Rest Assured: The Peril and the Plan

 February 22 2026

Genesis 2:16-17, 3:1-13, Matthew 5:1-8

         When we experienced what was called, Snow-maggeden, you know that big dump of snow that buried all of us, the initial feeling was that of of being just totally overwhelmed. And then, as looked upon all of the snow drifts, I remembered the wisdom found in one of my favorite Bible verses. I hold on to this verse because it caught me by the surprise because it actually does snow in Israel something we discover at the end of the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah. There the prophet writes: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but instead they water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater.’ This verse stands as a reminder that even though we may not like having a foot of snow to deal with, it nonetheless is given to us so that when spring arrives the water table is sufficient to make seeds come to life and grow.

         Well, that verse from the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah wasn’t just giving us a lesson on the necessity of snow, far from it. You see, God was comparing the rain and the snow to the power of his spoken word. Just as the snow and the rain are sent from heaven to water the earth, so too when God speaks, and his word comes  down to us from heaven we know it has a life giving purpose. Just as the snow and the rain water the soil so that life can spring forth, so too the word spoke by God is given to us to cause life to spring forth in us. If we keep reading the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, God goes on to say, “So shall my word be that goes out of my mouth, it shall not return to me empty. My word shall accomplish the purpose that I have for it. My word shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.’ These few verses in Isaiah clearly point us back, once again, to the creation story which happened only through the words spoke by God. As we have read through this story we have indeed found that when God speaks a word, that this word does indeed go forth and it accomplishes what the word speaks of, and the end result is always life. This is an important takeaway for us as we consider that the word of Jesus has promised us rest. We should expect that the truth of this promise will be found by us as we rest every seventh day all because this is what God did when he finished creation on the seventh day. 

         Now when we are told in our story that God rested, we are to understand that the place where he is sitting is there upon his throne. God reigns as a king who is certain that his reign and rule go forth into all of his creation. So the very reason that God rests is that on the sixth day, God first created us, his people. As the highest of all of his creatures, we have been created for a very special purpose which is that we are to be conformed to the image of God knowing that we have been made in his likeness. This means that we are to know ourselves as being the royal children of God who reign and rule like our Father, through our service to others. Once people have been created to have dominion over all the earth, God can then sit back, relax and enjoy the work of his good, and faithful servants.

         So because humanity has arrived on the scene, God can now know that his rule and reign has been established by and through the people he has brought into being. So, just as we learn from the Sabbath commandment, we are to find rest for our souls because we know that God is resting. Now, the good news is that we do not have to bring about a state of peace and rest in our life simply through sheer will and effort on our part. No, after God created people we are told that he blessed us. What Jesus teaches us is that the blessing God placed upon his newly created humans is given to us in a word, well, actually three words, a word of promise, a word of judgment, and a word of life, each word corresponding to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. These words, just like the words God spoke creation into being, have the power to create order within all of us.

         So, just like when the snow and the rain come down from heaven to bring life-giving water to the earth, so too the word of God comes to us and that word will also bring forth life. This is what we find in the teaching Jesus gives to us about the blessing God speaks into our life. There in the fifth chapter of Matthew we find that the first three of these blessings are the word of promise give to us by our Heavenly Father. Our Father finds us, poor, and empty handed and he speaks to us the promise of a home for us where we can experience the life of heaven here on earth. Our Father finds us grieving our losses, and his eternal presence walking beside us brings us great comfort. Our Father then tells us that if we are willing to yield ourselves to his guidance then he promises us that we will indeed, inherit the world created for us. This word of promise spoken to us by our Father creates in us a faith, a certainty which provides us a foundation for our life to rest upon which will never be taken from us.

         Today, we come to the subject of judgment because God introduces us humans to a new tree, a tree which gives to us the knowledge of good and evil. Now, the truth is that there is nothing special about the tree or the fruit it produces. No, the only thing that sets this particular tree apart from all the rest is that God has told his people that they are to not eat of this particular fruit. But there is a crisis that arises because there is now a choice to be made. Good is found listening to God and not eating what is forbidden for us to eat. Evil is not listening to God and going ahead and making a fruit salad. The result of the choice we make will be that we will either grow in our knowledge of good or we will grow in our knowledge of what is less than good, what the Bible calls evil. When we listen to the word of God, trusting his judgment, and obeying his word, we will discover an ever deeper understanding of God’s goodness. As we grow in our certainty of the goodness of God, we will be more trusting of God, always ready to obey. But when we refuse to obey God, then we will begin to grow in our knowledge of evil for we will be on a path that leads to ever more evil in our life as we listen to this other voice which drowns out the still, small voice of God.

         So this introduction of this new tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil causes us to wonder, just what is this voice that competes with the voice of God for our attention? Well, in the third chapter of Genesis, we learn about this other voice from a snake. To help understand what is going on here, I am indebted to Rabbi David Fohrman, who explains that the snake merely represents the rest of all God’s created animals. The snake is wondering why Adam and his bride, Eve, no longer listen to the voice God has placed in all the other animals, the voice that the other creatures listen to for their survival. You see, the animals know nothing of death. All they know is that listening to their inner voice keeps them alive one moment longer. It is this inner voice, the voice of the animal that we appear to be, which speaks to us. In the case of the fruit hanging there in the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, the woman, Eve, was first aware that this fruit was good for food. This fruit would be good to satisfy her appetite. The second observation the woman had was that this fruit was pleasant to look at, making this fruit an object to obsess over, the very definition of lust. Finally, the inner voice of Eve spoke to her of how being in possession of this fruit would cause her to look wise and honorable to her husband, Adam. So this fruit would become for Eve a great source of pride. So, when we listen to our appetites, and follow our lusts and allow pride to motivate us, this inner voice becomes so loud that the voice of God is no longer heard. So by following our appetites, and being controlled by our lusts, all the while allowing our pride to motivate us, then we have turned from God and his goodness, to walk the way of evil. Now, if we continually refuse to listen to the voice of God, then in the end we will become merely an animal, an animal that will die yet an animal who will be also horribly aware of what no other animal ever knows, this ending called death. It is this dread of death, this is what makes us a restless animal, continually concerned about the death that is waiting for us that we never really get around to actual living. And that is the real peril to not listening to God.

         Yet still, God continues to call his people to listen to his voice, for this is what separates us from the rest of all the creatures God has brought forth. The reason why God calls us to trust his judgment is that our own judgment is always being tempted to listen to our creaturely concerns. Instead of serving others as God desires of us, our appetites cause us to use people to get what is needed for our satisfaction. When we find others pleasant to our eyes they go from someone to serve and instead we make them into an object to obsess over. And instead of seeking the honor of God through our obedience to his word, we instead will do whatever it takes to make others give honor to us. The life which was to be conformed to the image of God, a life lived in the likeness of God, this is destroyed when we consider ourselves just another creature that God has made. 

         So God tells us that we dare not trust the inner voice that pulls us ever away from him. We must listen to the judgment of God, for he alone is good. Only God can know the good we were created to do. So, when God blesses us, he not only speaks to us a word of promise, that he can indeed take poor, empty handed people and through his eternal presence give us the world as our inheritance but he also speaks a word of judgment so that we know with certainty the path that leads us to the goodness of God. This word of judgment is the second part of the blessing God speaks over us so that through that blessing, the rest that God experiences might be found alive in us. 

         In the fifth chapter of Matthew, the sixth through the eighth verses, Jesus, the Son of God speaks to us a word of judgment. Through these three blessings we are able to put to death our appetites, our lusts and our pride. So, in response to our appetites, this inner search we all have to find satisfaction, Jesus tells us that we should have a hunger and thirst not just for our own satisfaction but rather we are to be craving a world where all people are at last satisfied. We are to ache for a world where all people can live as God created them to live, as equals under God. We are to find all people worthy of giving our life in service to them, having an appetite to help someone else who is hungering or thirsting for their life to at last be filled. When this becomes our priority, then God promises us we will have a deep, and abiding satisfaction with life.

         Jesus goes on to counter this temptation we have to fixate our eyes on what pleases by giving us to a new focus on which to set our sights. Listen to what Jesus teaches us, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Jesus is calling us to do as the Good Samaritan did, as recorded for us in the tenth chapter of Luke. How can we forget that it was the Samaritan who when he saw the man left half-dead in the ditch he had compassion on him.Jesus desires that we have eyes that look upon the hurting and the broken so that we become obsessed with offering life to them. God, once again gives to us a promises that assures us that if giving mercy is what our eyes are searching for then the judgment he has offers us will also be mercy.

         Lastly, when our need for honor in the watching eyes of the world begins to clamor in our ear, we instead are to find our status solely in the honor God gives to those who listen to him and obey him. You see, Jesus, in the twelfth chapter of John, tells us that those who are willing to serve Jesus by listening to him, these are the ones who will receive honor from our Heavenly Father. We should long to have as our highest ambition to one day step into the presence of our Master and hear those words, “Well, done, good and faithful servant.” You see, when we are tempted to chase after worldly riches in order that people in the world will hold us in high esteem, we are to pause and consider the joy we will one day have when we stand before the face of the God who rejoices over us. What keeps our heart pure is that we treasure the infinite riches of our relationship with God instead of desiring the fleeting charms of this world.

         So the judgment of God is that as his people, we are to hunger and thirst for righteousness, we are to be people of mercy, and we are to have hearts that are pure in their devotion for God. Then, if we live according to this way of life, Jesus assures us that all throughout our life, God will be the source of our satisfaction. If we are merciful , then when we stand before Jesus our righteous Judge, we will receive mercy, not condemnation. And lastly, if our hearts have sought only the honor of God, we can know that our eternal days will be always lived before the face of God. So from these words of God we discover that this plan of God has created hope within us. This is much the same as when we heard the blessings which speak to the word of promise given to us by our Heavenly Father. In the first of the blessings that Jesus teaches us, we are promised that we will have a home where the life of heaven is experienced here on earth. We are also given the certainty of the eternal presence of the God who loves us which gives us great comfort in a world marked by loss. And we are told that if we are willing to be guided by our Father we will one day receive the world as an eternal inheritance. This word of promise from our Heavenly Father creates in us the faith to believe and trust his words. So, through the Father’s word of promise and through the Son’s word of judgment, we discover that within us is a vibrant faith and a living hope. This faith and hope are the very means by which we are given the gift of rest by Jesus. So we take the yoke of Jesus upon us we learn from him the way for us to have a faith in our Heavenly Father. And then Jesus goes on to teach us the way to make right judgments that will give us hope as we grow in an ever greater knowledge of the goodness of God.

         You see, the word of judgment that Jesus taught to us in his teaching about the blessing of God should seem oddly familiar. The reason for this is that this word of judgment is the very same word of the cross. There we see Jesus, who desired righteousness more than the preservation of his life. The judgment we deserved for rejecting Jesus, killing him to silence his voice, is death, yet the cross, instead, shouts, “Mercy”. Yet, we might rightly wonder, is this truly the way we were created to live, pursing righteousness and offering mercy? The way we justify this judgment of Jesus is that three days after the death of Jesus he stepped out of his grave very much live. And now Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, forever. There Jesus, fully human and fully God, now rests on the throne. As we listen to his voice, and hear the blessing which flows from his word of promise and the word of judgment, this same rest that Jesus experiences now can be the very rest experienced by us. So in faith and hope, let us now rest always in the certainty of his love! Amen!  

Rest Assured: The Promise and the Peace

 February 15 2026

Genesis 1:27-31, 2:1-3, Matthew 12:1-14

         One of the most common ideas that we as Christian’s have is that our influence in the world is getting less and less all the time. I think we can all agree that the church and what it stands for no longer seems to have much bearing on the lives of millions of people. Yet, as true as this is, perhaps the influence that the church has on our society is just more subtle, less noticeable than it should be. I mean, think of how our world is structured around a seven day week. Yes, as churches we can bemoan the fact that there are no longer any blue laws on the books that keep people at home on Sundays, and that there is too much going on, on what is supposed to be a day of rest. Yet, what we still have is a world where people have come to expect and enjoy the weekends, to have a little time for rest and relaxation. Yet, what many people do not realize is that this idea of taking one day out of every week to rest is one that can be traced back to the first chapter of every Bible. Isn’t it fascinating that the glorious end to the creation story, a day of rest, has now become an expected way of life. Perhaps we all sense that we were indeed created to rest once in awhile.

         Well, this need we all have to rest is what we have been looking at in the last several weeks in this series of messages entitled, “Rest Assured”. You see, the gift given to us at Christmas named Jesus, desires that we might receive from him the gift of rest. This is what he promises us in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, where hear Jesus tell us, “Come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me for my burden is light, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” This is the very reason Jesus was given to us by the Father, so that we might be given rest for our souls. So we are right to ask ourselves, “Have I taken and opened up this gift of rest Jesus has given to me? Can I honestly say that I have found rest for my soul, as Jesus promises me that I should have? 

         When we encounter Jesus we must be willing to lay down the burdens that are just crushing us, and take Jesus up on his offer by taking up the yoke he offers us. This means that we will go wherever Jesus may lead us, and where we find that he is taking us is back to the beginning called Genesis. We know that the story of creation is where we need to be because on the seventh and final day of the creation story we find that God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. This may not seem to have much bearing on us, his people, until we remember the Ten Commandments, found in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. There, we find that God’s people were to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. God tells his people that six days shall you labor and do your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath, a resting day, to the Lord. On this day, you shall not work, you or your son, or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, nor your livestock nor any people of the nations who are with you. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Has it become somewhat obvious that the reason for the creation story is to provide the background and the reason for the keeping of the Sabbath? You see, for those who are not familiar to the story of creation, this idea that every seven days everybody stays home and takes a nap is rather peculiar. In the first place, why every seven days? Well, throughout the Bible, you will find that seven is a holy number that is used to represent wholeness, or completeness. Seven speaks to the ideas of peace and perfection. These meanings given to the number seven have their roots in the creation story where we are told God completed his work in seven days. As we hear in the creation story, the measurement of time usually follows the rhythms of nature. The hours we count and the days we number, merely keep track of the movement our earth around the sun. The months were originally based upon the waxing and waning of the moon. The years are structured by the various seasons and so on. So when we come to the marking off of how many days are in a week we find that this number seven is simply not found in the cycles created within the natural world. Seven, you see, is simply the number God has chosen to represent his work. 

         So our weeks follow the original format found in the beginning which was given to us by God. The pattern is that there is six days to work and then there is a seventh day to rest because this is the very rhythm of God. Now, as Christians we must be careful how we understand the keeping of the Sabbath because it will seem quite natural to believe in Jesus and, at the same time, feel the need to keep the Ten Commandments. You see, Jesus himself told us that he came to fulfill the Law. This means that Jesus brings about the life that the Law was always pointing us to. So it is important that we know just what is the purpose of this day of rest, I mean, why did God believe that this res was so necessary? The answer as to why there is this need for a day of rest is not as easy to find as we might expect. You see, even in Jesus day, the most upright, devout Law follower, did not apparently even know why God had set up this seven day schedule. This is discovered one Sabbath day, when Jesus and his disciples began to pluck heads of grain as they walked through a wheat field. Now, when these Pharisees saw Jesus being all ok with the behavior of his students, they were appalled. Didn’t Jesus know the law? Did he not know that when it says, ‘No work”, it means, “No Work”? So Jesus reminds these Pharisees of a story about David, and how David had once offered his famished soldiers the sacred bread of the Tabernacle. Even though the bread was holy there was indeed something more holy than what is found in the tabernacle and that sacred item to be revered was the very life of the men who were in intense hunger. Jesus continues this line of thought by asking the Pharisees if they were not aware that on the Sabbath the priests in the Temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?” Then Jesus reminds them that the disciples eating a bite of breakfast was something that was greater than the Temple here! Now to the Pharisees this had to be an outstanding statement for the Temple was as great as it gets. Yet Jesus speaks as an authority on the Sabbath because he is the very Son of Man; he is the Lord of the Sabbath. Right here, Jesus is taking us back to the original seventh day of rest in the story of creation. There, when we are told that God rested, we are to picture God seated upon his throne. This image of one resting there on that seventh day is none other than Jesus .

         Jesus, then is not just our Lord, but he is the one who reigns over the seventh day. You see, the Sabbath day is given to us to remind us that the very reason why God rests, and the reason why we rest is solely because of this: our God reigns. And further, the Sabbath also tells us that our God reigns through his people, the ones God created to reign and rule over his creation. You see, this reigning as God’s representative in the world through the serving of our neighbor, this is the true work for which we have all been created to do. So as we pause and rest from our labors, this is what we are called to remember. You see, this serving of others by giving them what is needed for life, as in the case of Jesus who meets a man whose hand is deformed, this is not the work that the commandment is calling us to cease from doing. Jesus clearly tells us that it is indeed lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Now, when we hear the words, “…to do good…”, we should know that this is the mark of the creation story. Every time God created another piece of his masterpiece he declared that it was, “Good”. The culmination of all this goodness is a creation that is overflowing with life. So when Jesus tells us that we are to do good, we can be assured that this means that we are to always be working at the giving of life. There is never to be a day when we are to rest from doing this good work.Whenever and wherever we see a need to serve someone else, doing whatever is necessary for someone else to be set free from their anxiety or worry about life, God tells us to go ahead and get busy. You see, the fulfillment of this commandment to keep the Sabbath is given to us so that we might begin to see every day as a Sabbath day. Yes, we do have to work in order to live but we can remember that such work is not the work we were created for. Yes, we do have to go to work but that work does not have to consume our life to the point that we have no time, or strength left to do the work God created us to do, ruling and reigning through the service of others. Yes, we do have to work but God will provide just as he did in the beginning. We need not be concerned about all that we need because above all we should know that our God reigns, a truth that is made more certain every time we reign and rule through our service to others.

         We have to understand that now because Christ has come to fulfill the law, keeping the Sabbath for us is to be an every day way of life. Each new day is a day we are to rise, living a life at rest yet ready to do the good work God has for us. Already when we consider what we were created to do we sense that we are not up to the task, and we are to right in doing so. You see, before we can rest there on the seventh day, God first does something on the sixth day to make this life at rest a real possibility. We are told in the twenty-eighth verse of the first chapter of Genesis that God blessed the people that he had made.  Now when we wonder just what does it mean for God to bless us, we discover that Jesus has revealed this to us. We first are to know that the word, “blessing”, in the Hebrew language, simply means to kneel before another in order to fear them a gift. When it tells us that God blessed humanity in the beginning, we are to have this image of God kneeling before us offering us a gift, so once again we see the posture of a servant. Now the gift God gives to us is his word. As we remember, creation began with God speaking, and when God spoke a word, light appeared, the light, as we learn in the first chapter of John, which is the life of all humanity. Then, as the creation of the world concludes, God speaks not one last word but this time three words to bring forth the highest creation called Adam, humanity. 

Yet, surprisingly, God is not done speaking because before God sends his people forth, he once again speaks a word, called blessing. Through this blessing of God our life is to produce good fruit. This good fruit is found listed for us in the fifth chapter of Galatians.There Paul teaches us that the fruit God brings forth in us, is not merely more life, as was the case in the rest of creation, but rather, the fruit in us is instead a life with certain qualities. These characteristics are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and the very life of heaven living in us.You see, this fruit God speaks into being within us is the very eternal life of God. This life springs up in us in much the same way as the rest of creation, through God speaking it into being. 

You see, the blessing of God is the gift given to us by the word of God. As God speaks his word, it brings forth in us earth-bound creatures the very life of heaven which is the very source of the fruit of the Spirit. We hear the words God blesses us with in what Jesus teaches us in the fifth chapter of Matthew. These nine blessings found there can be divided into what might be called a word of promise, a word of judgment and a word of life, which correspond to the voice of God the Father, the voice of God the Son and the voice of God the Holy Spirit. 

The first of these blessings, found in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the third through the fifth verses, is what we might call a word of promise given to us by our Heavenly Father. This promise is for those who know that they are the poor, the empty handed ones,  these are who our Heavenly Father welcomes home so they might experience the very life of heaven. Blessed, Jesus again tells us, but this time it is those who mourn, those whose life is marked by loss. This sense of grief is something we all know so instinctively, and it is the root cause of all our anxiety and worry. The blessing that is given to those who grieve, is that they are found by their eternal Father. What comfort it is to know the one who can never be lost to us is the very one who finds us when all seems lost. The Father who comforts us speaks to us, telling us that if we are willing to learn, to take the yoke of Jesus upon ourselves, then God promises us the earth will be our inheritance. 

So, let’s step back and look at how we are blessed through this word of promise spoken to us by our Heavenly Father. God speaks to the empty handed people that to them will be given a home where heaven can be experienced here on earth. In a world marked by loss, we are found by our eternal Father, the one and only who can never be lost from us. And our eternal Father promises us that if  we are willing to learn his ways, then we who were once empty handed, ravaged by the losses of this world, we are promised that the entire creation will one day be our inheritance. 

When we hear what our Heavenly Father promises to us we are to realize that this gift can only be received by faith. Can you believe that in this world marked by so much evil that there can be a place where the goodness of God can be found? I mean, can you really believe that the comfort given to us by our eternal Father is really the answer to the tragedies we experience through all that we have lost here on earth? Are we willing to yield our life over to the guidance and direction of this Heavenly Father who promises us that if we do so the whole creation will one day be given to us as a father gives their child an inheritance? You see, the blessing spoke to us by our Heavenly Father is to call forth certainty in us because now at last we have found, or perhaps better, we have been found, by our eternal Father. You see, all we have to do is to wonder just why it is that the one who is not only eternal but also invisible, would even decide to be known by us? The answer is that the God who too knows the pain of loss, desires that we know that there is indeed a goodness beyond the evil of this world. Such is the message of the cross, the painful loss, and the resurrection, where the goodness of God overcame the evil of this world. You see, it is God offering to us his goodness, this is what demonstrates his great love for us. Out of this great love we find in us a willingness to trust in his promises, above everything else. And here in this trust, we find that we are no longer restless, for we have found a certainty in the God who loves us. Amen!