The Peace and Rest of God - Genesis - January 25th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

We'll go ahead and pull out the sermon handout that you got on the way in. Or if you want to just look at your Bible, you could open to Genesis chapter 2.

Today we're going to be back in the book of Genesis, and we have reached the seventh and final day of creation. You might say that day seven is underrated. It doesn't get the attention that it deserves.

I'm going to be making the case to you this morning that it truly is deserving of far more attention than it gets.

A lot of people focus on the first day of creation because it's the beginning of everything, the beginning of the Bible, the beginning of creation occurring, the events of creation, the beginning of space and time itself.

Then there's a lot of talk about day six, the sixth day of creation because that's when God made Adam the first human being. But if you look closely at the creation account in the book of Genesis, the real star is day seven.

There are all these subtle hints and clues, and if you spend the time to read it carefully, to analyze the text of the book of Genesis, there are all these giant flashing arrows pointing right at day seven. There's something special about it.

As we'll see in a moment, there's something blessed and holy about it. So that's gonna be our focus this morning. Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us. Genesis chapter two, verses one through three. 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 word of the Lord. May we be seated, and please join me as I pray for us.

Father, we come before you, grateful for your word, God, grateful for truth, grateful for wisdom, for clarity. We would be so lost without your word. So I pray that you would help us to understand it and believe it this morning.

To understand it and believe it and apply it, and to honor you in the way that we receive your word. We can easily dishonor you by not paying attention, by not caring, by not believing, by not trusting, by dismissing, by distorting.

There are so many ways that we can dishonor you and do things that are wrong and offensive to you as we hear your word. Keep us from evil, Lord. Keep us from sin.

Help us to approach your word rightly. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

3:34

The Sabbath Practice

So as we get started this morning, I want to spend some time really unpacking just how it is that the author emphasizes and highlights day seven for us.

And then I want to talk about what this means for us, because for all of human history, virtually all of human history, God's people have set aside one day a week as a blessed and holy day. It's often been called the Sabbath Day or the Lord's Day.

For Christians, it's Sunday, typically. And so that's why stores used to be closed on Sunday, or still in the South, I think, they don't sell alcohol on Sundays. God's people have done this.

They've set aside one day as a special day because that's what God does right here in the creation account. God sets aside this day as special. Therefore, God's people have followed that pattern for centuries upon centuries.

So I want to ask you right now, you personally in your life, is there one day a week that you set aside for God? In other words, do you practice the Sabbath? Is there a day in your week that you stop working, you relax, and you focus on God?

And if you don't have a day like that, why not? There's been various points in my life where I have done an OK job at this, but there's something about it that's just really hard.

Most Christians I know, the vast, vast, vast majority of Christians that I know, and I know a lot of Christians, don't do this. Myself included. For most of my Christian life, I have not practiced the Sabbath.

And so I'm not speaking from experience here, as much as I am speaking from conviction about what the word of God says. So I'll just say that up front. Most Christians I know don't do this.

Most of the time I don't do this. Sometimes I do an OK job at it. But I think for all of us, it's truly killing us.

I think the fact that we don't do this absolutely kills us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, sometimes physically. So I want to show you just how important the Sabbath is in the creation account.

And then we'll talk about what exactly it means to take a Sabbath. And ultimately how it points us to Christ.

6:22

Day Sevenʼs Significance

First, notice in this passage, these are all the little cues about how important this is. Notice in this passage how there is no and God said in the passage. If you go back to day one of creation, each day of creation includes those exact words.

It's a refrain from day one through day six. And God said, let there be light. And God said, let there be this.

And God said, let the earth do that. And on and on. But here in day seven, that phrase is missing.

Why is it missing? Because God has finished his work. His creative work has ceased.

The word for Sabbath literally comes from the Hebrew word for ceased. So day seven is supposed to stand out because there's no creative activity. Genesis is highlighting it as unique in that way.

It's also unique because the author doesn't say that there was evening and morning on that day. Each day of creation, days one through six, they all end with a reference to there being evening and morning on that day. But not this one.

So in a sense, there's no closure. The evening and morning is basically saying there was a beginning and an end to those days. But with day seven, there's no closure.

There's no end. It's almost like it's meant to last forever. Many scholars think that this is meant to convey the idea of eternal rest.

The seventh day is also different because each day before it is paired with another day.

They sort of operate in pairs like day one and day two, and then days three and days four, then day five and day six, and then standing all by itself is day seven.

So there's like a subtle mathematical structure to the creation accounts that sets aside day seven as unique and different from all the rest. It's like the culmination, the pinnacle of the creation account.

Then we see that the word seventh is repeated three times in our passage. That's three times in three verses. It's like the author is saying sabbath, sabbath, sabbath.

The word seventh sounds like the word sabbath. And that's not an accident. And finally, the seventh day of the week is the only day that is blessed and consecrated by God.

The only day that is blessed and consecrated by God. Humans are blessed by God earlier in the creation account. Animals are blessed by God, but only one day is blessed.

Verse 3. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. In other words, this day is special.

Now, let me ask you this. Did God rest on the seventh day because he was tired? He was worn out, he was burned out, he needed to rest.

Of course not. God doesn't get tired. But you do.

God didn't rest on this holy and blessed day because he needed to. He rested because you need to. And he was establishing a pattern for how we should live our lives.

Why do you think people get burned out? Why do you think people experience burnout? Burnout has become like such a common term in our culture.

I've seen countless news articles about it. It's a phenomenon in our culture. And you have to ask, why?

Why do so many people experience this? Why do so many people in the modern world suffer from anxiety and depression and exhaustion? Why are people so burdened and overwhelmed and so miserable?

Well, maybe in part, it's because every day is the same. If you do the same thing over and over and over and over again, of course you're going to get burned out.

God established a Sabbath day because we need a day that's different, that is set apart, that is completely different from our other days. And in part, that's what helps us avoid burnout.

11:01

Sabbath Principles

And our passage gives us some indication of exactly how this day is supposed to be different. We learned three things about the Sabbath day from this text. First, there is no working on the Sabbath.

That's the thing that everybody knows about it, right? You say Sabbath day, and everybody thinks, oh yeah, that's like where you just, you don't work, you don't do anything. So there's no working on the Sabbath.

Second, the text says that God blessed the Sabbath day. So the Sabbath day is blessed. And third, it is holy.

It is holy. Verse two, 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 this is meant to be a day of rest, a day of rest.

And later in the Old Testament, God made the Sabbath into a law or a commandment. Right here, this is just a description, but later it becomes a law or a commandment.

It's almost like people are so bad at slowing down and taking a break that God had to force them into it. Listen to this from the Book of Exodus. This is the fourth of the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 through 11.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a 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 your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who's within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Isn't that crazy that the Sabbath is literally one of the 10 commandments? All of God's commandments are important, truly, but there's something very fundamental and foundational about the 10 commandments. And here the Sabbath day is among them.

But I think the challenge is that when God gives us commandments, we tend to treat them like obligations or burdens. That is sort of our natural human response to commandments from God.

As soon as we see them, we think, okay, well, now I'm obligated to do this thing. And if I'm obligated to do it, well, now I'm less interested in doing it.

Now I've got this rule I have to follow, and oh my gosh, now I have to think about this, I have to remember this, I have to do this. And it becomes this burden. But the fact is that a day without work is not supposed to be a burden for us.

It's supposed to be the opposite, right? We're talking about a day of rest. It should not be a burden.

It should not be an obligation. It's just bizarre that we have a tendency to make a day of rest into a burden.

14:13

Jesus and Sabbath

At the time of Jesus, the Jewish leaders had made the Sabbath into a giant religious burden. This was like, they made everything into a burden. Everything was just this horrible obligation.

And that was supposed to give you religious brownie points. That was how Judaism operated in that day. And chief among them was the Sabbath day.

It was like the ultimate way to get brownie points, the ultimate burden. They took the biblical commandment and they added a whole bunch of stuff to it. They, you know, they scolarized it.

They looked at the text of the Book of Exodus and said, okay, I can't do any work. My son can't do any work. Can my son-in-law do work?

Well, I don't know. It doesn't say whether or not my son-in-law can do work. We'll say no.

And, you know, my animals can't do work, but is chewing, you know, chewing food, is that work? No, that's not work. They can do that.

Well, what if one of my animals, you know, needs some urgent medical attention? Is that work if I give the animal? And so they went through literally every scenario you could possibly think of to define whether it's work or not work.

And they ended up adding, like, thousands of stipulations about, you know, what counts as work and what doesn't. And it became this big mess where you have to, you know, follow the code. It's like the tax code, basically.

Their Sabbath code was like the 79,000 page IRS, you know, tax code. And you needed a scholar to help you navigate it. They turned it into a giant, stupid, religious mess.

And completely distorted the purpose of all of it, of all of God's commandments. And they made it all about, you know, if you follow the rules, you're a good person. If you don't follow the rules, then you're a bad person.

And if you're good enough at following the rules, then God loves you. And if you're not good enough at following the rules, then he doesn't. So Jesus was constantly challenging their rules, constantly challenging that mindset.

He wasn't breaking the Old Testament law. Jesus never once broke the Old Testament law, but he was challenging their religious legalism. He was confronting the ways that they distorted God's law.

And one of the main ways he did that was by doing stuff on the Sabbath that they thought you weren't allowed to do. So he healed people on the Sabbath. He harvested food on the Sabbath.

He was making a very important point. As he said in Mark chapter 2 verse 27, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Let me say that again.

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. In other words, the Sabbath was made for you. It was made to help you, to bless you.

It is supposed to be a time of joyful rest, a celebration of work completed, an experience of completeness and well-being.

When you look at Genesis 2, verses 1 through 3, this text this morning, when you look at this, when you look at the Book of Exodus, when you look at the Book of Hebrews, when you look at the statements of Jesus, when you put it all together, that is

the picture that you get. God is calling us to set aside time to experience a joyful rest, a celebration of work completed, an experience of completeness and well-being.

17:54

New Covenant Freedom

Wouldn't that be an amazing thing to add to your life? So why don't people do it? Why don't people take a Sabbath?

We'll talk about that in just a moment, but I want to be clear about this because the Bible is very clear about this. God's people are no longer required to keep the Sabbath. It is no longer a commandment for us.

There's a whole bunch of complicated theological and biblical background that goes into this, but I'll say this just very simply. The 10 commandments don't apply to you as they're written in Exodus chapter 20.

Those commandments were given to the people of Israel who were in a specific covenant with God the Father. We are no longer in that covenant with God the Father. We are in a different covenant with God the Father.

It's called the Covenant of Grace. But within our covenant, within our relationship with God, all of the 10 commandments have been repeated just in different words, in different ways, except for the Sabbath commandment.

So essentially, I don't want to get into all of this stuff too much, but essentially, all the stuff that you read in the Old Testament, all of those commandments, those don't apply to us.

All the stuff that you read in the New Testament, those apply to us. We're the New Testament people of God, not the Old Testament people of God.

But what you'll notice is that many of the commandments in the Old Testament are repeated by Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. But the Sabbath day is not. So do we obey the Sabbath or not?

Is it a commandment or not? It's not a commandment, but if you feel like you ought to obey it, then obey it. Many, many Christians have argued over the centuries that the Sabbath commandment is, you know, it's not repeated in the New Testament.

It was an old covenant commandment, but yet there's something special and unique about it because it preceded the Book of Exodus. It preceded the Law of Moses. The Sabbath preceded, it came before the old covenant.

We see it right here in creation. So it gives it kind of more weight even than the 10 commandments because it's right here in the Book of Genesis.

And so if that's compelling to you, if you think, man, this is something that's built into the creation, therefore I ought to do it, then do it, if that's your conviction.

But other people see that it's not repeated in the New Testament and they think, well, I'm not obligated to do this. Maybe it's a good thing, but I'm not obligated to do it. And so maybe I shouldn't do it.

To each his own, this is one of the special areas of the Christian life where different Christians come to different conclusions and everybody needs to respect each other and their own convictions about it. This is how Paul says it in Romans 14.

He says, 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. When he says eating, he's talking about eating food that had been sacrificed to idols. And some Christians felt like that was wrong, and some Christians felt like that was permissible.

And so that was a, you know, he's throwing it in with the Sabbath day as another area of Christian freedom.

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.

So in other words, again, if you feel like God wants you to take a Sabbath, if you feel like God wants you to rest at other times and other ways, you should do it.

Each person needs to handle this issue and accord with their own convictions, and we should not judge other people about it. But here's the reality. Virtually nobody that I know takes a Sabbath.

And I think a lot of us probably should be taking a Sabbath. That's my opinion. And I'm trying to make the case for you why it's good.

And I'm trying to show you, trying to get in to some of the reasons why we might not take a Sabbath and why that might be unhealthy. Trying to paint the picture for like, how this might be a beautiful, powerful spiritual practice in your life.

Like, if you committed today, if you said, okay, from now on, I'm taking a Sabbath day, like a full-blown dedicated Sabbath day.

If you did that, I think that would be a massive improvement in your life and a huge blessing for you, and it would supercharge your spiritual growth. Does that mean that you're obligated to do it? No.

But the Bible seems to indicate that it would be a great thing, even if you're not obligated to do it.

23:07

Barriers to Sabbath

So, let's talk for a moment about why people don't do it.

A lot of people go to church, and, you know, this is Sunday, this is the Lord's Day, and a lot of people today, they go to church, but after church, you'll find them running errands, mowing the lawn, preparing meals, taking the kids to soccer,

cleaning the house. In other words, many Christians who go to church don't spend the whole day resting. And why is that? I think it's mostly for most of us because we feel like there's too much to do.

If we don't do stuff on Sunday, then we're not going to have time to do it on Monday, or on Tuesday, or on any other day of the week, because we're so busy and there's so much to get done. Or for other people, it comes down to money.

They make overtime on Sundays and they need that money. Or their work just schedules them on Sunday, and there's nothing they can do about it, and they're not willing to quit and find another job.

But let me ask you this, who is ultimately in control of your life? Who is ultimately responsible for making sure that you have enough money to survive? Is it you, or is it God?

It's God. How many people are working on Sunday because they simply don't trust God to provide for them? How many people are working and doing errands and doing chores on Sunday because they need to be in control of their lives?

Like, they can't let one thing go. Some people get stuck in this mindset where it's like, everything has to be taken care of and done and managed and accounted for because if I don't do it, who will? God will.

Many people refuse to rest on Sundays because they refuse to let go of the illusion that they are in control of their lives. You are not in control. God is.

So take a break and trust him. Trust him enough that if you take 24 hours off of getting stuff done, your life will not fall apart.

If you can't take 24 hours off without being terrified that your life is going to fall apart and things aren't going to get done, if you can't take 24 hours off, then you must believe that your life is completely your own, that you are solely

responsible and solely in charge. Have a little faith. Take a break and trust God. Take a break and rest.

Let the Sabbath day be a blessing to you. And let the Sabbath day be a holy and consecrated day. That's the other aspect of Sabbath that we see in our text.

For some people, taking a Sabbath is challenging because they have a lot to do. They're really, really, really busy. For other people, it's not a matter of busyness.

It's a matter of holiness. This is the other part of the challenge. God didn't just bless the Sabbath day as a day of rest.

God blessed it and he made it holy. To be holy is to be set apart for God, consecrated, set apart for God. So the Sabbath is not about laziness and self-indulgence.

It is about rest and consecration to God. If you decide I'm gonna take a Sabbath day and then you sit down on your couch and you watch Netflix for nine hours straight, that's not a Sabbath day. That's laziness.

It should be relaxing. You should not be working, but there should be a holiness to it. Think about your life for a minute.

Think about the past, say, 10 years of your life. In the past 10 years, have you set aside a single day an entire day for resting, reading your Bible, and praying? In the past 3,650 days, have you set aside one of them for God?

I bet most Christians have never even set aside a single hour for God. Maybe if you add up the two minutes here and the 10 minutes there, they will add up to many hours.

But I'm talking about a full 60 minutes, where it's just 60 minutes straight of no phone, no chores, no getting up to do this or that. Just a full 60 minutes of just focused on God and his word, like reading the Bible and praying.

Have you ever done that? I think most Christians have probably never done that. Therefore, most Christians, I think, are just living on spiritual life support.

We do two minutes here and five minutes there, and a couple weeks go by, and then we do another 10 minutes, and we think that's spiritual life. But adding up a few minutes here and a few minutes there, that doesn't add up to much.

Being a Christian and communing with God is not the kind of thing that you get done in 10 minutes.

Sometimes by God's grace, when we only have 10 minutes, we can sit down in the morning and read for 10 minutes, and God blesses us, and he meets us there, and we receive grace from him.

But to think that spiritual life and communing with God is something that normally happens in 10 minute chunks, I think that is completely mistaken. What if Bible reading and prayer is only really effective if you do it for hours and hours each week?

What if prayer is only really effective much of the time if you spend at least an hour doing it? Have you ever thought about that? Because that's actually proven true in my life.

I've noticed in my own life when I spend five minutes praying, it's good, I'm glad I'm doing it, it's healthy, it's a good thing, but it is a world of difference when I spend an hour praying compared to five minutes.

And I think most people who call themselves Christians have never done that. And therefore, they think they know what spiritual life is, and in reality, they have no idea.

I think there are millions of people in churches this morning who call themselves Christians and go to church all the time, but they're not even Christians at all.

That's kind of a separate issue, but millions of people who go to church and say, yes, I'm a Christian, but they don't know the gospel, and they don't believe the gospel. And if you don't know and believe the gospel, you can't be a Christian.

This is a heavy issue, it's a heavy topic. I just think there are so many people who think they know what it's like to draw near to God and experience his presence, but they just don't.

It's like a lot of us, many times, can be like the person who sees a video of a mountain climber, and they think they know what it's like to stand on top of Mount Everest.

Like, oh yeah, one time I was on YouTube, and I watched this clip of this guy climbing a mountain in the snow somewhere. I know what it's like. I know what it would be like to be on top of Mount Everest.

No, you don't. And the same is true for a Christian who spends five minutes reading their Bible every once in a while. They think, yeah, I know what Christianity is all about.

I know what it's like to do Bible reading and prayer. No, you don't. What's the difference between a Christian who is experiencing real life in Jesus and a Christian who is not?

31:32

Rest in Christ

I think for many people, the answer might be a Sabbath day, devoting a whole day to God. Jesus did not come down from heaven to save us so that we could experience a little bit of spiritual life every once in a while.

Jesus came down from heaven to save us so that we could have life and have it abundantly. Those are his words. That's what he said.

He said, I came so that you could have life and have it abundantly. The Bible teaches that Jesus came so that you and I can finally know what it's like to rest, to truly and finally rest.

Here in Genesis 1, we are looking at the very beginning of the Sabbath. Then the idea of Sabbath grows and develops throughout the scriptures. We see it later in the Book of Exodus, like I read that passage Exodus 20, and the Ten Commandments.

We see it throughout the Old Testament law in various ways. A lot of the same terminology and concepts of Sabbath are present in the Tabernacle, and in the Old Testament priesthood, and in their rituals.

So Sabbath, it just continues from creation all throughout the scriptures, but it ultimately concludes in Christ. Colossians 2, verses 16 through 17.

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 things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Think about that for a minute. Taking a whole day off work and dedicating it to God, that was a shadow of things to come, just a taste.

But the real thing is found in Christ. As we wrap up, I want to invite you to think about it like this.

From the very beginning of creation, from the very beginning of creation, Genesis chapter two verses one through three, God set a pattern of his people, a pattern for his people to sit down and rest.

He invited his people to take some time to think about God and draw close to him. But in the Old Testament, that practice only got them so far. They were very strict about it in the Old Testament.

They did absolutely zero work. They did a lot of religious rituals. But it was never enough until Jesus.

Hebrews chapter 10, verses 12 through 14. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. By a single offering, the offering of himself on the cross, Jesus has made us complete in him. Jesus has accomplished our salvation.

There's nothing left for us to do.

So all of our efforts to be good enough for God, all of our moral and religious work to earn God's favor, all of our straining and striving to control things and fix things, Jesus paid it all, so that in Christ we can be truly at rest. Let's pray.

Father, I pray that we would find the rest that your son has accomplished for us, has made way for us. We will never be truly at rest. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, as Augustine said.

So God, I pray that you would teach us to rest in you, that you would teach us to rest from all of our misguided religious efforts to earn your favor, that you would teach us to rest from our neurotic attempts to control every aspect of our lives,

that you would teach us to rest from all of our straining and striving to be good enough for to show others how good we are, that you'd teach us to rest from all of our stress and all the drama and all of the difficulties, that you'd teach us to

truly find rest in you. We pray in the name of Jesus, amen.