’re never going to know certainly that your eternal soul is safe apart from knowing Jesus. You can with the rest of the world just hope you show up okay. Hope it ends right. I hope I’ve done enough good things and it’ll be a bunch of you trying to do a bunch of religion to account for what you never could.

But when you know Jesus you’re satisfied because you were created by Jesus to be satisfied in Him. When you know Jesus you know how glorious God is and knowing God becomes enough and everything good that God’s made it’s just a window through which to see how glorious this God is. And you know you’re provided and you know you’re loved and you know that Jesus is the great shepherd of your soul who will never leave who will never forsake you who is with you. Every moment of every day because Jesus said I will never leave you nor forsake you in this world. You will have many troubles but friends take heart I have overcome the world. And as it concerns your soul friends you can look onward and know that your eternal soul is at rest and peace with God because Christ shed His blood and He wrapped you in His righteousness and you are found clean and right and just because of what Jesus and Jesus alone did. Friend do you know Jesus because until you know Jesus everything else it’s going to be a constant unrest. But Jesus takes us back to and takes us beyond rest from the garden into eternal satisfied true Sabbath rest that only our souls will know when we trust in and love and surrender to the person Jesus. It’s just Jesus.

And I’ve always loved the old saying by Saint Augustine. He says you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you. You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you.

So friends let’s rest in what Jesus has accomplished on our behalf and when we rest in that we’ll be prepared by the power of the Spirit to go and live for Jesus and make more of our lives in much of His name.

Let’s pray.

Lord this morning we turn our hearts to You.

We turn our lives to You.

We ask God that You would bring to our mind

everything that You are and everything that You have by Your grace. Done for us in Your Son Jesus.

Lord we don’t want to play the game of religion and we don’t want to try to keep rules that You never intended for us to keep. Lord what we want to do is rest in Jesus and just know His love and know His victory and call Him our God. Call Him our King. Call Him our Lord.

Lord I pray this morning if someone’s here and they know about Jesus they’re really familiar with Jesus and they know about religion but they’ve never actually placed personal saving faith in Jesus. Lord I pray this morning that would be the morning

Lord let us not walk out of here just a head knowledge of Jesus a head knowledge of the Gospel but let it affect our heart that we’re changed and we’re made a new person because Your Spirit’s come inside of us and You’re producing and making Christ in us.

And let it be said Lord that we individually and as a church we live for Your glory.

We live for Your kingdom because we know that we are kept and we are loved in Jesus. And Lord we can do all that You call us to because it’s Your power. That’s just my prayer for us this morning. Just love You. Jesus we just bless Your name.