Gen 1:1-2:4
Do you want to know the future?
Yes! We say. But what if it was terrible – what if awful suffering was waiting for you just around the corner? Would you still want to know?
Probably – at least you could prepare, maybe. But it would certainly be difficult to enjoy life now, knowing what is to come! It would always be in the back of your mind, and anxious gnawing thought, leaving you no peace.
But what if there was a way to change the future? Change the suffering to rejoicing, the sadness to happiness, the gnawing thought which saps your energy to something which fills you with hope and purpose.
Well, it is. We know the future. All of us.
We know that we are made by God.
And we know that our relationship with him is broken. We feel it in the depths of our being. Like when you’ve said something horrible to your parents or your husband or wife and you haven’t made right – you feel the break in relationship. You may try to cover it up with drink or loud laughter or entertainment or drugs or whatever else we use – but it’s there. The relationship is broken, giving us no rest, no peace.
This is how we live. With this deep, gnawing guilt that we are separated from God, and there is nothing we can do to get back to him.
But Genesis gives us hope. Even here, right in the beginning there is hope. V1 says “in the beginning” – and that which has a beginning has an end. And as we saw last week, the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) are carefully structured to keep our focus on what is soon to come. What God has done points to what God will do. The last things will be like the first things. And that gives us hope. It is good news for us. The Bible does not stop after Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve disobey God – no, it continues, there is hope, God will restore all things.
There’s a pointer to that here on the seventh day: it doesn’t end. Notice all the other days – what comes at the end of the day: “and there was evening, and there was morning, the x day”. The seventh day does not have that – it does not end. God’s perfect rest does not end. We’ll explore that idea in more detail in a few minutes.
“The last things will be like the first things” – and today we’re going to get an idea of what those last things will be like. What is coming is what has been: living on new Earth without sin, without evil, in perfect harmony with God, each other, and our world. That is the promise we look forward to, the prize won for us by Jesus on the cross. That is our hope. What does this puny life matter with its small crude pleasures and its passing and light suffering: we have all of eternity to rejoice with our Heavenly Father!
It will be like it was in the beginning: Adam and Eve at peace with God, at peace with each other, at peace with the world, ruling over the world with wisdom, meeting with God as he walked in the garden in the cool of the day. Naked, and without shame. Knowing and being known intimately, completely, and being fully loved.
Our future is marked by these two words: rest, and relationship. Along the way we’re going to examine the Trinity: that God is three Persons in One. So, like last week, get your thinking caps on, because this is solid food for the mind!
1. Rest and relationship
Ge 2:1–3 So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. 2 On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
God had finished his work of creation. Everything was completed. Everything was “very good” (1:31), because everything was as it should be. It was all in accordance with his plan. So God rested. And we get an idea of what God was doing with his rest in chapter 3:8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden.
What a beautiful picture we have painted here. God walking in the cool of the day in the garden he had created, with the people he had created. Until one day they weren’t there – they were hiding from him because they broke his word. But we’ll look at that in 2 weeks time. For now just notice that everything was at peace. Rest means at peace in our relationships – with God, with each other, with creation. Everything was as it should be. And it was “very good”
Think about your best rest. It’s not being unemployed, or being a layabout, or so rich you have nothing to do. That’s not restful, because we were designed to work, like God. The best rest is when all hard work is done, when everything is as it should be, nothing hanging over you – that is rest. Satisfaction. Or a holiday, when you finally spend some uninterrupted time together, nothing pulling you away. Just time to enjoy each other’s company. We had that this summer when we took the kids on Pirate boat trip to Denmark. So fun just to relax together. Enjoy being together, hanging out.
But when relationships are broken – when you are out of relationship with someone – there is no rest. Conflict, arguing – that’s not restful. War. Not restful. Manipulation, gossip, back-biting – not restful. Rest and relationships are linked.
The theme of rest is a huge one found throughout the Old Testament. We are not at rest, our rest was broken – we broke it when we disobeyed God. But God has made a way back! The last things will be like the first things. We’ll see now that God’s rest is linked with God’s rescue of his people. God’s rest is linked to relationship. And then we’ll see that God’s relationship with his people is a reflection of himself. He is one God in three persons.
Let’s look at relationship first, and then finish off looking at God’s rest which will take us through the Bible, through God rescuing his people Israel, to the Cross of Jesus Christ, and beyond the Cross to the glorious hope of the Heavenly City filled with the glory of God.
2. Perfect relationship
Why did God make people? The Bible’s answer is “God made people because God wanted to make people”. God is God and does what he wants, and what he wants, happens. He is God!
But have you heard “God made us because he was lonely” or “God wanted some friends”? Probably! And it’s nonsense. There is never any hint at all in the Bible that God made us because he was lonely. That’s the kind of simple made-up answers some well-meaning Sunday school teachers tell their children. “God was all alone and was sad. So he made his friends. We are supposed to be friends with God. And God gets sad when we ignore him.”
It’s rubbish. And although it often comes from good motives it is a dangerous lie. It reduces God to the level of a lonely old man, with a bit of magical powers – and it makes Him dependent on us. And the child begins to think “Well, I’ll sulk, and manipulate God into doing things for me just like I do with Mom and Dad”.
If God needs us – who’s God?
No, the reality is much better, much wilder, much more mind-blowing. God is not, was not, and has never been lonely. God is in a perfect relationship with himself.
And we are a reflection of that. Ever wonder why we are made “in God’s image”? Why we are made male and female. Why two different beings? Because that reflects God: the Father, and the Son, the Spirit the love-bond between them. Like a husband and wife and their undying love for each other. So united, they are as one. That’s kind of like the reflection of the Trinity. God is Three Persons in One.
Makes sense? No! But it’s true. The marriage illustration is a good one, but no illustration is really good enough to explain the Trinity. I have heard of water: one thing, but three forms ice, liquid, steam. But that sounds like God is just changing himself from one thing to another – and we know that Jesus prays to the Father while the Spirit comes upon him – all three are separate persons. So that doesn’t work.
Or we get an idea like the three-headed ogre. But the Father, Son and Spirit are three independent persons, bound so strongly in their perfect love that they are as one. Jesus said “I choose to lay down my life and to take it up. My Father loves me because I lay down my life.” (John 10:17.18) “Father, not my will but yours” (Mark 14:36). Perfect love, perfect submission. No compulsion here. They are not forced to work together because they share the same body. They are not three parts of a whole. Each is fully God. Jesus, the Son, is God. Fully God. “All the fullness of the deity dwells in Him” (Col 2:9). The Holy Spirit is God, fully God “I will send you my Spirit, and I will live in you” John 14:17 (For the Spirit to live in us means Jesus lives in us).
God is Three. God is One. This is simply true. God the Father is God. God the Son is God. God the Holy Spirit is God. God is Father, Son and Spirit, One God.
This is solid food. But you didn’t expect knowledge about God to be simple, did you? When is reality ever simple? Look at light. Easy enough. But then you test light and sometimes it acts like a waveform, and sometimes like a stream of particles. It’s those two things at the same time. Woah. How? Nobody knows. It’s a mystery. The reality of God is a glorious, curious mystery.
But the Trinity is vital to understand. From before time in all eternity God has been at rest within himself. He is in perfect relationship with himself. He needs no other. The glorious message of the Bible is that he made us to share in that perfect relationship – to be at rest with him. As Jesus says in John 14: 20 When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.
In Christ we can know God. In Christ we become what we were made for: to be in relationship with God.
Ge 1:26–27 (NLT) Then God said, “Let us (Trinity) make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
The creation of man is different to all the other acts of creation. God’s command in v26 is not “Let there be …” (impersonal third person) but rather the more personal “Let us make.”
The other animals are made “according to its kind” or “of the same kind” – the man and the woman were made “in our [God’s] image”. Man’s image is not simply of himself; he also shares a likeness to his Creator.
Another difference is that the creation of man is specifically noted as “male and female” (v.27). We are made as relational beings, made for each other - emphasised again in chapter 2 with the woman being made for the man as a suitable companion. We are made for relationship. And in that we reflect the Godhead. He is in perfect relationship. We are designed for perfect relationship.
We have also been given responsibility for God’s creation. We are to reign over all other living creatures: sky, sea, and land creatures. Like God, we have a relationship with creation. We are designed to be in relationship with Him, with each other, and with our world.
Isn’t that what we want to experience – harmony with all of life? At peace. At rest. Rest reflects the relationships in the Trinity. So let’s now look at the theme of rest as it unfolds throughout the Bible, starting here in Genesis 2.
3. Perfect Rest
Gen 2:2 On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
God rested on the seventh day, and, as I said earlier, the seventh day never ends. The day of rest, of perfect harmony in relation to God and his creation – that day is never-ending. There is no “and it was evening, it was morning, the seventh day”. Thankfully, even after Adam and Eve sin against God, the text does not say “and it was evening, it was morning, the seventh day” – instead we’re promised in 3:15 that a saviour will be born to crush evil and restore the broken rest.
I’m going to give you now a brief Biblical Theology of rest – tracing this idea of rest through the Bible.
In Exodus 20:8-11 (pg47) this idea of rest comes up again, in the Ten Commandments. Listen “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the LORD your God.” Why should God’s people rest one day out of seven? Listen to the reason “11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”
We are to rest on the seventh day to remind us that GOD rested on the seventh day. It reminds us of his rest. It reminds us that we are out of relationship with him and that we need that relationship restored. It reminds us that in Christ we can enter his rest. It reminds us of our hope for the future: the world restored to its former glory, all of us together, united, at peace with God, with each other, with nature.
In Deuteronomy 5 (pg112) the Ten Commandments are repeated – but this time the reason for keeping the Sabbath, that is remembering the day of rest, is different. Listen carefully. Dt 5:12–15 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. 13 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the LORD your God.” And here’s the reason: 15 Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, but the LORD your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the LORD your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day.
God’s rest is now linked to God’s rescue. Because the real problem in remembering God’s rest is that we remember that we’ve been thrown out of it! We’re no longer at rest in the Garden of Eden, but we are outside the Garden, outside Paradise, in a world filled with conflict and broken relationships and unrest. So God says “Remember the Sabbath day, remember that I am a rescuing God”. God’s rescue plan is linked to his rest.
In Deut 12:10 we read that in the Promised Land God will give his people rest pointing forward to the rest we will have in Heaven.
So how will God achieve his rest? How will God bring sinful people – we who are the cause of all the un-rest – how will He bring us into His rest? Through a great rescue, the great rescue that the Exodus pointed towards: Jesus, the Christ, on the Cross, giving his blood so that we sinners could be made right with God.
That is why Jesus said “I am the Lord of Sabbath”. Mark 2:27–28 (pg 600) Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!”
The Sabbath was made for man. It reminds us we need our relationship with God restored, and it points to our rescue in Christ! Christ is the Lord of the Sabbath both because he is the creator of the Sabbath and because he is the fulfilment of the Sabbath. We find Sabbath rest only in Christ. Through his death we have been reconciled to God. We are at peace with Him. Our relationship restored. 1 Pet 3:18 (NIV) For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
In Christ, we can enter God’s rest, through faith in Him. Hebrews 4 (pg728) reminds us that His “rest has been ready since he made the world. 4 We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” (Heb 4:3-4) and in v7 it says God set [a] time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”
Don’t harden your hearts, because then the future is one of broken relationships in all eternity – something the Bible calls Hell. Imagine being cut off from God forever.
But today, today we are being invited to experience the love God has within Himself. That same love the Father lavishes on the Son, he will lavish on those who are in Christ. Eternal rest. Eternal peace.
And if you are a Christian, that is our destiny! So be encouraged – no matter what suffering or hardship you endure in this life, no matter what you are called to give up to follow Christ, no matter how many hours you spend serving, or money you give, or ridicule you endure, or friends you lose for Christ – our rest awaits. Perfect harmony.
I’ll let the Bible have the final word on rest. The last book of the Bible, Revelation, where we see that the last things are like the first things (only better). The promise given in Genesis, now fulfilled.
Rev 21:1-5 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” 5 And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!”
He will live with us, and we will be his people. Perfect relationship. Perfect rest. What a merciful and glorious God we serve!
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