God Rests

Genesis chapter 2, the first three verses.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

This is the final portion of the creation accounts, which began in Genesis 1.1.

This deals with the final day of God's creative work.

I'd ask you to follow along in your Bible or the Bible in the pew as I read it for you.

Page 2 in most Bibles, Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

This is the heavens, thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done.

And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

This is the final portion of the creation account.

What we have here is a revelation from God.

That means we wouldn't know it in any other way.

It's something that God has kindly, graciously, for our good and for his glory, revealed.

If it weren't for this creation account, we would be left to our own devices to try to figure out where all of this came from, what all of this means.

When we encounter the realities of life and we find things within our own heart that repel us, quite frankly, at times, we would be confused.

We would not know if it were not for the opening chapters of Genesis.

The beginnings of all things, the genesis of all things are revealed here.

And it's a gift of God that we might understand reality around us.

The purpose of the opening chapters of Genesis, as I understand it and as we are looking at, is that we might see things through the right glasses, that we would see things in the right way, that we would interpret reality around us as God has revealed it.

And the most foundational, the most important fact of all reality is in the beginning, God.

In the beginning, God.

And in the beginning, God created heaven and earth and all that is in them.

That is the central understanding with which the Bible begins, and it is the central understanding which is given to us that with that framework of a God who is, a God who reveals Himself, a God who works, that we can begin to interpret and understand the world around us.

The way we've been looking at it is this is giving us a view of reality.

That's what God is doing.

He's giving us a worldview.

He's giving us a paradigm by which we can understand our lives, ourselves, human history, the brokenness of the world, and it all begins with God.

In the beginning, God.

Now, it's a very simple story, as we have been saying for the last several weeks.

So simple that every child can understand it.

It was not meant to be confusing, it was not meant to be difficult.

It is simply a revelation of who God is and what he has done.

Now, for us in our day and in our age, it's a very difficult issue for us because we have drunk the Kool-Aid, as it were.

We have seen and understood and imbibed different worldviews, different ways of interpreting what we see around us that compete with the biblical worldview.

And we've wrestled with this.

The biblical paradigm or the biblical worldview begins with God, a God who is, and a God who reveals himself.

There are several other paradigms that we've looked at, and I just want to remind you there's several competing ways of understanding what truth is and what reality is.

One of those is rationalism.

That's very much the spirit of our day, ever since the Renaissance.

That which we can understand with our mind defines that which is real.

Rationalism.

Secularism, the belief system that religion provides no meaningful windows into reality, or certainly no necessary ones.

Scientism, not science, no problem with science, but the belief that the scientific method is the way to gain understanding about the world around us and really the superior way.

And standing against all of that as a different way of viewing the world is what we have in the scriptures.

So it's a matter of worldview, it's a matter of how you perceive reality.

We've been talking about that.

I really don't want to go there any further.

But very interestingly enough, I came across something that I want to share with you.

A week from Thursday, Thursday evening, the 23rd, there will be a full-length, hour and 40-minute documentary that will be shown in the local theater that asks the question is Genesis history.

What major events might have occurred to shape it?

Was there a global flood?

A big thing?

How did the earth become filled with so many amazing and diverse creatures?

I'm Bill Tackett, the creator of the Truth Project, and I've spent a year asking a wide variety of scientists to help me better understand the world we see around us.

Well, it was a story that we all learned in grammar school, Colorado River, over tens of millions of years come up with a canyon.

Most geologists have geneticism that idea.

You can't imagine a canyon enduring that long with erosion.

Time is not a magic wand that solves all the geologic problems of the world.

You've got to understand what happened in the past.

Not unreasonable, but there's evidence in the rocks themselves that you can't do that.

If the fossils of dinosaurs have been dated incorrectly, then it's very likely the fossils of any organism have been dated incorrectly, and therefore then the geologic agents themselves are incorrect.

I believe in change over time, but I'm not an evolutionist.

The shark has the ability to change, to adapt, to respond dynamically to the environment.

But there are still sharks.

And when we look at the fossil record, there are still sharks.

We've been told to look at the history of the Earth that is millions and billions of years old.

Is there evidence that it could have been created in only a matter of days?

You really need to begin by looking at the governing paradigm about the history of life and the history of the universe.

We've got two possibilities.

In all the natural history museums in the country, I'll give you just one of those views.

Is there a recorded history that shows us a different view?

And when we look at the fossil record, we can see the complexity was all in from the beginning, and this begs the question of where did all this complexity come from?

An infinite history recorded in the book of Genesis.

We all have this notion that there was a prominence that has been worked out across time in a linear, understandable, traceable function, will come face to face with an earth-shattering question.

Is Genesis history?

Thursday, 23rd February, Carmike Theater 10, 32nd Avenue South, one evening, one showing.

I think it's going to be worth seeing.

I know the organization that put it out, they are the ones behind the Truth Project, which is one of the best works that is being done currently to deal with the issue of Christian worldviews.

Jane and I are going.

We invite you to come along with us.

I'm not going to pay for your ticket, but I think if there's more than 10 of us go, that I think we get a group discount.

I'm looking forward to seeing what that has to say because the point is this gives us a different paradigm.

It's a different worldview.

And the issue that we face when we open up the scripture is we bring our culture's paradigm to it if we're not careful, and then we're struggling all the time.

Where I believe that God has revealed to us a different way of understanding the observable facts around us.

And that is what's behind what we're doing here.

So we come today to the idea that God rests.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then He He worked for six days, and thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host.

And on the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day.

Have you ever thought what a strange concept that is?

God rested.

What does that mean?

What in the world does it mean that God rested?

I want to try to explore that a little bit because I'm not sure it means what we often think it means.

If I'm if I've been working hard, I get really tired, and I need to rest.

Is that what was going on with God?

God is on the throne, God rules, He reigns, He holds every cell in your body in place, every star system in the galaxies in the universe in place.

And is God, does God reach a point in which he's getting overburdened with all of his ruling of the universe?

There are millions of people around the world who cast all of their cares upon him because he cares for us.

Does God get burdened down with our is is he is he trying to control everything and deal with your problems and mine?

See, that's the way we would be.

That's not who God is.

We're a little bit like God.

He's not so much like us.

That's what we saw last week.

That God has made us in some ways like him so that we can know him.

But what does it mean that God rests?

I'm going to try to explore that with you in the few moments that we have together.

What it doesn't mean is that God gets tired.

We know that.

Isaiah 40, uh a wonderful verse, a couple of verses.

Have you not known, have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not grow faint or weary.

His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases.

Even youths get faint and are weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.

But they who wait upon the Lord shall gain their, renew their strength and rouse up on wings like eagles.

They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

There are ways in which when that happens we become a little bit more like God, but what we know is that God Himself is not weary.

Okay?

So what does this say?

What does this mean?

All right, so let's just walk through these verses.

The point of this is that these three verses, chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, reveal to us something about God's own day of rest.

Now, what we need to understand is that this, as I've said, is the completion of the creation accounts.

As we read it in our Bibles, we have a problem because there's this huge chapter division that appears between chapter 1, verse 31, and chapter 2, verse 1.

And for us, when there's a chapter division, it's as though this is starting something new.

Well, actually, chapter 2 begins with chapter 2, verse 4.

The chapter divisions in the scriptures are not part of the original text.

Somebody, an editor, came along and to help us made the different chapter divisions.

The chapter divisions of this portion of the scriptures go back to the 16th century in the 1500s, as the printing, there was a printer, in this case by the name of Stephanus, who made some marks in the text that he had before him and came up with a chapter division.

Many of the chapter divisions are very helpful.

This one is not.

The story is told that he was riding on horseback when he was marking his, and he must have slipped.

Maybe the horse jumped and he got it wrong.

This is not the beginning of a new chapter.

These verses are the conclusion and the completion of the creation story.

Just as verses 1 and 2 in chapter 1 are preparatory, in the beginning, God, God created the heavens and the earth.

Earth was without form and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

There is this sense of anticipation.

God is doing something.

God is, and God goes and begins a creative process.

And now this comes to completion.

Let's just read, for example, or look at the end of chapter 1, verse 31.

So all of the six days of creation, and God saw that everything he had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

Now keep reading.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

There is no break here.

This is a continuation.

So mark your Bible differently.

The first two verses of chapter one was like a prologue, and then we have the story of creation.

And now that's like the bookend on this side of the bookshelf.

And what we read now is the bookend on this side of the bookshelf, and the whole story is tied together.

It began and ended in quiet.

The earth was without form and void, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

This great sense of anticipation.

And it ends with quiet and calm and rest.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.

And God on the seventh day finished his work.

He rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

He blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God ceased God's Sabbath from all the work that he had done in creation.

There was a quiet anticipation at the beginning, and now there is a satisfied contemplation of the works of God's hands all tied together.

So this is God's own special day.

This is a day that is distinct from the others.

When we saw the sixth day last week, we noted that there were some details in the text that, if you look at it very closely, indicate that this was the high point of the story up until then, the sixth day, the day on which man was created, where man was placed in the ideal habitation which was created and designed for him.

Well, in the details of these verses, these three verses before us, there is an indication that these are not like the previous six days.

This is God's special day.

The numbering gives a clue.

The first day, the second day, the third day.

And then when it comes to the seventh day, it says the seventh day, the seventh day, the seventh day.

It's repeated three times.

And God on the seventh day finished his work that he had done.

And he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

Different kind of description of this day.

This is a different kind of a day.

In the other days there was evening and morning the first day, evening and morning the second day, evening and morning the third day.

There's no reference like that relative to the second day or the seventh day.

But very clear, this is God's day.

Just let me let me emphasize the references to God in these verses.

There are eight distinct times that God is referred to.

Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done.

He rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

You just can't miss that this is all, this day is all about God.

Different from the others' days.

This is his special day.

Well, what is so special about God's special day?

And what we find here is that it's finished.

All that he had set out to do, all that he had intended in the creation of the material realm, it's done.

We need to understand when we read this and we say God rested, we think he's taking ease.

For us, rest has the idea of recuperation from hard exertion.

The word that is used here is simply a word that means to cease and to stop.

The creative activity that God began in the early part of chapter one has come to an end.

It's finished, it's done.

God stops, God ceases, God sabbaths.

The word Sabbath, uh sabbat, comes from the idea to stop, to cease.

It doesn't really mean take a rest in the sense that we need to rest after we're exerting ourselves.

The same word to Sabbath or to stop was used in Joshua chapter 5, verse 12, where it was talking about God having given the manna.

Joshua 5:12

And then all of a sudden the manna sabbathed.

The manna stopped.

It was no longer being given.

That was done.

It was finished.

In the book of Job, Job 32, verse 1, the same word is used.

Job 32:1

And in the account of the book of Job, God has revealed that the so-called friends of Job just pestered him almost to death.

You read it chapter after chapter after chapter.

I have to confess, I get tired of reading chapter after chapter, in which his friends were saying, Oh, come on, Job, fess up.

You know you sinned, and that's why you're in this sorry state that you're in.

And then at a given point, they all just shut up.

And it said, his friends sabbathed.

They stopped.

They stopped with their silly arguments and their silly uh descriptions of what was really going on.

Just it stopped.

He sabbathed.

Now, God simply ceases uh the creative works that he has been giving himself up to.

What we have here is a Sabbath, a day of satisfied accomplishments.

And it says, it is finished.

It is finished.

Have you ever heard that phrase before?

It is finished.

Jesus on the cross.

Here we have the first person of the Trinity who says, it's finished.

And then Jesus on the cross, referring to that which the Lord's Supper was all about, his sacrifice for sin, he says, it's done.

It's been accomplished.

That's the same spirit that we find here.

I have a sneaking suspicion.

Maybe I'll get to ask Jesus someday.

I don't know whether he'll bother answering me, or maybe it'll be such a foolish question at that point that I won't have a need to ask it.

But I wonder, Jesus, did you intentionally say that as a reference back to chapter 2, verses 1 through 3?

It is finished.

It has the same spirit to it.

I have strange questions.

Good thing we've got all eternity, because I got a whole bunch of questions that I want answers to.

I may not get them, but uh but there's a stark parallel there.

Um this is a rest of satisfied achievement.

Just think about this.

This is not a rest of inactivity as much as it is a rest of God.

How should I say this?

God does more than just create.

God does more than just work.

God took one day after the six days of creation, and he stopped.

And as I read this in the breadth of scripture, I have the impression that God took great delight in what he made.

The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament showeth forth its handiwork.

The glory of God is on display in creation.

When you look at man, Psalm 8, man, we come in awe of who God is when we see who we are.

We reveal, albeit imperfectly, something of the glory of God.

God had been working, he had been accomplishing his purposes, and now he looks at what he has accomplished and he says, this is almost embarrassing to say it this way, well done.

He revels in what he has accomplished.

The created realm glorifies him, and he revels in that.

Now, if if somebody says to me, Walt, that was a great message.

It's not always what people say, by the way, but then there's the risk that I'll start thinking, oh, I'm really pretty good, aren't I?

I can be satisfied with that.

I'm I'm I'm satisfied in me.

If we're satisfied in ourselves, we've got huge problems.

But why would God be satisfied in anything else other than the perfections of who he is and what he has done?

God rejoices when he himself is glorified.

There is nothing more glorious than God.

Why?

When God is placed on display and we see him in his beauty and in his person and in his work and his grace and his glory, the exalted one, there is no one more exalted than God, and God rightly rejoices when much is made of him.

Now, when I start making much of me, or when you start making much of you, it's ugly because you're not much and I'm not much.

Who else could we make much of?

Who else could we exalt besides the one who is all glorious and all-powerful?

And there's something of that, I believe, going on as God looks at the works of his hands, and there is this sense of satisfaction in what he has done.

This is a blessed day, this seventh day.

The blessing of this blessed day is that in it he is exalted and he exalts himself.

It sounds awkward to us to think that God would exalt himself, and yet that's what the very essence of glory is.

It's God's self-revelation, and it's wonderful and it's right, and when we do it, it's ugly and it's sinful and it's wrong.

But when God exalts himself, all creation rises up.

Oh, I know, sin, sin changes a lot.

That's chapter three.

This is before all of that.

The glorification of God Himself in His works.

That to me is the blessing of God's own seventh-day Sabbath.

There's a number of things we can learn from this.

I want to touch on the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord's Day that are closely tied to all of this, but just in terms of the fact that God rests a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment of the work of his hands, there's some things that we can learn just in this creative account.

So this is just what I get out of some of this.

I see in the whole creation story a pattern, a rhythm, an ebb and a flow built into all of nature.

The sun rises, the sun sets, the waves, the tide goes out, the tides come in.

Everywhere we look, there is order and there is rhythm and there is harmony in all of creation.

What do you suppose that's about?

Well, in part, I think that's a reflection of who God is.

This tells us something about God.

And we who are made in God's image, there is something about that in us as well.

And as we will see, the gift of the Sabbath to his people Israel, or the Lord's day for us, is in part, you know, there's more to God than just working, there's more to you than just working.

On the seventh day, God revels in his glory.

On the seventh day, we are to worship and adore him.

And it's that rhythmic pattern of order and harmony in creation says something about God, and there's something about our worship of God that is pointed to in that.

Six days of creative activity, one day of satisfied delight in God Himself and in His work.

Six and one.

It's not 24-7-365.

It's not work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

He does more than just that.

Work does not, his activity does not define him.

It's a part of who he is, but he's all glorious, apart from the works of creation.

And we ought to take a clue from this.

Our lives must not be 24-7-365.

We say all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

I think there's something more profound than that.

All work without worship, all work without the word, a joyous, heartfelt response to God in worship, a soul-nourishing feasting on God's word.

All work without that makes us lousy creatures.

We weren't intended to be the ever-ready bunny.

We were intended for work and then reveling in what God has done.

There's a lot of truth to that.

Are we defined?

What are we defined by?

Well, there ought to be a rhythm in our lives of six and one.

A person who feels inclined to work all the time should examine how godly he is, because God does not work all the time.

We in our culture and in our time, and I fall prey to this just like you do, we take our busyness almost as a badge of courage.

As though that's wonderful, that we're so busy.

We're busy, busy, busy, doing, doing, doing.

There's more to life than that.

Um often when we talk with each other is one of the first things that we say, we're talking about how busy we are, or how tired we are.

And so, how are you doing today?

Well, I'm doing pretty well.

Boy, it's been busy lately.

Well, I don't doubt that it's been busy lately.

But if you're not careful, you begin to think, okay, that's a good thing to be busy all the time, to be productive.

That's to be American, isn't it?

Well, I'm not so sure about that, at least not anymore, but I'm not sure it's godly.

I'm not sure it's Christian to go, go, go all of the time.

We would reject the phrase, he who dies with the most toys wins.

Okay?

We would reject that phrase.

If we're not careful, I fear that we would say that we actually act like we think the believer who is the busiest is the best.

And I think we need to challenge ourselves with those kinds of thinking because God had a satisfaction in the works of his hands, and there was a sense of calm about it.

It is not godly to be driven.

Let me explain that.

God is not compulsively driven.

There's no OCD syndrome by God.

It is not godlike to be compulsively driven.

Making lists, oh, making lists all the time.

Some of us, Jane and I are uh we are list makers.

They're so wonderful.

Have you ever made a list just so that you could check it off?

Confession.

Yeah, there's a bunch of us.

As though that's some let me just suggest that drivenness is not godliness.

And we see that in creation.

Well, let me uh talk a little bit about the Jewish Sabbath.

Uh God shared this concept of sabbatz or ceasing to his covenant people Israel.

And he shares the blessing of it.

He instructs his people Israel to share in the blessing of his own day of rest.

Now, his own day of rest is far greater and far more profound, but in some small way he gave to his people something of that same, well, what was intended to be a blessing.

So he baked the Sabbath into the Jewish faith in various places in the Old Testament, part and parcel, and so we find that in the Ten Commandments.

We find that the second time in Deuteronomy 5 when the law was given, uh, the Sabbath, uh the Sabbath rest.

And it explicitly is pointed back to Genesis.

So there's a connection between this instruction to the Jewish nation to take one day out of seven and have a Sabbath.

There's a connection with that in God Himself.

And I believe that the intention of the Sabbath was to bless God's people, that they might enter into something of that sense of calm and enjoying the glory of who God is, be it the Shekinah glory in the temple or the heavens, which are declaring the glory of God, that it shouldn't just be focused on activities, because God is focused on more than that.

And this is a blessed day, and he gave the Sabbath to be a blessing for his people as well.

It was given that it may go well with them, along with the rest of the Ten Commandments.

We talked about that over uh over a year ago.

The tender commandments, not given to bind us, not given to keep us under thumb, not given to make us say, oh, I hate this, but I gotta do it because God said it.

No, these are, this is God saying, this is the way life works.

Go this way, don't go that way.

It's for your good.

I'm giving, I'm telling you this that it may go well with you.

God gave the Sabbath to his people Israel, that it may go well with them, that they could enter into some of the blessing which he himself has.

It was to be for his people what the seventh day was for him.

Unfortunately, in the course of time, in the course of the generations, the Jewish Sabbath degenerated into a burden.

It's what sin always does: takes the blessing of God and turns it into a curse, takes the goodness of God, which is meant to free us to be who God intended us to be, and causes that to bind us and restrict us.

And so by the time of the New Testament, the delight, the delight of God's original Sabbath, and the delight of taking one day out of seven to focus on God and exalt him for who he is, it had become a legalistic burden.

And so when Jesus expressed compassion to people on the Sabbath, healed on the Sabbath, the religious leader said, Now we've got you.

You're breaking the law.

And Jesus said, You guys don't know anything about what God was doing here.

The Sabbath, man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man.

It was to be a blessing, not a curse.

And we always, if we're not careful, sin is one of the insidious things about sin.

It causes us to take God's instruction and to feel it as an oppressive burden, to get weighed down under, and to take God's blessing and to experience it as a negative thing and as a negative curse.

That's the nature of sin, and we'll see what in chapter 3 how that came about.

Well, the fact of the matter is that Jesus removes the burden from his people.

I won't take the time to go into this, but it's very clear that Jesus and the New Testament sets the Old Testament Sabbath aside.

And there is a special day, but this becomes the Lord's day, the day of the resurrection.

And it's not a burden, it's to be a joy, it's to be a privilege.

A whole bunch of things that I would like to say about that, but uh I probably better not.

After all, I've got to get back and work.

And my wife is saying, Jane, that's your job, you know.

You do it very well.

Thank you.

Truly.

And all God's people said, Amen.

All right.

Lots more I'd like to say, but um, what we have is a new day for the new covenant.

And without going into all the detail, God has placed, has given us a heart, a new heart to respond in a new way.

He changes our desires.

That's part of the gospel.

We have a new heart, a new set of inclinations, a new set of desires.

Now we're stuck between now and then, so we have conflicting desires within us.

We have an old nature that and we have a new nature that is that refreshes and glorifies God, and we're torn between the two.

And the good things that we want to do we find that we can't, and the things that we don't want to do, we find we do those all the time.

Oh, wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from this body of sin and death?

That's what Paul says, Romans 6, 7, and 8.

Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus.

There is therefore now no condemnation anymore for those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of liberty and life in Christ has set us free from the law of obligation and earning God's favor.

That's the gospel.

And for this new covenant, which replaces the old covenant, there is a new day, and that is the Lord's day.

Let me try to wrap this up.

Several things by way of application of verses 1 and 3, the one day out of seven, God's very special day.

A couple of thoughts that are on my heart to share.

As long as you're still sitting there, then you get to hear them, right?

Um, first of all, the Lord's Day for us, um the Jewish Sabbath for Israel, was never just an external thing.

It was it was it was a matter of our hearts.

We must not approach Sunday legalistically.

Now, we've many of us have been raised in church all of our lives, and with a sense of obligation and a sense of pressure.

My friends, in the gospel, that pressure is off.

If you are here out of a sense of obligation, you shouldn't be here.

Really, shouldn't be here.

We are free in Christ, free to nurture the new desires within us.

God replaces the gotta gotta gotta do to wanna wanna wanna do.

God gives us a new set of desires.

God changes our what we want.

Our wanna doer gets changed by the Holy Spirit working within us as we grow in truth and our understanding of God and what Christ has done.

We begin to do what we do because we most desire to do it.

Unfortunately, I can't always do that which I desire to do, and my doing of it is imperfect, and yet I want to do different things than what I wanted to do before I came to know Christ.

He changes us from within.

It's always a matter of our heart.

As it relates to Sunday and going to church, if it is a burden, if it is an obligation, if you drag yourself to church, listen to me, don't come.

Um James M.

Boyce, a great pastor and scholar and theologian of another age, another uh generation, said, Let them be done with the long faces and solemn demeanors.

Let us be done with the type of worshiper who comes to church only to go home.

Yikes.

Come to church only to get out of church.

If you do not enjoy the worship of God and the fellowship of God's people, if you do not enjoy the preaching of God and the response of the congregation in word and song, he says, stay home.

And I'm not going to be around here forever, so I can get away with saying that.

Hear my heart on this.

It's a matter of the heart.

If you don't have a heart that wants to worship.

Now, I know you have other conflicting wants, but if there isn't something deep within you that really desires to worship God, if you don't have a hunger to feed on the manna of God's word, then there's little Point in being here.

If you don't want to be here, don't come.

Why would you come?

Under pressure.

There is no pressure that comes from the New Testament.

It's all the joy and the ability and the new desires.

This impacts how we handle parenting a little bit.

Now, it's necessary to train and nurture and shepherd our children.

And so there were times growing up that we said, son, I don't care whether you want to or not, you're going to church this morning.

But there ought to be very few times that you have to approach it that way.

And by the time a kid is in junior high or senior high, if he only comes because he's dragged along, what are you doing, parents?

What are you doing?

And if you only come because you feel obliged to come, please stay home.

I won't be the least bit offended.

I don't care how many people are here.

Our goal is not to have a big, impressive church, the biggest show in town.

That's not what we're doing.

Unless, unless, of course, that's because we are filled to overflowing with people who have a heart for God and a desire to be here and want to worship Him and want to immerse themselves in an understanding of reality, as that's revealed in Scripture.

You give me one person who comes on Sunday morning with a heart for God's word and a desire to exalt him, and I am all over that, my friends.

Long faces and a sense of obligation.

What does God really think about that?

And I would personally say, if you don't have a heart, you don't want to, and you're over, I don't know, 12, whatever.

I'll leave that up to the parents.

Then why come?

Then you come with a critical spirit.

Then you come, I want this and I want.

I uh Vic Lukin was here this morning in the first service.

I love Vic, pastor here for 33, 36 years.

He came up to me afterwards and he said, Well, what is it you really think about that?

And I said, Vic, you know, I'm not here for 33 years, so I can get away with saying that.

And he kind of laughed and he said, Yeah, you're right.

Um, another thought.

We talk about TGIF.

Thank God it's Friday.

The Bible portrays a little bit differently.

TGIS, thank God it's Sabbath, thank God it's Sunday.

The cultural pattern for the weekend is thank God the weekend, the work week is over, and I can actually veg out and have fun and have a good time and relax.

And I can down a couple of beers, I can watch a couple of flicks, I can find a couple of chicks, and it's going to be a good weekend.

Now, I'm sure that doesn't describe anybody here.

But you know, there's something about that mindset that is deeply ingrained in our culture.

So, two days I get off, maybe.

If you're lucky, you get two days off, and you have to fill that with yard work and soccer games and shopping and NFL games.

Of course, that is very important, especially when the Packers win.

But uh and and I'll go to church, especially if it's convenient, and if the sermon isn't too long, and if I like what I hear.

And if we're not careful, we get into that kind of a mindset.

My friends, that is so far from what God wants from us.

Um what should we do on the weekend besides take a day off?

And I would say, do whatever will reflect your appreciation for God, your respect for God, your love for God, your awe of the God of the cosmos.

And I want to uh uh cite Isaiah 58, verses 13 and 14.

Isaiah 58:13

Fascinating.

If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath, in other words, translated thus, if you honor the Lord's day, and from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call this if you call the Sabbath of the light and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it, not going your own way, not seeking your own pleasure, not talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth, I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Kind of an obscure verse, and yet I really sense he's saying, If you only understood what this was all about, it's more than just a day off, or it's more than just an obligation.

One final thought.

God calls us to rest in him.

Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Rest of your souls.

Rest for your souls.

This principle of God's own rest, not a ceasing, but a delight and a glorification of himself.

That's something that is for us, and that satisfies something deep within us.

Augustine put it this way: Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.

God offers us rest, and that rest is in God, and that rest is in Jesus.

That rest is the rest of faith.

Come to rest.

Rest of soul.

Well, I'm gonna Sabbath, I'm gonna stop here.

Would you stand for the benediction, please?