Honesty is probably one of the
toughest things that we can see in our lives. We lie a lot. Not necessarily deceptively,
but we lie to ourselves. We lie to others, generally. How you doing? I'm great. I'm
well. I'm good. All of which are lies. We're not well, we're dying folks.
We're not good, only God is good. We're not great, for sure. I've
never met a person that said they were great who wasn't trying
to sell me something. Well, brothers and sisters, I'm
not great this morning. I'm not well and I'm not good.
My body is hurting. My mind is hurting. My leg hurts. My foot hurts. My ankles hurt.
And now I've got this arthritis situation in my hand. I can barely
grab a cup. My spirit is burdened. My mind
is not clear. And Lord knows what else is wrong
with me. But God's Word is true. And if He requires His vessels
of mercy to be perfect, then in order for His Word to be expounded,
then it'll be silent. So our perfection comes only
through that that Christ is. As Brother Queller prayed that
the Word is all about who Christ is and what He's done for His
people, sinners. to save us and to make us righteous before the
Father. And that's what the Old Testament is about. It's the
hidden revelation of Jesus Christ that the apostles have declared
so clearly that we would know who he is. That we would know
who he is. And beloved, if it weren't for
the Spirit of God, none of us would even be able to stand together
and worship today. If it weren't for the Spirit
of God, His Word would return void. But the Scripture says
that it cannot. So that those who have been given
faith, those who know Christ, those who have been shown the
truth, we will hear the words of our Savior. Even when our
flesh resists, His grace abounds. Even when the darkness of depravity
stomps its ugly feet, God's grace overcomes. John says, the light
has come and the darkness will not overcome it. And we've looked
at that over the last two weeks. We've looked at the creation
account and I want to remind everyone Some of you may not
have heard the last two messages but Moses did not write this
by God the Spirit so that we could have an understanding of
the scientific notion of how the world began. He wrote this
by the Spirit to give an outline of the revelation of God. Now
if God and His infinite wisdom allows us to see things effectually
in the cosmos allows us to see things that only the people of
antiquity just carried along and superstitions and to learn
things that's great but it's still not the point of scripture
because all the wisdom of man and all the knowledge of God
I mean all compared to the knowledge of God is nothing all the strength
of man compared to the weakness of God is nothing as Paul would
say in first Corinthians so that we rest fully in the revelation
of God through the scripture. We rest fully in the power of
God revealed through the scripture. We rest completely in the person
of God who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And we do not rest
on our own understanding. We do not rest in history. We
do not rest in traditions. We do not rest in religion. We
do not rest in sacraments. We do not rest in polity or anything
else. We rest in the scripture. We
rest in the scripture. Now, everybody who is wrong about
everything usually yields to scripture in their own words.
Well, the Bible says this. But beloved, the Bible doesn't
change its message. And we can all be wrong, but
we cannot all be right if we're different. And there are more
wrong people in the world than there will ever be right. You
need to understand that. In the context of this picture of God
taking nothing and creating everything with order and purpose. With
God taking chaos and darkness and creating light and life and
order. This is why Genesis is written
so that we may have a clear outline of not just what Genesis is about,
but what the scripture is about. And if we were to, if I lectured
on John's writing, John is the most Jewish writer of the Bible. He writes in Jewish style. He
emphasizes Sabbaths. He emphasizes the perfect number
in his writing. He emphasizes the chiastic ways
in which the literature of the Old Testament was composed. And
these are interesting, but we are English readers. We cannot
understand this construction. It's not possible. And the problem
is when we look at it, and we learn it, then we begin to worship
it rather than the one to whom it points. We begin to worship
poetry or literature instead of the living word. And I wish
I had time. I think it would be good to even
produce some or publish some videos or some teachings on how
John's gospel is a blow-by-blow example of the creation account,
which is why he starts it. And I alluded to some of those
as we went through John over those four years. But the Word
of God teaches us about God's redemption of His people. And
then the apostles always write their letters in relation to
problems. It wasn't just a get well card.
The New Testament wasn't written in a way that just checking on
you. No. What's published in the Canon
of Scripture is the responses and the reactions and the wisdom
and the oversight of the joy of God's people in the midst
of great problems, in the midst of great chaos, in the midst
of great disorder. And the apostles, under the power
and the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, gave wisdom that is from
Christ Himself. So it is Christ speaking. Not
Paul speaking. Christ speaking. Not John speaking. If it's written in this Bible,
it is Christ speaking. God is speaking. So that in this chaos, we can
be reminded of the fact that God from nothing created His
people to give Him glory, to reveal who He is, and in so doing,
He gave the instruction of the New Testament so His people can
live in a symbolic way, and a joyful way, and an intimate way, in
a place of order. Disorder amongst anyone who names
the name of Christ is demonic. Let me say that again. Disorder
in the lives of anyone who names the name of Christ is demonic.
We do not allow disorder. Disorderly conduct, disorderly
language, unbiblical expressions, personal ideologies. We correct
those. The word correct, discipline,
is equivocal to love and specifically to God's love. Hebrews 4 says
God only disciplines those He loves. So as I pray for myself,
as I pray for others, as I beat my head against the table, as
I feel like I just want to jump off a short bridge, sprain my
other ankle, I realize that it's all about what Christ is, who
Christ is, and that's His people. We do well to quit praying for
God to take away our pain and we do well to thank Him for it. Because spending life trying
to clean up that which God has ordained is a fool's errand. And until we thank Him, we haven't
been given wisdom. And we'll talk about that more
on Wednesday. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and nothing. And darkness was over the face
of the abyss. And the spirit of Elohim was
with the nothing. There's your translation you
should hold to. the poetry in our English versions. In the
beginning God created the heavens, the sky, and the dirt, the heavens
and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and the
darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God
was hovering over the face of the deep. God said, let there
be light, and there was light, and God saw the light was good.
And God separated the light from the darkness, and God called
the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was
evening, and then there was morning on the first day. Now, keep this
in mind, in every day of the six days, we see evening as the
beginning of the day. There is darkness, and the morning
comes. There is nothing, and then God
creates something. There is chaos, and there is
order. There is blindness, and there
is the beholding of all His glory. It's on purpose, beloved, and
this is not new to you. We've read John together for
years, and you know what John 1 and John 3 reveal. God said, let there be an expanse
in the midst of the waters. Separate the waters from the
waters. Let it be. And then God made
the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse
from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And
God called the expanse sky. And there was evening and there
was morning on the second day. And then God said, let the waters
under the heavens, under the sky, be gathered into one place
and let dry land appear. And it was so. And God called
the dry land earth. And the waters that were gathered
together, he called seas. And God saw that it was good.
In verse 11, God said, let the earth sprout living vegetation,
plants, yielding, seed, trees, bearing fruit, and which is their
seed, according to its kind on the earth. And it was so. The
earth brought forth vegetation, plants, yielding seed, according
to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, and which is their
seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good,
and there was evening, and there was morning on the third day.
Now what we've seen and what we've learned over the last few
weeks about these first three days is that God is creating
a place. There was no place and then now there is a place. There
was no substance, now there is a substance. There was no matter
and now there is matter. Why did God create the world?
In order to put life in it. There was no life, now there's
life. Why? Because that's what the gospel
is. The gospel is we were dead in our trespasses and sins. We
were blinded. We were separated from the promises
of God. We were unable to come. We were unable to see. It's the
picture of Lazarus all over. Lazarus is decaying. His body
has odor. Lazarus is rotting. And all the
religious are there to see. And Jesus commands that which
is impossible to be. He calls the dead decomposing
man to life and he lives. Lazarus had no part in it. He
calls him out of the tomb and there he came. And then Jesus
says, unbind him and let him go. And all the world standing there
seeing, and I say that's an exaggeration, but the Jewish world was there.
It was represented there. The Pharisees and the Sadducees
were there. The Sanhedrin was there. The professional mourners
were there in Bethany. And they saw this man who was
dead come to life and it struck horror in their hearts because
they knew this man was from God. They knew he was the Christ.
He was Messiah. He was the one sent from the
Father. They knew it, but it did not fit their agenda. Because
they loved the glory that came from man rather than the glory
that came from God. So they set in their ways according
to the purpose of God to create chaos. Heaven has been opened
up. And angels are descending and
ascending on the Son of Man, as John illustrates in chapter
1, Jesus speaking in John 1. And so God in His perfect wisdom
causes chaos in order to bring about order. causes death in
order to bring about life. And Jesus speaks of this in his
teachings. He says, unless a seed falls
to the ground and dies, life never comes from it. A seed is
not alive. Other things have to work on
the seed. The seed has to be placed in a place that it can
receive the moisture and the life of water. And it has to
be put in a place to where it will receive the nutrients that
it needs and the minerals that it needs so that it will sprout
life. So as a seed, it must die. Jesus
calls himself the seed that must be put into the ground, into
the grave. And then from that place, he will bring himself
to life. And from his life, he will be the life that is the
light of men, the creator of it all. So these first three
days, God creates something tangible to see Himself. That's why the
psalmist says, the heavens declare your glories. Your creation declares
it all. In Romans 1, what does Paul say
about people who are obviously looking at that which God has
made? And they don't do what? What do they not do? Do they
not believe it? No, they believe it. They know
that it was made. But they suppress that which
is clearly seen by works of unrighteousness, which is what? I'm not gonna
believe that there's a God who created this, though it's obvious.
And the quintessential reality of, basically like the main point
of what happens when the world sees the world, when the people
of the world see the creation of the world, even in themselves,
and they don't thank God for who He is. And so God turns them over to
a reprobate mind. And some people accuse God. Why
would you do that? Because he's righteous. He can.
What God does is to display to us what righteousness is. How
do we know what is good and righteous? Then we see who God is and what
he does. That's how we know what is good and righteous. And we
see that only God is good. Only God is righteous. Only God
is well. Only God is great. So God creates this place. He
creates this... I'm almost gun-shy now to say
the world opportunity, but He creates the space in which the
opportunity for life is there. But without Him creating the
life, it would never be life, you see. But He couldn't create
sea creatures and nothing. He couldn't create oxygen-breathing
mammals into nothing. He couldn't create humans into
nothing. Even outer space is nothing but
it's something that exists in time. He had to prepare a place for
them. He had to prepare a temple for them. He had to prepare a
dwelling for them. He had to prepare a place. Why? Jesus says it. Behold, I go and
you can't go. Remember that conversation? The
latter part of John's Gospel. The last week of John's Gospel, which
is the last half of the book. Seven days. It's three and a
half years and then seven days. Where are you going? They ask. Well, you can't come. You can't
come for two reasons. is that it's not your place to
come to, you're not qualified to come because you can't do
what I'm about to do. You cannot die effectually for
anyone in righteousness because you're not worthy of righteousness.
You can't, your death would be justified to kill you. My death
is not justified. These are the metaphors in which
Jesus was speaking several times over. He says, but behold, I
go, I go to prepare a place for you. that where I am, you also will
be. I'm not of this world, he says.
And you're not of this world, because I've taken you out of
this world. This is gospel. This is good
news. This is what Paul really hammers home in Colossians, isn't
it? He talks about being snatched out of the domain of darkness
into the light of the kingdom of the Son of God. Who is the
one who guarantees our inheritance? Who qualifies us in light with
the rest of the saints? It's beautiful stuff. So God
in these first three days creates something so that He can put
life in it. And then He puts life in it. God said, verse 14, let the lights
in the expanse of the heavens separate the day from the night.
Let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for
years and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens
to give light upon the earth. And it was so. Verse 16 is an
important theme in the Bible. And God made the two great lights.
the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule
the night and the stars. And this picture is to show us
that the darkness of chaos and death will not overcome the light
of God's power. And this is review. I talked
about it the first week. And God set them in the expanse
to give light over the earth, to rule over the day, and to
rule over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good, and it was evening, and it was
morning on the fourth day. And then God, on the fifth day
and the sixth day, creates every living creature in the sea, in
the sky, on the ground, and man, humanity. He creates Adam, and then out
of Adam creates Eve. narrative that we see in the special revelation
and the special example going into Genesis 2. So we've had
all this and we've culminated up to this last day. And I'm
going to talk about resting today. So in other words, I'm gonna
talk about the gospel, and I'm gonna talk about saving faith,
and I'm gonna talk about the divine work of God who gives
his people this resting beyond comprehension, beyond academics,
beyond historical theology. Saving faith is not found in
the pages of history. Saving faith is found in the
finished work of Jesus Christ. Saving faith is found by the
Spirit of God causing you to be born again, and in that new
birth, you sit down and you stop trying. And people are experts at playing
the advocate for a high level of humanistic
ideologies in regards to saving faith. What's that mean? People
are really, really smart at trying to convince everybody else they're
lost. when they truly do rest in the
finished work of Christ. And that's not okay. The gospel
according to Genesis shows you it's a finished work. And that's
where we're at. God created man in his own image. Look at verse 26. And God said,
let us make man in our own image after our likeness and let them
have dominion. So we've got the cosmos that
has dominion over light and darkness. Like God, because He created
it, He has dominion over that. The darkness will not overcome
the light. He will save His people. And
our flesh, and our depravity, and our will will not overcome
His salvation. He will save His people. They
will come to know He has saved them. They will come to know
it. See, being saved is not what
you do. Being saved is not believing.
Being saved is Christ's death. This is the only message of Scripture
that matters, because it's the meta-narrative, it's the overall
point of Scripture. Let us make men in our image
after our light, so let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, the birds of the heavens, So here we've got the sea, the
waters down below, and the waters above, and the living creatures
that are there, as God has separated them and rules over them, now
man has been separated to rule over them. And over the livestock,
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth. This is the image of God, or what we would call
in historical circles, the Imagio Dei. The image of God. that the picture
of God's sovereign rule over these things is illustrated in
man and woman. Now we're not going to talk about
this today, but it's going to be in the next few weeks. I've got a series
of these that I want to teach. But do you know what the actual
word, let us make man in our image, let man be an idol of
us. That's what it means. The word there for image is the
word idol. What is an idol? A teeny, teeny little replica
that looks like something real. And in Romans 1, what happens?
Humanity, instead of thanking God for who He is and His reflective
glory in the image of creation, they worship the creation in
itself. They worship man. They worship man's wisdom and
man's ways. That's what unbelievers do. And beloved, before God showed
us the truth, we did it too. Some of us, even in the name
of Christianity, in the name of some false iteration of gospel
that came from the culture. Let's not hold on to those things
as though they're precious, they're wicked. Let them go, it's okay. It's okay to let go of dead things. It's okay to throw the idols
in the trash. It doesn't matter if it was great grandpas or not.
They're not that special. Men are not God. Humanity is
not God. Humanity is a creation of God
and it depicts His image in the fact that God established order
and rule and showed Himself in that order. but that was quickly
corrupted. I say the very same day. The
very next day. The very moment. I think they
were given instruction, I think Eve was here, and then they fell. I don't think the enemy wasted
any time. Now where do I get that? I'm
just saying. Adam and Eve didn't set up camp for a couple of months
and then things went bad. God purposed it the way it happened
and there it is. We don't need to speculate how
long it was. Scripture says, and then. It's not about time, though we
could get into that. Feast and festivals show us about
time. But if we remember the fall of Lucifer, Lucifer, likewise,
in some way, we don't know because the Bible doesn't give us that
knowledge, was created reflecting God as an image bearer of God
in some way. Specifically, the fact that he
was magnificent. So maybe there was magnificence, like the heavens
declare your glory. The magnificence of all that's
been made. Wow, this is a tiny little microscopic, teensy little
picture that a five-year-old draws. in comparison to the beauty
of the majesty of the complete glory of Christ. So it doesn't
compare, it doesn't compare. That which takes our breath away
in this world is really not going to affect us at all when we see
the fullness of Christ. We're not going to say, oh Jesus,
would you make something over there so I can see? No, because
that's a reflection of Him. Reflection of His divine power.
So here, like Lucifer, he saw this God orchestrated workmanship
in himself, right? And in his heart, he thought,
I should stand up there and bask in the glory of who God is. And
God threw him out of heaven, because you don't rob God of
what belongs to him. God is not in the business of
sharing his glory, because if he did, he would not be God.
And he would have no glory to share. And then likewise, and like manner,
men, as we'll see in chapter 3, fell into sin and rebellion
because they did not believe the glory of God. They did not
believe the promises of God. They did not hear and understand
the decree of God that says, when you eat of this, you will
die. It wasn't conditioned. It was
a direct statement. Then God said, let there be,
and then God created. God said, when you eat of this,
then God purposed and caused. That's going to rock some of
our boats. The law has always killed everyone who has ever
sat under it. Every command that God has ever given has always
killed everybody who heard it. It always brings death. From
the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, death entered into the
Garden of Eden under the command of God himself because of the
law. Do not eat. And from that point forward,
however long it was, Adam and Eve were set in their hearts
of wondering why, desiring that which they were
told they could not have. So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female,
he created them. And he blessed them and he gave
them dominion. Now let's go to chapter two. I just wanted all that fresh
in our hearts today. Thus the heavens and the earth, the sky
and the land, the creation were finished. All the host of them. The whole cosmos is finished.
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 set it apart in sanctity. because on it God rested from
all his work that he had done in creation. That's it. It's a recapitulation. What does
that mean? It's a restatement of everything that's just been
done in the first chapter. Just like the very first line,
God created the world, and then saying God finished it all. It's
just a bookend. It's an easy literary device
for those of us who read literature. For those of you who don't, you
don't have to worry about that. I'm just telling you what it
means. It's not a hidden message. There's no
hidden message here. It's very simple. Faith of a child. God created it all. Okay, that
settles it. They believe you. They don't worry about it. They
don't worry about, well, but then we get to a certain age
and we start to worry about it. But the heavens and the earth
were finished. God's purposes were finished. God's creation
was finished. It's finished. God's not creating
anything else. Well, how in the world is the world still here?
Because it is perpetually by His sovereign providence. Effectually
what? What? Being maintained by the
Word of Christ. He's created it and it is expanding. And life is what? Replicating. Why? Because that's what God
does. And it is finished. Jesus in
the Gospel does not have to die over and over and over again
for every generation of people. God the Son does not have to
die in the Eucharist of the cults. We don't have to have sacramental
things that are mysterious. The purpose of the Lord's Table
is for us to together taste and experience the unity of the good
news taught by the Word of God concerning Jesus Christ. That
we are together in God's creation and redemption. We are together
as one body. You know that redemption is a
collective whole. It is not a eeny, meeny, miny,
moe, or this one, this one, this one. It is a collective whole.
All the elect are redeemed at once. All the elect are purchased
at once. Otherwise the blood of Jesus
is still being held and there is some sense in which the philosophy
of this perpetual crucifixion and the body and the blood of
Jesus appearing in the context of the sacraments makes sense.
But Paul forbids it, Moses forbids it, Jesus forbids it. It says
it's a finished work. This is the point of life. It's
a new covenant. It's a promise that was existing
before the world began. All these other things are temporary
shadows of everything that God intended to do with it. Everything
that God has done. Everything. Believe it or not,
beloved, everything. The temperature in this room
has everything to do with what God is bringing about for His
purposes. Some of us say, well, it's too
cold, and we're complaining, and we need to not complain,
be frustrated. Some of us say it's too hot,
and we need to stop complaining. I mean, we complain about everything. We don't thank God for everything.
We don't praise God for everything. We're liars. Remember, I started
out with that. We're liars. I'm just so thankful. You are not thankful. We are
not thankful. Because in that same breath,
Well, I ain't trying to be ugly. You know how that... Somebody
says that, I'm not trying to be ugly, but... That but is huge. It knocks you right down the
stairs. But... Well, I am so thankful. I just
wish... Christ is finished. God is finished.
The work of creation is finished. So is the work of redemption.
The purchasing of God's people. Now wait a minute, now Paul teaches
about glorification and we know in the order of salvation, there's
no order of salvation. That's man's systematized way
of expressing that which he doesn't understand. Ordo salutis is not
a biblical ideology. These are finished works that
are all in Romans 8, if you don't know what I'm talking about. That little chain, that golden
chain, as so many people like that. Beautiful stuff. What can
separate us from the love of God? Nothing. What can separate us from the
redemption of Christ? Nothing. What can separate us from God's power? Nothing. What can separate us
from the finished work of Christ? Nothing. Nothing can separate
us. Nothing can separate us. Because God has finished the
work and He has rested. That's the reason the creation
account is here. To show us that it's about the
gospel. It's about the seventh day which has no end. It's not
ending. It never ends. Jesus is the eternal
Sabbath. Jesus is the eternal Son. Jesus
is the eternal Savior. Jesus is the eternal High Priest.
Remember Melchizedek? Remember the picture of Abraham
giving alms and praise and loyalty to Melchizedek? For those of you who haven't
listened to our reading of Hebrews, it's a very fast, I think it's
only like 40 weeks, it's a very fast teaching of Hebrews. It
really helps you understand this reality. from a Jewish perspective. We're not Jews. Paul had to deal
with that all the time. He didn't write to Jewish people
except Hebrews, the letter of Hebrews. And so when he was writing
to Gentile believers, he wasn't trying to teach them Judaism.
He didn't teach them that stuff. He was just trying to explain
the simple little nuggets, the good news nuggets, you know?
The gospel truths that were essential for their understanding, and
moreover, were essential for their joy. And herein lies the
problem. If we misunderstand this reality
and the purpose of this Old Testament teaching, we lose our joy. Because
we're pitting all this instruction, all this law, and beloved, I'm
gonna tell you, I'm going to destroy, I'm going to destroy
this fear of legalism by the mercy of God when we get through
with Genesis 3. We're going to destroy it by
the Lord's mercy if he allows you. You'll be free. You'll be
free from it. You'll be free. Some of the things that we say
that sound so spiritual and sound so cool because they've been
being said for hundreds of years are baloney. They're nonsense.
We need to stop saying things that don't make sense according
to the exposition of Scripture. The exposition of Scripture,
when we read the Bible and God shows us the truths, we should
put in our own words what is being said and make sure that
it's accurate according to the Scripture. Not trying to adopt
what we're reading into the language of someone else that is dead.
who isn't shepherding anybody according to the commands of
Christ. A dead man cannot pastor a soul. It is impossible. His
writings and his sermons cannot shepherd people. Because whether
you like it or not, the reason that this pulpit exists is so
that we can hear the truth, be reminded of the truth, be encouraged
by the truth, and be corrected in the truth that we might live
together in order according to God's commands. With our hope
being in the gospel. And people who reject that order
have rejected Christ himself. Now think about that for a second. See, people hate that phrase,
rejecting Christ. You don't think a believer can
reject Christ? Absolutely. Think about David. But David
wasn't converted. David was converted as a boy. Spirit of God was in
him and working. David's conversion isn't when
he sat down and walked through the Roman's road. That's witchcraft.
The Roman's road is not about evangelism. It has nothing to
do with salvation in the context of justification. It has everything
to do with surviving Roman occupation. Surviving hatred. Because Christ
is King. Christ is Lord, not Caesar. See
the context. Pretext is when we take verses
and we create theologies around them. Those are always erroneous.
Context is when we read the whole Bible and go, wow, look at this.
And it's not harder to do the latter, it's harder to do the
beginning. And so that's why we piggyback so much on other
people's ideologies and other people's theological systems.
It's easier to just repeat what we've heard rather than to learn
what God is teaching. In our minds, but it's very much
easier just to be taught by God, simply. Every generation of believer
needs to have the generations before them, the older women
and the older men, teaching the younger generations ahead of
them so that there is a perpetuity in the teaching of the scripture
that God, the Spirit, is always teaching the next generation,
live, at time, on time, not archived. God is not intended for the church
to live on the archives of dead men. except for the apostles,
who I would say are quite alive right now in Christ. So here we have this seventh
day, the rest, the Sabbath. And oh my goodness, the books
that have been written on Sabbath, the different ideas and thoughts
and theologies on Sabbath. Well, what is a Sabbath? What
day of the week is our Sabbath? Literally, it's Saturday. The
word Sabbath means seven. The word seven in Jewish understanding
is the word of completeness. It's the last thing. Rest. So the word seven, the number
seven, and iterations of seven, number 12, iterations of 12,
and in the context of time, and all the festivals deal with sevens. And I mean, you know, we'll get
into that through the years as I teach some more of the Old
Testament. But you'll see that the whole point of creation is
to get to the reality that God did all of this to show you He
has the power to make order and life out of nothing and death.
And we just need to sit down and be still. Rest. Trust Him. Trust Him. That's the image that we'll see
in chapter 2 and 3 where He just gave them everything they needed
in the garden. I mean, imagine waking up in the morning not
having to cultivate anything through work. Because the work at rest is much
different than the work in the curse. Work is a gift of God,
but it's not supposed to break us. That's a curse. So, what's
the gift? Work. Why is it so hard? Because we have sinned. Sin has
entered into the world. Death has entered into the world.
We work. I mean, we can't even get paint the last 10 years.
30-year warranty on the paint. What you gonna do? Peel it off,
take it back to Ace? This just didn't work. Still gotta put
it back on the wall. They're not going to like, poof,
and it's just going to come back up there. Magic wanded up. It
doesn't work like that. It's going to be painful. It's
going to be hard. It's going to be laborious by
definition. Labor. So here we have this rest. And it's why creation is. This rest is Jesus Christ. In
Exodus chapter 20, starting in verse 8, the scripture Well,
God tells his people. And you need to understand that
the law and all the laws of Moses and the Decalogue and everything
else related to it, everything written by Moses to the people
of Israel were given to the people of Israel. They were not given
to the New Testament church. All of it. What was given to
the New Testament church is what some people call the law of Christ
was to love the Lord and one another. And in doing so, you
fulfill all the law of Christ. You love one another. What does
that mean? We put other people first. We
put their needs first. We give them the benefit of the
doubt. We can go to 1 Corinthians 13 and we can see what love looks
like. We can see what the divine love of God looks like for His
people, right? That He gave His Son, Jesus, who was God in all
ways, in the essence of God, in the reality of God, equal
with God, and even in His humanity, equal with God. He did not take
that something to be grasped and made much of. He did not
come down here to say, look at me, I'm God. He came down here
to say, I am. in the flesh, the Son of Man,
to redeem my people from their sins, sent by the Father to do
His will, not mine." So you see this subjection? See this picture? And I won't get into it because
chapter 2 is all about marriage. It's all about the gospel of
Christ and His church in the picture of husband and wife becoming
one flesh, giving themselves to one another. And so we see all these pictures,
we see all this truth, and we know that the scripture teaches
that what God has given to Israel was just to show them His glory. To show them the perfection of
the One who was to come. Where do you get all this stuff?
Man, Paul wrote about it. He wrote about it in Galatians,
he wrote about it in Hebrews, he wrote about it in Romans, especially
chapter 3 of Romans. It's all defined very clearly. Just read. Just read it. Read
it. God will show it to you. Don't take my word for it. Please. Exodus 20, remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it set apart, to keep it separate. That's what
the word holy means, separate. The word holy does not mean good.
The word holy means separate. Part of that separateness is
that God's righteousness, you know. Keep it separate. Six days you
shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day, It is
a day of rest, it is the seventh day of the Lord your God. You know what he's saying there?
This is not yours. It was created for you, but it's
mine. Jesus talks about that, doesn't
he, in the Gospels. When he's out there, they're
starving, they're hungry, they've been walking, and people didn't
really take care of the disciples in the latter parts of Jesus'
ministry. They were so upset with what was happening, with
coming out of the mouth of Jesus, that people sort of showed up
to watch this stuff burn, not necessarily learn. People love
a good nasty fire, especially when people are trapped inside.
Oh my goodness, are they going to get out? Rubbernecking. I've been to a house fire before,
not a house fire, I've been to a vehicle fire before and watched
somebody perish in it. 30 minutes later they're eating
sandwiches. The firefighters. I'm going. Another day at work. There were 100 people watching
that. I mean, it bothers me still.
That was 27 years ago. People like a fire. People like
to see trials and stress. God says the Sabbath belongs
to me. And I created it for you. And why did God create the Sabbath? You shall not do any work. Your
son shall not work. Your daughter shall not work.
Your male slave or your female slave shall not work. Your cows
can't work. The person that comes and stays
with you better not work. You got this workaholic coming
in on Saturday. When the sun goes down Friday
night, that boy better sit there. You can't take a journey. You
can't walk across the street. You can't light a fire. You can't
wash a dish. You can't fold clothes. You cannot put on or tie your
shoes. You cannot spit on the ground
because when you spit on dirt it becomes mud and mud is farming. You've changed the composition
of the dirt to something that could be used for germination. That's work. And today, today,
literally today, in Reformed Jewish circles, There is a multi-billion dollar
industry of automated things that work. Light switches that
are motion censored. I'm not kidding. Washing machines
that are timed. They set their food up. I mean,
look it up. Look up Sabbath technology. It's not right now, but it was
like. But I mean, there's a lot of
ways. You've got to get around it. Can't push a button. Can't
do this. Can't do that. Why? Why does it matter? Well, we've got
to honor the Lord. What does it mean to honor the
Lord? What does it mean to honor the Lord? To thank Him. To remember
Him. That's it. Thank Him and remember
Him. There are other ways in which
we give Him honor. by doing that. But that's the simplistic thing.
So we stop. He has given us all this. He
has created all things for His purposes. He has given us Jesus
Christ, our righteousness. And so we can take a day away
to stop and listen and be reminded of these things. And so the Sabbath
that was given to Israel is not the same thing that's given to
us. Jesus has been given to us. It's not about a day. The reason
that we worship on the first day of the week, this is the
first day of the week, by the way. If your calendar has Sunday
at the end, it's messed up. Only in your house. Sunday is
one, Monday is two, Saturday is seven. We take the first day
of the week because historically that's what Christians did. Because
99% of them, including the apostles, still went to the what? Still
went to the temples and the tabernacles on Saturday. Why? To preach the
good news of Jesus. It was an open market. It was
an open court. Of course, they didn't bring
the sacrifices like they used to do, but they would get together
when there was an open market, and they would say, hey, you
know, you're here to do the Passover. Hey, you're here to do this.
Oh, you're here to bring your offering. Do you know who the
greatest offering is? Jesus Christ, the righteous.
God gave the Son, and they used the Old Testament prophets who
wrote of Christ to point to Him and proclaim to Him, and God
the Father, or God the Spirit, was in the business of converting
His people in His timing. So then they get together on
the first day of the week to order the priority of assembling
together as the church for the hearing of the gospel, for the
teaching of the scripture, for the understanding and the interests
of one another, and for the ultimate intimacy that thanks God for
who he is and what he's done. So the Sabbath commandments relate
to the very nature that God created all this redemptive purpose and
order in six days, then he stopped because he was finished. Jesus
Christ in Hebrews chapter 1 did all the work of redemption, then
he stopped, he raised himself from the dead, it was finished,
and he sat down at the right hand of majesty. So you see this
picture? Deuteronomy, the second reading
of the law. It's read again, keep the Sabbath,
that's Deuteronomy 5. And Leviticus, Leviticus 23,
same stuff. There's all these commands about
keeping the Sabbath. And beloved, I don't know how
many centuries it is, but it's more than... I don't know how many centuries
it is. 30? 40? Sabbath laws. But what is the
Sabbath really? It's the pinnacle of creation. It's the point of it. It's the
reason that we are here today. It's because of the Sabbath.
Because the rest of God, because of the promises of God. This
darkness in Genesis 1 has been overcome by the light of God's
intersecting and creating something that can see him. This divine
light who is Christ Jesus puts an end to that which is dark
and nothing. And so God then arrests the darkness
and contains it. And then He creates all things,
and all of these things are done and finished and ordered so that
He can be seen in the picture of redemption. And in day 1,
2, and 3, God is creating order out of nothing, out of chaos,
out of destruction, out of wilderness. In days 4, 5, and 6, He is creating
things to live there. Day 7, He shows that He's finished. And then when we get later into
Genesis 2, a lot of people, I'll go ahead and say this to you,
a lot of people throughout history have said, well, this is the
creation of the world and everything in it, and then chapter 2 is
another creation. I'm going to go ahead and tell
you, it's very, very popular. Very popular. Why? Because that's
what people want to do. They want to create their own
narrative. And it makes good sense when
we haven't read scripture. Because people can create arguments
that have biblical anchors but are out of context. And then
we go, That's why so many people think
that God said He'll help those who help themselves. The only
person out there that helps themselves is a thief. And according to
the New Testament, they were hanged on a cross. He's helping
them. I don't know. So in this Genesis account, in
this rest, we need to understand that he's talking and relating
everything concerning Christ in the gospel as the purpose
of all life. God set apart this day as a picture
of the true Sabbath rest that is in Jesus Christ. And then
he gave the commands to Israel. I mean, look at, just in Genesis,
I mean, but you look at the Old Testament. You look at the Pentateuch.
Look at the first five books of the Bible. You see all of
these festivals and these feasts and all of these things and all
of this instruction and building of the tabernacle and the wilderness
and all the things there. I mean, imagine you wake up in
the morning and part of God's provision is the man on the ground
that sustains your life but you complain because as a slave and
as a dead person you ate better and that's why in John chapter
6 the Jews there for that feast were looking for that manna that
was supposedly by according to the missionary and according
to Jewish tradition and superstition there was supposed to be a piece
of manna in the Ark of the Covenant so they wanted to see it they
wanted Jesus to hold up this manna so that they would believe
that he really came from God because that was the superstition.
That was the sign that they knew that he was coming. So what sign
do you bring? You know he just fed all of them
out of a sack lunch, right? And then he gathered up 12 baskets
of leftovers that none would be lost. That's the verbiage
of our Savior, that none would be lost. I gather it all up in
fullness, in completeness. This is not an accident. It's
got purpose behind it. So as we begin to see then the
unfolding of the generations of the heavens and the earth
as they were created, the day the Lord made the heavens and the
earth, when God created man and woman, the scripture, the Spirit
of God wanted to expressly detail that for a lot of reasons. Because
the giving of the people of God to Jesus Christ is the giving
of Eve to the husband. Who gives this woman? It's not
misogyny. It's glory. It's just a picture. Because
then we see Paul telling Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 that the husband
gives himself to his wife. The wife gives herself to the
husband. They become one. Each of them
looking after the concerns and the needs and the cares of the
other so that in that same way, their needs are met, their cares
are met, their life together is a picture of the gospel who
Jesus as God came down to be a creation put into a body that
he made for himself becoming like a creation. Then the elect
being given to him and he dying on the cross on their behalf
as a substitute to satisfy the wrath of God for them. Then raising
himself up so that he would say I'm going to bring you where
I am I read Hosea last week. Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. I mean, when you think about
it, you think about Gomer and what God told Hosea to do. Go find a prostitute and take
her as a wife. And she's going to be unfaithful.
But you don't lose her. Don't send her away. That's the
picture of what God has done with His church. I hate to use
the term church because the word church means institution. But
we know what it means. His bride, His body. This seventh day, this rest has
no end. This chaos has been shut down. But beloved, the picture of the
gospel is still shown. Because faith in Jesus Christ
is resting in Him. How do I know that I really believe?
Are you resting in Christ? Because that's what faith, that's
what believing in Christ is. You're satisfied. You're settled.
It's not about the affections of your heart. Those things go
up and down. Some days you really love Jesus emotionally and some
days you're like, oh, I hope He's not looking. But He is,
He knows. Some days we think we're doing
very well and then God shows us just how well we're not. So
that we are reminded that it is only by His grace that we
are saved. And so faith truly does understand
that God is the creator of salvation, that God is sovereign in salvation
because that's the point of creation, that He's sovereign in creation.
He's sovereign in creating life out of nothing and creating a
place and a purpose and order so that life may live. This is
the point. So that faith given to us by
God, being taught by the Spirit of God, literally sits still
and knows that He is who He says He is. And beloved, we learn. Our children learn new things.
We learn new things and new ideas and new understanding. I don't
necessarily want to say new ideas, but you know what I mean. We
come to the knowledge of what the Bible teaches. I mean, how
many of us have really studied 2 Samuel in the last year? It's good stuff. It's gospel,
gospel, gospel, gospel, gospel, gospel. Gospel pictures. You know David and Goliath, right? It's not about overcoming our
obstacles. It's about Christ. I mean, it's so Christocentric,
it's so much Christ in the Old Testament that it's very easy
to go, well, this isn't even true at all. These are just made
up stories so it'll fit the gospel narrative. The beauty of that
is that it can't be so because it wasn't written at the same
time. These are historical things written in a way in which they
illustrate Jesus. The Christ, the Messiah. Don't
ever forget that the word Christ and Messiah are the same word.
One is a transliteration from another. They're both transliterations.
Messiah is an English transliteration from Meshach, which is Hebrew.
And Christ is a transliteration of the Christos, which is Greek.
Christos. Just transliterated words. They
mean the same thing. So in this disorder, God has
become the Savior. He has become the Creator. He
has become the One who has given life. He has become the One who
has given His light. And He has given it to His creation.
And He's promised it, as we'll see in chapter 3, to His elect
people through the Son, Jesus Christ. But beloved, this great
order and the creation and everything in it was perfect. It was absolutely
good. It was blessed by God. And it was there that it may
be multiplied. But this cycle of darkness and
chaos continues. God did not intend to create
a world that's perfect and we mess it up. I've said that before
but I'll say it again. He continued to show himself faithful to be
the sustainer of true life in the midst of death. To be the
one who gives true order and light in the midst of darkness
and chaos. And in the garden, which all was perfect, He created
it was good. There was evening and there was
morning, the eighth day. Think about it. And so this special creation
of man and woman and this understanding of it, Genesis 3, chaos just
starts back up. Chaos just stirs its ugly head. The serpent enters into the garden
and we know the rest. God curses His creation. Then God promises that out of
this curse, out of this darkness, out of this chaos, out of this
death, He will be the life bringer through the seed of the woman
who will crush the work of the devil, the head of the serpent,
and so on and so forth. So what are we waiting for? What
are we waiting for? What is glorification really
all about? I never even finished that little
phrase because I got on this contextual higher criticism guard.
It's about resting forever without ever seeing chaos again. There'll
be no more disorder and chaos in our minds. There'll be no
more chaos and disorder in our lives. There'll be no more chaos
and disorder in our joints, our eyes, our bodies, our pocketbooks,
our children, our household, our paint. There'll be no more
chaos and disorder with relationships. There'll be no more chaos and
disorder at all because God will show and his promise will be
fulfilled that as he has created the world from nothing and out
of order, I mean, made order out of disorder, because He has
created a people, even in their disorder and destruction, He
will save them. He has done so in Christ, and
Christ then overcame the darkness, because He is, in His righteousness,
able to take His life up and put it down. He was raised alive,
and there is a promise that one day we will be like Him, and
we will be with Him. And so what is our job? To give
glory and honor to Him by thanking Him for all of it. For the bad,
the good, the ugly. Thanking Him that He has a purpose
in all of it. Thanking Him that He is sovereign over all of it.
And praying that His will would be done. You know that's often
an addendum to our prayers. Sometimes I think it needs to
be the only prayer we pray. Not, Father do this, do that.
You ever tell God what He needs to do? Oh my goodness, I have
prayed those prayers. And you're usually in a pretty
good place emotionally and spiritually. You feel like you want to approach
the Lord and just give him a list. Give him a laundry list of things
he already knows and how he should do it. Father, I need you to
do this and you should do it like this. And Father calls this
person. Father, have your way. You know what's happening. Have
your way. It's a desperate cry. It's a resting faith. It's a
hope that never fails. In His name is Jesus Christ.
And this is where we're going, beloved. We're going to talk
about what it means to be blessed next week as we get into the creation of
Adam and Eve. And just rejoice. Just rejoice in the finished
work of Christ because He will give us the promises that He's
promised. And He cannot fail. Let's prepare
our hearts for the Lord's table. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for the truth
of hope, of rest, of the Sabbath. And Lord, thank you for showing
us that this world is not what it's all about. And Lord, help
us to be patient and thankful and grateful. Lord, help us to live in a way
that is profitable amongst each other, not asking to get our
own way, not putting conditions on the things that you've given
us and the way in which you've taught us, but Lord, to just
be settled in our spirit. Lord, we cannot change the hearts
of other people, but you can, so we pray that you would. We
pray that you would bring the elect to the truth of the gospel,
that we would share it and that you would cause them to believe. Father, that you would give wisdom
and peace that surpasses every bit of our understanding as we
praise you, as we pray for each other, Lord, as we sit and rest
by the faith that you have given us by your Spirit. You have granted
us this peace. And out of this peace, Father,
we find the joy of Jesus Christ who gave himself for us, who
died in our place, whose righteousness has been given to our account. So we are perfect before you,
though we are not in reality. We are before you. Though our
flesh is much a problem, often a problem. Lord, we know that
you have overcome death, through the death of Jesus. You have
set aside our sins and placed it upon him. Father, you are at rest. Father,
you are at rest in your redemptive work. You are at rest in your
wrath that you poured out on your son. You are satisfied,
so help us also to be satisfied in Christ. And as we take of
these things, as we taste and sense these things that we put
into our mouth and remember what Christ has taught us about these
things, and that we should remember His body, Lord, broken for us
and His blood spilled for us. Lord, help us to know that we
are together in Christ. We are one in Christ. That's
why we do these things together, to remember that we are a body. and individually members of it. Father, we thank you for your
grace toward us and your patience toward us. And we thank you for
these things in Christ. Amen.