Rest

Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
What do you think of when you hear the word “Rest”?
One of the more literal ways that we use the word Rest is to talk about something coming to a stop. If you kicked the ball across the oval, it would roll and then come to a stop. It would come to rest. It would cease rolling.
This is the idea behind Rest in the Bible. Famously the word Sabbath is used to describe rest and it is about ceasing, stopping, resting. In the New Testament too, language around rest has a similar meaning: ceasing, stopping, resting.
When God made the world, he made it limited. He made us as limited creatures with limited ability so that we must periodically come to a stop. We must periodically rest. In fact he made it so that every single day we must come to a stop and sleep. God could have designed us such that we don't need to sleep so much, but the fact that he has should signal to us something about the nature of the world, and our humble place before a God who never sleeps.
Our need for rest is not just about physical rejuvenation, it is also about humble trust. Rest says “I’m a creature, I’m not God, and I need to cease for a time, but God will care for us, he will see that the world keeps turning.
Rest teaches us to rely on God, and Gospel Shaped Rest teaches us to depend on God in Jesus Christ for not only our physical needs, but for our salvation and eternal rest.
We have been making our way through some facets of the Gospel Shaped Life. We looked at
Worship
Work
Generosity
Now Rest
In next few weeks we will also look at Lament and then Relationships.
It important that we look at these because we are being reminded that our faith is not mere mental assent with some traditions to go along with it, but belonging to Jesus changes the every facet of the way we live. Our whole lives are impacted and shaped by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fact that Jesus has come to defeat Sin, to save his church, to sanctify us, these facts mean that we cannot go on living as if Jesus was an irrelevancy, we cannot just go back to lives lived in sin and rebellion and pride.
In Christ we are a new creation, and our lives should reflect the new identity that Christians have in Jesus.
So let’s begin our exploration of rest. Where else do we begin but the first chapters of Genesis?!
God Rested
God Rested
God made the world. Gen 1 tells us how God made the world over 6 days. He ordered and filled and shaped the world.
Each day of creation ends with the refrain like this:
And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
So God, even from before there was Sun in the sky, was building into creation the cycles of night and day.
Now interestingly after God formed the world over 6 days, we get to the 7th day and this happens:
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.
God came to a stop. God ceased his work of creating the world.
God’s rest is not because he is tired. God rested as the one who has completed a great work. Like a builder who rests after completing a house, or a baker who rests after finishing a grand cake. God has laboured, he has worked, and he has completed his work, so he comes to a stop.
Now this pattern is not just incidental, and we can see this in that way that God blesses the 7th day and made it holy. But note this - the last day does not have “There was evening and there was morning” - its almost as if the 7th day has no end. We will come back to this later!
God who does not need to stop, ceases his labor and rests on the 7th day. And then he goes on to use this pattern as a pattern of life, especially among his people under the Moasaic Covenant.
God Commanded Holy Rest
God Commanded Holy Rest
After God saved his people out of Egypt he entered into a covenant with them at Sainai.
A Covenant is a kind of relational contract, a bit like marriage.
As part of the Covenant there were laws and stipulations about how God’s people should live. And God was very clear that ancient Israel must work for 6 days and rest for one. It is repeated a bunch of times across the Torah, but here’s one example:
Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.
So serious was it that there was the death penalty for disobedience!
God gave them rules
No agrarian labour - like harvesting
No cooking fires
No making other people work on your behalf.
They truly had to cease, to set aside a special day once a week and remember God’s creative work.
This was not just a health benefit, it was a sign of the covenant:
And the Lord said to Moses, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.
Covenants signs pointed to the nature of God’s relationship with his people
Rainbow
Circumscision
Sabbath
Weekly Rest, as a remembrance of God’s Rest, as a covenant sign
The 1 in 7 principle was not just for the work week: Other sabbaths, for crops, for land, for slaves. There were times for labor and work, then there was rest, even for grape vines.
There were also special sabbaths for holy-days. There was time set aside across the year as kind of public-holidays so that the people could go and worship God, participate in the religious festivals.
God set a pattern among ancient Israel of work and rest, and he built it into the fabric of their national life. It was a sign of his relationship with them, and a matter of obedience.
Christ Rested Perfectly
Christ Rested Perfectly
But Israel did not keep the sabbaths properly.
One of the Sabbaths they were supposed to keep was once every 7 sevens of years, once every 49 years, they were to rest the whole country. No plowing or harvesting, just relying on what God has provided already.
But they didn’t keep this. And along with this, they failed in a bunch of other ways, so God sent them into exile so the land could have the rest that they wouldn’t give it.
They sinned against God. He gave the consequences, but he didn’t reject them outright. Instead he promised to overcome their sin problem so they could be made right with God.
The people came back from exile, and some of them got real serious about ssabbath. They’re like “we’re not doing exile again, we need to keep the sabbath super hard”
There guys are famous for coming up with rules upon rules about how to keep the sabbath. They placed restrictions on how far you could walk on a sabbath, what you could carry.
Then Jesus came along and flaunted their rules because they were man-made traditions. He kept the spirit of the Sabbath as God intended not onerous rules.
Just pointed out that the Sabbath was not meant to be a burdensome religious exerscise for God’s people, but a blessing for them:
And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
Jesus was Lord of the Sabbath, he did it perfectly, and he subverted the legalism of the day.
Their rest was meant to be a delight, a joy to cease from labour for a time, to remember God’s mighty deeds, time be dedicated to God, and to enjoy God’s provision.
Sabbath was not meant to be another kind of work, a different kind of labour. It was for their benefit.
Nevertheless, Jesus kept the Sabbath perfectly - indeed he was Lord of the sabbath.
He fulfilled the OC Law in a way that Israel had failed to do!
He fulfilled all righteousness, died for sin, rose from the dead, and now we can have the holy spirit within us that enables us to fulfill God’s law. We have moved from the OC into a New C, but obedience this New is achieved not through the external imposition of law, but through a HS enabled obedience from within:
Jesus brings this:
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Enter the LORD’s Rest
Enter the LORD’s Rest
What about for us now?
So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,
Obvious right?
No!
We must always look in context. Hebrews speaks of entering God’s rest, but eschatological rest.
Remember how there was no “end” on day 7 in the creation story? The author of hebrew picks up on this, and traces a pattern throughout history:
God Rested
Israel failed to enter rest in Wilderness,
Joshua couldn’t give them rest
David spoke in PS 95 about entering Rest
Today is still an opportunity to enter God’s rest
This is a spiritual rest, a rest with God from the labour of life outside God’s covenant.
So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
Unbelief will keep from true rest with God
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest
Enter by Faith!
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Sabbath resting is not a command in the NC, However, we still have a sabbath, and that is the Rest of God given in Christ. A Spiritual rest!
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
Resting to God’s Glory
Resting to God’s Glory
So we must rest, and it seems evident that the 1 in 7 is the pattern and it has been since the foundation of the world.
But, in the New Covenant there are not the same prescriptions as in the Old. Christ fulfilled the Sabbath, and while we still need to rest, it is freer rest.
Practical Advice
Deliberately set aside a day of rest - 1 in 7
My suggestion is that you make that day Sunday because it is already a day that most people have off from regular employment. You can come to the gathering of the church to worship, you are not pressured to run off to other activities and you can make the most of the gathering and meeting with other believers. You will notice that we try not to put any Church events on Saturdays, so that you can have that day for your worldly affairs, and you can set aside Sundays as a day that you know you go to worship the Lord and fellowship with his people.
Prepare to rest - make it a non-negotiable for your family. Do the things ahead of time that need to be done. Prep food, clothes, car whatever.
Do not be legalistic about your rest, rest is a blessing, and you cannot bind the consciences of others to rest on the same day or in the exact same way.
Have regular holidays where possible. Use them as opportunities to worship God all the more! (e.g. Christmas & Easter).
Deeds of mercy and necessity are good, even in your rest.
Make your rest holy, dedicate it to the LORD. It is not for selfish passions, but for glorifying God in the body. Rest in Christ, rest your body and mind from the cares of the world. Look to God your provider, thanking him, and trusting him to care for you while you rest.
Let the structure of God’s world teach you: there is night and day - time for labor and time for sleep. Do not become a slave to the clock with the power of technology, use the rhythms God has already built into the nature of the world. It is OK to work 12 hours, rest 3 and sleep 9.