We Were Created for a Place of "Rest"

One of the earliest memories of my childhood in South Africa is of spending Sundays with our big extended family. We've had a taste of that just recently with my brother's wedding. Every few months after church, we would make the hour long trip to a place called Firinnegan, where our grandparents lived. And we would have lunch with all the uncles and aunts and cousins that we had. These grandparents of mine lived on a poultry farm.

So while the grown ups talked about politics or whatever grown ups talk about, us kids would find endless things to do on this poultry farm. Whether it was trying to catch baby chicks to, you know, squeeze them almost to death, or whether it was shooting rats with an air rifle or whether it was playing hide and seek behind the chicken coops. These precious Sundays were packed with excitement, packed with endless anticipation. But one thing I will always remember was what happened when it was time to say goodbye. After a full day of playing with cousins and being hugged and kissed by all the aunts and being scolded by one or two grouchy uncles, it was time to leave.

To this day, I remember the saying goodbye tradition. After we had said our goodbyes to all the family members, Mum and Dad would put us in the car, strap us in, and Dad would make his way out the driveway, a fairly windy, longish sort of driveway. And as we got to the road, we had to turn left, which meant that we drove past the house again. And in that time, my grandmother, my Nana, who had just said goodbye to us, would hurriedly make her way through the house to the back door on the veranda that overlooked the street to wave us off one more good goodbye as we left. This was amazing to me because my Nana had two really bad hips.

She walked with a walking cane. So I can just imagine how quickly she had to hobble through the house to get there. But I remember what it made me feel like to see that final wave goodbye. My Nana had so appreciated me and my family being there, us being there, that she just wanted to grab one final moment with us. It made me feel appreciated.

It made me feel like I had been welcomed there. And even as we said goodbye, as soon as I saw that wave, I felt like I missed that place again. I couldn't wait to come back because I felt it was a place where I belonged. It felt like it was a place where something was like home. And immediately, I wished that I could stop the car and stay just a little while longer.

It's a funny thing, isn't it? This feeling of home. Feeling at home. Or when you don't have it, that feeling of homesickness. Missing certain elements.

Missing certain sights or sensations. Yet, speak to anyone and they will tell you exactly that they have sensed that as well. We can't describe it, what it is. We can't describe, you know, what elements make up that sensation, but we nod with sympathy about the feeling of homesickness. We nod with understanding of that desire to feel at home.

Why is it so hard to describe? Because home is a powerful yet elusive concept. Now I believe it is actually tied with a far deeper reality that many of our friends, many of us perhaps have never thought about. The great Christian thinker C.S. Lewis wrote that the feeling of longing for home, that desire to be home is so common amongst all of us, whether Christian or not, because it is a spiritual condition, not just a psychological condition.

Because every human being is spiritual. And we know what it means to desire to belong somewhere even if we have it all. Even if we've grown up in Australia all our life. We have our family in the surrounding suburbs. That idea of missing belonging, missing home. Many of us here have had all of these things, and yet who has not experienced that disappointment of looking forward to Christmas time where we think maybe just this year, we'll have it all.

We'll have the warmth. We'll have the joy. We'll have the satisfaction of it all coming together. And how many of us have sort of said, is that it?

C.S. Lewis writes, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside. That is no mere neurotic fantasy. It is the truest index of our real situation. We are all longing for home even if we have a house and a family.

You might be surprised that the Bible talks about God's great rescue plan, God's great rescue plan of humanity in very domestic terms like belonging, finding a home, getting reunited with a family. Because home, according to Scripture, is a place where life flourishes spiritually, physically, and socially. Home is a place where physical life and health are sustained and where our most intimate love relationships are nurtured. The Hebrew word describes this as shalom, peace, rest.

But as you read through the Bible, you see the story of the human race being one of exile. The whole story, the majority of the story is about humanity trying to find God again, trying to find one another again. Death and disease distort and deface a universe that we know shouldn't have those things. Society is a place that is filled with selfishness and pride. Exploitation and violence mar and ruin the human community.

But at one point, the veil is lifted by God to tell us that the world as it now exists is not our home. We are made for a place without death. We are made for a place without disease. We are made to exist without parting from love. That is why we miss people who die.

It is not meant to be that way. That is the reason we are homesick even when we have it all. And so over the course of the next five weeks, we'll be tracking this narrative, this motif through the Scriptures of God finding and establishing a home for us. We'll hear what God wants us to understand about the great comfort, the great strength, the great hope that we can draw from knowing our place in this universe, knowing where we fit. And so this morning, to kick us off, we're going to look at God having created a place for us.

God having created this home. So let's have a look at Genesis 2. Right at the beginning of the Bible that sets up who we are and why we're here. Genesis 2:4, we're going to start reading from. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Verse 7, then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the East, and there He put the man whom He had formed.

And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.

Bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows East of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make for him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord had taken from the man, He made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So far the reading. In Genesis 2, we get a zoomed in picture of the creation story that has been outlined for us in Genesis chapter 1, the previous chapter. We are shown in chapter 1 the extravagant power and authority of God as He forms everything that exists out of nothing. We see in this zoomed in picture where God forms out of something, dust, humanity.

We are all carbon-based creatures. And out of that, life is being inserted into this man. He breathes into the nostrils of this man and this man becomes a living creature, the Bible says. There is something powerful that is inserted into this man that makes them alive. But God, in creating Adam and then Eve, does not simply create them and leave them.

He then creates for them a garden, and He places them in this garden, and it is called Eden. And then God gives them a purpose. He tells them that they are to take care of the world according to Genesis 1. They are to take care of the world. They are given authority to rule over this planet, to advance it, to develop it, to subdue the areas that need maintaining. God shares, in other words, His creative power with them to also create, not out of nothing, but to create and mould what is already there.

But creation and creativity is initially given to us. It is a beautiful picture of the way that things are intended to be. There is something even more profound, however, happening here which we have missed, which we haven't read this morning. And it's found in the first two verses of Genesis chapter 2. We didn't read it because it flows more naturally or more logically within Genesis chapter 1.

These chapter delineations aren't, what shall we say, divine. They are just attempts to sort of categorise things. But I think the verses, the first three verses of chapter 2 fit more neatly into Genesis 1. But we do find something of a shift happening here and something very profound. We read in verse 2 that after the six days of God working to create, His, I mean, imagine creating the universe, the ends of the universe, the stars, the galaxies, everything, and our planet, and the complexity of life.

Having done that in six days, on the seventh day, it says God finished His work, the work that He had done. And He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. And so God blessed this seventh day and made it holy because on it, God rested from all the work that He had done in creation. And then we come to the creation of Adam and Eve.

Do you realise what this means? Why is it structured in this way? If humanity is created on the sixth day, the sort of pinnacle of all of creation, if humanity is created on the sixth day, they experience God for the first time on the seventh day, which is the day of rest. They experience God when He's put up His feet, when He is not preoccupied with work anymore.

Mankind sees God fully invested in them with time to give to His creation. God, remember, has said at the end of day six, everything is very good. Every time He's created, He says it's good. When He sees mankind and He sees the creation as it sits together as a whole, He says, not just good. He says, very good.

And it's as if God is just resting on that seventh day, drinking it all in, appreciating what He has done. And that is where Adam and Eve meet God. We see, in other words, a creation that is perfect. It is not a creation in flux. It is not a creation that is sort of figuring things out, and a God who is absent or preoccupied.

Humanity has, in other words, full access to the entire creation in perfection as it is meant to be, and they have full access to God. This is where that term, the Hebrew term shalom comes from, rest. The Hebrew word is tied with the idea of wholeness, of flourishing. And the Genesis account tells us that the plan has always been for us to belong, to rest, to have peace. God is saying to us, you belong to Me.

God is saying that you belong to one another, Adam and Eve, man and woman. You belong to the creation as well. You are part of the creation. You've been made out of the dust of this creation. You belong to it and it belongs to you.

Can you see there is perfect connection? There is harmony. That is why verse 25 in chapter 2 finishes off the chapter by saying that the man and the woman were both naked and were not ashamed. Why does it say that random sentence at the end? It means that there's nothing to separate man and woman.

There is nothing that hides them from one another. There's nothing that hides them physically, but also spiritually. There is no sin. There is no hatred. There is no jealousy.

There is no strife against one another. And so firstly, we are shown that humanity was always, was always intended to exist in this state of completeness, this state of wholeness. We were created to exist in a state of perfection. But secondly, we are also able to see humanity being created to enjoy the magnificence of God. As you work through the Bible, you start seeing a God who is supreme.

As you read through the Bible, as you work through the various interactions after this event, you see a God who is powerful, a God who is self-sufficient. He is perfectly sovereign, meaning that He has control over all things. This is how He starts revealing Himself throughout the ages. God creates for Himself a special nation called Israel and He shows Himself in very intimate ways to Israel. And then the idea is that through Israel, He is declaring Himself to the world.

Now we're not told all of this in the account of Genesis, but it becomes obvious as we read the Bible. God never intended to simply create because He needs us. God never created the universe because it somehow fulfils Him in any way. God didn't need to create us. It wasn't like He was lonely.

It wasn't like He sort of said, I really need a Tian in my life. Bang. I really need an annoying K.J. to look after all the time. God, as He reveals Himself to humanity, is God fully satisfied in Himself, not simply because He is all powerful, as we see in creation.

I mean, He creates so much. We understand God as perfectly self-sufficient in perfect community with Himself. He is the triune God as He reveals Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the Trinity is the perfect fellowship within one another. They honour and they worship and they love one another mutually.

And outside of this, this is the perfect community. Outside of this, there is no other need. And yet, we get a wonderful insight of just this dynamic between the Trinity in John chapter 17. Jesus prays to God the Father as He's about to go to the cross. And He prays in John 17:5 with these words.

He says, now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed. Glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the earth existed. Here we find sort of just a snapshot of this Trinitarian fellowship, the community. The Father can glorify the Son. The Son can glorify the Father.

Jesus is saying, as I go to the cross now to accomplish this great redemption feat, as I go and do this for the people that You have given Me, glorify Me through this process, Father. Let the cross bring glory to Me. And so in this prayer, we see a snapshot of the amazing internal relationship found in the Trinity. But what this means, what Scripture is holding out for us is that God never needed anything outside of that harmonious relationship, and yet He creates. And yet He designs human beings.

Why? Because He is gracious. In no sense arrogantly, God knows that He is perfection. He is the greatest thing that exists in this universe. And it would be a blessing to the highest degree to know Him, to participate with Him, to engage with Him.

It is the greatest thing that we can have in this existence. God knows this and therefore He creates us. It is grace that causes Him to form us because He knows He is the most magnificent thing in all of creation. And so the question that we ask ourselves, why does God create us, is answered thus: for His own glory and for our enjoyment of Him. Scripture itself attests to this idea.

The prophet Isaiah records what God says to His people Israel at one point in Isaiah 43:7. He says that He has formed sons and daughters for His own glory. I've created you for My own glory. And then at the end of the Bible in Revelation 4:11, we are given a glimpse of the heavenly praise. We already read a part of that in chapter 5.

In chapter 4, we are given a glimpse of the heavenly praise that God receives by the angels and myriads of created creatures. They all sing. These are the words, verse 11: You are worthy, our Lord and God.

Worthy to receive glory and honour and power. Why? For You have created all things, and by Your will, they existed and were created. God is worthy to receive glory for having created all things. And as creatures who have been created to recognise God, to interact with Him in a profound way, we find our greatest wholeness, our greatest completion in knowing God.

This is why King David writes in Psalm 16:11, in Your presence, God, there is fullness of joy. Not just a little bit, fullness of joy. By Your right hand, oh God, are pleasures forevermore. Fullness of joy, life of fulfilment is found in knowing God, being in relationship with the Creator. And so we see in Genesis 1 and 2, the state of existence is a state of belonging, a place of belonging, a place of peace and rest and harmony.

But then we flip to the next chapter, chapter 3, and it all starts coming undone. Very quickly, the wheels start falling off. There's a horrible turn of events. Mankind falls out with God. Sin and rebellion enters creation, and the harmony and the rest that God originally intended for us is spoiled.

It is marred. To this event, this event sets up then a long and a windy road of God setting up His plan to rescue mankind, to rescue this creation that He loves and created out of grace. And this is what we'll be exploring in the next four weeks after today. God going about restoring home, bringing home exiles, people that are away from home that still long for it.

But thankfully, we know that this rescue plan is and was finally fulfilled by Jesus, who pursued us. To be redeemed means to be restored back to the original purpose, to be returned home, in other words, to the state of rest we were always intended for. And again, we see in Genesis 2 the wonderful dynamic, the state of harmony for which we were created. We see three elements here.

We see God, man, and nature being shown in Genesis 1 and 2. And mankind is created and is here. Mankind is meant to relate to God and worship for His glory. Man and woman have fellowship together, and mankind looks after nature through stewardship. This is the harmony.

This is the system that has been created for us. And yet, in Genesis chapter 3, we find alienation with God. In Genesis chapter 4, with the murder of Abel through Cain, we find an alienation between mankind. And with the thorns and the thistles and the hard work that will come from looking after the planet, we find alienation and enmity between mankind and nature. All those relationships are broken and that is why we feel homesick.

But this is our great assurance that Jesus Christ has come to reconcile everything back to how it was. This is what we'll be following through in the next few weeks. At the end of the book of Revelation, as the apostle John sees the vision, Revelation 21, he sees the new heavens and the new earth. He sees what God will finally bring about. He sees also Jesus Christ sitting on a throne, now finally king, not the rejected strange man that we as human beings sort of sideline.

He is sitting as the King over everything, and this is what He says. Revelation 21:5, behold, I am making all things new. Friends, this is what Jesus does. He reinstates worship to God, a relationship with Him. He heals broken relationships between us and He reconciles us back to nature.

This is the home you've always wanted but you've never had. And our Saviour Jesus is in the process of making all of the brokenness in this life new. And so today, as you hear about our purpose, why we are who we are, why we're here, remember that you were created to know and enjoy God. That you were created for a world of harmony, not for a world of imperfection and just getting along and just getting by. And you were redeemed by a God who pursued you to redeem you for Him.

And so as Christians, as recipients of His grace, not simply the grace that created us in the first place, the grace that has made us, but the grace that has saved us as well. As recipients of this grace, this teaching should make us think very carefully about our life and how we live in response to it. If Christ is busy restoring our relationships with one another, that's already a place in a church. That's already a different sort of entity than what is outside, even clubs and other nice social things. As Christ is restoring humanity with one another, what does it mean for how we relate with one another? If Christ is in the process of making it all new and if that process has started now, how much are we actively thinking and pursuing building relationships, maintaining friendships, sticking it out with people that we find really tiresome.

What does it say about how we relate to the people of different ethnicities? Blacks, Asians, white people. If peace and harmony was always found in fellowship between one another, why do we so easily give up on friendship? Why don't we invest more time in our friends, in our church brothers and sisters, in our colleagues at work? Secondly, if Christ is redeeming our relationship with nature, why are we not more concerned about environmental issues?

Do we care about what is happening to God's creation? We've been created to be stewards and guardians of this planet. How careful are we in thinking through the issues of pollution? The treatment of animals. Our own footprint.

These are not lefty, greeny ideologies. This is what God has created us to be and to do. Similarly, we have to hold intention to God's command to fill and subdue the earth. We are called to work in this planet, to use the resources that it can give us to advance it and humanity. And so we hold intention to guardianship and also development of the planet.

And so we have to find this happy balance between guardianship and development. But finally, we are also called to return to God. We are called to come to God to enjoy the most excellent entity in all of existence. Only in Him do we find joy. Only in Him do we find peace and rest and home.

We pursue things that are secondary if we don't pursue Him first. And so why live in any other way than the way He has intended us to live? Why neglect our relationship with Him when there is nothing but fulfilment and a sense of acceptance and belonging in Him? Friends, we've been created for more. It's time for us to start making our way home.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word to us this morning, the great grand vision that we see. I want to pray for some of us who may feel overwhelmed by all of this. I want to pray for those who may feel that they are not worthy to be close to calling themselves beings that can glorify God. And yet, this morning we hear again that it's not about us.

It's about Your choice to have created us. And if You have chosen to create us, then we have no choice but to glorify You. Help us, Lord, in glorifying You to find that lasting joy. Help us to know You, to understand our place in all of it so that we sense the fulfilment, the rest, the happiness of knowing why we are here, who we have been made for, why we are created the way we are. And Lord, for those friends and family that don't know You, the ones who I believe do miss home even though they can't articulate it.

Lord, I pray that You'll be working in their hearts and lives. I pray, Lord, through us as a church, even in our imperfection, even in our ups and downs, our hearts that are prone to wander, our eyes that can take our attention off You. Lord, that even through us, we may proclaim and hold out that there is a hope and there's a Father who wants to welcome us. Like my Nana who waved us goodbye, a Father that cannot wait for us to return home. Well, we dedicate this series over the next weeks to You as well.

We ask that You will help us to understand and gain from it what we need, grow our church, and grow us through it. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.