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Plainly Speaking
with Karl J. Forehand
The
Creator Rests
(Genesis 2:1-3)
by Karl J. Forehand
The other day, I found myself feeling
guilty. I am the president of the
sports booster club at our school. We
recently bought a sound system for the school. After setting it up for graduation, I decided not to attend
graduation. Driving out of the
parking lot, I couldn’t help feeling guilty for missing the event. The evening before, I had driven by the
Fellowship of Christian Athletes picnic and had the same feeling. The whole weekend was that way. I needed some rest and relaxation; but
seemed to feel pressure from all sides to do everything but relax.
It was interesting that God gave me to
this passage to preach Sunday.
And by the seventh day God completed His work which He
had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had
done. Then God blessed the seventh
day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God
had created and made. (Genesis 2:2-3)
God rested on the 7th day. He also blessed that day and sanctified
it. Why didn’t he bless the first
day? After all, the first day was
light, which is so important to life.
Light represents so much about God – why didn’t God bless that
day? Or what about the day He created
man? What a unique creation – why
couldn’t that be the day He blessed?
I believe He blessed the seventh day because it represents God’s aim,
in that He desire real, eternal rest for His people. Not just rest from our labors; but
eternal, abiding salvation rest for us.
Therefore, God as our example, rested!
We see the example in Jesus who, “…having
offered on sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of
God” (Hebrews 10:12). You sit down
when the work is finished. If you
have a boss, you have probably heard them say, “You don’t sit down until the
work is finished.” Jesus Christ also
finished His work in salvation; and because He is finished, He sat down – He
also rested.
The truth of God’s finished work is
this: If God’s work in salvation is
complete, then not only can He rest, but we can rest in His completion. If you went to work and the boss told you
someone had completed all your work for today, there would be no need for you
to struggle – you could rest.
We, as humans, tend to have a sense of
restlessness. We almost seem to fear
rest. The Israelites feared entering
God’s rests. They saw the giants and
dangers and actually refused to enter the rest of the Promised Land (Numbers
13). They had been enslaved. God brought them to the edge of the
Promised Land, showed them the milk and honey and gave them a promise of
rest. They saw the dangers and
actually begged to go back to the familiar territory of slavery.
At times, God brings us to a
precipice. For instance, Jesus once
said to His disciples, “The fields are white for harvest…” At this time, we have to decide whether or
not we will give into fear or faith.
Faith enters us into God’s rest.
Either we seize the divine moment or we submit to our fears. Psalms 95:7-11 details both the Israelites
problem and our ongoing problem with not having the faith to enter God’s
rests. The Israelites were made to
wander in the wilderness because of their unbelief. I believe we suffer similarly because we simply don’t have the
faith to REST in God’s plan.
The Promise of Rest
In the past, God gave us the
example of resting. Jesus sat down
when His work was done. The people of
Israel were invited to that rest, but failed to believe.
In the present, a “promise remains of
entering His rest” for the believer (Hebrews 4:1). In salvation, we enter God’s rest by trusting Him to save us
from our sins. But, we also rest in
our submission to His plan for our lives.
We “cease striving” and allow Him to work through us.
In the future, we have a promise of
ultimate rest. Revelation 21:3-4
describes this when it says, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among
men, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God
Himself shall be among them, and He
shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the
first things have passed away."
What hinders us from this rest?
The Peril of Unbelief (Hebrews 3:12-19)
Beware of your unbelieving heart.
Take care,
brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving
heart, in falling away from the living God
(Hebrews 3:12-19)
Most of our problems are unbelief. When we don’t believe, it keeps us from
salvation. But, belief also hinders
our relationship with God. We don’t
trust, we don’t accept and we don’t obey because we have a hard time really
believing
Beware of the hardening.
But encourage one
another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," lest
any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13)
How do our hearts become hardened? They are hardened by sin’s
deceitfulness. Satan whispers
half-truths and lies that deceive us.
Once deceived, our hearts can become hardened before we realize it is
happening. Further deception just
leads to more layering of the hardness of our hearts. Beware because this happens subtly, not
overtly.
Beware of God’s discipline.
For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did
not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with
those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they should
not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? (Hebrews 3:16-18)
What makes God angry – what invokes His
wrath? I believe it when we ignore
His provision and focus on the one challenge in our lives. We then question God’s ability and resort
to fear instead of faith. God takes
doubting very seriously.
Be encouraging one another.
But encourage one
another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," (Hebrews 3:13)
“Day after day” we must encourage each
other to fight the fight of faith.
This very day, we must encourage each other not to fall into the peril
of unbelief. We must encourage each
other to keep from being hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We must encourage each other to avoid the
pitfalls of acting like the Israelites and fearing more than we believe.
The Power Struggle of Fear and Faith (Hebrews 4:1-3)
We have to fear going back to Egypt.
Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of
entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. (Hebrews 4:1)
The Israelites begged God to send them
back to their slavery. They did this
because it was familiar to them. We
must learn to fear the our old, familiar patterns more than the uncertainty
of the future that requires faith.
The good news must be united with
faith.
For indeed we
have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard
did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who
heard. (Hebrews 4:2)
The One who rests is the one that can give
you rest – that is the Good News! But
the Good News does not profit us unless we access it by faith. We cannot just have an intellectual assent
to it, we must put our full weight into it and trust in it. Otherwise, it is of no value. The uniting factor is faith.
His work is complete.
… His works were
finished from the foundation of the world (Hebrews 4:3b)
Because the work of Christ is complete,
when we enter it by faith, it becomes a rest for us. His work is eternally complete and we can
rest eternally in it.
The Proposal of Rest (Hebrews 4:9-11)
There remains
therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested
from his works, as God did from His.
Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall
through following the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:9-11)
Resting is not being lazy. If you have kids in your house, you know
that rest is intentional. When I
asked my eleven year old son to go to bed, he often replies “What did I do
wrong?” Rest is not a default or a
punishment -- it is an intentional reward.
It is what you do when the work is done. We rest, not in our work, but in the finished work of
Christ. Will you enter that rest?
We must stop trying to find rest in the
familiar things. They didn’t give us
rest before. Just because they are
comfortable and familiar doesn’t mean they can give a different result. Only the Creator who rested can give you
eternal rest.
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