I love you Lord.
Sorry, I just always a song on my lips. I was and well I was actually gonna start singing amen.
Cindy was mentioning that that that's a song that was always sung, but the church I grew up at like we'd have
we'd have potlucks down in the basement and
it's where I don't know y'all I don't I don't eat them very often anymore, but I could I could
kill a few egg salad sandwiches and I feel like maybe it's just a memory, but I feel like we would always say the prayer and then someone would say amen and then we would all sing the amen song and that would happen at church camp and stuff like that.
So like yeah, there's just these songs that are in our heads.
Well good morning. If you haven't met me before if I haven't got to mention before I'm not just a guy that randomly like talks about songs that are stuck in my head, but my name is Greg Hampton.
I'm one of the pastors here. I would love to meet you have coffee with you talk about Jesus with you.
Just get to know you and hear about your life.
We have been going through a bunch of stuff this summer, but we get to start with something fresh today with a short little series.
It's called rest live work.
We've said since the beginning of the church when we first planted the church, we've said that we wanted to call productless home and right.
Adopt the spiritually homeless that we wanted to be a place where no one was left out and we said that because we wanted it to be a place where all those people all of us could learn to rest and live and work in a great house.
Pastor Jen years and years and years ago. This isn't my notes, but I'll just say anyway we she had this great idea to have an actual house that was like an art center and you could do a lot of different things and it would have art studios for people.
And it was going to be called the house and when when we started praying about plant the church Jen was the first person we asked if she'd be a part of it and we just knew that the church needed to be called the house.
Now it was going to be the German spelling of the house was my memory was H A U S and so I looked up the origins of the etymology of the German spelling of house and it said as referring to a family that.
That lived and worked in a great house and I was like that's it that's it but as I went along I realized that if all we ever said was live and work that people wouldn't know that they could also rest.
So it's like no from the beginning we have to let people know that rest actually comes first that it is rest live work and so my hope for us today for you today is that when you leave here that you feel lighter.
You feel presence of God it gives you the sense of lightness and hope that you'll experience that today that you'll experience the rest of God because we're not just talking about sleep.
It's more than taking a nap.
It's more than taking a nap. So let's open up our Bibles we're going to open up to Genesis to the very beginning what Tim Mackey the biblical scholar would call page one and turn to Genesis one if you don't have a Bible you can grab one of those blue ones on the table.
Grab one you can take it home with you if you need it otherwise download a Bible from any of the digital app stores.
I'm going to reference a few different passages but we're only going to read this one passage today.
We have a tradition of giving the scriptures our full attention one of the ways we do that is by standing together if you would like to stay with me you can otherwise just give the scriptures your full attention as I begin in Genesis one verse 27.
It says this so God created humans in his image in the image of God created them male and female he created them God bless them. God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.
God said see I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth everything that has the breath of life I have given every green plant for food and it was so.
God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day thus the heavens and the earth were finished in all their multitude on the sixth day God finished the work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.
So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. Let us pray. God of every tribe every tongue every color every nation.
We thank you for the scriptures that they have persisted throughout the millennia that we still have them to read to learn from and I pray whatever you have for us to learn today I pray that it would stick that would become a part of the framework of our faith that our faith would become stronger as we become more like your son Jesus. Amen.
Rest is from the beginning. Rest is from the beginning. I don't think that it can be emphasized enough just how important it is that rest is part of the very first story in the Bible.
That from the very beginning of the Bible from the very first pages that God is the one that models rest.
The trouble is that most of us are probably used to getting paid after we work. Is that you? So it's easy for us to read that concept into the Bible to think of rest is something we get after we've worked when we're already tired.
And we can read it in. We can see that in Genesis if we want to. God worked and then God rested. Right? We can see that if we want to. He gave the humans a job to do and we could assume that they had to do it before they could rest.
But do this with me. Imagine that you're Adam and Eve. God creates you on day six. God gives you a purpose. And then you go to bed. When you wake up it is day seven.
You open your eyes and you find God resting. What do you do? Do you go straight to work?
Let's take it a step further. The Rabbi Abraham Eshel wrote that God may have finished creating the world and humanity on day six but his final act of creation in Genesis was actually on day seven when he created rest.
Not just rest, the concept of rest. Because we're not talking about sleep. We're talking about the rest from work. What happens is he creates it and he sets it apart.
He actually looks at all his creation and as you read through Genesis 1 you see he creates things and he calls it good. He creates something and he calls it good. He creates something and he calls it good.
He creates humans and he calls them what? Very good. But in all of the scriptures the first thing that God calls holy is what? A day.
A time. Not a place. A concept. Of rest. So now you wake up day seven with that in mind. You see God, maybe you even see God create rest. Maybe you even see God call it holy.
It's just hard for me to imagine that Adam and Eve wake up and just get straight to work. They've known God for a day. I don't know about you but I feel like if I wake up on day seven and he's resting I'm like oh man I get to hang out with him more.
Maybe it's okay to just wake up and rest with God.
Because that kind of rest, that kind of rest can shape everything that comes after. The live and the work.
This reminds me of the Exodus. Israelites had escaped their captors. God had sent Moses to lead them out and after 400 years of toil and slavery it says that they spent 40 years in the wilderness.
Why? Well I think two reasons. First the Bible says that it was a consequence of them not trusting that God would lead them into the promised land right away.
Secondly, I think that every consequence of God has a purpose.
Did you hear that? Every consequence of God has a purpose.
I think that purpose was rest from their labor.
That purpose was rest from the kind of work that they had been forced to do for 400 years and that kind of rest from that kind of work would teach them how to be shaped in the way that God was hoping.
See the Israelites had had 400 years of nonstop work, 400 years of being told that they were slaves.
But then it's in the wilderness that they receive rest. It's in the wilderness they relearn who they are. It's in the wilderness they receive God's teaching.
It's in the wilderness they learn how to worship. It's in the wilderness they learn to trust God for their daily bread, for their every need.
And it's in the wilderness they're made ready for the life and the work that is still to come.
Maybe you need to hear this, that if you're in a wilderness right now, God's trying to shape you.
God's trying to remind you who you really are.
God's trying to remind you of who he is.
You can find it. You can fight it with closed fists.
You can be angry about it. And you can feel like you're being punished or you can see it as a gift from God that has a purpose.
And you can choose to rest in it and let God shape you and prepare you for your tomorrows.
Because the wilderness can be a gift.
Where God leads you with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
Where he gives you fresh bread every morning. Where he teaches you to rest. Where he prepares you to live and work in the promises that he has for you.
I feel like too often so many of us when we experience a wilderness we think that it's because God's mad at us.
The Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness because they were not yet ready to fight the battle that was coming.
They spent all that time in the wilderness because for 400 years they'd been lied to about who they were.
Sometimes we leave our Egypt and we take our bondage with us.
Sometimes we need some time in the wilderness to learn to let go of the ghosts of our shackles.
Sometimes we forget that even being in the wilderness at all is a sign that you are no longer in Egypt.
Rest is accepting that God is working for you. Not against you.
Rest is learning that even when it feels like your world is falling apart that God is working to build you up.
Even when I don't see it you're working. Even when I don't feel it you're working.
God wants us to stop and rest. But the work of God, the work of God is always moving in you.
It's always moving around you. Everything, everything you experience has the opportunity to teach you something.
Something I'm trying to teach my kids. I wrote it on the dry erase board the other day. I posted it on Facebook.
I said our mistakes are not self-condemnation. Our mistakes are learning opportunities.
And when we learn to learn from our mistakes that is a superpower.
Wherever you are, whether you are just getting out of Egypt, whether you're 20 years into 40 years of wilderness,
or if you are on the edge of your promised land, every step along the way is an opportunity to learn from what God is trying to teach you.
Especially when you feel like things are falling apart. Especially when you feel like you can't put it all back together.
Solomon knew this. Solomon is, Psalm 127 is attributed to Solomon and it says this,
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is a waste of time to get up early and stay up late, trying to make a living.
Now here's the kicker, listen, because the Lord provides for those he loves even while they are sleeping.
I don't know about you but when I'm asleep I am worthless.
It happens all the time. Cindy will ask me, hey did you hear the storm last night? I'd be like no, I was dead to the world.
I think whether it's American Christianity or if it's just the trend of religion in general, I don't know.
But we are constantly told that how much we do and how hard we work and how much we accomplish, maybe even how much we know and how right we are about it.
We're told that those are the things that will mark just how blessed we'll be by God.
The scriptures just don't agree with that.
Rest is from the beginning. Rest is all along the way through the scriptures from Genesis to Exodus to Solomon and the Psalms.
And then we get to Matthew 11 and we find out that rest is found in Jesus.
It's when he says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.
My yoke is easy, my burden is light. Jesus is saying, you've been working so hard.
You've been following all the rules to feel like you belong, to feel like God will accept you.
But I have an easier way, a lighter way, a restful way.
Jesus isn't asking us to write his name on the burden that we bear.
Jesus is not asking you to write his name on the burden that you bear.
He's asking you to lay your burden down.
Those are two really different things.
And as I was writing this sermon, I mean, over coming up on 11 years, I've preached about rest many different times,
like you're trying to write a fresh sermon about rest.
As I'm writing, as I'm writing, I'm changing and changing and changing.
And I just thought, you know, the only real way, the best way that I can possibly end this is with a form of worship.
And to give us all a chance to lay our burdens down.
There's a song that I listen to sometimes on repeat.
It's called Starts and Ends.
And there's something unique about this song.
One of the reasons we've never sung it is that it never repeats.
Like there's no verse that repeats. There's no chorus that repeats.
It's just new stanza after new stanza after new stanza of just like heart piercing truth.
And I thought I wanted to give us the opportunity to listen to this song, to watch the video that goes along with it, to see the words.
It's eight minutes.
And I said at the beginning that I want to when you leave here today to feel lighter.
And I hope that as you listen to this song, I'm going to sit up here.
I might even get up and walk around. I want to model for you what worship looks like.
Because worship is the top way that I know how to lay my burdens down.
And you should feel free as you listen to this to do whatever you need to do to feel like you're actually laying your burden down.
Because rest is from the beginning.
Rest is a gift.
Jesus does not need us to write his name on our burdens.
He needs us to lay them down and to take up his yoke.
For his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
And after this, we'll share communion.
Let's worship.
My soul thirsts for things I can't explain.
In my bones I beg and need to pray.
If my heart is without a ground, my effects run both ways.
The flesh is a feather and a needle.
There is a spirit awakening me.
When real life and peace won't make a difference.
When all these thoughts start feeling like these things.
Like the world is a round and I'm bound to come undone.
There is a shifter, a priest.
There is a converter who converts me.
In my soul finds rest.
Where it makes no sense, the number sets in fear.
All my broken ground is in fear.
All my broken knees, all my feelings, we're dead.
It feels like I'm living where I stand marching and the cross stands free.
All the things I do, all the times I do, all my days we're dead.
It feels like I'm living where I stand marching and the cross stands free.
Lay your burden down upon the top of the world.
Jesus, my peace and peace, my reconciled, you're my every good.
I surrender all what I'm needing for you, my every good thing.
You're my medicine, you're my spirit I see, you're my every good thing.
All my days and nights, all my days to die, all my days to die.
You're my headache's friend, first and last refrain, you're my every good thing.
Lay your burden down upon the top of the world.
God, I pray you teach us how to lay these things down.
Take off the yoke of the world and take up your yoke that is easy, that is light, leads to rest, leads
to life and meaningful work.