The God Who Rests | What Is the Rhythm of the Universe?

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning, Awakening Church.

Great to be with you.

My name's Ryan, if we haven't met, thrilled, absolutely thrilled to have you join us on this Daylight Savings Sunday.

We've saved daylight.

Okay, there we go.

I want you to imagine a strange, otherly world with me for a moment.

This will sound bizarre, probably to most.

Like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Just access that region of the mind, your imagination.

Imagine a world where your computer, email, internet access were actually chained to a desk.

Either at work or at school.

When you left, they stayed.

No laptop in your bag, no smartphone in your pocket.

When you walked out the door, you were offline completely.

And uh amen went over.

At home, you had four TV channels.

Not four streaming platforms, four channels.

They aired shows at specific times, and if you missed it, you missed it.

And by midnight, the channels just stopped.

If you turned it on at TV at 1 a.m., you'd get static white noise, as if the universe is telling you, go to sleep.

When you left the house, you carried just your wallet and your keys.

Maybe if you're really organized, you had this tiny book for addresses.

But mainly you knew people's phone numbers by heart.

And if you were a doctor, I don't know, maybe even potentially a drug dealer, you might have this little box that beeped on your belt when someone needed you to call them back on a landline, this phone that was connected to a wire.

Those who visited this world remarked, times seemed to move slower.

People were more present, not because they were more spiritual, they just were less distracted.

We live in a world obsessed with progress.

Newer, faster, smarter, more efficient.

We've been conditioned to believe that forward motion is always good, speed is always better, and technology will always improve life.

What if that's not true?

What if the thing we call progress is actually moving us further away from flourishing?

Neil Postman warned that the biggest threat to humanity wouldn't be oppression but distraction.

His premise was: when entertainment becomes the dominant way we experience everything, news, politics, relationships, even spirituality, we'll lose the ability to reflect, think critically, and rest.

He wrote, We are people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.

Information comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness.

We are glutted with information, drowning in it, with no sense of what's relevant or not.

He wrote those words 40 years ago, in the age of the otherworldly world I just was telling you about.

In the age of TV, not TikTok.

And what he warned us about has become the air that we breathe.

We are the most advanced, most connected, most productive generation in human history, and yet we are the most restless, anxious, burned out generation in human history.

Maybe the problem isn't that we need to move faster.

Maybe the problem is we've forgotten how to stop.

Speaking of stopping, there's a clicking right behind me.

I just need somebody to run up here and stop that real quick.

Seriously, Glenn, run up here real quick.

Real quick.

The track is on nonstop behind me, and I'm hearing round one, round two, round three.

Thank you.

I think so.

Someone's ears, I could hear it through.

And I'm like, I ain't gonna be able to preach through all this.

I was trying my best.

But then my soul's getting anxious as I'm trying to preach unrest.

Oh, where were we?

Maybe the problem isn't we need to that we need to move faster.

We've forgotten how to stop.

We've forgotten and lost the rhythm our souls were created for.

So before we dive in into scripture, I want to invite you to pause.

Let me ask you to take a deep breath and just do a little personal inventory.

Is your life marked more by restfulness or restlessness?

Is it margin or business?

Is it slowness or hurry?

Is it quiet or noise?

Deep relationships or isolation?

Time alone or distraction with crowds.

Delight or distraction.

Enjoyment or envy.

Or confusion.

Gratitude or greed.

Discontentment or contentment.

Or worry.

Love or anger and anger.

Joy or melancholy and sadness.

Peace or anxiety?

Working from love or working for love?

Work as contribution?

Work as accumulation and accomplishment.

The question we need to ask.

Is the pace of my life forming me into the person I want to become?

Is the pace of your life forming you into the person you want to become?

Sermon titled Today is The God Who Rest.

We're closing out our series on foundations and simply asking, what is the rhythm of the universe?

What if God actually wove throughout the rhythm of the universe something for our very flourishing?

In Genesis chapter 2, we pick up the conclusion of the creation story.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

If you got your Bibles, I encourage you to open there or you got your notes.

Begins this way.

All the glory, all the incredible wonder and work that God did for six days of creation.

Then verse 2 by the seventh day, God finished the work he had been doing.

So on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

I want you first to notice God didn't rest because he was tired.

He rested because he was done.

He accomplished it and he was done.

And he finished, and that word rest is the Hebrew word Shabbat.

It's where we get our word Sabbath.

He Sabbath.

Verse 3, then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

The first thing we see God bless is humanity.

God blessed humanity.

The second thing we see God bless is a day.

A part of the fabric of creation.

He blesses a day, and then he does this.

This is the first thing in Scripture that God makes holy.

Not a temple, not a place.

Holy means to be set apart completely other for a distinct purpose.

All unto itself.

It's holy.

And God says, this day is holy.

God blessed it and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he has done.

Now I want to give you just an overview of where we've been for the last six weeks so that you can get a picture of what God's creative work has been doing.

In your notes, you have a chart and it begins Genesis 1.1.

In the beginning, God, we began the entire series, that uh all of creation, the universe, it's centered on God, that He is the architect and designer, which is incredibly good news that you have purpose, intention, design, and meaning.

You're not a cosmic accident, that God created the heavens and the earth.

And then verse two says, now the earth was formless and empty.

Those two words actually are the outline for the creation narrative: formless and empty, or wild and waste.

And what you'll notice is God's creative work from day one through day six.

He's forming and he's filling.

Days one through uh two, uh three, God forms and brings order.

Day one, he forms, he brings light separates from darkness.

Day two, sky separates from water.

Day three, land separates from sea.

God brings structure to the formless.

And then days four through six, God fills, he takes that order and structure.

Now he then fills it and brings purpose.

Day four, he fills the heavens with the sun, moon, and stars, fills the sea, day five with the fish and the birds of the air, day six, fills the land, animals and humans.

God brings abundance where there once was emptiness.

And then we're invited in as co-creators with God to bring structure and order and abundance and to cultivate.

We're to be working alongside and doing the very same things in God's good creation.

And then Genesis 2, day seven, which often we think about like, well, he didn't create anything.

No, he did.

He created a rhythm of the universe upon which we are designed to flourish.

He created rest.

Then God blessed it, declared it holy, because on it he rested from all his work.

What is the rhythm of the universe?

From the very first pages of scripture, God built a rhythm into the very fabric of creation: work and rest.

Create and stop, produce and delight.

This is the rhythm of the universe.

Within the rhythm of the universe, I want to draw your attention just to three things.

Within the rhythm of the universe, your body, mind, and soul need daily rest.

Within the very fabric of the way God designed things, you need daily rest.

Genesis 1, 5 says, and there was evening and there was morning.

Say evening and morning.

And there was evening and morning.

Okay, notice this.

We missed this.

God designed the day to begin with rest, not work.

And the Hebrew understanding of the day, the day began at sundown, not sun up.

And so when you finished your work and the sun went down, it was a new day began.

And so I finished my work and a new day as dusk came.

What did you do in your new day?

Well, you had a great meal with family, shared around a table, had conversations, told stories, because that was your entertainment.

Camping for most of us.

And then you slept.

That's how the day began.

With rest, not work.

In fact, for most of human history, that's how days have worked until the invention of electricity, where then we begin to violate the very rhythm of the universe, where we can have artificial light that allows us to work well beyond our days.

And then the industrial age came along and said, wow, you're really valuable in what you produce.

And we can produce things not just during the day, but we can produce them all throughout the night.

And we've gotten caught up into a cycle of always producing a rhythm, not in rhythm with creation, but in a rhythm of production.

God designed the day to begin with rest and not begin with work.

And so, if you work with your hands, how do we rest?

If you work with your hands, which some of you do, you generally tend to rest with your mind.

You exert throughout the day and you're doing uh some job with your hands, whatever that might be.

Maybe you are in the landscaping business, maybe you're a barista, you're working with your hands, you're like, I don't want to go do another thing.

I just need to rest, and maybe you rest with your mind, whether it's reading, uh, maybe it's a good conversation.

If you work with your mind, you generally tend to rest with your hands.

We have a lot of thought uh workers in here today, and you spend your day behind a computer doing this all day long.

You generally begin to rest with your hands.

For me, I actually love to cook.

I do a lot of the cooking in our home, not because I have to, I enjoy it.

I get home after a stressful day.

Actually, something is amazing, just doing something with my hands.

Some of you love to garden.

What does it look like to daily rest?

Maybe it's reading a book, maybe it's playing a game, enjoying a meal, gardening, getting a workout.

By the way, scrolling is not resting, it's numbing.

Say that again, scrolling, because this is what we do.

We numb out instead of actually do the things that nourish our soul.

Your body, mind, soul was made.

You need, you're not a machine for daily rest.

And yet what we do is we gravitate to that's what's easy, that which is mindless.

In fact, you know what the word amusement means?

Ah means no.

Muse, think.

To be amused is to be without thought.

That's why Neil Postman talked about amusing ourselves to death.

That we become a generation without thinking.

Because we just pick up what's easy and it becomes addictive.

Your body, mind, and soul, you need daily rest.

Secondly, you are created for meaningful work.

God blessed them.

What did he bless them with?

To be fruitful and to rule.

God created humanity to work with him.

Work is not, as some think, a necessary evil.

There was work in the garden before there was sin in the garden.

Work also isn't everything.

It's interesting.

People without meaningful work or purpose tend to die younger than those with it.

Now, here's what's amazing is I think when we look at meaningful work, you're like, what is that?

How do I get that?

In fact, would you just kind of shout out to me some jobs?

Tell me, just help me real quick.

Shout out some jobs.

Coach, what else?

Teacher, yeah.

Firefighter.

I saw a firefighter.

What else?

Huh?

Nanny?

Nurse?

Engineer, yeah, we have lots of those.

Contractor.

Social media.

Social media.

I don't know what that means.

Influencer, there we go.

Politician.

Behavior technician.

And you know what we do?

Even as you're yelling those out, we naturally assign value to them.

Some are more meaningful than others.

And some of you are not in your career, you're doing a job, you're just figuring out life right now, and maybe you're doing uh some job that you're like, this isn't where I want to be, or maybe you're in a place where you don't have a boss that you really love to be around, or there's another career step, and you feel like your life is on pause and you're waiting.

I want to tell you something that's incredible.

Wherever you're at, and whatever you're doing, as long as it's honest work, it can be meaningful work.

Colossians 3 23 says, Whatever you do, whatever you do, you hear that?

Whatever you do, I don't know what you're doing, what job you're doing.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.

As if working unto Christ.

Like whatever I'm doing, I can bring meaning and purpose, not because I have a great boss, not because I have somebody in my life where I even feel like this job is making that much big of a difference.

I am working as unto Christ, and so my whole heart, God, I I long for you to be honored with this spreadsheet that I produced.

You know what?

Today's daylight savings.

Tomorrow I'm a teacher and I'm gonna show up to cranky kids, and it's gonna just feel terrible.

And yet I'm gonna work at it with all my heart, not because the kids are really wonderful, but because, Jesus, you are amazing.

Everything you do can be meaningful work when we work at it with all our heart.

You, your body, mind, and soul needs daily rest.

You're created for meaningful work within the rhythm, the fabric of the universe that God has designed, your body, mind, and soul need weekly renewal.

I think we can understand the daily rest portion.

All the studies on sleep, we're like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna like track my sleep.

I gotta make sure I get rest, I get that.

This is the part Silicon Valley we we struggle with, don't we?

Weekly renewal?

I don't know about that.

Then God blessed them the seventh day, made it holy.

God set boundaries to work for your good.

He set a boundary line.

AJ Swaboda in his book Subversive Sabbath wrote this: The Sabbath has largely been forgotten by the church, which has uncritically mimicked the rhythms of the industrial and success-obsessed West.

The result, our road-weary, exhausted churches have largely failed to integrate Sabbath into their lives as vital elements of Christian discipleship.

It's not as though we do not love God.

We love God deeply.

We just don't know how to sit with God anymore.

We have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history.

Your body, your mind, and your soul needs weekly renewal.

A Sabbath.

What is a Sabbath?

Pete Sagazero writes Biblical Sabbath is a twenty-four hour block of time in which you stop work, enjoy rest, practice delight, and contemplate God.

That Sabbath.

All the studies show us after 50 hours of work, your productivity plummets.

This, you know, busyness as a badge of honor, this 80-hour work week, we think we're doing something and actually we're being counterproductive.

Enjoy rest, practice delight, and contemplate God.

Sabbath is not just a day off, it's actually an act of faith.

Did you know that Sabbath keeping is one of the Ten Commandments?

Exodus 20, verse 8, remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy.

Exodus 20:8

Six days you shall labor.

There's a boundary line here.

On the seventh day, Sabbath to the Lord.

All the other nations, they operated by the moon festivals and the worshiping like all the different um planets and moon and deities, and they didn't stop for any reason.

This was completely disconnected from all of that.

Said you're gonna work six days, and then seventh day you're not, and it's gonna look different than everybody else.

People are gonna go, why ain't you working?

Because God.

Sabbath is this declaration that you are not a machine, you're an image bearer.

Sabbath is this act of faith that God is at work when you're not working.

You know, it's interesting, he made the universe, holds all things together.

I think he can take care of some of the stuff in your life.

Sabbath is this declaration that your worth is not tied to your work.

You are far more, your work is meaningful, and you're far more than your work.

And it's this declaration of presence.

Matters more than productivity.

That's what your heart longs for, by the way.

We get into this production cycle.

I am what I produce.

And yet, what our hearts long for is just presence.

First and foremost with God and then with one another.

It's not just a day off, it's an act of faith, and it's more than just rest, it's actually resistance.

Um, Exodus, the Ten Commandments, is the first law that Moses gives to the people of Israel.

Then there's this book uh at the called Deuteronomy.

Duet means two, right?

You sing a duet?

Onami means law, second law.

It's the second law.

And what the reason they give it a second time is Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness, a generation died off, a new generation is about to enter the promised land.

And when Moses begins to give the second law, it's interesting how he reminds the people of Israel to Sabbath and why it matters.

Notice what he says.

He says, Remember, when you were slaves in Egypt, and 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.

In Deuteronomy, the Sabbath command is tied not to creation, but to liberation.

Remember, when you were slaves in Egypt, when you had a taskmaster, there were no days off, and you were what you produced.

Remember, you do not have a God like that.

Your God is not demanding of you, he's actually inviting you to delight.

Tim Keller writes this about Sabbath.

He says, Anyone who cannot obey God's command to observe the Sabbath is a slave, even a self-imposed one.

Your own heart or a materialistic culture or an exploitive organization or all of the above will be abusing you if you don't have the ability to be disciplined in your practice of Sabbath.

Sabbath is therefore a decoration of our freedom.

Sabbath is how we break free from the tyranny of never enough.

Isn't that what we feel we live under?

Never enough.

And there's never enough time either, right?

To do all the things and all the demands and all the stuff.

Sabbath is a day to say, God is enough.

God, you're actually more than enough for me.

And so as a result, I have enough.

Like, God, if you are enough, if you are all that I need, then I actually have enough.

And so the endless striving to not just be enough, but to get enough, I have enough.

And as a result, there's a day just to say, I've done enough.

I can't do it all.

I can't do everything.

In the rhythm of creation, pre-electricity.

There just was time when the sun went down and there was no more you could do.

So, well, I guess that was enough for today.

We'll pick it up tomorrow.

Wouldn't it be amazing if you were able to have that?

See, we live with this constant ding and pressure and access that says more, more, more, you can access it.

You gotta do it.

Uh, you know what?

Hey, do you remember when emails uh it used to be for some, like a response was within 48 hours or so?

And then it used to be 24 hours?

Now it's instant, right?

Somebody texts or emails you and then they walk down and say, Hey, did you get my text?

Did you get my email?

Did you get my Slack?

Oh no.

Wait, you sent that two minutes ago.

Sabbath is a day I've done enough.

And to realize in Christ I am enough.

It's a day of resistance against the tyranny of our world, of production, and declaring that my worth is not in what I do, but in whose name I carry.

And my heavenly Father, he rested, and so will I.

So, what does that look like in the Silicon Valley?

How do we embrace Sabbath in Silicon Valley?

Because you're like, Ryan, this seems impossible.

This is hustle culture.

This is, you know, if you're working in one of the big four accounting, you're talking about Sabbath.

Do you know what time of the year it is right now, Ryan?

If you're working in the startup world, they own your soul.

They have the, you know, silver or golden handcuff that like they might go public, you might make it, you might become wealthy, and then you can Sabbath forever.

Embracing Sabbath and Sisilican Valley, first thing I want you to do is start small but start now.

Start small but start now.

Twour hours might feel like too much to you.

Fine.

Do four.

Do four.

Do six.

Do a half day.

Start small.

Set it aside on your calendar.

Block it out.

In fact, if you have a play, uh if you have a hard time when people email you that you need to get right back to them, whatever that time period is, set an out-in-office email.

A busy.

Hey, I'll get back to you at this time.

Then they've already been responded to.

We leverage technology to your strength.

But start small, but start now.

What do you do on a Sabbath?

Three things.

Remember?

Stop.

Rest.

Delight.

Worship.

Stop the work.

Rest.

What does my soul need?

Delight?

Worship.

Let me ask you, what do you need to stop?

Can I invite all of us?

One of the things we need to stop is we probably need a digital Sabbath.

Your soul, my goodness, try it.

It's Lent.

You might as well try it for a day.

I'm not saying for 40 days, just try it for a day a week.

Do a digital Sabbath.

You Sabbath emails, Slack responses, social media.

Just try it for four hours.

What if you actually had dinner with friends with no technology?

Or you, you know, began the day with no technology.

Stop.

And then rest.

Let me ask you.

What is restful and renewing to you?

Did you know that's a spiritual question?

Maybe it's a good meal?

Spa day?

Getting your nails done?

A conversation with a good friend?

Hiking?

Maybe it's taking a nap?

Gardening?

Painting?

Walking?

Solitude?

Listening to music?

Nature?

What is restful?

And what brings you delight?

We have this picture of God, don't we, that He's demanding of us.

But what if that voice isn't God's?

He's the one who wove into the fabric of the universe a day just to delight and stop.

Friday is my day off.

It's my Saturday.

I get to have the day off and I love it.

So I work Sunday through Thursday and I do a little bit on Saturday.

But the reason I love Friday is I can put the sermon down and I don't have to think about it at all because I know Saturday I can pick it back up before this moment here.

We've not always been the good at Sabbathing, and we don't really call it that in our family.

But it's a day off.

It's stop, rest, delight, and worship.

Here was my Friday day, my Saturday.

Woke up, spent time with God.

The way I do it, it was just, I love my mornings, coffee, although that morning, anyways, you don't need to know all those details.

And then I worked out with my buddy.

Jenny and I had breakfast, made a little breakfast, sat on the back deck, talked, uh, or patio talked about uh our day, our future, kids, all those sort of things.

Sun was shining, wasn't that nice?

And then I started a thing with my brother.

As our kids had gotten older, we were able to do some different things.

We played golf.

When a kid's younger, we couldn't do that.

But now we have went and played golf.

Then my daughter's home for you know spring break, and so we picked her up from friends who were dropping her off, and then we ate sushi.

I grew up with this mentality, by the way, uh, I was told you can have too much fun in one day.

And at some point we'd have a lot of fun and said, Well, I think we've had too much fun in one day.

And we stop.

I don't know where that came from.

You cannot have too much fun on Sabbath.

And then I fell asleep early watching the show with the family, as I often do.

Dan Allador on the Sabbath writes this The Sabbath is an invitation to enter the light.

The Sabbath, when experiences God intended, is the best day of our lives.

Without question or thought, is the best day of the week.

Is it the day we anticipate on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and the day we remember on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Sabbath is the holy time where we feast, play, dance, have sex, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk, and watch creation in its fullness.

Few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it to make it holy because a full day of delight and joy is more than most people can bear in a lifetime, let alone a week.

Start small, but start now.

Stop, rest, delight, worship.

Stay consistent and be creative.

Stay consistent.

But my schedule's inconsistent.

You know, my friend who's a firefighter over here.

His days off are different.

You might have to rotate your Sabbath each week because of your days off.

That's fine.

But stay consistent.

Mark it on your calendar, block it off.

And then when people ask, tell them, you have a meeting.

I have a really important meeting.

It's true.

It's just with God.

Stay consistent, be creative.

And then finally, new seasons often require new rhythms.

We often get into a rut when we try to bring our old rhythms into new seasons.

When you're single, Sabbath can look in certain ways to then when you're dating or when you're married.

A new season of your new parents, your new mom and dad, Sabbath doesn't look like a day full of rest, does it?

You might go, okay, I'm gonna get like three hours here, and then you get three hours here.

But you begin to figure out what is the rhythm that works in the season that we're in.

The rhythm of the universe.

Your body and mind and soul need daily rest.

You're created from meaningful work.

Your body, mind, and soul need weekly renewal.

Imagine if we were this type of people.

It's what one person would say, I believe we would become a non-anxious presence in the world around us that would invite people to the very throne of God, wondering what is different.

As we close today, I want to invite you into a sacred moment, one that's been part of the rhythm of the church for over 2,000 years.

A moment that calls us to stop, to remember and realign our lives with the one who created us.

The story of creation ends with God resting, not because he was tired, but because he finished.

He looked at all he did had made and called it good.

Fast forward to the cross, and we find Jesus, the Son of God, hanging there, his body broken, his blood poured out, and in his final breath he declared, it is finished.

Salvation complete.

And communion.

This moment is an act of stopping, an act of trust.

A moment where we say, Jesus, you are enough.

In you I have enough.

I don't have to strive because you have accomplished and declared it finished.

So right now I just want to invite you to slow down.

Step into the rhythm of grace.

A moment to receive, not achieve what Christ has accomplished for you.

As you take the bread, remember his body broken for you so that you could be made whole.

As you drink the cup, remember his blood poured out so that you could be free.

And so Jesus, we confess we live in a world of endless striving, hurried schedules, and even now, in this moment, reality is a lot of us have restless hearts.

And so in this moment, in you may we find our rest.

So today we stop to remember your work on the cross.

Would you quiet our souls?

Remind us we're not machines, we're image bears.

Our worth is not tied to our work, but your finished work on the cross.

And you invite us to delight.

Meet us now.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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