We continue in our series on Hope Found Here and this month we are thinking about ‘Hope in the calming presence of God’ or to put it another way, knowing how to rest and relax in God.
The question I want to address this evening is "Do we understand what it means to rest in God?"
We live in a fast paced world and for many of us it seems almost impossible to take time to pause and rest.
When you think about rest, what do you picture in your head?
Sitting on a beach somewhere?
Staying in bed as long as possible?
An afternoon nap?
Sitting on a river bank with a fishing rod and pocketful of chocolate?
Perhaps you are thinking “I would love to rest but there is so much that needs to be done.” Sometimes we are so busy we simply do not find the time to slow down, pause, or stop long enough to rest and listen to God. Yet, since time began, God has offered us all the opportunity to rest.
The Bible first speaks about the importance of rest in Genesis 2:2-3, “On the seventh day God had finished His work of creation, so He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when He rested from all His work of creation.”
God is omnipotent, God is all powerful, God does not need to rest for reasons of physical tiredness or exhaustion. God chooses to rest, to pause, to stop and relax, to give us a perfect example of what we should do ourselves.
But people chose to ignore God’s example of rest, so in The Ten Commandments, where God says we are to love God, put no one else before Him, worship nothing and no one instead of Him, or use His name as a swear word, where He commands us to honour our parents, to not murder, to not commit adultery, or steal, or lie, or lust after things that belong to someone else, number 4 on His list is resting on the Sabbath.
Listen to the fourth commandment from Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy."
For Christians, the Sabbath is both a day of rest and a day of service to God. Most Christians honour the Sabbath on a Sunday to remember the Resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week on the Jewish calendar.
The commandments are translated from ancient Hebrew to English, in the modern world, the word Sabbath has lost the depth of meaning it had to the Hebrew people.
So let me give you a little Hebrew lesson! In Hebrew Sabbath is a day reserved for rest or prayer. The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat (????????).
Shabbat happens on the seventh day (Saturday) of every week. In Judaism, the day is defined with the cycle of the sun: The day begins and ends at sunset, not midnight. So the seventh day of the week, Shabbat, begins Friday when the sun goes down, and ends Saturday night after it gets dark.
The word Shabbat is built from the 3 letter Hebrew root Sh-B-T, meaning rest. In the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, the Sh-B-T is the word used to describe God resting on the seventh day.
In Jewish law, observing Shabbat is considered more important than Passover, or celebrating Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish New Year, or Yom Kippur - the day of atonement when the Jews spend 25 hours asking God to forgive their sins.
Jewish scholars often say that a Shabbat day is meant to be an example of a perfect world where everyone knows about God and loves Him. The Jews also believe that kind of world has not been seen since the Garden of Eden, and will not be seen again until the Messiah comes.
In the bible the Ten Commandment are listed in the book of Exodus and the book of Deuteronomy. In the original Hebrew there is a difference to how the Sabbath commandment is phrased. Exodus 20:7 starts with “Remember Shabbat to keep it holy.” Deuteronomy 5:11 says “Guard Shabbat to keep it holy.”
Jewish custom says that “remember” means to celebrate Shabbat. “Guard” means actual resting, don’t just remember the importance of rest, actually rest.
We can be distracted by the things of this world and we can be so busy rushing around from one thing to the next we don’t find time to physically rest. Worse still, we can be so busy that we can exclude spending time with God from our schedule all week long.
We don’t have time for God, no time to read God’s word, no time to pray, no time to seek God’s will for our lives, no time to honour Jesus in our lives, no time to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us.
We don’t have time for Shabbat, we don’t remember or guard the Sabbath as we should.
During the week we all have our “have to do” lists, we have to work, we have to shop, we have to cook, we have to eat, we have to sleep, we have to wash and clean, we have to go the gym, we have to watch the football, we have to watch hours of TV before we go to bed, we have to have a little “me time”.
How many people have on their “have to do lists”, have to read the Bible, have to spend time in prayer, have to spend time seeking God’s will and purpose, have to go to the prayer meeting, have to spend time showing God’s love to others, have to spend time sharing the Gospel, have to rest in the presence of God.
Some may choose not to find time to be part of a mid-week church group, God will understand how they are too busy to rest in His presence... Some may choose not to have a Sabbath that is both a day of rest and a day of service to God.
In your own life what are your current Sabbath priorities? Would God agree with your priorities?
Maybe we need to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions:
Do you place more importance on what you think you “have to do” or on what God actually commands you to do?
Are you more concerned with things that distract you from God than things which bring you closer to Him?
Are you failing to remember and guard the Sabbath as you should?
Are you failing to rest in the presence of God?
Do you need to learn how to to pause, to stop, to rest in the presence of God?
The truth is God can help you if you let Him, if you allow the Holy Spirit to work in you and through you.
God can change you, God can teach you how to rest. God commands you take the time to rest in His presence.
God invites you into His rest. God invites you to find rest in the depths of His love and truth. God, the creator of all, He chose to rest, and He calls each of us to rest in Him.
In Matthew 11:28-29 Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
As Christians, we know everything Jesus said was truth, and if Jesus says He will give you rest, He means what He says. In Jesus we can find true rest. He gives us the answer for all of our burdens, all of our cares. We are able to find rest for our souls because He is the source of all rest.
What do we need to do to truly live in this promised rest?
First we need to remember and honour God by living our lives according to His will and purpose for us. Second we need to guard and honour our relationship with Him.
You and I are loved by God, when we accept Jesus as the Lord and Saviour of our lives, we enter into a relationship with God. We have been adopted into the family of God, we are His children, we have an intimate connection with Father God who loves us so much He was willing to send Jesus to die for our sins so that we could be reconciled to Him.
Rest is not just an emotional or spiritual concept. Resting in God actually requires our bodies and our minds to be active. We need to guard and honour our relationship with God by actually spending time with Him, by reading His Word, by speaking to Him in prayer, by spending time worshipping and praising Him.
Sabbath rest is not an optional extra it is not an outdated concept. Jeremiah 6:16, This is what the Lord says:
“Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it. Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Isaiah 30:15, This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength.
There are many things that we really have to do each week, but top of our “have to do list” must be walking in a godly way and resting in God.
Let me remind you of these words from Hebrews 4:1-11, God’s promise of entering His rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some might fail to experience it. For this good news, that God has prepared this rest, has been announced to us just as it was to others. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. For only we who believe can enter His rest. As for the others, God said, “In my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest,’” even though this rest has been ready since He made the world. We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.” So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God.
So God set another time for entering His rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear His voice, don’t harden your hearts.” Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving his generation of Israelites this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labours, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.
Hope is Found Here, for now we have Sabbath rest, but there is a day coming when every believer will experience perfect rest. Rest from carrying burdens, toil, suffering and pain.
Hope is Found Here because the best rest is yet to come for every follower of Christ, we will rest in new bodies, not just for a day but forever in the presence of God. Don’t lose your hope in the future rest God has planned for you, and don’t ignore the command of God to rest now.
May all of us be encouraged to honour God, remember and guard the Sabbath, and remember and guard our time by ensuring we rest in and with the Lord.
As we approach our time of communion let me remind you of this: God is eternal. God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. God was there before the beginning of what we call time and He will always be.
God spoke and the universe came into existence, He created everything we see and everything we don’t and then He rested.
He created the Heavens and the Earth. Here on the Earth God created a perfect garden. He created man and woman in His own image.
Then Satan tempted humanity... you can be like God, all you need to do is eat from that tree... you won’t die you will know everything there is to know.
Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they disobeyed God, their relationship with Him was broken and sin entered into the world. They were banished from the Garden of Eden, the place of perfect rest, they left Eden with a promise that there would be a Saviour who come and who would save and restore.
There are two other gardens in the Bible that have also have great significance. The Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden of the Resurrection.
Gethsemane was not a place of rest for Jesus - it was a place of Commitment. Jesus, teacher, healer, son of God, the one who had restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the lame, brought the dead back to life, this Jesus who had been able to rest in the midst of a storm, He is so horrified in this garden He literally sweat drops of blood.
What was it that caused Him such pain, such unrest?
Matthew 26:39, Jesus went on a little farther and bowed with His face to the ground, praying, “Abba, My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”
Jesus called out to God His Father, as He had so many times in His earthly life, He calls our and hears no response.
For the first time in all of eternity, the Father was silent. Here, in Gethsemane, Father God had already begun to turn his face away. The judgment for our sin had already begun.
Jesus fully God, yet fully man, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night He was betrayed, the humanity of Jesus breaks through for a moment, He has no rest, the full weight of what He is to face in our place seems overwhelming.
He knew He would suffer, He knew He would have to endure the shame and pain of crucifixion. Perhaps for the first time in His earthly incarnation Jesus experiences fear, not the fear of pain, not the fear of suffering, but the fear of separation from Father God. He bows with His face to the ground, some translations say “He falls face down”, and Jesus asks Father God “is there is another way?”
Everywhere else in the Gospels, Jesus shows courage in the face of danger. For example when His disciples try to persuade Him to not go to Jerusalem, Jesus told them it was His destiny, He knew He had to go. His blood had to be shed, His body had to be broken, He knew He had to die so that the price for our sin could be paid.
Jesus had been in Eternity with God the Father, Jesus lived His entire earthly life in relationship with Father God and now, Father God turns His face away. Jesus experienced separation from God.
Jesus prayed, three times, “Father, if there is any other way, let this cup pass from me.” This was the only prayer from Jesus that Father God did not answer. Why? Because there was no other way for us to be saved.
Jesus had to die for you. Jesus had to die for me. Our salvation is something only He could accomplish.
In Him we are ransomed, healed, restored to relationship with Father God and forgiven.
Jesus went to the cross, fully knowing what He was about to experience. He went to the cross because of His love for us. Jesus knew He had to die so we could have eternal life and eternal peace with God. Jesus was willing to sacrifice Himself to redeem us.
Then three days later, outside the tomb, in the Garden of the Resurrection, Mary bore witness to the fact that Jesus had risen from the grave, He had paid the price for our sin, He had conquered death and He told her to tell the disciples, He was alive.
The Garden of the Resurrection was a place of proclamation, He is risen, He is alive, Jesus has conquered death, He has dealt with the consequence of sin, He is the Saviour, He is the Healer, He is the Coming King, He is LORD!
Peace with God is possible because of Jesus. After His resurrection Jesus spent time with His disciples, then He ascended into Heaven with the promise of His return. Then the Holy Spirit came to empower and enlighten God’s people, to fill us, to transform us, to change us, to lead us and guide us until Jesus returns.
Friends, there is a day coming when God will create a new place of peace, a new heaven and a new earth and a new garden in the centre of the New Jerusalem.
Jesus is the bridge we need to cross from the lost first garden of peace to the new place of peace in Heaven. How do we cross that bridge? Simply by repenting of our sin, and believing in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
There is no other way to save us, Jesus is the only way for us to reach the place of continuous peace and rest.
The communion table reminds us of the price for our salvation, it reminds us of how we have been saved, it reminds us we are to find the time to pause, to remember, what Christ has done for all who believe and trust in Him.
I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus, the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me—a sinner, condemned, unclean.
For me it was in the Garden He prayed: “Not my will, but thine.” He had no tears for His own griefs, but sweat-drops of blood for mine.
He took my sins and my sorrows; He made them His very own; He bore the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone.
How marvellous! How wonderful! And my song shall ever be: How marvellous! How wonderful is my Saviour’s love for me!
