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Entering God’s Day of Rest

Genesis 2:1-3 

“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)

Your days are hectic. It seems that the more you get done, the more is added to your “To Do” list. Sometimes, your head is so full of things that items seem to just fall out—like remembering to go buy milk for the kids, or to get the laundry out of the dryer before they wrinkle, or to call so-and-so in order to make sure that the sale is closed on that smaller deal that kind of dropped down on your priority list, or to call that meeting of people that should meet, but who has time for another meeting?

We never feel like we have found stability and equilibrium. We always feel like we have to do something else in order to bring control and stability to our world. This is the life we live—we are very often trapped in the struggle to keep our lives from spinning out of control. 

Most of the time, things seem to be all right. But then the bills need paid, or the deal needs closed yesterday, or the boss is mad again, or the kids are sick, or its exam week again. “Can I keep it all together? Can I make this month’s house payment? Can I save enough to get away on vacation this coming summer? Oh, if weren’t for those medical bills!”

As we look at our weekly planners, we think that God should have put eight days in the week, for that is the amount of work we have to squeeze into our week! We plan it out nevertheless, trying the best we can to become the master of our days, of our work, of our money, of our tasks, of our happiness. And next week, after succeeding only in part this week, we will do it all over again.

Today, I offer you relief. It is found in the supernatural Lordship of God—in his creating everything and then entering into what the Bible calls “rest.” And we are now invited into that “rest” as well. Today we will rediscover how we can do this, for along the way, especially in today’s culture, we have lost this concept. 

“Ahhh! Rest!” Sounds good, doesn’t it? Let’s look at the seventh day of creation and see what happened. 

“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” (Genesis 2:1)

In verse 1, we read the summary statement concerning the previous six days. “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed…” talks about those first three days; “…in all their vast array” speaks of the second three days, when everything in the first three days was filled in their immeasurable arrangement. God’s creation of these things is “complete”—perfectly accomplished according to his expressed verbal will. He said what he was going to do (“Let there be…”), and that is exactly the way it was. 

So, what did God do after all this incredible creative work was completed?

"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.” (Genesis 2:2)

So, on the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation, and he “rested.” That word “finished” in verse 2 is the same as the word translated “complete” in verse 1. You can almost see God wipe his brow and proclaim, “It is complete!” “It is finished!” And God rested. 

What does it mean that God “rested” on the seventh day? When we hear the word “rest,” we think of those times after a hard week at our jobs—of lying by the pool, sunglasses on, soft music playing on the stereo, with an iced tea in one hand, as a gentle breeze lofts across us, we drift in and out of sleep. We see rest as the ceasing of all our toils, of all the tensions of working for the sake of others, of relief from the stress of job, of boss, of bills, of hassles. Is this what the Hebrew word meant? Is this what those ancient Hebrews would have understood when they heard this word? Close, but not exactly. The word “rest” in the Hebrew certainly means a ceasing from work—but it is not the ceasing of just any old hectic, toilsome, stressful job…it is the ceasing of the work of creation! 

What God has been doing over the past six days is create a place in which he can dwell along with his creatures. He is “resting” in this work; he is taking up residence in the place of stability that he has created. 

It would look more like this: Imagine that you have worked all week in building the house in which you and your family will live—you are very meticulous in every detail, wanting the Formica in the kitchen to match perfectly, the faucets in the bathrooms to be perfectly straight and shiny, the woodwork of the staircase to be perfectly stained so as to bring out its beauty. You’ve run the electricity, plumbed the pipes, put on the shingles, designed and planted the landscaping. After a full week of hard work, hard creative work, hard creative work that you have truly enjoyed doing, you are done! It is completed! It is finished! It is now a place of comfort and security for you and your family to enjoy warm closeness with each other! So, on the seventh day, you rest in your newly built house!

And so do your kids. You have that special place in the house built especially so you can read to your little ones in comfort and closeness. You have that entertainment room where you can all play together—you watch them play, but then you join in. When the kids are all asleep, you have the intimacy of that special room for you and your spouse. It is the perfect place for relationships to flourish, and everybody who dwells here is at peace here, they feel secure here, they feel stability here.

That is what God has done in days one through six. He has worked to create the perfect place where relationships can flourish, a place of security and comfort and intimacy and joy: a perfect place where his creatures can live in relationship with each other, and with God. This is not only the place where the creatures will dwell, but also the place where the creator will dwell as well.

We are told in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In Isaiah 66:1, God tells his people, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.” In this symbolic way, we begin to understand that God rests on his throne as the King of both the heavens and the earth. He sits in heaven, and he rests his feet on the earth. He has created environments in which he himself will dwell with his creatures—a place of stability and security and equilibrium because he first created it, and because he is also living in it, enthroned as the ruler of it all. 

God created the place for us to live in security and comfort and perfect peace and completeness and intimate relationship with each other and with God. When we read the first two chapters of Genesis, our eyes are opened to the fact that this is the place we belong. But then we are shocked at the fact that the world around us does not quite look like this perfection in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. You know what happens in chapter 3—it is called “The Fall” by theologians. It is that moment when humanity decided not to live in the security of being submissive to this all-loving God. It is that moment when Adam and Eve decided to take their lives into their own hands, and know for themselves the extent of good and evil. It is the moment of disobedience, but more importantly, it is the moment of losing trust in the creator. It is the moment when humanity decided not to let God be God and simply and trustingly rest at his feet as he sits on his throne. It is when humanity decided to hoist themselves up on their individual little thrones. 

Now, God is perfectly good, perfectly loving. He has created this perfect place for all of humanity to live in security and rest. Like a good father, he has created a house in which his family can live in comfort and joy. But, like a good father, he makes some rules for his little children for their own good, and to protect them from evil. “Don’t do this,” the father tells his children, “It is not good for you.” At first the children don’t think twice about the forbidden thing. But as they grow a little older they ask, “Why not?” And the father tells them, “You don’t need to know why not, just trust me that I have your best interests in mind at all times. I know what’s best for you. Stay away from that.” 

And then that kid in the neighborhood that always seems to get in trouble (every neighborhood has one of these kids, doesn’t it?) comes over and says, “Your dad isn’t telling you the truth. He doesn’t want you to have the fun that you can have if you do that! You’re old enough to make decisions on your own! Your dad is holding you back!” Doubts begin to enter—“Maybe Father is not telling me the whole truth. Maybe Father is not to be fully trusted.” 

That is “The Fall”: the end of trust. The eating of the forbidden fruit we will read in Genesis 3 had devastating consequences, for it forever marred the place of rest. All of creation was made to be the place of rest for God and his creatures—a place of harmony and security as we all rest in trusting the One who sits upon his throne with his feet on the footstool of the earth. 

The Fall represents our inability to trust God wholeheartedly. Even the most devout Christian will confess that there are times when he or she struggles to trust God wholeheartedly—times when we take matters into our own hands because we do not trust God with it. Interestingly, it is very often with the most difficult things in life that we struggle to trust God. I can trust God with the small stuff, and I can trust him with the stuff that I know I cannot control at all. But I have trouble trusting God with the stuff I think I can manage, and with the stuff I feel I must manage. 

Or I simply forget that I need to trust God and rely on his strength and guidance as I make the decisions in order to manage my difficult situations—he kind of just gets factored out.

It is not that I am supposed to lie back in a resting position and let God do everything. No, that is not the world God made. He placed humanity in a world in which they are told to cultivate it—our rest is not meant to be a lifelong vacation, letting God do everything for us. Our rest is meant to be the place where we can live our lives in trusting relationship with each other and primarily with God. But we lost that when we lost our ability to trust God wholeheartedly. 

And we continue today to lose that rest when we decide we would rather live lives in our own control—deciding for ourselves how to live, choosing for ourselves our personal ideals of morality. 

Some people knowingly decide to say to God, “I don’t trust you to be my Lord. I do not want to be at your feet as you sit on the throne. I choose to sit on my own throne, thank you. Nobody will be master of me—not even you, God.” Some people say that, but not very many.

I believe that most people today are not that belligerent toward God, for they are not even sure that God exists, and they certainly do not know what the Bible says about the way we were created to live in this perfect place of rest and contentment and peace with God and with others. As you are reading these words, you may be hearing God’s story for the very first time! God understands this, and he is not condemning you for that. The reason this message exists is so you can have an “aha!” moment, a moment where God begins to make sense, so that you can begin your journey toward trusting God!

Do you remember what did Jesus Christ said?

“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

When Jesus said that, he was saying something more profound than, “If you find yourself worn out, come to me, and I’ll give you a great vacation!” It is more like this: “Ever since the Fall, everyone has been weary and heavy-laden because they have all been trying to muddle through life as if they are the ones in charge—that’s a lot of work! That is a burden that humanity was not meant to bear. I am here now, and if you come to me and trust in me, I will give you the rest that was meant to be.”

This is exactly what the writer of Hebrews explains to us in Hebrews, chapters 3 and 4. 

“So God set another time for entering his place of rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David a long time later in the words already quoted: “Today you must listen to his voice. Don’t harden your hearts against him.” (Hebrews 4:7, NLT)

What God wants us to understand is this: Today is the day! Jesus’ offer to each one of us to enter into the rest of having a secure, complete, stable relationship of trust with God is for us, right here and now! How was it accomplished? 

Think about the story—the story of creation, fall, and then redemption! 

CREATION: God created the world as the place of perfect stability and security in which everyone would live in relationship with each other and with God. God said, “It is finished—it is complete; it is perfect; my will has been done perfectly.” 

FALL: Humanity does not trust this God, and instead we try to rule our own lives as our own “gods.” We no longer live as trusting children in God’s secure created place of rest because we no longer trust the creator. Our relationship has been severed. As a result, we try our best to manage our own lives, but more often than we are willing to admit, we are overwhelmed by this—it is a burden that is too much for us. We are weary and heavy-laden.

REDEMPTION: Jesus does that which will bring us back into this place of rest. He dies on the cross. And his final words are, “It is finished.” He tells us, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” And then we are told by the New Testament that the time of entering into the place of rest is “today.” And we are told, “Today you must listen to his voice. Don’t harden your hearts against him.”

How do I enter this rest? 

1. First, I must hear the voice and agree! Jesus is speaking to each one of us today when he invites us to come to him. Come to him for what? Why? We must admit that we are indeed weary and heavy-laden; we must agree with God that we are wrong in trying to be the Lord of our own lives—and that it is wearing us out. This takes a great deal of HUMILTY! In our culture, we are taught never to act or look weak, but God says, “Quit the façade! I see right through it! I know you need me, you know you need me. But your pride is getting in the way. It’s time to rest at my feet.” So, the first step is to humbly come to Jesus and admit that I need him.

2. Second, I must not harden my heart. Hardening of the heart is a lot like hardening of the arteries—both are fatal. When we hear the “message of salvation” (that we are sinners trying in vain to be the Kings of our own destinies, and that we need to enter into the rest of submitting to the King who sits on the throne in heaven with earth as his footstool—that we need to enter again into that loving relationship with our creator and lover of our souls) what is our first inclination? It is to harden our hearts. We recoil from the offer of entering into God’s place of rest. We come up with excuses—“I don’t want to become a ‘Jesus freak.’” “I don’t want to be one of those unthinking, snobby, holier-than-thou types.” “That would mean I wouldn’t be me anymore, I will become one of them!” Do you see that none of these things have anything to do with Jesus and his offer to enter rest? God is not interested in making you a worse person, but to bring out of you everything that he has made you to be! God doesn’t want you to have to check your brains at the door of the church. He wants to take all that he made in you (remember you were created in his image!) and bring it to completion. So, forget the excuses. Do not harden your heart to the love-invitation of God.

3. Third, I must choose to enter the rest offered me. In his providence, God allows me to make the choice. It is a very real choice on my part. I must decide to enter into the rest. I enter by trusting that God has died on the cross and was raised from the dead in the person of Jesus Christ for my personal redemption. This is what we talk about here in church when we say that one must “believe.” The ancient Israelites were not allowed to enter the place of rest, we are told, “because of their unbelief” (Hebrews 3:19). I’ve been asked on a number of occasions what the “Unpardonable Sin” is. The Unpardonable Sin is the sin of not believing in God—for it is only through believing in him, it is only through entering into that place of rest of trusting him as Lord and Savior that we are forgiven of all sins! If we harden our hearts and refuse to believe, it is the only thing that cannot be pardoned. So, I repeat that verse again! “Today you must listen to his voice. Don’t harden your hearts against him.”

"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 2:3)

God established the seventh day as the Sabbath. God makes it “holy,” which literally means that he “set it apart for a purpose.” For what purpose? The fourth of the Ten Commandments tells God’s people to follow the example of God. 

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11)

What’s the point? What’s the purpose? 

We are to stop from our work so that we can refocus on the God who created us. We get so hurried and so harried that we do not have time to reflect. Somebody once wrote,

“A poor life this if, full of care, 
We have no time to stand and stare.”

Thomas Hobbes said, “Leisure is the mother of philosophy.” It is in times of rest that we can think about the deep, important things of life, and we can stand, stare, and worship.

But the rabbis took the Sabbath the wrong way. They multiplied the rules and regulations. It was nearly impossible to keep up with all the rules of the things one could not do on Saturdays! But Jesus came and declared himself to be “the Lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8), and reemphasized God’s design: The Sabbath is meant for people, not people for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a time to heal and to do good. The Apostle Paul clarifies that all the law and regulations of Sabbath observance are not binding upon the Christian. 

“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.” (Colossians 2:16)

So when Christ came, the Sabbath Day was forever changed. Since in the larger picture, every day is to be seen as a “Sabbath Day” of living in the Rest of being in relationship with God, Christians are no longer required to keep Saturdays as the Sabbath Day. 

That being said, the timeless principle of “Sabbath” remains. We need to remember to stop from our work long enough to worship the Creator. 

When we remember to take a day to rest from our labors, we are admitting to God that our life is ultimately in His hands. We rest from our labors because we know that our hope is in the Lord, not in our labors. 

Bruce Waltke writes, “A person who feels inclined to work seven days a week should examine what god he or she worships.” Martin Luther wrote that God is that “to which your heart clings and entrusts itself.” Those who find their security and significance in money or professionalism or busyness find taking a day off to worship a burden. 

When we stop and rest—when we choose to set Sundays aside for a purpose—we allow ourselves that opportunity to reflect on what is really important. And we force ourselves to trust in God all the more.

Madeleine L'Engle wrote, “And then there is time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be. It is then that God can take our emptiness and fill it up with what he wants, and drain away the busyness with which we inevitably get involved in the dailiness of human living.”

As believers, we have already re-entered the “rest.” Every day is a “Sabbath” because every day we are at the feet of our Lord. We are free from the rules of Sabbath-keeping, but we are not free from the principle of Sabbath-keeping. We still need to seek times of refreshment, times of refocusing, times of ceasing from our labors. We still need this in order to remind ourselves who is the Creator, and who are his creatures. We need to remember that our hope is in our Lord, not in our labors.

APPLICATION QUESTIONS FOR GROUP DISCUSSION:

1. What makes your life hectic? What are the major strains on your life right now?

2. How much of the stress in your life is because you have not fully rested in God’s loving control over everything? What stresses could be relieved if we allowed our hearts to rest in God?

3. What was the Sabbath’s original purpose? What benefits do you think you’d experience if you took the concept of Sabbath seriously? 

4. What must you change in order to do so?

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