REST FOR THE WEARY SOUL (Genesis 2:2-3 May 6, 2007) It is said when Rembrandt stood before a blank canvas he was able to envision the final finished masterpiece before him. Similarly, Michelangelo was reputed to be able to see the finished sculpture after merely looking at a block of rough marble. In the same way, there is no doubt that when God spoke and began His work of creation that He knew what the final finished masterpiece would look like. He knew where creation was headed. So what does this final finished masterpiece look like? Some have said that as the sixth day of creation ended with Adam and Eve having been formed from the dust of the ground walking in the Garden in harmony with God that this was the final masterpiece. Others have pointed to day 7 God resting after He has blessed and sanctified the seventh day. But what I want to suggest to you this morning is that the final goal of creation is man at rest with God in the new heavens and new earth. That this is where all creation and history is heading. What is important for us to grasp is that right here in Genesis God makes it clear that this world even the before the fall version of this world this world was never meant to be the final goal of creation. God has a bigger plan and His plan is to give us rest. Don t think that Eden was plan A and because of the sin of Adam plan B the new heavens and earth became necessary. No! God always had the final new heavens and earth as his plan. 1
And if you want to know what that final masterpiece looks like then read Revelation 21-22 a stunning picture of eternity. Why is this important? Because this world is messed up we are messed up. Our weary souls have no peace. This is especially true if you do not know Christ you have no peace. You can find no lasting satisfaction. But even as Christians there are days and weeks and months were our souls can be in turmoil. It might be our sin. It might simply be seeing the effects of the fall illness and pain in a loved one. It might come from looking at how messed up our world is. My message this morning is simple. God doesn t want this. He wants you to find rest for your soul. And He tells us how to find this rest now and eternally. And this rest is wrapped up in the meaning of the seventh day of creation. The verses we will look at this morning show that right from the outset all of creation was designed to move forward to the rest of the new heavens and new earth. Look with me at Genesis 2:1: Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. Here is the summary statement for the first six days of creation. God has finished creating the heavens and the earth. He has formed and filled the earth and then capped His creative work by breathing life into Adam and Eve. If the creation account just went straight on to verse 4 you might be forgiven for thinking that Eden was the goal of creation. But, we don t go on to verse 4 we have verses 2 and 3: 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. Unfortunately it is not so clear in our English Bibles, but the way the creation is account is written makes these verses stand out. This account is structured in such a way that we are meant to be drawn to these verses. It is as if Moses wanted to pull out a marking pen and point us to day seven. 2
Just look at some of the ways that the number seven the number of divine perfection is woven into the creation account. Seven days of creation. Seven words in the opening sentence. Seven x 2 words in the second sentence. Seven times creation called good. Seven x 5 times God is used in the creation account. Seven x 3 times heavens is used in the creation account. Seven x 3 times earth is used in the creation account. In fact there are even more ways in which seven is woven into the creation account but the most obvious is this: The seventh paragraph has three sentences all of seven words and each contains the phrase the seventh day. Moses wrote this in such a way that these verses would stand out as key verses. And if all of this weren t enough the God made sure that this seventh day stood out as radically different from the other six days. 3
The seventh day is the: Only day with no Then God said God does no creative work on this day. Only day God blessed and sanctified God wants us to see that it is this day that is holy. Only day where the number is repeated three times Every other day the number first day, second day is repeated once this day it is three times. Only day without a pair In the first three days God forms the formless world. In the second three days He fills the empty world. The first three days correspond with the second three days. What is formed in the first three days is filled on its pair in the second three days. 4
But the seventh day has no pair. Only day with no There was evening and there was morning Notice what happens with day seven: You read Genesis and you have this repetition And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. And there was evening, and there was morning the second day. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. 5
And there was evening, and there was morning the sixth day. But day seven is different. There is no refrain saying And there was evening, and there was morning the seventh day. God rests on the seventh day but nothing is said about this day ending with evening and going on to yet another day. Let me sum this up. God wants our attention, our focus, our thoughts to be drawn to the seventh day. Why? Why is this day so important? What are we supposed to understand from God resting on the seventh day? As Scripture unfolds these answers are given and the answers tell us about the goal of all creation. God s seventh day rest is a promise of eternal rest and a plea to enter that rest. We can sum up the point of the seventh day as a promise and a plea. God created the heavens and earth in six days and rested. But God knew the fall was coming. He had planned to send Jesus from before the foundation of the world. He knew this creation would be marred. And in these verses we find a promise that He intended to create again to form a new heavens and new earth that could not be marred by sin where redeemed men would rest with God forever. But the seventh day also becomes a plea to find rest for our souls in Christ. I have had a tough week on many levels. I have felt more exhausted this week than I have in a while. 6
But these verses helped me greatly. First, was the knowledge that this is not how it is meant to be. The day is coming when I will enter into God s final rest when labour by the sweat of my brow is done when I will simply enjoy Him forever. Second, I realised that I had not cast my burdens on Jesus. That I had not asked Him to refresh me and give me peace. I don t know what your week has been like. Maybe yours has been crazy like mine. Maybe you are reaching the end of your patience and endurance. Then know a better day is coming a day of glory and joy and rest. And know that in Jesus you can find rest for your soul. I tell you if this world is as good as it gets I would lose hope. But the message of Genesis is that a better world is coming. When we looked at Genesis 1:2 I told you that even there we found statements that are meant to lead us to see that a new heavens and new earth were always the plan of God. Scripture describes the earth in four different states. First, the world as initially created by God at the beginning of day one formless and void dark and deep. Then God begins His forming and filling on day one. He finishes it on day 6 where this world is said to be very good (Gen 1:31). God sends light into the dark and separates the waters forming land. He breathes life into the world. But this is not the final perfect creation. There is day and night. There is dry land and watery depths. 7
Even Eden is not the final perfect world. There is potential for sin and turning from God. And that is exactly what happens. Man sins. The creature turns against the Creator. The world becomes a fallen world. The world is still described in terms of light and dark land and depths. But the dark and depths do not just express potential for sin they express the parts of the world in rebellion against God. Man has no rest. Man is separated from God. Darkness and depths become symbols for death and separation from God. Genesis 3:17 calls this a cursed world. But all of this first creation looks forward to the final creation the new heavens and new earth where there will be no darkness and no depths. In Revelation 21 and 22 in the new heavens and new earth there is no sea and there is no darkness. There is no potential for sin or rebellion and no actual sin or rebellion. This is a perfect world. It is here that man finally and completely enters into God s rest. This is what the seventh day is meant to point us toward. This is the world that all creation and all history are moving towards. This is why God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He set this day aside as holy His day the goal of creation. What I want to do with for the remainder of our time together is to see how this theme of God calling man into His rest is worked out in Scripture. Rest actually becomes one of the dominant themes of Scripture. I only have time to point you to a few of the many, many verses that develop this theme. One of the hardest things for a preacher to do is to prune a sermon. There is just so much on this theme of rest and Sabbath and seventh day in Scripture. But do your own study this is a fascinating theme. It begins here in Genesis 2:2-3. Purpose: Man at rest with God forever 8
Right from the outset man at rest with God was the purpose of creation. God created us He formed us from the dust of the ground so that ultimately we might be at rest with Him for all eternity. The seventh day in which God rested points to the ultimate purpose of creation man at rest with God forever. But there is a: Problem: Man has no rest with God because of sin In Genesis 3 Adam sins. And God pronounces a curse on Adam and Eve. And at the basis of the curse is that God s rest the rest of man in relationship with His Creator is marred. For Eve there is anything but rest she will have pain in childbearing. For Adam there is anything but rest he must toil all the days of his life to eke out a living by the sweat of his brow from the cursed ground. In Genesis 4 we find Abel working hard to tend flocks and Cain working hard to till the soil. Throughout the rest of Genesis this theme of man in a marred relationship with God is developed death enters, the flood comes, the Tower of Babel. But, there is another theme running through Genesis. The theme of: Promise: Man will have rest with God through the One who will bring rest It begins in Genesis 3 the Promise of the One who will crush the serpents head. The promise of a seed who will come. This promise of a seed is fleshed out in Genesis. Then, at the end of Genesis Jacob is blessing his sons. In Genesis 49:10, Jacob says this: The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes and the obedience of the nations is his. There has been much debate about what Shiloh means. Some have argued that it means He to whom it belongs. Others He to whom tribute belongs. But most likely it means He who will bring rest. 9
In this understanding, Genesis ends with a promise of One who will bring rest. And if you want to sum up the rest of the Old Testament it is various promises and pictures of the One who will bring rest. And Israel would certainly need this promise. Listen to the situation they found themselves in at the beginning of Exodus. By Exodus 1:13-14, they were now enslaved in Egypt: Pharaoh worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labour in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labour the Egyptians used them ruthlessly. Israel was experiencing the full force of the fall. You and I may not end up as slaves making bricks for a tyrant but we have all experienced the bitterness of life. This is a fallen world life is not easy. Life doesn t go the way we want. We have turmoil and war. We have pain and suffering. Men, women and children die. Wars erupt. Parents fight with children. Husbands fight with wives. We have to toil to put bread on the table. But what we have to always remind ourselves of is that everything that is marred in this world is due to the fall. And when things get tough God wants us to know that He hears our cry and He is doing something about it. When Heather hurt her knee, I struggled almost as much as she did 15 year olds aren t meant to hurt their knee. I have been involved in several sets of counselling this week Christians are not meant to act the way we do. College students are not meant to become mass murderers. Droughts aren t meant to be so severe. I had a tough week in many ways. And I cried out God, its not meant to be like this. Where are you? And Scripture tells me God hears my cry and His answer is I will give you the rest your soul craves. In Egypt, the Israelites were bearing the full brunt of the curse and they cried out to God and God heard them. Exodus 3:7-8: The LORD said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10
This is the first of many promises that God would work to bring His people into His rest. Then throughout the Old Testament there are a number of pictures and ceremonies and all of them declare that God will one day bring this world to an end and bring rest. He gave His people Israel many pictures of this rest the Promised Land, the Sabbath Day, the Sabbath Year, the Jubilee, the Great Feasts. But what we have to realise is that every picture they were given was meant to point forward to the final eternal rest. Keeping the Sabbath Day having a day without hard labour is not the final rest. Entering into the land of Palestine was not the final rest. Unfortunately some Jews mistook the picture for the reality but the fact is they were merely pictures, signs, promises pointing to the final rest. Perhaps the first picture given to Israel is the promise of rest in the Promised Land. But, as they were preparing to enter into the Promised Land God brought Moses up to Mount Sinai and there He gave His people the ten commandments. And the fourth commandment was another promise of the rest to come. Exodus 20:8-11: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour 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. The point was to give His people a weekly reminder of the rest which He will bring. Entering the Promised Land was not the final rest. Conquering enemies was not the final rest. This was yet to come. God was reminding His people that when He created the heavens and earth in six days and then rested He was pointing forward to the eternal rest that He would bring to His people through the One to come. And as a sign of that promise He instituted the Sabbath every seventh day the people would rest. And in case any of the Jews mistook the purpose of the Sabbath in case any thought it was just a time to rest based on the way God created the world we need to remember that when God reminded them of the Ten Commandments forty years later he gave a different reason for why they should keep the Sabbath Day. Turn over to Deuteronomy 5:6: 11
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. And down to Deuteronomy 5:12-15: Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labour 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 ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. Here the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath is not linked to the days of creation but to the deliverance from Egypt. The point is that the Sabbath is not just a pattern for the work week it is a promise of salvation a promise of eternal rest. A promise of our final deliverance from every form of bondage. A promise that God will deliver us from this cursed world and give us rest. Just as God rested at creation so He will give us rest. Just as God delivered Israel from bondage so He will deliver us eternally. These are the promises bound up in the Sabbath. Listen to Exodus 31:17: The Sabbath will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested. The Sabbath was a sign pointing to the seventh day to remind the nation of Israel of the eternal rest to come. I don t have time to go into it but in Leviticus 23-25 God gives commands for a whole series of Sabbaths. The standard weekly Sabbath. The Great Feasts The Seven Sabbath Feasts that were to be celebrated yearly that all looked forward to the promised rest and deliverance from the curse of the fall that was yet future. I wish I could show you how each of these Feasts point forward to the One who will bring rest. How the seventh day and Sabbath are intertwined in the commands of these feasts. 12
Then Leviticus gives instructions for a Sabbath Year and every sabbath of Sabbath years there is to be a year of Jubilee. A time of celebration. All the slaves are released. The land returns to its rightful owners. Debts are cancelled. All the crops are freely available for all. The principle of Sabbath worship is meant to point to the One who will usher in the final rest and undo the curse. All of these Sabbaths are signs, reminders, promises of the final rest that God will provide. Keeping the Sabbath was a sign of faith in the One who would come to bring rest. Then, finally after centuries and centuries where Israel had no rest war and oppression and sin one Sabbath in the obscure town of Nazareth, a man arose to read from the Scriptures. He had a: Plea: Men find rest with God through Jesus When Jesus stood up in that synagogue to begin His ministry He announced that the Scriptures which promised the coming of the One who would bring rest were fulfilled in Him. Listen to this passage. Luke 4:16-21: Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord s favour. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus quoted a passage from Isaiah which promised that One would come who would usher in the final ultimate Jubilee Year the year of the Lord s favour. And Jesus said these staggering words: Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the promised One the One who will bring you rest. 13
And in case they missed this Jesus left the synagogue and performed miracles and healings on the Sabbath. He was declaring that the One the Sabbath pointed to had arrived. The One who would give men rest had come. The sign and promise had been replaced by the reality. In John s Gospel we find that Jesus began His public ministry by turning water into wine on the seventh day the Sabbath day. Jesus is announcing that He is the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the One who will give men rest. In other accounts Jesus calls Himself Lord of the Sabbath. He is the One the Sabbath looks forward to. One of the clearest examples of Jesus saying this is found in John 5. Jesus heals a lame man on the Sabbath. The Jews confront Him over this. In verse 17, Jesus said: My Father is always at His work to this very day. Here is the point the Lord is making. In a sense He saying: Answer Me this? In Genesis 2 when it says God rested does it mean that God the Father stop working on the Sabbath? Does He stop holding the universe together? Does He stop the tides and the winds and the rains? Does He put up His feet on the Sabbath and take His hands off the controls of the universe? This point was actually debated by the Rabbis. A few Rabbis did teach that every Sabbath God did rest He stopped all His work. But, the reality is that if God rested from His work of upholding the universe even for a moment everything would cease to exist. That is not the point of the Genesis account. Psalm 121:4 tells us: He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. So most Rabbis accepted that in some way God works on the Sabbath. They concluded and I think correctly that God rested from continuing His work of creation not from His work of sustaining upholding, guiding and directing the creation He has made. 14
So Jesus is making a statement that is fairly self-evident God never ceases working even on the Sabbath. The Jews before Him would have agreed with that. But what is shocking what would have sent every Jewish head into orbit is what He added at the end in verse 17: My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working. I work on the Sabbath because I am God I am Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is fulfilled in Me. And the Jews knew that this was exactly what Jesus was claiming. John 5:18: For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus is God come in human flesh Lord of the Sabbath the One the whole Old Testament looks forward to. And in case we somehow missed it Jesus makes His point very clearly in Matthew 11:28-29: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. The Sabbath is done. It was a sign pointing to the One who will bring rest. But now Jesus has come. And Jesus issues this plea to all men: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. The wait is over. The promised One has come. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. From the moment God spoke and the heavens and earth sprang into being all of history was leading up to the coming of Christ the One who brings rest. How would Jesus bring rest? Jesus died on a Friday the 6 th day. He was in the tomb on Saturday the Sabbath the 7 th day. But then he rose to life on Sunday the 8 th day. 15
Hebrews 1:3 tells us that: After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Jesus entered into the heavenly rest and He will come back for all who headed His plea to find rest in Him. In Jesus death and resurrection we too can find rest. But, here is the great tragedy. All throughout history many have thought they have entered into rest. Some Jews thought they obtained it by entering the Promised Land. By keeping the Sabbath. Today, many are satisfied because they were baptised their parents believed or they have tried to be good. But if Scripture makes anything clear, it is this. There is only one way to enter God s rest and that is through Jesus. And Jesus still pleads for us to come. Without Him, there is no rest for our souls. Listen to Hebrews 4. In verse 1: Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. This very day, God still calls us to enter His rest through Jesus. Verse 4: For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: And on the seventh day God rested from all his work. God created you to be in a relationship with Him. The seventh day is a promise and a plea. Come to Him. Verse 11: Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest. That is the whole purpose of the seventh day to show us the rest of God and to urge us to enter in through Jesus. And finally, we have: 16
Picture: Man at rest with God forever Revelation 14 describes one of two fates that awaits every man. Verse 11 the fate of those who reject Christ: And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night. And verse 13 the fate of those who accept Christ: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, they will rest from their labour. And Revelation 21 and 22 gives a vivid picture of that final rest. All of Scripture moves from the Promise of Rest to the Fulfilment of Man at rest with God eternally. So why did Moses highlight day 7? Why was it so crucial? Because the seventh day was a promise and a plea. It is a promise. A promise that one day God would send the One who would bring rest. And in Jesus Christ that promise was fulfilled. If you are not in Christ I know that you are dissatisfied with this world. You can have no real peace. You can have no rest. This world does not satisfy it can t. You were created such that you will only find rest in Christ. Nothing else will quench your thirst. 17
But it is also a plea. Come to Jesus, all you who are weary and burdened, and He will give you rest. Take His yoke upon you and learn from Him, for He is gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Here is rest for your souls! If you don t know Christ the greatest delight of my heart would be to share how you can find this rest. But this is also a promise and plea for Christians. If your soul is not at peace come to Him drink deep and be satisfied. We know we cannot find ultimate peace and rest in this life but we can cast our anxieties on Him, we can drink deep of His joy and we can find rest in Him. And when the worries of this world overwhelm you remember the day of God s rest is coming. He will destroy this marred world create a new heavens and earth and bring us into His rest. There is rest for weary souls now and final rest in the age to come. This is the glory of God s seventh day. 18