Okay, if you could take your Bibles and please turn to Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1, and we've been talking about wisdom and work. And my plan, initially, was to go ahead and move from the little section dealing with wisdom and work, and moving into some specific proverbs that talked about wisdom. Well, as I was sitting there and meditating on some of these scriptures, something popped into my head. There's a very important part of a biblical view of work that I did not address. And you might laugh when I tell you what it is, but it's a very important part of our understanding as Christians of work. So wisdom and work part three. Let's look at Genesis chapter 1 and we'll begin in verse 31. And God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. What we're gonna talk about today is the fact that part of a biblical view of work is learning when to stop. and rest. Believe it or not, we as Christians are commanded by God to take one day in seven and to rest. And I want us to actually look at that concept today. I want us to understand that this is really not a part of the Levitical law. It is true that the concept of the Sabbath is talked about under the Mosaic law, but it's something that God actually established before the law And it's something that we continue to see actually practiced in the New Testament in principle. And I want to talk about that tonight. So what's the purpose of this text? The purpose of this little section in Genesis is to teach us that God not only created us to bring glory to Him through our labors, but also to rest from our labors where we can find refreshment in our communion with Him. Let me say that again. The purpose of this little section in Genesis is to teach us that God not only created us to bring glory to Him through our labors, but also to rest from our labors where we can find refreshment in our communion with Him. To put it simply, God wants us to develop the discipline of resting from our labors to find refreshment in Him. God created us to be workers, but He did not create us to work all the time. That's really important for us to understand. In fact, I'll be really honest with you, this is something that, as I was doing my study, I kind of felt guilty about. Just to be very frank, okay? Because from the time that your feet hit the floor in the morning, to the time you go at night, your mind is running. And when you get to a day and you say, this is my day of rest, and this is my day to reflect on the Lord, and this is my time to worship Him. and for my mind and body to be refreshed and strengthened, all these things flood into your mind, and you want to do this, and you want to do that, and I need to do this, and I need to do that, and you end up not resting and being refreshed at all. In fact, it's something that it takes discipline to be able to stop and be refreshed and focus on the Lord. I want to remind you of a couple of the details that we talked about and then I want us to look at this truth dealing with rest. Truth one, God created me with a purpose. We saw that in Genesis 1, 26 to 31. He created us to work under His authority to take care of His creation. And that care involves a stewardship, not just a physical stewardship, but also a mental stewardship. God wants us to take his creation, he wants to use it for good purposes, he wants us to know him, and he wants us to work and take care of it. Truth to his purpose had multiple dimensions, and we talked about those dimensions in Genesis 2, verses 15 to 24. Truth three, we saw that the fall complicated our work. It's interesting that when Adam sinned and when Eve sinned, and he talks about the effects of the fall, and he talks about the curse that's on the creation, he emphasizes how now that they are fallen creatures living in a fallen world, it's going to affect their work. What was good and what was something that brought them joy and pleasure is now something that's going to have a degree of hardship and difficulty with it. And he emphasizes that. Truth number four, we saw that God rewards the faithful labors of his people, Colossians chapter three, verses 22 and 23. And I thought that was a very rich and a very helpful section for us to look at. And then truth five, God wants us to develop the discipline of resting from our labors. And here's the key. to find refreshment in Him. It's not just that God wants us to rest and, you know, basically have a day where I, you know, kick back and I sleep and I don't do anything. God wants us to have a day of rest where we find refreshment in Him. In other words, when the Jewish people under the law celebrated the Sabbath, they didn't just cease from their labors, they came together and they met in the synagogue, they studied the scriptures together, they were refreshed physically because they stopped working, but they were refreshed spiritually, and they were able to enjoy communion with God in a very special way. In the New Testament, once the law has been abolished, and now we're in a new system where the church is established, what we see is that the Lord's day was a time when Christians would come together and they would worship, and we'll talk a little bit about some of those things. God wants us to develop the discipline of resting to find refreshment in Him. So let's look at a couple of facts that we find in Genesis chapter one down through Genesis chapter two verse three. The first fact we're gonna see tonight is this. God established a principle in the creation week that we need to take one day per week to rest from our labors. Look in verses two and three of chapter two. He says, on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made. He rested on the seventh day from all his work which he made. here's the key and God blessed the seventh day and God sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all his labors now God wasn't tired he didn't need to stop okay he did it because he wanted to enjoy his creation But what's interesting, it's not just that he stopped the work, but he said, I'm going to make this day a unique and a special day. When he says that he sanctified it, it means he set it apart so that that day was meant to be different than all of the other days. When it says that he blessed the day, it's basically saying that there is some special blessing that's associated with actually observing this day, And that's what he did. And the reason is because he did that for our sake based on what he did. God established the principle in the creation. The second fact we're gonna see is this, God blessed this day and set it apart from all other days with a special purpose. Now, I kind of mentioned that, it says He blessed the day, He sanctified the day, but here's the point that I want to encourage you to notice. It says, it's because He had rested. In other words, the reason God took that action is because He had a purpose behind it. There was a reason for it. Now, He doesn't explain all the details of that. We're going to look at some other scriptures that talk a little bit about some of those details. but God did it in part because it was something that He had done and He wanted us as His creatures to appreciate. Fact number three, Christ explains that God blessed the day secondarily for our own good. Go with me to Mark chapter two, and we're gonna look at an interesting passage. In Mark two, verses 24 to 28, we're gonna see a conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. And it's interesting, it's a conflict that He, I think, purposefully introduced. You'll see what I mean in just a minute. It says in Mark chapter two verse 24, the Pharisee said unto him, behold, why do they, meaning his disciples, on the Sabbath day that which is not lawful? Now what's interesting is if you study the Jewish law, well let's say you study the Mosaic law, dealing with this issue of the Sabbath day, there's actually not a lot of information given about the Sabbath day. We know it's supposed to be a day of rest, but it's not like they tell you how many day, how many steps you can take, or is it okay to cook a meal on that day or not to cook a meal on that day? Can you walk this distance? Can you not walk this distance? Can you feed your animals? Can you feed your animals this much? Can you feed them at this time? It doesn't give you all those details. It just simply establishes the principle, this is a different day than all the other days. Well, the Pharisees kind of didn't like that ambiguity. They wanted precision, they wanted some rules, and they wanted some regulations. So rather than just saying, God said this is supposed to be a different day than the rest, and we're supposed to work through that personally, they said, you can take this many steps on this day. You can do this, you can't do this, and there are all kinds of rules. Well, where did those rules come from? Well, they didn't come from God. They came from the minds of those people. So what does Jesus do? He just confronts it by his actions. Very interesting. So the disciples are picking food out of a field and they're eating the corn. And the Pharisees go, it's not lawful for you to work on Sabbath day. In other words, it's not lawful for you to pick up your fork and put food in your mouth. That's basically what they're saying. He said to them, have you never read what David did? when he had need, how he wasn't hungered, he and they that were with him, and how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat, but for the priests, and gave also of them which were with him. He said unto them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. Now, there's a lot that's packaged into that statement. Part of what Jesus is doing is he's establishing, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. Who established the Sabbath? God did it, the creation. He's basically saying, I'm the creator, so don't mess with me. Don't mess with my interpretation of what I can and can't do on the Sabbath day. I made it. You know, he's saying that. Kind of. Yeah, he's saying that. You know what he's also saying, though? The Sabbath had a purpose, and that purpose was to bless people. In other words, God did not create a day of rest to oppress people. He said, you need a day of rest for your own well-being. That's really important. In other words, when we talk about the fact that we need to cease our labors, focus our attention on the Lord, that we need a day that is distinctly different than all other days, the reason for that concept is not so that we can be oppressed by that day, it's so that we can be blessed by this practice. Jesus is saying the Sabbath is for the benefit of people, not people are supposed to serve the Sabbath. Basically what he's saying is, you know, people got to eat on the Sabbath day too, you know. They got to eat on the Sabbath day. But the point I want to make here is this. God established this day of rest for you, for your benefit. He established it for me. If I neglect to take a day of rest and refreshment and focus on the Lord, I will suffer. And that's what he's saying. Fact number four, God established a Sabbath's rest as part of a legal system that governed his people. Now I'm gonna get into something a little bit here. The purpose of this discussion is not to get into how we're supposed to interpret the Old Testament, but I think we have to address that on some level when we talk about a concept like the Sabbath day. But here's what the scriptures say in Exodus chapter 20, verses eight through 11. Moses writes, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy sons, nor thy daughters, nor thy manservants, nor thy maidservants, nor thy cattle, nor thy strangers that are within thy gates. In six days, four, in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day. Wherefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and he hallowed it. I want us to kind of notice some of the details here, and then I'm gonna comment a little bit on the distinction between Sabbath, observance, under the Old Testament law, and really where we as Christians stand today. Notice the details. The first detail that stands out to me when I read this section is the phrase, remember the Sabbath day. Now, you know what's interesting? He's establishing a law here. You think he would say, observe the Sabbath day. That's not what he says. He says, remember the Sabbath day. You say, well, why is that? Because it already existed. The concept of a seven-day week where six of those days are labor and one day is rest, is something that was already an established practice. In other words, it was not being instituted as a new idea under the Mosaic law, but it's something that was already there for the sake of people. And he says, remember it. In other words, bring this to your mind. I think what are the reasons that we neglect to really take a day of rest from our labors? Because we get so busy, we don't have time to think about it. the majority of the time that we don't read our Bibles in the morning and spend time with the Lord in prayer. I don't think it's because we have purpose in our heart. I don't want to read the scriptures. I don't want to pray. I don't want to spend time in communion with God. I don't think many Christians are thinking in that way. I think it's more like as soon as your feet hit the floor, this is what I gotta go do. We don't take the time. We don't remember. He says you need to remember the Sabbath. Go back in your mind to creation. God made the world in six days and on the seventh day, he stopped. And he enjoyed the creation. And he set it apart and he blessed it. And he said, this is a sacred, holy, set-apart day. And then he says, keep it holy. In other words, it needs to be different and unique than all the other days. This is my question to you. Is there any day in your week that you can honestly say this is a sacred set-apart day? That's a pretty good question to ask. Because if you can't say that, then you're not doing what he's saying to do. It's that simple. Next, he says six days labor and do all your work. The point is, he's saying you've got plenty of time to get things done in six days. You know, a lot of times we can work and work and work and work and work. But we don't get as much done as we do when we have a productive period of time. Anybody ever experience this? I remember when I was in seminary. I didn't study in college. I just didn't do it. That was not my practice. It was a bad not practice, OK? But when I got to seminary, it wasn't like that. I had to study. But I remember I would stay up late, and I'd be typing, I'd be studying, I'd be working on things. And I would get to a point where I realized, you know what? At this point, I reached my limit. I can't go anymore. I mean, I can. I can physically and mentally continue to do what I'm doing, but when I go and take my exam, I'm gonna find out I didn't benefit by that extra hour and a half of study. I didn't benefit by that extra two hours of study. I actually hurt myself. I wasn't as sharp. I didn't recall things. In other words, that extra time was of no true value. It actually was detrimental. You know, I think we understand that when we work too many hours in a day, there comes a point where we reach our peak, and then the fall off is pretty quick. And we're studying, our mental capacity only goes so far. And eventually, what? We can't continue to do it. We have a limitation. In other words, it's not how much I do or how much time I spend, it's the quality of that time. And he's basically saying this. You have six days to get your work done. On the seventh day, Set it aside. It's interesting, Chick-fil-A as a, this is not a pro Chick-fil-A thing at all. I'm not, it's not all, I'm not trying to be about all Chick-fil-A, all right? But it's interesting. Chick-fil-A is destroying the competition. They really are. You go to Chick-fil-A and you order and it's like, it's there and it's hot and it's like, thank you. I mean, it's, they do a good job. They're service. They work six days at Chick-fil-A and they are dominating the competition. It's unbelievable. The fact is that you can do that. Not encouraging you to dominate the competition. That's not what it's all about here, right? I'm just trying to make a point that here's a business. They work six days and they don't work a seventh day, yet they're an extremely profitable company. It can be done. He then goes on and says that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. That little phrase is very interesting. In other words, it means that God has established this for you, and I think the idea is this. He invites you to come and participate with us with Him. That's kind of the idea. In other words, I've set aside a day, in principle, that you need to be here to commune with me. Then we see the word for the principle was not established at Sinai, but rather it goes back to the creation. And then the last thing I mentioned here is that the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and he hallowed it. This day was important to God and it needs to be important to us. Fact number five, we need to choose to personally observe this principle. Now, I'm not going to give you a list of rules and regulations tonight and say, this is what you can and can't do. If I did that, that's what the Pharisees did, right? And Jesus pretty much blasted that, all right? It was very much wrong. I really want to emphasize to you that this is a principle we need to follow. And I really think that as God's people, we should prayerfully think about what is in this text and we should purpose to follow it to the best of our ability so that the Lord can allow us to be blessed by it. Let me mention a couple of ways, a couple of factors that I think we should consider as we ask how do we personally observe this principle that's in the scriptures. First is this, I want you to consider the role of common sense. If you didn't have this in the scriptures that said you need to take a day off, I think there are a lot of people that when they went through life and they hit a brick wall pretty hard would say, you know what, I think every now and again I should take a day off. I think there's people that have good sense that tell others, you know what? You work too much. You don't spend time with your family. You constantly go and go and go, and mentally you're running low. You're physically running low. You cannot perform at the level you need to. Even if you weren't a Christian, you didn't have a Bible, common sense would tell you, you need to take time off. And I'm just gonna state that right there. I want you to think about the role of worship. Our lives in their entirety need to be expressions of worship to God. In other words, every aspect of our day should involve worshiping to God. The way that we use our minds, the way that we interact with creation, the way that we see God's hand of providence in everything that's going on in our lives, the way that we think, the way that we respond to people, the way that we work in circumstances, all of these things can and should be aspects of worship to God. But I want to add this. Once a week, we need to set aside time to enjoy God's invitation to enter His rest. This principle was established to remind us that God is the creator and we should enjoy Him. We should set aside all of the cares of life and focus on Him who made it all. I also think about the role of refreshment through communion with God, and that's really the heart and soul of what this concept of a day of rest is. The day of rest is not just about your body needs to stop every now and again, and your mind needs to rest every now and again, and you don't need to feel the weight of those responsibilities at work, in your daily labors constantly all the time, you need to stop from time to time. It's not just about that, but it's about diverting from just stopping to focusing on the one who should be the center of our joy, communion with God. It was established to allow people to be in a position where God can bless them. It says that God blessed that day. In other words, when we don't celebrate, or we don't observe a day of rest, as the scriptures teach, we actually miss out on a blessing God has for us. And that's a really important concept to understand. The principle was established to keep our focus regularly on our relationship to God. There's another aspect to this I wanna mention. That's the role of dependence. We need to learn to order our work around God and recognize that our productivity is not always directly proportional to the energies we put into our work. I'm gonna say that again, because it's something that if I was writing notes, I'd probably miss about half of what I just said there. We need to learn to order our work around God. That's really important. I can't tell you how many times people order their lives around their work, and God is an afterthought. I put all the pieces together, I'm like, oh man, I gotta get God in this too. Let me stick him in here. In other words, our life's supposed to be the opposite of that. God is the center, and our lives are ordered around him. We have to learn to order our lives around him, and recognize that our productivity is not always directly proportional to the energies we put into our work. I could tell you there are weeks that I pick up my Bible and I study the text and I labor for hours and I feel like I've accomplished nothing. I will write an entire sermon and end up throwing it in the trash can because the content was so like just confused and jumbled in my mind. And all those hours of labor just seems like it was nothing. And then other times, I don't know how to explain this other than the Lord's blessing at times, but just all of a sudden your thoughts begin to align, and you begin to think clearly, and begin to write things down, and type things out, and something comes together in a very orderly, very methodical manner, and it's that God has blessed that labor. I mean, you experience this in so many things. There are times that we work, and work, and work, and it's frustrating. It's like I'm always behind, I can't ever seem to get ahead. I remember we were talking when we had our financials, And Brother Vallier, Dr. Vallier was talking, he made some statement about how God can pay you in an invisible way. I don't remember the way that he put it. I'm not putting it the way he did, but the concept. And the idea was that there are times that God stretches what we have and times that he lets what we have fall flat. And we don't control that at all. In fact, I'll give you an example of this. Haggai chapter 1. This is what the prophet says to the people. This is after the captivity, they've come back. This is the post-exiled Jews back in Jerusalem. And their responsibility was to rebuild the temple. And they didn't do it. They spent all their energies and all their time on rebuilding their homes. Not that you, you know, you can't blame them for wanting to live in a nice house. And that wasn't wrong for them to want to rebuild their homes, but it was wrong for them to neglect the temple when it was basically saying that that's not important to us. But this is what the prophet says. Ye have sown much, and bring in little. Ye eat, but ye have not enough. Ye drink, but you're not filled with drink. Ye clothe you, but there's none warm, and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. What a crazy statement. So, you know, you take your money, you put it in your bag, and you go to get it, and it's gone. And you're like, what happened? Where'd it go? It fell on the ground somewhere. Somebody else got to use that. Thus saith the Lord, consider your ways. The point that he's trying to make is this. You can work, but if you neglect the most important things, and God isn't blessing your labors, it's as if all of your energies are being wasted It's not going to be efficient. You're gonna lose the productivity that you want. When people neglect God, there's a consequence. It's that simple. There's a consequence in our finances. There's a consequence in our energies. There's a consequence in our productivity. There's a consequence on many, many levels. And you and I can't always see that. We can't predict how it's gonna happen. But when you look over time, you go, you know, I was neglecting the Lord, and now I see that he has frustrated my purposes. And there are other times that God blesses in ways that we can't fully explain it. It's just he did that, he put those things together. I think that's what he's talking about here. I also want to mention the role of the conscience. In the Old Testament law, God established several Sabbath rests for the people. We're not under that Mosaic Covenant system, okay? I'm not, I'm not teaching an Old Testament Sabbath here. If we were to follow the Old Testament Sabbath rest, first of all, if you were a farmer on the seventh year, you would not work your fields at all. If you had people who owed debts to you on the seventh year, then you'd have to release them all of their debts. Some people in this room would probably be really happy if they had all their debts released and there'd be others that wouldn't be so happy because they didn't get paid back. That's the way that it works. Their system involved Sabbaths, not just a Sabbath. Every week, yes, there was a day of rest and refreshment and focus on the Lord, but they also had many different calendar events that were Sabbath rests for periods of time. We're not under that system, but I will say this. The principle was established before the system. In the intertestamental period, you had teachers who were wanting to establish stringent rules because they felt that scripture did not lay out enough information about what they were supposed to do. And I will say this, the danger when we talk about taking a day of rest is to fall into this category of where those Jewish teachers were, those rabbis, who basically said, you can do this and this and this and this, and you can't do this and this and this and this. And some churches do that, just to be very honest. That is not what I'm trying to do here. When I talk about the role of conscience, what I'm saying is this. Principle, I need a day of rest. Application, I want to conscientiously see how I should do that, and then I want to follow through with that. And what these main principles are. I want to talk about the New Testament pattern. Christians in the early church observed the principle of a day of rest and worship, but the way they applied it was not to the seventh day, but actually to the first day of the week. There are some folks that believe that we are wrong to worship on Sunday, and I've had long conversations with people about those things, and we go around and around in round circles. The bottom line is that we as Christians observe a day of rest on Sunday, because that's what the apostles established, and the apostles were speaking on behalf of Christ. That's the bottom line. Let me give you a couple examples. Acts 20, verse seven, on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, he's talking about the Lord's table there, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, continued his speech until midnight. I don't know if we fully follow the apostles practice because we'd be here till midnight and I don't know if anybody wants that. Even I don't think I want that, right? But that's what they did. That day was set aside for worship and those things. 1 Corinthians 16 2, on the first day of the week, let every one of you lay up with him in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gathering when I come. And he's talking about how they would collect tithes and offerings. During that time period, on the first day of the week, it was part of their worship. In Revelation 1.10, when John is writing and he's talking about this vision, he says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. When he talks about the Lord's Day, he's talking about a day that was understood by the church as a day of rest and worship. This was Sunday. You say, well, I don't understand why There's a difference between the Old Testament law and the New Testament practice. And I'll tell you what it really comes down to is this. There are two different systems whereby God gave governance to his people. That's a very long conversation. I'd be very happy to get into that conversation with you if you want to at another time. But the bottom line is the principle is this. Six days you work, seventh day is rest. Under that Levitical system, the nation was governed with a legal system that expected them to do that. In the New Testament, God gives instruction to the church that you need to gather on the first day of the week, and that's your day of worship. The role of the conscience is an important matter. And honestly, I would be very happy to sit down with anybody and work through that with you if you have concerns or struggles. I'd be very happy to do that. I also want to mention a couple things as exceptions just so that we're aware of them. On the Sabbath day, the priest obviously worked. And their work was serious work. Mr. Jennings shot deer. and take them to get processed. And the people that work in the processing plant, they're working, all right? Well, if you were a priest and someone brought an ox to be slaughtered, you worked. There's no doubt about that, okay? You had to haul a lot of wood. You had to kill an animal. You had to bleed out the animal. You had to bind it up. You had to put it on an altar. There was labor involved. They had a day when most of the people were not working. They were working. Think about people who are teaching in the synagogue. And I'll tell you that the thing that I love doing more than anything else as a pastor is teaching. I love it. To me, it's not work. The work is what goes on behind the scenes to get you to be able to do that. The teaching's not the work. I love that. But you can make an argument that on some level, teaching in the church is labor. And in the Old Testament, under that law, they still had people who were teaching in the synagogues. And during Jesus's day, he talks about the fact that they would gather together in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and they would read from the law and teach. We see laws in the Old Testament that talk about an animal that falls in the ditch, if an ox is in the ditch. Well, tough luck, man, you fell in the ditch on the Sabbath day. You're just gonna die there. No, you didn't do that. You go, you take it out. You take care of that animal. People ate meals. In other words, when we talk about the Sabbath day, we're not saying that everything stopped and nobody did anything. It was a different day. It was a sacred day. It was a set-apart day. It didn't mean that you'd let your animal die on the side of the road. You'd take care of that animal. If somebody was hungry and they walked through the field, they could pick the corn. Jesus addresses that issue. The idea is that the Sabbath was not to burden us, it was to bless us. I want to encourage you as we talk about the issue of work to not neglect that one element right there that we talked about tonight. We do need to rest. The purpose of this message is not to make everybody go home and feel guilty and say, man, I got to stop doing this and start doing this. It's to say, you know, God, I want to be in a position to be blessed by that day. And I really want to develop the discipline of taking a day to rest from my labors and to focus on the Lord. As we approach the concept of work, it's vitally important that our worldview is shaped by the Bible and motivated by the principles that have been established in these scriptures, not just what we looked at tonight, but the last few weeks. As they've been established, God wants us to live productive lives full of richness and purpose. And I believe that if we will take to heart what is talked about in these scriptures, that that is how our work will be. Let's bow our hearts together in prayer, please. Father, we are, We are so grateful that in your wisdom and in your love for people, you established this simple practice for our own good, that we would cease from our labors, that we would rest our bodies and our minds, and we would enjoy communion with you. Father, I plead with you, help us to develop a conviction about the need to do that, and help us to develop the disciplines that we need to be able to enjoy that day of rest and refreshment. I pray that every person in this room, every person listening by the live stream, would be blessed by this principle, that they would purpose to begin to establish this pattern, if it's not in their life, and if it is, that they would realize the tremendous blessing of it. Help us to be hard workers, but help us to be willing to set aside our labors for tasks and for blessings like this. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen.