Introduction

Genesis 2:1-3 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.  (2)  And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  (3)  Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

• Well church, we are on to our sixth sermon in Genesis and we have finally made it out of the first chapter, praise God!
  • In the first chapter we went over the sixth days of creation, in which the heavens, the earth, and every living thing was created.
    • We also talked about the first three commands that God gave to mankind… the commands to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, and to subdue it and have dominion over it.
      • Now we get to the Seventh Day.
        • Now some people call this the seventh day of creation, but no creation was done on this day.
        • So generally I refer to the six days of creation and then to the seventh day as the day of rest.
          • But before we get into the “rest” portion of this scripture, which we are going to focus on this morning… before I do that let’s take a look at one small detail in these verses that shows just how awesome and mighty God is. Take a look at verse 1.

Genesis 2:1 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.

• The heaven and the earth… and all the HOST of them.
  • The word host means “An organized mass group of people.” This word is especially used to talk about armies.
    • You have heard of “Heavenly hosts?” That doesn’t mean people who through a really great party and have out of this world hospitality.
      • No, Heavenly hosts means “Angel Armies”… Chris Tomlin wrote a whole song about it…
        •  know Who goes before me

I know Who stands behind

The God of angel armies

Is always by my side

The One who reigns forever

He is a Friend of mine

The God of angel armies

Is always by my side

• Now, we know that God has angel hosts, angel armies… but look at verse 1 again…

Genesis 2:1 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.

• God describes all of His creation as “Hosts” He describes it all as if it were an organized army at His command.
  • The Oceans, the Fields, the Mountains, the Sky, the Stars, the birds, the fish, all the animals… even mankind… God calls them  His armies.
    • Everything organized… not random, not chaotic… but falling in line to do the will of the Father.
      • And this makes sense in the light of all Scripture.
        • God tells the Red Sea to part and it obeys.
        • God tells the Sun to stop moving in the sky and it obeys.
        • God tells the storm “peace be still” and it calms immediately.
        • Jesus said if you have faith the size of a mustard seed that you can tell mountains to move and they will obey… and I have heard testimonies of people doing just that for the glory of God.
        • You see all of creation is an organized army created to do the will of the Dather.
          • Which means if you disobey God you are being insubordinate.
          • If you refuse to follow God you are Awal.
          • And if you do what some of the Pharisees did and you blaspheme the Holy Spirit saying that Satan did what really only the Holy Spirit could do… well then you are guilty of treason!
      • No other creature, other than angels, have ever been so bold as to go awol, to be insubordinate, or to rebel against their commanding officer.
      • But that is a sermon for another day, because today I want to talk about rest.

• A God of Rest.
  • We serve a God who rests… a God who invites us to rest… and a God who commands us to rest. Let’s pray.

• Point one this morning is that God wants you to rest.

Point One – God Wants You To Rest

Genesis 2:1-3 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.  (2)  And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  (3)  Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

• Now the question you should be asking, if you don’t know already, is “Why would an all powerful God spend an entire day resting. Was God tired? Did He need rest?
  • No, of course not. God did not rest out of exhaustion… but He did rest. Why?
    • I think there is a couple of reasons why God rested on the Seventh Day…
    • First, He rested as an example to us, because God wants us to rest.
      • That is the first point this morning, God wants you to rest.
• God rested as an example for us… to show us that He want’s us to rest. And I think we see that in the fourth commandment.
  • You see God gave us the 10 commandments to help guide our lives and show us in a very basic and clear sense how we should be living… and the fourth commandment is “Honor the seventh day as a day of Sabbath Rest… do no work on that day and keep it holy”… we are going to talk more about this commandment near the end of the sermon, but for now, look at God’s reasoning for giving the fourth commandment…

Exodus 20:11 NKJV  For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

• Now when we read this verse we get the sense that God rested on the Seventh day to show us the way in which we should live.
  • We should live in a way that includes rest.
    • Think about all the times the Bible talks about resting… about peace… about being still… about lying down… Christianity is not some hardship placed on people in order to enslave them, in order to run them down… in order to burden them…
      • To the contrary, God want’s His people to work, yes… but He also wants them to rest.

Psalm NKJV 4:8  I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. 

Psalms 127:2 NKJV  It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep.

Exodus 33:14 NKJV  And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Jeremiah 6:16a NKJV  Thus says the LORD: “Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls…

Matthew 11:28 NKJV  Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

• Guys, God is a God of rest.
  • He rested on the Seventh day as an example to us because He knows that we need rest.
    • We are designed to need rest, to enjoy rest, to rest in His presence.
    • And if you are living a lifestyle devoid of rest, then I believe that you are living in rebellion to God’s design for you.
      • I want to say this again, because some of y’all really need to hear this.
      • Some of y’all supper saints, who are always serving, working, moving, discipling, preaching, teaching, striving, and growing…
        • Some of y’all I am concerned about… because if you miss this… well, I have seen saints through their faith away because this missed this point, so let me say it again…
        • If you are living a lifestyle devoid of rest, then you are living in rebellion to God’s design for you.
    • Now I am not saying that you should stop serving, and discipling, and teaching, and working, and striving for holiness… I am not saying that at all… Lord knows this church needs as many servants as it can get… but I am saying that you must also intentionally include rest in your lifestyle.
• Because I have seen far to many Christians get burnt out…
  • Have you seen this happen this happen? The person you thought was CLOSEST to Jesus… they were at every Bible study, they were first to arrive and last to leave.
    • There kids played every sport at school.
    • They took as much overtime as their job could offer.
      • And they just seemed to have it all together…
      • Then one day, out of no where… it all comes crashing down.
        • They leave the church.
        • They get divorced.
        • They enter into sin… they find addictions to numb the pain…
          • What happened? They failed to find rest.
• And if you are listening to this and you are like “But Pastor! This needs to be done, and that needs to be done… and I have to do this and that for the Kingdom of God…”
  • If that is how you are thinking, THEN I AM TALKING TO YOU!
    • And I get it, I do… we are not a lazy church.
      • We talk about serving… we talk about doing good works… we talk about showing up… we talk about striving for Godliness…
        • And all of that is God… but God worked for six days AND ON THE SEVENTH HE RESTED.
        • DO NOT THINK YOU ARE BETTER THAN GOD!
• That brings me to point two this morning. Pride is the enemy of rest.

Point Two – Pride is the Enemy of Rest

Genesis 2:1-3 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.  (2)  And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  (3)  Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

• I have heard too many people say “I don’t need rest” or “I will rest when I die”…
  • I think it is a cancer of American society that we villainize rest sometimes.
    • “I just don’t need rest”
      • You mean to tell me God rested on the seventh day… but you… YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT HUH?
    • “But pastor there is just too much to do”…
      • Mankind has been on the earth for thousands of years… they have been doing things the whole time… there is still plenty to do… and there will still be plenty to do when you die… there will ALWAYS be too much to do…
    • “But if I don’t get it done now then”
      • Then what… you will burn out latter and everything you have done will come crashing down and then your hard work will mean nothing.
  • Dear saints… you were designed to rest… please don’t let your pride get in the way…
• Listen to this beautiful invitation by Jesus… and then I want you to consider how our pride gets in the way…  (Work 85.7% of the time, 6/7 days)

Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV  Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  (29)  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  (30)  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

• There is such a beautiful promise here, Jesus says “I will give you rest… you will find rest for your souls”.
  • What a beautiful promise… what a beautiful gift from Jesus…
    • But I want you to notice that this promise for rest comes with a condition…
      • And we need to remember this church, that the promises of God come with conditions.
        • His love is always unconditional, but His promises almost always come with conditions.
  • So the promise here is that Christ will give us rest… what is the condition.
    • The conditions are two fold… first, you must come to Jesus… Second, you must take His yoke.

• On this Ox’s back is a yoke, it is a large wooden harness used to connect heavy burdens that are to be pulled by the ox…
  • The burden the ox is pulling may be a cart, or a plow through a field… or any number of heavy objects that need to be pulled from point A to Point B…
  • You just Tie the burden to the yoke and the Ox uses it’s strength to pull it.
• So Jesus here is saying we are the Oxen and we have work that needs to be done…
  • And we have a yoke on our shoulders… and if that yoke is hard… then it is going to be a real pain in the neck…
    • And if your burden is heavy… then everything you do is going to be difficult.
      • And I understand some of y’all have hard yokes and heavy burdens…
        • Maybe you have health issues that make everything difficult.
        • Maybe your kids are a real handful…
        • Maybe your job takes it out of you…
        • Maybe your marriage is strained and home life is hard.
        • Maybe you are just asked to do too much and you are trying to carry it all on your shoulders… but you are feeling crushed by the pressure…
      • If that is you… then this promise from Jesus should be oh so sweet…

Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV  Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  (29)  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  (30)  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

• Jesus says “You have a heavy burden… you have a hard yoke… but if you would just come to me… lay down your burden… and trade yokes with me… then I will carry that weight for you… and you can take my easy yoke and my light burden. You can find rest for your soul.
  • And that seems so simple… but our pride get’s in the way… You know how I know? Because I am a man who had back issues… and my pride used to cause me a lot of pain…
    • You see when I was in my twenties I blew out a disk in my lower spine causing severe pain in my lower back, my leg, and my foot.
    • The bulging disk crush the left sciatic nerve causing all sorts of issues…
    • It got so bad that I had to lay on my back for 3 days straight, doctors orders, just to relieve the pressure… then I had to do a bunch of physical therapy.
      • And that worked well… but because of the nature of the injury, I learned very quickly that if I carried things that were too heavy, I would re-injure my back.
  • Then for years, my back and my pride were at WAR with each other… what do I mean?
• I mean, as a church planter… there is ALWAYS something to carry.
  • Tables, speakers, chairs… even gym equipment and weights…
    • Helping people move, picking up furniture that was donated to the church… taking said furniture to the dump when we realized it was garbage…
      • Always moving, always lifting, always putting pressure on my back.
        • But people would often be with me and they would say “You have a bad back, let me take that”.
          • And then I would have an internal fight… My back would say “PLEASE LET THEM CARRY THESE TABLES”
          • But my pride would say “Uh-Uh! You are a MAN you better carry those tables, and you better carry as many as you can at a time to show them how strong you are!”
            • And then I would carry four tables at once, and get home and cry to Amanda because I re-injured my back.
• And this is exactly what we do with Jesus church…
  • We say “I got this Lord… I know your burden is light and your burden is easy… BUT I NEED TO HANDLE THIS… THIS IS MY RESPONSIBILITY”.
    • Jesus says “Let Me help you carry that”
    • And we say *Pretend to pull heavy burden* “No, no, no, I got this Jesus… I will just… errrrrrrrrrrr…. Move it on my own…
  • Jesus says “Come lie down for a moment by still waters in green pastures”
    • And we say *pretending to pull again, in strained voice* “There is no time… for… that… Jesus… Can’t you see I need to… errr… move this burden?
      • Then we end up burned out and wondering why we feel abandoned by Jesus… well, because you failed to come to Jesus and take His yoke… He didn’t abandon you, you abandoned Him.
• Instead there is a better way… we realize “I have been working for the past six days… I am going to trust God with the seventh day and rest in His presence”.
  • I am going to trust that Jesus can take care of this, that He is good enough to get me through without me killing myself trying to move this burden.
    • I am going to come to Jesus and take up His Yoke and His burden and trust Him with mine.
• And that brings me to my final point this morning… and it is simply some basic instructions on how to find rest.
  • Point three… How to find rest.

Point Three – How to Find Rest

Genesis 2:1-3 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.  (2)  And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  (3)  Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

• How to find rest… well the first and most clear and obvious way is “Take a Sabbath”.
  • God took the Seventh day and blessed it as a day of rest… and in Exodus 20 God commands that we rest on the Seventh day and keep it holy.
    • Now of course we are not under the law, we are under grace… but the law was never abolished, it was completed, it was fulfilled.
    • Never once in the New Testament are we told NOT to honor the Sabbath.
      • But we are shown a few things about it… namely that it is ok to do good on the Sabbath, and that the Sabbath was made for man, that man was not made for the Sabbath

Mark 2:27 NKJV  And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

• In other words… honoring the Sabbath should be restful and good for you, not a stressful burden. The Sabbath was made and blessed so that you can find rest.
  • So, pick a day a week to be your day off, your day of worship.
  • Historically the Biblical Sabbath is from sun down Friday, to sun down Saturday… but that is not explicitly laid out in the Bible… we don’t know which day was the Seventh day of the week when God created things… we just know that the last day of seven days of labor would be the day of rest.
    • A lot of Christians celebrate their Sabbath on Sunday, and that is a great day to do it because church service is incorporated on Sunday…
    • But for me, church is a lot of work… and maybe it is for you too if you serve a lot, so for our family we take a Saturday Sabbath… I don’t answer phone calls, I don’t get back to texts… I just rest.
      • I even try to get all my choirs and errands done before Saturday, so I can simply focus on resting, being with my family, and worshiping God.
    • Whatever you do, pick one day, one day a week, that can be set a part for rest. If it is good enough for God, it is good enough for you!
• Secondly, rest in the presence of God.

Psalms 62:5 NIV  Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from Him.

Exodus 14:14 NIV  The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” 

• One thing that I love to do is find peace, and rest, and stillness in times of worship.
  • Sometimes Sunday mornings are SO chaotic for me… there is so much work to be done… so many people who want to talk to me… and it’s tough to find rest in those moments…
    • It’s in those moments I come up to the altar, get on my face, and rest in God’s presence.
      • I am still worshiping, but I am worshiping with a posture of rest…
      • “God you are so good… thank you for taking care of this burden for me…” etc. *Use song from that Sunday*
  • Other times, I need to go to a service that I am not helping lead, and just worship, and receive from the word, and be in the presence of God.
  • Sometimes, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep because of all the things going through my head that I “Must” do… I will go out to my recliner, and have the Bible App read me the book of Psalms and I will just sit, and listen, and close my eyes, and rest in His presence.
    • Come to worship night this month, it’s always the last Wednesday of the month… just try this… come, and sit… you don’t even have to stand… bow your head, and pray the words of worship for that short hour… just be in the presence of God and worship silently… watch as your soul finds rest.
• Third… Learn to pray before you say “yes”.
  • Again, this goes out to the supper saints…
    • When someone asks you to do something… spend a moment praying before you say yes.
      • Before you say yes to helping that person move.
      • Before you say yes to watching that kid for your friend from church.
      • Before you say yes to picking up that extra shift at work… take a moment to pray.
        • Now I am not giving the lazy an excuse to say “no”, to the contrary I think many times God will say “yes!”, probably about, oh, six out of seven times God will say “yes”…  and you must trust Him when He does…
        • But also trust Him when He says no… and be ok, turning some things down so that you can find rest.

Conclusion

Genesis 2:1-3 NKJV  Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.  (2)  And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  (3)  Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

• Now earlier in the sermon I posed the question “Why did God rest on the seventh day? Was He exhausted? Did He NEED rest?”
  • And of course the answer is no, God did not NEED rest…
    • Then I said there was a couple of reasons God rested on the seventh day… the first was as an example to us… but I never gave you the second reason.
    • I think the reason is to give us hope.
      • You see, God could have rested on the 4^th day… He could have done 3 days of work, rested on the fourth, then done 3 more days of work…
        • But that is not what God did.
      • God did 6 days of work… then at the end of the week He rested. WHY?
        • I think one reason might just be prophetic… I think God is telling us “After all the work is done… when everything is finished… you will find rest.”

Hebrews 4:9-11a NKJV  There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.  (10)  For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.  (11)  Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest…

• Guys there is a work that must be done with diligence… seeking after that rest.
  • We must be intentional. We must be focused… but we need not be exhausted and stressed.
    • We can find rest now, and as believers we know that we will enter into eternal rest at the end of our work.
    • I hope and pray that you too can look forward to that rest…
      • But if you are in here today, wondering if you will enter into heavenly rest when you die… I have good news for you this morning.
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