Let's turn together in God's Word tonight to the very first book of the Bible to the book of Genesis and we're going to be reading tonight the last verse of chapter 1 and the first three verses of chapter 2 So Genesis 1 verse 31 through chapter 2 verse 3 While you're turning there, let me just begin with a question tonight How many of you have read one of John Piper's books any of you read one of his books? Okay many of you have If you haven't read his books He's written of course many many popular books books like Desiring God, Future Grace, Let the Nations be glad book about missions But I want to share with you tonight my favorite Piper book and And my favorite of all his books is the book don't waste your life That's a book I've read a number of times. It's a book that I've come back to you over and over again And Piper's thesis in that book don't waste your life is this that the way not to waste your life Is to live with a single passion I'm quoting from him now with a single passion to joyfully display God's supreme excellence in all spheres of life So the way not to waste your life is to live with a single passion to joyfully display God's supreme excellence in all spheres of life And he goes on in the book to say where to do that 95 in other words he he tells us how to do that in our work Where to do that in missions? We are to do that at times living with a sense of risk for the glory of God and that thesis fits in wonderfully of course with What the Westminster shorter catechism says when it says you know, what's our chief end? To glorify God to enjoy him forever that is our purpose that is our reign that should be our single passion Piper on the last page of the last chapter of that book Asked a question that I've often come back to you over and over again in my ministry So Piper says that every year when he was pastoring Bethlehem Baptist Church There would be annually a missions conference and he said every year at that missions conference. I would Come back to ask myself this question He said will I be able to say to the Lord? That I stayed at Bethlehem because I believed I could be most instrumental there in accomplishing God's purpose to make a name for himself among the nations so Piper says every single year I'd ask myself Lord is this where you can use me the most for your glory? And then he goes on to say when I can no longer say yes to that question my leadership here will be finished So that's just one way that Piper applies the thesis of Don't Waste Your Life Well, I want to remind you tonight that we're starting a new series a June evening series so it's only for a month PM services in the month of June here's the title of our series It's not don't waste your life, but it's don't waste your summer Don't waste your summer and When I think about summer, it's my favorite season of all Probably because I lived in Michigan and of course that was the best weather of the whole year, right in the summer But still my favorite season a time for rest a Time of breaking from familiar routines a Schools out the evenings are long. We enjoy vacations Maybe we don't have to set the alarm clock. We have the run of the neighborhood Summer camps we hit a pool all kinds of wonderful things that happen in the summer But I'd like to ask you the question how can we make sure we don't waste our summer? With reduced routines sometimes comes reduced habit subgodliness, right? So we miss out on prayer more often we miss out on reading the word more often maybe Worship becomes more sporadic in our summers But how do we make the most of our summer and continue to glorify God in it? Here's one answer. You're gonna get more over the next few weeks One answer to use God's gifted the Sabbath To regulate our living To rest on the day that God rested to work and play on the day that God's on the days that God worked And then to find in Christ our true Sabbath rest That's what we're gonna think about tonight So let's go to God's word Genesis 1 verse 31 through verse 3 of chapter 2 God saw Everything that he had made and behold it was very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day 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 and 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 Three points tonight God's rest our rest and Christ rest First of all God's rest it occurred as we just read on On the seventh day so for six days God worked God created He called into being light And sky and seas and dry land the moon in apple trees and magnolias Eagles and ostriches rhinos and beavers man and woman He took a creation that was without form and void and he formed it and he filled it And he did all of this out of nothing exe hello God created all That was made and that is who read here in the text came the seventh day verse 1 of chapter 2 gives us a conclusion to the creation We read there dust the heavens and the earth were finished and All the host of them It's a book end to God's creative work God began everything chapter 1 verse 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth in In chapter 2 verse 1 you see as it were a reverse of what God began In the beginning he created heavens and earth but in chapter 2 verse 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished We have a beginning in chapter 1 verse 1 we have a conclusion in chapter 2 verse 1 and not just a conclusion but a climax Sometimes when we think about God's creative work and we make our way through the days 1 2 3 4 5 and 6 We think about day 6 as being the climax of creation There God makes man and woman That's the peak but I would contend with you tonight that the seventh day really is the climax It is the peak it is the crescendo And we know that because it is the day that stands apart from all of the other days in which God did his creative work It stands apart for a few reasons first of all It tells us that it was on this day that God rested So on the other six days God creates But on the seventh day God rested and Our text reminds us of that three times Verse 1 at chapter 2 the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them Verse 2 and on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day and Never three 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
rest rest Rest three times God's rest it doesn't mean that he was worn out and needed a weekend Remember who he is He is the omnipotent God He is our all-powerful God Isaiah 40 reminds us that he does not grow faint or weary In a contrast that for us doesn't even use growth tired and weary and young men stumble and fall But Isaiah 40 says not God He doesn't get tired Doesn't get weary he doesn't need a break God doesn't need a mental health day every once in a while to recover That's not why God rested Rest here simply means cease God stopped working And he delighted in the creation that he had made That's why we read verse 31 But the very end of God's creative work God looked at all that he had made all that he had created And you remember that he declared it very good God had put his final touches the finishing touches on his creation and he rested He took deep pleasure the light in all that he had created and all that he had made The sort of difference between saying at the end of a long day a hard work day and we come home from work And maybe we sit down to have a meal or Maybe later on in the evening after all of our errands and tasks are done and we're sitting down in the chair It's the difference between say between saying few It's all done finally it's it's all finished now I can sit down and relax or saying How wonderful it's been the difference between exhaustion and enjoyment God has not exhausted But God fully enjoyed as he rested all that he had created You might remember that throughout the Bible The number seven is a number of completion a number of perfection We find the series of sevens often in the scriptures the last book of the Bible book a revelation of course we have the seven churches Seven real churches, but Seven churches that are also Representative of the entire church right throughout the ages Was the number of number seven this number of completion or perfection is you know Is that just something that we've made up something that we kind of invented? It's it's sort of neat That fits the number of seven And of course it's not something that we just made up But it comes right here out of God's creative work and his rest this seventh day a day of completion a day of perfection a day of enjoyment a day of Delight God seats from all the work that he had done and he celebrated a creation that was very good
But what makes this day different is not just that God rested Which you see in verse three that God took the seventh day and he also blessed it And he made it holy Take these things and reverse with me first of all God made this seventh day holy a consecrated it He sanctified it God set it apart from all the other days
Think about how our think about the rhythms that are part of our life that Our kind of built into the creation that that God designed that God made All the other rhythms in creation aside from a week operate by heavenly beings in a heavenly order And so our year you know it's our rotation once around the sun sometimes you'll see people Wish others a happy birthday and they say well, you know, you made it in another trip Around the sun full year has passed Month the rotation of the moon around the earth the day and rotation of the earth on his access the week Established directly by God It is God that form it. It is God that shaped it doesn't get its direction from how the earth moves How the moon relates to the sun or relates to the earth the week a divine order Established by God the seventh day made holy consecrated sanctified Set apart belonging to the Lord His day of all the days His day Ordered by God himself and then blessed by God Designed to be spiritually and physically fruitful for us You might remember you know back a number of months now a couple of years even as Kevin preached his way through the book of Genesis reminding us of Blessing so often being connected with fruitfulness Blessing leading to fruitfulness leading to prosperity And here God blesses the seventh day You see this blessing even in creation in the creation account the the fruitfulness that comes from blessing To the living creatures God bless them and says be fruitful and multiply Genesis 122 You see the same thing in Genesis 128 to Adam and Eve God bless them and what it happens He says to them be fruitful multiply fill the earth so do it blessing leading to fruitfulness and the same is true here on the seventh day God blesses the seventh day
What does that mean? It means that God's intent for that day For the seventh day the Sabbath day Is that it would be spiritually and physically fruitful for us A blessing that would bring a certain kind of Prosperity to us life giving to us Not a hardship not a burden Not a day that we end up dreading But a day that we look forward to because we understand that God has blessing in it for us That is meant to be beneficial Can't use put it this way. He said it is a day of rest That has the power to stimulate animate in rich and give fullness to life
Does that describe your Sabbath your experience of the Sabbath your enjoyment of the Sabbath That it stimulates you it animates you enriches you gives fullness to your life in a way that the other days of the week Do not give to you God's rest Secondly, we see our rest Because not only did God cease his labors on the Sabbath but the Sabbath is also to be a pattern for our living And we understand that because Keeping the Sabbath they only became of course part of the commands that God gave to his people fourth commandment
In the two different places that we see The ten commandments in the Old Testament and see the fourth commandment about keeping the Sabbath they holy Deuteronomy chapter five and Exodus 20 we we see some slightly different emphasis That God gives us for reason for Why this day ought to be set apart the Sabbath they ought to be kept holy In Deuteronomy five the Sabbath is salvation celebrated And so God reminds Israel in giving the ten commandments there remember That you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord brought you out and therefore you to keep the Sabbath they holy Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord brought you out And so God says to his people sat apart The seventh day because God redeemed you and saved you Remember back remember how we need you if you were making bricks And Pharaoh kept saying to you more bricks more bricks keep making more and took your straw away and demanded more from you remember how you were making bricks in Egypt but God delivered you And he gave you rest He saved you From that hard toil And he's given you rest And so use the Sabbath God says to celebrate that To celebrate your deliverance to celebrate the salvation that God has given you Set it apart in worship to God One of the things of course that we do on the Sabbath right Heart of the Sabbath who worship the Lord for his salvation work When you go to Exodus 20 that we read tonight earlier The Sabbath isn't the focus. There isn't so much salvation celebrated but creation Remembered the focus there in Exodus 20 as God says it is to keep the Sabbath day holy Not do any work on that day for in six days the Lord made the heavens the earth but he rested On the seventh day and he made it holy and therefore you set it apart Remember God's pattern remember God worked six days and invested therefore year to set this day apart And so use the Sabbath not only to celebrate salvation and set it apart in worship to God but use the Sabbath day to rest Since God Rested as his image bears Those who reflect God God works six days and rested You work six days and rest St. Clair Ferguson says the gift of the Sabbath Provided a wonderful way of regulating the whole of life It provided an inbuilt weekly time and motion study to help us live well A wonderful way of regulating the whole of life that we might be fruitful
people God isn't interesting That as God creates and then rests on the seventh day that man's First full day of life Was not going off to work So it's created on the sixth day the seventh day comes along this day of rest Man's first day is is not to go off and do labor To go off to his job There would be time for that Nothing wrong with the work work is good Adam and Eve given the mandates to cultivate the creation to take care of the garden But its first full day Is a day of rest In other words his creation His life the life of man our life Oriented first around a day of rest The seventh day comes first for him and then the six days of work follow as if God were saying rest first And the six days of labor will fall into place Orients the six days of work around the Sabbath not the Sabbath around the six days of work Let me say that again Orient the six days of work your six days of work around the Sabbath not the Sabbath Around the other six days
Repeat that because That is something that is so easy For us to get backwards to fill six days of work and piano lessons Soccer practices grocery shopping and car repairs and bill paying and on and on we could go To get so consumed with with everything that we have to do in six days and then Get around to thinking about the Sabbath as an afterthought some of us might need Some reorientation in our living one that prioritizes the seventh day as God did
It was a number of years ago of still pastoring in Michigan Talking to one of the other pastors in our town Who had made a visit to New England And he went to visit a couple of churches in his denomination And was talking to one of the pastors of the churches and that pastor said to him He said we have no concept of weekend any longer in New England We have no concept of weekend Any longer in New England What he was saying is simply this In New England every day Is the same Discycle through a week one week comes another week goes Monday is the same as Saturday Saturday is the same as Sunday No concept of weekend no rhythm Except just a constant merry go round of day after day after day after day after day after day And my thought Just thinking to myself I didn't express this but my thought was this When that happens I think you've reached We've reached a total secularization of the culture right because There's no difference. It's just every single day is the same just doing the same thing day and day and day out And in in one week just leads into another
remember Jesus said this to Satan in the wilderness He's being tempted He said man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God Jesus is saying responding to Satan there is more To life than bread reminding us of that there is more to life than bread and and there's more To life than making bread
We have six days to give to bread Six days for making bread six days for earning bread But all the things that bread represents Cannot give us life
There's one thing that gives us life and that is the word of God We need what comes out of God's mouth the very thing that we get One day of the week on the Sabbath day that is the thing that can give us life the other six days cannot give us life And so to fall into a cycle where every single day is the same robs us Of a very important spiritual truth that we need a day like today
Friends we find I think so little time for rest on the Sabbath because of our pace and practices the other six days You know the million-dollar question regarding the Sabbath is of course always this is it okay Or not okay for me to do X on the Sabbath, right? That's what you would love to hear out of every one of your pastors Just tell me what I can do on the Sabbath tell me what I should not do on the Sabbath But I think a better question is this Why would I be doing X Whatever it be on the Sabbath or on Sundays In a common answer is this because I don't have time for it in the rest of the week I got so much going on that just kind of dumps over Right onto the Sabbath and sometimes I fear that we're living Taking the six days of the week first and loading them up so full that when it comes to the Sabbath We have to do all the things that we could not get to the rest of the week and what we've done is we have oriented the Sabbath around the six days
Instead of orienting six days around the Sabbath You see the Sabbath Not only regulates our rest But in Genesis 2 there the Sabbath also regulates our work It doesn't just regulate how we're to rest it regulates when we're to work and What we're to do with those days it regulates all the days of the week
And friends, what would happen if It to our lives if the Sabbath came first We rested We worshiped We fellowshiped We enjoyed the blessing and proof that God intended for us on this day spiritually and physically We prioritized that we guarded it Wouldn't that refresh us for all the rest of the days of the week that follow It might not not change how we live the rest of the days
Following the resurrection of Christ the course of Sabbath Shifts to the first day But I think the Sabbath is Is something like a first fruit's day Remember the first fruit's principle in the Bible You know you're out harvesting your crop It's the fall or whatever season it is when your harvest in Israel and you're out taking your crop in and you know You get that first wagon load of grain And what do you do with it? Do you bring it to the bank or do you bring it to the temple? And the first fruits that you take it to the temple right the first fruits. It's the lords And it's an act of faith Because by giving that first of your harvest to God what you're saying is God I trust you that you will take care of the rest of my needs There will be enough for me. I I give to you first and there will be enough coming I trust you That whatever I I have need for God you will provide
And I wonder if the Sabbath is kind of like that a first fruit's day Lord I'm giving you this day And I trust by giving you the state I trust that you will give me whatever time I need the rest of the week To do all that I need to do to work to play Be at home whatever whatever it is Then I trust you give me the rest of the week to do whatever needs to be done
Friends, what does this have to do with wasting our summer?
It's easy to miss the blessing God has for us in the Sabbath if we treat it as last Instead of first in the week You know not just in the summer of course, but all year long But maybe that's even more critical in the summer Because of the lack of structure that some of us enjoy. I mean, it's it's good right? We love it because of that
One of our brothers and churches said to me three days ago He said, you know, when I'm on vacation my devotional life suffers Then attend that He's on vacation and what he's saying in the is um Some days when I typically pray because I'm on vacation is kind of slips away or my devotion reading in the scriptures Doesn't happen is regularly You see when we lose routine routines we can also lose rhythms That God has meant for us to enjoy And by which he builds us up So God wants us to rest On the state that he's given us and to worship him And that leads us then finally to Christ's rest Because the Sabbath of course is also a foretaste Of a heavenly rest that is yet to come for us That's why we read the text from Hebrews chapter 4 And Hebrews 4 verse 4 the writer of Hebrews quotes from Genesis 2 From the text that we read tonight that God rested on the seventh day from all his works And the point that the writer of the Hebrews is making is not so much about following God's pattern of work and rest But rather entering God's rest by resting in Christ's finished work You were to rest in Christ. Do not be like the Israelites. He's making a contrast there About how God's people were traveling through the wilderness and they were on the doorstep of The land of rest the land of promise but some never entered that rest because They didn't live by faith And he's saying to us put your faith in your trust and your hope in your salvation in Christ Jesus find your rest in him For there remains as he says a Sabbath rest for the people of God Friends there remains a Sabbath rest for us There is a fuller rest still coming for God's people In fact, you can even see that in the creation account itself The seventh day no morning and evening pattern as you have any other six days right It doesn't end and there was morning and there was evening the seventh day Because the Sabbath is unending there is an eternal Sabbath rest that is awaiting us We're waiting the consummation of the Sabbath when Christ returns And that's why we still practice it. We might have this question running through our mind Well hasn't Christ fulfilled the Sabbath Has any given us our rest as is in point out here just a moment. Yes, he has
But we are not to the final Sabbath yet And that's why this rhythm is so important for us to to keep Reminding us of what Christ has done but also to keep us longing for what Christ is going to accomplish for us
We practice this day not in the same way that Israel did But we're not receiving the law from the hand of Moses what we receive it from the hand of Christ and our rest is in him
Remember Jesus words Matthew 11 Coming to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you what's the word Rest right. I'll give you rest Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lonely in heart and you will find rest for yourselves Rest in Christ We're at the cross John 1930 Jesus came to Last breath and he cries out it is finished All that the father had given him to do he accomplished Atonement forgiveness of our sins finished And remember the next day is Jesus laid in the tomb He rested Rusted from all the work that he had accomplished and And then on the third day rose again from the dead And of course that's why the Sabbath is no longer on the seventh day of the first Christ rose on his first day of the week our rest assured that day The seventh day of course is a day where you're always looking ahead right you spend your whole week looking to that last day that's coming And what a fitting picture in the Old Testament when you're looking forward to the coming of Christ it's out there and you have your eyes set upon it But here we are worshipping today on the first week why because we're not looking forward any longer To what is to come at the end of the week we Get to look back and what has already been accomplished Through Christ death and his resurrection So I'd ask you tonight are you resting in Christ for your salvation
Because you see that is the best way Not only not to waste your summer but of course not to waste your life Is by finding your rest in Christ and then responding with joy and gladness on the day that he has given you to worship It's a rest from your daily labors Westminster confession of faith reminds us that saving faith is accepting it's receiving and it's resting On Christ alone for our justification sanctification and eternal life St. Augustine of course put it so well you've heard this probably before This famous quote our hearts are restless Until they find their rest in the We're going to be restless Until we find our rest in Christ and that's why this day is such a great day for rest because you can say I'm not restless anymore I am resting in Jesus and resting from all that I have to do so I can focus upon him So how do we avoid wasting our summer well one way By keeping the Sabbath day holy recall God's pattern for our worship and rest be restored spiritually and physically and rejoice in the rest that you have in Christ Let's pray together Well, God, we do thank you for the rest that we have in Jesus
We echo what one of the old hymns says that day of all the week the best this one this day Day of all the week the best An emblem of our eternal rest Thank you for the rest that we have in Christ Thank you for the rest that we can enjoy weekly in this pattern that you've established for us Day for worship day for physically resting from all the other things that we have been given we Remember and we confess so we do not live by bread alone But in every word that proceeds from your mouth We praise you Lord Jesus and your name we pray Amen