Sweet Rest for the Labourer

Sweet Rest for the Labourer << Genesis 2 >> King James Version

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1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

4These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 6But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

18And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 20And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Sermon

We carry on in our study of Genesis... the last 2 sermons have been on the first chapter, and today we focus on the second chapter.

Those of us who are young men will particularly enjoy the bit about women being created, for what would we be without the ladies?

As I mentioned in my last sermon on the topic, The book of Genesis was written by Moses many many years after, but that doesn’t in any way mean that the stuff mentioned in this book is inaccurate, because Moses talked with God, and thus had first hand information about the creation, and all occurrences mentioned in this great book.

1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

In the first chapter we have been studying the first 6 days Sunday through to Friday, where God creates the world as we know it. This was a literal 6 days, not millions of years as the evolutionists would like us to believe.

Notice it says that the work was “finished”. God doesn’t pick up a task and leave it uncompleted. God sees His work through from the start to the finish. That’s not like us is it? We often start a task and we don’t complete it. I’ve often thought of doing some great work for God, and I start it, perhaps even get most of the way through, but then I get bored, or I get so busy with other things that I just kind of forget about it. Does that sound familiar to any of you?

I admire the Asian culture, like the Chinese and the Japanese. They find what they are good at, then they dedicate their whole life to it, they work day and night perfecting themselves, even lock themselves in a room. That’s dedication isn’t it?

I think that there’s something missing in our western culture. We seem to start things, then move onto the next thing then onto the next, never finishing a task. We all seem to have attention problems. But the problem is that we see life as entertainment rather than work.

Although there is some truth in the phrase “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy”, I think we can definitely afford to work a little bit harder!

2And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

The seventh day was the Saturday.

This doesn’t mean that we should have our rest on the Saturday instead of the Sunday. The Jews have their Sabbath on Saturday, but Christians have their day of rest on the Sunday. The reason that we changed from the Saturday to the Sunday was because that Jesus rose from the dead on the Sunday, and we want to be always reminded about that when we go to church on the Sunday.

Notice that God created a day of rest. ONE day, not a little rest at the end of each day. So what I’m saying is that on the weekdays Monday to Saturday, we should work from the time that we wake up to the time that we go to sleep, and on Sunday we should have the day completely free, as this is the best way to use your time. Remember God knows best, and if He thought that we needed one whole day off, then we really do need one day off!

So to work six days a week, doesn’t mean that we need to actually get a job that will allow us to work 16 hours every day except Sunday. Bible study and prayer can count as work which you can do in your “free time” in the week. Or maybe you might have a bit of house work to do, or looking after the children?

3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

The word here: “Sanctified”, means that God made the Sunday HOLY. That means that we should only do Christian related things on the Sunday, although in reality I believe that our whole life should be holy. If what you are doing doesn’t have anything to do with Christ, than I really don’t think you should be doing it!

You know, on that seventh day’s rest, I think the Lord looked on all that He had done, and was completely satisfied. Don’t you just feel great when you go to sleep after a hard day’s work? The Bible says that the rest of the labouring man is sweet. Let’s be labouring men, then when we get to Sunday, and we look at the week that has passed, we can see all and be satisfied as our Lord was in this passage.

What a blessing!

4These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

This is the true word of God, and by this we know that all that He says is true. This account we have just read of the first seven days of this world is exactly how it happened, there are no exaggerations!

5And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

There was no rain at the beginning, only the mist that we read of in the following verse. That’s a bit different.

We are not told of rain coming until; God sent the flood in the time of Noah. We have reason to believe that the flood was the first time that it ever rained, because the rainbow was first created at the time of the flood, and the rain will often cause a rainbow, so it is quite likely that the rain of the flood was the first ever rain.

According to someone’s calculations, Adam died about 150 years before the flood, and that the flood was about 1000 years after the creation. I haven’t had the opportunity to check the validity of these facts though.

6But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

I’m guessing that it must have been very hot in the Garden of Eden, and the mist would have come from the river mentioned in the following verses.

7And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

We were man from dust at the beginning, but when our time comes our bodies will become dust again. Solemn thought!

The breath of life! As Christians we should live and breathe God. When we breathe in, we take in to our bodies all the good oxygen and all from the air, which is like reading the bible. Breathing in is also called inspiring.

When we breathe out, that is like praying to God. Not that we cannot breath out unless we have first breathed in, and so in the same way, we cannot pray to God without reading his Word. Breathing out is also called Expiring.

So we should inspire God’s word, and expire prayer!

“A living soul”

God didn’t create us like the animals, which have no soul, who just cease existing when they die. We have a soul that just keeps on living.

8And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

You know, God was so kind to us, to put us in the most beautiful part of His creation. But sadly, as we will read in chapter 3, we kind of spat in God’s face a bit and He removed His garden from us. Just remember to be thankful for all the blessings that God sends your way.

9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God provides for all our needs, why do we still worry about tomorrow when we have such a great God that will look after all our needs?

Notice that right in the middle of all this beauty, God places two very special trees. The tree of Life and the tree of Knowledge. We are going to learn more about these trees later, but just for now, think to yourself, Which of the two trees would you have taken from? Are you looking for life? Or are you the kind of person that’s always very curious and wants to know everything all the time? I’m not saying that one’s better than the other at this present time, but we will look more in depth in out next section of this chapter. That’s all for now.

The Lord Bless you all

Amen

The Christian Workout

The Christian Workout

Ø Monday:

Love

Ø Tuesday:

Joy

Ø Wednesday:

Peace

Ø Thursday:

Spreading the Gospel

Ø Friday:

Poor Relief

Ø Saturday:

Prayer

Ø Sunday:

Rest

The Idea is to build up Christian muscles which are these 6 virtues followed by a day of rest. If you have ever been to the gym to build muscles or just to tone up, you will have been given a similar workout routine, working on Back, Chest, Biceps, Triceps, Shoulders, and Legs, with some cardio and a warm-up to start with. And this new method has a similar idea.

I have called this devotional method “the Christian Workout” solely because of it’s being based on a gym workout system.

I will be giving training advice on my new Workout blog http://www.thechristianworkout.blogspot.com/ but for now here is a bit of a starter:

On Monday our theme is Love:

I’m presuming that you will all be beginners for now; perhaps you are quite new to the Christian faith.

Every morning should start off with a Bible reading and a prayer, perhaps you could read 1 Corinthians 13 which is a great chapter, written by the Apostle Paul, completely devoted to love. Then you could pray that God will teach you how to love throughout the day.

Maybe you go to work, is there anyone you don’t like at work? Someone maybe you find hard to get along with? A great show of love would be to act courteously with them, be kind, and try and show a loving spirit. Remember God told us to love our enemies!

If you have time later, maybe you could pick up your study Bible, and look at all the themes of Love.

Love is the main theme in the Bible, it was all for love that Jesus came to Earth to save us, we would do well to truly understand this principle!

And before going to bed, don’t forget to read your Bible and pray again!

On Tuesday, our theme is Joy:

A great passage to read in the morning would be the Epistle to the Philippians, it’s all about Joy. Then you can pray to God that you will be given joy throughout the day.

Then what ever you do, see if you can keep smiling non-stop throughout the day. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t succeed, it takes a long time to build up your spiritual muscles. Do the best you can this week and hopefully next week you will be doing much better.

It won’t hurt to smile on the day’s that isn’t Tuesday, Tuesday is just the day when we really focus on Joy, a Christian should always have each of these principles in the Christian Workout at all times! But the idea of the workout is to encourage us to focus on these topics.

A Christian is a saved soul; nothing in this world that can ever happen to them should be able to make them sad or depressed!

On Wednesday our theme is Peace:

This one is really, really hard! Peace isn’t something easily acquired, like love and joy, we might only be able to achieve a little in a day, but we must pray that although we only achieve little, that God would help us to improve every week.

Is your job stressful? This inner peace can make all the difference.

I am no expert in Peace, I do not claim to have received much of it, but if we look in the Bible, doubtless we will be able to find the answers. I recommend that you buy yourself a good study Bible, and a concordance, just look through each of those reference to peace, look at examples of how people received peace and you will find the Bible an excellent resource.

And remember always read your Bible and pray.

On Thursday our theme is Spreading the Gospel:

This is one for every Christian, it’s the great commission found at the end of Matthew, preaching is not just for preachers, if you truly love God and are truly grateful for Him dying to save you, you will want to take every opportunity to talk to people about Him. But the problem is that we are all very fearful people, and we are afraid that people will make fun of us because we are Christians. So I have devoted Thursday to talking to people about Jesus.

In the morning you could read some chapters from the book of Acts, where the apostles told people about Jesus, ask for God’s help to open your mouth.

If you are anything like I used to be, you probably never even mentioned to your friends that you are a Christian, so a great start for you would be to let it slip out in conversation that you are a Christian, they won’t tear you to pieces, the hardest bit is overcoming yourself.

If you are an experienced Christian you might want to strike up a conversation with someone, and tell them about what Jesus means to you.

And remember, a good Christian life is as good an example as any, be kind and loving to all, and be certain to never do anything that God would not approve of.

On Friday, our theme is Poor Relief:

Give money to charity, if you have a good income you might want to set aside a sum of money each month for charities. Remember God loveth the cheerful giver!

Maybe you have some unwanted items hanging around the house, why not take them down to your local charity store.

Read the Gospels, you will see what love Jesus had to the poor.

Pray for the poor, prayer can do more than all the money in the world! But don’t think that you can pray and then you are absolved from financial contribution, that’s like the Pharisees that say one thing and do another.

As always, Bible study and prayer are invaluable!

On Saturday our theme is Prayer:

Prayer is of number 1 importance, and should be exercised every day, that and Bible Study form the Spiritual cardio, while the others form the spiritual muscle building.

But, we have set aside Saturday as a special day of prayer, see how long you can pray for with feeling. Don’t just say words, you have to really mean them, you must be passionate.

Pray for those close to you, pray for your natural and spiritual teachers, pray for important people in every walk of life, pray for the week and infirm, pray that the Lord would make you grow in grace and in the knowledge of Him, and most of all pray that God would be glorified.

A couple scripture passages that you might want to focus on is The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, and Jesus’ prayer in John 17.

There is much study that can be done on the matter of prayer, and much experience taken from simply pouring out your heart before God!

And finally on Sunday our theme is Rest:

Basically there is no theme, you just worship God as He ought to be worshipped, go to Church, sing praises just totally let God take over your life.

Remember God made the Sabbath for man and not man for the Sabbath, you should learn to enjoy your Sundays, do things that you want to do, but be certain that it’s all to do with God!

So just a few tips:

When building up your spiritual muscles, always work to your limit, love until you can love no more, be joyful until you have run out of joy, be perfectly peaceful until there is no peace left in you, and so on. Your spiritual muscles will only grow in they are pushed to their limits.

If you are new, don’t be disheartened if you feel like you are not achieving anything, everyone starts from somewhere.

And never let this workout become a burden to you, try and enjoy it. If it becomes a burden to you and makes you want to give up you Christianity it is of no use!

And remember all things should be done as unto The Lord bringing all honour and glory to His precious name!

Please check the blog mentioned above for more advice, and don’t hesitate to email me on cassie.holmes@hotmail.co.uk if you need advice or if you have any advice for me, or you just want to tell us how the workout scheme has blessed your life.

I pray the Lord would bless you,

Michael Buckingham.