Sabbath Rest Series

Good morning. If you have your Bibles, you will want to open up to Genesis 2:2-3. That will be our reading for today. Before we actually discuss that verse, what I would like to do is go back to Genesis 1:1 and read through the first chapter just to give you a little background on this particular verse. What we are going to do is read from Genesis 1:1 all the way to Genesis 2:3. (Scripture read here.)

If you have been around here for any length of time, you know we have been focusing on what we call our four core values of worship, discipleship, outreach, and community. Actually, what we are doing is focusing on those values since about last August. I think it was August 26th when I gave the initial sermon kicking off the values. I decided it was time to move on to a potential new series. That is what we are going to do starting next week so I thought I needed a transition-type sermon. What I was planning to do today was simply spend some time capping off those four core values, some of the positive things we learned from it, some of the things that happened because of them or possibly even do some last-minute twisting of arms to ensure that each of us are embracing those values. I finally decided that most of you already understand the importance of these values and if you don’t, to be honest at this time, one more sermon is not going to push you over the edge, so I decided I am not going to focus on those four core values.

Instead, I am going to focus on the one value that didn’t make the cut. In other words, the value that wasn’t included with these four values. When I began to think about becoming a value-driven church versus a program-driven church, I began to think about the values that were most important for the church. The first three were relatively easy: worship, discipleship, and outreach. Those three values have pretty much been a part of this church for the last eight or nine years and that is a good thing. What I struggled with was what to do with the fourth value. I didn’t know exactly what value should be the number four. Originally it wasn’t community. Originally the value that I came up with was the value of rest. In other words, just like there would be a week devoted to worship or a week devoted to discipleship or a week devoted to outreach, there would be a week devoted to nothing but rest. You may think what would that look like in the church. Really, it wouldn’t look like much because the whole week would be empty. Not a thing. There wouldn’t be a deacons meeting, an elders meeting. There wouldn’t be any committee meetings. There wouldn’t be any Bible studies. There wouldn’t be any home groups. There wouldn’t be any service projects. The calendar would be completely clean that week. Doesn’t that sound nice? I hear a number of people saying “yes.” You say that you would like it, but I anticipated that if I tried to actually do it (i.e., do nothing), I would be fighting people all week long because they would be emailing me saying I want to do this event or whatever and I would have to say no. We can’t put anything on the calendar. And you would say what do you mean? I have to have this meeting. I have to have this event. I finally decided I am not going to fight the people who insist on having something on the calendar, so I came up with a compromise and really the compromise is the value of community. Because to be honest, I felt like even though it is not the same thing as rest, usually if you do community well, it is going to incorporate some degree of rest.

I was thinking about it today and even though the value of rest become a value in the church, it should become a value of every Christian’s life. The reason being is that as we consider these two chapters, it was important for God to rest, so it should be important for us to rest. The idea of resting on the seventh day was a gift to us. Thinking again about that first chapter and the first six days of creation. There are all sorts of questions that rise up when you consider those days of creation. First of all, was it a literal six days of creation, a literal 24 hours? When God said “Let there be light” what language was he speaking in? Was he speaking in Hebrew or English or Greek? When it said that the earth was formless and void, what did that look like? What could that possibly look like? Those are questions that we really don’t have answers for, but one thing is clear. On that seventh day what did God do? He made sure that that day was special. He made sure that that was a day of rest. Reading from Genesis 2:2-3 again it says “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.” The seventh day was a day of R&R. It wasn’t necessarily rest and recreation, but it was a rest and reflection. Rest and a reflection on the creation before him. You say well how did he rest? Did he pull up a big recliner, grab a remote, turn on the TV, and then take a nap? I don’t think that is what was happening up there. There is a passage in Psalm 121 that says the God of creation, the God over Israel he doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t slumber, he doesn’t rest. So we can know that even when we are resting, he is pretty much awake. It does mean that he ceased from his creative activity. He ceased from the creation of the universe and making it sustainable from the moment of time all the way up to today. He was so excited about that that he actually sat back and said this is not just good; this is very, very good. On the seventh day he rested and reflected on that and reflected on what he had done and he really left us a gift. He left us a gift of that one day a week where we can really kind of enjoy and delight on his creation just as he delights on the creation. One day that he has set aside from the other six days to really enjoy him and allow us to cease from our work.