The day began very well, like so many other days. I got up, walked, read some scripture passages, said my prayers. It was the start to what I anticipated being a good day. Then it happened. Right after my morning devotions I heard some news that changed my whole outlook on the day. I heard some information about an event which I needed to attend that evening. This information led me to believe that the event might not go very well. Worse yet, there appeared to be nothing that I could do about it. But I wanted to put some creative energy into solving the problem——fixing the event so that it would be more palatable to me. I wanted to do something to make it better. The whole situation was complicated by the fact that this event involved people that I loved and wanted to protect from disappointment and hardship. What creative energy, what good work, could I do, I wondered, that would make everything all better? Well, sadly I quickly concluded that there was really nothing for me to do. But I could find no rest in that conclusion. My whole day was dominated by worry, anxiety and stress about this event that was coming up that was beyond my control. I could find no rest.
Do you ever have days like that? I am sure you do. Sometimes it is not so much our physical work and busyness that drain us and rob us of rest, but our own anxiety. In fact, I submit to you that one of our key difficulties in finding real rest, is that we either do not understand or refuse to embrace the rhythm of God’s creation. To put it another way, we miss some key beats of God’s creative music and therefore, we can never dance to the rhythm of God’s good rest.
Here’s what I mean. Look at Genesis One with me. Creation has a number of key beats that are obvious. These are repetitive beats that drive the rhythm of the first six days of creation. We read repetitively that there is evening and there is morning, the first day … there is evening and there is morning, the second day … there is evening and there is morning the third day … and on it goes through the first six days of creation. It’s a continuous beat. Likewise, we hear the beat of goodness. Over and over again we hear, "God saw what he had made and it was good … it was good … it was good. Finally, in Genesis One, we hear the constant beat of a creating God speaking and instantly it is so. These repeated beats drive the rhythmic flow of the passage all the way until the seventh day. But, on the seventh day, those other beats disappear and we are left with the simple beat of rest. God rests. Yet, tragically we often skip or miss the beat. Without the beat of rest, we get the entire rhythm wrong. We need to get the beat.
Our need to get the beat reminds me of a 1981 hit song by the Go—Go’s. They were what we called in those days a "new wave, girl band." One of their first hits was called, "We Got the Beat." It went like this, "We got the beat, we got the beat, we got the beat, yeah, we got the beat." In spite of the poor grammar of the song, and regardless of whether you have a taste for pop music, you can’t miss the point of their song. Some people got the beat and that is good! But a whole lot of other people don’t got the beat, and that is their loss. Well, there are a whole lot of us that just plain aren’t in sync with the foundational beat of rest in the rhythm of God’s creation.
Anyone who has ever played, sung, or even listened to music knows how important it is to count each beat. If you miss a beat, even a beat of rest where no musical note is sounded, the whole rhythm is lost. Well, the rhythm of God’s creation has an important beat of rest that we must not miss.
So, what I am suggesting to you is that God’s rest on the seventh day provides the key beat for the rhythm of creation. In fact, the rhythm that God wants us to live could even be called a rhythm of rest because the beats of working and creating come naturally to many of us, but not so with true spiritual rest. Without this deep, spiritual, and creative rest at the core of our lives, we will never get the divine beat; we will live our lives badly out of tune, singing in the wrong key, hitting off pitch notes and failing to grasp the rhythm of complete rest in our Creator.
Think about it. God doesn’t need to rest on the seventh day. He is, after all, God Almighty. He could work a gazillion days in a row without ever getting tired, and yet he rests on the seventh day so that the rhythm of life reaches its crescendo in a powerful note of rest. Why? If God doesn’t need rest, why rest? Could it be that God is teaching us something here?
When I think of my own failure to find rest is it almost always because I decide that I need to do something, some creative work that I think will maintain balance in my life or fix an imbalance. In other words, I skip, ignore, or even find it impossible to follow the beat of rest, because I am so busy following all the other beats of life. I trust in my ability to hit all the right notes so that when there is no note, only a beat of rest, I blow right past it tooting the horn of my necessity and hard work. But then come those times like I just described a couple of minutes ago where no amount of creative energy or hard work can make matters better. That’s when it’s hard to rest.
Some of you listening have just gone through weeks where rest seemed almost impossible precisely because there was no work to be done, no creative plan to fix things. I think you know the sort of things that rob us of rest: The sudden death of a brother—in—law … or the medical technician calls as says there has been an "anomaly" in your mammogram and so he wants you to come back for a second mammogram next week … or you come to the painful recognition that your divorce is final … or you read in the newspaper that your company is going to yet again cut back hundreds of jobs … or the value of your home is dropping … and on and on the list could go. There really is no work to be done to fix these things; no amount of creative energy will make them disappear. The fact that we can’t fix these sorts of situations is so frustrating that we are exhausted with worry, sorrow and frustration. We have lost the divine rhythm.
It is precisely because of this loss of rhythm that God blessed us with the seventh day of creation. Everything about this seventh day in our Biblical text highlights its importance. First, the Lord blesses the seventh day. This in itself is remarkable because scripture usually does not speak of God blessing something like a day. God blesses people, like Adam and Eve, Noah and his family, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—but not particular days. Just the seventh day gets a blessing. What could this blessing mean? Well, to be sure part of the blessing is found in the second profound truth that highlights the importance of this day of rest. That is, God declares this blessed day of rest holy. Once again, we must remember that it is usually people, places or religious objects, or God himself that are declared holy. But here the seventh day is declared holy. So, the seventh day is a blessed, holy day.
Once again, let’s remind ourselves that it is one, little, powerful, and divine four—letter—word that gives us the reason for the blessing and the holiness of the seventh day. That word is R—E—S—T rest. God rested on the seventh day. The Spirit who has inspired the writing of this text doesn’t want us to miss the importance, the blessing and the holiness, of rest. God wants us to be in touch with the divine rhythm of creation which always ends in a beat of rest. There is a time to be done with work, a time to rest. There is a time to be done. There is a time to let go and put your trust in God. God has built the beat of rest into his creation rhythm to give us the opportunity to rest in His security.
So once we have understood the importance of the beat of rest, how can we incorporate rest into the rhythm of our lives? I think the answer to that question is simple. We simply need to follow the rhythmic pattern that we see in the text. This rhythmic pattern is creation and work followed by completion and rest—creation and completion, work and rest. Once again, listen to the rhythm: creation and completion, work and rest. The pattern is one of activity and creative work followed by a beat of completion and rest. Remember, as we have seen this rhythm comes right from our text. God moves from the six days of creation to a day of completion—a day when he is done with his work. Creation and completion. The text says, that on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Work and rest. The music of activity followed by the beat of rest.
In spite of the profound simplicity of this pattern most of us do not follow that rhythmic pattern in our lives. Most of us are better at following the beat of creation than following the beat of completion. We know how to work hard and even play hard, but to simply be at rest is much more difficult. Most of us like to create; we like to give birth; we like to initiate new projects; we like to work with things that we can get our hands on, or puzzles that we can solve with our minds. So we work and we create and we are energetic, and we do so much, but when it is time to be done, we don’t want to be done—or we don’t know how to be done. So our rhythm is create, create, create, do, do, do, work, work, work … and there is never the beat of rest, of completion.
Sometimes our difficulty with this rhythmic pattern is that we are perfectionists. Now, I personally only have a passing acquaintance with perfectionism, but the difficulty of perfectionism is that you can never really be done because there is always more to do. There is always another draft that you could write of that proposal. There is always a little more polish to put on the car. There is always one more touchdown pass to throw before a career can be complete. There is always more weeding that can be done in the garden. As soon as you dust your house, you must dust again because dust is eternal! There is always the need to engage one’s creative energy and always work to be done.
This tendency for us to ignore the beat of rest within God’s rhythm doesn’t only leave us tired, but can also lead to various interpersonal difficulties. For example, parents who are not able to let their kids leave the nest, hover over their children squelching the kids’ development and growth. Some of us face great grief as we go through the seasons of life; never ready for one season to be completed, to be done. We are forever living in our past creative work and activity, or looking to the next thing in store, never able to simply be at peace and rest in the completion of a task well done or a season of life well lived. There is a time to be done, to let go, to rest.
Another reason that we have a hard time living in a rhythm that includes a strong beat of rest, is that too many of us believe that it is only our work and activity that gives us meaning, purpose, and identity. The tendency for many of us who have been raised with a strong work ethic is to believe that everything depends on whether we have made something of ourselves or not; whether we have produced something, or whether perhaps we have slacked off and just wasted our lives. Have I done enough? Have I worked hard enough? These are the questions that many of us are conditioned to ask. But again, as Genesis One and Two make clear, while there are six days of work, there is also a day of rest.
Look at the text with me again. The creation account shows God working for six straight days, and so too, our days are filled with God’s good work. We are called to be busy with the work of being parents, children, brothers, sisters, spouses, neighbors, employees and citizens. But on the seventh day, God rested, and so too, our days must be filled with God’s good rest.
This rhythm of creation and completion, work and rest depends on us trusting the Lord our God. When things are completed they are out of our hands and we must rest in God’s strength. And isn’t this trust—filled resting just what Christ wants us to do? That is, to rest in him. This spiritual rest is ultimately what the rhythm of our text is driving toward: The deep rest that we can only find in our Savior, Jesus Christ.
You see, the rest which our text is talking about is not just physical rest. It is the deep spiritual rest that we find, not in our good works or hard efforts, but in Christ alone. Yes, we need to be at physical rest, but even more importantly we need to be at spiritual rest. The spiritual reason for rest is quite simply because none of our work brings us the rest of forgiveness and wholeness that we need. So, Jesus tells us to be at rest in him.
In Jesus’ day the religious leaders of the Jewish people had burdened the people with so many rules, stipulations and laws to follow that it was burdensome work. The people labored under what was called in that day a "yoke" of teaching that had them working night and day and still finding no spiritual rest. They were always falling short. Into this context Jesus comes and speaks his famous words, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Jesus wanted his listeners to understand that it wasn’t their work that saved them from their sin and brokenness, but his work of salvation through his death and resurrection. Jesus did the work of salvation by dying for our sins on the cross. So we can now be at spiritual rest in him.
What Jesus is saying to us is that all of the hard work that gets us so far in life does not earn us God’s deep spiritual rest. His rest is instead, a free gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Put your work and your creative energy to rest by trusting in God through Jesus Christ.
That’s what I needed to do on that day of anxiety that I told you about at the beginning of this sermon. The upcoming event that I was sure was going to go badly and therefore ruminated on all day long, ending up going very well—no thanks to me and all my worry. It turns out that I had been misinformed, both my family and I were blessed by the event. I had lived the entire day out of rhythm and out of sorts. God reminded me again, that I need to rest in him.
So, I want to conclude now by challenging you to hear and live in the powerful beat of God’s rest. Specifically, I want to challenge you in two areas. First, I would like you to picture something in your life that you need to let go of. What matter beyond your control do you now need to give over to God? Once you have the item or issue firmly in mind, let it go, be done. Put your work and your creative energy to rest by trusting in God in that matter. Second, I want you to hear the words of Jesus again, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest." Have you come to Jesus? Have you found the spiritual rest of God’s forgiveness and wholeness through Jesus Christ? If not, pray with me right now for the spiritual rest and salvation of Jesus Christ to fill you.
Let’s pray together.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father,
We thank you for giving us the seventh day, a day of rest in your creation. Help us now, Lord, to find the beat. If we need to let go of something, help us to let go of it. And if we have never found your rest through our savior Jesus Christ, we pray, that you would give us that rest now, today. Give us faith in Jesus, so that we can be in rest with you. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
Paul DeVries
Rev. Paul DeVries, most commonly referred to as “Pastor Paul”, is the Sr. Pastor of Brookside Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is married to Diane (nee Vanden Akker) and the father of four children. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1989 and served for 12 years as the pastor of Unity Christian Reformed Church in Prospect Park, New Jersey. As a pastor his first love and greatest joy comes in the honor of bringing God’‘s Word to his congregation on a weekly basis through his preaching. He enjoys reading, camping with his family, watching his children’‘s sporting events, and working on home improvement projects - inside and outside his home.
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