Go and get those Bibles open to Genesis chapter 2.
We made it so we are only 49 chapters away from being done
with Genesis. It's right around the corner as
you're turning there. We've got 3 verses.
We have gone through the 1st 6, first six, first six days of
creation. This morning we turn the page to
chapter 2 and we are going to look at the 7th day of creation.
Historically, it's, it's been known as the Sabbath day, the
day when God rest. Personally, I feel like it's a
rebuke from the Lord for me to be preaching this sermon on this
Sunday. So I've been really, I've been
grappling with this. I've been like, OK, this feels
personal Lord, because I was telling our, our leadership team
this meeting or this morning. I was like literally if you
handed me a printed off calendar and you were like circle the
week where you are most exhausted, I would have circled
this week. I coach high school wrestling.
Yesterday was districts. This coming week is is state
wrestling. And so like this, this is like
this is the part of the year, man.
Like this is the part of the year where I'm like, I don't
know if I have laryngitis or I just yelled too much last night.
I just yelled too much. I was like, I don't know if I'm
just like too sleep deprived or if I'm legitimately sick.
Like I'll be like, I don't even know if that's a bruise or
ringworm. So it's like that, it's that
point in the season where I'm like, all right, I'm just going
to, I'm going to make it through it.
And so I love serving you. I love being with you.
I'm going to be mostly out of the office this week.
So if you have an emergency, if you need help, we have a
phenomenal elder team of men who are more qualified than me to
pastor you and shepherd you. So please feel free to reach out
to those men. But if I'm going to say, if I'm
going to say anything meaningful about the Sabbath, it I got to
pray. So let's start with prayer,
Heavenly Father. Yeah, I pray that this morning
would not just be a rebuke to me or a rebuke to us.
I pray that it would be a grace and a kindness and a gift from
you. And so in this moment, Lord,
because of everything that Jesus has done for us, and I pray that
his name would be lifted up, that he would be glorified, that
he would look awesome, and that we would embrace him.
It's because of Jesus and everything he had done on the
cross that we can actually enter into rest right now.
And so if some of us need to relax our muscles, I pray that
you would do that. If some of us need to take a
deep breath, really we would do that.
If some of us need to peel our ears from our shoulders, I pray
that you would do that. And I pray, I Lord, I love you.
And I don't want to just preach on Sabbath as an overworker.
I want to experience your Sabbath rest right now, in this
moment. So Lord, would you grant me rest
even as I tear through these couple verses?
Grant us rest. It's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Amen. Beyond Chul Han wrote a
phenomenal book called The Burnout Society, and in a he had
a sentence that frustrated me. I'm going to read it out loud
for you. What what Han says is quote,
burnout and depression are not the marks of failure, but the
result of excessive positivity. I don't like that.
I don't like that at all. How so?
He was on to say the achievement subject US exploits itself
willingly until it eventually breaks down.
The dude's a scholar. But what Han is saying here is
that we live in an achievement society that seduces us with
non-stop possibility. And So what happens is our
excessive optimism drives us to say yes to everything, to say
yes to projects, opportunities, self optimization.
And in doing so, what we end up doing is we end up exploiting
ourselves endlessly and freely. We live in what he calls the
burnout generation. We live in an exhaustion era.
But interestingly enough, the exhaustion that we experience is
not like what God's people experienced in the book of
Egypt. God's people experience
exhaustion and burnout in the book of Egypt, But the
exhaustion we experience is actually not.
It's not like what God's people experienced in Egypt, external
oppression from Pharaoh that makes us collapse underneath the
endless manual labor we don't experience that we have.
We have time hacking technology at our fingertips, things that
are designed to save us time and to save us from any sort of work
so ever. We've got the Internet, we've
got AI, we've got Google, we've got washing machines, we've got
dishwashers. Technologies literally designed
to save us hours in the day. And yet we're the most exhausted
generation to ever live. How could it?
Like, how could that be possible?
How could it be that the more technologies we create to save
us time in the day doesn't correspond with our exhaustion?
Going down, going up, it doesn't make any sense.
What's the deal? How are you doing?
Do you feel exhausted? Do you feel on the edge of
burnout? And if you do, it may be that
the wall, that wall that you hit, it may be that the wall
behind you is closer than you think.
Even if you're not burnt out right now.
I found that out the hard way. OK, I'll tell you exactly what I
found that out. I was I was in fifth grade,
maybe it was 4th grade out sometime in grade school and I
was doing what I should not have been doing.
Me and my buddies who were too big for the kiddie pool, we were
playing in the kiddie pool together.
OK, and I need you to get this because this is actually a
pertinent literary details of the story.
The kiddie pool in Hampton, IA was not built under the ground
like the adult pool. It wasn't above of ground built
kiddie pool, which meant that there was a concrete wall
surrounding the entire pool that came up to about your thigh or
for some of you, your knee. I get it, I'm sure.
And we were playing, we were playing Marco Polo and you guys
play that, right? So the dude who's it has his
eyes closed, Everybody else has their eyes open.
And the base, the safe was the safety spot was the wall.
And so my buddy who was it was saying Marco and I said, Polo.
Now you're it's going to be hard to believe this, but I was kind
of a cocky son of a gun back in the day.
Thanks for your look of surprise on your face.
And So what I was doing is I stood a couple feet in front of
him and I was mocking him and I was walking backwards with my
back to the wall. So he'd say Marco and I'd say
with a smirk on my face, I would walk backwards.
He'd say Marco and I'd say until he jumped at me to tag me.
I'm not a sucker, I'm not going to get tagged.
So he jumps at me. I think I've still got a few
feet of room behind me before the wall.
So what I do is I turn and jump at the same time.
And what resulted was the loudest tink I've ever heard in
my entire life. When I heard that tank, I can
still hear it to this thing. When I heard that tank, it
sounded like 100 baseballs being hit at the same time.
It sounded like Tiger Woods hitting the golf ball tank.
It was neither of those things. What had happened?
What that tank was is it was the sound of my front tooth hitting
a concrete wall. Yeah, it was brutal.
Here's an important literary detail.
My mother was a dental assistant.
And so it was to my horror when I reached up and discovered that
half of this tooth had been chipped off.
Half of this tooth right here, my front right one is filling.
And so that was the first of many calls to my mom that I
intro by saying I need to tell you something.
But you have to promise you won't get mad at me.
My friends called me chipper for like a week or two.
I'm actually quite surprised it didn't stick.
The wall was a lot closer than I thought, and I can still hear
the tank to this day. And for you, that wall is closer
than you think. It's not a couple feet away.
It's probably right behind you. We live in the exhaustion era.
Right behind you, That wall of exhaustion, that wall of
spiritual meltdown, that crisis of faith, that moment that some
of you have hit, did hit, or one day will hit where your prayer
feels dry. God seems far away no matter how
much truth you stuff inside of your head, because your nervous
system is too fried to even sense God's closeness.
Most of us are playing Marco Polo with our spiritual health,
the walls closer than we think. And so in our age of exhaustion,
where we optimistically exploit ourselves to death and never
rest, we should ask ourselves the question, is there a
solution to this exhaustion? Does Do we have to break our
lives in half? Do we have to hear that dreaded
tink and hit that wall and experience that meltdown?
Maybe. I don't think we have to.
And I'll be honest, I've been affectionately referring to this
sermon all week long as the most hypocritical sermon,
hypocritical sermon I've ever preached.
But I do believe that God has a solution to this problem.
And this is a struggle and a challenge for me.
So I as I preach the sermon, I'm going to be praying for non-stop
feeling this entire sermon. So if you're able, let's stand
for the reading of the word of God.
What's God's solution to this problem?
We see the six days of creation. Then we see something new,
something different, something distinct, Distinct.
We see the 7th day of creation. Thus, after the six days, the
heavens and the earth were finished.
It was finished and all the host of them.
And on the 7th day God finished his work that he had done, and
he rested on the 7th day from all his work that he had done.
And so God blessed the 7th day and made it holy.
Why? Because on it, God, the eternal,
omnipotent, omniscient God who never sleeps, God who never
depletes himself, that God rested from all his work that he
had done in creation. What in tarnation is happening?
I've seen clueless podcasters say, well, if God rests, what's
that imply? It implies that he was
exhausted, so maybe he's not omnipotent.
My brother in Christ, read your Bible.
If you're able, you can sit. All right, what's what's going
on right here? This text is about God's
Sabbath, God's Sabbath, which is kind of breathtaking to think
about it. The way that some theologians
describe it, and I think they're correct, is they, they, what
they do is they imagine God's rest in the Sabbath day as what
they call cosmic enthronement. Cosmic enthronement.
God has created the last six days creation the same way that
we might build a temple. He's created as a cosmic temple.
And so in the 7th day, what he does is after he's finished the
work of his cosmic temple, he enters into it and Thrones
himself in it, kicks his feet up and enjoys it.
It's breathtaking to think about.
It's fantastic to think about. It's amazing to think about the
fact that we worship a God who puts his feet up and rests and
Sabbaths. Now I know what you're thinking,
so let's just ask the question. Does the text actually say
Sabbath? No it doesn't.
You got me there. Game, set, match.
Wait, but what phrase is repeated 3 times and three
verses? 7th day, I'm going to read it
out loud. Just listen.
Listen to this poetry right here.
Listen to this repetition. The text says on the 7th day,
God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the
7th day from all his work that he had done.
So God bless that 7th day they made it holy.
Anytime the Bible repeats itself you should clue in.
All the lights on the dashboard should go off.
It's massively important. 7th day gets repeated 3 times.
Do you know how many other days of creation get that treatment?
0 No other day in Genesis gets repeated 3 times.
And so here's actually where we get the word Sabbath.
It comes from the second book of the Bible, which is the book of
Exodus. The book of Exodus is
interpreting the book of Genesis and it interprets the 7th day
for us this way. And by the way, this is not just
a passing commandment. This is in the 10 commandments.
Here's what Exodus says. This is massive.
It says, quote, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and
the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the
7th day. Therefore the Lord blessed thee
Sabbath day and made it holy. This is about the Sabbath, but
it's about God's Sabbath. So zoom out here.
Zoom out just a little bit more. That poses a bigger question.
OK, where, where did the word Sabbath come from?
Well, it's actually Hebrew for stop.
That's literally what it means in the Hebrew.
In the Hebrew language, it means stop.
So God stopped what? What did God stop doing
specifically? Well, let's start with a list of
a few reasons he didn't stop. God doesn't stop in Sabbath
because he depleted his energy. He doesn't stop in Sabbath
because he's exhausted or because he's phased out.
It's not like God stop. So why?
Why is God's Sabbath thing on the 7th day?
Does he need it? No, he doesn't need it.
But the answer is actually in the text.
If you've got your Bible open, just look at this really
closely. I need to bring one.
I need to take one word. I need to lift it out of the
text and just push it into your face.
Here. Verse 1 of chapter 2, the
heavens and the earth were finished.
Why does God stop and rest? The biblical answer is because
it was finished. God didn't rest because of
fatigue, He didn't rest because he was tired, He rest because he
had finished the work of creating the heavens and the
earth ex Neilo or out of nothing.
Everything that needed to be made and created in order for
God to enter into the earth and joy and walk on the earth with
mankind was finished on the six days before it was finished.
Wow, Cole keeps on repeating the arthritis.
I wonder if he's going to bring it back later on in this sermon.
What a thoughtful question you posed.
So exactly what is God resting from not being God?
It's not even God being passive. Here's Genesis scholar Kenneth
Matthews. I think he's right on the money.
He says, quote, the created order was whole, requiring only
the sustaining grace of God's superintendents, meaning no
longer him creating things out of nothing.
In other words, God stops creating things out of nothing.
That's the work he did for the other six days.
But what he doesn't stop doing is being God.
He doesn't stop upholding the cosmos by the word of his mouth.
He doesn't stop being active. He doesn't stop sovereignly
sustaining all of creation for every second of the day.
Apparently that stuff isn't even work to God.
That's crazy. The upholding of every inch of
creation, every second of every day.
God's like, that's not even work, bro.
What kind of God do we worship? That's insane.
Stuff doesn't work for him. And so here's the massive
observation that the rest of the Bible is going to make, and it's
going to make it a lot. The massive observation is home.
If we are God's images or statues and God's Sabbath after
six days, then we must be required to Sabbath too.
And we get that commandment a lot throughout the Bible to
practice the discipline of Sabbath.
It's in the 10 commandments, it's many other places, it's in
the New Testament. So let's gain some clarity on
the practice of Sabbath. When God's Sabbath, it doesn't
mean that he rests from upholding and sustaining the
universe. It means he rests from the
creative work he did for the first six days.
And So what this means for us is that the Sabbath is not an
excuse to be lazy. The other six days as
Christians, we should never use our faith to justify laziness or
to show up to work late or to not fulfill our time
requirements, our jobs. Amen.
Right. We shouldn't, we shouldn't be
lazy and say, well, you know, we just worship, we just worship a
God who rests. So, you know, it's like, no, the
pattern, the pattern is 6 days hard, one day of rest because we
worship a God who calls us to rest.
We rest, we Sabbath. But our rest is biblically
defined Sabbath rest like God. Six days of working hard, one
day of resting hard. Or as a modern person, maybe 5
or 4 days of working hard, a day or two of chores and then one
Sabbath day. So let's gain some more clarity.
What amazes me about the Bible is how psychologically like how
psychologically healthy the Sabbath is like it.
It prevents you from neither burning out or rusting out,
which nobody told me this, but they both they feel the same
even though they require entirely different solutions,
right? If you if you do not Sabbath one
day a week, you will burn out. But if you don't work hard 456
days, you'll rust out. And so the Sabbath provides this
like really psychologically healthy way of being human,
almost like we're made in the image of God and living like him
is the most healthy thing that we can do.
So let's push a little bit more for clarity.
I'm going to give you 2 definitions.
You take whichever 1 you like. I'm going to give you a pro
definition and I'm going to give you a rookie definition.
Whichever one works for you, take it.
We'll start with the pro definition.
I'm taking this directly from the New City Catechism, which is
a great catechism. I highly recommend it.
So this is textbook. Definition of the Sabbath New
City says quote The Sabbath is the day we spend time in public
and private worship of God, rest from routine employment, serve
the Lord and others, and so anticipate the eternal Sabbath.
That's good stuff. If that's TMI for you, let me
give you a rookie definition. This is my definition quote.
Sabbath is. You don't have to say quote when
you're quoting yourself. That was that was lame, sorry.
As my good friend Cole once said, Sabbath.
Sabbath is the counter cultural practice of setting aside one
day every week to enjoy as distinct and holy.
When God says it's holy, he's not saying this day is religious
and the rest of the week isn't. The word means set apart.
The key ingredient is distinct. It should look different, smell
different, feel different. It should be distinct.
And so definitions are fun, but we need to get practical here.
OK, How do you do it, Cole? And at the end of the day, we're
not going to legalistically as a church, enforce a bunch of rules
and regulations on exactly what Sabbath has to look like.
There was a group of people who did that a long time ago, and it
did not end well for the Pharisees.
And so I would encourage you to figure it out in a way that's
healthy and helps you worship Jesus.
But let me give you some starter tips if you've never practiced
the Sabbath. First, what I would do if you've
never practiced the Sabbath is I would map it out.
What I would do is I'd I'd get out my planner, I'd get out your
planner, I'd get out your phone, and I would circle one day a
week and I would consciously set that apart as a Sabbath day for
that week. The church has historically
treated Sunday as the Sabbath. I think that's good.
I think that's the wisest way to do it.
Personally. Sunday is kind of my game day,
so that doesn't work for me. And So what I do is I Sabbath on
Friday and God hasn't stoned me yet.
So even though I think Sunday's the best day to do it, I don't
think we need to be entirely legalistic about it.
I think we can be a little bit fluent with it.
I think the most important thing is distinction, making it
distinct from the other six days.
I've heard some great tips from people in our church.
I've heard some of you will. What you'll do is you'll light a
candle on Saturday night as the Sabbath candle, and that will
kind of almost function as this visual that you're entering into
a day of deep rest together. Love that I heard from the
Greggs this week that most Sabbaths they have a Sabbath
dinner and they read a Wendell Berry poem together.
Love that. Whatever you've got to do to
make it feel distinct, The key, the goal is God centered
distinction different from the other six days.
Which brings me to my second thing I would do.
I would map it out and the second thing I would do is I
would make a list of all the things you've got to say no to.
Remember Sabbath literally means stop.
Stop. God stops.
God rests from His work on the 1st 6 days.
You should stop from the work that you do for the majority of
the rest of the week, whether that's 4-5 or six days or
whatever. So stop from those things and
then think, what things do you need to say no to in order to
enter fully into that rest? Do you need to hide yourself on
a way in a different room for 24 hours?
Do it. Do you need your husband?
Do you need your wife to hide your laptop from you for 24
hours? Do that, right?
Whatever, Whatever you got to do, do that.
Here's one. This is interesting about the
7th day. I don't know if you noticed this
in verse three, you bump into something we're like, that's
different. Verse 3 says God bless the 7th
day and made it holy. Here's why that's interesting.
It's a blessing in a different dimension.
God's blessing in Genesis is 3 dimensional.
In Genesis 1, we've seen God bless space, blesses the heavens
and the earth. In Genesis 1 we've seen God
bless matter, human beings, creation, animals.
But God's blessing on the 7th day is in a different dimension.
It's not a blessing over space, it's not a blessing over matter.
It's a blessing over the dimension of time and on it not
a creature, but on a day. Why?
I think I think it's this reason right here because of human
beings are the matter where the space of heaven overlaps with
Earth, then the Sabbath day is the time where heaven overlaps
with earth. And if that's doesn't make sense
to you, I'm still kind of cracking that code too.
But I think the anticipating of the eternal Sabbath that the New
City Catechism says, I think what that's teaching us to do is
to make our Sabbath day a day of heavenly joy on earth,
strategically making it the day that looks the most like heaven
out of our entire week. And that brings me to my third
thing I would do if I were you, which I'm going to start doing
after wrestling season ends this week.
Again, I would map it out. I'd make a list of no.
And then what I would do, and I think this is equally important,
is I would make a list of yes, one of the things you need to
say yes to on the Sabbath day. Remember, Sabbath is God ceasing
from the first six days of creation.
It's not God Sabbath thing or resting from all active
endeavors. God Sabbath appears to be an
active, stressful, participatory enjoyment of his creation.
So another way of phrasing this is by asking the question what
what will heal me? That's a great way to start
thinking about Sabbath. You know what Jesus got in
trouble for the Pharisees for doing on Sabbath for healing.
That's the, the the point there isn't like, oh man, the
Pharisees took the Sabbath too seriously and Jesus doesn't take
it seriously at all. That's not, that's not the right
point. The right point is not I heard
one mega church pastor say God breaks the law for love.
Well, he loves, but he does not break the law.
He is the fulfillment of the law.
God breaking laws equal parts wrong and heretical.
What Jesus is doing is he's showing what the Sabbath is for.
It's for healing. That's why Jesus healing on the
Sabbath is a fulfillment of the Sabbath and not a breaking over
it. So if I were you, I'd ask the
question, what will heal me? What will fill my soul with joy?
What will thaw my heart out so that I can feel the presence of
God again? Some of us, some of us need to,
maybe we need to spend lots of time reading the scriptures
together as a family. If that's you, do it.
Some of you you need to make popcorn and watch a really good
movie together, do that. Some of you need to be screen
free, do that. Some of you need to make it an
ice cream day. Do that.
Some of you need to make it your vinyl record day.
The day where you're like, man, where I can slowly put that
vinyl record in and I can listen to the whole album.
Do that. Do the things that bring rest
and healing and joy into your soul.
If you're a parent, what I would do is I would work really hard
to ensure that the Sabbath day is a day that your kids look
forward to, not a day necessarily that bores them to
death. Practically, that means that if
if there's a really good movie The kids want to watch, maybe
you save it until the Sabbath to watch it so they look forward to
it. If if you don't have a problem
with alcohol, maybe you need to save the best beer or the more
expensive wine for the Sabbath. It should be almost like a
weekly birthday party. What I would protect against is
specifically if I'm a parent, is this warning that a Genesis
commentator says, he says quote, and maybe it's what you
experienced growing up. He says quote.
Sabbath observance has for us a rather negative ring, conjuring
up pictures of dreary Sunday afternoons with grandfather
dozing in front of a large Victorian Bible and the children
not allowed to do anything that even resembled fun.
Such negative legalism gets in the way of our understanding of
what the what. It's really what the Sabbath is
really about. And so it's not just about
saying no to things. It's also about saying yes to
things that bring life and joy to your heart.
And so on the Sabbath, the cry of your hearts, it should be
Lord, right now, right now, break me out and show me how to
live. Bring joy, bring healing, bring
freedom. Consider this testimony from
theologian AJ Swabota. He says, quote, one day a week,
my family turns all the screens off so they go screen free.
I think that's great. Light some candles, praise and
invites the God of the Sabbath to bring us rest.
And this practice, which again we do far from perfectly, has
saved, has saved my marriage, my ministry, my faith, and I might
even say my life. So this is this is the key.
The point of the Sabbath isn't to make one day of the week all
about God. And then the other six days can
be secular. No, no, no.
The point? The goal is to make one day a
week distinct in that it revolves entirely around
enjoying God, so that the other six days are as God shaped as
possible, no matter how worldly our work feels.
Does that make sense? Like the Sabbath day should, it
should almost be the embryo in which all the other six days are
formed. So you live out of the rest, out
of the Sabbath, out of your Sunday, if that's what it is,
man. All right, you guys, good.
I, I, I haven't even touched on like the living heartbeat of the
sermon or the subject of the Sabbath.
I like, I like definitions. I like explanations.
We did those things. Those things are great.
Here's here's the problem. Here's my problem.
I can't rest, man. Like, like I really struggle
with it, right? And it's not, it's not a matter
of a, a busy schedule or a tough work week.
Those things for me are excuses for why I can't rest.
Those are excuses for why I can't rest.
That's not the main obstacle for me experiencing Sabbath rest.
Those are excuses. My main obstacle to Sabbath rest
is the voice inside my own head. I bring me down, me, I bring me
down. It's the voice inside my own
head. You could give me 3 months off
of work and it would count for nothing if I didn't face the
voice inside of my head. I've got this voice inside of
me, maybe you've got a similar 1 And it constantly says Nope,
that's not enough. Never enough, never enough,
never enough. I have this voice inside of my
head that won't turn off and I know exactly where it came from.
In fact, some of you have noticed that I have not even
used one of my 2 wrestling stories from my yearly allowance
yet this year. And it's not because I forgot.
That's because I'm going to use them on back-to-back sermons.
So I can tell you exactly. I can tell you exactly where
this voice in my head came from. When I was a little growing up
my one of my best friends, he was also my practice partner
when we were really little. He was one of the best wrestlers
in the nation and I was not yet that and I had to practice with
this dude four or five days out of the week.
And so this I don't know if you've ever just had this snot
beat out of you constantly by the same person.
If you have, it changes your temperature, it changes your
core temperature. And so like the worst part is
I'd wrestle this dude for four or five days out of the week and
he would throttle me. He would just big dog me every
day in the wrestling room. And you know what I hated?
I hated this more than anything. I hated this man.
He what I hated most was he would he would put me on my back
and hold me there and pin me. I hated that.
But what he would do is he would look over at his dad, who is
sitting right next to my dad with their newspapers up against
the wall watching us practice wrestling.
He would look over at his dad for approval.
His dad would look up from his newspaper and give him a look of
approval. I was like on my back.
I hated it. And like I, I hated watching my
dad forced to watch me get stuck on my back.
I hated it. What happened is there's this
voice that took root inside of my head that was like, I'll do
anything to not feel that way ever again.
Anything. And so I did work, work, work,
work, work, work, work. And I eventually actually caught
up to my buddy and even surpassed him and got better at
wrestling than him. And you know what he didn't do?
It didn't heal me. It didn't heal that voice inside
of my head. I thought it would, but that
voice inside of my head still remained.
More, more, more, harder, harder, harder.
Achieve, achieve, achieve. Don't stop, don't stop, don't
stop. I'm in my 30s, dude.
That happened to me 20 some years ago.
That voice, if I don't consciously face it, it's still
there. It hasn't gone away.
And so if you give me a day off every week, I'll still feel
exhausted because what's going on inside of my head, never
enough, never enough, never enough.
When I'm, when I'm, when I do a bad preach, when I do a bad job
preaching the sermon, do you know what I feel?
I feel like I'm getting pinned again.
I know that sounds like a lunatic.
It just it, that stuff doesn't go away.
Like there's still this little kid inside of me that if I don't
face it consciously, he feels like he's getting pinned if he's
not the best at everything. And it destroys my relationship
with people, my relationship with my family and my
relationship with God. This voice inside of my head
that won't let me rest. Never enough, never enough,
never enough. That, not our busy schedules, is
our main obstacle to Sabbath rest.
At least for me. At least for me.
So what do you, what do you do? What's the voice?
What's the voice inside of your head like when you rest today
off at Sabbath? What's going on inside your
head? What's that voice sound like?
Does that voice sound more like God or Pharaoh?
More, more, more. That's the hard thing about
reading Exodus as a Christian is I read Exodus and I'm like, I
feel like I'm simultaneously God's chosen people enslaved and
Pharaoh. And so friends, you can't act.
It's like you live in Egypt and expect to not feel like a slave.
If you do not Sabbath, that's what your life will feel like.
How do how do you get how do you get into the hearth underneath
the crap and speak to that voice inside of your head?
And so to do that, I want to show you something profoundly
important in the text. If you got to open still, just
look at verse one. I'll read it.
If you don't have it open this. This is massive for me.
This was like all these doors started opening up.
Here's my question. How and when does God enter into
rest? Chapter 2, verse one.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.
How and when? When it is finished.
This is a big deal. The book of Exodus, the second
book of the Bible book of Exodus.
When does God's glory come to rest in the Tabernacle with
God's people? Not until the final chapter of
Exodus. Let me just let me read it.
Here's the final chapter of Exodus.
See if you see any language here.
And Moses erected the corpse around the Tabernacle and the
altar. He set up the screen of the gate
and the court. So Moses finished the work.
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the
Lord filled the Tabernacle. So when does God come to rest in
the Tabernacle? When it's finished.
You guys feeling this? You with me when it's finished,
man, if feel is what you want, feel is what you'll get.
Keep pressing in here. Keep moving deeper right at the
heart of the issue. When God comes in the flesh in
the person of Jesus Christ, what does he offer us?
Let's see if you can finish the sentence loudly.
If you know the answer, say it. He says in Matthew 11 verse 28.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest. Come on now, look at this puzzle
pieces coming together. Here's the deepest thing I can
say about the Sabbath. Is it a day out of the week?
Yes. Is it a practice?
Yes. Not.
Ultimately though, the deepest thing I can tell you is that
Sabbath is ultimately a person, the man God, Jesus Christ.
Ultimately, Sabbath is fulfilled in and through Jesus.
Jesus is our Sabbath. Jesus is the Sabbath in human
form. Jesus is the Sabbath with arms
and legs. Jesus is the Sabbath with skin
on. How do you enter into rest with
God? How can you silence that voice
inside of your head that constantly says never enough,
never enough, never enough? It's very simple by faith in
Jesus, then you can have rest only then like, Oh my gosh, I
was reading, I was reading Hebrews this week and you've got
to read Hebrews chapter 3 and 4 this week.
What the author of Hebrews says is that Is that the Old
Testament? Disobedient Israel did not enter
into Sabbath rest with God. Interesting.
Why is that interesting? That's interesting because
disobedient Israel took the Sabbath so seriously they
wouldn't even allow themselves to pick up sticks on the
Sabbath. Bros wouldn't even pick up
sticks and they didn't enter into the Sabbath rest with God.
What? You think as a modern Christian
who says, you know, it'd be nice if I had a Sabbath day, but I
don't have to? You think you're going to enter
into rest? They didn't pick up sticks.
Do you know why it was illegal for them to spit on the soil on
the Sabbath day? They could spit on a rock and
they'd be fine. If they spit in the soil, they
considered it a breaking of the Sabbath.
Why? Because that little divot in the
soil kind of sort of faintly, if you looked at it, really hardly
kind of sort of almost resembled farming.
They wouldn't even kind of sort of do something that maybe kind
of sort of resembles work and they didn't enter into Sabbath
rest. How do you think you're going to
do it? Did you know that if you allot a
ton of robes from that era of Judaism, you know, you know what
they had sewn into the robes? Handkerchiefs.
You know why? Because on the Sabbath day, they
were not even allowed to carry a handkerchief from one room to
the other without considering it a breaking of the Sabbath.
So you know what those little boogers did?
They sewed them into their robes so that they weren't technically
carrying them, wouldn't even carry a handkerchief, did not
enter into Sabbath rest with gods.
What makes you think that you could?
And Hebrews gives us a really good answer.
You know what the answer Hebrews gives us?
The gospel. He says by faith and grace in
Christ Jesus alone, you can do what disobedient Israel did not
do, enter into rest with God. It's Jesus, dude.
You can stop working. You can stop picking up sticks.
You can stop spitting into the soil.
You can sew A handkerchief into your robe.
You can sleep on a bed of Bibles and not experience rest.
If you don't trust Jesus, watch this, watch this.
Follow this literary pattern. OK, here's the pattern.
God rests with Adam and Eve in the garden after the work of
creation is finished. The next book of the Bible,
Exodus. God rests with his people in
Exodus after the work of the building of the Tabernacle is
finished. When Jesus dies on the cross and
absorbs our sin and overthrows Satan and death, what are his
last words on the cross? If you can finish the sentence,
yell it out. His last words on the cross are
it is. You see the pattern, right?
You see the theme the same way that Adam and Eve entered into
rest after the finished work of God in the garden, the same way
that Israel entered into rest with God after the building of
the Tabernacle is the same way that you enter into rest with
God when you repent of your sin and place your faith in Jesus.
And really, not just in lip service, but really believe that
Jesus has done it all, that he's finished all the work, that he's
done all the labor. Then with God, your muscles can
relax and you can take deep breaths.
You can put your feet up and just rest in God.
Everything necessary for you to enter into eternal Sabbath rest
with God. Jesus finished it.
You don't need to win anymore. You, you don't need to get off
your back and not get pinned to get that shining look of
approval from your Father's face.
You don't, you don't need to earn anything.
You don't need to try to achieve a right standing with God.
You get that by faith in Jesus. In fact, if you continue to try
to earn, you're going to break it.
Break yourself. You're going to hear that Tink.
You're going to shatter your spiritual life, and you're going
to exhaust yourself. You don't have to impress your
Father. It's done, it's finished, The
rest is yours. You can have it, you can have
it. What disobedient Israel could
not attain by spitting on rocks rather than soil, you get freely
because of faith in Jesus Christ.
And that's all we're doing this morning for a sermon.
Let me pray, Heavenly Father, give, give us rest in and
through Jesus Christ in this moment right now.
Some of us men, we haven't felt rest with God maybe for 10 years
or maybe ever. Like whenever we're with God, we
kind of maybe we feel like we clam up and our shoulders go
straight to our ears and we're like, Oh my gosh, am I perfect?
Is he not? Does he love me?
Does he not love me? Do I need to flex?
What do I got to do? And brother, sister, if that's
you, you can rest in the finished work of Jesus and then
just be with him. And yes, schedule a day out of
the week to really practice Sabbath rest with God.
But more so than that, to live out of that rest and anticipate
that final rest one day in glory when we see Jesus face to face
in heaven. Oh God, we want that.
So it's in his precious name that all God's people prayed.
Amen. Let's stand and worship this God
who rests together.