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Good morning.
If you've got your bobbles, we're going to be aggressive this morning.
All right, Genesis two, go ahead and turn there.
Exodus 20.
Go ahead and mark that.
And then Mark two.
We're going to end up there as we go through here's.
What we're going to do from week to week is going to be different.
I'm really excited about Genesis, but teaching Genesis is definitely not a one size fits all strategy as we go through it.
So some weeks we'll have like we did last week, where we walk through every single verse and kind of just hang in that chapter or in that section of Genesis and then some, like today, we'll come back in, we'll draw some verses and then help connect those as God does at different spots.
So open to Genesis Two.
Exodus 20.
Mark Two is where we're going to be.
Now, you just saw a video, so I want to draw your attention to two cards that are sitting on the rows around you.
And I see that we've got rows are filled, multiple families.
That's great.
If you don't have some of these, make sure you grab from other rows or back in the back because we have those.
So I want to talk about that.
The first one is the card that looks like this.
It's something called secret church.
And secret church was started years ago by David Platt as he pastored a church in Alabama to help them get the mindset of this is what it looks like for a lot of churches, particularly persecuted churches all over the world, where they meet at night, they meet in secret and they don't meet for an hour or hour and a half.
They meet for this extended period of time as they come together without all of the comfortable things maybe that we appreciate and that we value in our worship services to study God's word.
And so they've continued on year after year of doing that and making a national thing where churches can come together.
And hear from David Platt as he teaches, I believe, one of the greatest Bible teachers of the modern era and I also believe one of the greatest hearts for global missions of the modern era is David Platt.
And so he'll teach through a section of the Bible, a topic of the Bible, or this year a book of the Bible.
And so we're going to be partnering with and being a part of Secret Church on Friday night, April 21, until listen to me.
Until Saturday morning, April 22.
You heard me.
All right.
It's from 07:00 p.m.
To 01:00 A.m..
I know woe's right?
It's a lot, but it's exciting and it's encouraging to see, to hear from other churches that have done this.
And so if you would like to join us and be a part of that night, it doesn't cost you anything.
The church will register.
We'll pay for that.
So we can be a part of this together as a body.
But if you would like to be a part of that, here's what we're.
Going to ask you to do.
We do need you to register.
So there's a little QR code on the bottom.
If you don't know how to use.
That, ask your kid or your grandkids.
Or come talk to us, talk to Burger.
He'll do it in 0.5 seconds and have you completely logged in and ready to go.
But I do want to just emphasize.
Be mindful of the time 07:00 P.m.
Till 01:00 A.m..
And this isn't like a lock in.
Like we're not sleeping here afterwards, right?
We're going home.
But I'd love to have as many.
Of you here as possible.
And then also here's our card for.
Easter with all of our details for Easter this week, we had a staff meeting.
We were talking about this and we.
Just said, I said as we make these, I want them to be that you're invited because you know that you're invited.
But I also want this to look like an invitation so that you can go to your neighbor, your coworker, your.
Friend, and just say, I know you.
Don'T have a church home, so you're invited, and give this to them.
And so we're going to really do.
What we did last year.
Our 08:00, I think we loosely we call it an outdoor service because we realize, like, sunrise is way earlier than.
That and we struggle to do that.
So it's our 08:00 a.m.
Outdoor service that we'll have and then.
Our 09:00 A.m.
Breakfast, right?
So if you were here, if you're.
A part of that last year, it was just a wonderful time of fellowship.
And then the service in here at.
10:00 A.m., I do want to emphasize this, the 08:00 A.m.
Service and the 10:00 A.m.
Service are for the most part, identical services.
We'll take Lord Supper, we'll sing some of the same songs, we'll look at.
The same passage of scripture.
It'll basically be the same message.
If you want to join us for both of those, we'd love to have.
You for both of those, but if you only want to go to one, that's fine too.
Those are identical services as we do that together.
So if you got any questions about.
That, please let us know.
Both services are for the entire family.
Okay?
So we're going to bring babies and.
Kids and everybody in here and have a wonderful time as God's family, all in one service celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So let's go ahead and look at Genesis, chapter two this morning.
This is where we're going to start, and we're going to start talking about rest and I love this morning talking about rest.
Joel Van Ham, he prays with me every morning before we talk about our weekend, we talk about our week.
We talk about what I'm a preacher this morning.
And then the last thing that he says to me is like, hey, what's?
Just kind of impressed on your heart that I can pray specifically for as you come up and as you share from God's word this morning.
And I said, I was being honest with you, man, I feel like a hypocrite this morning.
Yesterday we got up at 04:00 A.m., got home at like 09:15 P.m.
From being at an all day track event.
And I didn't know that sitting in the bleachers can exhaust you watching people run.
But that's what happens, okay?
I'm spent.
I'm more tired than the people who ran.
And so that's what we did.
And then we got home and that idol of March Madness was there, and so I had to watch it.
And so I just said, man, I just find the hypocrisy and the irony this morning as we talk about rest.
And I'm exhausted.
All right?
And so he's like, get some coffee.
I'll pray it'll be good.
The Lord's going to work through His Holy Spirit and through Starbucks, and that's what God's doing right now, okay?
So we're going to talk about rest this morning and understand that I'm going to be preaching out of my insufficiency and God's sufficiency.
But when we talk about rest, there can be like that person, right?
Oh, this is an excuse to be lazy, right?
And there can be that battle that rages on in some of us, right?
The workaholics, the person who says, I've always got to be doing something.
But what we can see in Scripture is that scripture addresses that.
The scripture address that and there's a difference between rest and lazy.
So here's thing, what we're going to find as we look at this is that your body needs rest.
Yes.
And amen, right?
Like, your body needs that go out and work hard, and at the end of a long day, you feel your body saying, Stop.
Stop.
But what we're also going to see is your body needs work.
Your body needs work, and your body needs rest.
It's how God called us.
It's how God created us.
So this morning, the call is for rest.
The call is not for lazy.
In fact, the Bible talks about laziness and the Bible talks about doing work.
Next week, we're going to largely look at the work aspect in Genesis two, but I just want to throw out the handful three Scriptures, there were more than that that talk about this dealing with laziness.
In Proverbs 13 four, it says this the soul of the sluggard or the lazy one craves and gets nothing while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.
Proverbs 21 25, the desire of the sluggard kills him for his hands refuse to labor.
Ephesians 428 let the thief no longer steal.
And we can all admit, right, that that theft is the ultimate form of laziness, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Ephesians 428 so the Bible calls us to work the work of the gospel, the work of activity.
Like the Bible, it is good when you and I go and work and our bodies need work and our bodies need rest.
So if you walk away from here and you're like, this is my excuse to be lazy, that's Satan speaking to your spirit.
That's not the word of God speaking to you, right?
This is not a call for lazy, but it is a call to rest.
It's a call to rest.
And here becomes the trouble with us that oftentimes when we aren't careful, we have within us this ability that I don't believe it's from the Lord to say yes to everything.
Well, will you do this?
Yes.
Will you do this?
Yes.
Will you do this?
Yes.
Will you do this?
Yes.
And what I found and what I've realized is that as I walk with the Lord, what the Lord develops in a layer of confidence within me from him is the spiritual maturity to be able to say to things from time to time or to individuals from time to time.
No, no.
It's okay to say no.
Because what can happen?
Just as there's the danger and the sin of being lazy, there's the danger and the sin of busy.
There's the danger and the sin of busy, probably right now, honestly, for some of us, like the ugliest four letter word in our vocabulary, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy.
You know why you're busy, busy, busy.
Because you say yes, yes to things.
That God doesn't have for you.
And that's the danger and the sin of being busy.
We fill our lives with busy.
And in doing so, what we do is we neglect the greater that God has for us and we fill our lives with insignificant things, with no eternal ramifications that don't impact our relationship with.
Him or the opportunity for the gospel to impact the relationships with others, right?
And so what we're going to do this morning is begin with looking at rest.
And I'm excited as we study through this week because what I didn't want this to become is the message about more naps.
That's really short and some of you are like, man, that's kind of what I need right now.
But this isn't going to be a.
Message about naps, but we're going to begin and see what the Bible means and what God does with rest.
Now, over the next couple of weeks.
I want to remind us this of the context of what we're looking at in creation is in the perfection in which God has created the fall doesn't happen until chapter three, okay?
So when we see this in Genesis one, when we see how God creates when we see this call of rest in Genesis chapter two, when we see God providing work in Genesis one and two for mankind to do, when we see the formation of marriage in chapter two, when we see the formation of the unity of man and wife in chapter two, we have to understand that all of this is from the perfected creation of which God has in this moment.
And so this call to rest from.
The very beginning is what God has said.
So let's look at Genesis two, one through three.
Thus the heavens and the Earth were finished and all the host of them.
And on the 7th day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the 7th day from all of his work that he had done.
So God blessed the 7th day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
So what we see here in this moment of what God does for us is god models rest.
God models rest.
God has worked.
And we see it's, what we talked about last week in Genesis One, as he's created in Genesis one through six.
And we see that.
And in that, God has called man to work prior to sin.
Genesis 127, God says, subdue the Earth and dominion over the fish, birds and over every living thing, every living thing that moves on the Earth.
So in Genesis 127, God looks at man and he says, this is your work.
This is your responsibility.
This is what you're to do.
In perfection before sin.
God said, this is work.
And if you're like, well, bomb as just one verse.
No.
In Genesis 215, we'll look next week, God took man, placed Him in the garden to work it and keep it.
And so God said, look, what I've done and what I've shown is I'm going to work and you're going to work.
And so what God models, what God shows us is rest.
Now, here's a question.
Why would God rest?
Does he need rest?
No.
We are made in the image of God that we saw last week.
But God is not bound to the.
Limitations that you and I are bound to.
So God didn't kick back after day six and go, I'm spent I just needed mental health today, right?
That's not what he did.
He didn't go, I can't speak anymore and create.
God looked and it was finished and it was good.
And God, what he's doing in this.
Is he models rest as he's designed us.
And he knows that we will need rest, right?
As God created, the garden was not free from work.
And also nowhere in Scripture does it show us that the garden was free of us, of mankind needing to stop and rest either.
And so our body, your body, my.
Body, we need rest.
We need rest.
Now, here's what happens in lack of rest.
Like, you feel it, right?
You're a little bit irritable, you're a little bit cranky.
You don't have the energy.
Well, me not being a medical doctor, but having Google, right?
Probably one of the most dangerous things you can do.
I Googled and searched and I read on WebMD, all right, so that's pretty much the same thing, right?
Side effects of the lack of rest.
Pretty interesting accidents occur because of the lack of rest.
I'd be willing to bet if we pulled the group in here together this morning that there's probably been someone who's had a car accident because you or someone else, right, fell asleep behind the wheel, you were tired, had an accident.
The 1986 Chernobyl explosion, the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill are all contributed to in some aspect, right?
In some aspect, sleep deprivation.
So you and I, we are more prone to accidents when we are asleep.
The other morning, I had just woken up, I was tired, and I was walking through our dark hallway to wake my son up, and I tripped and I fell and I landed on the four foot tall vacuum cleaner that was left perfectly in the hallway for me.
Right?
Was that my son's fault?
No, it was that I was tired and I should have seen it.
But accidents, right?
We don't have rest.
We have a lack of cognitive processing.
If you don't sleep, if you don't.
Rest, it can make you dumb.
Right?
There's health problems, heart disease, heart attacks, heart failure, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes.
And 90% of people who struggle with insomnia also have another health condition.
So we feel it, our body feels it to a detriment when we don't sleep enough.
People who struggle from depression struggle from a lack of sleep or lack of rest.
It ages your skin.
I didn't know this.
When you don't get enough sleep, your.
Body releases more of a hormone called cortisol, and in excess, this hormone will.
Break down skin collagen, which is a.
Protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.
Right?
Some of you care more about this.
Than I do, but that's the side effect.
It ages your skin.
For men, it lowers your testosterone, makes you more forgetful.
And not because we like Krispy Kremes and Buffets, but because we don't sleep enough.
It brings a weight gain, right?
All of these things, our bodies are designed to need rest.
So on just a surface level for us this morning, because I do want to address this with where we are, is that physically, God gives us this rest because we need it.
But God also models rest for us, not just because physically we need it, because we need it for our soul as well.
We need it for our soul.
Our need for rest points us to our need for Jesus.
Your soul in my soul needs rest.
This is a little bit of what.
We did last weekend, last Sunday.
Your soul carries so much of the heavy baggage and burdensome load of the week.
And so we need within our very being, this essence, to come before the Lord to be with Him and say, no, this isn't about a nap, but.
This is about rest, interesting in you.
And so what we see in Genesis Chapter Two is that God didn't just model rest, but he takes that day.
And Scripture tells us that he blessed it and then he made it holy.
And here's what this means, that God took this day and he made it special.
He made it different and he made it set apart for others.
Now jump over with me to Exodus Chapter 20.
Because God modeled rest.
And now we're going to see something different with what God does with this.
Exodus 20, verse eight.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the 7th day is the Sabbath.
To the Lord your God.
On it you shall not do any.
Work, you or your son, or your daughter, your male servant or female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that that is in them, and rested on the 7th day.
Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
And so here's what kind of takes.
Place in some just really nerdy language.
Stuff that makes sense and excites me.
So just bear with me like you.
Like this too, okay?
In Genesis two, when God rested, the word that is used for that is the verb shabbat.
So God stopped and God rested.
And it is used in here that God blessed and made the day holy, the verb shabbat.
But what we see here is this word shabbat, where God makes the verb into the noun and brings the day.
And this is where we get the Sabbath.
And so what we find in this is that God commands rest.
Exodus 20 is where we see the ten commandments given by God to his people Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai.
And the Ten Commandments.
I don't know if you know this, but they have structure to them.
The first four Commandments focus on our relationship with God.
The last six Commandments focus on our relationship with one another.
And so let me summarize what we just read, the fourth Commandment.
Let me summarize these first four to you.
In dealing with our relationship with the Lord, what God wants.
The first Commandment, god wants our loyalty.
The second, God wants our thought life.
The third, God wants our words.
The fourth, God wants our use of time.
And here's what God does in this command.
He gives us a rhythm.
He gives us a rhythm of life.
God doesn't say that you just worship.
Go back and look at this.
What we see is that God gives us the rhythm that he instructs us to follow.
It's a rhythm of work and a rhythm of rest.
So for six days, you work.
God says I'm sorry.
God doesn't say you can work.
God says you shall work, right?
The call to work, you work, and then you take one day that is set aside for that.
This is the day for worship.
So we see.
Not only is God commanding rest and worship, but God is.
What he's doing here, more importantly, is he's commanding time.
And he says, here's what I'm commanding you to go and do this and then come and do this.
This is the command of the Lord.
J.
I packer said this, and I love this quote.
As I read this week, he said this god's claim on our Sabbaths remind us that all our time is his.
Gift to be given back to Him and used for Him.
Take my life includes take my moments and my days.
Take my time, all of it.
So here the Fourth Commandment is just as much about stewardship of time as it is about worship.
It's what do I do with all of this?
Not just of the part.
And this is going to be the heart of everything for us.
What we want to do is we.
Want to bring our pieces to the Lord.
And God says, no, I don't want your pieces.
I want all of it.
I want all of you in this, the call and the command that he has for us.
I want all of your time.
I want all of your mind, I want all of your words, I want all of your actions.
I want all of your money.
I want all of it, and you steward it unto me.
So every day for us is a day of worship, right?
So God modeled rest for us.
He commanded rest.
That's what we see in the Old Testament.
And then Jesus comes, and it's really interesting, and I like these parts of Jesus.
I like all the parts of Jesus.
Let me rephrase that.
That didn't sound right, but I'm really.
Drawn to how about that?
I'm really drawn to when you're reading in the Gospels and you see that after a long day, christ gets away to be with the Father.
He goes off alone to pray.
He goes off alone to rest.
And we see this.
And so Jesus embraced rest, but Jesus also embraced worship.
We see Jesus at the temple.
We see what he's going we see what he's about in all of this.
And then something remarkable happens, as Jesus is in ministry and as Jesus is teaching, and in those subtle ways, powerful ways, where jesus is sharing who he is.
Jesus says that he becomes our rest, right?
So now rest is really different.
It's not just about a nap, it's not just about a day.
Jesus says, I'm your rest.
Look at mark two, starting verse 23.
One Sabbath He was going through the.
Grain fields and as they made their.
Way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
And the Pharisees were saying to Him, look, why are they doing what is.
Not lawful on the Sabbath?
And he said to them, have you.
Never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry?
He and those who were with Him, how he entered the house of God in the time of abbathar the high priest and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat?
And also he gave it to those who were with Him.
And he said to them, so Jesus says this to the Pharisees, not to just a group of his followers, not just to the disciples, not just to that core group of three, but Jesus 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.
Whoa.
The words of Jesus.
And so what we see here is Jesus is our rest.
So in the Old Testament right there, there are things that God's people would do in worship on the Sabbath.
We know that there was action involved, but there was rest, was set.
Stop what you're doing, stop so that.
You can be and then they would provide offerings and sacrifices to receive God's forgiveness and restoration and relationship with Him, following the breaking of his commands and.
All the different things that were going on at the time of Mark two.
That this is the practice of what's taking place.
So the Pharisees are out and they see Jesus, they see the disciples.
Now Jesus isn't doing this, but the disciples are.
And they're walking through the grain field and they're taking the heads of grain and they're eating it.
Now I tried to think about this, I've never done that, right?
I've never walked through a grain field in my life.
So I'm just going to equate this, right?
When you're walking through, you see the honeysuckle and you're like, oh, that's good.
And you're walking through and doing that, there's just that kind of action.
But this is implied here that there's this work that they are doing.
So what is the issue?
And you're like, Well, I mean, they're stealing.
Well, they're not stealing.
And Deuteronomy 23 25, god's word allows people to pick the kernels of grain from the neighbor's grain fields as long as you use your hand to do it right.
So you're not using the sickle to come and cut it down so that you can get enough to feed.
It says as you walk through, as the travelers journey on the land of what God's sending them through, that they can remove these so that they can eat.
So this is what they are doing.
So the Pharisees objection to this act is that they view this as labor, as the disciples in their minds are reaping the grain.
They're working on the Sabbath.
And so for the Pharisees, they're like, no, they're missing the Sabbath.
And Jesus is like, no, you're missing the Sabbath.
You're missing the Sabbath because the Sabbath is standing right here in front of you.
Jesus is the Sabbath.
And this was his point.
Look back at verse 27 and 28.
He said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
See, the Sabbath was given by God to man as a gift in verse 28.
So the Son of man is lord.
Even Lord of the Sabbath.
So when you see Son of man here, this is Jesus's most common used title for Himself that we see here in Mark.
And so when Jesus says the Son of man, he's speaking to Himself is Lord, even Lord of the Sabbath.
You're missing it.
Jesus is the Sabbath rest.
So how is that?
How is Jesus our Sabbath rest?
The first way is this.
Jesus is our complete Sabbath sacrifice.
You see, they would bring before they would bring their sacrifice to pay for their sin.
Over and over and over again, the sins they had committed, the sacrifices would made so they would be forgiven and have restored relationship with God.
But Jesus is our Sabbath sacrifice because as they would bring sacrifice to the temple, jesus took his sacrifice to the top of Calvary and he died.
And in his payment, he paid the full price for our sins.
And so Jesus is our complete Sabbath sacrifice, but Jesus is also our complete rest for our labors.
Jesus is the work that was necessary for your and My salvation.
Jesus is what does the work of our salvation look like?
It's Jesus.
He obeyed all of it, every single aspect of God fulfilling the law of God.
And here's the thing.
Jesus earned your salvation, which means this.
You and I, we can't earn it.
We can't work for it.
We can't fight to grab it and grasp it.
Jesus did the work.
So our laboring for salvation is insignificant.
It's insufficient.
It's incapable to do what we want it to do.
And Jesus says, no, I've done this for you.
Come and find your rest in me.
And then in this, Jesus provides an eternal rest that daily, daily we long for.
I love, I love the boldness of that second song that we sang.
My sins are forgiven, my future is heaven.
Praise God for what he's done.
The longing of our souls that wakes and hears about the depravity that fills this world causes an unsettling in our spirit.
But I'm forgiven and my future is Heaven.
And in that is an eternal rest of what our soul longs for.
Some takeaways.
I'd be willing to bet.
You need more rest, right?
You do.
And I mean physical rest, right?
You do.
Here's a takeaway from this week, from this message.
You need more rest and you need to say no.
You need to, you need to feel.
The freedom as God leads you to say yes to what God has for you and no to what God does not have for you.
But if you walk away from today.
And your commitment is, I just need more naps, you missed it.
Second takeaway.
You and I, we need to evaluate our time.
We need to evaluate our time.
God says, you need this, I need this.
Stop saying yes to everything.
And in doing so, what we do is we say no to God.
God calls us to a church, to a family.
There is the church universal and God calls us to a singular church body of believers, and to invest there.
And you and I need to evaluate our time and invest, see our commitment and see where we're at.
But I'm going to say this too.
If you walk away from here today.
With just, we're going to go to church more.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I'm saying if that's it, you've missed it.
So takeaway number three.
Rest in Jesus.
Sunday through Saturday, rest in Jesus.
He and he alone can provide the rest that we need for the busyness of our life and the restlessness of our soul for all of eternity.
Our works cannot save us, but the work of Jesus can.
And so we rest in Him, in Him alone.
I'm going to read this passage of scripture.
When I say, when I finish, we're going to pray and we're going to respond in worship and I'm going to let God's word be what it is and be sufficient for us.
These are the words of Jesus in Matthew eleven.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
My yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Would you pray with me?
God, I come to you this morning and I thank you so much, Lord, of what you've given us in the gift of rest, lord, and there are so many of us and Lord, we.
Just need to slow down.
We need to slow down.
We're tired, we're cranky.
It's hard to display the joy of Christ.
That is in us when our.
Body has been neglected.
And so Lord, may we rest physically from the exhausted busyness of this world.
May we not pursue busyness for the sake of busyness.
May we not pursue laziness for the sake of laziness.
But may we pursue the rest that you have for us.
Lord, we thank you that you love.
Us enough that you give us a rhythm of who to be and what to do, to work and to rest.
Jesus, we thank you for that.
We thank you for the rest that You've gathered us in.
In our rest.
As a unified body as we come before you from the craziness of our week.
To just have a moment to be with family.
You don't need us here, but we need to be here.
Lord may not feel as a chore, but as a freedom we have.
My prayer my prayer above all was that we would rest in Christ Jesus.
You are Lord and you are Lord of the Sabbath.
And you call us to rest in you, and not our own false sense of perfection, and not our own false sense of morality, but in you and in you alone, that we would rest in you, and that our souls would find rest in you.
And that while tomorrow may hold what tomorrow holds, eternity holds.
We are held in Your hand, and in that, Lord, we are drawn to you.
We do not find rest in our works.
We do not find rest in ourselves, but we find rest in Jesus alone.
And it's his name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willeridgechurch.org or by searching for Willow Ridgechurch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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